Another personal post
So once again I find myself awake at an ungodly hour. This time, however, I’m not – to use a cliche – plagued by insecurity or uncertainty. I mean, there’s still some of it there, but it’s not got me up worrying about whether or not people are talking behind my back or if maybe nobody has ever loved me and ew look at me in the mirror what a fatty plumper. No, this time I’m up thinking about something my therapist and I discussed earlier today (technically yesterday but hey fuck it I measure my days by when I sleep you wanna fight about it?).
In discussing unhealthy trains of thought, and foul moods, and all manner of unbidden unhealthiness, we got on the subject of an old Taoist analogy that I’ve always been a fan of. Life was once explained as being like a cloud moving over an empty field. Where the cloud does not cast its shadow, it will one day cast it, this is just how clouds are. However, it is also true that where the cloud now casts its shadow, one day that shadow will have moved on and light will shine. This is just how clouds are. This is also how life is. Clouds happen. Sometime those clouds are dark and thick and full of fury, other times they’re wispy and thin and hardly noticeable. But they always pass. They move on into the wind, but the field is still there. You are the field, and the cloud is the bad times. Some bad times are worse than others, and some might leave lasting marks (physical or not), but they’re not forever. I think that even when I was at my worst, I was able to draw upon this analogy in order to move forward, if not always with my head held high. I’ve been lauded for my strength in the past, and while I was rarely able to see it (and even now I feel remiss admitting it for reasons of unnecessary humility), I’ve come through some fairly cloudy days. I wonder if I’d have had the same perseverance if I’d not discovered this concept.
After describing the cloud thing to my therapist, he nodded and offered his own extension of the parable. He urged me to think about what clouds are made of. He talked about being in a plane, looking down at the clouds while the sun shined brightly. Clouds are nothing, really – insubstantial. You could walk right through one. This is the true nature of sadness, of insecurity, of doubt and grief and all the nasty emotions we put ourselves through. They’re just a bunch of water vapor blocking out the sun. And the sun is the most important part of all this, because even when those clouds are overhead, even if they’re nasty black thunderheads, the sun is still just on the other side, waiting to see your smiling face again. All the brightness and beauty and, well, life of life is still there, whether or not you can see it.
Bad times, bad moods, bad thought processes, these are all very real – much like clouds are observably real – but you have to remember just what they really are. They’re insubstantial things. Sometimes they try their best to hide the good things in our lives. They’ll thunder and rain and flash like a child having a tantrum until they’ve got our undivided attention if we let them. But there’s something else about clouds that we humans have the very unique capability of doing – we can step out from under them. We can look out into the field where it’ s warm and sunny and leg it over to those greener pastures. Sure, some clouds take longer to walk away from, but no cloud covers the whole sky, and no cloud can devour the sun.
He told me these things, and everything fell into place. There was another weather-based analogy I had been using when I got down, something said by British comedian Stephen Fry, who suffers from bipolar disorder (something I don’t suffer from, but it sounded like good general wisdom at the time). He said, “Moods are like the weather. When it rains, it is real, you get wet It is also true of the weather that one day it will get better.” I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he has a point. But there was a crucial detail that I’d been ignoring – Fry is speaking from the perspective of a man with a mood disorder. Bipolar disorder is such that those who suffer from it have little to no control over their mood, and that sort of psychological chaos can drive a person to some unfortunate and desperate ends. For someone who may be at the end of their rope and just can’t seem to stop it, thinking of moods like the rain, as something that is out of your control but that is also not permanent, is a brilliant approach.
For a “normal” person (as far as brain function goes), this wisdom doesn’t quite go far enough. I had to think about this a lot, to find a way to reconcile the valuable wisdom that existed in the Taoist parable, my therapist’s amendment to that parable, and the words of a man who has seen some shit and come through the other side. This is what had kept me up, and why I decided to make this post, and it was two paragraphs ago when I wrote the bit about walking out from under the clouds that it all really came together for me.
I write a lot about writing here, almost every week for a few months now. I talk about the craft, and about how to improve the craft, but what often gets glossed over is how the craft can improve you. I came here to write this post because I knew that in writing it, I would digest the wisdom I’d been handed, that I would challenge myself to put it together coherently and in terms that were mine. There were a few times that I had to pause and ask myself questions as if I were the reader, questions that needed answers now more than ever. The integrity of the wisdom hung in the balance. I found a resolution to each question, and in doing so had weeded out the doubts and uncertainties that were hiding inside me, and I put them to rest.
Now it’s up to me to remember that clouds ain’t got shit.
What’s this? Two posts in one day?
Hey guys. I haven’t give those of you who read this thing an update on my personal life in weeks, so I figure now’s as good a time as any.
I had my 28th birthday this past weekend, and I gotta say it was the best yet. A week or two beforehand I was starting to worry about it. I worried that it would be shitty, that it wouldn’t go the way I wanted it to, that nobody really wanted to spend my birthday with me because fuck me that’s why. Thankfully, I was able to sublimate all of that nonsense in time for the day itself, and I had a really wonderful time. Dinner with my girlfriend followed by a great time just dickin’ around with friends at my house was exactly what I needed, and while some people might wonder why I didn’t do something more grandiose, the people who know me understand that as much as I love things like Six Flags and big fun day trips, for my birthday I’m content just to have the company of people who think I’m cool.
I’ve been in therapy about a month or so now, and a couple of weeks were rocky there, and I’m sure further weeks were rocky, but I can already tell that I’m getting better. I’m far from perfect, and I doubt I’ll ever -be- perfect, but I’m slowly becoming ME again, and I’m confident that I will one day be me. I may need to be in therapy for the rest of my days, I may not, but it’s a price I’d be willing to pay to keep the things that I have, as well as gain so much more.
I think the reason I’m posting this is because a friend of mine on Facebook posted a status about how she doesn’t want people to celebrate or mention her birthday. Having been there, I posted the following:
“There were some years that I felt this way, and to an extent I do still feel this way. I’m 28 now, and I don’t have more than a couple hundred bucks in the bank, I’m unemployed and living with my parents, slowly eating myself into an early grave. I’m the son they wished they hadn’t raised, or at least that’s what my mind tells me.
But then, if I’m such a failure of a human being, why do they keep me around? Why do my friends return my calls? Why am I with a girl who’s so clearly too damn good for me?
It doesn’t suit to focus on things yet undone, just as much as it’s bad to live in the past of things you cannot change. The fact of the matter is that you’re not a machine, and so you cannot be held to one universal standard of performance. Some of us take a little longer to get off the runway than others, and that’s perfectly okay because that’s just how people are.
I’m actually kind of taken aback by this status because even though you and I don’t know each other too well – we met maybe once or twice and a Hofstra Writer’s Club meeting – I have to admit that I kind of admire you. You’ve got a certain intensity about you, and you’re incredible talented. I actually had a bit of a crush on you for a while, if I’m being completely honest.
So what I’m getting at is that you might not be satisfied with where you’re at, but that’s no reason not to celebrate being there. Hell, if you don’t want to celebrate your birthday itself, then celebrate the things you DO like about your life – your friends, your family, whatever it is that keeps you going and makes each day worth living. Because even though YOU don’t think you’re worth celebrating, the people who love you absolutely disagree.”
I’m not going to share her name, or exactly what she posted, but sharing my response is my own call so please none of the OMG FACEBOOK NEEDS TO BE PRIVATE silliness that comes from mentioning social networking on any level.
A month ago I wouldn’t have posted anything. Two weeks ago I might not have posted anything more than “chin up, kiddo”. Today, I decided that I couldn’t stand by and just let something like that slide – not when I might be able to help. I barely know this person, but I know the pain she’s going through. I know what it’s like to feel worthless. And I know what it’s like trying to FIGHT that feeling. It’s hard to do, and near impossible to do alone. I don’t mean alone in the romantic sense, either. It might have taken nearly losing the woman I love to get my to finally make this journey, but I don’t need her specifically to do it. I DO need my doctor and my friends though. I need PEOPLE. We all do, really. I’m glad as hell that I DO have my girlfriend with me on this, I thank my luckiest fucking stars, but I finally know that I don’t need her to be happy. I don’t need her to live. I was here before her, and as much as I want for us to work out and maybe even one day wear rings for one another, I will be here after her if it doesn’t go as well as I’d like.
I used to focus too hard on being with someone romantically. It used to be my validation. I still fight with that part of my psyche sometimes, finding myself thinking that she’s my entire world, that everything would suck without her. But those thoughts are more easily chased away now, and I know that one day I won’t even have them, because I know where they come from now. I know that these thoughts aren’t mine – not really, at least. They come from an outside source, one that I took too seriously and misinterpreted. They live in a part of me that is weak and wounded and has been avoiding the healing process because it’s just too hard. Relying on other people is easy, and if you chase people away? There’s about 6 billion more out there to rely on, to take advantage of. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to lift people up, in the same way they’ve lifted me up all my life. I want to stand on my own as often as I can. I know there will be times that I need to lean on someone. I want to save the leaning for those times.
It’s going to be a long, hard journey, and I’m going to hate a lot of it. But it’s going to be worth it, as it already has been.
I probably won’t post this one to Facebook or anything. People check my blog now and again I’m sure, and these posts aren’t necessarily for public consumption. Maybe I’ll show the link to a few people here and there, who knows. What I do know is that I need to be writing other things right now, so for the nonce, I’m out.
Looking Behind to Look Ahead
So I’m sitting at my computer, reading the Internet in its entirety, and I find myself thinking more and more about the solutions to my problems. In the past, I’ve typically done one of two things: 1) Run from my problems. If they catch up, run more. 2) Patchwork solutions. Sweep it under the rug and forget about it. Be genuinely surprised when someone uncovers it.
These are really shit solutions in that they aren’t solutions at all. They might have worked for me when I was younger – that isn’t to say I’m not still young, but an 18 year old can get away with more than a 27 year old in this regard – but if I keep this kind of behavior up, I’m going to find myself very lonely and very confused when I hit 50 and I’ve chase everyone off. I’m finally starting to recognize that my prideful “I can fix it on my own” attitude just isn’t cutting it, especially when I follow it with a “fix it by ignoring it” approach. This can be applied to pretty much every problem I’ve got.
I’m insecure. I’ve openly admitted that for a while now. What I didn’t do was try to fix it, not really. Instead I made it into a part of me, wove it into my identity. In the (paraphrased) words of Tyrion Lannister, I “wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt” me. Only that shit was doing me more harm than good. Much like when Speedball became Penance, my armor had super extreme spikes on the inside. My “armor” was just a torture device that I didn’t really tell anyone about. That’s not to say Tyrion’s advice is no good, but it’s the sort of advice that can be very easily twisted into an excuse to not fix an unhealthy aspect of yourself. I have to remember that he was referring to Jon Snow’s bastard birth, and his own stunted form – these were things that were out of the hands of the people in question. My insecurity isn’t out of my hands.
I’m also overweight. I am fat as hell. This has also been a long-standing problem, but it’s one of those problems that was actually kind of exacerbated by my insecurity. When I was 18, I weighed something like 200 pounds. I thought I was the fattest thing to ever fatty fat its chubby way out of the FatLands. I would kill you, your parents, your siblings, your extended family, your coworkers, your friends, and all but one of your children to be 200 pounds again. I would leave your one remaining child alive because I’m curious what he or she would do with his or her life. See, my insecurity led me to believe that the problem was so far gone that there was no point in fighting it, and I might as well just have 3 croissants for breakfast on my way to class because HEY, IM ALREADY MAD FAT, SCREW IT YOLO. 18-year-old me was a damn idiot, and anytime someone hits me with that super-cliche question of “if you had a time machine what would you do”, the answer is always, and I mean always “go back and slap the food out of my hand”. Whether or not I actually SAY that answer, it’s always the one I think of first. Now, there’s no point in living in the past, but I’m a firm believer in at least TRYING to learn from past mistakes, and part of learning from your mistakes is being able to analyze them. When I hit college, I completely self-destructed, and that self-destruct took the form of all the delicious food I could stuff into my dumb head. I continued to self-destruct until I nearly hit 300 pounds a couple of years ago. When my doctor told me that I was 290 pounds and approaching diabetes in a very real way, I knew I needed to turn my shit around and go back the way I came.
Thankfully, though my weight has fluctuated since then, I’ve not broken that 290 mark. I drew my line in the sand, and I haven’t crossed it. It might be one of the few promises to myself that I haven’t broken over the years. I’m currently back down into the 270’s range, and I’m trying real hard not to lose my grip on it.
It all comes back to my insecurity. My negative self-image exacerbates the problems that caused it in the first place. A nasty cycle that I’ve been too ashamed to admit is too big of a problem for me to handle on my own. Finally I’m admitting it, and while there’s a good deal of that pit you get in your stomach when you’re about to admit to wrondoing – like showing your parents a shitty report card or telling your girlfriend you cheated on her – I have to recognize that even though I did let it get out of hand, I didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. If I persecute myself, it’ll only make my recovery harder, and it IS a recovery process. It’s almost like an addiction. I’m addicted to feeling down on myself because it give my brain an excuse not to really try things. It’s easy to say “Oh I didn’t get that job because I’m just a shit person overall” than it is to say “Maybe I need to retool my resume or work on my interviewing skills. Maybe I need to get some more relevant experience elsewhere before looking for a job in that field”. It’s easier to just blame my problems on some inherent, intangible fact of my nature that somehow makes me inferior than it is to recognize that my problems – at least the ones that aren’t entirely external, like those caused by economic downturn or crappy weather – are because somewhere along the line I fucked up. Because it’s hard, especially for someone with my issues, to admit that I’m responsible for my own actions when things don’t go right. It’s hard to admit when I mess something up because I have so much trouble recognizing that it’s okay to mess up and it’s not the end of the world unless I accidentally gave nuclear codes to a crazy person.
I can become the man I’ve always wanted to be. I’m still young. I can lose weight, I can gain confidence, I can finish writing a damn novel and get that shit published and make all that delicious bestseller money. I know these things as facts, in the same way that I know that organic chemistry is the study of things made of fucking carbon. It’s intellectual, academic knowledge that I can’t refute, but haven’t grasped yet. What I need to do, and what I might need professional help in order to accomplish, is make it so I know those things as well as I know the fact that water is fucking wet and is mad tasty when it’s hot out. I gotta turn that shit from fringe science to common sense.
And no, organic chemistry doesn’t count as fringe science, but that shit is hard.
I’m gonna be a fucking helium balloon.
First Toku Tuesday and a general post I guess maybe?
So I realized that today is Tuesday, and I mentioned before that one thing I’d like to do is called Toku Tuesday, so that’s just what I’m going to do.
For anyone confused, toku is short for tokusatsu, and is defined by Wikipedia as: “a Japanese term that applies to any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects”. Essentially, Japan’s equivalent to The Avengers or your average Michael Bay film.
So, tokusatsu is your Godzilla, your Gamera, your Ultraman, Kamen Rider, Metal Heroes, Super Sentai, that sort of stuff. A lot of it was appropriated for such American shows as Might Morphin Power Rangers, Big Bad Beetle Borgs, VR Troopers, and Masked Rider.
Now that we have that out of the way, today I’d like to talk about a show that, if you’re into toku, may have gone under your radar – it certainly went under mine for quite some time. The show in question is called Garo. Garo is the story of a young man named Saejima Kouga, who on the outside just looks like a dude walkin’ around in the raddest fucking coat of all time, but turns out to be one of an order of warriors known as Makai Knights (Makai Kishi in the Japanese). Makai Knights’ sole purpose is to defend mankind from the evil Horrors that lurk just outside of our world, waiting to get in and gobble us all up. That said, Kouga isn’t just a Makai Knight, he’s a Makai Knight of some rank, having inherited the title of Garo from his father, along with some fairly big shoes to fill.
I’m not going to spoil the story for you guys, because I really just want to encourage you to sit down and watch it yourself. The show resonated with some pretty heavy Castlevania, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Supernatural vibes, but with a nice seasoning of that unique Japanese flavor that you find in Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (a little of that flavor remains in the Americanized Power Rangers shows). If you’re a fan of any of the things I just said, and aren’t offended by the occasional boob, then do yourself a fucking favor and watch Garo. There’s two seasons and a few movies, and you can find them fansubbed at TV-Nihon and Overtime with little trouble. I prefer Overtime’s subs to TV-Nihon’s, but TVN is the only place I’ve been able to find Season 1. AS A WARNING – this show does have some more mature shit going on in it than your average Kamen Rider and especially your average Super Sentai. If you’re thinking about watching this with your kids, remember that there’s a good few instances of bare boobs, a lot of fairly graphic violence, and a good bit of just overall more mature themes. I have no problem with those things, I love that shit, and assuming you either know me (which would be one reason you’re reading this) or you’ve gotten this far in (which means you can handle a bit of foul language), then you don’t mind it either. But hey, you might have kids, I don’t know. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
—–END OF TOKU TUESDAY LINE—–
Aside from that I’ve had a bit of trouble getting any real work done today, despite taking my vyvanse. I had a somewhat important distraction of a personal nature that I’m not going to detail here but links back to what will eventually become a theme of discussion here – my personal insecurities. Turns out I talk a big game but don’t really think all too highly of myself, and that causes me to jump to stupid conclusions about the way other people behave, and that causes those people to feel kind of hurt, and rightfully so. I need to constantly remind myself that these people love me just the way I am, and that all of this pressure that I’m perceiving is pressure that I’ve put on myself.
I feel better now, since the situation that had me distracted was resolved (at least for the moment), but I’ve still been having trouble working. I got the revised synopsis for The Beacon finished, as well as the revised list of Major Characters, but even that I’m not super confident in. I feel like I can do better, but I don’t know what more to do with it when I look at it.
Gonna try to get some more editing in over the next hour or so before running out at the last minute to get to Blick before the close so that I can grab the brush(es) I need to finish the Commander Dante model I’m painting for Fearless Games‘ new Legends of War series. If you’re into Warhammer 40k, check out that channel, you might like what you see.
That’s all I’ll pain you with for now. Signing off.
Coming up Cypress 
