My mental state: a confessional?

I had deja vu today. I thought to myself “I really hate it when I am this anxious, I wish I could just go back to being depressed, at least then I could get some sleep.” and then I realized that a mere few weeks ago when I was feeling particularly depressed I thought “I wish I could just go back to being anxious, at least with anxiety I don’t feel dead inside.”

I can’t go through another 5 year bout of this. I don’t have the energy.

With that said, I don’t want to post this shit on a Facebook status update because honestly, there is less of a chance that anyone is gonna click the link to come here versus seeing it in a status update. I know it isn’t anonymous and that someone will see this, but I can’t afford a doctor and I need to get this shit out of me. It is poison. The problem is, people ask me to talk to them about it and I clam up. I can’t verbalize it right now because it is raw. Maybe when it is over and I’ve begun to heal a little, I can go back and reminisce about this awful feeling, but now, I can’t.

A few family members might come around the blog to see what’s going on. A couple friends might. If anyone does, though, they chose to read it, it isn’t like I made them listen to the incoherent ramblings of an over (or under, for that matter) stimulated brain, just spewing out emotion vomit. I know I am a burden when I am like this, but at least here, the people reading it chose to read it. At least here I can “say” what I need to say and cry about it without feeling like I am wasting anyone’s time, without feeling weak. I know I am weak. I dont think I can handle starting this conversation and watching the other person’s eyes glaze over, or the person listening perhaps checking their phone while I fall apart in front of them. Here I can get this rot out of me uninterrupted.

I don’t know why I am still justifying to myself why I am writing this. Oh well, fuck it.

So, here I am.

Anxiety makes me shake. I have nightmares. My guts are upset, I jump out of my skin at the slightest sound. My heart rate is irregular. My mouth is dry. My skin feels like I have bugs crawling all over me. I cant make a decision. I am confused by regular every day things. I have no desire to be out of my house, yet I feel guilty if I don’t participate in life. I am easily enraged by simple things. My feelings get hurt easily. I overreact to the slightest things. My senses are heightened to the point where a running fan is deafening and the sun is blinding. I can “feel” germs on me when I touch anything in public. I can almost “see” them. I feel nauseated. My breathing is strained, my chest hurts, my muscles are tense. My mind is throwing a million thoughts at me incoherently. I am remembering stupid things from ten years ago and feeling guilt, anger, and sadness that should have long since gone away. I am uncomfortable in my skin, I dread getting in my car tomorrow to drive to work. I am convinced I am losing my mind but at this point, it would be relief if it just shut itself the fuck off. I want to channel these feelings in to artwork but I am too raw emotionally to do so, and when I avoid getting this out of me I feel guilt that I am not creating. I know I am off of my “path” in life and that scares me like a horror movie scares a normal person. I am literally scared witless that I am not fulfilling some purpose that I am not even aware of. It is like failing a goal I was never told I had, just that I had to achieve it. I get the urge to pick at my skin, sometimes my brain tells me to cut myself, like a good bloodletting will release some of these demons. I am flailing my arms and legs on the inside while trying to maintain the appearance of steadiness on the outside, and, frankly, I am fucking exhausted. I wear my masks proudly, cracked, rotted, and decayed as they are, they still cover my rawness.

That’s where I am. Who knows how long I will be here, but that is where I am.

I had the urge to work on some photos today. I had the urge to make a painting. Neither of those things happened because the thought was overstimulating.

So, it’s out there, the darkness has lifted from my soul, only to be replaced with electricity. I go from nothingness to everything all at once. It is overwhelming.

To anyone who has read this far, I hope this helps to explain some of the things I may have said or did, or what something I might do or say in the future. In the meantime, I will continue to try to find this elusive path I’m supposed to be walking.

Peace and love, friends.

My cousin, and the beauty of 17.

First, let me start by saying that I hope this photo displays well. I can never tell when I write these posts on my phone if my photos are displaying properly or if I’ve been victim of a nasty image resize  🙂

Anyway, that being said, this is my cousin. I took her senior photos for her over the weekend, which I was (as usual) very nervous to do. No, I haven’t yet broken the trend of trying to talk myself out of doing photo shoots. It is an annoying side effect of panic. But let me try to stay on topic here.

I took over 100 images, two shots at a time to ensure open eyes, etc. so 50 shots to go through and this one ends up being everyone’s favorite. Why do I find that to be SO AWESOME? Because I have 49 photos of big, gorgeous smiles, beautiful blue eyes, perfectly styled hair, and planned poses. This shot was a test shot. I took it to test the lighting as it was settling in on early evening and my sunlight was slanting in and becoming very golden-amber. She isn’t looking, she isn’t smiling, she is lost in her thoughts, she is completely natural. I thought while I was editing that perhaps I liked this one so much because I rarely find myself so at peace with my existence that I can’t imagine or remember a moment that felt as peaceful as she looks here. I will never know if she was nervous, sad, or angry, and I don’t want to. In this photo, I see peace.

I’m not gonna get all psycho-babble philosophical on you here, but sometimes I see a photo like this, or a color, or a smile on someone’s face, or a tree branch swaying in a breeze, or even a bird pecking at his dinner and I get lost in a sea of thoughts, swirling and flapping around in my brain. I think of peace, I think of love, I think of things that make me happy and sad, I think of life and of death, I think of how the lives of those around me continue to play out with or without me around and sometimes I am happy, sometimes I just must draw or paint or photograph something because I am so inspired, and sometimes I just cry.

Hers is a life just beginning, and how short a time ago it was when I was just like her, smiling and happy, beginning my last year of high school, excited and terrified of what that meant for me. There is beauty in this world beyond just what we see on the surface. There is beauty in what she might someday become! There is beauty in the things she still has to learn!

But let’s face facts here, Phuktophiles, you don’t come here to hear about my senior photo sessions, do you? You come here to see what my panicky brain has to say about all this.

I didn’t expect to learn anything from her. Going in to this photo shoot, I didn’t expect that she would teach me something, especially something that she didn’t have to verbalize for me to understand.

Where is my 17? When did I lose my 17? Physically, or rather, chronologically, I lost my 17 in December of 1997, but when did I lose my 17 figuratively? I have been a scared 17 year old, excited and terrified of what the world would give me for the first 28 years of my existence. The past 4 years, I lost my 17. I lost my wonder, my hope, my faith. I lost my light. My cousin, her light burns white hot. Her 17 is still fresh and new. If there is one thing that I can teach her, it would be to never lose her 17. I also want her to know that she helped me find a little bit of mine.

I’M BAAAAACK (from the dead)

Well, hello again, Phuktophiles.

 

I bet you thought I was going away forever, didn’t you? Not gonna lie, the thought crossed my mind. Let me give you a little recap of what my brain has been throwing at me since my last post.

 

First and foremost, I can’t quit art. Quitting art would be like quitting breathing. That just can’t happen. I tried. So help me, I tried. I failed. However, I guess failure to quit something that you love to do is technically a success.

 

Second, I got all down on myself because of a BOY! I know. It just hit me hard to realize that I wasn’t wanted AGAIN. What did I do? I shut the F down. Why? What is the purpose in that? Over a guy??? Fuck that guy. This is me. This is my life. You knew what was going on from the start. If you can’t handle me, then I guess I will find someone who can.

 

Right. Because we all know that I don’t believe any of ^^ that.

 

But, whatever. It is what it is. Am I hurt? Absolutely. It hurts even more because it was HIM. However, since he may or may not read this, that is all the further I am going to go with it.

 

I write, damn it. I write. That’s what I do. Moreover, I write because Twitter only allows me 140 characters and let’s face it, I am entirely too colorful and awesome to be limited in such ways. Facebook lets me ramble, but Facebook kinda bores me and irritates me. So, WordPress, here I am again to fill you up with all the lovely purple chaos in my brain. Don’t like it? Eh. *shrugs shoulders.

 

Now, let us get to the nitty-gritty. I am coming back from the dead, Mfers, so look out. I can’t quit art because art won’t quit me and I am finally okay with that. I look at people flooding the Internet with their mind-vomit all day long on social media and whatnot and why can’t I do the same? I would probably do mine on a much smaller level, however. What have I been up to over the three-ish months that I have been gone? Panicking. Panicking to the point that I had to explain to my bosses what a panic attack is, how to identify it when I can’t form the thoughts/words to tell them what is happening to me, and when to and when not to call 911. I had to come out of the panic closet to my bosses. Not cool, brain. Not cool.

 

I’ve also been depressed. Yeah, good luck trying to find it. I hide it well. Really well, unfortunately. This has been a long standing issue with me, but lately I have been fighting the urge (the overwhelming urge) to cut myself. I used to cut as a teenager and the threat of hospitalization made me cease and desist. Well, that feeling is back. Do you know what it is? It is the feeling of being so overwhelmed by emotion that you can actually FEEL the knife cutting your skin, even when you aren’t cutting. It is your skin making a map for you, like saying “this is where you should cut.” It is thinking at length about where you can cut where no one will find it. It is thinking at length about how you will hide the blood if you nick something important. It is the CONSTANT tingle feeling all over your body, the kind you get when you’re waiting for something to happen. It’s all of that, and it sucks.

 

That being said, I am specifically writing this now because in 2 hours time, I am going to do a photo shoot. You read that right. I am coming back from the MFing dead. Am I terrified? Absolutely. Is my leg bouncing right now as I type this in that typical nervous way that my leg likes to bounce? Hell yes it is. Do I feel pins and needles in my skin? I do, and they are quite uncomfortable. Do I feel like I am going to pee my pants? I do. I won’t, but I do. I am telling you this now because Phukt is not dead. Phukt is Immortal. I am currently going through my old negatives, finding work that I loved, liked, can improve upon, was a good idea but didn’t pan out the way I planned, etc., and I am going to become IMMORTAL (through my work).

 

Stay tuned, Phuktophiles. I hope to take you on this journey with me. I hope that a little bit of what I do inspires people like me to do the same. Let’s do this, neurotics! We can beat this shit!    

The awesomeness of healing salted wounds…

Well then.
I saw the Turtle in passing yesterday and I am pleased to say that the salt is gone, the blood, coagulated. The wound is scabbed over. Even picking at the scab yesterday didn’t reopen it.

Anyway, this little metal guy is the reason the Turtle is thusly named.  A little history:

Apparently, the Turtle was camping once upon a time and everywhere he turned, this metal turtle was there, as though it was following him. I’m not sure how I came to possess him, but I think the story is the perfect metaphor for the Turtle. He has been “following” me around in a sense, because I have been trying to hold on to our friendship more than the Turtle was. Well, it has been two weeks since the last time we exchanged words, and I actually don’t care. I’ve evolved. I guess you could say I am the turtle now … I carry my “shelter” on my back, I retreat inside when threatened, and I’m slow. I mean, who else in the world would still be trying to fix a dead friendship for as long as I have been?

So the metal turtle sits on my bookshelf watching over my bedroom. Two weeks ago, I considered throwing the little guy away so I wouldn’t be reminded of the Turtle every morning when I reach for my perfume. Well, look at how cute he is. I can’t throw him away! However, now I can’t throw him away because he’s cute, not because I would be in some way betraying a friendship.

FREEDOM!

***

Well, day 4 of my vacation was uneventful aside from basic socializing and downloading copious amounts of music. Yes. I do absolutely love my music.

This is a shot of the stage at Peabody’s that I shot on Saturday because I really need to stick to this photo-per-day project I start 100 times every year. I have good intentions, I swear. Unfortunately, I missed today! Oh, and yesterday. And I am pretty sure almost all of last week.  🙂  Anyway, the point being, at some point I am going to start this project and actually stick to it, but I got a couple of awesome pics that I wanted to post here.

This is outside Peabody’s while Tony was having a smoke. Yes, I still enjoy sniffing other people’s smoke. As a matter of fact, the best smoke I have sniffed lately (ever) was Ben’s (from Lucero). Yup. I know that sounds incredibly stalkery and creepy, and I have made peace with it. I will be smoke free for a year on July 14th. I have to get my fix somehow …

I absolutely love Ben. He is a genius … and too modest, because he probably wouldn’t call himself a genius.  I am considering making the 2 hour drive to Pennsylvania to see Lucero again. Stalker.

And the two monsters I am sitting.

So, not quite a photo per day, but whatever. I get points for trying, right?

Well, kiddos, that will be all for today. On a sidenote, my phone wanted to autocorrect “kiddos” to “midsized”.

@_@

Yeah. I guess that makes sense on some level.  That’s all I can say about that.

Good night!

Or, rather, good morning, it would appear …

May is here.

Haven’t blogged in a while.  I spent the last week at my Aunt’s house where there is no Internet.  Talk about the most relaxing week I have spent in a long time.  See, it’s so much easier to ignore minor body “symptoms” when there’s no WebMD around. 

As you may have noticed, I didn’t title this entry “May is here!”.  Yes, I named it “May is here.” Simple matter of fact.  It’s here. 

For those of you who don’t know, I don’t like May.  See, in May of 2009, I fell in to a horrible TERRIFYING depression.  Ever since then, May hasn’t been the same.  I don’t look forward to it, I dread it.  The last week of April I spent at my Aunt’s house, scared out of my mind that May was nearing.  The second to last week in April, I spent a day in the ER because of a panic.  Whether or not that had anything to do with May’s inevitability, I’m not sure.  As I think back, however, there are many, many other Mays that haven’t been kind to me.  I won’t get in to that here, but let’s just say that May and I don’t get along. 

So, yesterday I had the mother of all headaches, and of course, the first thing I think is that I am having a stroke or something because I tend to expect the worst.  I don’t like taking drugs, so I suffered through the headache until I got out of work at 9, and at that point I had a choice.  I was starving, so I knew I would have to eat when I got home, but at the same time I couldn’t imagine staying awake long enough to eat and let the digestion process begin before laying down to sleep to get rid of the headache naturally.  I bought a bottle of Tylenol.  I took two caps when I got in the car at 9:14, and timed it.  Yes, I wanted to see how long it took for the medication to take effect.  Curiousity killed the cat… etcetera, but I was curious because I never take Tylenol.  I guess I’m lucky in that I don’t get unbearable headaches very often, so I don’t know how long Tylenol takes to kick in. 

Anyway, it took 15 minutes for the headache to lessen, it didn’t go away completely, but it did take the edge off.  When I got home, I was so frantic that I had taken a drug that instead of eating, I decided to start watching my body for signs of an allergic reaction.  I’ve taken Tylenol before and never had a problem, but ever since May 2005 when I had a tonsillectomy, I have been afraid of an allergic reaction to medications.  See, Amoxicillin, an antibiotic I have taken my entire life, suddenly gave me a head to toe rash and I found that I am allergic.  So, yeah, that’s where my fear of drugs stems from, and I’m sure all of my intelligent readers noticed that it was May 2005 when this occurred. 

I didn’t eat any dinner.  Instead, I decided to lay down and watch some television before I went to sleep.  It was during this time that I noticed that I was WIRED.  I couldn’t go to sleep if you had a gun to my head.  All I wanted to do was go out for a run.  I thought about who I could call (at this time, it was after midnight).  I channel surfed, trying to ignore the fact that I felt like I had just smoked crack, not that I have a basis for comparison, but I figure crack probably makes you wired.  So I grabbed my smart phone (mistake) and I typed in “allergic reactions to Tylenol” (mistake).  While I didn’t show any symptoms of an allergic reaction, I was concerned that it boasts sleep disturbances as a side effect.  I was also confused that it stated in one of the links that Tylenol is a narcotic???  I wouldn’t have guessed that, but then, I’m not a pharmacist.

As you probably guessed, no allergic reaction to speak of.  If I was having an allergic reaction, I wouldn’t be here typing, I’d be at the ER.  But, I will admit to thinking that because it was officially May 1st when all this was occurring, I was very nervous about it.  What a way to start off May.

This morning, I opted for decaf coffee, just in case.  I am occupying myself with laundry until my sister comes over.  I have found that watching Harvey Birdman DVDs keeps me laughing instead of panicking, so I have Harvey Birdman on in the background. 

Long story even longer, I have had an itch to shoot some film lately.  It’s been about 5 days now that I have had the hankering to load a roll of film and shoot some stuff the old fashioned way.  So, I loaded some Fuji 400 in my Canon Elan II and I shot about 10 frames.  Can’t post them here (of course), but I feel good now.  I wanted something and I did it instead of ignoring it.  I did it instead of writing it off as “stupid” or “too expensive” or any of the million other excuses I use to get out of doing something that I really want to do.  This makes me happy.

I am excited for May.  I want May 2011 to break the cycle of bad Mays so that I can see that bad things can happen at any time, it just happens that the May problems are the ones I remember because I have it in my head that May hates me. 

Here’s to a great May, everyone!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Touting my Irish ancestry today is not particularly important to me.  I’m a little bit Irish every day, why only celebrate it one day a year?  Okay, really, I am just pissed off at myself for not making any plans.

So with a corned beef on rye in my belly and a song in my heart I post my first blog entry at 8:30pm on St. Patrick’s day.

I did a whole hell of a lot of nothing today, aside from having to take a piss test for my new job.  Only one observation there … I would NOT like to be the guy that handles the pee all day.  Not only is it completely disgusting that I was adamantly discouraged from washing my paws when I finished the pee, I was also discouraged from flushing the toilie.  Eew.  And then I have to hand over the product of five cups of coffee to a man with a goatee and a bad dye job.  It’s hard to be my usual pleasant self and make conversation with a dude that is holding a cup of my urine in his hand.  Needless to say, I didn’t make conversation, I hung my head and feeling dirty and maybe a little violated, I shimmy my way out of the pee place and back to my car. 

I have ample opportunity to make this night something other than me sitting in my bedroom with Harry Potter on the tele in the background.  Panini’s in the Valley.  I was invited.  Am I going to go?  I’m thinking probably not.  I should, mind you, because I haven’t seen these friends that invited me in a while and would LIKE to go, but my corned beef makes me nervous.  No, the corned beef doesn’t make me nervous, the drinking mass amounts of green beer and PUKING corned beef makes me nervous.

It’s all about self-control, right?