Slump

Lately there's been a dark cloud over me. Now, as someone who has already been diagnosed with depression, this feels way too different. Back when I was diagnosed, I felt very much sound of mind and in control, or at least, in control of my thoughts (not my surroundings).

I knew what depression was back then, and no doubt I was depressed. I was in a pretty downwards spiral by the time anybody took the opportunity to convince me to try to get better.

But it happened, and soon after, I felt like a million bucks. Well, not a million. But like. At least a twenty dollar bill. That was pretty damn good. I don't know anybody who wouldn't be glad to have a twenty dollar bill in their hands right now. Twenty dollars can get a ticket to the movies, or some time at an arcade, or a ton of books off of Amazon. Twenty dollars means you are rich for a limited time, but damn if that economic boost doesn't make you feel like a million bucks.

I digress.

Lately, I've been feeling the same things that, by textbook definition, mean that I am, yet again, depressed. Now, this comes as no news to me. I knew from the start of it all that I never quite recovered, so much as just had a lucky streak for a while. Like living in a damp tropical island plagued by insects and hot weather, there's no such thing as "not-mosquito-season". They just dwindle in numbers for specific months, but you can bet they'll be back in full swing yet.

Unlike not-mosquito-season, however, depression can't be dealt with by just up-and-leaving the area. Technically that is a possibility, but one that could spring up various problems, and for someone who also suffers with anxiety, these problems can escalate terribly and feed into that monster that loves eating up your insecurities.

Now as far as I'm concerned, everybody has that little monster. Some monsters look different. Mine looks a little like this:

Don't let yourself be fooled by the really real picture above. This creature began as a teeny tiny baby. Hardly the size of a toddler, and with just about as much energy as one.

But much like children, the raspy voice of this little creature shunned from purgatory itself is enough to get into your head and rattle around, looking for the things that will satiate its never-ending hunger. To my dismay, my mind looks like an all-you-can-eat buffet to this little gremlin.

Usually I'm able to keep this monster at bay, but recently, not so much. It's about 12 feet tall right now but I'm rather sure it's all in my head, for now.

-E

A.N. This will be continued, perhaps.

Compliments? - March 12, 2014

There's already a stigma against bloggers in general, or anyone that writes anything on the internet. Being raised to believe that the internet was incredibly awful and having it treated as if it was the worst thing for me to have access to (besides possible bad influences of a group of misfits in high school), I of course as a rebel child was unnaturally drawn by it. Thanks to this, however, I was able to expand my knowledge incredibly and develop social skills that I otherwise would have no clue about. Which, ironically, were things I would be berated for not knowing in the first place.

However, after writing and presenting that amusing post a couple of days back to the masses (read as: about forty people that actually pay attention to what I write or draw), I was surprisingly bombarded by compliments from various sources stating I had some sort of untapped skill in writing. Immensely flattered, I gave in to the treacherous temptation of actually being proud of something I did, and let my ego have its fun for a while.

Which didn't last very long.

It isn't so much as I don't get support, but rather that I don't know how to handle the support. I'm so used to having to do things on my own, for myself, that whenever the opportunity arises where people like something about me or what I do, I can't help but just immediately look for any and every flaw in it.

Of course, people tend to misinterpret this as me running myself to the ground with work, and though it might be true in some aspect, it just happens to be based more around the fact that the only thoughts surrounding me my entire life have been that no matter how hard I try or what I achieve, it will never be good enough and I will never and should never be happy with myself.

It's a bit sad when you think about how unknowingly these ideals have been supported and thrown at me in feeble attempts to show support.

Even when I was young, I was taught how I had to measure up to nearly impossible standards if I wanted to get the smallest compliment or acknowledgement.

I suppose it was partially my own fault. I always felt I was the "black cloud" that brought bad luck to everyone and was constantly messing things up, so I always figured I brought the pressure on myself, and always tried to do my best in an attempt to prove that I wasn't a wasted human life. Due to my parent's ignorance on the effects of this self-inflicted pressure on me, they didn't really bother showing proper support or praise.

Now that I do have support and praise from people, however, it can get very hard to manage and accept it. I just default into thinking that I did something terribly wrong, and fall into a spiral of self-hatred the likes of which no regular living creature has ever known.

One of the most frustrating things when I'm in this state of being unable to comprehend that compliments mean good things is when people tell me to just take a compliment and calm down.

I don't think anyone who says that has really felt the bouts of self-doubt and depression that so famously are categorized as theatrics by people who don't quite understand what a chemical imbalance can do to one's motivation.

Maybe someday I'll properly sit and explain that.

-E

No(i)sy - March 10, 2014

As a child I used to not hear well. My parents would call me to do things, I would genuinely not hear them and, consequentially, got in a lot of trouble (ah parents and their belief that everything is done to irk them). When I moved in with my mother though, there was a very different way of dealing with my inability to hear my name.

Now, I have a very strong case about human adaptation, and I'm almost certain in a span of four years I developed hyper-hearing into my body.

A lot of people have told me how awesome this is, and I'll admit, it does have its good side. I don't bother the neighbors with loud music or television, I pay attention usually when I'm spoken to, if someone were drowning in the Nile river, I'd hear it. It's practically a superpower.

But all superheroes have their weakness, and mine happens to be the very same thing that is considered a strength. 

You'd think that studying art would mean a lot of very quiet people, reserved to themselves, focusing entirely on making their masterpieces. Trailers and advertisements of art schools show focused students carefully studying their subject to make sure to do it justice. Some have fun with it, making messy, broad strokes. Others are silent, viewing every detail and trying to recreate it.

Others breathe loudly.

Mouthbreathers are the bane of everyone's existence, especially when they choose to situate aforementioned existence as close to one as possible. Usually I'm able to avoid people with noisy tics, as these small noises happen to distract me incredibly from my work (and don't let me think at all). But today I could do no such thing, and I noticed far, far too late.

Normally I would just brush off the sudden noise. After all, some people just snort at times. It's a human thing. Everyone snorts at random, just like everyone has skin or self-diagnoses a psychological disorder which they may or may not have. It's part of being human. Soon enough I forgot it, just moving on to pay attention to the discussion of the details of Michelangelo's middle finger to anyone doubting he was the true author of his statues. 

But right as we were about to get into the struggle between people pointing out the detail on Jesus' pectorals while fighting against the hooting screams of pubescent males in the back making titty comments, I heard it again.

The grating sound of nasal cavities opening and closing in an attempt to make a stop-motion video of bogey bacteria nearly made my ears bleed. Once more, I believed, it was just a normal occurrence, but before I could process another thought, there it was again.

My ears vibrated with every obnoxious noise. The snorts, accompanied by the bellows of the different words for schlong in the back, only served to interrupt my train of thoughts more and more each time. Every sentence that our educator struggled to stammer out in a feeble attempt to spit knowledge into our brains was interrupted by the snorting. Just when I believed the noise couldn't get any more unbearable...

It didn't take long for it to invade my head, my every thought. Mid-sentence in the discussion and I'd spit out a snort, wheeze and sigh at the professor who looked at me as though I was somehow succumbing to delusion. Snort wheeze. I tried to analyze what could be the cause. Sickness? Allergies? Snort wheeze. Every assessment brought me back to the same conclusion, the same stream of consciousness that lingered in my head like a snort-wheeze lingered in their nose. I felt all sanity leaving me, any logical thought was replaced by the fearful snort-wheeze, every snort-wheeze would snort-wheeze snort wheeze snort wheezing snort wheeze and finally I had enough of it. 

Struggling to pull the words together, I managed to repeat them enough times under my breath in a soft mutter until they felt almost natural, and I turned to her, prepared with all my might to beg her to blow her nose, to offer medicine, something. This was it, my time to take a stand against loud snort-wheezers everywhere for the sake of all that was auditory, and yet...

There it went. The opportunity for me to speak out against loudness and I had wasted the entirety of my two hour class literally sitting down and snort-wheeze taking it. But I did it. I survived. Countless others would have succumbed to the insanity immediately. As I write this, I know that my future generations will look back at this and give a wise nod of approval, knowing that I, an average student of average talents with hyper-developed hearing, have survived the snort-wheeze-pocalypse.

-E

(A.N. I apologize for the one-day-late publishing of this. Just pretend it's still March 10, preserve the magic.)

The Point - March 9, 2014

When I was a child, I'd always dream to be someone famous. I'd always think I'd be a singer, or an actress. Perhaps a teacher who would change the lives of thousands of students, making an inspirational speech at their last graduation.

No matter how I would think about it, I'd be someone huge, and boy was I deadset on that view of myself.

Growing up, the dream was still there of course. I wanted to be recognized, but I better identified this dream as a need to feel important. I had what many people called "leadership qualities", and constantly started clubs and groups and the sort. There was only one issue with this self-important thinking, which I realized soon after starting my senior year in high school.

I was actually average.

I was so used to having high expectations, that I couldn't handle failure very well. In fact, I was terrible at handling failure. But my inability to keep up with expectations sent me into an apathetic world where nothing mattered. I didn't care! What was the point of succumbing to what everyone else defined as success, when I was happy just being not-that-impressive?

A few years of that accompanied by the high expectations people had around me, and I landed myself deeper into the apathy hole I was in, and ended up breaking it. Now, what nobody tells you about depression is that it's leveled.

When you hit that last level, all you do is look around for ways to not feel like that anymore. Some people find it, others (like myself), find comfort in the fact that there's something out there we're good at. Which is, unfortunately, being depressed. I spent my first year in a college studying something I didn't want, in a college I didn't care for, with expectations much too high for me to get. Instead of exploring all around for more reasons, I felt them thrown at me, so I managed to find a comfortable little corner of self-loathing and sat there for the better part of my first years in college. 

People kept reaching in to try to help, and I ended up finally getting to a place I wanted to be in, studying something I liked, in a college I cared for. Now, for someone who was so used to being in their little corner of go-away-I-can-do-this-on-my-own-ness, it was a very strange experience when I started getting recognized for, well. Me being... me. People would come up and compliment me, and I just wouldn't understand what they meant.

I don't usually know how to respond to this. I learned quickly that disagreeing was not the proper way to go about it, so I just quietly thank people instead. As I spent more time around people, getting out of my little corner of negative-words-describing-me-here-ness, I realized that there was something about me, just like there's something about everyone, that makes them... them. I wasn't just some average off-the-bat person. But I also have no clue what it is about me that makes me particularly stand out. So while I find that out, I suppose it'll serve its purpose later on if I go and write about it as well.

-E