I've Gotta Live With the Choices I've Made, And I Can't Live With Myself Today...

            I like to write. I love to draw. I find, more and more that there are actually a lot of people who are open to my type of humor, who enjoy what I draw, who might pay for pictures or stories I create.

I find this more and more and yet, I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

Generally, there are a lot of excuses I find myself making when it comes to these things. I sit and I think “okay, I should do something tonight. People loved Hometown, even if it was short lived, and I’ve gotten a few chuckles out of people just talking about what I want to do, so let’s give it a go.”

But then, I don’t.

I’m tired. It’s been a long week. I need to relax. I’m hungry. After this. It doesn’t matter, no one’s going to read it anyway, no one read the last things I did. What’s the point? You’re not going to make anything from it. It’s dumb anyway. Look at that guy! His art’s incredible! You look like a crappy kindergarten crayon stick figure! AND it’s in color, you fucking hack. Just go play some dumb games and get some gold for your guild. You can’t do fuck all anything else, so make yourself useful somehow, you fat piece of shit.
            That’s sort of the process that happens and I end up not doing anything.

So, I’m told I am depressed. I have depression. I used to think it wasn’t a thing. Maybe it still isn’t. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t fight that voice, or at least, I can’t fight it very often. I want to do these things. Eric and Jess are behind me in making the comic. They enjoy the stupidity I put in there, and the good (and not so good) natured mocking I give us all. Hell, just describing the comic to people who don’t even know my friends have laughed at just some of the ideas. They like the idea of the comic, and would probably enjoy it if I could get it out there. I have more comics that people want as well, more stories, more art. People like my creativity. They like what comes of it. I have marketable skills in those areas. I could make money off of them if I could just sit down and actually work on things.

But, my brain is fundamentally broken.

I still don’t know what all is wrong with my brain. The terms that are thrown out every time someone talks about an actual diagnosis is always the same; severe depression (crippling once), anxiety disorder, stress disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. There’s also the fact that I truly, deeply hate myself above all other things. I don’t know if that’s a disorder or if it goes along with one of the others. No one’s said. However, my brain isn’t right. And last night, it got the most not right it ever gets.
            Not a lot of you know about this. I don’t talk about it much. I play it off, pass it off, but it’s the most terrifying aspect of whatever is wrong with me, of this thing that I’m trying so hard to fight so I can be who I was once, so I can draw, so maybe, just maybe, I can be happy and successful.

Now, this doesn’t happen often. So far, it’s not done any real damage. That doesn’t mean it’s not bad, that doesn’t mean it’s not scary as hell. So, to preface, I have a tooth that needs to come out. A root canal at this point probably won’t do any good. It’s one tooth, after a year of completely not taking care of myself from super severe, crippling depression. The dentist says given what I did (or rather didn’t do, I guess) my teeth are actually in really good shape, and just that one needs out. This tooth has been infected once. Such things only get worse each time it happens. So, I’ve been in constant pain of one type or another in my mouth and jaw for a solid month. I have not been sleeping well. I have been working. I have been trying to work on drawing and writing. I have been pushing myself incredibly hard trying to live like I used to. Wednesday, the pain got so bad, I slept about 4 hours and simply could not get back to sleep. It wasn’t a big deal. Work went well and I had fun and came home and tried to grab a nap, but it didn’t happen.

The pain was so bad, I couldn’t sleep at all, and it only got worse.

I finally called a real dentist, since I had little other choice and managed to find one that gave free consults. I went in, got x-rays, and the place was great. It’s called Aspen Dental, by the way. The one in my area was amazing and everyone was so nice and so very helpful. But that was yesterday. They gave me some antibiotics, but they take time. The pain still hadn’t gone away and they didn’t really have anything for the pain. I did what I could to manage it, but it was intense, and still is to an extent. So, I was going on well over two days without any sort of decent sleep.

This is where things get bad. Most of you know that there’s something wrong with me, and that I’m not myself anymore. Some of you know I have an incredibly high pain tolerance. I worked for a week cleaning carpets with a broken toe, among other things (that toe got stepped on and broken again 3 times that week. The toe is so badly broken that it shows up like it’s broken on an x-ray cause it never healed proberly). So, when I’m beyond my pain threshold, you know it’s bad. I hadn’t slept, couldn’t sleep, tried to sleep, could not (still kind of can’t) escape the intolerable, ever building, throbbing, non-stop pain. So, with maybe four hours of sleep from Wednesday, I’d been up with this pain. It was now approaching 5 a.m. Friday morning. I’d been up almost two solid days. 43 hours without sleep and in constant, unbearable pain. I was watching Family Guy on the couch, trying to get the pain down, and hoping for the best. The next thing I know Karen is pounding on my chest and glaring at me and my face, arms and chest are burning.

This is the result.

If you think it looks painful, you're right.

Both arms are like that, as are parts of my face, chest, and stomach. I’d apparently been at it for a while.

I don’t know why I do it.
            It’s not a conscious decision. I am unaware that I’m doing it. I think, very strongly, it has something to do with how much I hate myself, but it’s very scary. It’s terrifying to know that there are times when I’m completely out of control of my body.

It’s even more terrifying because I do have suicidal thoughts.
            I’m afraid, one of these days, Karen will find me dead.

There’s not a lot of people who know how deep all of this goes. There’s a few, I’m sure who think I’m full of shit or don’t believe me, or don’t care. I wish I could say I didn’t expect that, or that I didn’t care, but I do expect it and I do care.

This is my life now. Trying, on a daily basis, to work through everything, to get out of this hell that I’m living in, to break out and get back to a life that makes me happy, a life that makes my wife happy, a life that is good and mostly care-free.

More than anything I can’t stand what this does to Karen. Every time it happens, my brain cycles to that place she hates.

“She deserves better. I’m holding her back. I’m making her miserable.”

She vehemently denies this, and will, occasionally (and with just cause) smack me a bit for saying or even thinking such things. I wish I could get over them, but I can’t. Not yet. I am trying. Things are, slowly, starting to improve in many ways. I thought I was getting better much more quickly, but, apparently not. Maybe this is an extreme case, with the pain and the lack of sleep. I don’t know and I can’t tell because I can’t see myself from the outside. I can from the inside. I don’t like what I think. I don’t like what I feel. It’s hard for me to fight back against things I see because I don’t feel I should. Who am I to correct anyone? And it’s the same with my writing and drawing. Who would care about anything I have to say?

Somewhere I know I have talent. Somewhere I know that people would enjoy Onyx and Jacobar, Saine and Chance. They would love to see Jess so seething with rage that he cooks the bed of meat I replaced his real bed with in his room. They want to see a Star Captain Canfield and the Galaxy Cadets patrol the stars. They want to know why there are so few priests with any actual power in the world of Liorus. They want to know Talon’s secrets, and why she so fervently defends and protects the Lightseeker.

I know I have good ideas, I know I have good stories. I know I have worth somewhere deep down inside.

Getting it out is like trying to balance an elephant on a mouse. It’s theoretically possible, but highly improbable. And despite his best efforts, Jacobar remains only a voice in my head, unable to bring about any real change in statistics.

So that’s pretty much everything I keep hidden. I’m sure the people I work with have no idea. They see this happy guy who makes people laugh, they see me work with customers and do my best to make their day better, but they have no idea that underneath is a man who just wants to sleep and never wake up again.

Later days.