Oz Monroe's Blog, page 3

Day Four: Tater Tots and Beer

Hello all. Welcome to the final installment of my “Oz Lost his Mind” blog series. Click here If you haven’t been following along, otherwise you won’t know what the hell is going on.

 

The last night I was in the mental hospital, I slept, really slept, for the first time in many months. Few people know how important sleep is. Nurses and doctors come close. Full time college students with an active social life come closer. Single parents with colicky twins come the closest. But those with chronic insomnia are the only ones that truly know. I had been getting two to three fractured hours of sleep a night, every night, for three straight months. And what sleep I did get was plagued by dark, anxiety ridden dreams. Medication didn’t help. Warm milk only made me gassy. Furious and enthusiastic masturbation made my forearms look great, but left me sweaty and slightly ashamed. Kidding. I’m not ashamed of that. I was always told to be proud of things I did well.

 

Lack of sleep twisted my mind. Reality became fuzzy, my words slurred. Holes in my memory grew with each sleepless night until entire days were swallowed by the monster. More than depression, more than anxiety, I hate insomnia. The two former ailments wax and wane throughout the day, but the latter? It is a constant weight that increases like water in a sinking ship. An hour of sleep here and there is like Leo DiCaprio trying the save the Titanic by bailing with a single bucket. Futile.

 

But that final night, I slept. Holy fuckstockings did I sleep. I woke the following day rested and content. I was by no means out of the woods, but I was on the trail once again, like Bilbo trying to escape Mirkwood. That’s right, I threw in another Tolkien reference. I’ll shoehorn those bastards in everywhere I can. Live with it.

My daily checkup with the nurse went well. She asked the usual questions. How are you feeling? How did you sleep? Do you have any thoughts of harming yourself? Harming anyone else?

I was happy to report that all was well.

“I’d say so. I noticed your wife left with a smile after yesterday’s visit.”

She was right, it had been a good visit. My wife showed up at the tail end of my third chess match. The first was with a young guy. He had only played a few times so I took it easy on him. He got agitated easily, so I gave him a fighting chance. When I inevitably won, I encouraged him to keep playing. It took practice, just like everything else. My next opponent was a few years older than me. He had watched my first match and underestimated my skill level. I beat him in five moves. He was prepared for the next game, and we were evenly matched. I barely eked out the win. I have a great mid game, but I suck at closing…..kinda like when I flirt with women now that I think about it…

After the checkup with the nurse I spoke to the psychiatrist again. He had only one question.

“Are you ready to go home?”

Was I? You’re damn right I was.

I called my wife right away to come pick me up. After making sure I had all my things in order, I said goodbye to my new friends and handed them scraps of paper with my email. I gave my copy of Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett to the young man I had defeated in chess. He was lonely and had nothing to read to get his mind of his troubles. Few things are as magical and healing to me as a great story well told. I knew Sir Pratchett would take good care of him.

At eleven in the morning I stood outside with my wife.

“Have you eaten? Are you hungry?” She asked.

“Yeah, I’m hungry.”

“What do you want?”

That was quite a question. What did I want? I was alive. The person I loved and cared for most in the world was holding my hand. My children were well on their way to becoming wonderful people. My friends were the most intelligent, loving, irreverent, loyal, witty, and all around awesome that anyone could hope for. What more could I possibly want?

“Tater tots,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yes. Tater tots and beer.”

“Tater tots and beer it is.” She hugged me tight. “I love you.”

“I know.”

And with that, I flew the coco’s nest.

 

Thank you for reading. Truly.

~Oz

Day Three: Imperfections of Perception

Hello again. Welcome to my fourth installment of “Oz in the Nuthouse.” If you haven’t been following along Click Here to go back to the beginning. Otherwise you will be lost.

With that, here we go.

The second morning, and beginning of the third day, in the mental ward was the first I felt normal. As in awake. The effects of my overdose had finally begun to dissipate. My thoughts, though still on the dangerous side, were clearer, more focused. I felt more in control. I got up on my own and wandered into the common room, sat in a comfy chair and read the Tolkien translation of Beowulf. I talked with the other patients on and off, letting them lead the conversations. The stories I heard were fascinating, but they are not mine to tell.

Breakfast came and went, the daily routine easy to follow and running smooth. It was the first good day I could remember having in a long time. Obsessive thoughts of self-harm were at a minimum, like the itch of a healed over wound.

Until it was time to go to the gym, and the wound was reopened. Growing up, I was the perpetual “New Kid” because my family moved so often. I went to six different schools in the sixth grade alone.  I was always the smallest kid in gym class, and almost always the last to be picked, and first to be picked-on. But that never bothered me, because the closer to last I was picked, the more I knew they were underestimating me. All they saw was a small kid that always raised his hand in class and got the answers right. A nerd. Nerds, epically small nerds, weren’t good at sports. Except, I was. I was really, really good. At everything. I could run faster, jump farther, catch better, throw harder, than almost everyone. I was never the best, but I was damn close. In class I earned the respect of the smart kids, but in gym I earned the respect of everyone. I prided myself on how competent I was physically.

That is why it hurt so much that day in the mental hospital’s gym. I crept over to the ping-pong table like a feral cat approaching a freely offered bowl of food. It looked too good to be true. I didn’t remember it being there the day before. Perhaps it was a magic ping-pong table. It traveled here from another dimension just so I could learn my lesson. No one payed me any heed as I picked up a paddle and sheepishly bounced the ball once on the table. With a nostalgic sigh, I did it again. I bounced it on the paddle five or six times and smiled. Then I kept it going, and added some flair. In between tiny bounces I would turn the paddle over, red side, green side, red side, gree…..

“Hey, you want to play a game?” A nurses voice broke my meditative exercise.

“Sure,” I say, playing it cool. This guy didn’t know what he was in for.

I gave him a nice easy serve, just a little warm up. He tapped it back, again nice an easy. I reached out, intending to continue our warm up, and missed. Completely. A little shocked, I served another, and again I missed the return. Fucking COMPLETELY. I couldn’t even hit the damn thing. It wasn’t just dulled reflexes. It wasn’t like I was swinging late. I kept my eyes on the ball, but my eyes had lied to me. My perceptions were skewed. The ball wasn’t where I thought it was. I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a fucking perfect metaphor for my anxiety and depression.

It was in that moment I realized just how close I had come to death. The full realization of my actions hit home. Silly how something as simple as missing a ping-pong ball can cause such a devastating epiphany. I had to change the way I was looking at the world. My perceptions were not reality. Everything I saw and heard and felt, were being filtered through my damaged mind. A line from Waking Up by Sam Harris flashed, “You are not your thoughts.” I reworded it to fit my needs. I am not my depression. I am not my anxiety. I am not how I see myself. I am something more. If I couldn’t trust my perceptions, what could I trust.

The same thing I always trusted. My wife. My friends. The people that loved me. I had to look to them for guidance when my mind went awry. I loved and trusted them. If they said I was worthy of love, who was I to disagree. I am not who I see. I am who they see, and they see someone that is worth their time and energy.

With that, I went back to playing. I served, he returned, and I hit the ball, but missed the table. But I kept trying. The nurse was super encouraging. I incrementally improved as muscle memory returned. Then something clicked inside. I felt good. Not just “Not Bad,” but good. I took a step back from the table, then a deep breath, and stepped into my serve, the one I used to have. The ball shot from my paddle like a bullet, cleared the net by a hair, and tapped the far-left corner of the table. The nurse stood dumbfounded.

“That is one hell of a serve,” he said.

“Thank you. I think I’m remembering how to play.”

“Good. Are you ready then?”

“Yes, let me have it.” I smiled.

What he didn’t know was, I am really, really good at ping-pong.

What I didn’t know was that he was better.

He kicked my ass. But I had fun doing it. And more importantly, I could see where the ball really was.

 

Stay tuned for the last day of my 5051 next time.

Thanks for reading.

Day Two: Dark Energy of the Mind

Welcome to the Third installment of the blog challenge I began several weeks ago. I was supposed to write about 500 words in 24 hours about my stay in a mental hospital. I didn’t even come close to getting it done in time, but it is a topic that deserves to be tackled. And there is far more than 500 words worth of story. If you haven’t read the first two posts you will be lost. Click here to go to the beginning. And with that, here we go….

 

The first time I’ve ever woken up in a mental health facility was to the sound of a nurse telling me it was time for breakfast. Not a bad way to start, not bad at all. But I can’t for the life of me recall a single thing I ate there. I do remember I liked everything though. But that may be because of the three days of cold, stale, hospital food I had to force down. After eating that crap, I would have been happy with lukewarm canned dog food wrapped in binder paper with dicks drawn all over the outside. It wasn’t good, that’s what I’m getting at. Not good at all.

Anyway…They like to keep you busy when you’re on a 72 hour hold, though most of my time had already been used up in the ER. There was time devoted to arts and crafts, exercise in the gym, and group discussion. In between all that was free time. We could spend it in our rooms or in the common room where they had a tv, board games.

Group discussion was my favorite time that first day, and not only because it is the only thing I remember clearly. Each person got to pick a song, any song, and the facilitator would play it. Most people picked fairly benign pop songs. One guy picked a Slayer song. We became friends :), of course, picked a Tool song. Parabola. Give it a listen. It’s perfect for when you feel like the pain will never end. Go ahead, give it a listen and imagine you are at the ragged end of despair. Imagine one of your darkest fears, that your constant battle with depression nearly won. That for a moment, you thought you would never get better, never be happy again. Everything you’ve ever don’t wrong, every pain you’ve caused or transgression you’ve committed, cycles through your mind in an endless and relentless loop. Now imagine Maynard James Keenan (your poetic hero) telling you “This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality. Embrace this moment. Remember. We are eternal. All this pain is an illusion.” That, accompanied by Justin Chancellor’s amazing bass, Adam Jones’s wicked guitar, and Danny Carey’s sublime drums. It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes even today.

And it nearly broke me down during group. Just as I was about to lose it, I heard the therapist guy ask someone about Dark Energy, if they knew what it is and how we know it’s there. I, of course, rose my hand and said that I did. The guy looked at me with a little surprise and gave me the “go ahead” nod.

“Well, Brian Schmidt won the Nobel Prize in 2012 for discovering Dark Energy, which is an unknown energy source that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. He did this by measuring the red shift of light from a supernova from several thousand mega-parsecs away.”

Silence. Everyone was looking at me trying to figure out if I actually knew, or if I was making it up. I WAS in a mental hospital after all. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if I was right or not. I purposefully didn’t look anything up just now. Go ahead, look it up. I’ll wait…..

Anyway, visiting hours were from 6pm-8:30pm…I think. My wife was there, of course. She brought me Beowulf translated by JRR Tolkien. It’s a beautiful hardcover she got me for Father’s Day a few years ago. Love that book. One of my best friends was there to see me too, I later found out. She couldn’t come in to see me though. Turned out that it was a good thing she couldn’t, because it wasn’t a very good visit for my wife. I was still pretty out of it. I don’t remember what we talked about. I only remember that at some point I got upset again and stormed back to my room. She left in tears. Not my finest moment.

I got to see a psychiatrist too while I was there, which was a good thing. I’d been trying to find a psychiatrist for weeks. Well, when I say “I” I mean my wife. SHE tried to find me a psychiatrist for weeks, to no avail. This doc prescribed me some new meds, along with those I was already taking, and asked if I wouldn’t mind staying in the hospital for a few more days since my hold was about to expire. I said yes. I knew I needed all the help I could get. I signed a paper saying that I couldn’t have a firearm for 5 years, and another to keep me lock up for another couple days.

Good call on both accounts.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I’ll tell you about my epic ping-pong battle the following day in my next installment of “Oz Locked in the Loony Bin”

Day One: River of Derision

Welcome to part two of my blog challenge from several weeks ago.

If you haven’t read Delusions of Insignificance (click here), I’d advise you do so before continuing, otherwise you won’t know what the hell is going on.

Have you seen those old Kung Fu movies where the two masters face off by imagining how the fight would go? There was a great scene like that in “Hero” with Jet Li.  In their minds, they were furiously battling it out, but to everyone else it looked like they were standing still. Or in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows with Robert Downy Jr. where he and Moriarty anticipated how each would react and played the fight out in their minds, and again, to onlookers it appeared they were standing still, staring at each other.

That was how I spent the first of my four nights in the mental ward. Only instead of an external foe, it was myself I struggled with, like the secret final boss in most old-school video games. My tranquil body lay in a surprisingly comfortable bed as my self-esteem warred with my self-hatred. The epic struggle laid waste to my insides worse than a dozen Jack-in-the-Box tacos after a three-day whiskey bender.

No, seriously. That kind of mental stress plays hell on the digestive system. And my medication wasn’t helping any. I was a few weeks into taking a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) and apparently Zoloft believes depression resides in the guts, because it did it’s best to evacuate EVERYTHING for the first several days. “What, you have crippling social anxiety and depression? Here, take this pill that will make you shit yourself, tremor uncontrollably, and all your food will taste like pennies.” I was beginning to think my doctor was laughing at me. “You think you’re sad now, wait until you see what this pill can do to you, then you’ll realize your life wasn’t so bad after all.” It was the pharmaceutical equivalent of “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

Anyway, there I was, doped out of my mind from my heroic dose of Valium (the first responders couldn’t believe I was walking and talking) in my tiny barren room, oscillating between wishing the damn pills had done their job and happy they didn’t, when my brain FINALLY received the distress call my bladder had been urgently sending.

Now, if you’ve read my novel you might have noticed that I have a thing for doors. They fascinate me. Myths, legends, and old wives tails (just realized how sexist that is. What, old husbands don’t make shit up too?) are rife with the magical properties of doorways. None of which I believe of course (atheist, remember), but there are some studies that suggest that walking through a doorway has a “reset” like effect on the brain…..sorry, getting sidetracked again. Why was I talking about doors?

Oh yeah, my three doors. That’s right, I had three doors all to myself. The first, and only normal, door led from the ward’s main hall to a fifteen-foot hallway. Half way down and on the right was the bathroom door, which was…. interesting. It was made of a ridged foam encased in white vinyl and held closed with a two-inch-wide magnetic flap that stuck to the door jam. And it only filled about half the doorway. I could stick my chin on the top of the door and look in. A sink with no mirror was on the right, toilet was on the left. At the end of the hall, leading into my room, was the final door, which was…. intimidating. Big. Solid. Impenetrable. It had large metal bolts top and bottom to lock in whoever was unfortunate enough to find themselves on the other side. Me, if I didn’t behave. This is what you got when they check the second box, the one marked “Danger to others.” Again, I found myself pissed that they considered me a danger to others. Didn’t they know I’m a pacifist? Every time I think about how they assumed I would hurt another person it made me so mad I could rip out someone’s throat like Patrick Swazye in Road House…. oh…um…. To all future psychiatrists, that was a joke. I would never rip someone’s throat out like Patrick Swazye. For one thing, I don’t have a mullet, so….

I didn’t do much with my first night, other than take a stumbling stroll around the ward. There were somewhere between nine and twelve men and women, their exact number and their faces blurred from the drugs and passage of time. All the other rooms were much larger than mine and had three beds. The good news was I was the only one with a room to myself. The bad, everyone else had a shower. I was told I could use the one in the room with the other men, so it wasn’t that bad. Across the main hall from the nurse’s station was the common room. It was only open another half hour so I didn’t bother going in.

I think I called my wife, but I don’t remember.

Lights out at Ten. I lay in the semi-dark, and again my self-esteem warred with my self-hatred. It’s an interesting thing to be as self-aware as I am and still be completely unable to do anything about it. I was nothing more than an observer to my tumultuous thoughts. Swept away by a river of derision, I, the part that was me, drowned in delusional thinking. How could someone as fatally flawed as I, be loved? The caring actions of others became sinister and self-serving. Past caresses no more than calculated manipulation. Affirmations turned to mocking accusations. I, the small part that was left of me, struggled to hold on as I slipped into sleep, only to have my fears manifest in my dreams.

It was not a good night.

But the morning was better, as it almost always is, if you stick around to see it. And I did. And I will continue to do so.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Stay tuned for day two in the Ward.

Delusions of Insignificance.

Wow, my first attempt at getting back into the Throw Oz Under the Bus Blog Challenge went as expected, though not as hoped. I had hoped I’d rise to the challenge and creating a kick-ass blog about whichever topic my dear friends voted on. What I expected to happen was that they would want to know about my time in the psych ward, and that it would prove too hard for me to write it up in 24 hours. Yep, couldn’t do it in time, but like an orgasm, better late than never, right?

So, thanks to my fabulous friend Jennifer, here is what it was like to spend 100 hours locked up for being “A Danger to Myself, or a Danger to Others.” First off, I’m not sure how overdosing on Valium can be considered a Danger to Others. It was a completely separate box that had to be checked on the admit form. After 100mg of Valium I’m not sure I could have even been a danger to others. It was hard enough for me to walk, how did they expect I was going to hurt someone? Pass out against the bathroom door so no one could get in to pee? And it’s not like I’ve ever wanted to hurt anyone else anyway. I’m a pacifist for fucks sake.

Ok, mostly a pacifist. Apparently if I’m in a mosh pit and someone on the sideline elbows me in the face and breaks my glasses, instead of turning the other cheek, I’ll to a quick one two combo and lay the fucker out. But I’ve been assured by many people proficient in mosh pit etiquette, getting knocked the fuck out is the appropriate response one should assume to receive when one elbows someone in the face from the sidelines. So, when in Rome, I guess. Other than that, I haven’t struck anyone in well over twenty years.

A danger to myself? Well, yeah, that was totally right. Here is a quick hint, if you are trying to convince someone that you are just fine, don’t tell them you only took that much Valium because you wanted to dampen the urge to shoot yourself. They will call an ambulance and lock your ass up right quick. Also, and more importantly, don’t try to lie and say you are fine when you CLEARLY are not. Ask for help. Seriously. ASK FOR HELP. Hell, if you feel like you have no one else to turn to, message me. I’ve been there. We can commiserate. Have a cup of virtual tea together. Get to know one another, you know, shoot the shit, not ourselves.

And really, being in a psych ward on a 5150 isn’t all that bad. I kinda liked it even. Being in the ER on a 5150, now that sucked. Fortunately, I don’t remember much. Benzodiazepines mess with your short-term memory, so all I have are short clips of my time there. And I was there for a couple days….I think…

I remember being in a bed in the hall by the nurse’s station. I think I was there for a long time. Long enough to have a couple meals and see some good hospital drama.

A tall, rangy dude with no shirt was asking for his pills. He had his shoes in his hand. Pristine white Nikes I think. I think he had been asking for a while because the tiny nurse looked exasperated when she said she didn’t have them.

“I have to have my pills. I’ll have a seizure without them.” He fumbled with his shirt a bit, like he was getting ready to put it on as he stepped further into the hall. Tiny nurse turned to the brunette behind the counter for backup.

“We threw them out.” Brunette said.

“What the fuck man?”

“The bottle was empty, so we threw it out.”

“The fuck it was. I know how many I had left. Give me my pills. I’ll have a seizure without those.” He nearly dropped his shirt he was so agitated.

“Sir, the bottle was empty. We threw it out,” Tiny said, backing up Brunette.

At this point one of the security guards, a big bastard with a condescending smirk, came into view. Or maybe I should say came into focus instead. Thinking back, he might have been there the entire time, but my memory is blurry, like an old tv show flashback where the edges of the screen fade away. The only reason I remember this at all was because of the tension in the room and my hyper-attention to insignificant details.

So, Big Bastard walked up to Rangy and said “Sir, you have to leave.”

“I’m not leaving without my pills.”

“Sir, they already told you, they threw them out. You have to leave now.”

“I need my pills!”

“Sir, I’ve asked you three times now to leave. We can do this the easy way, or the hard.” Big Bastard pointed a finger at Rangy’s face from two feet away.

Shit got real quiet. Rangy took a half step forward.

“I. Aint. Leaving. Without my pills.”

“Ok, the hard way it is.” Big Bastard turned around and grabbed some latex gloves from the nurse’s station. As he snapped the second into place, Rangy dropped his shoes and shirt, spread his arms out wide and raised his chin.

“Bring it,” he said.

Big Bastard squared his shoulders and stepped towards Rangy.

Just when I thought I had lucked upon bedside entertainment, A balding nurse came tearing around the corner, feet sliding on the slick floor like a cartoon, with a Ziploc bag in hand.

“They’re right here, his pills are here.” He handed the bag to Rangy, who shook the bag, letting everyone hear the rattle of a decidedly non-empty pill container. Big Bastard stood down as Rangy gathered his things and left without another word.

Baldy glared at Big Bastard, and the rest of the hospital staff and cussed them out for escalating the situation. It was their job to calm things down, not to treat the patients like shit. And the pills were right where they should have been, if anyone had cared enough to look.

Things get foggy again after that. Other moments of the staff treating people like garbage stand out though. I didn’t see Big Bastard again, but all the other security guards were rude as hell. One yelled at a little old lady to get back in her room, then he turned to his friend and said that he should have just chocked the bitch out and locked her in. How he wished he could just lock us all in.

Oh yeah, by this time I was in a room. I think my wife complained about there being empty rooms and I had been left in the hall for about a day….again…I think. At some point she brought me some books to read. I think they were Night Circus, Reaper Man, and the Hobbit. I know I ended up with J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf at some point, but I don’t know if she brought it then or if that happened after I made it to the psych ward.

Oh, yeah, she had taken me to the in-patient psych hospital first, but there were no beds, so they called an ambulance and transferred me to the ER. I’m kinda remembering some of this as I write, so please bear with me if the timeline jumps here and there.

Anyway, back at the ER, I slept a lot, and read The Hobbit. I picked that one because I can almost remember it verbatim, and since I was so drugged I couldn’t focus on anything else. It was more like remembering the story than reading it. It was the first book I ever read. And I read it over and over again because it was the only book I had. It was that story that got me through my very first major depression episode when I was a kid. I read it every winter after that. It is a simple story that evokes strong, complex, and comforting emotions in me. So please, please don’t mention the fucking movies to me. You can’t imagine my disappointment in Peter Jackson. I had such high hopes after the amazing job he did with Lord of the Rings.

So…um…oh yeah, back at the ER…..

I’m not sure how long I was there, but it felt like forever. No one came into my room. No one talked to me, except when they took my blood pressure. Sometimes I would wake up to find my food tray on the floor next to my bed, everything cold and stale. My wife visited when she could, but at some point they stopped letting her in. I found out later that the nurse on duty, nurse Ratchet I now call her, wouldn’t let my wife see or even talk to me on the phone. She told my wife that I didn’t want to talk to her. How fucked up is that? At some point someone told me that my wife had called and I could use the phone at the nurse’s station, so I called. My wife was almost in tears she was so angry with the nursing staff. She knew I would never turn her away, especially when I was alone in the hospital.

So, the ER sucked.

At some point, I think two days later, a bed opened up at the psych hospital and I was transferred, again by ambulance. It was night, I remember that because the ambulance guys said it was going to be cold and wrapped me in a blanket.

Once at the psych ward (PW) everything was good. I sat in a little room with a (really cute) nurse as she asked me questions and took my vitals. Did I know who I was, where I was? Did I know why I was there? Did I take the pills on purpose? Did I have thoughts of harming myself? Did I have a plan on how to do it?

That last is a funny question to me. I felt like saying “Of course I had a plan? Who doesn’t?” Turns out, most people, that’s who. Most people don’t have detailed plans on how they would end their lives.

News to me.

After the initial round of questions she told me that she was going to have to check my body for wounds or sores, would that be ok?

“Sure.”

“A male nurse will do the checking, ok?”

“Fine by me.” I was still feeling VERY relaxed from the pills. I guess Valium stays in the body for a loooooog time. Like, 100 hours someone at the hospital said.

As they got the room where they would do the checking ready, the nurse informed me that they were understaffed so it would have to be two female nurses to do the checking.

“Even better J” Yes, I smiled at her. I’m a HUGE flirt when intoxicated.

Another (even cuter) nurse joined us in the room.

“Ok,” said Cute Nurse, “We have to check everything, so please remove your clothes and put them in this bag.” She fumbled with a hospital gown as Cuter Nurse stood behind me.

I took off my shirt, then dropped pants and boxers at the same time. I kicked them away and stood, feet shoulder wide, arms raised 45 degrees, and looked Cute right in the eyes like “Tadah!” No I didn’t actually say Tadah….I think….

“Um…people usually remove their shirt first and we put on the gown before removing your pants.”

“Oh, whatever. You’re gonna see it all anyway right.” I turned my head to see Cuter looking at my bare butt. She quickly looked up. Our eyes met, and I winked at her. She blushed a little. Like I said, Valium stays with you.

Thus began my sojourn in a Psychiatric Hospital. I was there from Monday night to Thursday afternoon. This post is getting a bit long, so stay tuned for how day one went.

Anyway, thinks for reading.

To You, With Love.

Hello everyone. I know it’s been a while since I posted anything. I’ve been a bit busy with traveling and having one of the best summers of my life.

I have also been dealing with some of the most severe anxiety and depression of my life. For the past 25 years I’ve been (mostly) successful with dealing with my depression. But right now I need a little back up. Something to get me through the worst part, so today I took my first pill ever for depression. Here’s to modern medicine!

In my quarter century of having the winter blues, I’ve come to understand a few things about depression. Someday I’ll write a memoir and get into the gritty details, but for now, here are a few things I’ve learned. I hope it helps you as much to read it as it will be for me to write it.

First, depression is like any other physical ailment, because it literally IS a physical ailment. Everything that happens in your mind is the result of neurological interactions. If you can’t physically produce Serotonin, you can’t feel happy. No matter how much you like eating chocolate, or watching re-runs of Cheers, or dancing, or dressing up like a Chocobo and going to a Final Fantasy event, no serotonin equals no happy. There is some promising research in this area ~ Sciencedaily ~

So that’s a bit about what depression IS, but that doesn’t help to understand what it FEELS like.

Depression is like being in a gravity well. The deeper I go, the more pressure I feel. And the more energy it takes to get out to be free. The energy that it takes for me to get me out of depression can come from many sources. Sometimes it’s a hug, or a kind word, or even a smile. Or sometimes it’s just for you to listen to my woes, or to talk to me and distract me from my pain. All these, and more, give me energy. But it still takes an internal spark to get the energy to work.

The problem with lighting that spark is that depression attacks the very thing that I need to succeed—my will to do so. It’s like an auto-immune disorder of my ego. It attacks my ability to fight, and sometimes I’m so tired of the fight that all I can do is “be”. Just be depressed, just be anxious, just be sad, or angry, or whatever. To you it might look like I’m giving up, or leaning in, or letting the depression win. It’s not. It’s me floating on my back to keep from drowning. It’s me taking a breather to gather the strength to utilize the love you have so kindly given me.

Which brings me to another point. Please don’t be disappointed, or feel guilty, when your efforts don’t work right away. If I broke my leg you shouldn’t feel guilty that you can’t make my bones mend instantly with the power of your love and devotion. When you do everything you can to help, and all I do is give a weak smile of acknowledgement, your face falls. And I feel like a failure when I can’t be happy for my friends or family. As horrible as I might feel, nothing compares to the misery of letting down my loved ones. To know you are suffering because I can’t get my shit together hurts like a spike in my chest.

To see you hurting because of me, that is the absolute worst part about depression. To see you standing there, feeling hopeless, useless, or like you aren’t enough is sometimes more than I can bear. You are enough. I wish at that moment I could tell you how much you really are doing for me. All the encouragement and love, all the kind words and hugs, the smiles, the pats on the back, they all help. They are doing wonders. They fill me up with that desperately needed energy and as soon as I can, I light the fuse and soar.

 

Anyway, thanks for reading. Hope you feel better. I know I do. But then again, I did just take a happy pill

Stroking in Public

I can’t believe it, not only did Soil-Man win the 2016 IPPY Gold Medal in Horror, and receive multiple 5 star ratings from Readers’ Favorite Book Reviews, but yesterday I found out that it also won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Best First Novel.

Now, I’ve read time and time again that industry professionals don’t care about these indie awards; that they are nothing more than money making schemes preying on the vanity of self-published authors.

Guess what, I don’t give a shit what “Industry Professionals” think. I only care what readers think. That is why I built my own team to publish. And even if they are preying on my vanity, do you know who needs to have their ego stroked now and then? Me god damn it. Most of my writing life is spent in insecure self-loathing. If these self-serving awards are what it takes for me to keep plugging away on my keyboard, then by golly I’m going to enter every one I can.

Look, I know that awards are arbitrary and subjective. I have no delusion that winning means that everyone else would, or even should, like Soil-Man. On any other day the judges could have felt differently, could have been in a different mood and wanted something else from the story.

I worked my ass off for over a decade and a half to get this story exactly the way I wanted it, and to hear that on at least two occasions someone, or several someones, picked my work out of dozens and said “This one,” makes the hard work feel justified.

It also helps me build my platform. Sure, an acquisition editor from Simon & Schuster or a journalist from the New York Times aren’t going to give a flying fuck that I’ve won. But you know who will? My small town newspaper. When I send them a press release that says “Local author of the multi-award winning Soil-Man” they will jump all over it. So will the city where I grew up. As an indie author I have the ability to take the time to be a big fish in a small pond as I grow.

So excuse me while I stroke my ego in public. I think I’m allowed a few days of gloating after the years of self-flagellation. And don’t worry, I’m sure to go back to despising everything I write within the week.

But not today. Today I celebrate!

Ready To Bloom

As I’ve said before, I don’t have writer’s block, it’s just that my writing is deciduous. My creativity lies fallow through the winter months and comes bursting forth in the spring with deeper and stronger roots.

So too my emotions.

You see, I get the winter blues or, as my diagnoses from 1993 calls it, “Recurrent Major Depressive Disorder with Seasonal Pattern.” Otherwise known as Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD? Can you believe that? I was a teenager wondering what the hell was going on and a doctor told me I was SAD.

“No shit doc, I know I’m sad. That’s why I’m here. I want to know why.” Well, that’s not true. I didn’t give a shit why I was depressed. My mom wanted to know. She had noticed that her normally enthusiastically cheerful son (minus the periodic episodes of blind rage, but that’s a story for another time) would act completely different in the winter. She could see the pattern of danger from the outside, but to me it felt like a gradual, annual awakening to the tragic realities of the world, and with it came the crushing knowledge that I would never be able to make it better.

As autumn waned so too my dreams. I wanted (want) so desperately to be a hero. I wanted (want) to save the world, help people, lessen their suffering, make them smile, laugh, and enjoy every moment of their lives. Never one to go to sleep easily, if I wasn’t spending my nights playing hide and seek with my older brother and cousin (my mom worked graveyard shift) I’d be saving mankind from aliens, or rabid dogs, killer cars, vampires, werewolves, or C.H.U.D’s, until the wee hours of the morning, catch a couple hours sleep then get up for school. Then, at 12/13 years old, the long winter night, my dear friend for so long, had turned on me. The monsters began to win. They had traded their fangs and claws for diseases and bullets. Fantastical creatures became fanatical crusaders. Night-time no longer hid demons to fight, they revealed truths to fear. I could (can) feel the pain of the world like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

Every winter now, for over two and a half decades, my head becomes an echo chamber of self-doubt and self-flagellation. State dependent memory kicks in and my mind latches onto every other time it felt the same way. Every pain I’ve inflicted, every disappointment I’ve caused, every failure comes back in a deluge of self-loathing. I’m not really a hero. I can’t do anything to help people, not really. I’m just a high-school dropout with no real skills that matter. How can I call myself a good person if I can’t do anything that matters? I can’t help anyone.

But slowly the winter recedes, and little by little I remember.

I can do something.

I do have a skill.

I am a writer

I. AM. A. WRITER.

Words are my weapons. Words can tear down tyrants and build up liberators. Words can banish fear and engender courage, dispel lies and reveal truths, lessen suffering and heighten love.

Spring has returned, and I gain strength with the sun. Light fills my mind and my power blooms.

Goddamn it SPRING HAS RETURNED, so too have I.

The Prestige

The first time I held my wife’s hand it was magic, and I fell in love. I was a sophomore in high school and she was a junior. Heather was (is) short, blonde and busty, just my type. Her best friend (to protect her identity, we’ll just call her Cora) … Continue reading →

What’s a Meta For?

What was it like to write my novel? I’ll tell you what it was like. It was like snowboarding for the first time without a sense of self preservation. After falling flat on my face immediately after getting off the ski lift I thought to myself, “What I really need to do is go FASTER! That’ll help.” Newton’s first law of motion, right? Right.

               It totally worked too. Once I got moving I kept moving. Didn’t matter if I was standing on my board or ploughing the snow with my face, my movement (and my luck) continued generally downhill. Do you have any idea how fast you can go if you have no clue how to stop? Pretty damn fast, let me tell you. So fast in fact, that if, sorry, when you catch an edge you will hit the ground so hard that the fluid from your cold will fly out of your head like a snot demon.

As you lay face down in the snow, with the mucus monster glaring at you accusingly mere inches in front of your eyes, for I don’t know, 5 maybe 6 minutes, reflecting on your life choices, you’ll wonder if you can quickly evolve the ability to absorb oxygen through your pores because your lungs are getting fuck all.

Now, if you are like me, once your diaphragm settles down and you stop fantasizing about becoming an amphibian (they breathe through their skin) you will get up and do the same damn thing again. And again. By the time I reached the end I felt exhausted, bruised, and broken.

And accomplished. Every ache and pain was worth it, because at the end of the day I survived. I looked at the mountain and knew that I had won.

Yeah, writing my book was like that.

Thanks for reading,

~Oz