Random Noise On the Internet

I almost wasn’t going to tell the rest of everything. Look, is it any surprise that I’m sensitive? Anybody as chaotic and messy as me is sensitive.

I’m not exactly sure why being told I’m self-absorbed or wallowing should bother me more than people thinking I’m mean or cruel. Probably because the former two imply weakness. I guess I should just come out with it then: I am weak. There. Now that I’ve admitted that, I can keep going. I’m going to keep telling everything that happened.

This is the internet. People are gonna be shitty.

But also, a lot of people have been awesome about me putting these essays out. Those are the people that matter. And I’m so grateful that I feel like I’m being seen and understood. There are good people in this world too.

I’m allowed to write about things that happened to me. I’m going to keep doing it even if a minority of shitheads don’t like it.

I guess this whole thing was bound to rub a few people the wrong way. People are very uncomfortable with negative emotions. You can really only express them in fiction, which is why I have for so long. You can abstract negative emotions in any artistic way you want. My sister Carly makes movies. They are the strangest, most surreal movies. I see her pain in them. You can also use paintings. That was what my mom always did. It’s also what my grandmother did. My grandmother loved to paint, although she stuck mainly to landscapes and animals.

Abstracting pain in fine. Owning it is not. That seems to be the consensus.

If you admit you are struggling, people pop up to tell you how to fix it.

This may come as a surprise, but I actually am trying to fix it. Writing it all out is part of it.

And this may be even more of a surprise, but I actually am getting somewhere. For the first time in so long, I feel comfortable bonding with people. Not people I’ve barely spoken to and watched on the internet for months on end. Not bonding in a this-will-never-be-real-never-be-reciprocated sort of way. People who actually like me and want to talk to me, and that’s online and in real life. I think, for a long time, I’ve only really noticed when people are awful. When people were kind or supportive, I didn’t give it as much meaning. I didn’t have as strong of an emotional reaction to it.

And my anger issues are something that have gotten a lot better over the years.

I also don’t binge drink.

I’m resentful of being told I’m wallowing, because I went through a horrible depression the end of 2020 through the beginning of February this year. I spent a lot of time thinking about buying a gun, putting it in my mouth, and shutting the lights off. I researched the easiest and fastest way to get a gun. I spent hours trying to talk myself into it, because yes, I’m afraid to do something so drastic and final.

To be completely honest, that’s why I finally put my face on the internet, started making youtube videos, and pouring my heart out on camera. I really thought I’d do it. I thought if I really let all the insanity out, if I really publicly self-destructed, well, then I’d have to do it. I thought “It doesn’t matter how stupid I look, because I’m so close to being ready to do this. I won’t ever have to think or feel again.”

All of that is to say, I didn’t drink anything during that whole period. Because there was still a part of me trying to get it together. I have a problem with alcohol. I love how numb and giddy it makes me feel. Well….until it doesn’t. It is a depressant. You feel really good until you feel really awful. If I started drinking during that awful period of months, I think I would have completely lost touch with that part of me trying to get it all back together.

I think the biggest issue that I have right now is that I don’t know exactly why I had this major depressive episode, or why I did any of the weird, erratic things leading up to it. You know, it’s awful being this crazy and also being aware of exactly how crazy you look to other people.

I won’t say I always know when I’m being crazy. At least, not in the moment. I usually do after though. Later, when crazy brain is off. Crazy brain feels a lot different than normal brain, although my normal is probably skewed a little crazy at the best of times. But even when I don’t know I’m in crazy brain mode, I can figure it out by how other people are reacting to me. That slow nobody-make-any-sudden-movements way people get of speaking to me. They look nervous, like if they pick the wrong selection of words they’re going to set a bomb off. The way people look at each other, exchange glances like “Holy shit, help me deal with her.” When people start doing that, then I know I’m doing something that doesn’t make sense to regular people who don’t have crazy brain moments.

Crazy brain feels like your thoughts are very fast, and you see a lot of connections, but later you can see that none of those connections made sense. You can take 2+2 and get xylophone. And it makes perfect sense, in the moment.

That was all a long-winded way of saying, I think I am making progress.

But even if I wasn’t, I think it’s shitty that people want to say you can’t write about your own life. Or maybe you can’t write about your own life unless all of your emotions are neat and tidy and perfectly processed, like you plastic-wrapped them on an assembly-line. Or maybe you’re not supposed to write about your own life until you’re completely better. Then, maybe then, you have a right to talk about everything that happened.

Or maybe you have to be a perfectly sympathetic character: one who was resilient and kind and brave.

I am not resilient or kind or brave.

I am wilted and mean and cowardly.

Maybe those of us who don’t bend under pressure have something to offer the world too.

Or if there’s nothing of value here, then fine. There’s a lot of random noise on the internet already. I can make some more. I’ve always been really noisy.