Why am I the way that I am

Even when surrounded by friends and fam

The dark thoughts hurt and combine

Yet I smile and reply that I’m fine

I listen to others as they bitch and moan

Yet at night a lie awake and think I’m on my own

Confidence is what I give to others

Even those idiots, my so-called brothers

No man, I’m free to rehearse

Though you wouldn’t be there if the sitch was inverse

Yeah I’ll drop everything and fly to New York

Though I hate performing, life’s road is at a fork.

What’s that babe?  Another family thing?

Yeah of course that’s something I can swing

Sure I’ll be there to hold you as you cry

But do you listen when I say I wish I’d die?

Scratch that, its my fault you’re hurt

I’ll calm you down and feel like dirt

Hey big bro, something got you down?

I nod and listen and offer a sympathetic frown

You and your boy are the queens of drama

Funny enough it’s a familiar trauma

I’ve been through parent’s divorce before

(Just a heads up, yelling goes through your door)

Hon, stop, being skinny is overrated

How much you’ve used me will go unstated

You’re pretty, talented, and a manipulative bitch

Damn this compulsive “helping others” itch.

Therapists charge by the hour and choose their fee

Somehow right now the only thing being spent is me

I do this to myself, I only care about others

(Though this theory radically differs from my mother’s)

I used to think that I was a good person for it

But in reality I’m just a stupid shit

Stupid on so many levels of my life

Problems surrounding me seem so rife

For starters I chose poorly for a profession

Theatre is just a sick obsession

Then for schooling, I completely fucked up

Found most answers in the bottom of a cup

Friendships I easily lost

(Well for them it seemed like there was no cost)

I know this college experience hasn’t been cheap

But I hate going home being the black sheep

Look in your mom’s eyes and know that you’ve failed

And you know what its like to be Jesus when he was nailed

To a cross of broken dreams, hopes, and desires

I don’t have to give what life requires

A failure is what I’ve been and will be

Please stop before you disagree

This is wrong; I wasn’t supposed to get to this point

Whatever, time to coast as I light a joint

I like to smoke, wouldn’t you know

Helps me get by with a life full of woe

But as the high fades, the problems come back

And I know deep down, I’ll never get on track.

Totally want to continue this story, and I plan on it, but I’m just super busy right now.  Kind of lost too.  Do I really want to continue on this theatre path?  Because I don’t know if I can handle any of this stress anymore.  Or the drama.

… but then again what else have I been doing with my life for the past six years.  So I guess that’s why I’m so lost.  Without theatre what the hell do I have?  But I’m not sure I can do this from here on out…I’m so discouraged at this point.

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

Have you ever seen that movie?  It’s actually quite amazing and if you have the chance you should give it a viewing.  (Zac Galifinakis, aka hangover guy, is in it and gives an amazing performance).  It’s about this time in my writing that I conclude that no one has and just quickly say it’s about a young teen boy who thinks he wants to kill himself and ends up in a mental hospital and what happens to him and his perspective on life during his short stay.  So I guess I’m using a preface of this movie for this plucky little story to tell you dear reader that’s what exactly what my story is like.

It’s at this time that I also want to say that this is my side of this story.  This is what I can recall and this is what I remember thinking.  So dear reader if you DO know others involved with this story let’s not jump to conclusions etc etc, ok?

Like any good drama angst ridden teenager, this story starts with a long standing history of depression.  (Well that and a girl, but that’s coming shortly.)  Another story for another time, my parents are divorced and everything about it was very messy and very public.  Long story short, that’s the point in my life I believe my depression first reared it’s lovely head.  Soooo…. My mother had me in therapy at a very young age.  And I continued going, week after week, year after year, until what do you know, I’m a junior in high school.  Due to stress from closely failing three classes, being the lead in the musical, speech, and all the fun natural angst that goes along with being 17, my depression reached an all time peak.  I started cutting regularly, sometimes in obvious places, but mostly places no one would see.  (If you had ever wanted a list of profanities you could have just checked out my carved up left thigh)  I had reached what I absolutely knew in my mind was the end.  Just one issue, I had a girlfriend of a year and half, whom I loved very much…

Two weeks before tech week for the musical I started planning.  Lists in my mind were made, strategies of how things were going to end for me were thought out.  I just needed to finish two things: Break up with the girl and finish the musical.  So I asked for a break, over the phone, on a Monday night.  To this day I could not tell you what “a break” meant, but I told her it would all be figured out once the musical was over. I had plans that I wouldn’t have to make that decision because a much bigger decision had been made.  Little did I know that the next two weeks would change everything.

Little known fact: Musicals are an enchanting experience.  That may sound super fruity, but musical casts (especially those that are made of high school choir kids) become super close in an almost strange way.  And when you are the lead, it’s as if EVERYone wants to be your best friend.  I went from the kid who never did choir before that year and only talked to a select couple people, to every day someone new asked to sit by me and the stuck up bitchy girls who were always too good for others wanted to flirt with me.  It was a weird time where I was depressed and had no idea who really wanted to be my friend.  It was an amazing and confusing time.

But the one thing that grounded me through that was my girl.  Even though we were “on a break” only two things changed, we stopped everything physical and we stopped saying “I love you.”  But she was still my best friend and was still one of the people I talked to the most.  She didn’t understand my depression, so it wasn’t something that I could really talk about easily with her, but still, she knew me best.

A lot of shit went down in those two weeks.  A lot of late nights, whispered conversations, and a lot of emotions.  What I can only describe as “show-mances” began to occur.  Essentially long nights, close quarters, overflowing emotions, high stress, and highly-tuned hormones cause people to fall in love with each other, hook up with each other, and they really think these feelings are real.  But when the show is over, so is the romance.  Anyways as stated before somehow being the lead gave me the power to be irresistible to many girls.  Yet every night who did I want to text?  My best friend.  My girl.  I never did anything in those two weeks.  I got through the musical.  My girl even came one night and brought me a bouquet of roses  Maybe I was stronger then I thought.  Maybe my plans and strategies and preparations were all for naught.  Maybe since I told her I’d have it figured out after the musical I could just tell her I was confused, brush everything under the rug, maybe life doesn’t just suck.

But it does.  Turns out she didn’t take those two weeks as well as I had imagined.  I knew it wouldnt be easy, but it was infinitely more easy for her to be angry at me if I killed myself then if we were together… She “hooked up” with two guys in those two weeks.  The first a guy I told her had a thing for her and she claimed I was just paranoid and even if it were true nothing would happen.  The second, the drummer in the pit for the musical. (Which to add insult to injury I found out this occurred about a half hour after she handed me the roses).

“Whelp.  Looks like the girl I loved and turned down hooking up with other girls for, did NOT feel the same way for me.  Guess I should just go ahead with my plans for the whole killing myself thing.  Oh what’s that?  I have to take the ACT tomorrow.  AND I have national qualifiers for speech next weekend, damn.  Funny I have to perform with my now ex-girlfriend in a piece about relationships that was only good because of our natural chemistry.  Awesome.  No time for death in here relatively soon…”  This was the thought I had when I got off the phone for the second time in two weeks feeling like shit.  That’s my beef with suicide I suppose.  The most selfish thing in the world is suicide, and the only reason up to that point that I hadn’t just gone ahead with it was my obligations towards others.  (I got a 29 on the ACT which I did have to take the next day.  I still feel like if I hadn’t gone through the whole break up thing the night before I would’ve gotten into the 30s, but I never did retake it)

We, for some god only knows reason, qualified for nationals.  So now I’m a hugely depressed, angsty, frequently cutting, pissed off seventeen year old who’s now competing over the summer as partners with his first love who has now completely scorned him and is dating some other guy while we have to pretend in our scene to still be a functioning couple.  Yeah, my emotions were the roller coaster of death.  There wasn’t a single practice where we didn’t fight, and I’m pretty sure she went home crying daily.

Things got dark for me.  I had friends I would talk to and hang with, but most of the time I wasn’t at work or practicing, I was at home in my room alone brooding.  Sleep became difficult, I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t dark.  I started going through old facebook messages and pictures of me and my girl and writing mean messages.  My mom started making me a couple extra appointments with my therapist.

T-minus three days before we’re supposed to leave for nationals and after two sessions two days in a row my therapist hit a wall.  She could tell that I was in a worse place then she had ever seen me before, and at that point I had been seeing her close to a decade.  With the trip for nationals just a few days away my therapist could do no more for me on her own.  She thought that maybe it was time that I try taking a couple of anti-depressants.  After weighing my options of either being 100% completely miserable with my ex-girlfriend on a stressful speech trip out of state for a week (which was kind of the original issue here) OR finally killing myself (Which I couldn’t do because I had an obligation to my team and partner/ex) I decided that perhaps the trip wouldn’t so bad if I were drugged up (because that’s TOTALLY how anti-depressants work).

One small glitch.  A therapist cannot prescribe medications to their patient.  Therefore she couldn’t just tell me what to take and how many to take for the next week while I was away, those dosages needed to be figured out by someone else.  Her solution was to talk to my pediatrician, and I should be all drugged up and ready to go.  My mom (who was super understanding through this and just insisted that she just wanted me to get better) booked me an appointment for the next day after speech practice.

I got home that night expecting a weird next day and was in shock that I would soon be medicated for my depression.  Little did I know that the next day would forever change my life.

My God it is the year 2012 and I am now the ripe old age of 20.  I’m fully aware that it may be a cliche or whatever, but honestly turning 20 was a big deal.  I’ve experienced a LOT in these twenty years, and when it came time for my birthday to roll around I had to reflect on my past.  Perhaps it was around that time that the small seed of “holy crap, I do not remember my past as vividly as I thought I would” was planted in my mind.  And honestly in the couple months that have passed since I turned the big 2-0 it’s like my subconscious wanted to remind me that a lot happens in life. 

Memories of events I forgot even happened, that hadn’t occurred in years would just randomly pop up.  It almost gave me a false sense of security, “well if I can recall them now, I can probably recall them again in the future.  My memory really isn’t that bad.”

It wasn’t until something as simple me forgetting an elementary school classmates name that I started to panic.  Let me explain, I went to a Catholic kindergarten/grade/middle school.  (Those of you who know this pain just went “ooooooh…”)  I started kindergarten with 70 kids.  9 years of school later and 54 of us remained.  So me forgetting one of those classmates names, that’s like forgetting a family members name.  It was like going to school with your siblings for 9 years.

Without remembering her name (it still eludes me…) a realization dawned upon me.  Memories fade, even those you thought were the “most important, life changing” ones.  There are things in my life that I never want to forget…

So I guess with this new year and my 21st birthday seemingly fast approaching I want to keep a better track of my life.  It just seems to speed by faster and faster, year by year.

I have stories in me.  Stories that shouldn’t be faded because of time.

So here it goes.  I’ve tried several things with this tumblr while I’ve had it and none of it stuck for me.  So maybe I should just try its most basic usage, a journal.

This first story is one I’ve never taken the time to really talk about or write down.  It’s not a simple or necessarily happy story, but I know that it’s important for my life and should never be forgotten.

The following entries are the story of my time in the hospital.

Read what you want if you want.

…you’re my source of most frustration.  And when I don’t meet expectations.  Everything you wish came true…

Jesus fucking christ you have no clue how true these lyrics are in relation to you.  Why does there always have to be something?  I feel like every god damn day there’s something absolutely wrong and we have to fix it.  Always have to appease you, because its always gotta be a big deal.  And I always owe you this and that.  Yeah you have done and continue to do a lot for me.  But I do a lot for you too, yet that always seems to be forgotten or just not fucking good enough.  Fuck the bullshit?  You’re absolutely right.  FUCK. THIS.