Domestic Violence

The Texas summer is an abusive partner
Wherever I go, it's
Screaming at me, belittling me
Making sure I stay small and powerless

And I can't leave
A hundred miles makes no difference
Even two or three hundred miles away
It's still there, beating me down

Everyone wants to know,
Why can't I see it's a beautiful sunny day today?
It's because I can't see anything
It's too god damn bright to see anything

In the winter, we have coats
To protect us from the cold
But in the summer I have only sunglasses

So I cry, I sleep, and I drink
I avoid being conscious
It's just too much to handle

The woman I love, she doesn't understand
It's not enough for her to just enjoy summer
And I'm glad she does, but
She makes me feel bad if I don't

Soon though, relief will come
Abject misery will transform into ecstatic joy
Let's go outside! I couldn't be happier
And all you assholes who gave me shit all summer

You suddenly disappear, saying
"It's too cold - it's freezing!" But
This is Texas, and you have no perspective
There's no such thing as cold in Texas

Despite my best efforts not to be,
I'm sure I was a negative Nancy
All summer long, and you made sure
To make me feel bad about it

But now, where are you?
Huddled indoors against
The biting fifty degree cool breeze
Who's the negative Nancy now?

Oh, that's right - it's still me
Because I'm in the minority
And in a system of majority rule
The minority is always wrong

Through the Darkness and Into the Light

My name is Aaron.  I have bipolar depression.  I have taken more psych meds that I can count, and I'm here today to share my story, and most importantly, to say that there's always hope.  The reason I feel confident in saying something I always thought was so trite is that I know now that we never run out of things to try.  Like many stories worth telling, mine is one of going through the darkness and into the light.

There is about a five year period of time that I don't really remember.  While my friends went to college and did all the fun things that you can only really get away with when you're that age, I went to psychiatrists.  I firmly believed that I had a terminal disease and that I was fighting a losing battle.  It certainly seemed that way, too.  I just got worse and worse, and I was a topic of discussion for my whole family.  To be the problem everyone is talking about is a most unsettling feeling.

Over time, most of my family became convinced that I was lazy and that I wasn't trying.  I didn't really disagree.  But my mom tackled my depression head on, and over time I think she became nearly as depressed as I was.  I remember her lying on the couch, staring at the wall, with a look of utter hopelessness and defeat on her face.  I knew it was because of me and I remember feeling so sad and powerless that I couldn't seem to keep from destroying her life.  That was the worst part, feeling like I was to blame for her despair.

I tried to kill myself twice.  After the second time I was hospitalized.  I felt hopeless, largely because I felt I had already tried everything and that nothing was working.  I had learned a fair amount about psych meds over the course of taking so many of them, because I wanted to be knowledgeable about what I was taking.  I learned about SSRIs, tricyclics, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and so forth.  I knew I had tried many of the drugs in each of these categories, and others, and that I was running out of drugs to try.  But what I didn't know was that there is a whole world of options out there, and that psych meds make up only a small number of the options available.

When I was in the hospital I agreed to try Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT), because I felt like I'd already tried everything else.  The point of ECT, as you may already know, is to induce a short seizure, which supposedly realigns something in your brain.  Well I didn't get my brain realigned, and instead of one short seizure, I had a series of long seizures the doctors had trouble stopping.  I spent that weekend in the ICU and don't remember any of it.  My psychiatrist was never able to figure out why that happened, but he did suggest that I try again.  Fortunately, I declined.

I'd been taken off my meds for the ECT and after that failed, I was put back on them.  I was still in the hospital and was having uncontrollable crying spells.  I wasn't allowed to go outside and all there was to do was to sit for hours in front of the TV (which I despise) or to read, in between the various sessions they held.  Much of the material they presented in these sessions was good, but was a repeat of another outpatient program I'd been to previously.  I wasn't allowed to leave until my psychiatrist decided I was ready.

I was still depressed, and the hospital was only making things worse.  I hid my crying spells and feelings, and manufactured what I hoped would be a believable story of feeling a little better each day.  Talking to my doctor, I felt like a prisoner talking to his parole board.  I guess I'm a good liar because they eventually let me out.  I remember the day I got out, driving to buy new strings for my guitar, with the windows down and the wind in my hair.  It was one of the best days of my life.

The hospital was my rock bottom - I was determined to never go back to a psych hospital, and resolved to either get better or find a better way to kill myself.  I spent a lot of time working on both.  I got out of the hospital in February of 2005, and over the course of that year I quit taking my psych meds and starting getting acupuncture.  I started paying more attention to what I ate and I started exercising.  I had some mind expanding experiences, and I really grew up a lot. 

I gave up on psychiatry as a solution for my problems.  And I'll admit, I had gone into it with an immature attitude, expecting the doctor to fix me instead of working to fix myself.  I know psych meds help some people and I am not suggesting that anyone quit taking their meds if they work.  There is no uniform treatment that works for everyone, and that is one point I wish to make:  Everyone is different and gets better in their own way.

Treatment has such a narrow scope in many people's minds - it means doctors and pills.  But treatment and recovery encompass everything from what drugs you take to whether you like your job, to what you do with your free time, to where you live and the people you surround yourself with, and much, much more.  It's about being happy, and everyone has factors that affect their happiness, whether or not they have ever felt depressed or been to a psychiatrist.

By far, the biggest and most important thing I've learned is that you're never out of options.  You never run out of things to try, and any time you feel like you've tried it all it just means you're not looking hard enough.  It means it's time to branch out and investigate a totally new aspect or approach.  I let doctors give me a seizure before I had tried things as simple as exercise, nutrition, or acupuncture.  It's really crazy, looking back. 

The few years following my release from the hospital were far from perfect and I experienced plenty of dark times and what I guess you could call relapses.  But the overall trend was a positive one, and I have made a long uphill battle to where I am today.

Nowadays I work in IT, working on computers, and I live in an apartment I like on the east side.  I have a wonderful girlfriend, and I spend a lot of time on creative endeavors.  These creative outlets have been very important to my recovery.  I play guitar and sing, and I draw.  I write on a blog.  I still get acupuncture, and I trade guitar lessons for my treatments.  I take Lithium, which I've been back on for a few years, and it helps keep me on an even keel.  I'm working on saving money to move out of Texas, which has been a dream of mine for years.  I love Austin, but I really want to live someplace with cooler weather.

I still have times when I feel depressed and I'm by no means magically cured and happy all the time, but who is?  That's unrealistic.  I am happy overall and I would consider myself to have recovered.  I have a good support system in place of people I can talk to when I need to.  I look forward to the future and am glad I have persevered and made it this far. 

I value openness and welcome any questions anyone has.  I am here because I want to share, and would rather someone ask me something they feel awkward about than hesitate out of fear of either asking something too personal or me judging them.  I also have business cards for the acupuncturist I see at South Austin Community Acupuncture.  His name is Mike Sobin and he works on a sliding scale, with prices as low as $15 per treatment.  It's been an effective, affordable treatment that has made a big difference in my life.

Finally, it doesn't matter who you are, where you've been, or what you've done.  The past is the past, and all you can change about it is how you view it.  It can either be a situation that's depressingly similar to the present, or it can be that period in your life when you were just crazy screwed up.  It's up to you.  All that matters is that you continue to try, because giving up is the only way anyone really loses.

I Was an Asshole, But She Was a Bitch First

Sure, I was crude, but the thing I don't think she understands is that I don't act that way towards people who DON'T say things like “you have a God-shaped hole in your heart”. I'm not lewd to people who DON'T introduce their sermon by saying “I swear I'm not preaching, but...”. I don't do that to people who say “this is what I believe, what do you believe?”. But to the arrogant stranger who said my heart has a God shaped hole in it, I replied “I have a God-shaped hole in my heart like a lesbian has a dick shaped hole between her legs”.

And yes, that was crude. I'll admit that freely. And this was on Facebook, so it's not like the woman was talking directly to me. I didn't say what I did to offend her, but I didn't refrain in order not to offend her. I figured she'd be offended by what I said, but I don't generally feel obligated to be that considerate to a person who I feel is being disrespectful to others. And I'm sure she didn't intend to offend me either, but I stand by what I said, which I think was an accurate, even clever analogy.

I feel that when an evangelical type engages me in a conversation like that, telling me in such a friendly, personable way that I'm inherently flawed, I have two options. I can either hold my tongue and be polite in the face of their unintentional attacks, or I can be an asshole. Mind you, I don't feel like I'm being an asshole, but they do. And I don't even like being an asshole, but then I'm not the one going around imposing my beliefs on other people. I'm just reacting, defending myself against personal attacks from a person who often times knows nothing about me.

They're just telling me what they believe, and I understand that. And I understand that doing so is important to them. But if I tell them what I believe, my goodness how offensive! I don't even say I think that they as a specific individual are performing the ultimate sin by trying to shirk responsibility for their own sins onto the shoulders of Jesus. I'm not as tacky as they are when they tell me that I, Rhomboid specifically, am a sinner. I say to them that I think Christianity is a fable that manipulates people into feeling guilty for things they can't change, and then bends people to the will of the church by exploiting that guilt. And if that makes me an asshole, I'll wear the crown. But it's one size fits all, and is equally at home atop the head of the Evangelical.

1. I find Evangelism to be very offensive.
2. But, I don't expect Evangelicals to stop proselytizing.
3. I don't demand that they take their programs off the TV or radio.
4. I'm polite when they knock on my door and try to convert me.
5. I'm nicer than they would be if I knocked on their door and told them in the nicest possible way that their beliefs are flawed, and the truth is that going to church is a waste of time at best and simple brainwashing at worst.
6. We heathens need to quit feeling bad about standing up for ourselves.
7. We need to feel as comfortable and justified telling them what we believe as they do.
8. Being honest is not the same thing as being hateful.

I didn't have to be crude, but I was. She's right about that. But by the same token, she could have just said that her belief in God has made a big difference in her life, but she didn't. She said that everyone needs God in their heart or they'll be forever incomplete. And that's okay too, it's just the hypocrisy that bothers me. Honestly, mostly I just wonder if she understood what I meant about heart and dick holes.

Antithesis

Have you ever yelled or screamed to express an emotion other than anger?  Have you ever cheered on a sports team or screamed in sheer excitement, or maybe sheer terror?  Me too.

When you hear a father screaming "Go, go go!" at his kid's Little League game, do either you or the child conclude that his dad is mad at him?  Well maybe if the kid is autistic, but - yeah, me either.

Of course, screaming is usually a reflection of intense emotion, but the specific emotion itself can result from any number of different feelings - some good and some bad.  We all understand this, at least most of the time.

But when you hear music with someone screaming the lyrics at you, what is your initial reaction?  Many people find it disconcerting and unpleasant, and interpret it as anger.  And though it certainly can come out of anger, the yelling is more a reflection of intense emotion than any specific feeling.  It's conveying something too packed with emotion to sing in a gentle three part harmony, the same way you wouldn't whisper "This is the best day of my life!  I'm the king of the world!" or "I can't stand this job another day - I quit!".

Take the screaming however you want.  Art is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.  And if you don't like heavy metal, that's cool. This really isn't about taste.  I'm just very confused as to why so many people take this certain sound to mean anger every time, when in other areas of life we all understand it is a way of expressing a multitude of different emotions.

The ironic part is that metal is the most inclusive genre of music I know, and yet it's arguably the most shunned by the rest of the music world.  Personally, I like music with variety - bands who mix many different influences and genres together.  Some of my favorites are "metal" bands who play a little bit of everything - jazz, southern rock, pop, dance, R & B, blues, and folk to name a few.  I wish the the jazz bands, pop groups, and all the rest would mix in some metal every once in awhile.  Now that's a show I'd go to!

But many people contend that metal is very static - always loud, heavy, and fast.  And maybe they've never heard metal with a wide dynamic range, music that transitions from gentle instrumentals to funky abstract jazz, to grinding electric guitar, to doowop.  Like any other genre of music, there's plenty of bad metal out there, and most of it makes its way onto the radio.  But I would argue that pop, jazz, and the rest are far more static styles of music, genres that bind musicians to a certain style and dynamic range.

The metal I'm talking about runs the gamut from soft and gentle to loud and heavy and everything in between, but chances are you're not going to hear pop artists break into a hardcore breakdown.  Singer-songwriters may make it down to the soft and gentle end of the dynamic range, but aren't going reach the top of the energy spectrum.  They're bound by convention and are basically prohibited from venturing that far.

But metal bands are free to go anywhere they want because they've already broken convention.  They're already running around like crazy people, banging out what is often quite complex, technical music and screaming "BRING ME THE HEAD OF ANDY WARHOL!" in one song and then following it up with an R & B tune.  And that is precisely where their true freedom and power lies - in their lack of inhibition.

Like I said, it doesn't really concern me whether you like metal or not.  That's not what this is about.  I'm just so very perplexed as to why most people have this uniform reaction to screaming in the context of heavy metal, a sound they understand can have any number of different meanings in different situations.  I find it very strange how something which seems so simple could be a mystery to so many.

Parabolic Hearts

The bull moose in rutting season knows not what he does;
A thousand pounds of raw power, pointless without direction.
The unfocused beam of the brightest light is outdone
By a mere candle and a parabola, just ask the sun.

Despite my best efforts not to, I've learned that
Rage is draining, and there'll be no more giving myself away.
So come revel with me in the power of intertwined hearts,
For lives lived in stereo are more than the sum of their parts.