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Health, Politics, and the boundless unknown
Today gonna be a day
At the time of writing this, I am sitting at my computer fully dressed head to toe in my nicest outfit, getting ready to go to a celebration of life for a dear friend of mine. Im tired as all get out, but I cant sleep right now because im afraid that 1. I wont wake up in time and 2 that I will wrinkle my clothing more than they already are from me trying to put them on.
And with everything that has been going on in the last few weeks, it has given me time to pause and think about things. To reflect on those who are in my life still, and what type of legacy i would be leaving behind. To date the only things worth notation that I have done was write my book and become a Peer Counselor. Where I am in life isn't what I had planned for, but it has been a good one with some bad parts, but that is just life in general right? We have those days that are sunny and full of fun, love, and joy, and those that are not anything but a rainy depressing day. Living with depression, I take the days that I feel amazing with an open heart and mind and completely embrace it. When my depression hits, it makes me long for those good days.
My friend Papa Dan (who's funeral I'm going to) always said "every day is a good day" but today, is not for most of us, as we have to say goodbye to him. But knowing him and carrying that message, as well as the wisdom he imparted to all of us, makes the forthcoming days good. Because though we lost a friend, we gained a guardian.
Take a moment to contact those you care about today. Reach out to them and just let them know you love them. Life gets so complicated that we tend to go a period of time without communication. But no one ever says "I'm glad I didn't take time for those who mean something to me." We always beg, plea, and wish for one more second with that person. To have the chance to say what we didn't get around to. So now is your chance. This is your sign. Pick up that phone, make the call. Reconnect.
2025
my book, the holidays, and more!
The election, depression, hope and more
First, I must start this post to let you know that it is going to be a bit of a rant, as well as something that I like to try and stay away from, politics. With the latest election, the country is divided even further. And with the change of the regime, we have the Sword of Damocles hanging over a majority of the nation. Along with the changes coming to the White House, we also have the looming Project 2025 that could in my opinion which is shared by many, revert the country back to how it was prior to the 1960's where segregation, women's rights, and many other civil liberties could be stripped away from those within certain demographics.
It is a very scary idea that someone's religious views can cause all of these things to come to light, when the very country itself was founded on the idea of religious freedoms. Yet since the founding of the United States we have had anything but that. Time and time again it has been a wave of Christianity washing over the entire country from Plymouth Rock in 1620 to the golden coasts of California. The destruction of Indigenous people and their cultures, and so much more.
With the revocation of Roe v Wade more than just women's reproductive rights have been affected. The LGBTQIA+ Community may lose the very rights that have been fought for with countless lives being lost, either by diseases, violence, or self-harm. Gay marriages can be dissolved. Gender affirming treatments are on the chopping block as well. I fear that this is a very very slippery slope for everyone, including those who blindly voted for this to take place. I fear the narrow sightedness of said votes may be what spearheads the next Civil War within this country.
That aside, my depression has been coming and going in waves. Some days are better than others, and during those really horrible days, all I can do is cry and listen to the voices that say I should unalive myself. In a lot of my videos and podcast's I refer to it as "The Self-Checkout line." Because you can't use certain words without getting your post banned or flagged.
And I know there are things that are outside of my control, however, that is not how mental health works. You can have a full understanding of all the right and wrong and everything in between and still your brain tells you that you should hurt yourself or get into the self-checkout line.
If you have been following along with the Podcast, or the YouTube channel you will see that I have taken steps to "fix" certain aspects of my mental health and the wanting to cause myself self-harm. I've never delt with the idea of self-harm but just recently that became something "new" for me. I began doing Cold Plunges and strangely I found that by doing so it has "scratched" that itch. So, for now, it's a good thing. I'm able to "hurt" myself but in a very healthy and productive way. I have talked with my doctor and told him what I was doing, the reason behind it, and how it was helping and he "signed off" on me continuing to do so.
Moving away from the "heavy" stuff and getting into lighter things. I have been focusing a lot of my energy into playing my Nintendo Switch, I finally was able to get a game that I have been wanting that takes place in the Harry Potter Universe called Hogwarts Legacy. As of right now I have about 60hrs into the game. It has been a really nice distraction.
As for the book....well the book has caused me more stress and anguish then I had ever thought was possible. I've finally gotten a copy of the book from the editor that I was able to get uploaded to Amazon, and have ordered my Author/Proof copy which should be here Tuesday November19 2024. After which time I'll have the ability to look at and hold a physical copy of my book and give the go ahead to publish it and make it go live.
I had to send my editor an email today letting him know that the eBook isn't coming out properly when i look at it on the previewer that Amazon offers and that I still have yet to try to upload it to Barns and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Books. I'm hoping to be able to cast a wide enough net to make it available to a wide range of people across the world. However, I know that it is going to be nice just to get it sold locally, and a dream come true to go to a thrift store in Brooklyn and see it sitting there.
With the holidays quickly approaching, I am really worried about what is to come with those as well. All my finances are wrapped up in trying to get this book out, with my vision being very narrow and only looking at most 30-60 days ahead. But I always seem to manage at one point or another when it comes to the holidays. After the first of the year, Im going to try to do some traveling. With what finances that has yet to be determined. But I need to get out to California, and I want to go spend a week or so with my aunt in Indiana and try to get out to Las Vegas to see my friend and meet her beautiful daughter and see her family too.
So this is everything up to this point in my life at the moment.
Depression, and the hiatus from posting
My book and it's progress - a review of the last 30 days
So, as of right now, it's been almost 30 days since my last update here on the blog. There has been a lot of stuff that has happened. Mainly a lot of depression. But tonight, which at the time of writing this it is Friday October 11th, 2024, at 11:08pm PST I have submitted my book to the final editor. It should be back to me within 5 days. It is currently Saturday 12th 2024 at 7:08am in Nigeria. I'm working with a guy that I selected out of about 30 people on Fiverr to bring my book to life. From the get-go he has been very communicative, professional, and has amazing reviews.
I am super excited and nervous to have pulled the trigger and made this huge investment in myself, and my dream. All of this foreshadows the previous 29 days where I have dealt with stress, depression, self-doubt, thoughts of self-harm and more. I had a huge emotional outburst to the point of doing the ugly cry in the middle of the grocery store the other day, which was hell of embarrassing, but I could not stand by and listen to the prelude to a conversation that not only triggered my own childhood trauma but was the bases of something that by law would have forced me into filing a Child Protection case.
The self-harm is something new that I have never delt with before. So that is kind of concerning. I've delt with suicidal thoughts, depression, and all types of mania, but never active thoughts of causing myself pain like cutting or some other type of pain that would dull the mental with the physical. Thankfully the analytical side of my brain kicked in and was like "what the actual fuck is this and where the hell did it come from?" I am one of those people who have internal monologues aka "verbal thinking" or "inner speech" where only 30-50% of people the world over think to themselves or have internal monologues, others do not have this ability. So, because of this there literally are "voices" inside my head. And each one has its own "sound". I know it's rather difficult to properly explain it if you don't have an internal monolog. But when the thought of self-harm came up, it was a "new voice" and the "others" were like "no bitch you are not invited." So, I did a shallow dive into self-harm reduction and other such topics on YouTube and got a shit ton of pop-ups for the 988 Suicide Hotline and things like that. But it has given me something new to study in the terms of mental health and the classes that I have taken over the years.
I have found a healthy way to "self-harm" however. That came in the form of doing Cold Plunges. It was a temporary pain that I could cause myself and have healthy benefits from. I have only gone twice, since writing this post. But I find myself looking forward to it more and more, and it's like a drug. Each time I've gone, I've submerged myself a little deeper and deeper with my final goal of just jumping headfirst into the freezing water and actually swimming like I would in a pool for the 15 to 20 minutes that is allotted to me by the medical nurse whom I've befriended and go with. I even was able to get a portable showering unit that is basically a rechargeable sump pump with a shower attachment. So now when we get out of the water, we can pour our collective hot water into a bucket and shower off more thoroughly, rather than just dumping a bucket of hot water on ourselves.
But the emotional rollercoaster that I have been on since July has really thrown me for a loop. Dealing with my biological mother's failing health and her intolerable drug addictions and toxicity and overall general negativity has been one kick to the balls after another. First getting a call that she was rushed to the hospital with a broken pelvic bone or a fracture to the femoral neck, and then her going through detox and withdrawals and hearing how she is going to "beat the shit out of any motherfucker who tries to put her into a goddamn home.." and being so violent that the doctor and several other members of the hospital contacted my sister and I via Zoom to discuss how she is being discharged against medical suggestion and that she was basically going home to fail aka "die."
Only for her to call me not even 3 days later to complain about how much pain she is in, and to be actively doing drugs on the phone with me as I can hear the sounds of her being in a car with other people. She thinks that I am stupid and not aware of her drug use, and doesn't remember all the times that she has given me meth pipes trying to pass them off as marijuana pipes, when I use to hand blow them for the tweaker "friends" I had as a teen, as a source of income for myself, and watched all of my friends from the age of 13 to 25 use meth and know what it looks like, what it smells like, how to make it, and what the residue looks like.
Like I was about those streets, when she would take off to the casino with the alimony, child support and welfare checks and leave me at home for hours with no food or anyone else in the house. So needless to say, I was never home much as a teenager because well I didn't really have a "home" to be home for. How I never got mixed up with doing drugs outside of smoking marijuana, trying shrooms and doing something called Sherm in my twenties (which is marijuana or tobacco laced with formaldehyde (embalming fluid you know that stuff that they put into corpses before burying a person) or PCP, is beyond me. The closest thing to a drug addiction (other than Valium that was given to me at a very young age without any supervision) was when I was actively smoking Sherm (I felt myself slipping and stopped before it got much worse) and later when I was smoking marijuana daily and had to stop myself because I noticed that it was becoming a huge problem.
So all of that to say that it has been a bunch of compounding issues that have come to a boil and has beaten me into the ground. Plus, my father's birthday hit me really hard this year. And thinking the thought of how he cleaned up for about 27yrs and found an amazing woman who I consider my mom, because she's done more for me in the 20-some-odd years that she's been in my life than my own biological egg carton ever had. And he passed away and she is still roaming the earth. Like why is that fair? He worked hard, always put me ahead of his addictions, and really tried, and she's calling me up doing lines, and just actively fucking up all the time. Then I get mad at myself for getting mad at her and allowing her stupidity to hurt me, and for me to get into my feelings because of it, and it just snowballs into a bigger and bigger mental health ball of anger, shame, and depression.
I really do think that my next book is going to be about growing up at the child of addicts and how through some miracle not ending up a statistic, but still ending up with mental health issues, but trying to heal themselves, even though they come from toxic backgrounds. But for now Carpe Diem Scroto is one step closer to becoming a reality and that is something to celebrate.
Stress, Depression, and more
So if you've watched any of the YouTube videos that I have uploaded in the past 2 weeks, or listened to the Podcast at all you will know that I am not doing that good right now. There is aton of things that I haven't said on camera or on the podcast that have really be weighing on me.
Lately the new thoughts of self-harm have arisen and I have no idea where the hell that has come from. Not like suicide or anything like that, but the physical act of harming myself. I have never been a cutter or anything like that. The closet thing to that I ever did was carve the initials of me and this person who I was really into at the time on my leg, like you would carve it onto a tree. I took a bunch of pills and used probably a pound of ice and a compass to dig into my leg. But that wasn't to "hurt" myself it was to show "love" for the other person...you know the crazy shit teens do.
But this has been something new for me and as someone who studies mental health, and lives with it as well, this is all new territory for me. I don't plan on actually following through with it, and I do have access to lethal means, but have no actual plan to do it. It's falling into the category of my ideation more so than anything. But all of this is also compounded feelings of hopelessness and being overwhelmed with the bullshit my biological mother is going through, as well as my own stresses about getting the book published, and dealing with new health issues, and everything between.
I don't really know when this is all going to stop. But I do hope that it is soon. Im thankful that I'm not still trying to write the book because I wouldn't want this energy going anywhere near it. Today has been a good day so far. I went grocery shopping with my sister, and a friend worked on my car some. But it was almost instantly when I walked in the door, all the racing thoughts, and the bipolar mood swings hitting me all at once. So maybe it's just the house right now. But I am going to be reaching out to my psychiatrist and seeing if I can get a zoom meeting if nothing else just to talk things over. Or I may reach out to 988 to see if I can talk things over with someone there.
But for right now I'm doing like I said "ok" but it's still rather taxing to deal with my brain wanting to hold itself hostage.
Reflections of 2024 seven months in
What can i say about 2024 so far? Well, there has been a lot of changes for me, and some milestones met, and new passions ignited and some moments of depression, and others of pure joy, happiness, and gratitude. I started off 24 with an outlook of middle of the road enthusiasm. However, January found me completing my manuscript and from that getting interviewed on several pod casts, becoming an accidental Beta Tester, and starting the steps i needed to start getting the book published. February and most of March found me in a depressive slump. April found me in a straight up panic about my housing and trying to get that figured out. May had me holding my first public fundraising event, and June and July have found me just being anxious yet grateful for my life as it is thus far. I have ups and downs like everyone else, but it is also highly favored right now too. I've been blessed with cleaning my house and getting rid of old items and making my home a home again.
The other day I just sat in quite awe of my home, my life, and the steps that I've taken to get to this point. However, I am no longer built for heat of any type, anything above 65 and I'm dying. but an amazing opportunity appeared in a free portable air conditioner from a low-income program that I am part of. Mind you I have a large window unit that has sat unused still in the box it came in, on a chair in my living room because I cannot install it by myself, and though I've asked many people to help, none have. So, like many items in my life, I will have a backup if anything happens.
Im not a religious person, but I am a spiritual one and i just had to take some time to put a thank you out into the universe and be mindful of where Ive been and how far I've come.