YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hello again!

I've had a couple of accounts on this forum before. I get spooked very easily, especially when talking about myself, and I tend to abandon my own efforts to reach out. There's a pattern to this behavior - I reach out, meet people, feel as though what I'm writing is an embellishment of the truth, become paranoid that nobody is telling the truth, and run away. It's maddening and I'm trying not to do it, but I'm an immensely guarded person. I use humor and storytelling as a way to avoid talking about my own emotional state, and I'm really good at telling myself to tough things out even when those things should not be toughed out.

On that note. As I type this I have a piece of homemade lasagna in the fridge not 10 feet away from me. Have I hauled my lazy, overweight ass to the fridge to eat some dinner? Nah. I'm not exactly glued to my chair - I'm probably going to go out and partake in my marijuana addiction (yes, you can be addicted to the devil's lettuce) after I finish typing this out. I usually justify rolling up another jazz cigarette by saying that it will make me hungry so that I actually eat something. And then I sit down at my computer and proceed as before, only baked. And then I beat myself up for not being able to take care of myself.

Among my gravest struggles, if you haven't noticed, is an inability to take care of myself. I haven't purchased a new pair of glasses in over 8 years; my world is sepia-toned and blurry because my glasses are wholly inadequate prescription-wise and yellowing. My shirts all have holes in them. Apparently my preferred aesthetic as far as clothing goes is "old shit". I own two pairs of pants, two pairs of scrubs, and a pair of shorts that I can't bring myself to wear because I'm really prudish. Oh, and gym pants, which double as swim pants because apparently I'm a Victorian and the thought of exposing my calves gives me a case of the vapors. Hygiene isn't really a problem, but my clothes are hideous and scarce.

That isn't helped by me being a) broke, and b) living in Canada. I think a lot of Americans, particularly of the progressive political persuasion don't realize that Canada isn't America + healthcare. This country is very difficult to live in; costs of living are skyrocketing, jobs are scarce, and our social infrastructure is burdened with decades of neglect. Our public transit is atrocious (and no, being "better than America" doesn't make our transit adequate. I can't afford a car and it takes me forever to get anywhere), our mental health infrastructure is primitive (fun fact - our beloved healthcare system doesn't cover therapy or indeed any mental health needs save psychiatry upon referral. We pay for everything else, including prescriptions), and on top of that people tell me all the time that I should be grateful for being broke, distressed, and unable to get anywhere quickly.

I have experienced chronic body dysmorphia over the years, going from a maximum weight of 300+lbs to a minimum weight of 150. I stand 5'11" tall, for the record. My biological parents are both absolutely bonkers. They split up when I was 5, my father kidnapped me, and I developed mutism which has since resolved. My parents hate each other and used food as an incentive to persuade me of the malice of the other parent. My mother would put me on restrictive diets "to protect me from my father", and my father would encourage me to eat anything and everything because he knew it needled my mother. Later on my father would tease me for being a fatass. Later later on I would become "bigorexic", starving myself and going to the gym daily (sometimes multiple times a day) in a misguided effort to get swole. I am, for the record, not swole.

Mirrors spook the hell out of me. I kind of look past myself when I look at a mirror. When I do look at my face I treat it as though it belongs to someone else. No idea what that's about but I really don't like mirrors. I also dislike photographs (which is unfortunate because my mother loves taking badly-framed, poorly-exposed pictures of family members standing about and gearning), being filmed, and indeed any kind of record of my existence. When I got a minor traffic ticket last year my biggest concern was not having to pay a fine but rather the thought that someone could search my driver's abstract and know where I was on May Day, 2015. Does anyone care where I was on May Day in 2015? Intuitively, I doubt it. Internally, I fear the prospect enough to be spooked.

I have a glib, comic disposition that allows me to dodge conversations about myself. I seem to be pretty good at turning the charm on, so to speak, and I'm really good at talking people into liking me. At my worst I'm caustic, aggressive, and mean like my parents. At my best I can make a room laugh, score mad tips at my serving job with charisma, and stand out in a good way from a crowd. When I'm really firing on all cylinders with the charisma cannon I feel like I'm high. Almost like a coke high but without the visual acuity and sharp focus. I love cocaine. I also love MDMA, acid, and weed. I'm too poor and have too much invested in my own life (going to college, with my girlfriend for five years, adopted a cat) to really get into a solid coke habit but I'm always down for LSD and molly and I've probably smoked more weed by myself than several Pacific Island states.

Despite being prudish I have a massive BDSM fetish. I figured out how to masturbate when I was really young, did some questionable experimentation (read: sucked dicks) in Cub Scouts, was caught holding my breath and jerking it during class in the fourth grade, licked a chair that a girl that I liked sat in when I was twelve, and am deeply ashamed of everything I just wrote. In high school I would slap myself for staring at a girl I liked only to then masturbate and beat myself up even more. If I could go back in time and slap fourth-grade me in the teeth a few times to stop him from misfiring the purple yoghurt cannon I would do it in a heartbeat. Oh, yeah. And all of this happened in a deeply religious school. My mother and stepfather are deeply religious and would probably disown me if they knew of my quirks and kinks. Being forced to perform cunnilingus on a dominant lady by way of her wrestling me down and sitting on my face is probably the hottest thing I can think of. Would Jesus approve? I dunno.

My little brother is currently in a tag-team gaslight scenario of epic proportions. My stepdad coddles the kid, and my mother slams him for being sheltered...only for my stepdad to then step in and protect the kid. I kind of raised my little brother alongside my stepdad because my mother is not good with children and at that point was a major workaholic. What am I saying - she has always been a workaholic. My kid brother is closed-minded, extremely defensive, and lives entirely on the Internet. He's also a huge slob, which enrages my mother and causes my stepdad to step in and clean things that my brother should be cleaning. My poor stepdad has been massively overworked both by my mother's manic stream of projects and my kid brother's complete inability to take care of himself. We are all realistically financially dependent on my mother. I can survive on my own if I eat rice...oh, right. Eating. I mentioned needing to do that several paragraphs ago.

That's not lasagna, Vaporwave. That's a beer. God-dammit. This happens more than I care to admit.

Does any of this crap sound familiar? I hope so, because man do I feel like a weird case. The people interviewed on the podcast either had way more fucked up childhoods than I did or have found help. I want help but when I get help I tend to lie to my therapists because...reasons. Not good reasons, or even reasons that I understand, but there it is. I'm making a conscious effort to be honest here. The goal is to write a script that I can hand to a therapist. Then I'll adapt it into a screenplay. I feel like Paul does when he starts a bit that he can't finish. I think this is the part where I tell myself to go fuck myself.

If any of these sound like something you experience, please talk to me. I'll try to be present and funny. Do you have vaporwave mixes that you like? Send your D A N K A E S T H E T I C to me! This is my current jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJsUpeXK6Jo&t=880s

But yeah! Come talk to me! Please!

I...I blew it, didn't I?

This is a well-written, fascinating post.

Were I not exhausted I'd post a proper reply.

Thanks for sharing!

Update: took lasagna out of the fridge. Talked to girlfriend about Game Grumps while smoking a joint. Now worried about speeding ticket from 2015, seeing as I have a job interview tomorrow that requires a clean driver's abstract and I had applied completely having forgotten about the ticket.

Thanks for reading, friend. I just kind of word-vomited all over. I get momentum from writing a couple of things and then I can get more stuff off of my chest at a go.

Hi Vaporwave,

I read your post.

Seeing as you're an Aussie, I'd like to take this moment to thank your country for The Checkout. I know more about Australian consumer law than Canadian and I wish the CBC would produce stuff like this instead of Schitt's Creek. Ugh.

Thanks for reading my rambling!

BREAKING NEWS:

Went to job interview. Was interviewed by literal, professional clown. Workplace appears bonkers but will give me cash-dollars with which to pursue my favorite hobbies - smoking marijuana, drinking beer, eating chicken wings, and hating myself. Was texted by clown while walking home; I'm now working for a clown, watching slides and bouncey castles and dealing with rental properties and Excel spreadsheets and who knows what else. Also, Detroit Tigers are currently sucking. Was not fun to watch Mike Pelfry pitch against us yesterday. This bothers me because I am a strange human being and the goings-on of a multi-million dollar sporting enterprise built upon the fabulous wealth of a pizza chain concern me. Ave, (little) Caesar!

Now I'm waiting until I have to go to work. Not the clown job, the other job. Speaking of clowns, I feel like my head is a bag of mixed nuts and someone picked out all of the cashews. I don't even know what that means, but it seems like the "I'm nuts" part of the equation shines through. I wish I knew what was wrong with me so I could talk to other people instead of babbling.

Some thoughts to offer, as I read.

First up, you are a gifted writer with a fine mind. Thanks for sharing.

* Feel free to have as many accounts as you like, I say.

* Yes, I identify: when I was broke I went ten years with the same glasses. It makes me very sorry to think about now. Here we have a place where you can get an eye exam and two pairs of glasses for $70. Perhaps they have something similar in Canada. They're worthy it.

As far as American healthcare, I've been on both sides:

1. Working poor: the dollar store sells aspirin. (This was the extent of my healthcare.)

2. Having a plastic card (health care): I am welcomed everywhere. Last month I got four prescriptions, much of the medicine un-needed, and it cost $30. Something in my conscience knew that wasn't right.

* If you are willing to share, I'd be interested to hear more about your struggles with body dismorphia.

* It sounds like you were burdened with many burdens in your childhood. You deserved better.

* Thank you for your honesty about your sexual identity and experiences.

* I think some (not all) religious people overlap the venn diagrams of sexuality and religion. I knew some "anti-masturbation/porn" guys; they thought about porn constantly.

* I hope your brother learns to rely on himself, soon. This world is real. Real real.

* Rosebud: Charles Foster Kane would approve of the sad, poor man who bought the Tigers.

Related: years ago, when I was still drinking, I worked for the Indians. Many people loved their "Tribe" when they came so close to the world series six months ago. Besides the obvious reasons to revile the Cleveland baseball team, I have two personal experiences that "The Tribe" doesn't give a damn about people:

1. They paid me a grossly un-livable wage, and constantly harped on increasing out sales and items per transaction. Moral cowards.

2. One of their representatives, one of my managers, drunkenly called me a homophobic slur. That is when I realized that my heterosexuality is here nor there: the homophobic people are nuts.

One more reason to hate the Tribe! I was livid when they booed Miggy at Progressive Field. I know that baseball is an emotional sport and that groupthink is powerful stuff but some respect for a titan of the game is warranted. I've always assumed that major league anything doesn't pay very well; I'm reading an excellent book on the history of the Detroit Tigers right now and the ways that the Briggs (the old owners) spun their finances to make players (who were often left unemployable and without a pension) look greedy for demanding more financial protection. If they were that intense about keeping money away from the stars I can only imagine how cheap they are to the employees. Having worked many, many, many, many shit jobs in the past it pains me to hear the stories of others trapped in the muck. Glad you got out of there. And I wholly agree with your comment:

That is when I realized that my heterosexuality is here nor there: the homophobic people are nuts.

As for my dysmorphia, it really manifests as a combination of refusing to eat, binge-eating when my body realizes that an 800-calorie day ain't gonna cut it, and then feeling the need to angrily go to the gym and demolish everything in sight. Yoga has helped me hugely and I highly recommend it to anyone who uses rage as a way to overdo workouts. With yoga you can't Hulk Smash your way in and out. You have to feel every motion, move slowly and with purpose, and listen to a friendly voice telling you to move and breathe slowly. My girlfriend encouraged me to try yoga and while I was initially very closed-minded about it I finally came around and I am so very grateful that I did. I also am doing a lot more cardio than I used to, enjoying the chance to kind of talk to myself through my problems. Or daydream about ways to undermine the Canadian state/rebuild my shattered rust belt hometown, but that's another topic.

I have insurance through my college to save money on glasses, and while the money is a disincentive to get new ones the other problem, my fear of mirrors (which you kind of need to see whether you like a pair of glasses) is an integral part of why I'm still wearing these ancient things. Usually I'll go in, try a couple of pairs of glasses, get freaked out from looking at myself, think about how expensive the things are, and be too uptight to make a purchase. They need calming, soothing glasses shops for weirdo fucks like me. Nothing but chill music and a cloned Mr. Rogers reminding me that he likes me just the way I am. This sounds pathetic but Mr. Rogers is a personal hero - I watched PBS as a kid because we didn't have cable and American TV was always better than Canadian, and I think the CBC sometimes had him when we did get cable. I'm looking for a third in the Holy Trinity of Admirable Childhood TV Personalities: Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, and...?

My childhood was rather strange. As I said my family broke up violently on Valentine's Day, 1995. My father took me to his car, where his secretary (with whom he had been cheating on my Mom) was sitting in the front passenger seat. When I was buckled in my father said "this is your mother now. You'll never see that bitch (referring to my mother) again". I was so scared. Then we drove around a lot. I don't recall much of that, but I do remember my mother calling the police and my father eventually buying a house in my hometown. Admittedly this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (why wasn't my father jailed? Why did he stay in my hometown?), but I've accepted that I'll realistically never have answers to that one. I haven't spoken to my father for a few years, and I don't intend to start now.

Thanks so much for responding! It makes me happy to know that I was able to interest someone, anyone, about my little corner of the universe.

Hello, Vaporwave. I echo others: You are a really gifted writer and storyteller. I don't mean to demean your experiences by calling them stories; I just mean you're really engaging. I guess you know that, or you wouldn't be able to wield it to keep people away, right? I do some of that myself. People feel very alien and unsafe to me, and keeping them laughing, or at least charmed and distracted, is often the most humane and adaptive way I know to interact.

You have my great sympathy for the nightmarish things you suffer.

And thanks for the heads-up about Canadian health care. It has occurred to me on occasion that I ought to refugee myself in hopes of better access to care; thanks to you, I won't end up in Canada, disappointed.

I'd say "hang in there," but I don't think it's safe to ever assume that's good advice. I haven't yet found an alternative way to express the good wishes that phrase seems to want to express.

May a lovely miracle of health and recovery find its way to you.

Thanks for coming back.

I am a master of admitting a problem, wanting to tackle it, then running away and self destructing and living in denial until it all comes crashing down, again. Its how we learned to cope.

Sending love.