I've felt suicidal lately. Why talk about it openly? Because I don't want to feel this way, talking about it alone, makes it less likely to happen.
I'm really sick, mentally and physically just unraveled. I'm usually a positive person, but even in my darkest days, I usually knew the path out. It was always obvious where I fit, and what I needed to do to get there. It's not that way right now, I can't see any obvious direction but down, the calling I usually feel is hushed, and the world, for the first time really feels hollow, lonely, and just a place I'm not sure I want to occupy. All of the morals, and goodness in people seems vacant, society as a whole seems lost, and shallow. It's not a world I'm proud to be a member of. This isn't a jab at any specific person or people, in fact I dearly love so many people that may read this, and you're wonderful, but in my head, you're just memories, there is no tangible good that I can place my hands on.
I'm used to clinical depression, as much as anyone can be, it just feels different this time, I dug myself into a hole, and I don't remember which way is up. If I could more eloquently phrase my words, if I could better express this emotion... But it jumbles out like some cliché, depressed crap that seems to pollute the Internet in every corner. Maybe that's the problem, we've become jaded to hearing each others woes, and it's become hard to truly sympathize with our fellow man.
I want to manage to express this, because it's foreign to me to feel this bad. It's not my goal to get feedback, or sympathy, just to express this and get it out there, and maybe in the process, expel it from myself, or at least begin the process.
Let's start here, just some of the facts, things weighing on me that could be culminating to form this dark cloud, though I couldn't easily point to any one thing and say,"that's the problem", because while there is a lot of negative forces working against me, I feel like it's more the fact that I don't remember why I should feel better. To what end? When I get better, what is waiting there? What life am I trying to preserve, or strive for?
Despite the fact that these separate things may or may not equate to this feeling, I want to get it all out there, in the harsh, unforgiving truth, the reality of what has happened.
My family has been clinging together, for support, and to live the way we should. Our mother has mental illness, as do I for that matter. We chose, for her good, to help her retire and move her close to family, with promises of a better life. I sit now, in a small dwelling, in a small corner room, surrounded by things I couldn't fit in my usual "studio" space. I awoke to ants today, because I fell asleep with an empty glass that had soda in it last night.
Every source of water here is messed up, washing machine is completely broken and everything else leaks. There are several other problem just with the living situation, but I am thankful there is a roof over my head.
To really dig into the root would be to discuss mental illness, and the corrosive effect it has, and the mind deteriorates so does everything surrounding it. Just two years ago, we wanted for nothing and celebrated life everyday, and oh how things have changed.
My mental illness, the best any healthcare professional can surmise, stems from several near fatal head injuries, and possibly some inherited family issues. So to speak it in their jargon: acute anxiety with agoraphobia, clinical depression, severe insomnia, possibly post-traumatic stress disorder. To state it plainly: daily anxiety attacks, I can't leave my home, I don't fully know whats wrong with my head, so they just throw medicine at it, yet think I'm a junkie half the time because I look the way I do. My brain, will not shut off on it's own. Over-critical thought, jumbled ideas that run in circles, which causes anxiety and insomnia. So, well... I'm fucked up. I feel judged constantly, which just adds to the depression. Family, I'm sorry that I drink sometimes, I'm sorry I haven't quit, and I'm mainly sorry that I don't really want to quit. It's always caused problems, but I've been much more responsible, and try to keep myself in line, I even try to make a conscious choice that if I know I'm going to drink, I don't mix it with my medication. Aside from drinking some, I live a pretty normal and moral life.
We can't discuss the families decline without addressing my mothers mental illness as well. I don't enjoy making these things public, but I cannot bare to hold them in any longer. My mother is a gracious, kind and gentle person, an intelligent nurse that, at least nine months of the year, is a pretty stable person. Yet, she will not stay on her medication, which has been an issue for more than thirty years. We have to take our mother to a psychiatric unit, where she stays for up to a week, every eight months. Right now, I am tasked with dealing out her medications twice a day, in hopes that she will stay on them and get better. In thirty years here's a list of medical terms that have been thrown at us, as doctors never agree what or how to treat it, starting from my first memories: manic depressive, bi-polar, graves disease, hyper/hypo-thyroid, dementia, psychosis, vitamin deficient, schizophrenic, depressed, and the list would dwindle down to mixtures of those . I can't stress enough, I love her and it breaks me, every time we have to commit her. These "episodes" range greatly in form, but cause money issues, and a general corrosion of quality of life for everyone involved. We have stunted our lives, frozen in time it feels, trying to deal with this, and hating the idea of many of the "solutions" we are presented with.
So, there is a very sick woman, just down the hall, very confused, debt like we never thought possible.
Now, I keep saying we, and while I understand, sympathize and even envy, the we I've known for several years is about to dwindle by one. In a few weeks my brother and his fiancee are getting an apartment a few towns away. I am happy for them and the choice to make a life together. However, I don't yet see how this will change my life, and my mothers. Can I help and handle her illness, should I? Or should I seek my life, and worry about what's wrong with my world and take steps to fix it? Can the two happen at once? Can I care for her, and start preparing to enter some new life? Or do I have to get away, to better myself? I feel unfair and selfish when I dream of something more. I feel shame that I could move on.
This issue alone, encapsulates enough I could write a book, on the worries, and odd childhood.
Between mental illness, past addiction issues, and some less than proper choices in my love life, I can build a tree of regret. These would be the roots and the dry, barren branches would be the minor issues that were born of just a few key problems.
I miss my children, I can't use anything but the less than adequate word unfair, for what has happened. I miss them every second of everyday, and my heart will never be whole if they can't see me more. It's a situation I feel powerless in. I am an awesome father, and I was doing everything I could, they were happy, life was good. Without divulging or saying anything that could be misconstrued as trash talk; my heart feels a weight, a yearning to be with my children, and there is nothing on earth that can patch that hole.
This is where I stop typing, to wipe the tears streaming down my face.
I was fucking up my life, starting about five years back, missing my kids, and unhappy I'd make bad decisions, or I'd blackout drinking. I hurt the ones I loved, pushed some away for good because they couldn't bare to see the destructive path I was on. I could be handed the world, and I would find a way to fuck up every good thing in my life. Bands, friends, love, family. I was unhappy and didn't even know it until I decided, after a few traumatic events, I broke down and rewired. I quit drinking completely for several months, became celibate, and got a psychiatrist. I didn't know I was depressed until the first time I felt it ease up. I got serious about music, and photography, but then I still fucked up, not as often or severe, but I still lost things I cherished. I've found myself in this current state of suspended animation; there is no forwards, and there is no turning back. I spend a great deal of my day laying in a bed, twitching for hours. Not to sleep, just sick, pure and simple, stuck on a broken record of regret and shame. That's where I am now, a single small light in the corner of the room. I type to keep my hands busy, while my legs twitch uncontrollably. I ignore the pain in my chest, and the labored breathing, the tightness in my muscles, the numbness in my hands and feet. The frequent shooting pains in my head and neck, stiff, clenched jaw. I count the hours until I can take medicine, for a minor, brief distraction and calm... If I feel it today.
Like so many things I write, they start with a direction and just unravel.
I WANT to live, but I have to remember why.

I'm noticing an alarming trend, musicians getting severely depressed within days of releasing material. I think that we pour so much into it, channel our emotions, use it as a coping mechanism, or just distraction. And once it's finished and out of our hands, everything comes crashing in. The realities we were able to suppress, to voice in music, is suddenly very real, and our way of coping has left. What we offer you as entertainment, sometimes it's our cautionary tale, one we can't ourselves heed.