Brattleboro Stories—My Family

Book | Memoir | 30 hr read

A bipolar software engineer and writer cycles through seven inpatient stays at the Brattleboro Refuge psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt, forming intense bonds with fellow patients (Faith, the oppositionally defiant bipolar woman who once jumped through a glass window onto a security guard; Spots, the self harming mental patient he falls for; Grace, the heroin addict with the perfect face and the handful of Skittles), while his psychiatrist Dr. Meggs delivers a skeleton diagram of his psyche that traces his humiliator/humiliated patterns back to potty training abuse; after discharge he ricochets through Portland (kicked out by his sister), Baton Rouge (three years with racist uncle Rusty and alcoholic aunt Susan in a house where the phrase "nigger pussy" is thrown around in casual conversation), and Nashville (manic episodes, police at the door, cops called by doctor emails), accumulating diagnoses from bipolar I to schizoaffective disorder and a tardive dyskinesia that leaves him horizontal 23 hours a day. Content warnings: suicide attempt, graphic suicidal ideation, psychiatric institutionalization, alcoholism and drug addiction, racial slurs, sexual content, childhood abuse, family dysfunction at industrial scale. "You should never bargain with the devil. But the thing is, she seems to be bargaining with me."

My Family

116

Well, as you've seen, the Brattleboro Stories didn't start in Brattleboro—and as you're about to see, they didn't end there, either.

I went to New York. I went to Portland. I want to Baton Rouge, in the deep south, where they have hurricanes and lizards and crawfish and you're basically living in a swamp.

You wanna know what happened in all these places? Well sit tight, I'm going to tell you.

In New York. Scared. Lonely. Found Joanne, left my bag in her studio. I've put all my possessions in a bag and left all the limited home I had. Getting through this minute at a time, and some, wishing I had a partner in life to go through things with. Getting comfort food to make it through a few minutes, a laugh with my server, and a few deep breaths. Not drinking—but why not—to get through some time..ugh.

Want a home. Want love and community. Want security. Want my life to come together.

---

Feels good to at least be out of the cold, in this restaurant for a second. Drinking a Pepsi. Sometimes I wish I was just born in a place like New York..or..in New York. That I had a family here, a reliable dad, etc. He's just clueless—he sent a note recently that indicates he hasn't been paying attention to, or simply doesn't remember, the content of our recent conversations. I have sympathy, pity, fear for him even, but there's no peer relationship there. He's busted, needs help, and I'm not in the position to help him. Makes me sad, a little.

Calming down now..settling a bit..glad I sat down.

---

Adjusting now. Took me a couple of hours. Understandable, as I've spent the last one year in a town of thirteen-thousand people, and there are probably thirteen-thousand people in about a two-block radius from where I now sit. It's a bit of a shock.

Ate food and drank juice and Pepsi. Even my handwriting feels better now [It's shocking, the difference in my handwriting from the previous two entries to this one. Those are oblique and irregular, this one is neatly squared and legibly stylized. I was more out of sorts, in a basic way, than I realized]. Needed to warm up and eat something substantial. Hadn't eaten much before just now..only a small sandwich and salmon earlier in the day. Centering, and better now.

Took a clonidine [supposed to act as an anti-anxiety agent by lowering your blood pressure].

Stuffed myself on food..but..it's ok.

---

Ok, universe. I love you, I trust you, I throw myself upon you. I'll give myself completely and I'll ask only that you do the same. Of course you, by virtue of being much larger, have more to give, but I am attempting to give a large enough percentage of myself, and in such a wild style, that my drop will be noticed in your ocean.

117

Portland.

Even though I made it through a meal at Whit's (my last supper with Thomas) without drinking, and I made it through a night with Gretchen while she was drinking wine and gently offering me wine (only if I wanted it), when I got to Portland I didn't call Leona right away. I found a bar in the airport and had a few glasses of wine. Then I called Leona to pick me up. I didn't think I could handle the embarrassment of needing my little sister to give me a place to live, I was afraid she'd be harsh toward me—not her fault, not her fault, just my own insane fears that even my own family hates me.

I'm scared of people—my muscle clenching gets worse when other people are speaking—because you never know what crazy evil antagonistic shit someone else is about to say. Even the thought of illogic scares me—funny, huh, since I'm full of it. But in an AA meeting, when I'm speaking, my muscle clenching stops—I think it's because I know what I'm going to say next. But when someone else is speaking, my muscle clenching increases, especially with people I distrust, people who might inject illogic into my brain or at least spray the environment with it.

And I'm afraid, that's the basic statement.

I'm afraid of other people and what they might be about to do. When I'm home alone all day, my clenching subsides to a great degree. But even when I'm around Mom, one of the safer people I know, I don't know, maybe my nervous system got fucked by the combination of drugs I've taken throughout my life—some prescribed by my doctors, some prescribed by me—but I'm scared when she walks in the door. And with good reason. Every day we have a fight and I am increasingly bracing myself for the day when she says, You can't live here anymore, and I'll be homeless again. I was homeless ten years ago, and I could hardly do it at twenty-seven. Now I'm thirty-six, and I don't know if my body or mind could take that again.

But yeah, I had to have three glasses of wine before calling my sister to pick me up at the airport.

And all that clenching stuff—the muscle clenching stuff?—that happens much later. Forget about that for now.

If I had unlimited funds, I might wander around airports for the rest of my life, never calling anyone, sitting on the floor eating Wendy's hamburgers with triple beef and triple cheese, drinking wine, getting drunk, and watching strangers arrive and depart, observing them with my sharpened intuition, pretending I knew their whole backstory and pretending that we were friends. Every hour a new girlfriend. Every hour a new father. Then I'd fly drunk to a new city and do it all over again.

That's how lonely I am.

---

Leona took me to the thrift store to get some clothes since I hadn't packed any. The only clothes I had were the clothes I was wearing. Daniel was in a car seat in the back. I cried a lot and Leona cried a little when I thanked her for taking me in. I got some amazing finds at the thrift store—Izod shirts, jeans I still own—even Leona was impressed.

Leona and James made me a tiny bed area using their futon chair. It was perfect. Tucked behind the couch in their living room, I could fall asleep instantly while they were still awake, working, watching TV, playing with the kids. Didn't seem to bother them, didn't bother me. I slept a ton when I first got there I think I was depressed.

I applied for disability. I filled out half of the forms. Someone who knew me well had to to fill the other half—Leona agreed to be that person. I remember Leona sitting at her desk and me sitting in my bed, each filling out our separate portions of the disability application.

Leona shakes her head.

"I'm sorry things have gone so badly for you, bro."

"I'm sorry too, Leona."

Her husband says, haltingly, smiling, "I just don't think of you as someone who would need to have disability. I mean disability. I thought that was reserved for people who have serious illnesses."

Leona was like: "He does!"

In a way it's a testament to how well I hide my illness, but even more it's an indicator of how little we understand mental illness. James knew that I had attempted suicide. I'm not sure how well he understood the link between suicide and bipolar disorder, but in his mind, and probably in a lot of people's, including my own, I was still in the mode of thinking, "Just get a job!" when for me, chronically suicidal, bipolar, possibly schizoaffective, just getting a job would have been impossible. And even if I could find a place to hire me, I would have just continued the same pattern of failure in the workplace—sure I have the programming chops to be useful to almost any company, but my moods, my sense of pointlessness around that kind of work and my intolerance of the average people I'd be working beside..and my unique (perhaps sometimes delusional) way of thinking..make me anything but the ideal candidate for a job in corporate America.

Also I just don't think any of us know each other.

Years later, when I told GranGran I wanted to stop drinking and was going to AA to help me do that, she said:

"Well Matthew, I didn't realize you had a drinking problem."

This is coming from a woman whose husband died of alcoholism. Whose daughter, whose son, have drinking problems (half her children). Are we that good at hiding it, or is she that good at denying it? Probably both. But either way, we're all fucking clueless as to how fucked up we all are.

---

We were leaving the house and I was checking email on my iPad when I just stopped in the kitchen.

Leona saw me looking at the screen.

"Is everything ok?"

I smiled.

"Hah. Yeah. I got my book published."

"You what??"

"Yeah."

I'd been trying to get Things Said in Dreams published for years.

"Listen to this: 'Just finished reading your book, Things Said in Dreams..Holy Shit..Damn, damn, damn..You're hands down the best prose writer I've read in a long time..I like the edginess of the book..I like that it's a ballsy book! I like that it would make some people's heads explode (but hopefully not literally). CONGRATULATIONS. If you realized the level of enjoyment I got from your writing versus most of the other submissions I received..or even most of the BOOKS I've read this year..you'd be one proud dude.' Well fuck me, I got my book published."

And Daniel says, "Fuck me."

Leona shakes her head but smiling, making a finger-over-the-mouth motion at me.

"Fudge me!" I say. "Fudge fudge fudge."

Leona and James took me out to sushi to celebrate.

I was high on that for months.

---

Leona and I discussed Dad's poop situation. (Pooing with the door open, eating tons of fiber and laxatives and Metamucil.) And Leona tells me:

"Dad is obsessed with pooping at the same time every day."

"He is?!"

"Yes."

I look at her.

"Yes," she says. "I have observed it and I can tell you with absolute certainty that many of his behaviors are designed around pooping at the same time of day."

"You are shitting me."

We both crack up. Leona slaps my knee.

"That's why I love you bro."

"Oh, shit, thank you but—why? Why does he want to poop at the same time of day?"

"I don't know. I don't know if it's some thing from his childhood, like the way his brother treated him or something."

"I think Danny was much older. I think he mostly played with his sisters."

"I'm glad you brought that up, actually. Speaking of his sisters, did you know they used to dress him up like a girl?"

"No, I did not know that."

"It's true. I've seen the pictures. They'd put lipstick on him and everything."

"Do you think that fucked him up?"

"Who knows. Who knows, my bro, but I get the feeling it wasn't like a game they played together—it was more like they forced him to do it, so I could see how that could be traumatic."

"How old was he?"

"Two, three."

"Where did you see the pictures?"

"In Seattle. Mabel lived there before she died. She showed us pictures of all the kids. It was weird, to see Louise as a kid. I almost felt sympathy for her. Almost. Had you seen Mabel recently before she died?"

"I hadn't seen Mabel in twenty years."

"Well, it was kind of scary. She stopped making sense. She 'lost her mind' and I think it really shook Dad up."

"That almost gives me sympathy for Dad."

And Leona says, "Almost."

---

Cleo, the PTSD researcher, called me for a follow-up interview. Her voice reminded me instantly of her professionalism and perfect-10 cuteness. Now that I was safely in a different state I had to settle for listening to her voice and picturing her consummate professional little self sitting in a chair in some empty office needing badly to be raped. Look, I'm a feminist, too, but sometimes a girl just needs to be raped and Cleo was one of these. Everything about her was so perfect and it just needed to be messed up in the best way. I wanted to get that bitch sticky.

But we were in a PTSD interview and the questions and answers did everything but turn me on. Hearing myself answer these questions to things I had never considered like how little social contact I had made me see myself in a different light. The reality of this situation was that I was the whore and Cleo got everything she wanted out of me for a mere sixty bucks.

118

We potty trained Daniel in that apartment. I got more involved than I expected, but when your nephew, for a while, prefers you to help him carry his pee bowl to the toilet to flush it down, it's a strangely glorified experience—an honor, really, to be so involved in your nephew's life.

I snuck a little 1800 and SoCo at Leona's house. I learned to feel drunk on tiny amounts of alcohol so my consumption wouldn't be noticed. Drinking became more using the act of drinking a tiny amount of alcohol to give my brain permission to feel drunk..more like a symbolic act, you know, like putting on your comfortable shoes.

They decided to move from their apartment to a house. I helped with the move. It was infinite work. Infinite trips from the apartment to the house moving boxes in a little Hyundai or whatever. Or, when Leona and James were packing, infinite episodes of Dora the Explorer with Daniel to keep him entertained. I learned to truly love the backpack song and when Leona banned Dora in favor of Blue's Clues my depression deepened.

That's not a joke. I fucking hate Blue's Clues.

Not to get all deep and psychoanalytical on you, but maybe it's the mixing of reality and fantasy on Blue's Clues that made this psychotic person uncomfortable, whereas, as repetitive as Dora is, she is firmly in the realm of fantasy. See, you thought Part III was gonna be a gimme—no—this book gets deeper and more conceptual as the parts progress, so don't get comfortable..I'm just warming you up.

So we moved from one house to another. It was a lot of work.

---

One day I said to Leona that my suicidality was a financial problem.

She said, "No it's a mental problem."

But we're both right: part of the reason I considered suicide as a life path is there was nowhere for me to fit into society. If I'd had a stable job and wasn't losing my apartment because I couldn't pay rent, then I could have been less situationally depressed. I would have felt affirmed by society as having the right to live. Which, when society is telling you it has no place for you to fit in—to work and to live—that is society telling you to die.

But Leona is right, too—even if I had a place to live and work, and I had money, even lots of money, bipolar might still be telling me to kill myself, and might succeed in getting me to do so.

---

I went on trips to watch drag shows, eat mac and cheese hamburgers, and get drunk off wine. I made grocery store trips secretly purchasing wine with cash, sneaking it to my room, drinking and Tweeting..trying to reach that perfect state I had felt before—a social/artistic nirvana where I was socially connected and artistically active, writing good poetic Tweets. But the nine months I was at their house I probably drank only six or seven days. I didn't want anyone to know, though—I'd sneak my empty wine bottles to the Taco Bell dumpster a block away so no one in our family would see them. I didn't want to be critiqued. I'm defensive, I know. I don't stand up for myself.

---

I went to a psych ward for freaky body sensations (like my whole skin surface was cumming all at once—yeah), automatic erections. I called Dr. Meggs and had her paged and she discontinued some medication that can cause dangerous permanent erection in men and told me to call 911. Leona and Daniel took me. Daniel napped on the hospital bed while I paced around the tiny room and I had the sensation that all colors around me were ultra bright—it's a manic thing.

The first night I was in the hospital I had insane hallucinations but I was back to normal quickly with some Seroquel, an extra antipsychotic on top of my normal Risperdal. I was only there for four days.

After I get out of the psych ward for those manic texture hallucinations like I've never seen before, plus auditory hallucinations of music way off in the distance, I email SXG, an options trading company I used to work for, a hedge fund—I was a programmer there. I had crazy plans. Even though I had no money, I was going to get SXG to rehire me, offer me an advance so I could fly to Philadelphia, then I was going to live in the apartment building across the street—have SXG pay the rent—and from there once I got my first paycheck, I would move out, start a life, and everything would be great delusion.

To entice them, I proposed a plan for what I would build. It was either brilliant or psychotic—I have no idea. I would work alone, under my own direction. No one there was qualified to be my boss. I had met their so-called whiz-kid programmers when I worked there and their only demonstrable skill was their snobbery. "I built SXG's options model" was the only thing one of these greenhorns would say to me when I asked him what he did—just trying to make conversation with the guy. He was offended that I didn't already know what he had done—like his work was so important he thought it must have rippled through the company ranks with hush and awe. Congratulations, you built an options trading model. You know C

Academic programmers like that, just silly kids really, they're proud if they write ten-thousand lines of C code a year. I write a thousand lines of C code a day. Anyway, yeah, a guy I used to work with at SXG, a manager, wrote me back and said "I don't have open spots that match your skills..but I will pass your note on to recruiting." Uh, you still need programmers, don't you?! Their job board had hundreds of postings. There's no loyalty, no idea that we're all part of a team. They're not trying to hire the smartest people they can find. It's a club, and it's about going to the right college and wearing a tuxedo to your interview (yes, they actually do that). It's a fucking club. And I'm no longer in it.

There was a millionaire named Josh Harris. You've probably never heard of him, but in the nineties he founded pseudo.com, the first internet television network. At the time, it was cool as fuck—the only thing like it on the internet. This man was an entrepreneur of historic scope, an eccentric whose rise and fall is documented in the film We Live in Public. Well, Josh made a lot of money and he lost a lot of money. And the social experiment he spent his money on is beyond art, it's beyond science, it's beyond all common sense, actually—but it is visionary. Roger Ebert called him prophetic and strange.

But here's the kicker—and I'm no visionary internet entrepreneur—but I can relate to something that happens at the end of the film. Some time after Josh Harris is at the top of the mountain of venture capital fundability, in the late nineties, he is out of money and needs a job. This documentarian follows him to several interviews with Silicon Valley startups. The CEOs are younger than Harris, and even though these interviews take place roughly only ten years after everybody knew about pseudo.com, these CEOs have never heard of pseudo.com—the name means nothing to them, the name of its founder means nothing to them—and they refuse him work as a programmer because they think he lacks the requisite skills! Pseudo.com rose and fell, as all things do. But these startup CEOs who were interviewing Josh Harris..their businesses hadn't even rose! Probability says that now, five years later, two out of three of them are jobless. But they wouldn't hire a—granted, crazy, but—visionary internet entrepreneur who had already done more in his life than any of them are likely to do in theirs, in terms of impact to the world. They wouldn't hire a guy who pioneered the first streaming TV network on the internet because they didn't recognize his name or his company's and they thought his programming skills were rusty.

So quickly we forget!—or in this day and age, so quickly we never learned—about the past.

The industry in general isn't loyal to one of its pioneers, Josh Harris—in fact that industry doesn't even know who its pioneers are. They wouldn't give Josh Harris a mop job.

And I feel that with SXG. There I was, a former employee with a good record—I programmed needed systems that nobody else would or could do, I worked quickly, I innovated, my code reviews were perfect, I was friendly, had social skills, I was easy to work with, I helped other people. And there's SXG, with hundreds of open programmer positions posted on their public job board, and they would rather hire an unknown quantity—some baby chick with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania—than someone with a decade of experience, some of it with them! I can make a lot of assumptions from this, but I'll stick to the one most firm. When that corporation told me they hire the smartest people they can—that's frozen orange juice filled with maggots, it's b-u-l-l-s-h-double i-t. That is not the primary criteria for their hiring.

In fact, you won't find your smartest Americans working for the corporations—you'll find them in exile in Russia or Bolivia, hunted by the secret governments they exposed as they blew the whistle on their way out the door. Or like Josh Harris—former superstar internet millionaire living in Africa to avoid US creditors. Or like me, simply unhirable because I have a mental disability—and even though discrimination on those grounds is illegal, we all know we do it anyway.

119

Leona and James bought me a bike! It was awesome! It was a fixie—a fixed-gear bicycle—and I loved riding it.

I rode my bike to my bi-weekly mental health appointments. It was dangerous but I did it for Leona's convenience, so she didn't have to interrupt her day to take me.

That's why they got me the bicycle.

---

Leona yelled at Daniel one day so strong that I had the experience of seeing terror truer than I have seen anywhere else, in the movies or out, in psych wards, African jungles, emergency rooms. It was the look on Daniel's face when my little sister Leona screamed at him and his mortally scared little body ran for me—the only other person in the room. Within ten minutes they were friends again, and I doubt Daniel will ever remember that event—but I will. I imagine parenting must be hard, but I don't think that kind of yelling ever needs to happen, and though I know my sister goes to counseling, I think she needs to take a step very far back and reconsider her own mental health with some new paradigms. I got yelled at as a child, but that wasn't just yelling—it was hellish, it was menace, it was shrieking—not things any child..any person..ever needs to hear in a relationship with someone they love.

James's parents have suggested that my sister is unfit emotionally to be a mother. While I have a natural tendency to disagree with anyone saying that about my sister, when I saw her yell at Daniel that day—the way she yelled and the terror it caused in him—I questioned, myself, whether something drastic might need to change within her in order for her to be fit to be around children. That yell—that scream—was way out of bounds.

---

I did some chores at Leona's house.

I loaded and unloaded the dishwasher. People did not put their own dirty dishes into the dishwasher. They left them on the counter or on the sink and it was my job to keep the surfaces clean and get the dishes into the dishwasher, run it, unload. Sometimes Daniel helped unload. That was particularly fun. It didn't actually speed up the process—but it was something I could do with my nephew that we enjoyed. We were a family of four; we did the dishes twice a day.

I also mowed the lawn. I did this with a manual lawnmower. It was extremely physical work that made me sweat (I don't like to sweat) and I resented the person doing the lawn mowing not being the person to choose the lawn mower. This was like: you're going to do this job to help me and I have chosen the hardest possible way for you to do it!

Prior to our dad coming for a visit, Leona gave me the task to paint some shelves—something I have no experience with—then being unhappy with the result (but not telling me that) and covertly having Dad redo them. I felt like I was set up for failure here. My only work skills involve me sitting at a keyboard. I am not a carpenter. I am not a painter. I cannot paint a room. I don't plan to ever learn how to paint a room. And by the way, my dad was quite disappointed when he learned this about me in my early twenties, as he is a handyman of epic proportions. I'm not interested in things involving rust, splinters, or nails.

While I'm bitching, Leona decided that having me cook a meal a week would be a good way for me to participate in the family. So each week, one day, using a large quantity of my food stamps, I researched a recipe on the internet and made it. I am not knowledgeable about cooking, but I have aptitude as a cook, therefore meals I cook are quite tasty and proper and I followed all of the dietary restrictions of everyone in the house. And I made my meal, to participate in the family. But after a while, Leona wouldn't eat the food I made—on my dinner night, she'd go up to her room with an alcoholic drink and ask James to bring her different food later. That really hurt my feelings.

Also, at the risk of connecting too many of the dots here, it injured my motivation. Leona is the one who asked me to cook. Leona refused to eat my food. Do you see how that fucks with my motivation??!!

---

So Dad's trip.

It was weird.

It was really weird.

He was supposed to be hanging out with us—right?—but half the time he spent at the hardware store or at his hotel room or on mysteriously long trips in his rental car. He also exhibited a trait which is becoming common in our family—not answering your phone and having some really good but improbable reason like you didn't hear your ringer. Multiple people in my immediate family do this now—I'm not going into this in this book.

Did I mention the word weird? What about my dad's weird inability to interact with Daniel? I mean he treated Daniel like a dog and told him to get out of the way while he was attempting to fix their doorbell, instead of prioritizing the child first and the fix-it job second. That a man of his age doesn't prioritize interactions with other people—especially children..especially his grandchildren—is worrisome. I am being very nice here.

---

A few days before Dad's visit I could see Leona was really anxious. I could tell by the way she talked. I could tell by the way she moved. And I said, Leona, what is going on?

"I don't want to tell you because I'm afraid you'll get mad."

"Well tell me anyway. I promise I won't get mad."

"I'm worried about you and Dad."

"You're worried about me and Dad getting into a fight when he comes here?"

Leona starts crying.

"Yeah, I'm really worried about it."

"Ok, listen to me Leona. Look at my eyes. I am promising you that when Dad is here I will not initiate a fight with him nor will I respond to anything antagonistic he says. If he says something antagonistic, I just won't respond. I'll pretend like he never said anything. I'll get up and leave, go to my bedroom. But I am promising you that a fight between me and Dad won't happen because I won't let my end of it happen. Ok?"

We hug.

Dad comes to visit.

Dad and I are civil to each other, and we even hug when he get there, which makes Leona cry even though the hug didn't mean anything—it didn't to me anyway. It wasn't some big reconciliation if that's what you're thinking. I would have hugged the fucking exterminator if it would make Leona feel better.

And the whole time Dad was there, I treated him like a platinum customer. It didn't matter what he did, how rude he was, how inconsiderate, how inappropriate he was with Daniel, I treated Dad with undeserved respect and I made it sound sincere and I gave him every chance, second, third, fourth, and last. I helped him as his slave. I laughed at his stupid jokes. I let him take control of the dinner we were supposed to be making together—but that's the way he always takes control. I'm used to it—I lived with him for half my life.

And during that trip, Dad bugged the ever-loving shit out of Leona and James. He was supposed to be helping them hang some shelves and he wouldn't do their project their way—he had to take control and they wouldn't let him. I was in the back yard editing, so I didn't actually see this, but Leona and James said when he couldn't get his way he threw a tantrum, threw some tools around, and left.

Like left the house.

And at the final dinner of Dad's visit, Leona and James were so fed up with me and Leona's dad—and Dad was saying such fucked-up stuff to Daniel—that when Dad got up and went to the bathroom, Leona and James were begging me to tell Dad off. They knew I could do it in style. They wanted to see some of that righteous smackdown that my sister Joanne talks about, and they wanted to see it smack our father right in his idiotic fucking face.

But I said: "I can't do that, Leona. I promised you that while Dad was here I wouldn't argue with him because I wanted to help reduce your anxiety."

And Leona said, "Well, I release you from that promise."

They were mad. They wanted some retribution for my dad's terrible treatment of them while he was their guest. Understandably. And they wanted me to give it to him, because they knew that once you got me going I was like a fucking nuclear reaction—it starts out small, then it blows up an entire city and every living thing in it.

That's what they wanted to see. Some kind of verbal/psychological justice for this man who was playing the fool in their house, mistreating their child, my nephew. I was mad about that part, too.

But I was also a changed man—or a man beginning to change. I didn't spend three months in a psych hospital for nothing, and when Leona and her husband were seriously begging me to tell off my father for all his missteps during his visit to our house, I did tell Leona, smiling and shaking my head:

"I promised you that I wasn't going to have conflict with Dad while he was here and I can't break that promise now just because we have new information—the information that he's still a fucking jackass!!"

They laughed and we all shushed each other—the bathroom was right next to the dining room, and my Dad might have heard everything we said.

But that promise wasn't just to Leona. It was to myself. I saw myself in the mirror so many times at the Refuge when it comes to anger that I had started to learn what a dangerous emotion it is for me. Not learned perfectly in Zen master holiness, but started to learn. But that start was enough to keep me cool for a week of Dad being at Leona's house while I lived there. I mostly just ignored him and did my thing—and it felt really fucking good. David Mamet in Redbelt writes, "A man distracted is a man defeated." Well, these days, my dad isn't my dad anymore—he's a distraction. For me to stay on my path, to write, to accomplish my objectives, I must ignore my father, I must not be distracted by him or anything else. I'm not on his trip anymore. I'm on my own.

120

We had our little routine. James would go to work and Leona and I would sit downstairs watching Daniel. During Daniel's nap, Leona rested and I wrote, then I took care of Daniel from the time he woke up to the time Leona woke up.

I rode my bike to all my mental health appointments. I was getting my medicine from the clinic now so Leona and James were no longer paying for my medication. The food I ate came out of my food stamps, so I wasn't a burden on them in that way.

But, after a while, Leona and James told me I needed to find somewhere else to live because, "It was just too much." "I was stressing Leona out." "Taking care of me was more than she expected."

Leona wanted me in a group home. We met with my social worker and Leona suggested the idea.

My social worker laughs.

"You'll never get him into a group home."

"Why not."

"Because he doesn't need that level of care."

"Well I think he does."

"Why?"

"He doesn't bathe. He wears weather-inappropriate clothing."

"How often are you bathing?"

"I don't know..like..once a week."

"What's the deal with the weather-inappropriate clothing?"

"He wears wool sweaters when it's warm out!!"

"Well that's not hurting anybody."

"But it indicates he has disorganized thinking."

"The thing about a group home in Portland is..first of all no one will ever evaluate him as needing that level of care..and secondly the waiting lists are over a year..two years..so if you're looking for some sort of immediate solution—"

We stormed out of the meeting. Leona wanted a second opinion. She thought my social worker was crazy.

---

I let my psychiatrist know about the situation..told him I might be moving soon. We talked about the usual things. He asked about my thoughts, my plans. Toward the end of our session, he said:

"How do you think your medicine is working?"

I said, "Fine."

He said, "You just told me you're thinking about going back to your former mental hospital in Vermont and killing yourself on their grounds. But you think your medicine is working fine."

That was the last time we met.

---

I called Mom for help. I needed the big guns.

She suggested I take a three-week vacation to Baton Rouge and stay with Susan, Bob, GranGran. To give Leona time away from me and time for us all to figure out a good next move when it came to finding me a place to live.

We were all on the phone together.

"How does the idea of a vacation/break sound to you, Leona?"

"I think he needs to be put in a group home."

"Did you two meet with the social worker?"

"His social worker says he doesn't need to be in one and there's no way we could get him into one because his level of functioning is too high!"

"So he thought it was high," my mom says. "And what did you think?"

"I think it's low!" Leona almost screams, then she goes into the fact that I'm wearing wool sweaters when it's warm out.

"Well, I'm working on a temporary solution that could relieve some of this pressure." This is what my mom says.

---

This disconnect between my family and my doctors has become typical. What has happened since, with my sister Leona, my Mom, my aunt Susan, is that they will take me to the psychiatrist or tell me to take myself, claiming that, "it seems I'm doing really poorly," or, "You look manic."

Then I go to the psych doc and he says, sometimes with my relative sitting right next to me, that I am fine. I am not manic. For a person with bipolar I, I am stable—or as stable as it gets. Leona wanted to put me in a "group home?" My social worker almost laughed us out of the room. He said I wasn't sick enough to need that level of care and when my sister insisted he try to put me on a list to get me out of her house and into a group home, my guy said, "Ok, I'll do that if you want but he'll never get in because that is for people who are in dire situations."

"Well, I think his situation is dire. He doesn't bathe every day. He can't take care of himself."

"Those aren't bipolar symptoms," a psychiatrist once told my mom when she said I was having fast talking periods and crying spells and I don't know what all else she mentioned.

I got the distinct impression (and I'm sure she would disagree) that my aunt, when she was having a bad day, would tell me to go to the psychiatrist.

I had become enough of the identified patient that Leona couldn't see the inconsistency in calling me an invalid when I spent more time than she did, each day, taking care of her kid.

She yelled at me once because Daniel took a glorious spraying shit all over the changing table during the two seconds she had gone into the bathroom for some wipes and come back.

"HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN??!!!"

"Leona, I have no control over Daniel pooping."

"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WATCHING HIM SO HE DIDN'T FALL OFF THE TABLE."

"He didn't fall off the table. I was watching him. He never went near the edge of the table and if he had I would have stopped him from going any farther."

"But you standing all the way over there is part of the problem."

"What problem are you talking about?"

"Your—you and Joanne's—problem with poop! You both have a problem with poop. You won't get near it. Babies poop, ok?"

"Yeah, I know. If you want me to help with changing diapers just let me know."

"No. That's not the issue. Neither you or Joanne are married."

"Ok?"

"Neither of you have partners. Do you even have friends?"

"Yes, I do have a few long-term friends."

"Who?"

I roll my eyes. "Ashley, Astrea—"

"Do you ever see yourself having kids?"

"If I'm ever financially stable enough to support kid, yeah, I'd have one, and I'd change the diapers, too—I don't have a problem with poop."

Leona snorts and shakes her head. She's wiping up Daniel's shit from the changing table. She starts crying.

"I just feel like I have to handle all of this alone."

"This what?"

She holds up a baby wipe with poop all over it.

"This. Couldn't you have done anything to stop it?!"

I'm racking my brain.

"No, Leona. There's nothing I could have done to stop it."

"It's just that I leave and he's clean and I tell you to watch him and I come back two seconds later and there's..shit..everywhere!!"

"But do you get, Leona, that you leaving him with me has nothing to do with him shitting all over the place and that I did my job which was to make sure he didn't fall off the table. Just because I'm standing here when you come back and get surprised by this fuckload of poop doesn't mean that I have anything to do with it or that I'm a punching bag. I'm not your whipping boy for when Daniel poops in a messy way."

"I know," she says, "I know. But I just wonder what in you and Joanne's childhood's contributed to both of your misanthropy."

This is what I had to look forward to after I failed to kill myself, after I spent three months in a mental hospital, after I abandoned all my possessions except a backpack and a laptop bag and moved to Portland because my sister Leona was the only one kind enough to suggest that I come and live with her during one of the roughest periods of my life.

I'll never forget that she said the word misanthropy. I mean if I'm senile someday and I only remember eight things, I wouldn't bet against this being one of them. My one sister thinks that my other sister and I are misanthropes because neither of us is married or has kids or a partner?

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines "misanthrope" as "a person who dislikes humankind and avoids human society." The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus is much more expressive. To them, a misanthrope is a "HATER OF MANKIND, hater, cynic; recluse, hermit." Those are their capitals, not mine—honestly, I did not know that the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus was capable of such a smackdown. And I know Leona didn't mean that particular definition, but when she said that to me, there is no doubt in my mind that she meant at least just a little bit of a moral judgment between all three of us siblings where she was superior to Joanne and I because she had a kid. And a husband. And a house. And a car. And money. Basically, all the things that make up a normal American life.

Most children imagine their weddings when they're little. Joanne and I have talked about this and neither of us ever imagined that. I mean from an early age that destiny of aloneness was already set—I won't say set in stone but there's some reason, somewhere deep in our genetics or our subconsciouses, that neither Joanne or I ever wanted to have kids, get married, or maybe even form close relationships. Joanne and I are close in age. Leona is seven years younger. Maybe this misanthropy which irks Leona so much is because Joanne and I grep up with a seriously different set of parents than Leona did. Maybe it's as simple as that.

---

Or you could go with a theory held by two separate women who are close to me. I won't mention their names because their theory would royally piss off people close to them—let's leave that at that. But the theory, which these two women who hardly know each other and I am certain did not learn, one from the other, is that artists have the ability and vision to make things—things like symphonies and photographs and books that never go away—and if you're an artist, that's what you do, you make those kinds of things. And if you're not, you make babies. And there is a frustration that these theory-wielding women have when the whole family gets together and everyone talks about the baby. Baby this, baby that. It's so disgusting. I mean we all love those babies, too, and we love the people they grow up to be even more. But, while raising a child is certainly a lot of work, anyone can do it—just about anyone can do it. As one of these women said to me, "I mean we all know how you're doing that." Exactly. Congratulations. You fucked. That's all you did! Penis in vagina. And the whole family will sit around gaga-ing over this [truly] beautiful thing you "made"—But you didn't really make it. You just fucked and took some prenatal vitamins and waited in angst and did breathing classes and went through tons of pain and fucked up your vagina and changed a lot of motherfucking diapers. While you've got—as these two women who shared this theory with me do—you've got actual mental skills that allow you to make art. And let me tell you, most grandmothers don't give one one-thousandth of a shit about art as they do about grandbabies.

The women who told me this theory, and other related ones, one of them has children, one does not. So no one's saying don't have children. I'm certainly glad my mom had me! But it does seem like, even though it's not literally true that you have to choose, there is a psychological choice you make between developing yourself and developing someone else.

121

When I left Leona's house, about a year after I attempted suicide, it was on bad terms: my sheer presence in her house had become too much for her to handle, even though all I did was help her with Daniel, wash the dishes, mow the lawn, make one meal a week for their family using my food benefits, and sit in the corner and write during Daniel's nap. Yes, they paid for my prescriptions at first, since Oregon denied me Medicaid, but by the end I was getting everything I took from a free clinic that I drove to on a bike that they purchased—Leona and James were generous and welcoming to me.

But one day Leona had a bad day, probably because she shares some of the same mental traits that make me bipolar. Mom had already arranged for me to take a three-week vacation to Baton Rouge, leaving the next day by airplane, to give Leona and I a break from each other. So help was on the way. But Leona and James decided to create a problem.

Leona and James accused me of doing fewer loads of dishes because they had told me to find a new place to live—they said that I was shirking on my chores after they politely asked me to start looking for where I could live next.

It all came down to a single day when they were working in the yard. They claimed that they had done two loads of dishes that day to make up for my supposedly having not done any dishes that day and that I had not done any dishes that day specifically to punish them for asking me to find a new place to live.

"Leona, I would never do that. I'm not mad about your request for me to leave. I am looking for where my new place will be, and (because you were in the yard much of the day) you didn't see the complete picture on the dishwashing situation, which is that we've done three loads of dishes today. I did one of them. Whenever there were dishes to be done, when James didn't beat me to it, I did them. James seems happy, on occasion, on the weekends when he isn't working, to do the dishes for me sometimes."

Leona and James claimed that I was lying about the number of times I had done the dishes. Leona said she had noticed a change in my behavior since she had asked me to leave.

"Leona, I don't feel a change and I am absolutely not upset with you. I don't love you less or anything like that! It's your house. I'm thankful to you and James and Daniel for welcoming me here, warmly—which you certainly have."

At the beginning it was me and Leona watching every season of The Biggest Loser, sitting on a couch cluttered with baby toys and afghans and it was the best time of my life in a while, to be with the sister I have seen the least in this life. And after we watched every episode of The Biggest Loser, we watched every episode of Cake Boss. It was true decadence.

But you know how things change, especially with fiery people—or maybe people with certain mental illnesses—you can feel amiable for months and then one day, maybe just for one day, you can be so out of control emotionally that you're yelling at your brother while he is gently trying to disarm the situation, using a quiet voice with my sister even as she shouted at me and told me lies about myself, about what I was thinking and what I was feeling, about how many times I had run the dishwasher, finally screaming at me in a way I have only been screamed at a few times in my life, to—quote—"GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!"

James did what a husband has to do: he backed up his wife. I had gone up to my room to hide from the hate and screaming and James knocked on the door and said, "I'll take you to the airport in ten minutes." Ten minutes to pack my stuff, whatever was critical, into just the bags I could carry, for a flight to Baton Rouge that my mom had already arranged and which left the next day. Leona wouldn't let me stay in the house one more night so that I didn't have to sleep in the airport. She told me to get the fuck out of her house and I got the fuck out of her house. Happily. Refused the ride from James—took public transportation. When you've given up personal integrity to passive-aggressively support your wife as she angrily kicks me out of the house and yet at the same time offer me a ride to the airport—no thank you. That's some weird push-pull power shit that I want no part of.

---

And someday, James is going to have to stand up to Leona—or not. Because Leona goes too far. She's like me. I told you one of the scariest things I've ever seen is the look on two-year-old Daniel's face when Leona got fed up and gave Daniel a BALLISTIC scream that sent him running for the nearest safe adult—which happened to be me. I was sitting in the corner, writing, and Daniel ran to me..for protection..from my sister. He clung to me and Leona cooled off. And of course ten minutes later Daniel trusted her again. But when I heard my little sister scream, I looked up and saw Daniel's face: it was terror. That face burned into me and there it will stay forever.

James is a glacier. I told him about a bad dream once and he said he's never had bad dreams. James doesn't wake up in the night because his subconscious is haunting him. He goes along with everything that Leona demands. She sets the rules. She makes the plans. She makes the decisions and James quietly puts up with it all. He's a stable personality—and I'm glad. I want James to be stable..because he takes care of my sister. I'm glad James is the kind of guy whose psychology allows him to go to work each day and feel happy, earn money, and support my little sister, himself, and their two boys. In short: I'm glad he's not like me.

But Leona is bipolar—her manic reaction to the SSRI proves it. And if she or you do not like hearing that diagnosis from a non-psychiatrist, then allow my descriptions of Leona's temper, irrationality, yelling, yelling at her fucking kid and not just yelling, but wrath-of-god yelling that puts the fear of the devil into my nephew..her three-day descent from treating me politely to kicking me out of her house right the fuck then instead of the next morning so that I didn't have to sleep on a bench at the airport..this is all (and I offer this as gently as possible) but this is mental illness.

Someday James is going to have to decide if he's going to let Leona's extremes go unchallenged for the rest of their relationship. I don't know—maybe he's already made that decision.

The two of them owed me twenty dollars from a food stamp exchange. I asked James for it and he gave it to me. As I was walking out the door, James was standing there with his arms outstretched, smiling genuinely, telling me that he loved me—I don't think he saw the contradiction between his actions and his words. I Tweeted from the airport later that night that I tip well even when I'm poor and James replied instantly with some smart-ass Tweet asking if I had any money left. It's my money, motherfucker, and if you have something to say to me, skip the subtext and say it directly. Don't just be quietly "supporting your wife" while she goes into a bipolar rage and forces me to sleep in an airport when there's a perfectly good extra room in your house that I could stay in for one more night without bothering a goddamn soul.

And now, when I see James, he doesn't make eye contact with me. If he tells a story to me Joanne and Leona, he smiles and waves his arms and gets wild and funny and he looks at my sisters over and over, connecting with each of them, but the entire time, in a twenty-minute interval, he never, ever, not one time, looks at me.

Fucked-up shit happens, especially when you're crazy, especially when your whole family is crazy. But my relationship with my sister and her husband does not rest on the insanities of one day..any one day. Rome was not built in a day—it wasn't burned in a day either.

I never did get to sleep that night in the Portland airport. The bench was less comfortable than the floor so I curled up under the bench. At some point in that night, I pull out my notebook.

if As I intentionally fill, I must intentionally empty thenI think the universe is emptying me right now because it wants to fill me very full for a time, and it can't start yet because there's not enough room

Wishful thinking? Wishes..well..when it comes to thinking, I think thinking should be full of them =)

122

I was on a writing schedule. I had been writing every day during Daniel's nap on my book Lacy. I hadn't missed a day yet in over two months and I wasn't about to miss a day just because I'd had no sleep and was on an airplane. My plane changed in Vegas and on the second leg, from Vegas to New Orleans, I used offline Google Docs to write my three-thousand words for the day.

Met up with my aunt in New Orleans. She picks me up at the airport and I tell her about what's been going on with me. When I tell her I attempted suicide she goes silent. That's the end of the conversation! I mean from that point on the road all the way to the house in Baton Rouge, our raucous conversation fizzled to a rate of close to zero words per minute. I don't blame her. It's hard for people to understand. It's considered taboo to indicate something that wrong with you. She did tell me that she's taken antidepressants and she's had that feeling before (a suicidal feeling) for a week or a few days or something. She says she takes antipsychotics. Maybe it's the similarity of our situations that is running through her head while she's sitting over there silently driving. I'll never know 'cause she didn't tell me—a theme you'll see continue in the coming pages.

We get to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Deep South, home of slavery, the Bible Belt, swamp land, hurricane country, one of the fattest and poorest states in the Union. Upsides: my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin live there. Oh and the food is excellent.

123

I set up my laptop in the front room, where I sleep. The room is filled with my uncle's bookcases, millions of Tupperware containers, antique furniture and old pictures. The ancient aesthetics of the place make me feel like a foreigner, and the closest thing I can compare it to in my panoply is Deckard's apartment in Blade Runner: lots of shadows and a bunch of old stuff in a futuristic world. My aunt and uncle are working, my cousin is staying at a nearby rental house, and my grandmother is in her TV room watching entertainment news with her door closed. The house is essentially empty, so I revert to journal writing, a skill I learned in fourth grade. I clear off a corner of an old coffee table by stacking some boxes on top of each other. My laptop screen is familiar to me, the surest home I have.

October 12, 2012

Have an unfinished book.

Have ideas for more.

Feel stuck in Baton Rouge. Not sure what I have to look forward to here. I'm both hopeful I can get a job at McDonald's and depressed about the possibility.

Started smoking. A little wine at the end of the day is the greatest thing I have to look forward to. While my funds hold out, which is only a couple more days.

Read a C. S. Lewis quote today about it never being too late to start a new dream, to begin something new. Or: one never being too old to start a dream or begin something new. Liked that idea.

I could still be a writer. Could still have a shot at making money doing that, such that I would have a career that fit my personality. I just have to make it from here to there, from sitting around my grandmother's house to paid writer, with my own place to live. Maybe I can make enough money at McDonald's to rent my own apartment. I tend to doubt it, but maybe I can.

I wonder about my mental illness. How much it has to define me. Hopefully not much. I don't want to be overly fixated on it, but I don't want to be caught in the trap of not paying enough attention to it that I end up being screwed at work by bipolar symptoms and end up getting fired.

Can't wait for tonight's wine. Even though I'm not even really getting tipsy lately, I don't know why, but even the littlest bit of fun is welcome in my somewhat dreary days.

Maybe I can write another book, not Lacy, but something new, while I'm here in Baton Rouge. Something I can write while the TV is on in the background, as it is so often here.

I want a long break from my family. I want to be doing well and separate from my family for a while. There's been too much needing, to much dependence, too much intertwining. I want to be ok separate from them.

I want fame. I want my books to be rocking the boat, to be controversial, to be events. That's what I should focus on above all else. Trying to make that happen.

Even a bit of writing makes me feel better. This little document is organizing my brain, sequencing me. Yay.

Believe that this can happen, this becoming an important writer, an event-causing writer. Write like there's no tomorrow.

I'm in such a low space, a low mindset, that it's tough to rally myself up. I need to be easy on myself, not demand too much, give myself time to come back to full force, if that can happen. I'm still in my mind debating whether I want to be in the hospital or not. Do I want myself to be heading in the direction of the hospital, or heading away from it? I haven't been entirely sure that I want to be moving away from it. But I have glimpses that I could move away from it, that I don't need to be on the ward, that I could manage my life without that. I wish I had a little money and a job prospect in say Brattleboro. Maybe I can save money from a job here, like McDonald's, and move to Vermont again, find a job in town, live there successfully this time, write.

I worry about my ability to live with a non-software job, to live simply and cheaply, and to live alone. I fall apart too easily, lose track, lose faith, fail to execute, grow mad. I'm too volatile a mixture, too complex, too unbalanced, to simply live life in jobs and bills and routines. I long to do this, to live normally. But I forget! It's intolerable to me, impossible to stomach.

What if I make my plan to move to Brattleboro, after saving money in Baton Rouge. Write down lists of places I can work in Vermont, apply to them all when I get there. Make budgets, make plans. Make my project to see if I can live successfully.

To move toward being a greater writer. Keep writing. Make statements in books, not Twitter, not blog, not conversation, but books. Continue the age of books, where that's how I communicate, that's my medium and mode.

Just visualize TSID taking over the world. That one book becoming a bestseller and getting me into a new financial way, and professional way, leading into my other books being bought by major publishing companies.

When I smoked, I developed an obsession with looking at pictures of women smoking while I'm smoking. I liked to pretend I was them..celebrities..Lindsay Lohan, Katherine Heigl..I had a whole set of bookmarks to my favorite female celebrity smokers and I would read their gossip and watch them smoke and I would smoke right alongside them.

I imagined going to Rutland and picking up Faith (despite the precautions they take in a psych ward to prevent this, I knew her last name) and me and Faith being a perfect odd couple, traveling the country like a bipolar Rainbow and Clyde. We wouldn't rob banks, but we'd be crazy like bipolar people are, and in particular how me and Faith are. We'd say STFU and laugh our asses off about it and then Faith would start saying UFTS instead and with a touch of mania, the fire of our wordplay would rage in directions that straight people can't even follow.

I don't know if we would have sex—we probably would. I'm not even that sexually attracted to Faith, but I'm attracted to her as a whole person. I would have sex with her personality. But I'd have sex with her body, too—Faith deserves it, deserves to be taken care of sexually, loved by someone who's not taking advantage of her, and I'd love to hear that bipolar girl cum. It would be the scariest, most beautiful cum sound I had ever encountered, I am sure.

But if Faith and I traveled the country like Rainbow and Clyde, we'd prob'ly run out of money and end up in a mental institution somewhere. I can only hope it would be the same one. 'Cause when it comes right down to it—and I've had some great company—but that crazy, bipolar, oppositionally defiant, big gulper, coffee guzzling, fighting maniac of a human being is just about the closest person to me that I have ever known. Certainly in a mental health sense.

Spots says she's immature. And she is. I don't know what Faith is like now but back when I was in Tyler 2, Faith was in a sweet spot of age and crazy and spunk and words and the fucking pit bull in the girl. She got kicked out of her assisted living situation because she attacked the safety attendant. The safety attendant was in a swivel chair behind a glass window.

The window was open.

Faith jumped through from the outside.

She landed with one knee on either side of the woman.

The woman had insulted Faith.

So Faith beat her face in and the safety officer had to go to the hospital.

Faith got kicked out of the building.

She had nowhere else to go. Her father didn't want her back.

I love Faith for beating up that security attendant, sending that bitch to the hospital with her bare hands.

You can't let people talk shit about you.

Maybe the future will be wonderful, maybe it will be horrible, but if I think good thoughts about it now, I will enjoy this time more..that's my most solid reasoning behind thinking happy thoughts.

And even in my depression and disconnectedness, I was still reaching up for a branch with one spring leaf on it.

If I wanted to, I could make something that was beautiful, true to me, but something I would make if I loved the world, if I wanted to give my readers something that broke them down, and then breathed life into them. I have the skill for that, and I wonder if I am deciding to want to do such a thing.

Then I write the title of a book I'll write later that year.

Of Bicycles and Boardwalks and Oceans and Ships

Yeah, I like that.

124

There was hurricane not long after I got there. The rain came in. The power went out. Our generator had seen its last seasons, but some neighbor friends loaned us one, which meant we had a lamp in each room and the food in the refrigerators didn't go bad.

There are three refrigerators at that house. Don't ask me why.

I missed the internet of course, but other than that I loved the hurricane. No one got hurt. The lack of air conditioning brought everyone but GranGran outside to the carport, where we sat together for the most time we all sat together the whole two years I lived there. Susan played on her phone (which did still have internet). Bob and I read books from his extensive library. I read several books by Brett Easton Ellis, who I had been meaning to read. Also, Susan and I made frequent trips to Walgreens to buy bottle upon bottle upon bottle of red wine, which she drank fast and I drank faster. I didn't mind that at all.

Me to Bob: "Do you have American Psycho?"

"I believe we have that."

"Less than Zero?"

"Yes."

"Imperial Bedrooms?"

"No, I don't think I have that one."

"That's ok, everyone says it's just Less than Zero twenty years later."

"Ugh."

Bob had all the classics and all the classic authors. I even fleshed out my D. H. Lawrence while I lived there. But during the hurricane it was Ellis and copious amounts of wine and it was delightful. Overall Less than Zero was my favorite, but the technical achievement of American Psycho was staggering.

One day Susan cooked us burgers on the gas grill, and it was great to be doing something together, but other than that one meal it was fend for yourself and we all—forgive the dated metaphor but it's the perfect one—were like ships passing in the night. And I don't mean just during the hurricane, I mean the entire time I lived there. I couldn't relate to a single one of my family members, and I remembered why I had decided to stop communicating with them at the end of high school—everyone just watched TV alone in their rooms, refused to ever discuss anything of controversy or substance, we didn't eat together, we hardly talked to each other, unless it was to passive-aggressively complain about what someone else was doing. Some people call that family. But I am not one of those people.

Of course if I was happier myself I would have been less concerned with what everyone else was doing. In a way I made a colossal mistake coming to Baton Rouge. Nothing was within safe walking distance to our house—and by that I mean the bigger streets had no sidewalks. To walk to McDonald's, to walk to anywhere at all, was to risk your life. So I felt I had foolishly moved to a house where I was basically isolated—I couldn't safely get to McDonald's if they hired me. And they didn't hire me. I applied online and never heard a word from them.

125

Then Susan's friend Mack moved back into the house. Susan was preparing Mack's old room for my Mom while Mack was off dealing a poker tournament, so when Mack returned, he and I shared the front room.

Mack.

Susan introduced us like "here's my best friend" and "here's my nephew" but it was never a friendly arrangement and, per the good God of the south, it was never designed to be.

This asshole isn't worth a sentence, not a period, not a comma, not a single pile of shit from a single fly, so I'm going so try to contain him within this one chapter, which, if this book's chapters had titles, would be called, "Asshole Roommate." That's all this fucker ever was and that's all he'll ever be. (If you can't tell, I'm more of an Old Testament God than a New Testament one. If it was up to me I would just incinerate this fucker and save the rest of the world the trouble.)

Check this fucker out:

In fact, if you want to save some of your precious life, just skip to the next chapter and don't even read about this motherfucker. Honestly, just skip ahead.

Ok, check this out:

I'm sleeping. Mack and Susan come in at 4am yelling, cussing. Then I realize that they're yelling and cussing at each other. Then I realize that they're both drunk and I don't know where you took math but by my math that means at least one of them drove home drunk. This is them after an all-night poker session at one of the casinos.

"Well I don't need you to be yelling at me like you're a fucking hyena!" That's my aunt.

"Well if you didn't act like such a bitch then I wouldn't hafta." That's Mack.

"Did you just call me a bitch?"

"Yes I did, ya bitch, and I'll call ya a bitch as many times as it takes to get through that thick bitch skull of yours, ya fucken' bitch."

Susan's husband, Bob, is in the next room.

Mack and Susan are yelling.

"You are a low-class piece of country trash and you need to remember who's putting a roof over your head!"

"I knew you were gonna hold that over my head, ya fucken' bitch!"

"You need to get out of my face before I—"

"Before you what? You gonna bring Bob out here to back you up? That pansy ass ain't gonna do nuthin'. Gonna bring your GranGran out here. I can kick your ass right now if I want to."

Susan laughs. "I'd like to see you try."

"This is why you should never play poker with a woman."

"And why is that?"

"This is why you should never drink with a woman."

"Mack I could drink you under the table."

"And she brags about it, too!"

"It's not a brag it's just the goddamn truth so why don't you get. out. of. my fucken face. fore you find out. how a southern woman fights."

"You ain't nuthin' but a unused piece of southern white pussy. And you better be glad you white or else you'd be worth nuthin'."

This was one of my first nights at the house in Baton Rouge. I was scared. Waking up to people cussing at each other at the top of their lungs—that's the type of shit that brings back childhood memories, you know what I mean.

If it had been one of my last nights at that house I would have gone out there and told those two assholes to keep it down 'cause people are trying to sleep.

But my first night—I didn't know—for all I knew this could escalate to violence. So I stayed in my fucken bed.

---

Let's proceed.

Susan and Mack coming home from the casino and Susan proudly telling me that Mack had gotten kicked out of the casino for using the n-word at a security guard. You should have seen how excited she was by it. Like she didn't condone it. But it got her off. Yeah. It got her need for chaos off big time. She liked going to the casino with someone just the opposite of her husband—someone who fought fights and used the n-word and generally acted like a two year old plopped into the adult world.

Mack is learning disabled. Or IQ challenged. Whatever you want to call it, the guy should not be allowed unsupervised into the real world. I call it being a dumb motherfucker, but that's just me.

Used the n-word at a black security guard at a casino.

If I'm in charge you get your wings clipped for that one.

---

Oh yes: Mack's fatherly lectures to me about how to get my life back on track. (He's a mentally disabled part-time construction worker with two kids. Susan says he's undiagnosed bipolar—I say he's just an asshole.)

Susan says, "Oh well that's just the way Mack is. He's an asshole and he knows it and everyone knows it and that's just the way it is."

And I say, "Not with me, it isn't. I won't be treated like that by anyone."

"Well he's just like you, he has bipolar..except you're getting treated for it."

"Susan, even if he had bipolar—which he doesn't—the fact that he's not seeking treatment makes him not like me. And that's if he wasn't already a lot not like me in other ways. And what if I was 'just an asshole?' Would you accept me and defend me or would you have a problem with it. Just a question. Think about it in your spare time."

Let's just jump to the core of this situation. Susan has a crush on Mack. So Mack gets to follow different rules. Mack is judged in different ways. Mack sits in Susan and Bob's bed with Susan and watches TV with her. I brought that up at one point with Susan—I think I have it in an email later in this book—and boy did Susan hate me for saying that. Now I'm not glad when Susan hates me, but when you get that kind of reaction from someone, it usually means you've hit a nerve.

Mack left his cigarettes out on the carport table and I extracted an asshole tax of two cigarettes per day from that asshole.

Oh yeah, his fatherly lectures.

Matt, go help your grandmother—Fucker, I know when to help my grandmother. I grew up helping my grandmother in this house you just came to be squatting at recently. Fucking dotard.

Matt, take the trash out—Fuck you, asshole. I take the trash out once a week and I take it on my schedule, not yours, you pinprick.

Matt, we got to get you out of the house. Play some poker, get you laid or something—Look, I'm not stupid, I know this is this dimwit's attempt at making friendly conversation with me, but he'd be better off keeping his mouth shut. I can decide how much social contact I need and what kind, thank you, you terminal fucking loser.

"And for God's sake, when you address your mom and your aunt and your uncle and your GranGran, say 'sir' and 'ma'am.' "

"Mack, I'm from the north, we don't say 'sir' and 'ma'am.' You would know that if you ever left the state of Louisiana."

"Well show some fucking respect, somehow—I don't care how you do it—but respect your elders."

I decline to comment further. Mack says "sir" and "ma'am" but he pisses with the bathroom door open right across the hall from my grandmother's TV room. This is not the guy I'm taking manners lessons from.

And even if he is "undiagnosed bipolar," (a preposterous phrase since bipolar is nothing but a diagnosis) at least I didn't go off and have two kids I didn't have the brains to provide for financially. That's something I never said to him, because deep in my heart, I have no intention of hurting Mack. A person like that is just a colossal inconvenience for me.

And I know I need to make it less colossal.

Around this time my alcoholism was budding, rekindling. I drank wine every day—box wine, Bob bought it with the groceries. I was sitting on the porch drunk when two trick-or-treaters come up, porch light on, me drinking and smoking and looking at pictures of celebrity female smokers on my iPad. I very apologetically explained to them that we didn't have any candy and I sheepishly turned out the porch light and resumed my ritual.

---

This next one, as I read my notes for this chapter, I actually can't believe that I still talk to my aunt Susan, that I gave her another chance after this happened. It makes me angry.

My cousin Stephen is over—he's folding laundry in the living room. Mack is watching some ridiculous titty movie on TV—like softcore teenager water park bullshit, with the sound way up. Mack goes outside for a looooooooooong time to smoke and listen to commercial pop music on his iPhone. Susan is in the kitchen drinking and eating cheese and whatnot.

I turned off the TV.

"Do you mind?" I asked Susan.

"No," she said, with a mouth full of food.

"Stephen?"

"Cool with me, brother-o."

"Cool."

So we all go back to what we were doing. Mack eventually comes back inside, looks at the TV, and says, "Who turned that off?"

I proudly said, "I did."

And Mack said, "Asshole."

And I was like, "What did you say?"

And Susan said, "No trouble here."

And I said, "Mack. Repeat what you just said."

And that little wimp said, "I was saying it to Stephen. We joke around like that sometimes."

And I said, "I don't care who you're saying it to. That's my cousin. This is a peaceful house. We don't talk to each other like that here."

And Susan and Stephen were all defending Mack like, "Oh, that's just what he does, ignore him."

And I was like, "We need to solve this right now."

But Susan shushed me with her finger over her mouth and Stephen said, "It's better just to ignore him."

And I was shocked.

My family are the biggest conflict avoiders in the world.

Actually I might have made Mack move his clothes so I could sit down and watch TV in the living room—whatever—it was some minor thing but the point is Mack called me an asshole in front of my Aunt Susan, she heard it, and she didn't do a thing about it. That's a thorn that manages to stick in your hand for a long time.

Then there was the Hemingway incident—the straw that broke this camel's back. When this happened, I told Mom and Susan that this was the end of the line for this bullshit train.

It's noon. I'm writing. I'm at the dining room table. Mack is in the same room watching TV. I get myself a glass of wine and go back to my laptop.

Mack says, in the most judgmental, sour, condescending tone his weak verbal engine can muster, "Did you just pour yourself a glass of wine?"

I didn't say anything. I went back to writing. It's none of Mack's business if and when I drink wine and therefore I owed him no reply.

But I told my mom (who was living there by that time) and I told Susan about this incident and I told them this was not to happen again and we were going to do anything that needed to be done to/with/about Mack to make sure that it didn't happen again.

I told them about his lectures. I said they must end. Right away. I don't need to be lectured on family matters by a non-family member with the IQ of a Lemur. End of the line for that train too.

So Susan and Mom talk, privately, in a coffeehouse somewhere.

Mom comes to report the contents of her coffee discussion with Susan and says Susan says Mack says you were drinking one night and threw up on the porch and Mack helped you clean it up and I say I specifically asked Mack not to mention that to anyone and he obviously told Susan and Susan obviously told you and just because Mack did me a favor means I have to take shit off him? What is the relevance of that to this discussion?

Mom admitted there wasn't any.

Let's see..there's something about a loud phone conversation..Mack disrespecting my mother to her face..and it looks like that Hemingway thing also happens in a later chapter.

So ok I lied. Mack's only claim to fame in life will be having me insult him in this text, and even though I want to pack Mack's assholishness into this one chapter like a mobster wants to get a body into a single suitcase, it's like a PBJ with too much J. You pick it up and all this jelly falls out onto your plate. Because Mack's assholishness—I admit—is truly too epic to lock away into a single chapter. So, feel good Mack (this will be your only accomplishment in your entire worthless life) but you and your Indian elephant-sized assholishness will, indeed, show up in later parts of this book.

126

Let's be honest: my talking directly to Mack in this book can never be anything but a rhetorical device, because the longest piece of text Mack will ever read is the current track title as reported to him by his iPhone.

127

Toward the beginning of my stay in Baton Rouge, cheese, crackers, and wine with Susan turned into going to the casino to play poker with Susan and Stephen. We waited forever for a poker table and drank while we waited. Susan was really excited about bringing me into her inner fold, her world of poker playing at the casinos, but as you know I have bipolar disorder and gambling is not a good idea for me. Gambling addiction is one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder, and I've stayed away from gambling a lot better than I've stayed away from substances.

Anyway I felt nervous. My aunt had staked me for the game, and I didn't want to lose her money. But even though I don't play poker, it doesn't mean I can't. I sat down at the table, doubled my money, got up, and Susan was like shrugging anxiously saying What the hell? with her eyes. For her this is an all-night extravaganza. For me I just didn't want to lose my aunt's money—that would have been a disaster for me. Stephen drove me home.

Then I got sick for three days, like the flu, I was shitting the bed while I slept, which I've never done before. I think my whole system, from the neurons to the bones, was in bad shape.

I'm sweating my ass off at night, not used to the humidity. The hurricane comes. I get the flu. My cousin blames it on cigarettes. My aunt blames it on alcohol. My grandmother, with a few more trips around the sun, recognizes it instantly as a three-day flu.

I have fever dreams.

That I and a bunch of kids (young elementary/kinder, but in the dream, Rebecca's age) celebrated RML's birthday party for her ghost. We were the living participants, or the real ones. Her ghost participated with us from the other side. I rode a large inflatable unicorn (pink) to lead the procession, which represented Rebecca, and on her side, was her. All the kids followed. So from her side, she had us all there partying with her. And from our side, we got to celebrate with her. And process our love for her. And if I hadn't been at that party, I would have never been able to process beyond that point of grieving.

Rebecca is a friend who died in our early twenties—a girlfriend. There was a tight pull among our atoms and it took me a long, long time to move on after she did. Actually, reading that silly pink-unicorn dream from above breaks me up, so maybe I'm still dealing with it.

My thinking is what my old psychiatrists might call disorganized. Notes from that time take the following general form:

Hyper.

Doubting all diagnoses.

Able to talk on the phone now, free to speak freely.

Looking everywhere hoping to see a snake, in my grandmother's back yard, for instance. Haven't seen one yet.

Dealing with the fact that I'm aging.

Ate pizza tonight. Sausage and jalapeños.

Not looking forward to going to sleep.

Ok with my history.

Horny.

Imagining a giant dog attacking me (it just came to mind).

Two more dreams.

In the first dream I'm a cheetah, or a leopard or some kind of really fast deadly animal with spots who can run at incredible speeds and overtake its prey, biting it in the jugular and ending its life quickly (as humanely) before ripping into its flesh and consuming the muscle within. But there's only one problem: I'm in the middle of a desert and there's nothing there to eat. This isn't funny, in the dream. You and I might laugh about it now that I've woken up, but in the dream the desert has no pumas or elk or desert deer or anything that I might be able to eat. I'm a noble cat—I'm not about to eat bunnies or go digging in snake holes with my paws.

Second dream. I'm still a big cat. I'm on a beach—another sandy place a big cat has no place being. I can't run well in that sand just like you can't run well in that sand. There's no traction, so I'm reduced to a kind of painful prance where each step involves a strenuous extrication of the paw from the sand only to bury it again in more sand slightly farther ahead—I can't hunt here. I can barely walk! And as if the gods wanted to curse me (and all of us) the beach is littered with dead whales, sharks, dolphins, rotting fish, and some sea creatures that neither you nor I have seen before this dream—huge dragon- and snake-like beasts that must have lived in the deep.

And what's so fucked up about this dream is that I don't eat seafood, and if I did, I certainly wouldn't eat it while it's rotting. There are other cheetahs here, and we're all starving, but even though the remnants of life are all around us, all we can do is slush through the sand amid stinking carcasses that we wouldn't have eaten if they were fresh.

If you thought I was going to interpret these for you, think again. Google that shit or read some Freud 'cause I can't help ya. As Quentin Tarantino's character might say: Did you see a sign in my yard that said Matthew Temple, Dream Interpreter? No? You know why you didn't see that sign? Because it ain't there, 'cause dream interpretation ain't my fucking business!! Let's agree on that, right here: this is Brattleboro Stories. I'm writing down what happened in Brattleboro, to me, over the course of one year—and the aftermath. Any and all interpretation of what happened will be up to you, Lebowski—you. I'm not here to hold your hand. I'm not here to connect the dots. I don't personally think this shit means anything. If you do, that's your fucking business.

128

Susan and I do fun things together for a while, before the novelty wears off.

My illogic and optimism tells me the only thing to do is to be in the sun, develop ways to win money at casinos and the stock market (legally, with intelligence) and take over casinos with Susan. That's what I thought was going to happen.

Susan takes me for steak at Fleming's, her favorite restaurant. We split a bottle of wine. I get bold while we're telling stories and tell her that I slept with a prostitute once, just to see what it would be like.

"What was it like?"

"It sucked," I say, and take another sip of wine.

Looking back, I was too trusting. I shouldn't have opened up with her. But whatever—what's she gonna do to me? I tell all my secrets anyway.

My medicine runs out—I have no psychiatrist in Baton Rouge. We can't just call a place and get an appointment. We have to do it the southern way: my aunt knows someone who knows someone. If you don't know someone then you're shit out of luck. We get a phone number through the grapevine. Even though I'm a bipolar patient off his medicine, it's six weeks before they can see me. I've done all this work to get on medicine—something I didn't want to do for years to begin with—and now that I agree to the medical establishment's suggested course of treatment, I can't get it! I freak out. I think I'll fall apart or die without my lithium. Hearing, from my aunt, that she thinks I seem to be doing ok off lithium, does extremely little to convince me that things are actually ok in my mind. We have an agreement that if she notices me getting wacky, she'll say something, but given that she's constantly drunk and spends most of her time at the casino, I doubt she'll be spending much time observing me.

At first I felt left out when Susan and Mack would go to the casino to play poker—Susan had stopped doing social things with me because I wasn't drinking or I wasn't interesting to her or I didn't play poker or for whatever reason. But very soon I came to crave these moments of hours or days where Susan and Mack would leave for New Orleans because it meant the house would be calm. Even though it was her house, I often wished Susan didn't live there at all. I relished the time she and Mack were away. What they were doing, what state they would be in when they came back, what I had to say about it..those all became secondary to the fact that when they left the house, so did ninety percent of the chaos.

And shades of the spoon psychosis later, months and years after I was out of the hospital it became that I had to pick the shiniest spoon in the drawer, but I didn't think the NSA had anything to do with it. And after that, even more years later, when I needed straws to drink because I had a movement disorder, I gave more thought to which straw to pick than most people probably would, but I wasn't overly concerned about choosing the shiniest one and my thoughts about the NSA's involvement in my silverware drawer had faded long ago.

Mom lives in Baton Rouge for a while. At my Mom's request (to get me away from Mack), I sleep in Mack's old bedroom while Mack stays in the front room. Instead of putting my mom in her own room (Stephen's room—Stephen no longer lives there), Susan has my mom sleeping in the front room with Mack. I beg my mother to switch with me so she isn't in the same room as Mack, but she won't make the trade.

Mack yells about ingredients being put in food. I realize this is difficult to understand. Say Mack was in the front room and he heard Bob in the kitchen say, "I'm putting dill in the cucumber," Mack would then yell at startling volume, "WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU PUT DILL IN THE CUCUMBER?!?!?!?!?!?!" To which everyone else in the house would reach like a grenade had gone off at Mack's coordinates.

My mom went into the front room and said, "Mack, you might not understand this, but loud noises like that create an environment of not-calm and calm is what we're going for in this house."

Mack said—motherfucker—"Sharon, I'd love to talk to you right now but I gotta go to work."

"But do you understand what I'm saying about a calm home environment?"

"Miss Sharon, I gotta be out the door fifteen minutes ago and I still have to shave so as much as I'd love to talk to you about this I just gotta go."

"Ok," my mom says, and she literally wipes her hands of the situation.

Oooooh. Deep breaths. You want to spark murderous rage within a son? Disrespect his mother. Brotha, you better hope you're never on a desert island with me, 'cause I will kill you, dissect you, and set you on fire, just like Ted Bundy.

Etc. etc. etc.

I allow myself to watch TV for once but my thoughts are so scattered I'm thinking of jacking Mack in an alley in one moment. In the next moment I feel it is absolutely imperative that I do a bold retelling of The Wizard of Oz. I think of David Mamet's quote, "Leave the bold moves to the brilliant players." Of course I think I'm one of these brilliant players, and I need to be making bold moves. Next it's a book based on Tori Amos lyrics, as I've always wanted to do. Next, next, next—I'm a firebox of loose ends, ends that will never be tied up.

129

Susan would always invent extra work for me to do around the house—work that didn't need to be done—with the intention of "structuring my day." She'd say:

"We need to structure your day. It can't be good for you to watch movies all night—though I'm sure that's fun—then sleep all day, wake up at four. I need you to vacuum the house tomorrow."

"Ok," I'd say, even though I vacuumed the house yesterday.

Then her chores got obsessive. We had three cats and three cat boxes. She wanted me to clean each cat box every day, at a certain time of day—this was supposed to somehow give my day structure. In my mind, you can clean a cat box every few days—otherwise every single day you're cleaning out one piece of shit and one clump of pee from cats that mostly pee outside anyway. At first, Susan just told me what chores to do that day:

"Can you mop the kitchen today? Especially in front of the refrigerator, I think there's some dried juice spills there from when people have been pouring juice."

"Sure, I'll do that."

And I did. The verbal thing worked fine—there weren't that many chores. But that was too simple—I think she wanted to formalize it so she could feel like she was structuring my day—like that was some sort of benefit she was providing to me—like a manager might do to an employee. I think your day needs structure.

So next it was a simple whiteboard with a list. If there was something on the whiteboard, it was mine to do. I did it, then crossed it off the list. But that wasn't complicated enough. Susan asked me if she thought it would be better if we had a bigger whiteboard, separated by day, where she could list the chores. I did not think this would be better but I did not want to open up a deeper conversation with Susan so I said:

"Sure, whatever you want to do."

So she got a bigger whiteboard that was already divided into a calendar month, and in each day she wrote "cat boxes." It was the same thing for every single day!! Honestly, I wonder what is going through someone's head when they have a monthly whiteboard calendar in front of them and they are writing the exact same thing in every one of those neat little boxes—it's meaningless!! Clean the cat boxes, blow the pine needles off the porches, vacuum, mop, do the dishes, do the trash, do the recycling—it was the same very small set of chores that needed to be done. I could keep it in my head. There was no need for a monthly calendar except that Susan wanted to control what I was doing. Everyone in this family wants to control things, people, events, themselves. That's at the root of our alcoholism. Really you're not "making me more productive" or "structuring my day" in some way that's going to give my life meaning, psychologically. You're just a control freak and you're doing all this shit not for me, but for your benefit.

What came next?

A Microsoft Outlook calendar that sent me email reminders every morning that said the same exact motherfucking thing every day. No, I am not lying. Susan thought adding this level of complexity was going to solve some sort of problem—maybe my lack of productivity, probably her lack of control. I don't know about you, but when some system somewhere is sending me the same exact email every day, my mind extremely quickly starts to ignore the hell out of that email. In fact I created a filter to delete it and just did the chores from memory. When Susan asked:

"How's the Microsoft calendar thing workin' out for ya?"

I said: "Great!"

Because I didn't want to get into some deep discussion with her about where my life was going and whether I was spending my time well or not.

Some people thrive in structure created by others. My sister Joanne has said she's one of these. My Mom has said she's one of these. They need a schedule. They need structure to their day. I am not that way. I am much less productive when someone else is trying to "make me productive" than when I am structuring my own time. This has always frustrated me at work, because I've had people far less intelligent than me trying to "get me productive." Ray Kramer from Softronics used to say that to me all the time. He wanted to start his day, but first he wanted to "get me productive." Dude, I was born productive. And if you think you are gonna get me productive, then you don't know me and you also don't know that you're shit for a manager.

When other people micromanage me, productivity slams to a halt.

When I'm left to my own devices, I'll get done what you wanted plus ten times more stuff you never would have thought of but are grateful that I did.

That's part of the problem: people who have less of a clear picture than I do, of their business, telling me what to do. They're actually wasting my time and underutilizing me by not acknowledging that I know more than they do and them managing my day is like me taking orders from a monkey.

In the first five years I was unemployed, I wrote ten books. Something like that. Maybe nine, maybe eleven, but it was something like two books a year. I can't think of a single manager or CEO or employee I've ever worked with who is likely to produce one tenth that output in their lifetime. Programming is hard. Programming is complex. But I've never worked on a program that is as complex as any one of my novels. Even big programs, like I helped build as part of forty-person teams at Mead Research and Anthem. There is not as much lexical meaning or logical complexity in those entire companies as there is in a single book written by me. If you think that's just ego, let me ask you this: have you ever a) written a novel, or b) worked on a million-line program? Because if the answer to either is no, then you're not really in a position to evaluate the statements I just made about lexical meaning and logical complexity, are you?

Anyway, whether you, my aunt, or Kermit the Fucking Frog believes me, I don't need anyone structuring my motherfucking day. I was happy to do whatever chores my aunt made up for me—even if it was vacuuming the same spot two days in a row—and I did everything she asked cheerfully and thoroughly. But I resent the (probably well intentioned) idea that giving me busywork around the house was somehow going to meaningfully structure my day. If she thinks that, she doesn't even really know me as a person..she doesn't know what's going on inside me..she doesn't know what makes me tick. She never even read my book. I got a book published while I was living at her house. I gave her a copy. She never even read it. I won't go so far as to say that indicates a lack of respect, but I think it's fair to say it indicates inability and disinterest (about having a relationship with me).

---

Here's a little icing on the cake.

Susan and I drive to New Orleans. She puts on earphones and listens to an audiobook the whole time. Eccentric? Maybe. Self-care? Maybe. But it sends a powerful message, especially in a car with just two people in it: I don't want to talk with you. If it had been a family of four and someone was listening to music, it would be different if at times some people were watching movies or doing games or whatever else dominates one's attention. But this was just me, just me and her, and instead of keeping the environment open in expectation that conversation might arise—that I might have something to say that might interest her more than an audiobook—she closed herself off from me, preferring to finish a book than talk to a real live person. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

But I wonder if she would ever try that around my mom..or hers. I wonder how she would have reacted if I had stood up for myself and told her how that made me feel (it hurt my feelings). But I would never do that. She's my aunt Susan. I'll always defer to her.

130

Susan told me to empty out the used coffee from the K-Cups that went with our new Keurig. We bought this thing because everyone thought the old-style coffee maker we had was antiquated and buggy, but no one considered how they would feel about the environmental impact we were making by using the Keurig. Everyone had a solution. GranGran told me to use each K-Cup twice, so instead of throwing away a used one she would set it on on the counter near the Keurig. That made it so we were always having this conversation:

GranGran: "Have you used this one?" (holding up a K-Cup)

Me: "I have no idea."

GranGran: "Well do you know how many times it's been used?"

Me: "Actually I don't."

GranGran doesn't care if her coffee is roughly the strength of tap water, but I do, so my method was to use each K-Cup once, throw it away, and throw away all the other used K-Cups that were littering the counter.

Then Susan told me about this whole reusing system you can get on eBay or Amazon or wherever the fuck, these lids that can be adhesively stuck to the top of an empty K-Cup. So Susan asked me to save all the K-Cups, remove their tops, empty the used coffee grinds, wash out the cup, and save the clean, empty cups for when these reusable lids arrived.

When she told me this I thought: Are you fucking kidding me? Every time someone drinks a cup of coffee, you're going to create a significant amount of work for me to do, just so you don't feel bad about the environment.

But what I said was: "You got it, Susan! I'll be happy to do that! Where would you like me to put the empty cups?"

The way I see it—and you can stop reading if this just sounds too fucking simplistic or juvenile or naive or whatever adjectives you can come up with—but when you buy a Keurig, you are making a commitment to creating a bunch of unnecessary trash. It's not just a cup of coffee, it's an environmentally irresponsible way of life. And in the particular moment, on this particular issue, I'm not saying one side is wrong and one side is right—I'm just saying if you buy a Keurig, don't try to be an environmentalist. The old coffeemaker was about simplicity and less waste, with a little more work for the human. The Keurig is about fucking up the environment to elevate human convenience! If you buy the Keurig, go all the way, baby! But my family wanted both—this impossible contradiction—they wanted the convenience of the Keurig without somehow using a shitload of K-Cups. That's insanity.

And when you survive a suicide attempt, this is what you are surviving for—when you don't die, you don't die so that this can be your life.

---

But the worst insanity of that house—and it's hard to pick just one, especially with Mack on the menu—but the worst insanity of that house was getting conflicting instructions from the older people living there. Susan would instruct us all, since it was flu season, that she wanted every dish run through the dishwasher, to sanitize it. When I did that, GranGran would get mad at me for having put pots and pans in the dishwasher.

"They just take up space in the dishwasher," she'd say.

I wanted to tell her that everything you put in the dishwasher takes up space in the dishwasher, but I decided to keep that little insight to myself.

So if I hand-washed a pot, I was going against Susan's instructions. If ran a pot through the dishwasher, I was going against GranGran's instructions. And that particular lose/lose situation got to me after a while. It did make me angry. I don't like being in a situation where no matter what I do someone's going to make an issue out of it.

I talked to my mom (the sage) and she suggested I politely inform whichever one of them scolded me next that this issue was really an issue between Susan and GranGran, and had nothing to do with me. I did that and it frustrated the hell out of GranGran, who happened to be the one I mentioned this to first. She was so flustered the only word she could get out of her mouth was: "Well."

One time when my mom was at the house GranGran made an issue of a skillet I had run through the dishwasher.

"I thought I told you not to run this through the dishwasher!"

She held up the dish—this supposedly non-stick skillet that was so carbonized that I was the only one who even used it anymore.

"This. Does not. Go. In the dishwasher!"

My mom was at the dinner table. She perked up but didn't say anything.

"Do you remember me showing you how to wash this?"

"Yes," I say.

She had dragged me from my room one day to embarrassingly (for her) give me a lesson in how to wash a skillet, to instruct me to use paper towels to wash out the "grease" first and throw the paper towel in the trash, otherwise it would clog up the sink. So even though I have a moral objection to using paper towels when I don't have to, even though I know that the "grease" she was referring to was not bacon grease or hamburger grease or something that would clog up the sink, but rather, it was olive oil, which will not clog up a sink, still I kept my mouth shut. I also wanted to tell my grandmother, while she was giving me this one-on-one lesson on how to clean a skillet the GranGran way, that I was thirty-six years old and had lived in many apartments, cooked many meals in those apartments with all sorts of ingredients, and I had never once, not one time, clogged a sink with grease. I have never bought Drano in my life. I have never once called Roto-Rooter. I know how to clean a pan and run a household kitchen. In fact I've worked as a dishwasher in three separate restaurants so I think I can handle this little green skillet here.

But I took the lesson quietly, and from that point on I washed that skillet exactly as GranGran had instructed—even the part where I destroy the environment by using paper towels to scrape olive oil out of the pan.

"So why," my grandmother says, "is it in the dishwasher?"

"Well, for that pan, what I've been doing is washing it per your instructions and then dishwashing it to satisfy Susan's requirement that all dishes be run through the dishwasher during flu season."

GranGran shakes her head.

"This doesn't need to be run through the dishwasher!" she yells.

My mom jumps in. She says:

"Mom, you realize this is an issue between you and Susan, right? You see that this has nothing to do with Matthew? You see that?"

Susan comes out of her bedroom.

"What is the problem?"

GranGran sighs.

"This pan does not need to go through through the dishwasher," my grandmother says, so tense, like we're all doctors in the emergency room trying to decide how to save some fucker's life.

"Fine," Susan says. "Just..do whatever GranGran wants."

Susan throws up her hands and stomps back into her room.

GranGran leaves the dishwasher open, puts the green skillet on the counter, and ambles out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down the dark hallway toward her sitting room.

Mom looks at me.

I'm looking at the ceiling and scrunching my nose, my lips open, clenching my teeth.

"Just stay calm."

"I will it's just..I don't see how this is an issue that requires emotion."

"What do you mean?"

"She storms out, she storms out. It's a fucking skillet."

"Do we need to go to Chili's?" Mom asks.

Chili's is where we go when we both need a break from the Ranchwood house dynamic.

"Yeah, probably," I say. "It's like—"

"Tell me in the car," Mom says.

My mom is one of the coolest people I know. She knows how to love. She knows how to live. She's a master at group dynamics. She's human, yes, and while she's highly irrational at times, she's still the most rational person I know. She's just got a good machine inside that skull. And she actually fucking uses it. That combination is rarer than you think.

Plus, she introduced me to pedicures, so in my mind she's basically a deity.

131

Susan, months after getting fired from her job, asks me if I could format her résumé for her. I said of course. It took me four or five hours to format the information from her old résumé into a professional template and then also to rewrite her descriptions so that they were all in the same tense and then rewrite them again so that they were concise, meaningful, non-repetitive. Her résumé looked awesome. It got her the interview. She got the job.

She thanked me for making her new résumé. And don't think I'm saying anything near that me making the résumé got her that job..of course not..but I am saying that if I hadn't re-made her résumé she may not have gotten that job. What's frustrating to me is this: I help out with all these "little" tasks, from cleaning the cat boxes to creating beautiful résumés, but then I'm treated like I don't matter, like I'm a second-class citizen. Susan asked me to make her résumé. I said yes—of course I did, I would do anything for her. But when GranGran asks Susan to tell me not to sit on the couch in the living room, Susan does not have my back. She does not stand up for me. She just demotes me to house pet who is not allowed to sit on the couch. Like I have no importance here. It's like how people treat a janitor: they look down on them because they do the dirty work. But guess what happens when someone else is no longer there to do the dirty work. Do you think Susan steps up to do it? No. The cat boxes just pile up and the house smells like shit.

Susan once had me download every stupid game off some game service she was paying for monthly so she could cancel her subscription. It took me a day. I downloaded all the stupid games that Susan played maybe one of once. I did it because I would do anything Susan asked. But you can't abuse that power and just have people do stuff that doesn't even need to be done—stuff that would never be done if you didn't have a slave. I mean, here is a woman who is either unable or unwilling to format her own résumé. And I am able and willing to do so. And that résumé gets you the interview. And you, in that interview, get yourself the job. How do you then treat the person who made your résumé like they're a substandard person in the house, not allowed to sit on certain furniture, not allowed to comment on the behavior of anyone in the older generations? You thought I had value when you needed your résumé done—so where's my value now?

I love how people think if you're disabled, everything is wrong with you. No. Really there are only a few select (extremely critical) parts of me that are broken. Every other aspect is still smarter and more talented and in general better than the vast majority of you motherfuckers.

My teachers used to tell me, "I wish every student in my class was like you." I was the politest, the most helpful, and hands down the smartest kid they ever met. So, family, country, world: I hate to tell you this, but if I'm the crazy one, then we have got some serious fucking problems.

---

Then what took the cake, what really took the cake for me, is my local/free/community health clinic needed a statement from my caretakers of how much I was costing them per month. My aunt filled out the paper and said something like $1200. Or $1600. I don't know what it was, but I know it was a hell of a lot more than my groceries and the use of a bedroom that they had previously let Mack sleep in for free. So we're not talking about any realistic loss they incurred for letting me stay there rent free. I don't know if that's the ballpark of what they claimed on their taxes or not. But I do know that the basic idea was to help out your nephew, not use me as a way to make money on your taxes. My food stamps covered most or all of my food cost—I was costing them a lot closer to $0 than $1200. That kind of lie just burns me from the skull to the spine.

132

To my way of seeing it, the situation degrades.

Bob bugs me for using too much cream in my coffee. But he doesn't just say, "Hey, cream's expensive, could you use a little less?" He says, as I'm pouring cream into my coffee, "Say, what do you call a coffee with that much cream in it?"

I said, "What?"

He says, "That's not just a coffee. A coffee with that much cream in it..isn't that a cappuccino?"

I'm in no mood for this conversation. Again, this is what dead people miss.

I got out my phone and looked up "cappuccino."

"It says a cappuccino is espresso with a bubbly layer of hot milk on top, so I don't think it's a cappuccino."

Bob says, "Well I know it's something. Is it a mocha..or..is it an espresso?"

I am committed to not arguing with him, so I continue to merely recite dictionary definitions (which just so happen to shoot down his theory that by using a lot of cream I have somehow transformed my coffee into an otherworldly coffee drink).

"A mocha is a mixture of coffee and chocolate."

"No.." he muses, as if the correct work for what I drink each day is on the tip of his educated tongue.

"Espresso basically means strong coffee," I say.

"What about a Frappuccino?"

"Merriam-Webster doesn't have it. Looks like that's a Starbucks trademark..for what I would be scared to ask."

"I just know that there's a word for that," Bob presses. "For a coffee with that much cream in it. What about a cafe au lait?"

I skip the dictionary this time. "A cafe au lait is half coffee, half hot milk."

"So that's kind of like this..you use about half coffee, half cream."

"If I'm using too much cream you can just say so—"

"No, but—"

"I'm not finished yet. I would just like to formally conclude by confirming that I am not making a cafe au lait since that would be half coffee, half milk and this is simply..a coffee with a lot of cream."

Fuck. You. You little. Passive-aggressive. Nitwit.

---

Or how about this little maneuver? I'm in the living room watching TV. The overhead light is on. People (GranGran or Susan) come into the room, do their business, and when they leave the room, they turn off the light!!! To review, that's when they leave a room when I'm still in the room. I have to get up and turn the light back on to remind myself that I still exist.

---

But the killer one to me (see someone disrespecting your mother, above) is when my mom comes up from New Orleans once a week to visit, she comes through front door and says, "Hello! Hello family!!" (so innocently, with such unabused expectation), and her sister and her brother-in-law don't even get off their asses to come out of their room to say hi—they lie in bed and don't even greet their own fucking sister when she comes to town for a few days. To this day, my indignance on this subject is replete. I am up against a wall. My understanding is blown. To not even yell a hello from your bed into the main room when a close relative walks through the door—it's past my comprehension.

Bob, Susan: that was bullshit.

133

Once you get a diagnosis, everything you do is seen through the lens of that diagnosis. Same thing with being a patient in a mental ward: if I wear two different-colored shoes to work at Mead Research, they just laugh and say That's what programmers do or That's what young people do or Matthew's trying to bring some of that California vibe to the midwest. But if you do that shit in a hospital, your psychiatrist'll probably keep you there another week. They'll analyze it down to the marrow of the bones, try to figure out if this is a sign that you're going manic or developing some new disorder.

Consider a simple mistake in the home: leaving the oven on after you're done cooking something. My mother does this sometimes, and when she does, I don't go up her butt with a microscope. I just say, "Mom, can I turn this off?" She says yes. I turn it off. And we go about our business.

But what if I were to leave the oven on after cooking something. It would start an invasion of analysis. Does this mean I, Mom, can't go out of town without taking Matthew with me? That I can't leave him at home by himself during the day? Is he safe? Is he psychotic? Is he spiraling down? Should we call the doctor? Be sure you mention that to your doctor. Ok, I'll mention it to my doctor. All of this is done with the intention to help—of course. But leaving the oven on from time to time isn't a sign of mental illness—it's a sign of being human!

The same thing happens with the old. At my grandmother's house, if aunt Susan leaves raw meat out on the counter for eight hours, no one says: Gee, we need to get Susan checked out by a psychiatrist. We just collectively assume that Susan doesn't give a shit about her own or other people's health, and we move on! She's just an inconsiderate person! She expects other people to clean up after her! She's in her own world—whatever!

But if my grandmother leaves a burner on after she makes a grilled-cheese sandwich—which happens twice a month—it inspires an all-family meeting where we figure out if she's developing Alzheimer's and who needs to take her to the doctor and whether we should allow her to do gardening by herself anymore or drive or OH MY GOD SOMETIMES PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES!! Yes, all the "normal, healthy" people want to look out for the marginalized (old, sick, eccentric) but my god sometimes when people use the stove they forget to turn it off afterward. It might not mean a thing.

134

Or the time GranGran came running from her back room to the front door to display her racism when Hank was telling me a story about a stolen bicycle seat.

First thing you have to know about Hank: Hank doesn't have enough to do, apparently, because Hank constantly insinuates himself into other people's business. Like when we had a sinkhole in our back yard and people came to work on it. I looked out the window and Hank had let himself in our gate and was talking to the workers!! He went in our back yard without asking us. Some places I've lived, that'll get you shot. Down here it's just, "Oh, that's Hank."

Well Hank comes to the door one day and I answer.

"Kid stole a bicycle seat," he says.

"Hey, Hank, how's it going?"

"Black kid, black as the bottom of my shoe, beside your house, took a bicycle seat!"

"Where was he?"

Hank points. "With all them bicycles y'all got."

Oh, you mean the rotting, ivy-covered relics of bicycles we have along the side of the house?

"I'm sure it's fine, Hank."

"This kid was as black as my shoe polish, musta had hisself a screwdriver, ran off down the street—I told him to get out of there."

"So you were in our yard?"

"Little black boy," Hank says.

That is the conclusion to and the extent of his storytelling powers.

"You like this cooler weather, Hank?"

"Kid had a—"

"Well we don't care about those bicycles. If somebody wants to take a seat or any other part of those old bikes that's ok, it's not a problem, it's not something I'm going to be worrying about and I don't recommend you spend too much more time on that one, either, my friend. You take your walk today?"

"I'm about to. But I figured I should tell you about this first."

"And now you have. Enjoy your walk. I'll see you later, Hank!"

I closed the door.

I saw my grandmother had come out of her room and was listening to my conversation. As soon as I close the door Bob also comes out of his room.

"Did he say that kid was a black kid?" GranGran asks.

"Well, that depends on what story you think he told," I say.

"What is that supposed to mean," says this crotchety, hateful old woman.

"It means is Hank telling me a story about a kid who stole a bicycle seat or is Hank telling me a story about a black kid in a white neighborhood where he wasn't supposed to be."

"Well just tell me, was the kid black?"

"GranGran, I'm not going to discuss that because the only reason that matters is if you're racist and I know no one in this room cares whether our junk bicycle seat was stolen by a white kid or a black kid."

"Well it matters to me," she says.

"I know it does," I say.

And the rest of that conversation occurs between my uncle and my grandmother. My uncle stands up for the non-racist position and, frankly, my grandmother stands up for the racist position. It is not a proud moment for her, or for my family.

And all this supposedly over a rusted bicycle seat that none of us would ever use if we lived to be a hundred—not even worth discussion.

---

And, you know, my cat died. Mom and I happened to be the only ones home when she walked out to her favorite spot in the porch sun, laid down, and died. That's the second cat I've buried with my mom and we cried both times.

After that, smoking on the porch was a lot lonelier. No one to pet. No one to rub her lovely face against my skin.

---

I called Spots a couple of times when I got up the nerve. She had voicemail but she never returned my call. Then one time she called me but hung up before I could answer. I called her right back and it rang and rang and rang.

That could have been the mouse whimper of our ending.

But I hope not.

Spots, if you're reading this, do me a small favor. Leave whoever you're with, move across the county, show up on my doorstep, come inside and make mad Spots/Matthew love for the rest of our tortured lives, ok? I could use you. And I'd let you use me for anything.

135

When I go to sleep this shit will never stop. Story ideas. Thoughts about relatives. Fears.

The television.

I can't stand TV and I live with TV freaks. For them, that level of noise gets processed right out—they don't even know if the TV is on. But for me TV—especially commercials—have been taunting me since I was a little kid. They're an oppression to me, a hell to escape or avoid. I can't stand uncoordinated noise—and that's what ads, TV, and most movies are to me.

It's either the fakest, cheesiest military, mythological, or historical film (that's Bob) or like Rambo I-XVII (that's Mack). Or police procedurals (that's Susan). Or hate news (that's GG). Full volume. Late at night. I can hear every explosion, every line of dialogue, in my bedroom, under my covers.

Honestly what bothered me most wasn't being kept awake by that trash—it was that my relatives and their friends had such poor taste in programming. I lost respect.

Idea for a pub story. Something that takes place in Athens, Ohio. Channel some of the Flat Iron energy (a bar), but something that takes place in the underbelly of a college town of the first order: Athens, Ohio. The Gyro Buggy. Those who work within. Character sketches. A whole chapter of depth on the guy who works the gyro buggy (for example). This is me trying to sleep.

It's impossible.

An idea: something that takes place in my impression of the world of Dark City..a criminal who comes around..who ultimately comes around to the light.

It never stops. I could be up till 3am with this shit. I could be up till 6. I could be up till 9. I could be making coffee, the next day, in the kitchen with groggy relatives and I'm wide, wide awake because no coffee is needed for this machine—it has no effect—either way, I'm bright and energetic and rubbing all the sleepy folks the wrong way. To them it's normal to be grumpy in the morning. To me all that is weakness—needing coffee and time to wake up—I'm awake all the time, and anyone who isn't is a lesser human being.

136

Stephen getting a job dealing craps, moving back in, buying a PC, and playing Assassin's Creed late into the night with the sound on full volume, subwoofer turned up. I guess it runs in the family because Bob would do the same thing with movies: watch some part of the Hobbit trilogy at extra loud, starting around 10pm. I just knew on those nights I couldn't go to sleep early, and I stayed up, preferably drinking, Tweeting for a few hours until whichever one was done and the sound was not washing through my bedroom.

I guess it's just part of a general über individuality that runs in our family. No accountability. Bob and Susan leave the house while my mom and I are sitting in the living room and they just wave and smile at the door and say, "Bye!" not telling us where they're going or when they'll be back. I remember us having the same issue when I visited Baton Rouge that Christmas before I went to Vermont. It's certainly not that I give a fuck about what you're doing..it's just common courtesy among housemates to let people know approximately where you're going and approximately when you're coming back so those still at the house know when to start worrying, when to report a missing person, etc. It's not about getting in other people's business, it's just part of common living.

But no. I never got that respect.

Susan could be going to Biloxi, Mississippi for a week and she'd never mention it to me. She'd just stand in the doorway with her unzipped travel bag showing a half-drunk bottle of wine and she'd smile a wide-teeth smile and wave where the only moving joint was at the elbow and that was her nonverbal Bye! and a night would pass, and another night, and on the third night I'd just slip it in to a conversation with Bob:

"So where's Susan?"

"Oh, she's playing some poker."

"Cool."

"In Biloxi."

"Oh, great."

"With Mack."

"Nice."

"She'll be back..actually I'm not sure when she's coming back."

I'd nod, eating my dill pickle with cheese—something Bob taught me which is actually great—and I'd wonder about my own illness. Am I too involved in other people's business? But I didn't think so. I think I view it as an issue of safety. Like what if something bad happens to Susan in Biloxi—or to one of us here—don't we want to know roughly where each other are in case of emergencies?

I knew where some of this came from: GranGran. GranGran was always prying and spying and turning down the volume on her TV when she wanted to overhear one of our phone calls. My dad was the same way: always in your fucking business. And when you have a busybody like that around the house, other people tend to shut down on revealing information about themselves and their plans. Susan's guardedness with her comings and goings had nothing to do with me, in essence—it was between her and her mother.

---

We were always keeping secrets from GranGran to avoid confrontation. Like when Susan got in an accident on her motorcycle, I was instructed strictly not to mention it to GranGran and lie to my grandmother if she asked where Susan's motorcycle was—I was not to reveal it was in the shop because that would lead to questions from GranGran which would unravel the truth of Susan's accident.

Or my food stamp card. "The magic food card," as my uncle called it. We physically hid it from GranGran and I was likewise instructed not to mention to GranGran that we were using food stamps to buy a large portion of the groceries for the house. Her politics, it was feared, if mixed with the knowledge that she herself was consuming food bought with government assistance, would cause some kind of rift in the fabric of space that would make a Hadron Collider mishap look like a mouse fart.

I never argued politics with my grandmother—I hardly ever spoke with her about them. When I was watching the news in the living room and GranGran came through to get to the kitchen, she would stop walking, look at the screen and shake her head at the channel I was watching, then continue on her way to the kitchen.

Sometimes she would express her views.

"omitted"

I was going to write some of the statements she made but my fingers won't let me type them. My grandmother's brain works fine—she's a sharp woman, even in her eighties. But, simply, she believes what she sees on hate TV, hate radio, and she doesn't read news from the internet. So that bright mind of hers has been warped by a diet of propaganda that makes her unaware of what her own governor is doing.

She asked me why it took me so long at the community health clinic one day.

"I had to fill out extra paperwork so they'll treat me because I lost my insurance."

"Well, honey, why did you lose your insurance?"

"Because the governor of Louisiana cancelled it."

"No he did not."

"Yes. He cancelled the whole Medicaid disability program, so all the poor people with disabilities in Louisiana who had Medicaid lost their insurance as of the end of last year."

"Well I never heard anything about that."

I wanted to say: "That's because you watch Fox News."

But I didn't say anything, because my grandmother is eighty-three and I'm not going to argue with the eighty-three-year-old matriarch of my family, my last living grandparent, about which news program she chooses to watch.

She did not extend me the same courtesy. She daily vocalized hate for the news I was watching, muttering or speaking so that I could hear her while she cooked her dinner.

"Well, I just think she's a hateful woman. I heard her say the most hateful thing on TV the other day."

In my mind, I was all: That's because they selectively edited what she said.

My grandmother is in the kitchen frying an egg.

"That woman must be the most ignorant person they have on TV."

In my mind I'm all: She's probably the smartest person on TV.

Then my grandmother would go on, as was typical in that age, to blame Obama for things that the President doesn't even have power over, things the US Congress does. But to her and those like her, everything was Obama's fault. And of course for people like GranGran or my uncle Rusty, they just didn't like Obama because he was black.

Not long after this pattern of GranGran dissing whatever I was watching on TV—movie, news, or whatever—started, I would just mute or pause the TV as soon as she came into the living room/kitchen area and keep it muted or paused for as long as she was in there. The first couple of times I did this, she said:

"Oh you don't have to pause that on my account."

And I would say: "I'm just pausing it to Tweet for a second, I'm not pausing it because of you."

Lies, lies, lies. I learned very well from the other members of this house that was the way to get along with everyone. We're like a house of cards, built on secrets and lies. One little bump in the system and the whole thing falls apart—but pretends not to.

137

Music is my major coping skill. Like today. Music saved me from so many cravings of the bipolar-mania style: food, drugs, spending money, sex. It makes me think of Faith, from the Refuge, with the ward radio set on one of the tables in the room in front of the nurses' station, and Faith, peaceful for once, lying her head on the table next to the speaker, With Adele's Someone Like You playing, and there was a ripple effect, Faith's calm echoing through everyone in the room. And no one would even talk during that song, it became sacred, a sacred four minutes, with Faith quiet or singing off-key to her favorite parts. Of course that song still soothes me, and makes me think of the ward, Tyler 2 during a certain fall of 2011. I'm sure everything's different for all of us now, doctors and patients, but we helped each other there for a while.

Shhh: I actually hate this world.

And nothing about me is as sane as I was, then, in that controlled environment, with regular access to a psychiatrist and to meds. I heard recently Louisiana was voted worst state in he union in terms of medical care, access to food stamps, and just care in general for the non-rich. And I know I've been falling apart a little without my medicine. Or maybe a lot. And from drinking. And from being in such a hectic environment. So..well..I'm doing my best to keep this narrative alive.

Which, actually, brings us nicely to:

138

The nigger pussy incident.

This is going to be a short chapter. It's going to be mostly nonsensical due to the the fact that is consists almost entirely of a monologue my uncle Rusty presented to me at the Ranchwood house while I was trying to write. His dumb ass planted it in a seat crosswise from me at the dinner table, apparently because my aunt and uncle and grandmother wanted nothing to do with him—none of them even came out of their rooms when their brother/son walked through the door after he drove here from Asshole, Florida or wherever this asshole lives.

He sits down.

His wife doesn't even come in the house—she's outside smoking.

I give Rusty a skeptical look.

He speaks in this booming voice. Fucking Hank across the street can hear every word.

"Matthew! My nephew!"

He reaches out for a handshake but I don't give him one.

"I see how it is. Well. There's been a lot of water under that bridge..a lot of water."

I assume he's referring to the time he misattributed a quote to Abraham Lincoln on Facebook and I corrected him. Extremely harshly. Embarrassed the hell out of him in front of his honky friends.

"Well, what's been going on? Florida is crazy, man—crazy. We've got the air show coming up—you're always invited! You seemed so excited about the idea on the cruise, man, what happened? Bygones, right? I was all excited, you could have come to church with us. Have you found yourself a church in Baton Rouge? We've been going to this Christ Almighty church or it might be Christ Almighty The Redeemer—tell you the truth the sign is so goddamn big I can't read it without my glasses and when we get out sometimes I'm helluva damn mad, you know? I mean this pastor, it's like I like him, but why does he have to be so political? Your mom's a preacher. Does she get political in her sermons? It's important to have a church to go to—you go to your mom's church? Anyway I thought we had a good one but this guy has to talk about Obama this and Obama that and I'm like are we here to worship God or am I watching the news? What's your political persuasion these days? Did you vote for the ol' blackie or did you go for the other guy."

I look up from my MacBook. I look Rusty straight in the eye.

"That's ok, we don't have to talk politics. What are you doing for work these days? We have this new manager, and to tell you the truth he is the most incompetent manager I have ever had the misfortune to work under. I don't think me and that job are long for this world, if you know what I mean. I mean this guy, he comes in, he thinks he's gonna reorganize the place and I'm like, slow down there, stallion, I've been working this business for twenty years and I mean this new guy thinks he's gonna come in and tell me what to do!? Fucking Obama. Do you know how far into our business Obama's fingers are reaching?—and we're not even a health care business. I hate to imagine what it's like to be in the medical field right now. Fucking ObamaCare—can you believe that shit? So this boss starts hiring computer programmers and he's hiring people based on their color!! Are you a fan of affirmative action? You're prob'ly too young to remember affirmative action. But your parents aren't. I know your mom voted for that communist bastard."

I'm squinting at Rusty now.

"You're a computer programmer. I mean, I've looked over the shoulder of our programmers—it looks like all you have to do is string a few words together—would you say that's about right? You prob'ly worked with a lot of Indian programmers—that's where it's all going these days, isn't it? Fucking free trade agreements. You know this used to be a country I could be proud to live in. You're prob'ly happy with ObamaCare, aren't you? Well, either way, this new manager—he thinks he's a manager—I told him straight to his face Just 'cause you went to Yale doesn't mean you know shit down south. You in Bible country now. You're not an atheist, are you? Tell me, at least, Matthew, tell me you're not an atheist. I saw some of your Facebook posts and it looked like you and God were headed in different directions. I'm worried about you, Matthew. You need God in your life. We all do. And all this mental illness—what you call mental illness—that's the devil. It's nothing but the devil. In your mind. And this lithium, pills, all that crap—you don't need that. You need God in your life and until your have God in your life your mind will not be right, I can guarantee it. So anyway this manager is hiring all these programmers, and they're all black, and that's not the kicker! The kicker is this negro asshole I have to work under now is paying these guys like eighty..a hundred grand. That's what I make. And I'm trying to tell this guy—business degree from Yale—I'm like: maybe if you were hiring white programmers, then maybe they're worth a hundred grand. Maybe. But black programmers, in south Florida, them's as cheap as nigger pussy. You can buy two, three, maybe four programmers for what this Yale nigger is paying for one nigger programmer. The first computer programmers were white—were they not? You're what I think of when I think of a programmer..white dude. Fat. Doesn't know how to take care of himself. Kind of stinks, you know, doesn't shower all that often. A guy with a messy cubicle, for sure, but a white guy, with like Pringles crumbled all over his desk and fingers covered in Cheeto dust but he still types with them anyway!! I mean, wash your fucking hands, man!!"

Rusty is laughing and slapping his knee.

"Actually," I say, "the first programmers were female. It wasn't considered a status job, it was considered a clerical, kind of custodial job so men didn't want to do it, so. The first programmers were women."

"Is that right? Well aren't you just a fountain of information."

He starts talking again but I stop him.

"We're done here Rusty."

"What did you say?"

"You heard me."

"I heard you I just didn't like it."

"I don't give a good goddamn what you like. You see I'm sitting here writing, don't you? You see my laptop? Cover is open, fingers are on the keyboard. Now, you can find another chair to sit in, in another room, but the minute you say the phrase, 'nigger pussy,' our conversation is over."

I'm nodding at him like trying to get him to nod back, like you would try to get a dog to nod back to prove he understands you.

"I don't think I like the way you're talking to me, Matt."

"It's Matthew."

"Well, Matt, I think I have exhausted all useful possibilities with you."

"Yeah, that happened when I was about five."

"What does that mean?"

"Rusty, I'm trying to write. Why don't you go say hi to GranGran?"

"I'll say hi to GranGran when I'm ready to say hi to GranGran," he says.

And I say, "You should be aware that I'm going to report your 'nigger pussy' remark to the family and ask that you not speak to me when you're at this house."

"Is that so?" he says.

At this point I put in my earbuds and go back to writing.

Rusty sits there, looking at me, talking, saying who knows what for a full five minutes before getting up and slamming the chair back under the table. He walks real close to me on his way back to my aunt and uncle's room.

My heart is racing.

I breathe.

To me, my uncle has always been subhuman, a mad dog, the only useful thing to do with him would be lock him in a cage and throw away the key. And stop feeding him.

My first software CEO, Jim, used to say he could work with anyone as long as he could see signs of improvement. That's the problem with Rusty. He's—what, in his fifties?—and there are no signs of improvement. He obviously gets off on being a racist asshole and provoking people who aren't, especially my mom, especially me. And it's been that way forever, just a constant stream. No signs of improvement. He's a black hole—any effort you spend on him is wasted. If I was fifty years old and acting that way, I'd consider myself a failure. But I guess if you still get high off hurting other people and you like to spend the majority of your time angry, then Rusty is a success.

And I lied about one thing: I did hear some of what he said to me while I had my earbuds in. It was just fragments, competing with Basshunter, but what he said to me while I was stonewalling his dumb ass had to do with the fact that I didn't have a job, didn't seem to be looking for one. He said explicitly what a lot of people are probably thinking: that since I'm no longer pulling down the big bucks programming computers that I have just become a bum living off government entitlements, taking advantage of my aunt and uncle and his mom, with no motivation, unwilling to work a forty-hour workweek like a real man, and all I do is jerk off and watch Netflix 24/7. Those were the bits and pieces that came through. Really my only reaction to any of that is to laugh at the implicit assertion that my uncle Rusty is a real man. I'm gonna have to beg to differ on that point.

---

A few days after Rusty leaves, when my Mom comes up from New Orleans, I get her, Susan, and Bob together in the living room and I tell them that Rusty imposed himself on me conversationally when he was here earlier in the week and that I was going to tell them the phrase that broke the camel's back..

"..the phrase that makes it an imperative for you to support me in blocking Rusty from speaking to me when he's at this house. I can't have this type of language assaulting my brain. This might be a surprise for some of you, since I write raw and disturbing things in my books. Those things in my books are designed to mirror the real world—they are reflections of people like Rusty, who I find absurd. I find it absurd that a person like that exists, and that's why I write about him. But in my own life, in my own head, I like to keep things calm, believe it or not, especially after my Vermont psych hospital experiences. I have learned that I am a very angry person. And I am making the choice not to be angry as much of the time as possible."

"So what's the phrase?"

"I don't believe I'm repeating this to you but I do think it's important for you to hear it. The phrase is, 'nigger pussy.' The context was, 'in south Florida such and such is as cheap as nigger pussy.'"

Susan's eyes go wide.

"That's clearly a racist phrase," I say.

"It's sexist, too," says my mom.

"Yes it is."

"How did you react?"

"I didn't react much. There was no shouting or anything like that. Honestly it makes me so mad that I don't remember the details. I put in my earbuds and he eventually left."

"I think he was trying to push your buttons," my mom says.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah," she says.

"I guess my evaluation gives him more credit than that, but I just think that's the way he is, and whoever he was talking to, that might have come out."

"You think that if he was talking to GranGran he would have said that?"

"Well, that's an excellent point. But I will tell you all now with no uncertainty that I will not hesitate to relay to GranGran that he said that to me, and nothing you say is going to change my mind on that, so don't even try. I realize I'm a guest in this house but I will not be treated that way by anyone. I've been homeless before and I'll be homeless again—"

"Don't say that," my mom says. "Please don't say that."

"Ok but this is a serious issue to me and I consider all of you, as his sisters, as his brother in law, to be involved, responsible parties—"

"What are we supposed to do?" Susan says. "That's just the way he is. I'm surprised to hear that phrase come out of Rusty's mouth but I'm not surprised to hear that he said something racist."

"I think this is abuse toward Matthew," my mother says.

"But what are we supposed to? Tell him he can't come over to see GranGran? That he can't take her to lunch?" That was Susan.

"All that needs to be done," I say, "is for you all, plus GranGran, to get together as a unit and tell Rusty to watch his fucking language while he's in this house."

My mom says, "Why don't you watch yours?"

Susan says, "Yeah, really."

"I'll you why. Because this is a serious issue to me and I need to express myself in a way that communicates to you all that if this happens again we will have World War Three."

My mom gives me a threatening look.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means we want to stop this problem before it happens again and not wait to see what happens if it does happen again."

Susan gets up.

"Y'all can deal with this yourselves."

And on that she gives me a special look of disbelief/disgust/disapproval—you choose.

She's headed back to her bedroom, to her comfort place, sedentary, in bed, in front of the TV.

"So, what?" I say. "You just deal yourself out of any responsibility for what goes on in your house?"

"I can't control Rusty," she says.

She slams the door.

Bob gets up, goes to the dishwasher, opens the door, pulls out the top tray, and starts rearranging the dishes, optimizing their layout in a pointless gesture of kindness to the machine.

"You need to keep yourself away from Rusty," my mom says. "You understand me? If he comes over, you go to your room. That is not just how Rusty behaves with everyone. He is pushing your buttons, mark my words. You just..stay..away..from him."

"Ok," I say, and in this case that simple little word is a promise.

I don't know many things, but one thing I do know is when my mom gives a warning, you should heed the motherfucker.

139

And here's an even shorter chapter.

The time I was five and uncle Rusty took me for a walk around the block and told me what a man should be.

He started in on this values and morals lecture, responsibility, values, work ethic. Generic terms he couldn't even define if pressed.

And it was ludicrous, and scary, and I knew that even though I was a child and Rusty was an adult, that compared to him I was wise and compared to me he was a fool. I turned around halfway up the block and walked back to GranGran's house with Rusty tagging along behind, appeasing me, telling me that what we said was between us, and me knowing that this is someone I could never ever trust my whole life. And that has remained true to this day.

He continues to this day to abuses my mom on Facebook—says things that make her cry—and when I, or his daughter Lily, or my mom, asks him to stop badgering his own sister, he stops—oh, he stops for a while—but he always goes back to his old behavior, getting drunk and wheedling his big sister about politics and religion until he makes her cry. He's a real motherfucker.

And after I instructed him not to speak to me at the Baton Rouge house, of course the next time he comes over, as soon as he gets in the house he speaks to only me without stopping and when I say, "Rusty, can you honor the agreement we made?" Susan and GranGran back Rusty up and make me the enemy. Then Rusty says he's going to be moving nearby and "the problem" (me) needs to be taken care of, moved out of the house, before he gets here, so he won't have to deal with me when he comes to visit GranGran. GranGran says nothing. Susan agrees with him, says "It will be taken care of." There's a touch of evil in all of 'em.

But when me and Rusty took our walk around the block when I was five, at his suggestion, we only made it partway down the first street before I turned around and went back. Rusty was acting like he was the adult and I was the child, but I could tell from what was coming out of his mouth that really it was the other way around. Even though he was big and I was small, I knew more about life than he did, when I was only five, and I resented being spoken to by him as though he had a vast store of wisdom about life when I could tell he was bad news, an idiot, and he was trying to be parental toward me and I did not like to hear his voice and I did not want to hear it one second longer. I left and went back to the house, with him first standing there yelling for me to come back, and I was back at the house before him, with the safety of my Mom's presence, then Rusty comes angry through the door.

My mom says to her brother, "What did you do?"

Rusty says, "Nothing!"

My mom asks me if everything is ok.

I tell her yes, but the walk is over.

My mom glares at Rusty.

He puts on this mock-innocent face like What?!

---

As a kid, my dad started my skepticism of men. Rusty fanned the flames. And many a boss and friend have added their log to the fire. I have met abusive women; I have met gentle men. But largely I prefer the company of women—they do not compete with me, they are more mature emotionally, and they tend to support me rather than try to tear me down. Just generalizations, not hard and fast rules.

But yes, many of my experiences with men—younger, older, gay, straight, coworker, boss—have left me with the instinct to distrust men initially.

I'll never forget walking one fourth of the way down the block with Rusty, at his suggestion, and him starting in on the manly advice right away and me being like, I'm five and this idiot doesn't know that I know more than him about life! And the walk with Rusty has been over ever since then. In recent years, after we made up to each other for Facebook conflagrations in order to set my mom, his sister, at peace, Rusty non-ironically wrote to me and offered to be a male role model in my life. I politely refused his offer, giving no reason. But inside me, I was thinking: You think you can be a mentor to me? Do you have any idea of who you are and who I am and how those things relate? I refrained from insulting him there but I won't refrain from doing so here. It was a well-intentioned offer. From a buffoon. Even if both of our current life trajectories were to change drastically, Rusty will never be equipped to be a mentor or a role model for me!! It would be like a fly being a mentor for a tortoise. You live 28 days—I live a hundred and fifty years. When Rusty was 30-something, and I was five, there was nothing he could teach me. Thirty years later, Rusty is going to be my mentor?? Rusty is going to teach me about how to live life? I don't think so. Sorry, sir, but you are clueless about you and I.

140

In the summers I get crazy. In the summers it's the worst.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

regular paper/paint hallucination is in normal places but is now also inside the computer

object-moving hallucination

bug hallucination

light hallucination (moving points of light)

tactile memory hallucinations (iPad, cat, sitting on me and I feel them like they're still there)

peripheral hallucinations

skin/muscle chills and sensations—overwhelming sense of ecstasy

am I imagining the beginnings of kidney stone pain?

bizarre belief that music is transmitted through tattoos

belief that my heart is going to stop or beat too fast (ocd obsession/compulsion checking my pulse)

I'm extra sensitive to sounds..not hallucinating them, but being surprised by them and hearing them extra loud

Having problems with the directions of sound..which direction is a sound coming from?

attaching extra significance to digital clocks and LED lights

it seems a page is missing from my notebook

I'm inside the rhymes

Yes, the feeling, when listening to rap, that I'm not only listening to to the rhymes, but that I'm inside the rhymes. It's weird, I know.

141

Knowing things are getting worse. I'm grasping. I write this letter to my psychiatrist:

Dr. Narra,

I'm making these notes because I have a hard time remembering things, keeping it all in my head at the same time.

These are some of the damaging things I've done that I think are related to my bipolar disorder.

Once, on a whim, I quit a very nice ($80k) job and moved across the country to live in a tent in my friend's back yard. I've quit other jobs "for no reason" when in manic states.

I've abandoned three apartments. Just gave up my home and my possessions because I was in a manic state and didn't think I needed them anymore.

I've abandoned two cars. Just got it into my head that I could not drive them anymore, and left them behind. I was unable to get to work after this, because I had no transportation.

I've telephoned both the NSA and CIA, believing I had unique and amazing software that was going to save my country from spies. (I did not.)

I've threatened suicide at work. This cost me time off work and the respect of my co-workers.

I have bought hundreds of glow sticks (all that were available in the camping sections of several stores) which I then passed out to everyone dancing at a nightclub. Spending money like this damaged me.

In an attempt to get a gallery show, I mailed the contents of my kitchen (as well as original art) to a New York art dealer. I even sent my spice rack. I couldn't function in my own kitchen because I had given away all my dishes.

Back at a time when I used to sell paintings I had made, in a manic state I gave away all my unsold artwork to people I hardly knew. When I came out of the state I thought, "What have I done?" [Ok, I exaggerated here a little bit. I wasn't upset about giving away that art.]

There are so many "crazy" things I've done due to this illness. I can't remember them all (I've heard mania affects your memory), but these are a few that I wanted to mention.

I want to work again as a computer programmer (the work I did for more than ten years before my illness worsened). But to get from here to there, I think I need some financial support, while my medicines are being adjusted and while I'm stabilizing. Because of that I'd like to file for disability. Will you consider my case and think about whether you could support me in this? Thank you for all your understanding.

Sincerely,

Matthew Temple

Music sounds different to me when I'm manic, out of tune, like I'm in between the voices, the notes—it almost makes no sense to me. And I remember having that experience as far back as high school, a decade before my first diagnosis. I think I've been having this experience for a long time, it just didn't have a name, I hadn't learned to recognize it. I didn't differentiate between states. It was happening without me being fully aware. Also, that was at a time before I drank or did drugs, and it eases my conscience a little to know that I didn't bring this on myself.

---

Dr. Narra supported my case for disability—in theory. In actuality it took her and my social worker a full year to shuffle papers between them, each passing off responsibility to the other, to get my disability advocate the one-page form that they had requested from my doctor, that the disability advocate needed to get started representing me. Ultimately, it took my psychiatrist and social worker so long to fill out this one-page form that my disability advocate dropped my case and declined to represent me.

From: Matthew Temple

To: Capital Area Human Services District [a community health clinic]

Subject: CAHSD evaluation

Please forward this to whoever is in charge over there.

I am a patient/client of your clinic and I am glad that for two years I've been able to be seen by a psychiatrist and get my medicine through your pharmacy.

That said, many aspects of your organization are functioning poorly—to the level of barely working.

First of all, the computer system, as reported to my by the receptionists and other workers, is slow to the point of often being non-functional. This has cascading effects for doctors and patients, it helps create long lines in the lobby and forces the receptionists to make pen-and-paper lists of patients they need to call back to schedule an appointment once the computer system is running again. This frustrates the receptionists and patients. If I was a receptionist forced to deal with such shoddy systems, I wouldn't want to work there. This computer systems issue is a serious problem for you and I suggest you put whatever time, resources, focus into upgrading your systems to something that works.

Secondly, your walk-ins only, no-appointment policy is an embarrassment. You're wasting the time of everyone who comes in to see a doctor by having them sit in the lobby for hours—sometimes up to four hours I've waited. Will you please consider the impact that has on someone who has a job? Just to see their doctor they have to take off half a day of work to allow enough time to be seen. One social worker told me that he advises patients to take off the whole day from work when they have an appointment with CAHSD because in general that much time may be taken in order to see a doctor or social worker. This is SO wasteful of people's time. I realize some people don't keep their appointments, but for everyone to have to use half a day or a whole day to accomplish a one-hour visit is nonsensical. Please switch your doctors and social workers to appointment-based scheduling to increase the efficiency of your organization.

Next, I'd like to talk about a social worker: my social worker. Issue one: he is not trained as a talk therapist. Therefore: he is not qualified to do counseling with me. Our conversations mostly consist of him telling me to wait while he types things into the computer. He does not provide insight into my problems, nothing he says is original, and he lacks in-depth knowledge of my illnesses. Our sessions are a waste of time; the only reason I keep going is that I am required to do so in order to see the psychiatrist and get my meds. Additionally, my social worker will not give me his office phone number or his work email address. The same goes for my psychiatrist. Of course you want to have a level of screening so your patients aren't bothering their caregivers too much, but there are cases where I need to get information to my care team and I am unable to because of these policies. For example, I needed to give the address of my disability advocate to my social worker so that he could send them a one-page form signed by my doctor. He wouldn't let me send it to him in email (wouldn't give out his email address). He begrudgingly gave me his office phone number. I left the information in his voicemail. The next appointment I asked him if he got the message and he said he doesn't have time to check voicemail. It took a year of foibles like these to get my social worker and psychiatrist, both, to fill out a one-page form to send to my disability advocate. A year. To fill out a one-page form and mail it. That's an extra year of my life that I will have to wait on the possibility of getting disability, just because my doctor and social worker couldn't get their processes worked out to sign a simple form. My doctor was complicit in this as well: every time I brought up the form with her, she said to talk with my social worker. Every time I brought it up with him, he said to talk to the doctor.

Your organization is operating at the most basic level of functionality. The only reason I continue to use you is that you seem to be my only option. Please take this critique as information you can use to improve. Have some pride in your work!—you can do better!

Of course I knew they would never write me back. The fact is there are a lot of mediocre people in this world who are perfectly content to do mediocre work and live through day after day of mediocrity until they die.

142

I end up in the mental hospital due to my reaction to thinking about James even shaking my hand, much less touching me, during their upcoming visit.

Learning that James would be coming with Leona and Daniel to the Baton Rouge house for vacation made me feel so angry. And after the way James had dumbly backed up his wife while she kicked me out of their house when I had a plane leaving in the morning made me not want him to ever touch me, even shake my hand, for being such a wimp while Leona yelled at me and kicked me out that critical one day early, like she couldn't take me sitting in a room sleeping for twelve more hours. James didn't temper his wife, try to diffuse Leona's rage, he just followed behind her like a custodian with a mop. My anger was so severe, then turned inward, I felt homicidal and suicidal and I went to a psych ward over that shit.

For everyone else, it's a la la life, fuck with people with completely unreasonable behavior and they don't pay the price. Grace was right about us being the weight-bearers. James didn't have to lie on airport carpet all night and not sleep. Leona didn't. I did. Part of why you're mentally healthy is you don't care about other people's feelings. And those of us who do care, who care too much, end up spending time in psych wards because your behavior, Leona, your behavior James and Dad and Mom, is so harsh and inconsiderate that I can't take it.

I can't live around you people because you don't know how to love.

You'll probably laugh and think that's a ridiculous statement, impossible to defend. But when I say, "I like spending time with you, Mom, just hanging out in the same room," and you say nothing in return—I get it, you're just so in your own world on your device that you never even heard what I had to say—but that's the problem. Or Dad, when you cut me off, choose not to call me for years and years and years—a decade?—how can I consider you my father in any meaningful sense? I understand some aspects of mental illness from my own experience, so I know it's sometimes hard to see things clearly, but Leona and James, do you realize you kicked me out of your house when I was already planning to leave the next morning and you did it, Leona, by YELLING: "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!!"

And your reasoning (the reasoning stated to me) was that I had been slacking off on running the dishwasher, when I told you that I had been running it as usual as often—once or twice a day—and you had no evidence, only your own impressions and suppositions, to back your position up. Do you see how that's asymmetric? Someone who's already leaving your house tomorrow, who never raised his voice at you, and you continued to converse with me about the dishwasher situation with you yelling and me speaking in a normal voice—which of course made you very angry. Like Dad, Leona, you get more and more upset if you've gone wild and the person you're flogging doesn't jump into the ring with you. I guess that mixes metaphors. Maybe you were really dealing with a Dad issue, and I reminded you of him, like I remind Mom of him sometimes, and you know what I have to say to that?

Stop.

It's not fair to me. I am not Dad nor anything like him. To punish me for his wrongs is senseless. The other day I asked Mom a question and she said: "You're reminding me of your dad. I feel like I'm being interrogated."

I said: "Dad doesn't ask one question. He asks you unlimited questions until he gets to one you can't answer. That's interrogation."

I know I have been less than the brother, less than the son I could have been to all of you. I know there are always good reasons you have, your own disorders and histories and personalities, and I know that sometimes a person isn't even aware of why their behavior is the way it is, or why it has changed. But we're all in a web and you may not know this, but I need you. I need your support and I need you to love. Without you, my mental health falls apart. Without you, I feel lost and disconnected. Sometimes when we're together I still feel disconnected!—but that's ok, it's better than nothing. I'm thirty-six and in many ways an adult but Dad, do you know how hard it is to know that you're alive, out there, consciously making the choice not to call your son. Every, single, day. Really thinking through that—thinking through what that means—has put me in the hospital before. Thinking about a father who has the ability to emotionally cut off his son? I don't know, man, I think you and I are cut from different stuff. And he has his reasons, too—his parents, his sisters, whatever..call your fucking son. Did you ever think that part of why I don't have kids is I'm scared I would parent like my dad and I would never want to do that to someone else.

---

It's not your fault that I end up in a mental hospital, that I have bipolar, that I'm chronically suicidal. But we don't exist in a vacuum. I can only imagine the effect my illness has on you. I'm sure it's at least half horrible. And I know it's at least half wonderful. Joanne is right, though, this isn't a family—it's a collection of individuals. We call each other rarely or not at all. My dad denies me the simple love of a call—I believe that is criminal. My aunt and uncle lie in bed watching police procedurals eight hours a day while my grandmother sits alone, at the opposite end of the house, her usual company nothing more than a cat—I believe that is criminal. My mother doesn't like to touch..to get a hug I have to go to a 12-step meeting—I think that is criminal. I'm a huge fan of therapy but I don't think it takes the place of the people who are supposedly in relationship actually talking to each other. If you and I have a problem—yes we want to call in the experts—but we're gonna have to talk to each other, too, work things out, be honest, touch, love, learn something new about each other. Counsellors can provide a magical nudge, but you can't outsource the whole relationship to professionals. In the end, it's just you and me babe.

My relationships, people I guessed in my mind I might be close to, my aunt, coworkers, my dad—they're dropping like flies. Maybe it's because I'm crazy. Maybe they're not up for me. Maybe they just don't want me in their lives because I don't provide something they want. At my current rate, though, by the time I'm forty I'll have no one left.

Dad will have nothing to do with me (which in the past has made me want to kill myself). He and Mom are the ones who have given me the most in this life—especially Mom. I live in fear, each day, that I will do one last thing—something attributable to my illnesses or something not—but something that will make my mom cast me off me forever, like my dad has, and if that happens I don't think I will be able to live. If my Mom died, it would be the hardest death I could imagine. But if she was alive and refused to speak to me, the weight would be too much to bear.

---

So, because I got irrationally mad and ultimately suicidal over the thought of having to pretend that James and Leona and I were all one big happy family at GranGran's, I checked myself into The Worst Psych Hospital in the World..because I take suicidal thoughts seriously, like my doctors tell me.

I stayed at the most horrible, horrible mental hospital in the country—the worst of five I've been in. It did more harm than good for me. Complete incompetence, negligence, lack of training. It wasn't a healing environment at all. You had to ask every single time you went to the bathroom, you weren't allowed to write. Writing is the single most common and useful therapeutic activity that takes place in a mental hospital—over doctors, over medicine, over safety. But not in this place. No paper, no notebooks, no pencils. They had some elementary-aged coloring books with a bunch of 1/3 length colored pencils—try to write a journal entry with that. Once I got there I realized I made a huge mistake: this was not to be a healing time, but an endurance test—don't act out, act normal, so you can get out of here as soon as possible. Our medicine was administered at all times of the day except the times we were scheduled to be taking them. The psychiatrists did not consult with my outside psychiatrist—too much work—and they changed all my medicine. It took months for my outside psychiatrists to get me back on a reasonable cocktail. The worst part was we were marshaled around the ward in one large group. You could not spend quiet time in your room. Bedrooms were for sleeping only. The rest of the time we were forced to sit in a room with a TV running daytime, mainstream television—this was hell for me.

But you always make friends. My favorite was the Lortab girl—she was detoxing off taking like 40 Lortab daily and after that she would go to some rehab center in New Orleans and somehow start a new life. To me it seemed impossible (the starting a new life part). I told her about seeing computer patterns on the wall and when I stared off she would ask if I was seeing my stuff again. You know, we took basic psychological care of each other.

I had this schizophrenic woman talking to me and it takes a while to figure out that her whole story is bullshit. She had me feeling sympathetic for her at first..then she was related every US President and I was like, I gotta go. I'm crazy enough without having my head messed with (totally unintentionally, of course) by some schizophrenic in total fantasy land—I've only got one foot on the ground myself. I'm trying to keep it there.

One day a guy tries to make a break for it but he just falls down when he runs into a huge plastic window that he must have thought was an open space. We all kind of laughed at his attempt. But he had spunk, he believed in his plan and he gave it his all. I think he was in a wheelchair.

---

I said "Yes, sir," and agreed to all the psychiatrists's ridiculous medicine changes and got out of that hospital in a week. Coming back from the hospital, I walked into my room and instantly realized Bob had gone through completely everything in my room—all my clothes, all my possessions—cleaning it wonderfully, but rearranging everything. It was his way to show he cared, but it also showed that it wasn't my motherfucking room. He and GranGran often entered my room to collect an empty glass or two—if they had simply done nothing and not come into my room, I would have brought those glasses to the kitchen within a day or two. Also, some of Bob's bookshelves were in "my" room and he went in there from time to time to re-shelve his books. I know I was living in their house but I was contributing my entire food stamp card to the house groceries, my mom was paying the entire phone bill for all of our shared cell and data plan, so I was contributing financially, even if it wasn't apparent that I was contributing in other ways as well.

My grandmother was caring but clueless. The last thing she would ever think to do would be to educate herself on—say—what bipolar disorder is, or why her grandson wanted to kill himself and had to go to a substandard red state mental hospital to supposedly prevent this.

The way it was at GranGran's house, because we lied to her, she never had to face the political fact that some people have no money, no car, no way to get a job, and are mentally or physically disabled. Now it becomes a personal issue. It's not just some vilified mass of losers living off the government dole. It's her grandson. That makes it real. It's just like the gay rights issue. Predictably as the rising of the sun, before people know close friends or family who are gay, they can afford to be against gay rights. After they know close friends or family who are gay, their position changes, one-hundred percent, every, single, time.

143

I ate macaroni and cheese for the two and a half years I lived with my aunt and uncle. My uncle did all the shopping. No one else was invited or allowed to go with him. I just had to put grocery items on the refrigerator whiteboard and hope for the best. About once every six months GranGran would cook some food she bought off QVC and we would eat together. On these rare occasions she would open up to me and have me look up the meaning of a word for her crossword on my iPad dictionary. Or she'd tell me about Phillip Phillips' "Home," and we'd listen to it together again and again. It was precious time. As of this writing she is still alive, but I haven't been back to Baton Rouge since we moved away and the last time I said goodbye to her, for all I know, it might be the last time I ever say goodbye to her.

So Bob himself only ever went to the grocery store—only he ever went to get groceries. That's just the way things were done at that house. At first when I asked Bob if I could help him put away the groceries, he said no, but I persisted until we always put the groceries away together. And the cupboard was wonderful. I was conditioned by my father to dread helping him put groceries into the cupboard—in our house the cupboard wasn't quite alphabetized, but there were definitely certain places you put certain things, and if you put something in a new place it was wrong. Dad would get frustrated and angrily move the item to the correct place, pushing me out of the way.

But with Bob, it was very relaxed.

I'd say, "Where do pickles go?"

And Bob would say, "Wherever. It's not like we won't be able to find them."

And with a feeling of lightness that I had never felt before helping an older man put away groceries, I chose a place on the shelf that I thought was perfect for the pickles, and I put them there. And no one got gruff or scolded me or moved them from the place I put them. I mean there was plenty of OCD around that house—and I fit right in with that disorder—but somehow the pantry had escaped this ordering fetish and putting jars and cans and bottles away there was anxiety free.

When Susan left food out after she used it, GranGran (even though she had presumably been living with Susan for a decade or two before I arrived) GranGran always asked me if I left whatever food out and I gently said no without ever mentioning Susan. I never knew what was most helpful and less codependent—putting the food away or leaving it out for Susan to do later in the day when she realized it had been out all day. Seeing raw meat left out on the counter was the hardest for me to do nothing about. But I dared not say anything—I didn't want to accidentally assert that I had any power to suggest a change to Susan's behavior. That assertion in that house would have been like setting off a bomb.

There was a day when Bob was making his famous chili—the chili that mostly Bob ate and everyone else ate half a bowl of topped with mountains of sour cream and cheese just to be nice. So he gathers all the ingredients—on his bike, being very environmentally responsible—he puts the ingredients in a giant pot (like two feet tall), he turns the burner on low, and he goes to work.

Me, Susan, and GranGran are at the house. I was in my room with the door closed. Susan was in her room with the door closed. GranGran was in her room with the door closed.

At some point I realize this chili is burning.

There is smoke filling the entire kitchen and living room.

For some reason the smoke detector is sleeping.

I go to Susan's door, about to knock, and then I think: Susan is gonna get real pissed about this chili thing. She might—not saying she will—but she might even hold me or GranGran responsible.

And then I asked myself: do I want to put myself in the center of this problem by being the messenger of bad news. And I decided the answer to that question was no. If Susan was less cocooned in her room, she would already know about this problem. And in my mind, this burning chili problem became more about the fact that everyone in this house holes up in their rooms talking to no one, aware of nothing..or even, it becomes about someone who put something on the stove and, without telling anyone, goes to work.

So I take that hand that was about to knock on Susan's door and I go back to my room, close the door, and go back to watching movies on my iPad.

Periodically I check to make sure there isn't an actual fire that might burn down the house, but every time I check it's just smoke, smoke, and more smoke. So there's no real danger.

An hour or two later, Susan comes out, goes ballistic, turns on the attic fan, calls Bob, complains to the security system company. Bob is extremely pissed..at what?..that he left something on the stove and went to work and it burned? I hope he wasn't pissed at anyone at the house for not doing his cooking for him because I for one can say I was never asked to look over a pot of chili.

It's like the meat-on-the-counter thing. Why should I stick my neck out with Susan and say, "You're leaving raw meat out on the counter?" when I'm likely to get my head bit off?

We weren't a community—as I've said people didn't even tell each other where they were going or when they'd be back when they left the house. So fuck that. I'm not sticking my neck out to possibly get blamed for someone else's failed cooking project.

Bob was a weird guy. Like he thinks he can cook but he can't. His coking is awful.

Or he'll say, "Susan and I are probably going to retire in Arizona."

Then a month later I'll say, "Are you and Susan still thinking of retiring in Arizona?"

Instead of saying, "Oh we're thinking differently now. We're thinking more Oregon," he would say, "Arizona? No, we like the weather but we would never move there because of the politics."

Like? You just said you were going to move there. You have to link the two ideas, conversationally, to showcase the change of position, or else it doesn't make sense.

Or his debugging of the cable/TV/remote situation. If some of the buttons on the remote were working, but others weren't, he'd immediately conclude that the batteries on the remote needed to be replaced. Instead of: maybe the cable box is broke? If a battery—even a weak one—has enough power to work one of the buttons on a remote, it has enough power to work all of them.

I wondered, frankly, how he managed to get paid as a computer programmer for his entire career—someone with his debugging skills, at one of the companies I worked for, we would just fire.

---

I cooled down enough to be around James when they came for vacation.

James totally told me Leona and Joanne a story in the living room of my grandmother's house and—lol!—James did not look at me for the duration of his entire story. He gesticulated! He used verbal emphasis! He made eye contact with..Joanne..Leona..just not me. Not a single time.

But I still text him from time to time. After interacting with Daniel and Joel, I'll say things like, "Your sons are delightful and that reflects so well on you and Leona!"

James doesn't respond.

Whatever. You know? I'm living my life and when I want to say nice things to people, I will. Their response or lack of response has nothing to do with me.

He told me once he reads everything I send but is too busy to respond. That's bullshit, bro—I hope you're reading this and let me repeat that for you—that's bullshit, bro. If you want to be in a relationship with someone, you gotta respond. Without two-way communication, there is no relationship.

It's a world filled with weird-ass people like that, that makes me want to kill myself.

I mean what type of bullshit are you selling yourself, James? I communicate with you but you're too busy to communicate with me—but you want me to keep communicating? That's nonsense, among other things..it's disrespectful, it's idiocy, it's insulting.

And at the time it made me mad.

So I got mad at James.

Then my internal rule fired off: I'm not allowed to be mad at anybody else.

So I got mad at me.

Then I felt suicidal.

I wasn't drinking at the time. See, when I'm using and I get depressed, mad, whatever, I drink or drug. It distracts me from my feelings, and I wake up the next morning feeling fine. However, when I'm clean and sober and I get depressed or mad, I make plans to kill myself.

There was this NA group leader in Tucson who said he would never go back to using—that if he ever got in that cycle again he would take a bullet to the head. Those were his two options, as he saw them: stay clean (and he didn't seem very happy clean), or die..literally die by suicide. He moved to Tucson to work for a company that was supposed to make him rich. It didn't work out. He became homeless. He started using. This is a middle-class person whose life was destroyed by capitalism and then he took it upon himself to destroy it further with drugs. You don't start out homeless—you start out in a cubicle in a high rise in New York.

144

I recover from my one-week stay at The Worst Mental Hospital over a period of six months.

At Leona's house, someone had agreed to publish Things Said in Dreams. Leona and I fought about the cover photo. She wanted one more smiley and I wanted one more serious but she couldn't frame a picture so I went with my serious but well-framed one. Editing took months. I got bored waiting for my book to "come out" on the publisher's schedule. It came out of me three years earlier. When I got the box of author copies, I broke out my aunt's gin and celebrated with a tall glass. I published my first book. I wasn't even sure what that meant in the internet age, but I celebrated anyway.

A year later I deciding to unpublish TSID and give all my books away for free on my website. My friend Davina helped me through the process. It took some mental contortions on my part but in the end it felt so right. It was a cathartic process and a bold decision and I'll never forget that day. I wrote on my whiteboard (and it's still there) "That's what I need. Not the good choice. The brilliant choice."

My ideas about selling my books go through a rapid transformation. I'll share them here in two posts:

March 13, 2014

Why I am unpublishing Things Said in Dreams

Simply, because the publishing industry is bullshit. The author gets 10%, while the publisher gets 90? It's unacceptable.

I'd rather give my books away for free than go along with something like that. So until a publisher is willing to give me at least 90% of the proceeds of my books, I won't publish with them.

The author does the crucial work. For a publisher to get most of the money is robbery. I'm done with it.

I've deleted my list of literary agents and I will no longer send query letters or try to be published by the traditional route.

Who benefits? You do. The reader. And that's the whole point. People write books so that people can read books, and it's a beautiful thing that—with the advent of the internet—simply doesn't need publishers anymore.

So..sit back and relax, and read my books for free.

And number two:

May 13, 2014

Why I am giving my books away for free

For a while now, the way to get a book published has been to submit query letters to literary agents and hope to find an agent who will make your case to a publisher. You can't submit directly to publishers—they don't accept submissions. You have to go through a literary agent if you want a shot at a commercially successful book.

Query letters are evil. They consist of a description of the plot of the book and a blurb about the author. Agents read thousands of these every year and decide, based on these letters, which books to read. The vast majority of query letters are ignored or result in a rejection. Think about what this means: it means that books are being rejected by agents without the agent ever having read the book. I understand that agents can't read every book that everyone submits to them, but a query letter is a feeble tool for understanding what is in a book. A book is its text, not just its plot. The fact that agents rely on query letters to select books tells you something about what they value in a book. They value the book's salability based on market trends. Is this book enough like other commercially successful books in terms of subject matter? They do not value the writing itself—or they would request a writing sample (the first page for example).

Feedback from literary agents is frustrating. When they deign to respond, they often say something like, "We like this but couldn't publish it in today's climate." This is a common theme in my rejections and the rejections of my author friends. Tell me this: if you like a book, isn't that the book you should be backing? Isn't the job of the literary agent to champion an author whose work they like? Apparently not. Literary agents also want to rewrite your book. I've had agents tell me that they could publish my book if only it had a different ending. My book wouldn't be my book if I let others write the ending! I don't contact an agent to get advice on how to write. I contact them seeking representation for my book, which I wrote. Yet another thing you'll hear from agents is that your book isn't right for "their list." They're looking for particular books that fit their wish lists, instead of reading the books that are actually being written and picking the best of those.

To make matters worse, if you do publish a book with a traditional publisher, the publisher will take 90% of the money. That's right. The author creates the product—and gets %10. The author develops, over a lifetime, the sensitivities and skills needed to write a book, and produces a rare product that people want to read. What does the publisher do? Have a connection with Barnes & Noble? The publisher offers editing assistance and a way to get your book onto the right shelf in a bookstore. Is that worth 90%? I don't think so. Those percentages should be reversed.

I had a book published, my novel Things Said in Dreams. It was published with a small press that treated me well and gave me a slightly higher royalty percentage than usual. I was very excited to get my book published. But after a year or so, I developed a moral objection to the basic arrangement. Even if it's a small amount of money, I just can't feel right about someone else getting the bulk of the proceeds from my books. I'm not writing my books to make money. I'm writing because I love the process of writing, the act of writing—and because I love reading books. But the money is important. It reflects where we think the value lies. And to go along with a system that suggests that the value lies more with the publisher than the author is wrong to me.

So I got out of my contract with my publisher. I was already giving away all my unpublished books for free on my website. This was just that final step towards giving away absolutely all my books for free. I had heard of Radiohead giving away an album with a pay-as-you-want model, and that example inspired me. I put a donate button on my website and started submitting my books to free book sites on the internet.

I stopped thinking in terms of reaching agents and publishers, and started thinking in terms of reaching readers. People write books so that people can read books, and with the internet, I can reach readers everywhere. This has been a major shift for me. I sent query letters out for ten years. I got into the mode of thinking that in order to reach readers, I had to first reach agents. Agents became more important in my mind than they should be. I never wrote to please agents, but I did want to please them. With giving my books away for free, that has all shifted. The most important person for me to reach is the reader. The agent is irrelevant.

Giving my books away hasn't been without hiccups. One editor of a free book website rejected all of my book submissions. He said, "If you ever find yourself writing anything a little more 'mainstream' please feel free to email me." As if it's the author's job to write to the editor's specifications.

The author's job is to have a vision. A singular vision, that only they could have. And to write based on that vision. It is not the author's job to write commercially successful material, or mainstream material, or to please literary agents and editors. Writers do something that neither literary agents nor editors nor publishers do: they write books. They go into the wilds of their imagination and observation and they construct something that can be read by others. A person who does this earns, on their journey into those wilds, the wisdom to know what to write and what not to write. A literary agent has not made this journey. A publisher has not made this journey. It is the author's place, and the author's place alone, to decide what to write. For agents and publishers to act like it is the author's job to cater to their whims is nonsensical.

When it comes down to it, it's not about agents and publishers. It's not even about authors. It's about books. People love to read. As writers, I think we need to aim to increase the amount of reading that happens. For me, right now, that means giving my books away for free. That way people with no money can read them and people who can and want to can donate. Take as needed, give as able. I think that maximizes the value I can provide through my writing, and that is why I'm doing it.

With those two transitions, my thinking about books and writing them had changed forever.

145

Where do you get your good feelings? That's a question you need to ask yourself. Maybe you get your good feelings from your job (your "career")—from doing good work and making money in return. From feeding your family, feeling like you're needed—that feels good. Maybe you get it from your belief in god or the belief that when you die, there will be something after—maybe you get it from religion. Or maybe you get it from your art, from saying something and feeling that people are listening to you. Or playing with your dog. A lot of people get their good feelings from exploring and expressing their sexual identity—it's important for humans to have a sense of their own identity, who they are—and our identities are complex and changing. Maybe you feel good when you fuck—when you make your girl cum. Maybe that look on her face when she hits the top, loses all control, and her pussy runs hot and she looks you in the eyes like she's so grateful that you can rock her world—maybe that's part of where you get your good feelings.

But what happens when your ability to do those things goes away? Maybe you get old. Maybe you get sick. Maybe you lose all your money and all the relationships you had before that can only take place within society are lost. What are you then? What if you can't work? What if you can't make your girl cum? Then your identity is less stable.

What if you're diagnosed as crazy. Yeah, that's not the technical term, but what if your diagnosis is so serious and so stigmatized that your family members, your friends, your lovers, your employers, your coworkers don't trust you anymore. They don't trust your veracity. They think that mentally ill people are dangerous. They think that because you're ill, their thoughts always trump your thoughts because you're crazy and if you're crazy, how can you be making any sense? Suddenly no one regards you as the expert on anything—at work, school, home. Everyone doubts you because your illness overshadows everything else about you, even things they've known about you for a long time.

Like this one time, my grandmother stomps into the room where I've been talking to my sister on the phone—GranGran was eavesdropping from the hallway and I said something she found so unbelievable that she was forced to break her cover. What I said was something along the lines of: Uncle Rusty is a loose cannon and I don't want to be in the same room with him when he might have a gun. My grandmother busted in the room and said:

"That's my son you're talking about."

"I'm fully aware of that. And my point stands. He's a drunk, he's a loose cannon, he's a racist, he's a sexist, and I don't know if you know this, but the last time he was over here he used the phrase 'nigger pussy' in a conversation with me. I know he's your son. I respect that. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, but based on Rusty's politics and things he has said I think it's reasonable for us to stop him at the door next time he comes over and one of the adults can frisk him and make sure he's not carrying a gun."

GranGran looks at me in the most derisive way possible and hisses at me like the serpent from the Garden of Eden. She says:

"Rusty doesn't own a gun."

Then she disappeared back the way she came.

Later, someone—either my mom or aunt—asked Rusty if he owned a gun, and lo and behold, that drunk, racist, sexist, Tea Party motherfucker does own a gun, and he keeps it in the glove compartment of his truck. So when Rusty is visiting the house, being hateful and out of control and drunk and angry, we're all just one trip to the driveway away from having a family shooting.

But the point isn't how ignorant and irresponsible my uncle Rusty is, the point is I was right about Rusty owning a gun and even after my grandmother spitefully, dismissively, disrespectfully hissed at me: "Rusty doesn't own a gun," she still gives me no regard, whether I'm talking about Rusty or a roach. That's fucking rudeness, I don't care if she is my grandmother. Did she ever come to me and say, "I'm sorry, I was wrong, you were right, your hothead uncle is packing heat and I'm sorry for hissing at you like a snake." No. She never mentioned the incident to me again. She never came back and corrected the wrong. She never gave me a simple apology. She gets a pass because she's eighty-four—and because she's my grandmother—but even at eighty-four, that woman is still sharp. She knows what's going on. Most of why she never apologized to me is not because she's senile—because she is not senile and she does not have Alzheimer's—most of why she never apologized to me is because I'm not a real person to her. I'm someone to be pitied or feared—not an equal. Almost no one understands mental illness, but old people are the worst—when they hear the term mental illness they think you're a vegetable or a murderer and either way you should be locked up for the betterment of society—and by society they mean white supremacists like my loving GranGran and her precious little gun-toting white supremacist son.

A lot of people think mental illness means a person is dangerous—even when science shows that mentally healthy people are more of a danger to mentally ill people than the other way around (this should make us all question our terms). Even if you've never thrown a punch since the moment you came out of your mother's womb, some people get scared around you even though you're acting just as they are—breathing slowly, talking gently, eating, laughing, joking.

Who are you when you can no longer do anything silly—because when a normal person does something silly, it's funny..but when a crazy person does something silly, it's scary, somehow..scary that I sent you a text message that stated your daily fortune in emojis—the only thing scary about that is that you didn't think of it first. Truly, even among supposedly civilized people, we simply fear what we don't understand—and we're not embarrassed by our ignorance, we revel in it.

Sometimes I think it's not really that most people are sane and a few people are crazy, but rather that most people lack imagination and fun! in their lives and a few people have imagination and fun coming out their ass.

I know this is judgmental and I know from therapy that it's a mistake to compare my insides to other people's outsides but I really do believe—as a result of all my experience and all my observation and all my thinking on this subject—that you have to come unhinged at least a little bit to fully enjoy this life.

146

I went into Susan's bathroom to get the hair clippers and this time when I opened the drawer where they were kept, I paid a little more attention than usual and noticed Susan had syringes.

Guess I was weak on the drug front 'cause the first place my mind went was: I wonder if I can shoot some of Susan's hydrocodone for a more immediate effect?

Crush up a hydrocodone.

Dissolve it in water.

Shoot that motherfucker.

Luckily, like a good drug addict, I looked it up first because according to the internet, shooting hydrocodone doesn't get you any higher than swallowing it and it causes liver damage or kidney damage or some shit. So of course I didn't do it.

I never told anyone that, even Davina, 'cause I knew it was crazy scary and indicated I had worse addiction problems (and was in a worse addiction state at that time) than anyone knew.

The was the same day when, earlier, I had discovered, after a couple months sober, a bottle of gin in the back porch freezer and you better believe I popped that open. I was so excited when I opened up that door and saw that giant-sized bottle of Albertson's gin. The excitement was instant.

And that was the day I told Davina I thought she was my soulmate. Three days later when I told her I was drinking, she thought that meant that I didn't mean what I said. But I did.

147

You know when I started drinking again, the last time?

Davina asked me to write her memoir. I started taking notes as soon as I said yes, not waiting for the interviews to start. I raised the level of sexual intimacy between us to help her feel comfortable with telling me her deepest secrets. I also told her my most intimate stories to encourage her to do the same. One day, on a lark, I told her about the time I mauled that snake in the woods when it had surprised me and I said I felt horrible about it. And—like magic—she told me the puppy story from her youth and it turned out to be the lynchpin of her whole book (read Davina if you want the details).

But yeah, I sent her dick pics and videos partially for fun and partially because I like talking sexy with her and her talking sexy with me through text and phone, and she did get me turned on with her dirty texts, but it was also a way to increase the intimacy of our relationship in order to increase the intimacy of the interviews..and it worked..and once the interviews were over, the sexiness subsided and eventually went away when she found another boy to be sexy with.

But I kept taking notes on everything she said, Tweeted, texted, posted before during and after our twenty one-hour interviews, for over two years, until about a month after I finished the first draft. This was a gray area, taking notes on what someone says outside the context of the formal interviews, using material she told me before she ever asked me to write the book..but I had dual goals: 1) Treat my friend fairly. 2) Write the best book possible. They were only sometimes at odds. I felt at the time I was in a moral gray area, taking notes outside the interviews, and at times I felt I had crossed the line. I am not generally an ends justify the means person—quite opposite. But in this case, in order to make the best possible book, I went against my own morality a little bit.

Davina and I never discussed this. When she read the book, she never mentioned any distinction between content that was gathered inside the context of the formal interviews and content that was gathered outside that context. I don't know if she remembers what she said when, if she cares, or if perhaps she knew all along that anything she said was fair game.

But: drinking.

I had stopped to do interviews on Davina's memoir. Then I stayed sober for a while and I was on a good path. I worked on the outline to that book, watched movies every night till 2am, and listened to the DJ Baby Anne station on my Pandora. I had a new iPhone, and I even stopped smoking the day I got the iPhone, which only cost my aunt twenty-six dollars with taxes and activation and everything, because of some promo.

So I was doing alright. And what happened next I can't blame my drinking on, but at the very least I can say it was my excuse to drink again. And once I broke the seal, I was done. I only drank for one or two months, but it was the heaviest drinking I've done in my life.

---

What happened was this garage sale. And if you're already congratulating yourself on how psychologically robust you are that you would never drink over a garage sale, pipe down a minute, we're not all as well adjusted as you are to living in this hideous, backward world. I'm too sensitive a person to live in the reality that most of you love and call home—it's a miracle I've lived this long here, to be quite honest.

Right. We have a bunch of stuff in the house, my aunt uncle and grandmother's house where I'm living after I tried to kill myself in Vermont, moved to Portland, got kicked out of my sister's house, and moved to Baton Rouge where my aunt kindly took me in.

There were problems. First, everyone in my family, not just me, has problematic OCD. I basically couldn't do anything in that house without someone correcting me. I took their correction quietly and adjusted myself to them—I was the mentally ill one who needed a place to live, so I decided to make myself as conforming as possible.

Second, you might recall my aunt has this weird love affair with a moron named Mack, and Mack was staying at the house. For a while Mack and I stayed in the same room. Recall that Mack and Susan would come home drunk from the casino, screaming obscenities at each other at 4am. That does not equal safe living environment to me. Mack physically threatened me, he yelled for no reason when cooking smells from the kitchen bothered him, he disrespected my mom when she asked for some of his time to talk about how yelling was raising the anxiety level in the house. (Strike infinity, motherfucker.) He camped out in the living room watching The Expendables (every sequel), dumb-ass high school pseudo-comedies, Eli Roth films—films for morons. I mean if Mack had the tiniest taste in movies, he would have been less annoying camping out in the living room while I was trying to write. He disrespected my grandmother by wearing earbuds when she was talking to him. When he did that I wanted to slap the shit out of him—my Mom also, naturally, didn't like it when Mack showed disrespect for my mom's mom (in fact if you think I hate Mack, check with my mother—her vitriol for the motherfucker is greater than mine).

And he made fun of me—uncalled for, dude. When I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down at my laptop, he said, (imagine this in a disdainful southern accent) "Did you just pour yourself a glass of wine? It's twelve o'clock. Who do you think you are, Hemingway?"

Yeah, Mack, compared to you I'm a thousand Hemingways.

Anyway one night this insect said some critical shit to me and I snapped my fingers in his fucking face—like right in his eyes, an inch from his head. My aunt called us both outside for a conflict-resolution session. As you recall, she was always making excuses for Mack ("Well, he's untreated bipolar"). Then treat that motherfucker! And she was always comparing me to Mack, which, I mean, was ridiculous. We both have forty-six chromosomes—that's about where the similarity ends. The conflict-resolution session didn't resolve shit. Mack insincerely appeased Susan but he continued to insult me and my cousin. Stephen and Susan's MO was to let Mack do whatever he wanted. My MO was to lay down the motherfucking law.

One night, late, my mom was sleeping in the next room and Mack was having a loud telephone conversation. I was in a different room by this time. I could hear every word he was saying. I went to his room, opened the curtain, and said:

"Mack. It's late. My mom is in the next room trying to sleep. Will you please quiet your voice?"

Mack handled this in the typical bullheaded ignorant male style, coming up to me and stepping to me like we were about to have a fight. Hey Bobby Fischer, my fucking grandmother is two rooms down, do you really think you're gonna fight me? How many moves ahead did you think that one?

Words were said. I don't remember what they were exactly but the gist was me telling him to shut the fuck up and go to bed and him threatening me in vague and unlikely ways, since he was a foot shorter than me and I was so mad at him that I could have bitten his face off like Hannibal Lecter on bath salts.

The scene ended with Mack in his room being very very quiet and my aunt and mom (who was already awake due to Mack's loud phone call) standing in my room and my aunt crying, which broke my heart on one level and made no sense on another—really she was just re-living some fear from childhood when her drunk father was yelling in the middle of the night.

But Mack was gone the next day, and—regardless of Susan's infatuation—that's exactly as it should have been.

---

I get delight in thinking of eating Mack's face off and serving him a glass of my "Hemingway" wine through his lipless mouth. He prob'ly never read a Hemingway book in his life. If Mack had been stupid and benevolent, we could have lived peacefully. But he was stupid and malevolent, so that bitch had to go.

My objection to Mack is probably what ended my aunt's relationship with me. But it wasn't just me who hated Mack. My other aunt, both her children, my grandmother, my mom. None of us felt safe around him. And yet Susan chose to make us all uncomfortable in order for her to play Good Samaritan to a loose cannon who picked fights at casinos by calling the black employees nigger. It's obvious why she liked him—she likes the excitement (the chaos). Anyway that's the house I was living in.

And Susan and Mack would watch TV both lying in Susan and her husband's bed. Even when Susan's girlfriend came over to watch TV, Susan lay in the bed and her friend sat on a reclining chair beside the bed. I confronted Susan about this and she never shared openly with me again. My mom confronted Susan about Mack and Susan stopped sharing openly with my mom, her sister, from that point on.

148

But Susan did let me do the garage sale.

We had a bunch of stuff from my aunt and uncle, my mom's storage unit—the house was filled with junk. Aunt Susan came to me and said:

"How would you like to be in charge of the garage sale?"

I said, "Fine. I'll do anything I can to help."

She said, "You can do it any way you want. You can set the prices. Basically everything in the front room is for sale."

I said, "Sweet. Just tell me the date and I'll make it happen."

She said, "Ok, Bob and I are working out the date. It'll either be the weekend a month from now or the weekend after. You can keep the profits. I just want all this stuff out of here."

I said, "I would have done it for free, but I'll be happy to take your money."

I smiled.

She smiled.

"I know you would have," she said. "But this way you'll have some money for cigarettes and stuff."

The date of the sale approaches.

We all gather our junk and put it in the front room.

We're a family of junk, furniture, and book collectors just below the level of hoarders. We watch Hoarders to feel better about our own lesser level of hoarding. The front room used to be a place where we hung out when guests came over (I was a guest at that time). We played Pong in there when Atari first came out. Ornate, antique cabinets contained decks of cards and poker chips from another time. Now, the front room is an untraversable junkyard of books, suits that were only worn to one job interview, and tons of plastic bins—who knows what is in them.

On the night before the garage sale, I imagined us all kind of doing a party atmosphere like we did when I first arrived at that house: cheese-and-olive plate, all talking and joking. No. Susan grabbed an overnight bag and went—somewhere—she never tells anyone where she's going and she sure as fuck never told me after I confronted her about Mack.

So Susan is gone. When she said I was going to be "in charge" of the garage sale I didn't know that meant she was going to be unavailable if I had questions..but..this was ok. I hoped she had fun and I started making signs to place around the neighborhood to lead people to our house. Susan's husband, my uncle Bob, moved everything from the front room and placed things in categorical piles in the living room. I had imagined myself doing the moving of the for-sale items, since I was in charge of the garage sale. I was happy to do all the work so Susan and certainly Bob didn't have to do anything. But I was never really "in charge" of the garage sale—I was just there to be the guy who priced the items, got up early, and dealt with the customers. I wanted to organize the items, but Bob had already pre-organized them! He gave me a speech:

"This keyboard..I'm not sure if it works. If anyone asks if anything works, just tell them yes, that we tested everything. This TV..I'm guessing you could get fifty..a hundred..one-fifty? And maybe these books could be like..five dollars a piece? I got them from book sales but they're duplicate copies." (Bob has a five-thousand book library in that house.) "And these cable modems..I think I got these out of the trash heap at the old library..they were just throwing out all this equipment and I was like..some of this stuff has value."

Don't hear me making fun of my uncle. That five-thousand (at least) book library that has grown to occupy every room in the house—that's hoarding. He hasn't read a tenth of those books. So in that sense it's sickness: the need to categorize, collect, database thousands of books that even an avid reader will never get round to reading. But it's amazing, too. If I ask Bob for a classic, something I want to re-read, there's at least a fifty-perfect chance that he has it (and knows exactly where it is).

Bob goes through everything in the garage sale and tells me how to arrange it and he sets up tables on the patio and for most items, he suggests prices and I'm starting to wonder how exactly I'm in charge of this garage sale. I would have loved to do it with Susan, with Bob, but before tonight the only communication I was aware of was between me and Susan. Now Bob is directing me down to the detail about what to do. And he tells me he'll be sleeping in in the morning, missing as much of the actual action as he can.

I felt used. When Susan said, "Will you be in charge of the garage sale?" she meant Will you run the cash box for the garage sale while Bob sleeps in and I'm playing poker at some hotel in Mississippi?

---

And what does an alcoholic do when he feels used? Does he call his aunt and talk about his feelings? Does he say to someone, This is not what I signed up for, I'll be in my room, goodnight. No. An alcoholic takes on the disappointment, feels hurt by being clearly misled and miscommunicated with, and he takes the remaining garage sale work upon himself while everybody else in the "family" is nowhere to be seen.

Oh, and he procures some Evan Williams and drinks half the bottle.

He arranges everything meticulously on the patio, setting up a cove at one end of a long table that contains his cash box, an iPad with earbuds and music, and a glass of whiskey.

He starts pricing but it's too late so he makes the decision that everything, including a huge-screen TV, will be priced at one dollar. The exception will be books and music, which (in the interest of promoting learning) will be free.

Yeah, I nursed my overreacting feelings with whiskey that night and the next morning all through the sale. With my genius pricing scheme, every motherfucking thing on that porch sold and we made more than we had made at any previous garage sale.

With the proceeds, I drank every day until I was begging for help from the heavens to please let me fucking stop. If you're still enjoying drinking, you're not an alcoholic. If you have ripped all the skin off your own body and written I am in hell—Help me on the wall, with your fingers, in your own blood, then you might want to get yourself to a meeting.

I drank like that.

I had gotten sober to do Davina's interviews, stopped drinking wine even though she was drinking wine to loosen herself up. Let's say that was fair since she was the subject and I was the one "on duty"..let's just say that was fair. So I sobered up and did her interviews sober or drinking a little wine and not telling her about it. I borrowed money from GranGran to drink jug wine from Walmart..I could drink one of those in two nights. Then I sobered up completely. Was about to start writing Davina's book, then found that bottle of Albertson's gin in the outside fridge and tore through it with some codeine from my aunt's room (which just made me puke—it was designed to lessen pain without getting you high =( I was so obsessed with drinking that I would drink on the back porch, puke in the garden, then pour another drink, knowing I couldn't keep that one down, either.

I had fun drinking with Davina. Sometimes I'd tell my family, often I would go out under the pretense of buying Burger King and set the Rite Aid Evan Williams in a hidden spot somewhere in the front yard, then when the front room was clear of people, I'd go out and sneak in my alcohol. One night Bob was watching some hobbit movie at full volume so I took out my trash, emptied it, put my whiskey in it, and carried the trash can in as if it were empty. Then I was free to drink.

I drank in secret at night in my mom's living room on our trips to New Orleans. Having gotten a week clean and not even having an immediate emotional reason to drink, I poured myself a drink at Mom's house and set it beside my iPad, Tweeting, deciding whether I was going to drink that night or not. Forty-five minutes later I finally convinced myself to take a sip.

I drank for another month.

I would drink in my room and watch Flight all day and all night—I obviously related to the story. It made me want to stop. It made me want to drink. It underscored my drinking. I used it as a justification. Over a year and a half sober now, I finally dared to watch it again and it was a totally different experience.

Then came my final drinking days of traveling with Mom to New Orleans and making screwdrivers with our Wendy's breakfast orange juice and I'd sit in the balcony of her church drinking and emailing my cousin Kristi while they did church below.

I finally started going to meetings. I went through four sponsors in a year, finding them all lacking. I went to a hateful men's meeting in Baton Rouge, then a good meditation meeting but it was peppered with events like a guy named Chris raising his hand when the questions was asked, "Is anyone here willing to be a temporary sponsor." After Chris raised his hand, after the meeting, I went up to him and asked if he would be my temporary sponsor and he said, as he walked past me,

"I don't do this temporary sponsor stuff. If you're ready to get clean follow the steps, and live by a higher power of your choosing, then call me."

What an asshole. Maybe next time don't raise your hand when the moderator asks who's willing to be a temporary sponsor.

I finally settled on a sponsor named Glory. Tradition says that in sponsorship men stick with men, women stick with women, but Glory was a perfect fit for me so we broke that rule. Glory was so generous—she talked with my for 45 minutes after the meeting where we met. But she was also really pushy—coming over to swim in the pool at me and Mom's new apartment and talk AA. I was telling her my clenching was acting up too much and I was in pain and I needed to go inside in ten minutes.

I had developed tardive dyskinesia from one of the psych meds I was taking—my antipsychotic—and I could barely sit or stand. I still have to spend most of my day lying down.

Anyway in the pool, Glory is like, "You don't look like you're clenching that bad."

Wtf??!!!

Like many AA/NA people, Glory was pushy enough to come to our freaking apartment without calling first..unbelievable. I dropped her as a sponsor because of some AA bullshit that I'm about to get into in a minute, and Glory just marched herself over to me and Mom's apartment to bark about it. I'm glad for Glory's sake and my own that I was in my room with the door closed when she came over 'cause I would have closed the front door in her motherfucking face. You don't come over without calling unless you think there's a physical emergency—in which case you still don't come over without calling..you call 911. But it was a sign of my pocketful of serenity that I didn't leave my room. I let my Mom handle it. And LOL. Glory thought that my mom was going to totally side with her, and Mom was like, No, you all have made it more difficult for a person with disabilities to come to that meeting..and Mom made an analogy to her churches where some adult members have had a problem with children wearing street shoes to church or using their devices on silent or with headphones during the service..Mom says these adults think they have a really good point but that they're missing the point of why we're here in the first place..to welcome God's people! Anyway she handled Glory.

And when things got really good for me, around the one-year mark, Mom and I started having daily arguments. We were moving, but Davina suggests it might be because I'm improving myself. I think that's a good theory. Why isn't Mom in therapy, you know? Does she think I'm the only one between the two of us who can improve. On the phone Leona suggested Mom and I do couples therapy and asked me if I'd be willing to do that and I was like: Yeah! (I love therapy.) But it took me asking three times and many more months of our fighting before Mom said "yes" to couples therapy.

---

But before I got better, I got worse. A month clean, I relapsed.

Every day I told Davina that today was going to be the last day, and I was always wrong. She stopped wanting to hear it because it was always a fucking lie!—And I stopped wanting to say it for the same reason. She lost me for a while there.

I never came out of my room except at night to drunk-drive in a blackout using one of my relatives' cars to a gas station to buy vodka and cigarettes.

I switched to the cheapest vodka.

I drank one bottle a day.

I was horrified, each day, to wake up and see that I had bought more, while I had absolutely no memory of leaving the house to get it.

And, each day, I drank it anyway.

There were nights when I only wrote poetry because I was drunk. Feeling like I'm on a surf board, in life—and I can't surf. I enjoyed writing for no one, for myself, for a while. It was like a lullaby: no one is reading what I wrote :that pacified my mind.

I wrote on Twitter and was ok with what I wrote—no matter what I wrote.

I went on night walks. Tolerated a small mosquito. Returned without my sandals. I needed another pair, but was too embarrassed to tell my mom how much I was drinking or how I had lost my sandals.

I missed my Vermont psychiatrist, and thought I might be in love with her.

I planned on robbing a Mexican restaurant (not for cash—just for margaritas) but lucky for me it was 4am and the restaurant was locked.

One night Davina texted me that her son had gotten in a car accident. I didn't know this till the next day when I scrolled back through my text history, and in shock I saw that my response to her was, "Hahahahaha."

This next thing might seem minor, but I'd wake up and my iPhone would be on the floor. I would have no idea if I had gently dropped it? Thrown it? I treat my devices preciously—the idea that I had dropped my phone was scary to me..because what else had I done?

Every morning I had to check Facebook, my blog, texts, Twitter, and my call history to see how far my drunk expression may have gone the night before.

I called my cousin. We drank together over the phone for a full week and had hours-long intimate soul-baring conversations that neither of us remember.

This is when I went to visit my mom in New Orleans. I sat in the balcony and drank improvised screwdrivers and hoped I wouldn't throw up during the service.

Someone from Mom's church—let's call him Milton—saw right through me. How could he not?—He's an alcoholic, too. This kind man shared a cigarette with me and talked about his journey and how wonderful his life was now that he stopped drinking—and how it got better every single day he stayed sober. He didn't tell me to stop. No. Milton is too smart for that. He put a hand on my shoulder and he said, "Enjoy your drinking. You'll stop when you're ready."

---

That's something AA's twelve steps don't quite capture. Yes, the first step says, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable." But there's something else that happens, that's really when you change. I've only heard Milton and one other person say this, but, there just comes a point when you're ready.

I wasn't ready. I decided in my crazy mind that I wasn't getting nearly as much bang out of cigarettes as I was alcohol, so I quit smoking and doubled my alcohol consumption. I'm lucky this strategy didn't kill me—but I did quit smoking. Then the weight of drunk driving hit me one day. Waking up to phantom bottles of vodka that certainly hadn't delivered themselves, imagining the very real possibility of waking up out of a blackout drunk in jail after having killed someone driving my mom's car..that was too much for me. I couldn't let that be my life. I couldn't ever again write my best friend, "Hahahahaha," after she told me her son had been in a car accident. That was too much for me. I couldn't let that be my life. I had two nephews now—my sister Leona has two boys. I couldn't be their drunk uncle—I have a drunk uncle and I've hated him since I was about five. I knew there was something wrong with him. I knew I couldn't trust him. And now I had the power to choose whether my nephews have a sober uncle or a drunk uncle. Letting down my sister's kids by being their drunk uncle that they hate, that they distrust? That was too much for me. I couldn't let that be my life.

I told my mom I was drinking again and needed to go to a meeting. She asked no questions—she just made it happen. That day. After my first meeting, I cried. After my second meeting, I wailed. I sat in the car with my mom in the driveway of my grandmother's house and I wept for the me who had for so many years estimated myself so low that I was willing to do drugs that can kill you the first time you shoot them, every time you shoot them. This was not sadness. This was grieving and lamentation—I felt the soul ache that one feels when something of such high value as a human life..my human life..is held so low. How could I have ever let myself get to the point where I cared so little about myself that I would gamble with my life?—flash to this one time, driving like a maniac on the 101, weaving in and out of cars—it's basically a miracle I never got stopped for drunk driving.

And all through this, my mom sat next to me and listened.

Then she drove me to meetings for a year.

I have been sober since that day. I do it the way the wise ones do it, the hard way, the only way that works: one day at a time. I can't manage the future. I can't fix the past. I am in this tiny shell of consciousness that lasts two seconds, or twenty minutes, or one day. I have made a decision to stay sober today—that is the limit of what I can do.

When I got sober off that two-month binge, Susan was sympathetic when I stated to her that I had been drinking too much and had started attending AA meetings. She drove me to meetings on days my mom wasn't around. She let me use the car. She came home early so I could use the Prius to get to night meetings. Totally supportive.

But she said—and these are almost her exact words: "I know we don't spend much time together anymore—I hope you know it's nothing personal. I'd like to do more things with you, Matthew, but I can't think of anything that doesn't involve alcohol."

This didn't just mean she and I wouldn't be going out to bars anymore to watch the game. It came down to family dinners, for example the one where Susan put tons and tons of wine in the spaghetti sauce, so much that my mom could taste it. I ate something else of course. But it's like: I'll support you by driving you to a meeting, but I won't take into account that I'm excluding you from eating dinner with the family by pouring more than one bottle of wine into a pot of spaghetti sauce when there's a recovering alcoholic in the house.

---

And I remember when Rebecca died her mother asked me if I was suicidal and I said yes, I told the truth. When she asked me if I was doing any drugs or drinking, I said no. But I lied. I was drinking after Rebecca died. I had to. Rebecca's mom was an alcoholic. She knew what question to ask.

And I remember Matt, the stupid substance abuse counsellor who had obviously never had any personal experience with substance abuse himself, detained me for half an hour as I was about to leave the Refuge for the last time, to print out a list of 12-step meetings in Portland, ask me for my sister's address, and highlight lists of meetings in my area. I knew this whole time I was not going to be attending any AA or NA meetings in Portland because I was burned out on the bullshit but I smiled as this happy-go-lucky asshole pleasantly lectured me on the relationship between mental illness and substance abuse. Believe me, buddy, the amount of fucked up that I am is such that your lectures won't make a dent in my psychology.

149

Rusty getting all friendly and drinking while I was sober and him sitting next to me at a restaurant talking about some job he might be able to offer me, remote, contract work. I always knew it wasn't going to work out, I just entertained his lengthy proposal over lunch out of politeness.

Then a week later he's on Facebook insulting my mom over some political shit. She asked him behind the scenes to remember that she's his sister and he's attacking her in an entirely personal way in an arena where her work friends can see it.

The minute I found out this was happening I wrote Rusty an email saying, No, I will not even discuss with you further doing work for you. You are harassing my mom—that is not the type of person I want to do favors for. He wrote back and reminded me they would be paying me, so it would be him who was doing me the favor!!?? !@#$^%&$ I wrote him back and said, Rusty, 1) Refer to my previous email. 2) You're not doing me a favor!! I don't need the piddly little hourly rate your three-man consulting company can afford to pay me! What the fuck. It's like the guy is clueless.

But not too long ago, I was drunk off my ass, calling Joanne, calling Leona drunk. Joanne mentions she's deleting her Facebook account—I decide to do the same. And I delete all email from Rusty, and his contact record, so I won't be able to contact him if I'm drunk in the future. Leona and I apologize to each other over the phone about the way Portland ended and have a divine make-up session, most of which I do not remember.

I realize, looking at my own behavior, that Rusty is probably drunk when harassing my mom on Facebook. Before I delete my Facebook, I'm sending Rusty messages like "I'm instructing you to stop harassing my Mom" and "If your drinking is part of what is making you think it's ok to make your sister cry by sending her personal attacks on Facebook, then your drinking has to stop" etc. Parental, patronizing, I wanted to make him feel as small as an gnat. Which is fucked up of me, since that's probably how he feels anyway. I just couldn't see that at the time, that someone who felt good about himself would never make my mom cry.

I make a deal with my cousin, Rusty's daughter Lily to ask Rusty to stop harassing my mom on Facebook and she is in Florida (where Rusty lives) at the time. She writes me back and says stop sending messages on FB. I say ok, and I do stop. Five minutes later and says it's taken care of..and do you know what?..for a whole year Rusty doesn't harass my mom on Facebook. Then he forgets or decides to break the deal he made with his daughter and goes right back to the same asshole behavior.

---

I didn't even know I was an alcoholic until I had been drinking for 18 years.

Well, that's not exactly true. I had some ideas here and there—some hints—but not until this last time did I really want to stop drinking. Once before I quit because my boss put me on half salary and I could no longer afford to drink all day. I didn't want to quit, though, I had to quit. AA doesn't work for people who have to quit, it only works (sometimes) for people who want to quit. This time around, the whole first year I didn't have a single craving for alcohol—that's how bad I wanted to quit.

For a while I was still drinking during and between meetings. I switched to the cheapest vodka, drunk drove to get it, called my cousin's friend to buy drugs..asshole never responded. I went to a meeting where if anyone picks up a white chip it turns the meeting into a beginners meeting..I picked up three white chips at that meeting, listened to good and ridiculous advice (including an addict who suggested they get me a bottle and get me drunk on the way to detox). I drank after the third time I went to that meeting, a smaller quantity than usual, and stopped drinking from then until now, over a year and a half later.

---

Right around the time my drinking stopped, the pain of my muscle clenching caused by stopping the antipsychotic that I had been taking for three years..that pain increased to the point I couldn't sleep, my shoulder hurt so much. The muscles were clenching more than they were designed to and so they hurt. My aunt Susan dropped me off at the hospital and I went into the ER while Susan did her thing elsewhere.

This incensed my Mom.

"What if you needed me to take Stephen to the hospital and I just left him there in the ER by himself?"

"Matthew's almost 40 years old."

"No he's not—he's 36!! How would that feel to you if I just dropped your son off while he was in excruciating pain?"

Susan thinks.

"I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one," she says.

But that was just an expression—she never actually did get back to my mom on that one.

---

Intelligence and overthinking puts you at a critical disadvantage as a drug addict. Addiction is a problem whose solution requires action, not thinking. As one addict I met says, I didn't have a theory of addiction, so I don't need a theory of sobriety. I had a practice of addiction; now I have a practice of sobriety.

That's the kind of thinking that will help you in recovery. If it sounds too academic, then you can be sure it will mislead you from sobriety. A lot of people like to share that high-class recovery, but what you're looking for is horse sense. Like my sponsor Tom from Tucson. Tom would sit through about 3/4 of a meeting filled with high-class recovery, then he would speak up and say:

"Hi. I'm Tom, I'm an addict, and I'm happy not to be smoking crack today."

When it comes to recovery, Tom is a genius.

See, you can eat a desert if you have the patience to eat only one grain of sand each day.

But an alcoholic doesn't have that patience.

We just can't stop at one grain of sand.

We just can't stop at one drink or one line.

I learned workaholic patterns from my dad. I can find peace at an AA meeting, but I can get just as much peace meditating on an idea like: My value is not in my work. My value is that I can sit in the sand and smell the ocean.

My consciousness is its own value.

---

Let's say I'm walking a path, and little pebbles keep getting in my shoes. Well, if they're small enough, I might finish my whole walk before I empty out my shoes. But even though those pebbles weren't very big, they affected every step I took..they were hurting me a little bit.

So let's say, instead, I came across a boulder in the path, blocking my way forward. I would have to deal with that boulder right away before I took another step along the path.

Everyone has their own arc—or slope—of addiction. And a high slope of addiction kills many of us..the addiction beats us. But in a way, those with a high slope of addiction are at an advantage, because they have the chance—just a chance—that they might find a sober way.

Do you understand what I am saying?

---

And sharing doesn't make me high—it sets me at peace—but sometime after the meeting is over and I've gone home and all is quiet, I yearn for Amanda to be sitting two seats to my right, doing her forward stretches on the meditation cushion while we do the standard readings, Chris to Amanda's right, leading the meeting. I don't know if Chris even likes boys, but I love them both, as sobriety mates, as women, and I know everyone gets all disappointed when men make everything about sex, but I want to know Amanda, to please her, to touch her deeply after a four-hour conversation because she makes sense, somehow I am tuned to listen to her frequency..and I would never mess up the Platonic relationship we have as recovering alcoholics..but I want to real bad.

---

And when I went to AA, and the most important part of AA for me, this time, wasn't the community, it wasn't sharing my story, it wasn't listening to the wisdom in the rooms. It was hearing the Serenity Prayer over and over and over again. I'm a collector of wisdom, of quotes, of adages, and the Serenity Prayer has to be the single most useful piece of operating wisdom I've ever heard. Basically: understand what is within the realm of your control and what is not, forget about what you can't control, and focus on what you can. It's so simple, and yet how much worry is spilt over things we can't control.

I'm back in a bathtub, in the eleventh grade, after my morning run, after my morning novel read, and one day I have the realization that everything I control is within the space of this bathtub. And later, by years, I realize further that I can't even control everything in my body—I don't control my stomach, for example. So I learned that a) yes, everything I control is within the space of a bathtub, and b) most of what's in the bathtub I don't control either! Even my brain is mostly outside the realm of what I control—there's only a tiny bit of my mind that fits with this paradigm of control or change. And probably, there isn't even such a thing as control—it's just a paradigm that's developed to protect us from the fear (and the rollercoaster blast!) of knowing that we don't control anything, we can't change anything..that life is a vivid movie and our consciousness is just strapped to one of the seats.

AA has helped me. Not drinking has helped me more. But living my life with a more realistic idea of what I can change (hardly anything) has helped me most of all.

The Serenity Prayer is about serenity and courage and wisdom, yes, but it's also about efficiency. Today, I waste less of my time engaging in battles I cannot win, and almost of all of my time giving myself to projects and people with whom I can make a difference.

That is a gift of enlightenment right there. A gift of lightness. Because it's tiring to beat your head against the wall, and it warps you to battle monsters you can't defeat (to borrow a concept from Nietzsche). But to let go of all the heavy, impossible, undefeatable, unchangeable things—things that are outside of your control—that is freedom born of honesty. The Serenity Prayer asks for the wisdom to know the difference between things we can change and things we can't. To have that wisdom is the truth I am talking about. To not have the wisdom to know what we can change and what we can't, is to never be able to act truthfully—in that state I find myself trying to change things that truthfully I can't change. That is foolishness—and how many years of my life could have gone better if I had known this truth: the boss, the coworker, the girlfriend, the father, the company, the law, the government, the fact that I'm an addict..I can't change. But I can quit the job, ask my girlfriend to go to couples counseling, I can break up with her, wish her the best, and never speak to her abusive ass again. I can decline the strip club invitation from my coworker—even though not being friendly with him will interfere with my ability to advance within the company, regardless of the work I do. I can stop trying to change something I can't change: that I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I can't change that. But I can change my behavior of taking that first sip, doing that first line. I can almost control that first sip or that first line. Once I take a sip or do a line, though, now we're in the realm of what I can't change (that I'm an addict and there's no such thing for me as one drink or one line) and I am Alice tumbling head over heels down the rabbit hole, once again in Wonderland, and there is no telling how deep that rabbit hole goes or how long I'll be down there or if I'll ever get back. That's the truth. As long as I keep that truth in mind, and believe it, I can stay up top with Dinah the cat in the green grass with my elder sister reading me fairytales. But the minute I lie to myself, the minute I stop having the wisdom to know what I can't change, the minute I deny that I'm an addict, I am as lost as that little girl in the blue pinafore dress with the white apron, and I am dealing with a Queen of Hearts who really can say, "Off with her head!" and it's not a cute but spooky little Disney cartoon where Alice always wins by just knocking over her enemies like a pack of cards—it's some deadly chemical that I've decided to swallow or snort or inject and it's killing me by my heart, my liver, my brain.

150

I say life is simple but it's hard. It's simple, not complex, to know that it's dangerous to shoot cocaine into your veins. Everybody knows that, even people who are just about to do it. We know what we need to do, in relationships, with food, in our jobs. It's simple to know that stealing software is illegal and wrong, but it's hard to say to your boss: I'm not going to do that. It's simple for an addict, if they listen to their life, if they honestly observe the big picture of their addiction, to know that the need to stop using. But it's hard to do. Oh yeah. Most people never stop. That's how hard it is to stop: you know you're killing yourself and you still can't stop? You're destroying your relationships? You're rolling the dice with your life? And you still don't stop? That must be some hard shit to stop.

Yeah. If it was easy to stop drinking, do you think there would be a hundred thousand AA groups across the world? No. We'd all just stop drinking and be nice to our families, start loving ourselves spontaneously. But that's not the case. It's hard to do what is simple to see we need to do. We need help. We addicts need help. We all need help.

So, at thirty-six, I have learned a little to just relax. I'm not in the driver's seat. Life's movie is playing on largely oblivious to me. I'm not important, even though my bipolar grandiosity sometimes tells me I am. I am loved by my family and friends, but let's be honest, I'm not even as important to my own mother and father as I'd like to be. Yes, we do connect, in this life, and yes, we even have intimate connections and soulmate connections from time to time, but this is a trip each of us takes alone. There's nobody else inside your head but you. There's no personality-oriented God who speaks English and listens to your prayers. I'm not saying stop praying!—Keep praying, but not because anyone is listening. Pray because of the states it puts you in: ideally, gratitude and humility. That's how prayer works: it works by changing your state into a state that is appropriate for the truths of this world: namely, that you are a tiny ball of flesh in an infinite multiverse of possibility, as my old friend used to say. Those trite fuckers in AA call this getting "right-sized." Essentially: realizing that you have a little bit of importance but not that much.

Having some way to remind myself that I'm not the center of the universe has been very helpful. Manics think they're Jesus, think they're God, think they're Buddha. Addicts have a best/worst self-esteem model—they think they're the best person in the world or the worst, depending on the time of day. That's a lot of tempest to have going on inside your head, so I find, personally, I need help from wherever I can get it. The rare wisdom spoken in AA rooms, the Serenity Prayer, stuff from Helen Heller, Gandhi, Einstein, the fucking Sufis—I take it all. And, while it might be hard for you to believe my (probably psychotic) sometimes belief that cellular automata have reprogrammed my brain, it won't be difficult at all for you to imagine that the Serenity Prayer, or some piece of wisdom from Helen Keller or Einstein, is like a little piece of programming code, and simply by reading it and repeating it, a mantra does infiltrate my brain, and reprogram me, change my very neurons and therefore my very actions.

It is not so hard to imagine a program infiltrating one's brain—in fact there are easy examples of this all the time. In school, it's just called learning. What about the twelve steps? That's a program with twelve instructions. Millions of people all over the globe follow the twelve steps as a program for living. Even more follow the Ten Commandments. What are those but programs? Simple programs for living. We reprogram our brains constantly. Advertising reprograms us. Propaganda reprograms us. Drugs, food, love—they all reprogram us. I view as holy the knowledge left behind for us by Helen Keller and Einstein. To be able to embody a complex piece of wisdom that reflects and works in our world as a simple guide to action—that is the work of a programmer. The two of them did it brilliantly—and perhaps that's no surprise. We think of Einstein as a genius, but did you know that he and Helen Keller shared the same IQ? Yes, that outdated metric. But whatever it had to say, it said the same thing about these two misfit children who grew up to be—or maybe always were from childhood—two of the world's greatest programmers.

151

I've spent so much of my life drunk.

The only time I ever signed up at a gym, I was drunk. I was going to go directly from work to the gym, but I was nervous about going there so I hit a couple of bars on the way. I signed up for so many personal training sessions that I couldn't pay for them and I had to change my debit card number to stop them from automatically billing me to the point that I couldn't buy groceries.

It's the same thing with my passport photo—I was drunk when they took it. All I could do was drink myself into a frenzy and imagine that someday I could leave the hedge fund and move to Morocco or at least visit there—that's what the passport was for.

I remember having sex sober—in the beginning most of the sex I had was sober. But since becoming an alcoholic I can't remember the last time I had sex sober. I think back to all the most recent sex I've had and I was drunk or on drugs every time. Really, the only sober sex I can clearly remember happened about ten years ago. There must have been some sober sex in there somewhere, but I don't remember it.

(In case you're wondering, the emotion you're supposed to be feeling now is sadness.)

I couldn't even get a haircut without being drunk. I went to a certain hotel in LA that had a bar and a tiny hair salon with three seats in it. You could bring your drink into the salon and drink for the fifteen or twenty minutes it took for my favorite girl—I forget her name—to cut my hair. We'd talk about her Mini Cooper, which she was very proud of. And she told me about the work she did raising money for breast cancer awareness, and I was like: this girl is deep. I loved talking to her, I loved getting my hair cut by her, but even that twenty minutes of human interaction—with someone I liked—I greatly preferred doing drunk. I'd sit at the bar drinking gin martinis until my favorite girl called me in for my turn. I'd set my drink in front of the mirror and look at myself, pathetic. Fine on the outside but at the very least I knew I was spending too much money on alcohol—that was a perspective I understood. I owed people money and I was buying ten-dollar drinks and leaving ten-dollar tips just so I could be fucked up while I got my hair cut. A sip of the martini helped me think less about this and listen to the woman who cut my hair tell me about her life—and I just knew that my life would never be like that. I could never buy a new car—I had done that once when I was nineteen and that was never going to happen again, my credit was too fucked and my mind was too fucked to fix it.

One day I went to a different location of that same salon because my favorite girl was working at the different location and I wasn't about to risk having someone else cut my hair. When I sat down, we looked at each other in the mirror and she saw something different about me—she didn't even have to ask, she knew. As the was putting the apron around my neck she said:

"I think this is the first time I've seen you sober."

We both smiled.

"You look happier."

"Thank you. When did you quit?"

I lied. I said a week ago, when I had drank last night.

"That is amazing. And you won't believe what today is."

"Tell me."

"It's my one-year anniversary of stopping smoking."

"Nice!"

"Yeah! I decided I would celebrate it, just, you know, in my own mind and by telling you, but I told myself that once I hadn't smoked for a year I wasn't going to keep track of it anymore, no more anniversaries, like you're the last person I'm going to talk to about it, because, I think, continuing to celebrate not doing something is just another way of keeping doing it."

"Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."

"I thought you would."

She cut my hair, I sat there deluding myself that me and my favorite girl were on parallel paths of healthiness, when in reality, I couldn't make it through the day without drinking. When she was done cutting my hair, I went to the ArcLight and drank gin and tonics for the rest of the day. My perfect girl was out curing breast cancer—I was sitting at a bar inside a movie theater daring my liver to kill me. That's the level I was operating on.

---

Carl Sagan said, "An organism at war with itself is doomed," and for a long time I was mostly at war with myself. I wanted to stop drinking but I couldn't stop drinking. I wanted to undermine my uncle Rusty in every stupid thing he said, but I also wanted the peace of never hearing his voice again. I wanted to take the next step in life, but every step I took landed me in a psych ward or a medical detox or jumping off my balcony, running across the street hallucinating, walking the streets of LA at 3am with a Special Forces murder knife at the ready, not even looking for trouble, just wanting the police, night scum, gas station operators, security guards, drunk motorists, pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers who were having their own altercations in 7-Eleven parking lots..just wanting them all to know that I didn't give a fuck about them, that I could walk around with a Special Forces murder knife because I was fucking crazier than them..I was out of my fucking mind.

So I wanted everything to work for me the way it did when I was twenty-two, but nothing worked, no matter what I did. I was an organism at war with itself, in Carl Sagan's words, and I couldn't accept what friends and relatives and doctors and psychiatrists had told me for years. I didn't really think the words major mental illness applied to me. I felt fine. Everything I did felt normal. I don't feel the shift between depression, normalcy, and mania—because a mind that shifts between those states is the only mind I've ever had. To me, none of those are danger states. They're just where I live.

And becoming willing to take medicine for bipolar required me being committed to locked psychiatric wards. What can I say?—I'm adaptable. Even on my first psych ward trip, I didn't think I belonged there. I flirted with the El Salvadoran health tech, watched I Love Lucy, played Yahtzee, and sweet-talked my way out of there as fast as possible. Even when those three LA psychiatrists gave me my first diagnosis of bipolar, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I didn't think "it" was responsible for my chaotic life—I didn't even know my life had been chaotic..I thought it was normal to quit a big-money job and move across the country to live in a tent in my friend's back yard. That made sense to me. It still does. In fact I think it's a big mistake to spend your whole life living in cubicles doing Dilbert-class computer programming with a bunch of fucking tools. I spell that life like this: l-o-s-e-r.

But that life is just right for so-called mentally healthy people with so-called normal minds. People who write spaghetti code, are unable to construct a working project schedule, who can't write a one-paragraph email..these people sit in the offices and cubicles of every company I've ever worked for, producing nothing, and taking home a fat check for it. Repeat. Your whole life. Then you're dead. Personally, I've got no use for those people: they're unsatisfying as lovers, useless as friends, counterproductive as collaborators, deathly boring as conversation partners. The only thing they're cut out for is factory work. Whether making Apples or the software that runs them, it's all either a literal assembly line or the assembly line of whatever software development methodology is hot at the moment. They'll spend their whole lives sailing the seas of development paradigms and new languages. Just to keep their jobs, over a lifetime, programmers will learn dozens of languages most of which are so similar to existing ones that they never should have been invented in the first place. Companies hire the youngest, dumbest programmers they can find because they can pay them less!—it's that simple, fools. At twenty-five you think you're riding high. Now welcome to the rest of your career, which will be spent trying to make your slowly rising salary a necessary evil as you get older and harder to justify when there are recent college grads who don't have kids yet and haven't thought far enough ahead to realize they can't survive on ramen, espresso, and adrenaline for their entire lives.

Soon raising kids becomes an end in itself.

That justifies working the inane job.

You convince yourself the job isn't inane, that you're learning things, inventing things, but if you're honest you're stuck in an intellectual cesspool just re-coding the same ideas over and over. You're not making an impact. You're not leaving your mark.

The only reason you got the job in the first place was to attract a mate. Nobody wants to go out with someone who's broke! That's universally accepted. Think of how shallow that is. Your relationships are based on money, security, going out to eat at restaurants, buying expensive rings. You're just a rat in the maze, bro—it's all designed to keep you working so the Federal Reserve can make interest on your tax dollars. Money is evil, I'm telling you—you just don't see it yet.

---

I used to drink at this bar in California, near work, and the bartender Willie would make me these amazing margaritas with orange juice and Don Julio tequila. But I stopped going for like six weeks, just got tired of drinking, knew I had to stop at some point. One day I decided to walk back into that bar—to test myself, for sure, but also because I missed the people who worked there!—so I take two steps into that bar and Willie beams at me and holds out his arms and he says:

"Matthew, you look so happy!"

And I smiled and shook Willie's hands.

Then I turned around and walked the fuck out of that bar. Yeah, six weeks of a bipolar drug addict not taking massive daily amounts of a powerful, legal depressant—of course I'm fucking happy.

152

I went to my grandmother's room one day and said:

"GranGran, I'm going to stop drinking and I'm going to use AA meetings as a way to help me stop, so if you see me leaving the house more than usual, that's where I'm going."

And GranGran looked at me, surprised, and said:

"Well Matthew, I didn't know you had a drinking problem."

That's how well we know each other. I live in the same house as her. Her husband, my grandfather, died in his fifties of alcoholism. When I stopped drinking in my thirties, I was drinking as much as he drank at his worst. I only have vague memories of him in the hospital. He was abusive when he drank. Alcoholism, mental illness, suicide—they go back far and wide on both sides of my family.

I was hiding my drinking from my family—but no one can hide that well. For me to be drinking that much, all day, every day, and no one notice, there has to be another ingredient. And that's that my grandmother, my uncle, my aunt, are either clueless, completely self-absorbed, or they were looking the other way.

153

Once I sobered up I became more unruly.

For instance.

Me GranGran and Mom were having lunch.

Mom said, "Well at least we aren't one of those families that talks about each other behind their backs."

And I looked at my mother and I said: "Oh. Yes. We. Are."

She was shocked at what I said.

But I was shocked at what she said.

We most certainly talk about each other behind each other's backs!! Not just a little, either! In every pairing I've been in, this has happened. It runs rampant in our family! And here my mother is casually saying, over lunch, that we don't do this????????????+1

This shit sent me spiraling.

I couldn't be around the two of them, plus we were about to go to a movie which would put me in my worst position: sitting. Guaranteed clenching and uncontrolled movements for two hours. Which I would try to stifle for the sake of my company, which would only make me hurt worse.

Conversation escalated.

We went to the movie.

I doubled over in pain the entire movie sending a zillion angry texts to Susan while I sat next to GranGran and Mom, livid out of my mind that I would be visually and verbally reprimanded by my mother for saying something that was true! I felt like this was not my family, not people I could relate to or trust—I still feel that way, verbatim, to this day. But this was also irate bipolar mania on my part—these people just want to have some Mexican food for lunch, spout some casual lies, and watch the latest by Pixar. They're not trying to maintain personal authenticity. They're just going to lunch!

It sucks that I let loose on Susan, but, if I'm honest, she trashed our relationship long ago. It had been years before that that I respected Susan for the last time. Everything offensive she did since I moved to her house just slid her further down the landslide. She saw me weeks later and gave me a sad hug—sadder for me, sister.

This I wrote to Joanne and Leona after they said I am a good brother, even after a possible bipolar mixed episode where all I did was speak the truth in front of GG and Mom:

Thanks for saying those things. I'm controlling what I can but I can't control everything, which is hard for everyone, and I don't hesitate to speak the difficult truths, which is part of why I have very few friends or family. I welcome the truth, even when it's hard, but I find that is a one in 100 sort of trait. Most people just aren't strong enough to talk "on the level" and I like to give them chances and invitations to talk on that level, occasionally, and it is always met with weakness, fear, unwillingness. So I find I have very few peers in that particular way.

154

I correspond with a writer doing an article about bipolar.

From: Kirsten
To: Matthew

Subject: Bipolar interview

Hi Matthew

Thanks for reaching out. As I mentioned before, I'm writing about various subtypes of bipolar disorder for U.S. News & World Report. I've already spoken to two women—one with Bipolar I, the other with Bipolar II—but I wanted to dispel the misconception that mostly/only women have bipolar by speaking to a man about his experience with the condition. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself—full name, background, profession, diagnosis, etc—before moving forward?

Best,

Kirstin

---

From: Matthew
To: Kirsten

Subject: Bipolar interview

Kirstin,

Of course I'll provide those details.

I'm glad you're dispelling the misconception that mostly/only woman have bipolar. My understanding is that unlike major depression, which affects more women than men, that bipolar disorder affects women and men at equal rates.

My full name: I was born Matthew Temple but changed my name when I was in my early twenties to Inhaesio Zha. So that is my legal name. But on the internet, and as the byline for my novels, and in interpersonal communication, I use Matthew Temple exclusively now. That is my preferred name and I hope we can use it.

I started experiencing symptoms of bipolar disorder in the tenth grade, although I didn't know it was bipolar at the time. I had crying spells in school because it seemed like such a lonely place. Instead of just thinking about things, I had feelings about my thoughts..when people were assaulted at school I felt extraordinarily deeply for them, even if I didn't know them. I was of high intelligence, and I've now had the chance to read many studies that link bipolar with high intelligence. I did well at school, but was sent to the counsellor often because I would say or do things that disturbed the class. I was just doing what came normally to me, but my teachers found my behavior psychologically disturbing. Senior year, I just went to my computer science teacher and wouldn't stop crying. My parents put me in professional counseling after that.

I went to college for two quarters, then dropped out. I made friends well, as I always had, but there was no deeper connection. I found my classes ridiculous and stopped going. I dropped out and went back to my home town. I had always been into computer software—programming. So I found a small software development company and worked for them for a few years. I was generally in a good mood, I maintained a relationship with a girlfriend. Then after a certain point I just flipped. I told the secretary goodbye, went to lunch, and never went back.

Since then has been a patchwork of working well-paying jobs and then freaking out as manic people do, suddenly quitting a job for no reason and moving across the country to sleep in a tent in my friend's back yard (for one example). I went to film school in Los Angeles, then while my peers were making it in LA, getting movie jobs, I was homeless in Tucson, Arizona. I don't know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

I drank alcohol about half this time. I did cocaine in Los Angeles for about two weeks. I've tried other drugs but other than alcohol and cocaine, never did them for more than a day at a time.

My diagnoses are: Bipolar I Disorder Most Recent Episode (Or Current) Mixed, OCD, and tardive dyskinesia. I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2007 or 2008. I had what I now know was a manic episode. I stayed home from work for a week, doing my own programming, staying up all night and day, drinking, watching The Truman Show on repeat. I thought I had come up with a new way to find terrorists using a software algorithm I had developed. I called the NSA and tried to sell it to them. They wanted nothing to do with me, even though years before I had made a similar call to them and been invited to go present technology to their engineers and done so. Then I called a suicide hotline, cops picked me up, and I had my first trip to a psychiatric hospital and my first bipolar diagnosis.

Since then I've been inpatient at five different mental hospitals around the country, made a suicide attempt, hardly worked a job. I live with my mother now.

One of the antipsychotics I used to take has given me tardive dyskinesia, which is uncontrollable muscle movements of the mouth, neck, shoulders, arms, torso. This has taken me from partially functional to not very functional at all. It's hard for me to coordinate cooking a complex meal, for example.

I'm going to send a second email with links to some more detail. If it's too much, I apologize.

---

From: Matthew
To: Kirsten

Subject: Bipolar interview

Kirstin,

Answers interleaved. I didn't proofread this, so please forgive my errors.

Matthew

1. How do you control your symptoms? Do you take medication and see a psychiatrist regularly? If so, what kind of medicine and what type of therapy? Do you see a therapist/use lifestyle elements (diet, exercise, schedule, etc.) to also help you with your bipolar disorder?

I take medicine. I currently take lithium as my mood stabilizer and escitalopram as an antidepressant. Taking an antidepressant (especially by itself) can cause mania in a bipolar person, so I take a low dose of the antidepressant and for me, right now, the lithium counteracts any mania the antidepressant might cause. Until recently I took risperidone, an antipsychotic that is used in schizophrenic and bipolar patients. In bipolar patients, this type of drug is used to manage manic states. I took risperidone for three years with good results (low mania, feeling mentally solid), but my psychiatrist discontinued it because she observed signs of tardive dyskinesia—a side effect of antipsychotics that cause uncontrollable muscle movements in the mouth, tongue, jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, and torso. Now I take three additional medications to manage the symptoms of dyskinesia, and I still experience shaking and clenching all the time except when I am lying down.

I see a psychiatrist anywhere from once a month to once every six months depending on how she thinks I am doing.

I would like to do talk therapy but the public clinic I go to does not provide this. I see a social worker there but he is not qualified to do therapy, so my visits with him are a waste of time.

I've had trouble getting health insurance since my state (Louisiana) declined the Medicare expansion, so I'm stuck dealing with this free clinic for now.

As far as diet, I no longer drink alcohol or do any other drugs (except those prescribed to me). I take a number of dietary supplements. I drink a reduced amount of caffeine. I don't smoke because that has a stimulant effect. I haven't exercised in a while but when I do run, running helps calm me down. As far as schedule, I keep regular sleep hours from 12pm to 10am. Missing sleep is the first sign of mania. If I go three days without sleep, I begin to be overwhelmed by ecstatic sensations, I am very excited about communicating with and being with people, I can't shut up and am excited about everything, and this drives those around me crazy.

Another tactic I use is lying down for ten minute periods throughout the day. A mental health worker who I met in a psych hospital suggested this: to go into a quiet, dark room ten minutes out of every hour. She said I have enough going on in my head that over-stimulating environments can agitate me quite easily.

I also listen to music to help regulate myself closer to normal mood—it's my favorite drug!

1. Can you describe what your depressive periods feel like, along with your mood swings? What about hypomania and a mixed episode?

In a depressive period I feel I have no future, that I am worthless, that my family would be better off without me. I have no assertiveness. I can't believe anyone would want to hire me or be my girlfriend or friend or anything. I hate myself. I can only see the faults and horrible things I have done. I can't see myself as love-able or useful. I feel like killing myself, not to die but to end the pain. I don't reach out to anyone, I burn bridges between associates and friends, feeling it's useless to maintain relationships. I think everyone else's life is better than mine. I become destructive and disrespectful. One time I was depressed and I was going to this outpatient class at the mental hospital in Vermont, and I don't know what I said but the facilitator pulled me aside at the end of class and said, basically, "We think you're suicidal and would you like to go inpatient for a while?" I didn't even know I was suicidal! I thought I was just mad and bored at everything being so pointless. Apparently those are conditions under which people sometimes kill themselves.

A depressive period ends slowly. You might take a walk one day, then a bike ride the next, then you're grocery shopping more regularly and taking showers every day and it starts to feel good to take care of yourself again. And then at the end of a therapy session (back in Vermont where I had health insurance), your therapist says, "You seem like you're back into life again." And you smile and say, "Yes, I am."

I feel hypomania all the time. It feels like being excited about everything, wanting to be friendly to everyone, but you're still in control. When hypomanic, you might say hello to a table of people you don't know in a restaurant. When manic, you'd pull up a chair, start talking, ignore your friends and still be there two hours later when you're the only one left at the table. When hypomanic, you might think of moving to Australia. When manic, you go to the airport, buy a ticket with cash, never even pack a suitcase and you call your husband from the terminal telling him you're leaving. (That's an actual example involving a relative of mine who is bipolar.)

Bipolar cannot be viewed separately from drug use. Bipolar people typically use alcohol and cocaine—the perfect downer and upper to accentuate or offset bipolar moods. Hypomania feels great. Mania feels great at first and shortly thereafter you don't even know that you are manic. It's like a trance that is broken by medicine or disaster. One time a couple years ago I knew I was getting manic. I told my family who I lived with. They didn't know what to do. I said, "Take me to the hospital." So my mom took me to the hospital, I consulted with the ER docs, and they gave me a shot of ziprasidone. Half an hour later I felt normal again. So you've got to know the signs of hypomania so you can deal with it before it becomes full mania.

My diagnosis is currently: Bipolar I Disorder Most Recent Episode (Or Current) Mixed. In a mixed episode you feel elements of depression and mania at the same time. It is the most dangerous of the bipolar states because part of what produces suicidal feelings is a manic feeling followed by a depressive feeling. People like mania and hypomania. Bipolar people don't go to their first psychiatrist because they feel GREAT! They go when they're depressed, because depression feels horrible. Manic people don't feel there is a problem with their behavior that needs to be solved. The most dangerous moment for a bipolar person (in terms of suicidality) is when they switch from mania to depression. They go from feeling super good to feeling really shitty in a short amount of time and they feel the loss for that manic state. It's as difficult as losing a loved one. That might sound extreme but the transition from mania to depression is so jarring, so horrible, that it suddenly seems reasonable to commit suicide. You've tasted such a bright and energetic and possibility-filled world and then are thrown into what seems dark and pointless and already dead.

1. Have you ever reached a period of remission, or a prolonged period of time without depressive episodes/mania?

Yes. The last year and a half I have not experienced depression or mania. I attribute this to 1) being on the right dose of lithium combined with a low dose of antidepressant and 2) using skills learned in the hospital to minimize my anxiety. I meditate once a week—not very often but it's better than nothing. I stay out of family or political arguments that would otherwise cause me anxiety. I skip family functions that would be extremely stressful to me. To be smart as a person with bipolar, I have to view myself as an extra-sensitive machine, as well as the caretaker of that machine. My bipolar self is too sensitive to take on drugs or alcohol, so I just don't do those things. My bipolar self is too sensitive to miss sleep, so I keep regular sleep hours. And 3) I live with my family. I'm around people who love me and I don't work, so that keeps my anxiety down. It's maybe not the best long-term plan, but it's what I've got for now.

1. Do you go to a support group? Do you know anyone else with bipolar disorder? Anyone with various types of bipolar? How do their versions of the illness differ from yours or are similar to yours? Do you have a family? If so, are they educated about the bipolar disorder and supportive toward the ways you choose to stay well?

I went to several bipolar support groups in Portland and they were not the greatest. But I feel optimistic about finding a bipolar support group that works for me and am looking for one in Baton Rouge.

I knew some bipolar people from the Vermont mental hospital, The Brattleboro Refuge. We corresponded for a while and then fell out of contact.

There are other people in my immediate and extended family that are generally suspected to have bipolar. They are either undiagnosed, or in at least one case, have been diagnosed as bipolar but refuse to accept the diagnosis for fear of how it might affect how people see them, that it might raise their insurance rates, etc.

I was hospitalized with a woman who had bipolar disorder who in a mixed state grabbed a police officer's hand—with his gun in it. She pointed the gun at her head and begged him to shoot her. Even though she and I have the same Bipolar I diagnosis, she and I act very differently. We have different secondary disorders. She has ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder). I have OCD. She's a woman. I'm a man. We have entirely different upbringings which makes our bipolar symptoms different. It makes the way we are seen by doctors different. When you talk in a low-class way and don't have insight into your illness, the doctor takes more charge. When you present yourself as smart and insightful about your illness, the doctor involves you more in your care. This can be a bad thing. When you seem like you have it together mentally (in some ways) it can be harder for your doctor to treat you like you have a serious illness..which you do.

Bipolar mania takes two forms: euphoric and irritable. Bipolar mania can present hallucinations and delusions to the sufferer. So while one person has a euphoric mania where she thinks she's the Dalai Lama, another person might get so angry at his racist uncle that he stays angry for a week, destroys his own property, and otherwise acts out his anger in non-proportional ways.

I have a family. I've given some concise pamphlets to them and I think they read them. [Update: ehhhh..not so much.] My immediate family (excluding my dad) is supportive of my treatment plan and they help me recognize when I might be symptomatic. My dad uses my illness against me. For example, if I want to talk about something painful that happened between us in the past, he denies it ever happened and claims my memory is simply a bipolar delusion. My extended family doesn't have much knowledge about my illness but my mom has gently encouraged them to do a little reading so they can understand what I go through.

1. I know a lot of people see several mental health professionals before achieving [Level Unlocked!!] the "bipolar" diagnosis. How many did you see before you found out you were bipolar?

I was sent to school counsellors in the eleventh grade for my "disturbing" behavior (using school photographic equipment to take and print pictures that looked like me and my classmates were masturbating in a local church—we weren't, it was fake). I started professional therapy when I was a senior in high school. That therapist suggested I see a psychiatrist but I didn't go because I was opposed to taking medicine. I saw many therapists after that but it wasn't until I was 29 that I had a week-long manic episode, crashed from that and called a suicide hotline. Police came to my apartment, cuffed me, and took me to a mental hospital outside of LA. A team of psychiatrists observed me for a week, asked a lot of questions, and diagnosed me with bipolar disorder.

1. Did you have any idea that you were bipolar, or did you know anything about the disease? If so, why/how? If not, how did you learn?

My girlfriend in the 10th grade told me she thought I might be bipolar. At the time, I didn't really know what bipolar meant. Didn't think about it for years, until I was 26. A second girlfriend suggested that the problems we were having might be caused by my craziness and she suggested that I might be bipolar. I didn't think she was right—I thought she was crazier than me. When I lived with my dad for a while his wife gave me a book on bipolar disorder as a subtle hint. My dad's doctor gave me a mood stabilizer and said he thought I had bipolar. But I didn't seriously listen to any of these people, who were all right, because I had a simplistic misconception of what bipolar was, and I thought that even if I did have it, it was no big deal. Until the last four years, I didn't realize at all that my behavior was making me impossible to date, to employ, to be a family member of. So no, not even after my first psychiatric hospitalization which came with my first diagnosis of bipolar disorder, did I think it would change my life. It took years to pass, and me to attempt suicide in the small town of Brattleboro Vermont, to wake me up to the fact that this disease was killing my jobs and relationships, creating waves of emotion that were too easily fought with alcohol and cocaine..and, ultimately, in mixed states and depression, a disease that made me want to—and made me try to—kill myself. Only at that point did I start taking this illness seriously.

Then I sent her another email:

I think one more thing worth mentioning is that the antipsychotic-caused illness of tardive dyskinesia can be permanent..so—no shit—I may have these uncontrollable muscle movements for the rest of my life. I'm staying optimistic and working the problem, but I think that's a great example of how high the cost can be to treating bipolar disorder..a pretty high rate of bipolar patients who take antipsychotics develop TD. If you want the actual percentages I will look them up for you..I just remember that they seemed like a lot of risk to take for the [considerable] benefit of taking antipsychotics. TD, like bipolar, increases the incidence of suicide, makes people antisocial because their movements are embarrassing, causes constant pain because your muscles are always flexing, etc. If you want statistics or supporting material for anything I've said, I'll be happy to find that for you. I hope you have a good night, and I am wishing you the best with your article! =)

And another:

Allow another thought from a hypomanic bipolar source: I was only ever taking antipsychotics to get rid of a hallucination that I had never experienced before going into that psych hospital, where I was put on a number of serotonergic medicines all at once. The point being that nobody knows what these psych meds do, how they'll affect a normal brain, a bipolar brain, or in my case a bipolar brain that had done hallucinogens. It is reasonable to question whether I would ever have had a hallucination that warranted antipsychotics if I had never been given so many serotonin-tickling drugs by that hospital.

Anyway, thanks for listening. You've got my thoughts going on all this.

And another:

Something I think is interesting about bipolar disorder is that some people are diagnosed after they're prescribed antidepressants by their doctor. The person goes to the doctor because they're not feeling well, their doctor diagnoses them with depression and gives them antidepressants. The patient goes home and takes what was prescribed, and in a few days they become manic. The latest DSM says that mood elevation as a result of antidepressants justifies a bipolar diagnosis. I just find it interesting that in some cases bipolar people either never knew they had a manic episode before taking antidepressants or perhaps they never did have a manic episode before taking antidepressants. I have similar questions about the genesis of this "texture" hallucination I sometimes see. It seemed to be caused by all those serotonin-regulating medicines I was talking at the hospital. But working with doctors I have never been able to isolate any particular medicine that causes it. So maybe it's caused by a combination of medicines. Or maybe it's a feature of my mania—manic bipolar people can have hallucinations, especially visual ones. Maybe the reason I first saw it in the hospital was because I was manic then.

Forgive the detail,

Matthew

---

From: Kirsten
To: Matthew

Subject: Bipolar interview

Hi Matthew,

Thanks so much for the reply. Sorry it wasn't sooner—my cat knocked some liquid onto my computer, and I've been scrambling around for new technological accommodations while it dries out. I'll let you know if I have any additional questions, and please let me know if you have the same. I'm so sorry to hear the sadder parts of your story, and I appreciate you opening up to me and telling me about it. If I do end up quoting you, you're still comfortable with me using your full name?

Best,

Kirstin

---

To: Kirsten
From: Matthew

Subject: Bipolar interview

Kirstin,

I'm sorry about your computer woes—may they be fixed soon! Thank you for your sympathy, a kind ear is always welcome. But I'm doing pretty well now, getting back into writing and I'm on meds that work so my mood swings are pretty smooth now, I haven't been to the hospital in a year and a half, and I'm in good spirits most of the time =) You are welcome to quote my full name, my writing name "Matthew Temple" not my legal name. Wishing you well with your article. Would love to read it whether you use my info or not—please send a link?

Thank you,

Matthew

I never heard back from her.

155

Learning to live with bipolar is like learning to surf. First, you've got to realize you're in the ocean. You're not one of those dry-land creatures with two feet on the ground. No. You're in the waves.

And, for instance, I was just in the living room watching game shows with my mom. And I realized, before she even had to tell me, that my humor was getting inappropriate, my responses to the shows had become outbursts, and through some kind of miracle I saw this myself and came into my room.

In surfing, that's like feeling the waves, seeing which waves are coming in and knowing which ones are surfable and which ones to let go. Because my inappropriate humor around my mom is totally appropriate in my books. That's the surfable wave.

I can't write at any given moment.

You can't surf just any wave. Well, you can, but it'll suck.

You have to know when you're in control and when you're wild, when to paddle and when to stand up on the board.

But it's hard to get right all the time—actually it's impossible. You don't know what that wave is gonna do. It might be perfect fucking pipe—your creativity might be on fire. And that water, and that fire, might carry you a long way. But eight pages later, or a hundred pages later, sometime that wave is gonna dump ya, that fire that kept ya hot is gonna burn you through your skin, and as you travel through the great Pacific at eighty miles an hour, all the sharks you pass will say, That's one deadly motherfucker—we thought we were badasses, and then you'll hit your head upon the reef and bleed to fucking death.

Or within a pinch of your life.

Rolling with the deep.

Seaweed, hair, body—everything intertwined.

One arm operable, circular motions, like you learned as a kid.

Foot after foot, coming through the shallows with a gash on your head.

And everyone is standing around looking at you like: Dude, you've got a death-sized gash in your head.

And you're like: I know, this is what it's like to be bipolar.

I'm not appropriate for anyone.

When I'm normal, I'm lucid, I can program computers, deign to carry on what intelligent people call intelligent conversation.

But then the big waves come.

And my words,

And my actions,

Are not appropriate for anyone.

You know what you hear when you're bipolar?

You hear: You're scaring me.

Oh yeah? Does it scare you that I talk about death like you talk about chocolate ice cream? Does my hyper, open sexuality scare you? Does it scare you that I think of cocaine as candy? Does it scare you that I tell you, my co-worker, that listening to you talk makes me want to shoot myself in the face? Listening to you talk makes me want to shoot myself in the face? Is that not appropriate office conversation? No? Then why don't you hire more intelligent people??!! It's not my job to put up with subpar individuals. Ok? Are we clear on that? You want to know what the rules are with me? I'll tell you: There are no rules. Those are the rules, motherfucker. Those are the rules when you're dealing with me.

It's out of favor to use the word "crazy" in conjunction with mental illness. It's pejorative. It's dismissive. But if black people can call themselves nigger, can reclaim it, can use it in certain contexts as a word of power, then as a mentally ill person I can use the word crazy. Yeah, it's inaccurate. Yeah, it's unhelpful. But you know what, sometimes crazy is exactly what I want to say. Because I am fucking crazy. Yes. That's right. I've been in mental hospitals eleven times. How many times have you been in mental hospitals? None? One? Well maybe I've seen a thing or two, or had a mental experience or two, that makes my humor inappropriate to your vanilla fucking ass. Maybe you will never understand me. Maybe I will never make sense to you. Maybe, on first dates, I will always get the door for you, then walk over the top of my car and around the back to let myself in the driver's side. And to me that'll be funny, exuberance—and to you it'll be like oh my god is this guy fucking crazy. And what's wrong with saying crazy there? If I'm scaring young ladies in the passenger seats of cars on first dates by stepping on the hood and the roof and the windshield of my car, ain't that fuckin' crazy, Miss Mary? Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? I'll lick your garden till you water my face with your cum, then I'll lick it off you right as I turn you over, stick a thumb in your butt, and fuck your little pussy so right you won't care if I'm crazy or not. In fact when you cum you'll pull my finger out your ass, lick your own shit off of it, and say:

"Fuck me. Is that how a crazy person fucks?"

And I'll whisper in your ear:

"Shh. You're a crazy person too."

'Cause what kind of person licks their own shit off someone else's thumb. A crazy person—that's who. Now try replacing the word "crazy" with the phrase "mentally ill" in that last sentence. It doesn't work.

Therefore, you're going to have to endure me saying crazy nigger faggot all I fucking want.

There are no rules—remember? Those are the rules.

Hahahahaha.

Basically you're living in a world that was designed to cater to the squeamish. People who are squeamish about life. I can't stand those fucking people. And I've spent decades dialing myself down just so I won't get thrown out of every establishment I've ever set foot in.

I'm not trying to be controversial.

I'm just being myself.

I wore a dress to church when I was a kid. Back before any of these terms trans, queer, gender fluid, pansexual, skoliosexual were mainstream. Everyone got real pissed and talked to my mom (who was the pastor of the church). I didn't do that to piss anyone off—it didn't have anything to do with them. I wanted a dress, I asked my girlfriend to give me one, she did, I wore it, it happened to be a Sunday, I went to church, and suddenly..controversy. Look, some people are so narrow-minded it's a controversy for them every time I get out of bed. Sound grandiose? Egomaniacal? Narcissistic? It is. Every bit. Every byte. Every word.

And apparently there's a right and a wrong time to bring up suicide? Like, when I think of a girl who I grew up going to conferences with who killed herself, and the news goes around in secret email lineages—hush, hush—and everyone follows the rules: Don't ask how she did it. Don't ask what her diagnosis was. Don't ask when the list time she was admitted to a mental hospital. Give her some dignity. Oh. Uh-huh. 'Cause there's so much dignity in killing yourself because you're crazy. Crazy people have so much dignity in our society. Right. Like the dignity not to be hired because you're crazy. All the mentally healthy Grand-Poobah CEOs of three-person companies (it was five but the woman quit so she wouldn't be harassed and the crazy person, well, we had to let him go). So you're on the phone with the other mentally healthy small-time millionaire CEO and you're like:

"So is this guy crazy or what?"

And the other small-time millionaire CEO says:

"He's crazy as a bat is blind but he programmed stuff for us that our Chief Software Architect couldn't program, stuff that I couldn't program, so."

And I pop in on a second line and say:

"Bats aren't blind. Look it up. Wikipedia. 2015. Out."

Fuck your metaphor.

And for those of you with problems with tangentiality, I'll return to a previous subject because it will make you feel comfortable by creating the illusion of coherence.

You're at dinner. Everyone is having polite dinner conversation.

"What did you do today?"

Hmm. Hmm. Yes. Amazing.

And then I say, "How did Sarah kill herself?"

Everyone will look at everyone, trying to figure out where to look. It's a simple question. Different ways of killing yourself express different feelings you had about yourself at the time of death. I am interested in this much the same way as a dog is interested in smelling another dog's butt—I am checking the state of the society around me for various signs of health and sickness. Don't be squeamish about life.

Some socially inept relative will say, "How well did you know Sarah? When was the last time you contacted her?"

And I will say to this socially inept relative asshole, "When someone I knew kills themself, it affects me. I am concerned. It doesn't matter if the last time we saw each other was in a sandbox. I am particularly interested in suicides because I am suicidal, and I am particularly-squared interested in suicides by people I knew, even if we weren't asshole fucking bosom buddies at the time of their death. I'm not claiming to be bereaved. I'm just asking how she killed herself. I'm perfectly aware that it isn't kosher to talk about, but I am asking you if you know. So, I mean, how did she kill herself?"

My sister quietly says, "I don't know."

I decide against speculating openly, based on Sarah's likely diagnosis, how she did it. But I do engage in this analysis internally and based on her age, gender, and my own informal diagnosis of major depression, suspect that she hung herself, likely in a private place, like a closet.

It's so dignified to be mentally ill, isn't it, to be crazy.

To hang yourself with a belt from a clothing rod in a closet where you have pulled the door all the way closed, so you can be in darkness, so you can be alone, when you die.

So dignified to live with your parents, your sisters, your aunts and uncles—whoever will take you—because you no longer fit in a work environment and everyone in the interview can see, from the graphic designer to the owner to the CTO. They can tell that you know your shit but you're not going to fit in, and when it comes to corporate America, conforming, talentless individuals make up the mass of the population, and non-conforming individuals, talented or not, do not get hired.

So dignified to have no money for five years, to have to ask your aunt for five dollars for a pack of cigarettes and your grandmother to drive you to the store to get them. So dignified.

So "mentally ill" is just a small concession, as if I robbed a man of his house but left him a blanket. And now he's leaning up against one of the posts that hold up the Santa Monica pier, and I'm towering over him, saying:

"Aren't ya glad I let you keep that blanket?"

With a big grin.

And a million dollars in my account.

I'll kick sand in your face,

But do you the service of calling you "mentally ill" because it's so fucking dignified.

But I take back faggot.

And I take back nigger.

And you can call me mentally ill behind my back—but by Shiva the Destroyer and by Shiva the Transformer, if you want to live—you call me crazy to my face.

156

So I'm sitting in the living room. Movie on in the background. iPad. Twitter. It's about five o'clock.

Then I hear a booming voice.

The door opens.

Who is it?—Rusty. Wife Janelle beside him.

Rusty goes straight for me, conversationally.

"Matthew! How are ya, buddy? Whatcha doin' there? What movie is this? Looks like you need to shave that beard—don't tell me they let you go to church like that."

"Rusty, we had an agreement. You're not to speak to me. Ever. Understand?"

Instantly my grandmother and aunt Susan are in the living room.

"I don't think I heard you."

"Rusty, if you need me to repeat it for you I will. We have an agreement.." —I say it real slow— "..that you don't speak to me. I've asked you for that and I think it says a lot about you that you won't honor that simple request."

"And what is that, that you think it says, do you think?"

"Rusty please stop speaking to me. There are plenty of other people here to talk to."

Everyone else in the room is silent, stunned. I look at GranGran and Susan's faces and they are mortified—mortification-level shock that this type of conflict is taking place in the living room. Janel just looks like she wants to smoke. Janel is cool. She's never done anything to me except not keep her husband in check—but honestly how could she.

"Well I asked you some questions, now, and I expect my little nephew to answer."

"I'm thirty-six years old so I'm not your 'little' nephew anymore. I've asked you politely, in writing, not to speak to me when you come to this house. You come in here, you go right for me. I assume you're here to take your mom to dinner so why don't you just do that. Or do you want to play games?"

This whole time, no one—not Susan, not GranGran, not Janel, not Bob in the other room—no one says anything. No one comes to my defense or even just says hey, why don't y'all leave each other alone? Big time conflict avoiders. Maybe it's because all their dad and GranGran's husband was a drunk who was always making a scene and they just don't like to make scenes anymore.

But that ain't me—I'll go head to head with fucking Rusty any day.

Rusty points his finger at me.

"You and I are gonna have a talk one of these days."

I shake my head.

"No we're not."

"Come on, GranGran, let's go to Chimes. I'm tired of farting around with this nonsense."

"It certainly is nonsense," GranGran says, looking at me.

Right, GranGran, blame me.

"Well," Rusty booms, "y'all have fun tonight. Looks like a regular frat party around here. Susan, Bob, you sure you don't want to come out to dinner tonight?"

He's looking straight at me while he says this, underscoring that he's invited everyone in the house but me—what a fucking toddler.

"Bob's a vegetarian," Susan says.

She goes back to her room and closes the door.

Rusty, Janel, and GranGran go out the front. GranGran goes out last and while she's twisting the lock on the inside handle, she looks at me and blows her breath out in a sign of exasperation.

Happy fucking family.

From: Matthew
To: Susan, Bob, Sharon
Cc: Joanne, Leona

Subject: personal safety around Rusty

I need a break from Rusty. His use of the term "nigger pussy" harms my ears, it harms my soul, and I don't like to be surprised with hateful language and emotion when I'm in a casual conversation.

I don't like to be surprised by Rusty when he shows up at this house without me knowing he's coming.

I need to be protected by you all, people of a higher generation. When I remind Rusty of our agreement that he not speak to me, and he lays into me, and no one present of the older generation comes to my aid, that shows me that I am on my own, and that no one there is looking out for my safety.

I have asked Rusty, months ago on Facebook, not to speak to me when he sees me. Tonight he didn't just speak to me, he went out of his way to continue speaking to me after I asked him to stop. I don't have much leverage in this situation, but here's what I am going to do: if Rusty speaks to me again, I am going to have conversations with Paula, Janelle, and GranGran in which I report to them the conversation in which he used the racist, sexist term (nigger pussy) and I am going to tell them that that is why I don't want him to speak to me. If he continues speaking to me, I will expand my reporting of this story to the cousins, yes, the younger cousins.

I do not have any malice toward Rusty, but I do have boundaries, and my current boundary is Rusty not speaking to me or touching me. If this boundary is not respected I will make a stink of things by spreading the nigger pussy story. I see the best I can in people, and I wouldn't have said this before this moment, but I saw Rusty's eyes tonight when he looked at me, when he was speaking to me, and it's a look I see very rarely in a person's face—malice. Based on his behavior and body language, I believe Rusty does not have my best interests at heart.

I need your help moving forward. Please advise.

No one responded to this message. Why would they? It's just a major family issue that needs to be dealt with or else it will just get worse and worse. Putting your head in the sand will not make this one go away. But that's exactly what everyone in the family (except me and my mom) does.

From: Matthew
To: Susan, Bob, Sharon
Cc: Joanne, Leona

Subject: re: personal safety around Rusty

Always trying to improve my approach here..

Perhaps instead I'll:

• leave the room when Rusty enters

• let him play the fool all he wants (and hope he doesn't have a gun)

An hour later I write:

From: Matthew
To: Susan, Bob
Cc: Sharon

Subject: Living with you..

..has been wonderful for me. Thank you both SO much. I don't know what's going on with Mom and me getting an apartment, and it's very difficult for me to think about making a change from living here, but hopefully whatever we all do will allow us to, you know, be family and love each other and shit =)

I am sorry for the confrontation between Rusty and I tonight. I didn't know he was coming or I would have arranged to be in my room. Rusty received communication from me several months ago insisting that he not speak with me when he sees me. Tonight he blatantly and I think intentionally violated that. The silence contract between him and me is something I need in place for my psychological well-being, and I will enforce it legally, lovingly, and firmly.

I think we need to make sure Rusty isn't bringing guns into the house. It bothers me to wonder if he is coming into the house tonight to drop GranGran off..because I don't know if he will knock on my door, continue conversation with me, or what. And if he's been drinking, with a weapon..I have serious concerns there.

I realize my opinions and approach on some of these things might seem strange. But even as a person with bipolar disorder, I am lucid almost all of the time. Please consider that what I am saying here is reasoned, even if it's not where your thoughts would initially go.

No response, verbal or written—not just that night—ever. No acknowledgement of the communication whatsoever.

From: Matthew
To: Susan, Bob
Cc: Sharon
Bcc: Leona, Joanne

Subject: I'll just move

I've thought a lot about this tonight and the bottom line is I don't have time to deal with Rusty's breaking our agreement and going out of his way to talk to me while he's here. I'm actually doing things with my life, like writing novels and memoirs. Time spent listening to Rusty is, for me, time wasted.

I also feel betrayed by those in the older generations who were present tonight not coming to my defense Susan, Bob, GranGran. Imagine if it was one of your siblings harassing your kid—would you say nothing? Some trust was broken tonight that I don't believe will ever be repaired for me It's a year later and I still agree with this statement. What was broken that night will never be repaired.

I need a safe, quiet, loving place to live. Rusty's promise of his increased presence here, while he acts decidedly unloving toward me, is itself a deal-breaker. The arbitrary restrictions from GranGran on where I can and cannot sit in the living room, the ridiculous rule that I can't put a saucepan or bowl in the refrigerator to save my leftovers, and other factors, are just nails in the coffin.

I deeply thank you for giving me a place to stay when I desperately needed one, and I deeply love you all. I will always remember this time with fondness.

I'll find a new place as soon as possible, whether it be with my mom, a halfway house, or some other arrangement.

No response, written or verbal, ever. No one comes to my room and says, "Hey, are you ok?" No one does anything except lie in their beds and watch TV. That is the capability level of my family: either being drunk racist assholes or having their eyes glued to a television every free hour of the day.

Conflict avoiders, all. Even my mom—sorry, but my grandmother and all her kids prefer to live in denial than actually confront issues, communicate, and build relationships. It would be my granddad's responsibility to confront Rusty normally—but my grandfather is dead. He died of alcoholism. So the next person in line to put the reigns on Rusty is his mother, my grandmother, but that won't happen. She worships her one male child. Mom tells a story from their childhood where the kids would come home from school and GranGran would ask Rusty what kind of sandwich he would like for a snack while leaving the girls to make their own food! I disagree with almost everything my grandmother says and does, but you can't really blame her—she's from three or four generations ago. She asked me, one day, what I had been doing.

I said, "Working on my website."

She said, "What's a website?"

That was in 2014, so websites had been around for over twenty years. And it wasn't that my grandmother didn't know how to make one, or how to use one—but in 2014 she apparently didn't know what one was.

The woman is like eighty-five years old, and she's my grandmother..so..I give her a pass.

From: Matthew
To: Susan, Bob

Subject: re: I'll just move

Most of all I'm sad. I wanted to live here forever. I really like living with you two and GranGran. I thought we had a good thing going.

This is the only crazy email in the bunch—obviously I wasn't going to live there forever. Part of me wanted to, though, or wanted to live in my idealized version of what living there could have meant to me. I don't have to tell you that no one responded to my message. Why would they? Interact with me on an emotional level?..pshftt.

157

Susan dealt with me in the early periods of this latest sobriety—hats off to her for that. It's not easy to be around a bipolar alcoholic drug addict. You can trust me on this—I'm around one all the time.

The texts between me and Susan are crazy. I describe them as consisting mostly of my arbitrarily alternating angles of approach (or moods), Susan's single but significant antagonistic dig (or sour attempt at humor), her ignoring most of what I say, and us occasionally happily collaborating on a joke. We're best keeping it surface. A joke is ok. Feelings?—Not so much.

But like my grandmother, I can't blame my grandmother's kids too much. They grew up with an abusive, alcoholic, probably bipolar father, and each of the four of them have managed to heal and survive that experience with wildly varying degrees of success.

Susan: Rusty will be picking mom up to go to dinner tomorrow. I don't know what time. When I find out I will let u know.

ME: Thank you for telling me. I'll plan to be in my room so there's no interaction.

Susan: He should be there around 6.

ME: Tyvm. I'll plan to be in my room so we avoid the interaction altogether..When is he leaving? Is it a dinner thing or is he staying overnight? If it's an overnight thing I can go to New Orleans.

Susan: Just dinner.

ME: Ok thanks! Do you mind texting me when I can leave my room?

Susan: I'm sure you'll be able to hear when they leave I'm not home right now. three hours later U can come out.

ME: Ok thanks!

Yes, seriously, this is me and my aunt arranging for my uncle and I not to see each other when he visits the house. I know, healthy, right? I'd bet my left testicle the situation between me and Rusty will never be resolved. I hope I never see the bitch-ass pussy again. He's what my sister's guru calls a non-rent-paying tenant—the only thing to do with 'em is kick 'em out of the building. They give you nothing of value, yet take up your resources. Evicting them is a no-brainer.

When they come back from Chimes that night, GranGran, Rusty, Janel, Susan, and Bob were in the room. They were in the living room. I was in my bedroom, with one thin wall between us. I couldn't hear everything that was said but I heard Rusty say he was taking a job in the area, he was going to be around the house more, and "that problem in there" needed "to be dealt with" before Rusty moved to Baton Rouge.

"I don't know if that means he needs to find another place to live, or what," Rusty says.

And Susan says something affirmative. I don't remember whether it was a "Yeah," an "Uh-huh," a "Yep, that's right," or what it was but I think I remember Susan agreeing positively with—or at least not disagreeing with—Rusty's demand to kick me out of the house!

Just fuckin' run me over with the car, like that bee that Dad killed when I was a little kid. I must have been five. This bee stung me while we were driving, and to make sure it was dead I made my dad run over it with the car and I observed the carcass before and after, and he kept running over it, until I was satisfied.

From: Matthew
To: Susan, Bob, Sharon

Subject: White racism against Black people in the US

I have learned some things recently in interacting with and mostly listening to Black people who are discussing White racism against Black people in the US. One of the most important is the idea that this racism is a White problem: some of us do it, we all own it, and we're the ones who can stop it.

Fast forward to our family situation. Rusty. An overt racist who makes a point of saying racist and sexist things in front of those he knows disagree with him. I have rarely in my life stood mute about justice issues when by saying something or doing something I could make a change. After what I've heard from Black tweeps over the last few weeks, I realize I have allowed our family tradition of non-confrontation to pull me into a zone of inaction that goes against my morals.

From now on, I am going to insist that Rusty remain silent on politics, religion, race, and sex because in these areas he has shown himself to be irresponsible and, frankly, hateful. I will no longer abide by the policy of non-confrontation that allows Rusty to be a bigot in our midst. If Rusty asks on what authority I make these requests of him, I will put each of you on the spot as either condoning his language and action, or supporting his language and action. This is so important to me morally that I am willing to lose my relationships with any of you if you decide that you don't want to be in relationship with someone who is going to take a very active stand against racism from this family member.

By remaining silent (even to avoid confrontation in the family) we are allowing racism to live in our family. Your choice is your own. I think I've made mine clear in this note.

P.S. A related issue: to those of the upper generations who stood by and in one case acquiesced to Rusty's statement that since he's going to be coming to the house more often, that "that situation" (me) "needs to be dealt with" before Rusty moves to town: you need to know that I felt you majorly sold me up the river. Rusty has it out for me, for a couple of reasons. One is that Lily and I worked together to get Rusty to stop harassing my mom on Facebook some months ago. Ever since then, he's had his sights on me, for removing one of his outlets of hate. Obviously I'm moving anyway, but for you all to allow Rusty the power to upend my living situation..or even think he has that power, is doing me a disservice. It's also doing Rusty a disservice, if you think it through. I will live civilly with you for the next couple of weeks but I need you to know that that really hurt me, and broke my trust in you. I mean you all showed, right then, that you don't have my back against Rusty when he is clearly attacking me. That is a hard pill for me to swallow.

Then I get even more in touch with my feelings, and I realize who I'm really mad at is my aunt Susan. She runs the house. She's the shot caller here. I decide to bring up the unmentionable subject: Mack. I know Susan will not be receptive to this, so this is me saying that my need to express my concern about and hurt over Mack overrides my honoring Susan's mysterious need to never discuss Mack with me, Mom, or anyone else who wants to discuss his problematic ass with her.

From: Matthew
To: Susan

Subject: mad

I am really mad at you right now. You know, I'm so thankful to have had a place to live but stuff like you just relaying onward GG's request that I not sit on the couch, that's a good example of a lot of stuff that's been wrong between us that I never brought up because I didn't want to put my living here in jeopardy. That was a chance for you to stand up to GG's passive-aggressive action toward me. But you just passed it on, and so for most of the time I've lived here, I've lived under the confusing instruction not to sit on the couch. Everyone else is allowed to sit on the couch except me—that sends me the signal that I'm not a first-class resident. I know you've helped me however you can, and those things have been major, and I am so grateful to you for everything you've done and for your whole self. I guess since I'm going soon I'm just allowing myself to be a little more open about the problems.

A main thing was Mack. Honestly, Susan, I'm just never going to forget that you continued to allow him to be around me after he treated me so poorly. I don't even know if you can accept that he treated everyone poorly, especially you. You two woke me up one of my first nights here, drunk and YELLING at each other such scary things. I can't live with that kind of conflict right next to me. I'll say this, too, I think it's kind of weird that you would watch TV with Mack while both of you are lying in you and Bob's bed. It's totally none of my business except to say that it's evidence that you and Mack have a special relationship and from the way you treated me and the way you treated him it was clear to me that your relationship with him is more important than your relationship with me. That hurts because I like you a lot.

I'll leave it at that. There's a lot more to say but I will spare you on the chance that this is hurtful—which is not my goal.

Sorry if this makes you hate me, but I gotta be honest.

I'll try to stay in my room as much as possible until Mom and I move, so I don't disturb you further. And I won't ask for any special groceries or anything. I'm probably not going to come around much after we move because, as I knew many many years ago, I don't fit into this family and in cases like Rusty I'm not even wanted.

No response. Stupidly, I continue writing email messages to my family.

From: Matthew
To: Mom, Bob, Susan

Subject: advance notification on Rusty's house visits

I would like to know when Rusty is going to be at the house, before the fact, as long as I'm still here. The last time it seemed like everybody knew but me, and him walking through the door and going after me discursively..was a bad surprise.

No response, no follow up discussion, no mentions in later conversation.

From: Matthew
To: Susan

Subject: [multiple emails, multiple subjects, combined]

[While Susan and Bob were out of town and Mom and I were over there doing chores and checking on my grandmother] Your house smells like dog. The trash that I took out yesterday smelled like fucking vomit. You have never apologized to me about exposing me to dangerous bigoted Mack—ditto Rusty. You've shown that you would never have my back in a bar fight [a serious dig—Susan's office voted her The Person You Would Most Want to Have Your Back in a Bar Fight and she's very proud of that title, but, actually, I still believe at the time of this writing that Susan might have] somebody's back in a bar fight..but not mine]. I don't respect you anymore. I guess you have too much pride to admit your wrongs and I'm not down with that.

I won't come over again. We're done.

[I was having a manic day this day. This is the day of the failed lunch with Mom and GranGran where heaven forbid I spoke impolitely and said the fucking truth about our family being a place where yes, we do talk about each other behind each other's backs, and I was emailing Susan all these bullshit emails bent over in my chair in a movie theater trying to keep my phone light from bothering my ancestors as they watched the latest movie from Pixar. My ticket was wasted money—I was so effing livid I couldn't pay attention to shit.]

You left that trash can for GG??!! Full 100%. And smells like shit. You guys don't take sufficient care of her and that's part of why I can't have anything to do with you anymore [sadly, true—they neglect my grandmother].

You didn't even say "we're going out of town, will you guys get the trash?" You're so fucking SELFISH Susan. And you're weak to not be able to stand up to Rusty. Smh.

You and Bob are so fucking "autonomous" that me and Mom have to guess at your trip dates so we can keep GG company at the right times.

Something else, Susan, that you should know, is that I wanted to and expected to get to know you better, to do things together. I'm thankful for the place to live, but I can live anywhere. If I'm living with my family I expect we're going to build our relationships. Obviously that didn't happen. I mean: when my mom came to visit the Ranchwood house, very rarely did you even yell a "hi" to my mom or come out of your room at all. That pretty clearly shows that you don't give a shit about respecting or being friendly with my mom.

You want to be "doing your own thing"? Go for it. You can sit around affirming your racist brother with silence as your consent. Sounds like a pretty sad party to me [corny line, but I wasn't exactly in top form that day].

And the fact that you let him talk about you all kicking me out of the house because he was going to be in BR more often. When you said nothing in return, you ended our relationship right there [true]. I'm never going to forgive you for that [true—disloyalty is a permanent deal-breaker to me in any relationship]. I'm never going back to your house and if that means GG gets less company, too bad. You showed your true colors that day and I'm done with ya [I mean I'll be nice to ya but it won't mean anything].

It was shocking to me the day you compared me to Mack. I write two books a year. Mack probably doesn't even read two books a year. In making that comparison, you showed how clueless you are about what a loser Mack is and how accomplished I am [haha—ego much??!!]. How many people do you know who have written ten books [can't blame the mania for this one—I think this is a tough but valid point to make to someone]? And yet, you don't even show me the kind of respect housemates show each other. Is it because I'm of the younger generation? You still see me as a kid or something? The stuff you do just doesn't add up, and based on past experience with you, you'll have no desire to even speak to me about what I'm bringing up with you [extremely solid point to make with Susan, but it's her choice to decide what she talks about with people, and lately that ain't much]. You might think you're "just in your own world" but really, what it is, is you're too scared about the changes you need to make [probably true but none of my goddamn business].

Smh.

Then my mood changes, my perspective changes, my energy changes, and I see things as if I'm a different person. I feel sympathy for Susan, I realize I am a bastard due to mental illness, that I owe my non-homeless status to my relatives, and maybe I don't have some inalienable right that says my relatives have to like me. And yet, they helped me out anyway.

I text Susan.

ME: I should be more gentle with you. I love you and my primary feeling right now is thankfulness for you and Bob and GranGran. I needed help and you saved my ass. I'll never forget it. That's the bottom line. No need to respond. I hope you get over the cold soon. —Matthew

Susan: [one day later] Bipolar much? Lol..sorry..just wanted to say that those emails were just words [if they were "just words" then you wouldn't be trying to deflate them by saying they're just words—I see right through you, girl]. They don't hold any power over me ["The lady doth protest too much, methinks"]. I understand your illness to some degree so I know you are going to have moments of rage about things.

ME: In your last text to me you maliciously made light of a major life-threatening mental illness that I have. That is not the type of speech that I expect to come from an aunt who loves me. I have enough health challenges to deal with that I don't have time for speech from you that aims to hurt, not help me. I'm blocking your number as a way to discourage any more language from you that shows that you do not have my best interests at heart. My note to you was honest and described how certain situations at the house made me feel. Your note to me was malicious, it was a personal attack, and it showed you offloading your responsibility for things that happened and blaming them on my disease..in a way that my disease was not responsible. I expect more from you than what you wrote in that text, but you clearly don't have the wherewithal to even extend the same authenticity to me that I have extended to you. Your number is now blocked.

158

I did block my aunt's number (for like two hours) but my mom convinced me to unblock it because basically for the family to work Susan and I sometimes need to coordinate about things. Or..in case of emergency..you know. Two weeks passed. I left Susan alone, she left me alone, and it was wonderfully peaceful.

Two weeks later:

ME: I heard you want to go to lunch?

Susan: Lunch or dinner this weekend. Whatever works for you, birthday boy!

ME: Could you pick the time/place? I can't handle doing that right now but thank you very much for inviting me, it's very kind of you and I look forward to seeing you.

Susan: No problem! Let me think about it and I'll get back to you.

ME: K, cool.

We have a birthday lunch. We don't talk much. Most of the time we spend typing on our respective phones. Neither of us cares. I don't care about connecting with her. She either doesn't care about having deep conversations (which is what I love to do with people I love) or maybe the extent of her ability to connect is to buy me a birthday lunch—and you know what, as long as we're not fighting, that is ok with me.

Either my expectations have been lowered from experience, or I've gotten wiser about meeting people where they are, and not expecting them to trudge through the rough territory I happen to live in.

So the lunch is ok. We go our separate ways.

And because Susan rarely responds to my meaningful/substantive texts, I text her a joke—something I know she'll be able to relate to easily. In the context of our prior discussions of the word douchebag and its variants—douchenozzle for example—I text my aunt this odd morsel from the internet:

ME: I just saw a new (to me) word on Reddit. As a fellow aficionado of words, I thought it might give you a chuckle: the word is: "douchecanoe". Way worse than a simple douchebag, obviously.

Susan: Lol! Love it!

She texts me something simple and personal and true a few days later.

Susan: We are at a wedding and Bob was talking about little Matthew as our ring bearer..

ME: =) Aww..I remember that !! That was a great experience \<3

I bet they liked me more back then when I was cute and pliable and they hadn't realized yet how all that childhood smartness was going to grow up to be intractable mental illness.

159

Because the crazy bipolar stuff I do is stuff I'm doing, I feel like I could have stopped it, like I could have done better. But it's an illusion. During mania and depression, I'm not in control. Depression brings feelings that a rational mind could reason its way out of, but a depressed mind cannot—My family would be better off without me, for example. During mania, I sometimes don't remember what I did—just like a blackout drunk. I open my mouth when a sane person would keep it shut, I say things and write things to people I love that I know will hurt their feelings—but I feel an obligation in that moment, as strong as Martin Luther's, to speak my truth, even at the cost of a relationship.

And because these are things I do, I blame myself for them later. I take total responsibility. Then I hate myself, because it seems I will never be who I want to be: an always-loving, kind, calm, responsible person. Until I was twenty-seven, I refused to take meds or see a psychiatrist or even admit to myself that maybe I had a part in the continual chaos that was my life. Maybe it wasn't all my crazy girlfriend or my crazy boss—maybe the crazy was me.

Now this is a dangerous path to go down, societally—to take responsibility for your part of the crazy—because once you go far enough down that path, past the initial maybe I have a responsibility part, you realize (or at least I did) that I am not the only crazy one. I'm just the one who finally decided to own up to my part in it. The crazy girlfriend is still crazy. The crazy boss is still crazy. They're crazier than me, in fact, in that they are wolves in sheep's clothing, people who hide their illnesses under a thin veneer of politeness and professionalism and denial that there's anything to be healed within them.

It is the right path to examine your own life, if we are to believe Socrates, but when you are the one wolf who takes off its sheep's clothing, you better believe all the sheep in the room will designate you the bad guy.

All fear is the fear of becoming.

It is the fear of what you might become.

And when someone admits their illness, everyone around them who has illness (which is everyone) sees what they might become if they admitted their illness. Discounted. Knocked off their pedestal. Made human. It's scary to think that instead of being popular and employable and liked, you might be denied the approval of those who used to like you, employ you, adore you.

And the worst part is, you might be denied entry to the relationship, the job, the family, the culture because of something you don't control. We're uneducated as a society about mental illness. That ignorance leads to the casting out of people who are not bad but simply ill. That ignorance of mental illness, when it exists in the mentally ill, causes us to hate ourselves for aspects of who we are that we can wrangle with, but never master. Lithium helps lower the amplitude of the curve of my mood swings. I take it religiously. But lithium doesn't cure bipolar—nothing does. Even on lithium, I have mood swings. Even on lithium, I say impolite things in polite contexts, setting relationships back for months—or destroying them. And because I am getting treatment for my illness, and the ill around me are not, I become their excuse for furthering their lack of self-examination. It's so easy for the wolves in sheep's clothing to describe the incident as: Matthew went crazy and said some crazy things at lunch! But when I describe the events to my massage therapist, my nurse, my doctors—people who are slightly healthy—they say, "Sounds like you said the truth that no one else was willing to say."

It was me, my mom, and my grandmom at a Mexican restaurant.

My mom said, "Well, at least we're not the kind of family who talks about each other behind each other's backs."

And I said: "OH. YES. WE. ARE."

I told a truth that nobody wanted to hear. I was partially out of control. I'm fuckin' bipolar for god's sake. Don't..invite me..to..a..polite..conversation! I don't even believe in polite conversation anymore. To me all that's just stalling, just delaying the inevitable, the moment when you crack or come unraveled or start to see. Life is short. In my opinion it's better to come unraveled now.

But believing I can master my illness only causes more trouble. Doctors say you manage it—to me that's not the most accurate word from the patient's perspective. To a doctor, they might be managing your illness, "helping solve a problem, first by observation, then by careful intervention" (to quote Daryl Zero). But from the patient's perspective, at least from mine, what I do with bipolar, with OCD, with tardive dyskinesia, with alcoholism and drug addiction, is more like wrangling. I'm not a lion that can eat another lion—I'm just a lion tamer. And the longer I stay in that cage, the greater chances there are that that lion is going to eat me. All I have is a puny little whip—and yeah, we put on a good show, me, the whip, and the lion—but in reality that lion doesn't give a shit about that whip. He's not afraid of it and he's not afraid of me.

"Managing" mental illness, "managing" addiction, is kind of like managing the devil. You ain't gonna win. But you can first: admit your weakness, and second: roll with the punches. If you fight the devil, the devil will win. You can't beat her—she's too powerful. But you can learn to live with her, you can learn to survive the cage for as long as possible. And a key part of that is admitting she's there in the first place.

It is actually more complex that this example, for the devil is part of you. She is no external demon, shaped as a bat, hanging from the bars, ready to suck your blood at any moment. She's not a lion of entirely different composition than you, differences clearly visible to anyone. No. These illnesses, diseases, disorders, or whatever you want to call them, are part of our nature. They are us, we are them—there is no us and them. So it is impossible for my grandmother to distinguish—impossible for me to distinguish, impossible for my psychiatrist to distinguish—what is me and what is illness. To quote Steve Arlo from Zero Effect, "There aren't any good guys. You realize that, don't you? I mean: there aren't evil guys, and innocent guys. It's just—it's just.. It's just a bunch of guys." There's no good me or evil me. I'm not innocent of what I said or guilty of what I said. That wasn't the illness speaking or the old Matthew speaking. It's all just..me.

Would I have said what I said that day at lunch if I hadn't been bipolar? Well, theorists, scientists, people who would like to figure this out by isolating the variables, I've got bad news for you: we're never gonna know. This isn't sixth-grade science class. It's the real world. Paradigms of mental illness have changed before and you can bet your tent that they will change again. But if you think it's gonna get more simple—they're gonna invent a cure for bipolar, give you an injection and—poof!—you're well—I don't think so. Once, we had four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm—to explain our emotions, our behavior. Now we have classified hundreds of mental illnesses. Bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia..these disorders will never become easier to understand, even as our knowledge of them grows—they will become harder to understand, more complex. What is known as bipolar disorder now will someday be a family of illnesses, tens, hundreds of classifications strong.

Saying, What would Matthew be like without bipolar? is like saying, What would Annie be like without red hair? It's a pointless question. A dog and its tail are so wrapped up in each other that when considering one, you must consider the other—they are integral, they are part of the same thing. It is considered kinder these days to say someone has bipolar disorder rather than saying they are bipolar. I get this. I am not bipolar, in the sense that there are paradigms in which bipolar disorder is not the totality of what we consider "me." But to say I have bipolar is not right either. You can lop off a dog's tail—you cannot lop off my bipolar. And this is where I started: how much responsibility do I take? How deeply do I blame myself? I think I have to take as much responsibility as possible but at the same time be gentle with myself. A bipolar person causes everyone around them suffering, but they cause themselves suffering a thousand times more. I think to survive bipolar as long as I can, I have to stop beating myself up for having a devil inside me, and start being as gentle as possible to me and the devil—because, insidiously, we are one and the same.

160

I don't really think of the events of that fall—my suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalizations—as a breakdown, or a "nervous breakdown" (that tired old term), but in a way it was.

Before I tried to kill myself, my whole life, I took at least one shower or bath every day. I didn't feel awake until I'd had my morning shower. If I didn't take a shower in the morning, I felt that fact in my consciousness all day and it didn't feel right. After my attempt and being in the hospital so often and so long that I went inpatient in the fall and didn't get out till winter..after that, I didn't bathe every day. I bathed every week when I moved to my sister's house. By the time I moved to my grandmother's house, I was bathing once a month. This started at the Refuge, and I told my check-in person one night, when she asked, among many questions, "Did you shower and clean up today?" that I was afraid of the water. Like a cat. I was afraid of the transition between dryness and wetness and in a shower (versus a bath) all those little droplets of water hitting my skin at the same time was a sensory overload. I guess that's part of mania: colors seem brighter, sounds seem louder, everything tactile is turned up to the max. But to an uncomfortable level. Like I won't do it.

When I lived with my sister in Portland, I wore sunglasses to the grocery store. It was much more pleasant. I was instantly happier there. Without the shades, it was just too bright to be able to function..because when you're manic, especially when you're psychotically manic, the real problem with those delusions and hallucinations, as minor as they may be, is that you focus your attention on them instead of focusing your attention on what everyone else has agreed is "real life." Psychotic people tend to turn inward, to withdraw from social life, because they are presented with alternate realities that are fascinating, frightening, or just brighter and shinier in such a way that they grab your attention. You can't pay attention to the "right" things—what everyone else thinks is important. And it seems silly to you that they would pay attention to those things. You feel like you have a special perspective on the world that no one else has—and you're right. You do have a special perspective. Sometimes that perspective is irrelevant. Sometimes it is dangerous. Sometimes it is valuable—but getting people to listen to your psychotic or alternate-reality thoughts is difficult.

With people you don't know, the moment you say, "mental illness," the conversation is over. They quietly tune out, move away. With people you do know, you might get sympathy if they have their own experience with mental illness or they work in a medical field. But with most people, even family who supposedly love you, once they know there's something wrong with your brain, they discount you, don't take you seriously, stop conversing with you, stop including your opinion in group decisions. And..they don't get your jokes because they don't have the context you do, which is required for getting the joke. I remember having that problem in college. I would say things and I think they genuinely offended or frightened men and women in my dorm—some of my speech was just too unusual for people to get. And some of it was too complex. And some of it was crazy, probably, some of it made no sense. The people in my college dorm nicknamed me "Crazy Matt" and I don't think all of them meant it as a compliment. Truth be told, I thought they were crazy, too—we were in completely different worlds.

I've always only ever loved freaks. My high school friends called ourselves that—The Freaks. There were the jocks and the band kids and the smart kids and the black kids and the rap kids and skater kids and the drug kids and the goth kids and there were real hardcore loners who literally sat one to a table. Then there were me and my friends, fluctuating between six and eight of us. Some of us were goth and some of us were skater kids and a couple of us were actually the very smartest kids in the school, even smarter than the smart kids, and we sat at a round table in the corner of the lunchroom and since every other group of kids had a name, we gave ourselves one, too—The Freaks. We were the freaks of Colonel White High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, because we truly fit in no bucket. You might find one of us suspended for wearing an offensive shirt, you might find one of us crying in the stairwell using a Heinlein novel as a Kleenex, you might find one of us taking the PSAT and getting the highest score in the history of the school. So we fit together, because we didn't fit anywhere else. Whatever. We were the fucking Breakfast Club. Every school has one.

Back then I used to wake up at five, run outside for an hour in the grounds of a seminary near our house, then come back to the house and take a hot bath followed by a cold shower. During the bath I'd read Fitzgerald and Salinger. When I told Tuesday about the cold showers, she said:

"No wonder you've been so frisky lately."

"Yeah," I say, "I read that nuns used to give kids cold showers to quell their sexual desires but the cold shower actually has the opposite effect. After about twenty minutes, it dilates the capillaries and increases sexual desire for hours and hours..like the whole day."

"I know," she'd say. "I read that too."

And she'd touch me in places that I usually only touched myself.

And every day since then I took hot baths and cold showers until I had my nervous breakdown and attempted suicide and ended up in the Refuge. Sometime I blame it on it just being a major pain in the ass to take a shower at the Refuge. You had these group bathrooms with two showers and two toilets and two sinks and a lot of slippery wet tiles that were wet with more than just water. It was dangerous, it was embarrassing—you want to just take a freaking shower and you're in there with a plastic curtain, hospital blue, that doesn't even cover the whole shower stall, so crazy people like Chad'll be walking in, looking at you and your dick, and then they'll start a conversation with you while they're taking a shit and you can smell their shit and they're saying something like, "Matt, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

After a few visits to the hospital I noticed that there were private bathrooms that had toilets, sinks, showers in them—one for men and one for women—but the staff didn't announce these bathrooms to everyone. To the general population, they were just locked doors with no windows, but if you asked any one of the mental health techs, they would unlock the private bathroom and get you towels and soap and you could go in there, with a door that locked from the outside as soon as you closed it. And I would take my showers in there, every few days, or sometimes once a week. And I would always try to masturbate with the liquid soap but I could never cum due to the antidepressant I was on. At first I thought it was my fault—I was defective or nervous or rushed—but then I realized it was the Celexa. I tried to masturbate at night in the fifteen minutes of privacy I had between safety checks: some guy opening your door and shining a flashlight on you long enough that he can see you breathing—that's the insurance company requirement for safety checks. You're supposed to see the patient's eyes, but you have to make sure they're breathing, for sure. Anyway I could never cum in these short increments and I found myself thinking: Why am I trying to hide it? I'm in a fucking mental institution. Sometimes I was there for a month. A man has to get his cock off once in a while.

I asked Dr. Meggs to switch me from Celexa to Lexapro and within days I was cumming again. I came in the shower. I came in my bed. My mood improved greatly as I'm sure you can fucking imagine.

But once I got out of the Refuge I stopped taking baths and showers. I had to make myself do it. My sister would ask me how long it had been. That was when I stayed with her family in Portland. I can't explain it because I don't understand it, but bathing just seemed wrong—uncomfortable and a waste of time. I've never been a big soap person. I don't wash my hair. I don't use soap every time I shower. I don't use washcloths. I don't own a comb, and haven't since high school. All that soap is bad for your skin. But at my grandmother's house, when I moved down there, bathing once a week and then once a month..was pushing it. When we went out to lunch my grandmother would tell me to comb my hair. This is like a thirty-six year old being told by his eighty-five-year-old grandmother to correct a few stray hairs on the head of a tiny human on the edges of an unfathomable universe. I told her I didn't own a comb.

"Well put some water on it and run your fingers through it."

"Why?"

"Because you look like you just got out of bed!"

"Who cares? We're just going to a restaurant."

GranGran would huff. Her generation and to a lesser degree her children considered going out to eat on the same level of formality as going to church in 1950.

I stared my grandmother down. To her, Chimes is the epitome of fine dining—the best seafood she's ever had. To me, Chimes is just one tiny notch above Applebee's, which is a restaurant so shitty I refuse to eat there. Besides, as I mentioned, my whole philosophy of restaurants and clubs is to dress like a homeless person but spend so much money and leave such good tips that they're forced by their own greed to let you dress however you want.

My mom would only want to know:

"Did you sleep in that last night?"

I always lied and said no, even though at that time I only changed my clothes once a month as well, and I wore the same thing to bed as I did to breakfast as I did to Chimes as I did to drink whiskey as I did to smoke cigarettes on the porch as I did to take out the trash etcetera etcetera etcetera. I think I wanted someone to say, "You can't go out to lunch with us unless you change your clothes," just so I could shake my head and sigh and go back to my room and lock the door and let them go to lunch without me. Fuck you. If you want my company you can accept me as I am. And fuck you, if what I wear is more important to you than what I say or what I think or how I feel or who I am, then fuck you.

"Are these pants ok?"

"As long as you didn't wear them to sleep last night."

That was their yardstick of civilization. You would never wear something out of the house that you had slept in the night before—to do so would violate the most fundamental principles imaginable.

161

I wanted to be done with them all, but they were patient, some of them were kind, and every one of them was passive-aggressive. My aunt would pass messages to me from my grandmother saying my grandmother said it bothered her when I sat on the couch. O-k. Fail. Fail on grandmother. Fail on aunt. And when I put the wrong pots and pans in the dishwasher, my grandmother would stand in the kitchen with the dishwasher door open, look at me as I sat writing with my laptop at the dining room table..and she would sigh, and make ugly faces, and she would re-wash, by hand, perfectly clean dishes that (unbeknownst to her) I had already hand washed, then run through the dishwasher.

I guess when you're eighty-five and all you do all day is read the Bible and watch Fox News and get mad about political scandals that a) aren't even remotely true and b) you can do absolutely nothing about..I guess at that point in your life it becomes really important to let your first grandson know that he is a fuck up when it comes to washing dishes.

Even though he's thirty-five and has spent a lot of his life successfully living in apartments and maintaining kitchens and dishes and carpets and clothes. And cars. That's the other thing that made me feel unwelcome: everyone in the house was allowed to drive my grandmother's car except me. No reason ever given. She never even told me this directly. It just became clear to me over time that whenever we went somewhere, I was never allowed to drive. If it was just me and GranGran at the house, and her car was the only one there, I couldn't just borrow the car so I didn't interrupt her stories—she had to get up from her chair and get ready to go to the Circle K and she drove me three blocks there and back and had another reason to resent me, that I had rudely interrupted her from watching The Young and the Restless, which last I checked is the same story every week since the inception of the show.

I felt so resented that I stopped asking her. I'd mine my uncle's change jar and walk to the Circle K—even though there were no sidewalk, so cars would be zooming along right beside me and sometimes they'd give a little honk of the horn to surprise the pedestrian! Always a fun game! And that's people of all ages, too—teenagers, middle-aged men—apparently people of all demographics think it's funny to scare the shit out of someone who is risking their life to walk along the side of a road with no sidewalks. One time I slipped in the mud and fell down a hill. I was muddy everywhere. I had to search around for my phone and tell my friend Davina that I had fallen in the mud. But once I got up, and righted myself, and climbed back up the hill, a guy in a pickup truck was there, across the street. He had stopped when he saw me fall and was waiting to see if I was ok. I gave him the thumbs up and we both smiled and he drove on. So yeah, there's good in the world, even in the deep south of the United States, where the stereotypes are mostly true.

A lot of people are like my grandmother—white, racist, ignorant, republican, right-wing conservative crazy Christians who vote against the poor, even when the poor is their own grandchildren. Like my aunt and uncle telling me to hide my food stamp card from GranGran because if she saw it she would get mad. I didn't give a shit if she got mad and I would have rather us have it out in the open and her have a realistic picture of the world, that some people can't find work and some people are mentally ill and it isn't like you can live off minimum wage anymore. My aunt and uncle prefer to avoid the conflict. I'd rather just deal with the truth—as much as I possibly can.

I don't know why I thought these houses of my loving but themselves crazy relatives were good places for me to get well after my suicide attempt. The Refuge was crazy and I couldn't keep going back there, so I went to Leona's house in Portland. That was crazy from the start but the crazy only involved me listening to Leona and her husband fight over ridiculous minor things for hours just like our parents did. But gradually they discovered that I would always say yes to anything they asked me to do—with no limit, no matter how ridiculous the request was. My other sister Joanne just moved there from New York because her dance studio folded and fired all their employees. She moved into the house with Leona and James and Daniel and now my newest nephew Joel! And from the sound of it, Joanne doesn't do a damn thing they say. When she's at home she's in her room with the door closed. She doesn't take orders, she doesn't report her activities. Joanne is smart—maybe the most of all of us. I could take a few lessons from her.

And then Baton Rouge was a disaster. I came down here for a two-week vacation and ended up staying three years. At the beginning my aunt and uncle were welcoming and everyone was having fun and we had cheese and wine night on Friday and Susan and I did things together like go to a football game and tailgate party and watched the LSU games in a bar. But when I stopped drinking, my aunt stopped inviting me to things. That's what's called family systems, folks. You're not drinking in a vacuum. You don't have bipolar disorder in a vacuum, either. My aunt took me to meetings, though—she supported me in that way. It's just that we were on different paths now. But let's be clear: there's not one crazy person in a family. Everyone in the family is crazy. There's just one person in the family that admits it, seeks help, and tries to get better.

---

And when my grandmother said something negative about me to my mom while they were at lunch one day, Mom said she backed me up. She said:

"Mom, your husband was an alcoholic who I don't have to remind you died when he was younger than I am now from his alcoholism. Rusty, when I see my brother on Facebook, in every picture he has a drink in his hand. And now that Colton's back living with him what do you think he has in his hand?—a beer, just like his father. Susan has wine bottles hidden in her room. She takes open bottles of wine with her in the car when she goes on road trips to Biloxi. And Matthew has alcoholism and drug abuse and mental illness..and suicide..on both sides of the family—"

"There's no drug abuse on our side of the family."

"Mom, yes there is."

"Well there's no suicide."

"Mom. Ernie?"

"I don't want to talk about that."

"You don't want to talk about it. That's fair. I'll respect that. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. It did happen, Mom, it did. And on his dad's side, too, he has twin cousins diagnosed with bipolar who have had some kind of substance abuse problems that—guess what?—no one wants to talk about. And his cousin Kristi is an alcoholic."

"She is?"

"Uh-huh."

"I thought she was a writer. Doesn't she live in Nashville?"

"She is a writer. She lives in Portland. One day her brother Joel called Leona and said Kristi is in her apartment, locked in, hasn't left for days, and she's drinking herself to death!"

"Really?"

"Yes really!! And Joel asked Leona and James to pick her up and take her—"

"Take her where?"

"To rehab! She was in rehab for a week or a month or something, I don't know, and Leona said when they picked her up she was extremely drunk and laughing and just the most amiable person you'd ever met. But they had to detox her safely. You can die from alcohol withdrawal."

"I would think detox and rehab was more for people who used heroin."

"No. Mom. This is a fact that Matthew learned in one of his rehab classes: The only recreational drug that you can die from stopping suddenly is alcohol. Not cocaine. Not heroin. Alcohol, Mom."

"Well frankly I'd be suspect of anything Matthew said after all the drugs he's done."

"Think what you want about that, Mom. But I want you to recognize that of all the alcoholics on both sides of the family—"

"No one on my side—unless you're counting Rusty and Susan—but no one on our side of the family is alcoholic. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Aunt Kathy. Aunt Stelle. Uncle Bill—"

"Stop. Just stop. Those people are not alcoholics."

"Here's what I want you to realize," my mom says. "You may think Matthew doesn't make sense or has lost it and maybe that's just because he doesn't make sense to you. But my son is the only person on either side of the family who has ever done anything about his alcoholism. He's the only one who ever stopped drinking. He's the only one who's ever gone to AA meetings."

"Oh is he still going to those meetings?"

"Yes. He can hardly sit still because he's in so much pain but he goes to one meeting a week."

"I wasn't even aware that he had an alcohol problem."

"Do you think that Rusty has an alcohol problem."

"Rusty?! No. Do you?"

"I think if there's never a day when you don't have a drink, or a week when you don't have a drink, then you have something to look at."

"Well, Sharon—"

My mom interrupts her.

"I just want you to remember one thing. For all his faults, and his outbursts, and his weird theories, and his intensity—"

"I just wish he'd comb his hair."

"Well, Mom, that's his hair and he's going to do with it what he wants. You may not realize this, but you and Susan and Bob—to the degree that he participates at all—have made my son the whipping boy around that house, in so many ways that I'm not even going to go into now. But I want you to always remember that in the history of this whole dysfunctional family, Matthew is the only one who ever did anything about his alcoholism."

"You mean stop drinking."

"Stop drinking, stop doing drugs, pursue a more spiritual life. Everyone else in both sides of his family drank until they died."

"I can tell you one thing," my grandmother says, "and that's that Aunt Stelle and Uncle Bill were not alcoholics. And I don't think I would call Matthew spiritual."

That's an arrow through my mom's heart. Her emotion rises. She could cry but she doesn't let herself. She keeps it simmering just below the surface. And she looks her mother in the eye.

"You're walking a thin line with that statement."

"He just doesn't seem very spiritual to me, Sharon. He doesn't go to church."

"You're talking to the wrong person if you want to talk about church. Don't forget you're talking to a pastor. And I know—I know, from twenty years of being a pastor—that church is sometimes the least spiritual place you can be. Have you ever had a deep conversation with my son?"

"Not that I can recall."

"Why do you think that is?"

"Sharon, I don't know."

"Well you might consider—and this is all I'm going to say to you about this—but you might consider that the reason you've never had a deep conversation with him is that the waters on his side—" And here my mom does shed a tear. "—run deeper than the waters on yours."

My mom was exactly right about this. And I do this with a lot of people. I never pressed my grandmother to discuss anything substantive because when I have laid out conversational invitations to do so, she has always dismissed them. I remained at the level of small talk with her, or at the level of agitated, illogically personalized confessional struggles about Benghazi—with her as the confessor and me as the priest. I did this out of politeness to her, nothing else. If she had ever wanted to have a meaningful conversation with me, we would have had one. I was ready.

162

I send some crazy email to my cousin Lily about how Mom is going to try to put me in a mental hospital 'cause I can't function normally just because I said something impolite at lunch with her and her mom. My note is full of paranoia. Fear. I think that because I said four undesirable words to my hypersensitive grandmother and the daughter who is trying to protect her, that I'm going to lose my place to live, what little property I own, the right to walk free outside a psychiatric hospital, the right to refuse medicine. I'm going to lose all this plus the love of my mother just because I said four little unpleasant words at some shitty Mexican restaurant that sent me into a tailspin.

From: Matthew
To: Lily

Subject: a hard day emotionally

I had a hard day emotionally on Tuesday and then Wednesday. When I woke up today, things seemed to be better, so I accepted Mom's invitation to go to lunch and a movie with GranGran. We ate at a Las Palmas near the movie theater, I got chicken, everyone said they liked their food. We talked about stuff, all of which I do not remember because I think I might be in a mixed or manic state of bipolar disorder. Evidence: over the last few days have been talking loudly and too fast (as reported by my mom). I did talk a lot at lunch and then Mom was saying we had to go right then to get to the movie on time. We sat down at the table at Las Palmas at 11:00. We got up from the table at 11:34. That was the start of some of my frustration: I don't like to hurry when I eat. Of course it's no real problem, we just took some food in boxes, but my idea of lunch is more like two hours..where there's time for conversation and learning about each other. I guess they didn't schedule in time to have much talk at lunch. I should have followed my gut instinct this morning which was that a restaurant and then a movie would be too much sitting for me because of my tardive dyskinesia, the uncontrollable motion thing. I spend most of the day lying down now, because sitting and standing are positions where I clench the most. So it was just sad, because I said things at lunch that GG and Mom did not want to hear (critiques of the family may have been one of my topics)..so they were uncomfortable, I was uncomfortable. In the movie I hid my head in my shirt because it was waaay too stressful to me to hear the soundtrack of this Pixar movie. I'd like to see it on a smaller scale someday because I love watching movies and this one seemed cool. But I'm just hurting and I don't feel connected to the Ranchwood house people or my mom. I feel like I'm a burden, I definitely do not feel like I fit in. I'm honestly straight-up mad with Susan..they didn't even tell us when they were going to visit Bob's dad..which would have been good information for us to know so me and Mom could do stuff with GG, visit her, etc. I mean, it's no big deal to figure that out, but when they don't talk to us about that, that's not within the definition of how I expect a family to act. Here's something else that I guess is just two different approaches to life, but I lived at the Ranchwood house for approximately two years, and one thing I expected (yes, expected) us to do is get to know each other better..like..have conversations about ourselves or issues or whatever. That didn't happen, and I will get over it but it's frankly upsetting to me that the whole two years GG sat in her room with the door closed watching TV and Bob and Susan laid in their room watching TV and we hardly talked at all. I'm thankful I had a place to stay so I wasn't homeless, but it's basically killed my relationship with Susan..her more than the other two because I expect more from her, for whatever reason. Anyway I'm at odds with all of our family in this town, including my mom, and some family elsewhere. I am rational enough even in this state to know that it's my fault. I'm not conforming to the expectations of others, in terms of how honest they want to be about our family systems or other subjects. I live with my mom now, I'm not sure if you knew that..anyway I think I'm just too much of a pain and really more of a bad force than a good one. I want her life to go well. I don't want to be a negative influence. I'm thinking I might try to get to Vermont, which has a very good mental hospital, because I don't want to end up in the mental hospital in Baton Rouge I spent a week in a couple years ago..they put me on like 10 different medicines which my regular psychiatrist had to undo once I got out, you weren't allowed to write, you were required to sit in the TV room with everyone and watch Family Feud all day..for a week..they gave us our medicines late..there were no classes or workshops, we didn't see a doctor daily..it did me more harm than good. Anyway I'm staying in my room trying to act normal when I see Mom so she doesn't take me to the hospital. I have outpatient doctors I am seeing..I'm not a danger to myself or others..a week in a psych hospital is not what I need right now. I should have taken care of my own needs today, by staying home instead of tagging along with Mom and GG.

Smh. I feel so stupid. I'm glad we can still send letters and I am terrified that I'll do some bipolar thing someday that will offend you. I hope not, but until then thanks for listening.

And then the very next day:

From: Matthew

To: Lily

Subject: my mom is trying to put me in a mental hospital

Well, my mom is trying to put me in a mental hospital because I apparently said some uncouth things at lunch with her and GG yesterday, so I'm trying to basically cease contact with people I love so that I don't accidentally hurt them. I don't think it's safe for anyone to be around me so I'm sorry to push you away but I just don't know what to do so I'm ceasing contact with everyone. I am sorry to have wasted your time.

I don't remember what, if anything, my mom said to spark this idea of mine that she might be on the verge of taking me to the hospital. I suppose it's possible that she openly questioned whether I needed inpatient time. I suspect it's more likely that I made the whole thing up in my head, and just imagined that if I continued "acting crazy" (saying an oppositional, though perfectly reasonable, true statement in a rather scary way at our Mexican lunch) that my behavior would cause Mom to send me to a mental hospital. Since she's never sent me to one before (I've tended to send myself) and since saying something impolite doesn't get you admitted to a mental hospital (danger to self or others does) I think it's fair to say that this scenario was all in my mind.

I already showed you the emails I sent to my aunt while I'm sitting in the latest Pixar movie that wasn't designed to be enjoyed by people experiencing bipolar manic episodes—work on that, could you, Pixar? So I sent those messages while my mom and grandmom were watching this incomprehensible, highly existential movie that I also can't imagine kids having any kind of understanding of. This movie is like how Sesame Street was a show for kids but it had subtle cultural references that the kids wouldn't get but it made the show funny for adults. Right. Well this Pixar movie—whatever the fucking title was—was just like that except it was like the primary audience was existential philosophers and they had put a few cute elements in here and there so the kids could watch it too.

The whole time I'm Tweeting my breakdown, punching away in the dark at an on-screen keyboard. At the end of my self-hating, revealing rant I Tweeted:

Some people have Twitter meltdowns. I don't fuck around. My entire timeline is a Twitter meltdown.

It's like with Twitter, with my life in general, one of my goals is to humiliate myself so much that no one else could possibly step in and do a better job.

So I had sent those fucked-up emails to my aunt, so mad I could hardly see, from the Pixar movie theater and—you know—a week later, at her earliest fucking convenience, Susan writes me back.

Susan: Hey. I just read the email you sent. Is everything OK?

ME: Not really. I've had a mood episode this week. I'm sorry I contacted you during that time. I don't expect you or anyone in the family to understand me and I don't even want you to forgive me. I just can't be around anyone anymore because it's not safe for them..you never know what I'm going to say or do, so I'm staying away from family meals (I missed a meal with Mom and GG this morning because it was bound to result in disaster—mostly for me). So thanks for all your help in the past but for now I need to keep communication and face time to a minimum, with you all, with AA people, I just can't do it anymore.

Susan: Matthew, I'm not going to say I fully understand but I accept you. I had no doubt that you were having a bad time of it. I support you doing what you need to do to take care of yourself. I love you. [You know, right now I can see that this is a perfectly reasonable, loving response but at the time that's not how it read to me. That's the damn near impossible thing to deal with about bipolar disorder..as my psychiatrist says..your organ of perception is broken, and that makes problem solving and acting reasonably almost unattainable for the bipolar person. It's like in Apollo 13, where they have the false indicator light..their instruments are giving them the wrong information about the state of their spacecraft, so that makes it impossible to fly. Those are some of the hardest problems to solve, when your sensors are giving you inaccurate feedback..you have to do a very difficult thing, which is first realize that the data you're getting about your situation is wrong..then you can solve the problem. But, yeah, as long as you trust that false indicator light, nothing else you try will ever work. Of course I responded to Susan's text like a hardass—frustratingly, even though everything I said is true, my approach is still coarse, even at thirty-seven.]

ME: Sometimes it's not about me..even though I'm the identified patient..sometimes it is about you and the way you affect the system [like hey bitch, why don't] you take some responsibility—but guess what, Matthew, Susan doesn't want to do that! Stop knocking on that door!]. Might as well just forget about it. I appreciate that you took me in. I'm upset because I had expectations that we would get to know each other better (all of us who lived there). It hurts to think that nobody else wanted that. To me, if we're not building our relationships, we might as well be strangers. But I need to accept and respect that you all didn't want that. It's ok. It's my fault that I'm upset because I created an unrealistic expectation, then got mad when my expectation isn't met. My therapists have been telling me for years that I do this..for whatever reason it's a hard habit for me to break. I love you too—everyone at the house. I don't think we know how to interact very well, and not just the relationships involving me or you. Learning, as an adult, for example, that my mom and Rusty didn't even have each other's phone numbers until about four years ago..is just one of the things about our family that I find surprising and disillusioning. The other day at lunch, my mom said, "Well, at least we're not one of those families that talks about each other behind each other's backs," and I said, "Oh yes we are!" GG and Mom flipped out, their faces turned red, and suddenly we were in a conversation about my mental health. I agree that starting last Tuesday and continuing up to now, I am having a mixed-emotion bipolar event. I can and do admit hard truths about myself. When I say a hard truth at lunch, neither of those women were ready to say, "Yeah, I guess sometimes we do talk about each other behind our backs." No. It's too hard to look within, so we blame the one who spoke the truth. It's ok. I don't need you or anyone to like me, and I'd rather have no relationship than a fake relationship. You've recently said you're not into spending time with me or Mom or GG so really this works out ok for at least you and me, because I can't handle any more family get togethers—my tricked-out nervous system is too stressed out by them, and I need to take care of myself instead of trying to please the family.

No response. There's no relationship here—I'm talking to myself.

ME: Hi. Hope you're well. I hope things are well with you. I know I've been erratic. I'm doing what I can with the parts I can control. I have been sober for over a year, I am working with a sponsor every day and in longer sessions on the weekend. I'm working with three different doctors. I want to be the best Matthew and the best family member I can be. I love you.

Susan: Yay for over a year sober!!!! [Like she gives a fuck. Her room is littered with wine bottles and vodka bottles and when she takes a road trip, her unzipped travel bag reveals an uncorked red. She puts that bag in the passenger's seat and backs down the driveway. I'm not judging—I'm just saying. And she probably does give a fuck.]

ME: Thank you. Thanks for your patience. And thank you again for good measure.

That felt like progress. I didn't fuck up, anyway. And she stuck her neck out to congratulate me.

Then sometime later, I tried to describe to her, in detail, the current state of a medical situation that started while I was living in her house.

ME: Today was my neurologist appointment. It went well, I think. My neurologist, immediately upon seeing me, suggested that he prescribe tetrabenazine. We talked about tetrabenazine six months ago but I decided not to take that or either of the other two medicinal options. One option is to start taking the antipsychotic that caused the problem in the first place..that would mask the clenching symptoms but make the root problem worse, which neither my doctor or I were into. We discussed tetrabenazine at length. Its most common side effects are drowsiness, depression, and suicide. I told him before that I have a history of chronic suicidality and one suicide attempt and I took that option off the table last time. But, having lived another six months tardive dyskinesia-style, I had become open to the tetrabenazine option, and that's what we're going to do. The medicine is only available at one pharmacy in the country..partly because it's new-ish, partly because it's dangerous. But as my doctor explained, part of why it is associated with an elevated number of suicides is that it was designed and tested for Huntington's disease, which itself has a high rate of suicide. Since I don't have Huntington's disease, the tetrabenazine isn't as dangerous as it seems. Also, as I pointed out, and my neurologist laughingly agreed, tardive dyskinesia increases your chances of suicide as well, so we may be canceling out tetrabenazine's suicidal effects by using it to treat my TD!! Assuming Mom and I can figure out a way to pay for it (which is probable), I should start taking it in 2-3 weeks, titrating up slowly, and I'll make sure I'm near someone at the beginning of taking it in case I do feel suicidal. I asked exactly how the medicine worked (something I couldn't find on the internet) and my neurologist gave me a detailed answer. I felt satisfied with that and he said no when I asked him if it would affect my cognition. So I should be able to write and think and talk just as I have been. The way he spoke, it wasn't like maybe this will work, it was like this will work. I think the moment I'm able to sit in a chair or stand or do anything without clenching, I'm going to cry. It's been so long since I've been able to be still. Oh yeah, and my neurologist called my psychiatrist and the psychiatrist agreed on this course of treatment. That's about all that's fit to print. Thanks for caring for me and wading through the details =)

No response. She didn't wade through the details. Why would she? No one reads long texts, emails, books anymore.

They teach you in film school never to have a paragraph in your script that's longer than three lines because film producers can't read large blocks of text—their attention spans have been systematically neutered to the size of a baby carrot.

Also, no one gives a fuck about the details of my medical treatment except me, my doctors, and sometimes my mom—why would they? They haven't even done basic reading on bipolar disorder—for me to write anyone in my family a detailed note on the treatment for my TD is like me making a soliloquy to the moon. Or I guess, since it's a soliloquy, to nobody at all.

My AA sponsor would look at all this and say:

"Early sobriety is hard."

My psychiatrist would look at this and say:

"Bipolar disorder is hard."

But that's all bullshit. You know what? Life is hard.

163

A long exchange where Susan shows me her haircut and I compliment it profusely.

Then a few days later:

ME: I don't feel good about being a resource suck on the phone bill when you and I don't even see eyes to eye on stuff. So, I just don't want to be unfair to you since you obviously don't like or respect me, it doesn't feel good to me for you to be paying my bill. Mom said I should just let you pay but I don't feel good about it. Do you want me to mail you this phone back. I'm probably moving to the woods.

Susan: I will let you know.

ME: Take your time.

Lily is telling me about your rental house and I'm like Lily I don't even officially know about the rental house! You never open up to me, you know, just tell me things that are going on. What changed?

You just don't treat me like a real person.

I'll always love you, aunt Susan, but you didn't treat me too well at the Ranchwood house.

And Mom wants me to spend my birthday there? Why would I want to do that?

Whatever. If you take away my phone I won't be able to schedule with my doctors. I can't afford my own. So I guess I'm just beholden to you while you hold me at a distance. I think our family is so fucked up.

Susan: I bought that house a year ago. It isn't a rent house. We talked about that I wanted to use it as a place to do recycling of things I find by the side of the road. Stephen asked me to let his friend rent a room and that lasted 2 months. Stephen lives there now. I don't talk to Lily about that either. She must be talking to Stephen or something.

ME: You never talked to me about it. And I don't even care. But I at least used to want to be part of your life and it just stings that you didn't seem to want that.

Case closed.

Goodbye.

Susan: I don't want to take the phone Matthew..I never said anything like that. I freely gave it to you. You are clearly having an episode.

ME: Clearly, yes, clearly. Since I'm ill, no one else has to take responsibility for their actions. Very convenient.

Conversation is over. Ignoring all replies. Take the phone if you want I don't give a fuck. I'm leaving here anyway. Bye bye.

Look, I'll delete your number. I'm sorry. I really don't actually want to talk to you because it hasn't been fruitful in the past. But I "love" you as much as anyone does and I wish you the best. Do whatever you want with the phone.

Text to Joanne and Leona:

ME: I need help. Mom has planned a trip with me and her going to Baton Rouge with no guarantees that Rusty will not be there, Mack will not be there, alcohol will not be a main event. I told her I'm not going. I do not want to move again bc I'm just getting set up here with excellent doctors and a counsellor but Mom and I are fighting every day. We hardly ever fought in our last apartment. Now every day is a fight. She seems to think that me going to the Ranchwood house will be a blast—to me it seems risky especially because there's likely to be alcohol there. I have one year and four months sober today and I'll be homeless before I break that streak. There's of course more to the story but this text is long enough so I'll stop.

Actually, forget it. I'm done talking. I love you both.

I've been pushed too far.

No response so I leave an urgent cry-for-help voicemail for Joanne. Joanne texts back:

Joanne: Hey, I hear you and I'm thinking of you, want to talk tomorrow?

ME: No thank you! Have a great day though!

When you've needed me, have I ever pushed you off until tomorrow? Not one time. I'm turning my phone off indefinitely. Mom is arguing with me every day over nothing, pushing me and pushing me. This almost never happened in Baton Rouge. Just forget it.

Joanne: Would you like to talk now? I have 20 min now before work..

ME: No. I'm done talking with this family. I have new bad mental health news and I can't trust anyone in this family not to use it as a new way to use power against me. I'm taking Mom off my medical release forms and I'm never telling any of you. Fuck!!

Joanne: I won't use anything against you. I hope to talk to you if you want to.

Ok, I'm turning my phone ringer off for several hours now; if I call you tomorrow it's only because I care about you and want to help.

ME: You can't help me. In addition, you've been totally unavailable lately. Which probably is meeting a need of yours, so I respect it.

Please just focus on yourself and don't think about me, ok? You seem to have a good thing going there. I am on a different path, one that will likely lead to homelessness again, as Mom is very displeased whenever I share my thoughts, as they are too much truth for her to handle. You might think that's bipolar grandiosity speaking. Think what you want, but the fact is Mom is not interested in treating me as an equal, mentally. She informed me earlier that since I was younger and not as wise as her and her siblings that my insights into our family are not welcome! Ha ha ha! She is the more deceived!!!!! My insight there goes far past her siblings' if not hers, and she's generally taken to ignoring everything I say while expecting me to respond to what she says!!! Obviously not a train that is long for its tracks. Thank you for your love but I don't need any help, mentally, except from my counsellor. Have a great night and think nothing of these things!!!

Joanne: That 'mindspa' device [that she gave me years ago and I've used once] uses the same brainwave technology that that new doctor you told me about talked about. (I find it very soothing.)

ME: Thank you. I will try it. But I am not the problem. I told Mom this morning I didn't feel safe going to GranGran's in January without knowing that Rusty and Mack would not be there, that alcohol would not be a major part of the event, and I told her that even with those safeguards in place I don't feel psychologically safe around the residents of that house. Mom took offense, flipped out, and has been assaulting me emotionally ever since. Simple as that. Instead of solving the problem, perhaps with me going to someone else's house for that week, she displayed her hurt feelings. Which I can understand. She probably wanted my company, frankly. But I'm just not going to that house. Mom can frame that as my mental health issue all she wants but I'm the one seeing doctors and counsellors, working to improve myself and my ability to interface with others. Mom threw some real pot shots at me today. It was her acting out of anger but somehow it's all seen to be my fault because I'm mentally ill!! My mental illness has nothing to do with what happened here today, except maybe in other people's minds. Even the people who know me don't even know me.

I didn't do anything wrong today. Mom's saying well when are you gonna be able to be at an event or a table where there's alcohol and I told her it's different for different people but me being around aunt Susan while she's drinking is a really bad idea for me right now. I like to have fun with people and if Susan is having fun drinking, I'll want to have fun drinking with her. That doesn't mean I'll drink—but why put myself in such a stressful position? Mom doesn't understand where I'm coming from on that one and that's ok but that's a rule I'm setting for myself..for my own safety and development. It's non-negotiable, whether Mom respects it or not. That's part of what's going on over here today.

I'm going to stop writing because I have no idea if you're even reading these.

Best to us all as we proceed.

Joanne: Hey, I got your texts and voicemail—just wanted to say that I respect your privacy, and that you haven't made anything worse for me :)

ME: Did you get the one about me protecting my sobriety and sanity at the cost of my relationship with Mom..I thought that one was key.

She doesn't understand sobriety. She has said before, when I've vocally re-committed to staying sober today, "I hope you get past the point where you have to think about it every day."

Well literally I don't think about it every day. But part of the key to success there is to stay sober for one day—today—and not to ever say, "I'm over it, I no longer have a weakness to alcohol."

Because people stay sober for 20, 30 years and then go back out, they take a drink and it's because they thought they were over it.

My fortunes went south in that house once I stopped drinking. Susan literally said to me, "Well, Matt, I know we don't hang out anymore but I just can't think of anything to do that doesn't involve alcohol."

And even Mom doesn't seem to understand that I'm not "over it"—if I went into an AA meeting for advice about going to a house where alcohol was going to be part of the fun, they would say 1) don't go unless you have an escape plan: your own transportation and another place to go so you can leave under your own power if you need to, and 2) they would suggest that no matter how much or little sobriety time I have, just not going to an event that makes me uncomfortable.

If I did the opposite, they'd say I'm consciously putting my sobriety at risk—and they'd be right.

I'm not about to mess with that part of my life which is going well for once. Yesterday I had one year and four months sober. That's the most I've ever had.

And each day I commit to being sober for just that day—that's how it works for me.

I'm sorry I messed up Mom's plans, but I cannot responsibly go to that house.

She took it personally and went crazy on me for this today.

Damn. I'm an idiot. I had a plan to stop talking to everyone for everyone's safety and I forgot already. If I don't talk to you in the future it's just because I'm too scared to trust even those in this family who still care about me with any new mental health news/diagnoses..because I'm afraid it'll cause me to be discounted more than I already am. I feel like I am put down and marginalized by Leona, Dad, and Mom and it's become almost a joke that every time we have a talk that's hard for them, they say, Are you having a bipolar episode? They're just using it as an excuse to discount what I'm saying, which most of the time isn't being affected by bipolar or anything else. The extended family (Susan et al.) does it even more pronouncedly. It's a farce I want no part of. I'm sorry I should have ignored your communication for simplicity but it's the middle of the night and I simply forgot my new policy of getting as far away from our family as possible. I wish you good things. I won't abandon you, but I should never have been this open tonight.

Joanne: Ok, that's fine, I think it's great that you're protecting your sobriety, and I can only imagine how difficult that is!

I respect you, and if you want to talk I love to hear your voice, and if you don't want to talk that's ok too :)

ME: If you want to talk, I will always talk with you.

Joanne: Aww! \<3 Is there a good time for you today?

ME: Literally any time.

We talk a few hours later.

ME: Thank you again for talking/listening. I feel very alone due to my health situation and Mom's emotional shut-out of me. I'll be ok (like my zest for life is intact) but a little company helps and I trust you more than I can safely trust anyone right now. No pressure. Really. No pressure.

Joanne: It's fine :) I'm glad we talked :)

ME: Me too.

I'm sorry I talked so much. Clearly a problem I have right now. I'll work on it.

I just want someone to know what I'm going through over here.

164

Did you think my obsessive psychotic emails has reached their limit? Fuck you! There is no end to my obsessional psychotic email. Here's act II, III, IV, or V in an infinite series of psychotic email.

When I look at this sane, I cringe—I am the fool. Everyone else is just standing around like what the fuck?

One day I wake up early—could be bipolar, could be the medicine, could be my obsession with writing this memoir. I don't know. I do know that at 3:47 this morning my fearful, unruly brain wrote this email to my dad:

From: Matthew
To: Van

Subject: payment plan?

Dad,

You won't even give me the decency of calling me and saying, "I don't ever want to talk to you again, my son." Do you see how weak and cruel that is? You just sit in silence—why would you do that to your firstborn child?

Why don't you call me ([my phone number]) and we'll set up a payment plan for the [ridiculous amount of money], or whatever it is? I'd like to pay that off, though it would be a slow process, it would make me feel better.

But you're not even going to give me that, are you? Before, you filed a restraining order against me; now, I suspect you'll take some legal action against me so that you'll never have to talk to me, only your lawyer.

Let's forget about love and talk about the money for a second. Let this email be on record showing that I am attempting to contact you to pay you back in installments—the only way someone who is disabled and can't get work could possibly pay you back—and that the longer you go without calling me to work out a payment plan or tell me where/how I can send you payments, the more it will work against any legal plan you might have to forcibly take what little money I have.

I never should have contacted you about this, because if history proves real, you will use this (as you have used everything I've done) against me in some way. But I am attempting to at least pay off the money I owe you, even though you show no signs that you want to act as my father, no signs that you even care about my life-threatening disabilities, and every sign that you have simply moved on from being my parent—but without the guts to own it and inform me that that is the case. All I hear from you is..silence. No calls in years. I don't view that as very responsible parenting behavior.

It used to hurt me more, but it hurts less and less because..I guess just because of the passage of time. I'd prefer to hear from you what you want or don't want from our relationship (as if one still existed between us) but you seem content to ignore a child you have abused and say nothing. I suspect your mind doesn't want to face the realities of your abuse, and talking to me would certainly stir up those realities for you, and that you're not emotionally strong enough to do that. But that's just my layman's analysis.

I could have stopped there, but this quintessential story straps itself inside my mind, barricades, ensconces. Minutes pass, maybe an hour. And I can't keep it to myself—I have to tell him, you, everyone two or three times just so you understand that this is a key event in the formation of me, in the formation of my relationship with my dad, in the formation of how I view men and women differently.

To: Van

Subject: do you remember a time..

..in Dallas, when you and Mom were arguing. I was 2 or 3 years old and I came to you and asked if you and Mom might be getting a divorce in the future, since you were arguing now.

(And don't try to say this never happened and that it's some bipolar delusion of mine, because Mom remembers it exactly the same way I do.)

You answered, "No, son, your mother and I would never get divorced."

Mom answered, "Well, sometimes people do get divorced, and it is possible that your dad and I might get divorced, but that isn't what's happening right now."

I believe you were trying to comfort me—and if you were, I appreciate that intention. But that is one of my earliest memories and what I took away from it, even at that age, at that very moment, was: Mom is respecting me and giving me an honest answer; Dad is being disrespectful of my intelligence and giving me a dismissive, bullshit answer.

I knew more about that situation than you did, when I was 3 years old. That is just the first instance of many where you have disrespected me, not acknowledged or listened to what I was saying (which was more intelligent and informed and correct than what you were saying) and from the moment you gave me that (comforting?) bullshit answer claiming that you and Mom would never get divorced, I have known since then that you didn't respect me, and I haven't respected you since then—when I was 2 or 3 years old.

Do you see how early these seeds were sewn by you?

Yes, the old I was superior to you when I was 3 argument—never very popular with the fans. Also never popular: the blame the other guy for everything tactic. No one likes that.

Being the insensitive, crazy motherfucker that I am, I decide to keep digging. I'm already neck-deep in dirt—might as well try to find China.

To: Van

Subject: actually

Dad,

Please don't call me [This is an insane request—I can't get him to call me by] begging him to call me. There is already almost zero chance that he will call me regardless of what I do. It's wishful thinking on my part that I would get any kind of voluntary contact from my dad]. The last time we spoke on the phone (when I was in Vermont) your denial of the potty-training abuse you did to me made me so angry that that night I was admitted to the ER and was subsequently hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. The fact is your abuse and neglect tickle my bipolar mania and depression and if I'm smart, I need to eliminate all contact with you because for me, with the illnesses I have, it really is a matter of life and death.

As I mentioned before, I now have another condition, caused by one of the drugs prescribed for me in the psych hospital, that makes me unable to stand or sit without clenching uncontrollably, so I have to spend most of my time lying down.

I'm not asking for your sympathy or care..I know you probably want to do that, but it's clear to everyone (except maybe you) that you have your own psychological problems (possibly borderline personality disorder) that make it impossible for you to have emotional relationships with any of us. So, please, I am not asking you for something you may not be able to give me.

But I have been diagnosed with three mental illnesses, two of which increase one's chances of suicide, and you know I have bipolar I disorder, which is extremely difficult to cope with and reduces one's life expectancy by a decade.

So, really, it's not smart for me to dick around with you about money, our love or lack of it, your denial of abuse, or anything. I have blocked your email, will see if I can block your number (if I even have it) and I will try not to email you or contact you in any way, any more.

I just have to do this for my health. The hospital experience is very traumatic and I might not survive another one.

Please leave me at peace to live what life I can live, and I will do my best to do the same for you.

Matthew

I stop for a while, get scared, think of the worst thing that could happen, decide this is an inevitability, and write again.

To: Van

Subject: actually

It's important that you don't get a court to drain the little money in my disability account, because that's the money I use to pay for my doctors and medicine, and without my medicine my chances of death go way up. So please don't pull some kind of stunt like that. I am forwarding this to my doctors so that it is on record that you knew that draining my disability money would increase my chances of death [Total lie—I never had any intention of forwarding this to anyone.] I don't want you to get away with something like that without the rest of the family having recourse if you cause my death by stealing my disability money. You had the chance yesterday to contact me about a payment plan and did not do so. Really I can't afford psychologically to deal with you any more.

Then I get really scared. I try to threaten him but he certainly sees through this to the simple reality that he has a thirty-seven-year-old mentally ill kid who he prefers not to think about (it's inconvenient, he's moved on in his life to a new family that suits him better because they require less effort—they're also intellectually disabled, but hey, if you don't like to be challenged, that's your business). But let's focus on my disabilities since this is my memoir: psychosis. Scared animal trying to defend itself against an enemy that hasn't actually presented itself anywhere but in my mind:

To: Van

Subject: actually

In fact if you attack me legally, I will try a criminal child abuse suit against you for your potty-training abuse of me. So just don't try anything legal or I will come out swinging. You have wronged me greatly and the least you can do is never contact me again. Your emails are automatically being deleted so don't waste your time replying via email. Please don't call me or contact me in any way and if I die before you, you are not invited to the funeral. I will forward this to the family so they know you are not welcome there, if that's the order it goes in [Again, never any intention of forwarding this to anyone.] I want nothing to do with you for the rest of my life.

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, this is totally untrue. I would give a fucking hand to have my dad in my life. All this cutting off contact with my dad—total bullshit, total smokescreen. My dad cut off contact with me far before I ever had a clue. I desperately wish I was in the power position and could cut him off..but that's not the case. I'm the grown-up puppy still lapping for my daddy's attention—he's the father dog who moved on to a new bitch and a new set of pups long ago.

To: Van

Subject: actually

You must think we're all so stupid—either that or you really don't remember. You claim you never left us and went on trips to Florida..I'm living with Mom again and I've got the letters right here..in your handwriting, postmarked from Florida!!!

Lol Dad..I mean how can you lie when I have indisputable evidence right in front of me??!! You either think I'm that gullible or you are in some extreme denial.

Joanne told me stories of you fucking with her when she was younger, playing the count-to-100 game..and she would ask if she had said, say, 14 yet, and you would lie and say she hadn't when she had.

Your lies (head games) have contributed to the mental illness of all three of your children—you are complicit in that and you up and leave us all and Mom has to pick up the pieces.

I'm working on another memoir and your abuse of me plays prominently in it. I suggest you don't read it, because it might be too hard for you to handle. One thing you and Mom taught us when we were kids is that the truth always comes out eventually..well..that is true for you, too. And don't try to sue me or do any legal action..everything I'm saying in this memoir is true and I have every right to say it.

I don't believe in god, but if I did, I'd pray for you.

Me, sadly, falling back into the humiliator/humiliated pattern—I know that having his secrets exposed is something he fears greatly, and I played that card shamelessly because somewhere in life I learned or decided that once someone crosses the line (of acceptable human decency) it is then ok to treat that person like they are a subhuman piece of shit. I hate that about myself—I'm just being honest here.

To: Van

Subject: can we just have peace?

I live my life in fear wondering if you're going to file more legal actions against me, your own son.

Or that if I speak with you, you will abuse me by lying about the past that we both know is true.

Your behavior, and I'm not the only one who thinks this (or uses this exact word), is crazy-making. Talking to you makes a person crazy because you deny what we all know is true, you refuse to connect emotionally..it really has been a contributor to my instability in life, especially knowing (based on your actions) that I am not important to you, not a priority in your life. It is maddening..so if that was your goal..then you fucking succeeded.

I'm just falling apart here, my mind becoming more disorganized. Obviously that wasn't his goal—he's doing his best, just like everyone. It's just that my father is a very sick man. And instead of stepping up to the plate to help his mentally ill son, my father just backed into the shadows like a scared little kid.

The main difference between us in that regard is I admit I'm sick. It took a while (decades)..took a few inpatient hospitalizations before I admitted I was sick, that I was the cause of my disastrous life, that I really had bipolar disorder and that it was my world that was not normal, not all of yours.

I am basically living in the Matrix.

I am Truman Burbank.

Things that are real to you seem fake to me. My world is constructed with lies I can never detect, and even when they're presented to me, I can't tell if they're lies. My texture hallucination—a sign that I'm manic—appears on walls and paper and it looks real but I know it's not real—but I don't quite know that. When I'm manic, I can't figure out whether it's real or not, and the fact that earlier in my life, when not manic, I knew it wasn't real, doesn't help me make that decision then. It's undecidable—I can't actually tell what's going on.

I angered my mother one time we drove through the pharmacy window. She asked me if we were refilling cyclobenzaprine and I said I didn't know. I was ninety-nine percent sure we were because that's the medicine I had requested to be refilled via the pharmacy app. But the text message confirmation that said I had a medicine to be picked up just said that a medicine starting with C was ready at the pharmacy..and I take multiple medicines whose names start with C. So I didn't really know with one-hundred percent certainty that the medicine that was ready was cyclobenzaprine. So I said I didn't know. And this set my mom off—to her it indicated that I had a lot less awareness of the situation than I really had—because I was being technical. To most people, ninety-nine percent certain is certain. But to me, someone with psychosis, I have to be very precise about what I know and what I don't know. Frankly, I think it's prudent for everyone to doubt what they know—in my observation a lot of what people think they know, they don't have what I would consider sufficient reason to think they know.

This morning I was just battling my own shadow. For all I know, my dad has a Gmail filter to delete all my email, too. I was just arguing with everything I feared, and it didn't have a tangible connection to my dad (in the present moment, in his current incarnation, with what he's actually done about our loan). I was doing something I always hate when other people do with me: have a relationship with me that doesn't actually involve me, but is just them working out their own shit with me as their punching bag.

But, this morning, I couldn't stop.

To: Van

Subject: also

If you get a court to drain my funds [Yes, really, I'm continuing on this subject]—unbelievable!], or if I end up in a psych hospital or dead, my disability will go away, and Mom depends on that too, so please don't do anything like that if you have any caring left in your heart, because it could cause Mom to become homeless if that money is cut off. These are the the things I worry about now that I have a little bit of money. I want to pay you back in installments but I can't trust you to communicate with me safely [That is certainly true—no psychosis there], so for my own mental health and life safety, I can't do that right now. If you have Leona send me your address I'll send you checks once I get a real bank account set up. I want to pay you back—regardless of what you believe about my lack of character and "work ethic", which you have made very clear in the past—and I will pay you back in full, eventually. Please just ask Leona to send me your mailing address or bank routing/account numbers and I will pay you that way. Actually, no, fuck it, there are ways to send money through email now..I'll figure out how to do that, and pay you back that way, that way we don't have to have any exposure to one another. I'll send you some money asap.

My obsession takes a few steps backwards, but not all the way out of the room. The email money transfer solution placates me—I really want to pay my dad back, and I really don't want to delete my Gmail filter..part of what keeps me sane is not hearing anything that comes from within that man's head. An hour passes. I do other things. At 10:29am I feel compelled to send the following email. My hope tells me it will be the last one I ever send. My obsession knows that can't possibly be true.

To: Van

Subject: all you want

All you want from me is money. Well, believe me, that's all you're going to get [Borrowing a little here from Princess Leia's classic scolding of Han Solo: "If money is all that you love, then that's what you'll receive."] From now on, the only communication you're going to get from me is email money transfers. And once the last one of those is sent, you'll never hear from me again.

That's what it's like to be paranoid, folks (and an insensitive, hurtful bastard—or maybe a sufferer of bipolar disorder who doesn't have the full degree of control afforded a mentally healthy person). Yes, my paranoia is rooted in reality—most paranoia is. Being psychotic, I am told I have a reduced ability to accurately determine the probability that my dad will get a court to drain my bank account to pay a tiny fraction of what I owe him for my film school tuition. I get irrationally, unnecessarily worried and I write multiple emails, trying to position myself strategically relative to my dad (who is less of an enemy than I fear him to be but more of an enemy than I would like him to be), trying to box my dad in out of a desire to defend myself against attacks from him (I can't tell anymore if they're real or imagined).

I think I used to have boundaries but I lost them. Now I wrongly think that everyone is accessible to me, that I can impose on anyone's time or mind, when I never used to think that. I'm having to learn boundaries again and I'm not even sure I want to.

Instead, I go crazy. I write my dad nine email messages between 3:47am and 10:29am. The link is one way—my Gmail filter doesn't just archive messages from my dad, it deletes them upon receipt. That's for my own personal safety. That's how mad my dad makes me. Listening to him deny the horrible shit he's done to me literally puts me in the hospital and like I said, I can't afford to go there again.

I used to write chain emails like these to my boss in California. I thought it was because I was drunk—but I was drunk all the time, and it turns out I do the same exact thing when I'm sober, except now I send them to my dad. I tried to use that California boss as a father figure. It's partially obsession, partially graphomania, and partly a need to be heard. Unfortunately, people don't like to read lengthy chains of email, or, really, to read much of anything at all. If someone mass-emailed me like that, I wouldn't like it. I know (sometimes, later) that my paranoia is paranoia, but I am compelled to write about it anyway. You may know that graphomania is defined as the obsessive impulse to write, but the etymology is far more telling—graphomania comes from the Greek words for writing and insanity.

165

So, I mean half my family ignores me, the other half hates me, the remaining two percent are keeping my ass alive, so forgive me if I'm a little crazy. If I sent cry-for-help text messages to my aunt, she ignores me—like, just never fucking responds. If I send her a stupid joke from the internet, she responds right away. My cousin, her son, doesn't respond to anything serious or deep either. Not just my immediate family, but my extended family too, is not a family. It is—as Joanne says—"a collection of individuals." My mom, my sisters, my friend Ashley, they've had my back when I was homeless or suicidal or just getting out of the hospital. But even after my suicide attempt, I sent an email to my family being honest with them about why I was in a psych hospital for the last three and a half weeks. I don't think anybody responded.

But that's ok. I'm used to being alone because very few people know what to say to me.

Eventually I ended up living with Leona, my sister, seven years younger than me. I don't know if Mom and Dad just didn't know what to say? Were in denial? But I mean how do you think that feels when your own parents don't come to your rescue..when they don't even hit "reply."

How do you think I got this way?

---

Writing Davina's book with TD—some days I was typing with one finger I was in so much pain, then discovering the prone typing position, finding a doctor while Joanne was here visiting, going to AA, working through various sponsors. Sticking with the meditation meeting. Making a year sober.

I write a blog post to mark the occasion:

Just for Today

I have been sober for one year today. For purists (and I am one) that's much more accurately stated as 365 sober days in a row. You can't get sober for a year, you can't get sober for a lifetime, you can't get sober for a week. You can get sober for a minute, 10 minutes, an hour, an afternoon, maybe even a day. Staying sober for some time is like painting a wall—except you're not allowed to use a brush or a roller..you have to use a Q-tip, and you have to paint one spot each day, and you can only paint one spot each day. It's like writing a book, actually. In school, if you were halfway smart, you could write all your 10-page papers the night before. You can't write a book "the night before"—you have to write a few pages every day for months or years. With sobriety and writing, you can't skip ahead and it doesn't help to get stuck in what you already did—it's a one day at a time sort of thing.

Recovering addicts pay a massive price to learn that the only way to move forward at all is by taking "baby steps". Baby steps are from What About Bob?, a comedic movie about what sanity is and what madness is. If you are mad underneath but on the surface sane, What About Bob? will unnerve you. You'll wonder who the hero is and who is the villain. The Royal Tenenbaums has a similar effect on those who are from pathologically evil families, and who have not dealt with that (with a therapist). Anyway Bob from What About Bob? cannot make it down a hallway without taking "baby steps". He cannot psychologically "make it" from 2pm to 4pm without taking baby steps—he looks at the clock and manages his thinking in terms of one- or five-minute intervals. It sounds silly but "baby steps" resound as one of the most crucial paradigms in our world—all from a very silly screenplay by Tom Schulman (who by the way also wrote a very serious screenplay called Dead Poets Society. Of course this idea is older than Tom Schulman—the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu most famously stated it: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

When you are addicted, you are not in control. This goes for all sorts of substances and in fact also goes for non-substance-related behaviors like work and obsessive-compulsive behavior. People are addicted to power, sex, their own image. I believe that, of these, substance abuse at least is coexistent with a whacked-out relationship with the present moment. For me, substance abuse has most of the time been a way to either hold on to a moment that I love or a way to make a moment I dislike, go away. I've used alcohol along with music to return to the same emotional moment again and again..long enough to write a book that oozes that emotion when read. If you read about writers, you will quickly see that there is far more than a casual correlation between writers and alcoholism—it's less like a correlation and more like a death knell. So the moment hurts—there's a drug for that. Or the moment is ecstasy—there's a drug for that, too. If you had the ability to manipulate your mind to dull the pain that someone you loved is dead, would you do it? If you had the power to feel more godlike/beautiful/sexy than you could have previously even imagined, to have orgasms that are 40 times more powerful than a normal, already mind-blowing orgasm, would you do it? For the extra-intelligent, exploratory person, the answer is more often yes than for people who have a greater ability to just accept the world they are given. I've said yes many times to drugs that I used to control my state in so many moments. For a while they worked for me. Then, as any addict will tell you, the drugs turned on me. I was no longer controlling the moment with drugs—drugs were controlling me. There's that saying: You don't do drugs. Drugs do you. Well, that's true.

Now's a good time to stop, make yourself a screwdriver, and come back when you're ready.

166

Everyone refreshed? Let's continue.

People who have never done serious drugs sometimes say things like: Why would you ever do that? It just destroys you, it just kills your body. They haven't made a very obvious inference, and the answer to their question is this: Look at what pain and death I am willing to inflict on my body and my family and my life. Don't you think I must be getting something phenomenal, something extraordinary, in return? We addicts do get something in return for this crazy trade: we get to feel good, even if it's just for a few seconds. A young woman told me this story once: She said: "I dropped out of college 'cause I was spending all my money on drugs, skipping all my classes, and there was no point. So I went home for a few weeks to get ready for a road trip. I was going out west, because I had never seen Utah and I'd heard it was like soul-fillingly beautiful. I was standing in the corn field talking to my dad and he said, 'Laura, I don't understand why you feel you need to go on this trip. There's nothing special in Utah. You're just going to end up on drugs again, homeless, a prostitute, and two or three years from now I'll get a call from you.' And I said, 'I have to go to Utah. There are rock structures and canyons and hot springs in Arizona. How come you never went to Arizona? Didn't you ever want to see something other than Ohio?' Dad is quiet. I say, 'Why didn't you ever try drugs? Don't you want to see what Native Americans see when they're on peyote? There's a whole spiritual world out there that you can't just stand around in your corn field waiting for your heart and your spirit to be filled with!! You have to seek it out!!' And my father looked at me and he said, 'I can't imagine what it must be like to be you. You are my precious child and I hate to see that your heart hurts and I hate watching you try to fill it.' He went back to his work in the field. And I screamed: 'DON'T YOU WANT YOUR HEART TO FEEL THAT PEACE, THAT UNIVERSAL PEACE THAT PEOPLE TALK ABOUT?!' My dad looks up at me and says, 'Laura, I already have that peace.'" That was the end of her story. I'll connect the dots a little: Smarter People Are More Likely To Be Mentally Ill and to be alcoholics and drug addicts:

In modern life, the opportunity to imbibe—or to otherwise ingest mind-altering substances—presents an "evolutionarily novel" situation explored more readily by the smarter, bolder ones among us. In fact, the correlation is so strong scientists say the inverse is true: People of lower intelligence are the least likely to drink or use drugs. Now, scientists have identified a biomolecular connection between curiosity as a trait and intelligence in general, as evidenced by a 2009 study in Neuron from researchers at the University of Toronto and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital. Specifically, the neuronal calcium sensor-1 protein was associated in a mouse model with spatial memory and curiosity. Interestingly, that same protein has been linked in humans to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

I don't know much about AA. I've been to AA or NA meetings over four distinct periods. Even telling you that, I am breaking one of the integral rules of all 12-step groups, which is that members remain anonymous. I've been schooled by long-time members of AA about breaking this rule and I do believe it is one of the most important features that makes the organization work. However, I believe breaking that rule is sometimes necessary to do the most useful thing overall. For the purpose of this post, telling you a little about my AA experience, even though it is outside the context of AA is, I believe, a good compromise. Once, early in a period of sobriety, I told what someone had shared in one meeting, to some other people in the same AA circles who were not in that meeting, and they sternly informed me that What happens in a meeting, stays in that meeting. They were right—I stood corrected. Each AA meeting is anonymous even from other AA meetings in the same town. It's an ad hoc meeting and when it's over, baby, keep it to yourself. It's an important rule to protect the safety of those who share: Let's say a husband and wife are both AA members in the same town. The wife might share something in a meeting where her husband is not in attendance that she does not want him to hear. If I share what she shared with other alcoholics outside of that meeting, it might compromise her ability to share safely in meetings. It's an extremely important rule—which people break constantly so that they can pass along wisdom from one group to another. AA members break their own rules all the time: there is a guideline prohibiting "crosstalk", which is interrupting someone else while they're talking, or sharing directly at someone, giving them advice instead of sharing your own experience, strength, and hope. It's sad to hear some "old-timers" share at newer members week after week, giving them advice, never sharing a thing about themselves or their own journey. If AA ever became that for me, I might as well be drinking.

I said I don't know much about AA, and that's true. I've read about 25 pages of the Alcoholics Anonymous book, begrudgingly. I've done hardly anything my sponsor has asked me to do and I am surprised he is still willing to be my sponsor. I only go to one meeting a week, which is frowned upon by my AA friends. (This is mostly due to the fact that I am in chronic pain, have a serious movement disorder that makes it impossible to sit still or stop uncontrollable clenching of my muscles. I'm forbidden to drive by my psychiatrist, I don't have a car anyway, and the one meeting I go to is a meditation meeting, so I am able to lie down during the meditation part of the meeting and sit extremely awkwardly and painfully for the open-sharing part of the meeting.) (I'm not against meetings. When I got sober in Tucson I went to three or four meetings a day for the first few months.) I do listen carefully in meetings and I sometimes pick up wisdom from other addicts. When I was talking with my AA friend Glory about how little I know about AA, she said, "That's ok, because this isn't a program of knowledge or understanding. It's not even a program about feelings. It's a program of action. It's a program of doing."

The American philosopher William James thought along similar lines:

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

So it doesn't matter how I feel. I don't have to feel right or wise or successful with respect to AA, I don't even have to feel like being sober, I just have to do being sober. That is a very weird way of thinking for me—I am a thinker and a feeler and sometimes I start with feeling and thought about a writing project and then move to the action of writing. But the AA way of staying sober doesn't work that way—it works by taking action first and letting the thoughts and feelings come later. So that's something I know about AA-style sobriety. I—perhaps accidentally—got this right during this period of sobriety: I started going to AA meetings before I stopped drinking and before I met AA's one requirement for membership (a desire to stop drinking). When I went to AA this time, I did not have the desire to stop drinking. I had the desire to keep drinking! But I went anyway—I took action before I had the right feeling—and a month later I finally stopped.

Now I'm going to tell you the handful of things I know about getting clean and sober the AA/NA way. None of these are original to me—I learned them all from wiser creatures I met along the way =)

Live in the moment. Live for today. Don't beat yourself up over yesterday and don't get overwhelmed by tomorrow. Do something you can actually do something about, which is this moment and this moment only. This is the most important thing I know about living sober and living life in general. I certainly consider this a type of meditation, and as such, regardless of how long any of us does it, we will always be beginners.

When you start to fret that you're not doing things the right way, when you want to do more but don't know what to do, just chill. You don't actually have to work AA "the right way" or do more in order to succeed or survive "the program". All you have to do is just don't make things worse by picking up a drink or a drug today. Life doesn't actually require your help for things to go well—the world is designed to go wonderfully for you—the universe wants every good thing for you. Before you try to help it go better, first, do no harm. As a drinker, as an addict, I was doing way more work than necessary. The more days in a row I don't make things worse by drinking or drugging—even if that's all I do—the more my life gets better.

In the same vein, I called my sponsor. I said, "I didn't go to a meeting today! I'm freaking out!" My sponsor says, "Are you drunk?" I said, "No." He said, "Then you're doing something right!" The point is that AA is an amazing tool, but even AA is not the point. The point is to live a happy life. I didn't get sober to go to AA meetings; I got sober so I could be happier and more loving and more creative and productive! AA is part of that for me, but being in AA is not the overarching goal of my life.

When you think about using, ask yourself this question: "Did I ever wake up and say, gee, I wish I had used yesterday?" This is from Tom, my first sponsor, a fucking spiritual master and in order to gain this wisdom he had to lose his wife, his kids, his job, his dignity and almost his life..which is usually the type of thing you have to go through to get even the slightest handle on the deepest truths of this world.

When I had two days clean and Tom had two years, I asked him, "How do you know you're not wasting your time—that you won't relapse someday? How do you know each day invested in sobriety is worth it? How do you know you're going to get two more years?" He looked at me and he said, "Well, Matthew, I don't know—I just know I'm going to stay clean today." In my mind, before he said that, I thought getting clean was like graduating from school—you do it once and then you're done, you're clean, you're educated, graduated..you move on to the next phase. Some magical transformation happens after which I will no longer be an addict. After 18 years of using and stopping and using and stopping, I can say that that doesn't seem to be the case for me. There's no fast-forward button. You're painting a wall. You can't use a brush; you can't use a roller. You have a Q-tip, and you get to paint exactly one spot each day. If you stick to what you can actually do each day, then each day is exceedingly easy, fantastically fun, and over time you will paint that wall..or live your life..the way a spiritual master would: with ease (expending the littlest effort possible), with elegance (making graceful transitions from this moment to the next), and with lightness (letting go of everything that doesn't matter).

167

I talk with Joanne on the phone. She tells me about her improv. I tell her about my writing. I tell her about my problems with Mom. I guess I go on too long because Joanne reflects back to me that it's ok to go on extended speeches with her but to try to keep it short around people like Mom because it might make them think I'm doing worse mentally. I write her this text immediately after our conversation:

I'm so glad we can discuss deep things about art. After our conversation I told Mom (jokingly) that I was giving her full credit for raising such a wonderful, wonderful woman as you. I appreciate so much that we can talk about deep and far out and abstract things. I am used to most people simply dismissing me as crazy when they don't understand me, and sometimes (just now was an example) when I mention radical ideas to Mom she gets frustrated and angry, and it messes up the whole vibe of our conversation. And I feel like she doesn't accept me. I know she loves me—she takes care of me in so many ways. But she does not like radical ideas about what to me is the evil of money (and all trade), and she absolutely hates any scientific data suggesting (the following is real data) that cannabis, ecstasy, and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. I told her the other day that right before the FDA classified all the bad drugs not to take, Congress passed a law excluding alcohol and tobacco from the list of drugs to be classified..and the law specifically states that the reason for excluding them is because of their relationship to the IRS..ie we are making too much tax money off these extremely dangerous drugs to make them illegal. One in five deaths in the US is caused by tobacco. How is that not a Class I substance? Because in this particular case, the law, or lack of law, is designed to generate tax dollars at an extremely high cost of human life. Anyway, whatever, maybe it's because her dad died of drinking alcohol, but she does not like to hear that alcohol, which is legal and has little stigma, is more dangerous than ecstasy, which is illegal and has great stigma. Maybe you don't want to hear about this either. Mostly, lately, I just try to shut my effing mouth and put my thoughts into my books. Everything I say to Mom invites a criticism. Sometimes she just walks out of the room when I'm talking (although she says I walk out abruptly in the middle of us watching tv together, so maybe it runs in the family). I kinda cut my ties with my AA group because we're moving, I got so incredulous when the daily meditation book my sponsor and I both used to read from used the phrase "spiritual success". I was like: these people have no idea what spirituality is if they think it's something that is well characterized by success and failure. That's the last meditation I've read from that book, I stopped talking to my sponsor, and the very next day I felt so much better. My writing was happy, I felt empty and free. I love the AA meeting I go to here but I just found out one of my favorite people is also leaving. I'm doing pretty well right now..I'm not mad about this stuff I'm just not in the mood to waste my time. My sponsor is wise in a way but she's also full of platitudes—"pride is pity in reverse". Ok, I get that, but that doesn't mean that having pride in your work means you're about to pop open a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Like I'm unable to use the word "pride" around my sponsor or she'll go off in some teaching mode. Idk. She helped me stay sober for over a year. Maybe it's time to move on, for me, and I'll find AA communities in Nashville that will be right for me as my sobriety continues. I feel optimistic, I just wanted to say a few things. If you don't want me to share on certain topics, or in certain forums, or at all, just let me know and I'll be quiet. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable or certainly not angry just because I mention a certain thought. I said to Mom that I thought money and equal rights were contradictory. It was right after she said we should get the money out of politics. What I said went too far for her, she got frustrated, then angry and short with me. It just makes me not want to speak—I'll just keep it in the books.

168

As I'm sober longer, more and more feelings come out. I am no longer numb. My bipolar is less and less controlled. Even on an antidepressant, I cry at the drop of a hat. My emotions of anger and love and even pure bliss overtake me and I'm impossible to talk to. I try not to talk with anyone, because none of us are on the same page. People who love me think it's weird when I express joy with tears. I am talking about the beauty and wonder and shock of the world and no one, but no one, is getting it.

When you're drunk you go on wild rampages on Twitter and email and in person and say and do all these crazy things and after a while once you start to do some real damage, you say, I better stop drinking. So you stop drinking. But when you're bipolar you find out that stopping drinking doesn't do shit to change your behavior! Those wild things you said and crazy rampages you went on?—You would have done those stone cold sober. It's maddening. Your friends can stop doing drugs and have normal lives and jobs and babies and husbands and wives. But when I, for example, stop drinking, stop drugging, it gets worse.

The things I say when I'm drunk are fairytales compared to the things I say when I'm sober.

You can't drink—'cause that causes its own problems. But you can't stay sober, either, because drinking, in my case, was helping to calm me down. Drunk, I'm terrible—I'm a menace, I'm a criminal. But sober—and bipolar—I'm one of the most dangerous elements around. Certainly in an emotional sense, a social sense. Maybe in a physical sense, too. Most people drink to get crazy. I'm crazy as a baseline. My normal brain will violate every rule, cross every boundary, care about nothing, destroy relationships without even knowing it. When I'm doing manic shit, I don't know it! I have no idea! Only when I see the horrified look on your face do I start to think that what I'm doing is crazy..and that look in your face is my only reference to normal—there's not one inside me. To me, suicidally depressed, regular mood, and guerrilla manic all feel the same. I don't know if I'm making love to you or scaring the crap out of you. I don't know if I just made the best presentation my boss had ever seen or gleefully said the most obscene phrase his upper-crust ass has ever heard in his life. I don't know if I'm getting promoted or fired! I have almost no handle on this shit except for other people's reactions—and I don't even see those half the time.

I am open emotionally, and it makes people just as uncomfortable as if I was standing naked before them.

I post:

"It's so beautiful to feel"

I cry.

I cry because I have bipolar. I cry because I feel. I cry because when I witness harsh, deep, true beauty, it touches me.

That kind of beauty can only touch you if you're open, defenseless, willing to be hurt.

I told my mom about In Bruges this morning, that I watched it a second time last night, and I cried when I told her about it. It is a subtly, realistically touching movie—but "touching" is not the first word most people would think of to describe it. And I didn't cry when I told my mom about it because it's touching—I cried because it's one of the very best pieces of writing I've ever had the privilege to witness as a human being.

I thought for a moment that great writing touches me because writing is what I love to do most myself.

But that's not it.

When I went to see the Basquiat exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2005, I brought my sunglasses with me because I knew that seeing that man's art in person would make me cry. Basquiat blows me away. And seeing those paintings up close, seeing how big some of them are..for me it was overwhelming. Emotionally. Spiritually. For me that's one part of what it means to be human, and that is to stand in awe. I think it is a very appropriate paradigmatic stance, a very appropriate stature for us to embody, precisely because we are tiny, tiny beings who live among the stars, among universes inside universes, inside slowly spinning nebulas, inside a Great Mystery, and so awe is maybe the rightest emotion we can feel.

Awe in another human being.

Awe at the clouds.

Awe at the Grand Canyon.

Awe at an ocean storm off the coast of South America.

Awe at the youngest girl to sail around the world alone.

Awe at Yusuf Islam singing [The Wind].

Awe at reading The Catcher in the Rye, Glengarry Glen Ross, or watching Pulp Fiction.

Awe at the bloody, screaming, miracle birth of a new person.

Standing with my best friend in the quietest place I've ever been: miles and miles inside Allegheny National Forest at the top of a mountain plateau, in snow we had not prepared for, among leafless trees, with no sounds of any other animals, no wind, just complete, blanketed silence that I have never heard before or since. Part of the awe and humility of that situation is that we were not equipped to handle the cold that could have killed us. Starting a fire was impossible. No one would hear us even if we screamed—that near-complete isolation is terrifying, but you accept it, and it is beauty.

Facing your death is terrifying, but you accept it, and it is beauty.

Solo camping is terrifying. But then, when you've done it a few times and you're at the top of a mountain in Tucson with the rattlesnakes and the elk and the little bunny rabbits and the pumas and the saguaro cacti, you have to face a simple, laughing truth: which is that we can all die anyway, at any time, all the time—we just usually don't think about it.

I woke up with a famous quote from Faulkner jangling around my head:

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

I was thinking, in my first thoughts of the day, that there is an uncrossable line between every pair of us. I think this is by definition, for if you could know and feel and be made of my experiences or memories, there would be no difference between us, and one of us would be unnecessary. The Dub Pistols suggest that there are Six Million Ways To Live. Right. I am my point of view, my process for doing things on this lucky little ball of green and blue. I can never cross into the Basquiat way of living, of seeing, of creating, of painting.

No. Basquiat will always be the only one of him. You will always be the only one of you who ever lived, with your wisdoms and talents and children and friends. So like Faulkner says, competition and comparison with others is the lesser striving—the truest competition is only with yourself—because of that uncrossable line. It doesn't make any sense for me to say, "Gosh, I really wish I was Shawn Johnson winning the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics balance beam event."

What makes sense is for me to stand in awe, as I stand in awe of the literal stars, at this pinnacle human performance that took one person a lifetime to build, which will always stand as one of the most perfect things that anyone has ever done with their body, their mind, their emotions, and yes—their spirit. Shawn John makes me cry, too.

One of my great teachers, Rebecca Lamb, simply said to me, over and over, "It's so beautiful to feel." How right you are, old friend. Don't doubt that your words will never leave me, or that they describe even the younger me who existed long before we ever met.

I may cry more at human greatness because I have bipolar disorder. I would bet that is a factor. But I think it would be unwise to discount my perspective on this basis. Some people are especially intuitive. Some people are especially smart. We don't discount dogs because they have a wonderful sense of smell—we put them to use! We put our smart people to use with some small rate of efficiency—most are marginalized or discounted. A few of us are either intuitive ourselves or recognize intuition in others. I have learned that when my mother has an intuitive feeling about a situation or person—even if it makes absolutely no sense to my own perceptions and thinkings and machinations—I better give a hard look at my mom's intuition, because that motherfucker is finely tuned.

My tears are like a divining rod for beauty, and they detect their target better than any stud finder or Wall Street trading strategy. I love to write, yes, but by the wisdom of Rebecca's proverb, if I had the choice of writing for the rest of my life, or wandering around MoCA weeping before Basquiats, I might just choose the latter.

169

Legal classifications matter. Back then ecstasy was considered a dangerous party drug and there were all these scary ads and exposés on TV about people dying in dance clubs. And yes, MDMA is still classified on the FDA's list of dangerous drugs. But now we know, from many scientific studies, that ecstasy, along with pot and LSD, are incontrovertibly less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes. So what difference does it make? My girlfriend is still dead, right? Well, the doctors who looked at her said, "This doesn't look like a drug overdose. The usual signs of massive organ failure that we would associate with a drug overdose are just not here. We see massive bone fragmentation, decomposition, porousness, due to bulimia. And the same thing probably would have happened to her if she had taken a Sudafed." But instead of all this time me thinking, oh, we did a drug that scientists say is safer than alcohol and cigarettes, I've been thinking: Stupid, stupid, stupid, I gave my girlfriend some freaky, dangerous, illegal drug than neither of us should have been taking in the first place.

And a lot of people reading this are still gonna think that: my mom for example gets very uncomfortable when I talk about any illegal drug. A lot of people put stock in the US government's classification of evil drugs. But it's completely unscientific—and by the way it's completely rigged. Right before the DEA classified and illegalized all those drugs, Congress passed a law saying that alcohol and tobacco would be excluded from the classification because they were being taxed..because we were making so much money off them..so people like my mom (no offense) who put stock in the DEA's drug classifications are trusting a source that is not even as disinterested and dispassionate as a scientific study is supposed to be. There are a lot of people—let's take my grandmother—who think there is a strong equivalence between moral rightness and human law..or think there should be.

But anyone who thinks deeper, any smart person in any time of history, knows that the common knowledge is not always right, morally or scientifically—and many have been executed by their governments by speaking some kind of "truth," some kind of dissension, whether it be moral or scientific. Some of the rules are not there to keep you safe—they're there to control you and to stunt your development.

Anyway a person like me, who's been beating myself up for years with guilt over handing a twenty-year-old who I loved—who I was in love with—a dose of ecstasy that seemed to play prominently in her death..when I, who have been carrying this heavy piece of history like a Pilgrim's burden, am lightened somewhat by this news, it sets a tiny wrong right. It doesn't un-coma my girlfriend. It doesn't un-die her. It doesn't take back her beautiful organs and un-donate them to fortunate strangers. But it makes me feel like less of a criminal—my guilt has partly been about the fact that "the drug that killed her" was illegal—when science believes now I would have done her more of a disservice, chemically, by offering her a cigarette and doing shots of Absolut all night (which was definitely not the experience we were going for).

So legal classifications do matter. The fact that cigarettes aren't included on the DEA's list of bad, bad drugs has certainly killed more people than ecstasy ever will—especially given that tobacco is responsible for one out of every five deaths in the US. That omission—the omission of tobacco—from the FDA's list of drugs not to try, which was voted on and passed by Congress, has probably been one of the deadliest acts in history. Ditto the omission of alcohol. People like my mom have a reluctant understanding, and people like my grandmother have zero understanding, that, yes, sometimes the rules are there to keep you safe—but sometimes, and this is one of those cases, the rules are there to keep you addicted to something the government has a stable tax arrangement with, which they know is killing you at alarming rates. The hard truth is that the people who get very very rich off that fact that one-fifth of the US citizens who die each year die from tobacco..those profiteers have made a decision, whether they allow themselves to realize this consciously or not, to take the money at your expense. The expense of your life, your premature death, your suffering at the hands of a zillion forms of cancer. My grandmother's husband died from drinking alcohol—but I bet you my two front teeth that that woman would defend the government to her death that alcohol is safer than LSD. Even very smart people confuse legality with scientific or moral rightness—don't you be one of the ones who makes that mistake.

Additionally, the US suffers from what engineering corporations call not made here syndrome—meaning that if we didn't make it ourselves, it couldn't possibly be of any value. Let's say you were in charge of US drug policy, how would you go about deciding what the laws would be? If the US was the best in the world in terms of its drug record—lowest percentage of deaths from drug overdose, lowest percentage of addicts—then you might do your own research into how you could extend the frontier of drug policy excellence—which you occupied..you were the frontrunner in this area. But that is not the case. We have a pitiful record in terms of those statistics and so going it alone—that most foolish part of American exceptionalism—going it alone isn't the smartest strategy.

A smart person faced with such a problem would humbly realize that other countries, through policies much different than our own, have amazingly low incidences of overdose and addiction. Then that smart person would simply copy or adapt policies from the world leader in this area into our own system, theoretically producing some of the same results as the world leader in this area. I don't know what's wrong with us: the US is either too proud to adopt systems similar to other countries' drug and health care systems that work better than ours, or our rich, detached, isolated, prideful lawmakers just don't give a fuck that regular people are dying because they choose to re-invent the wheel with every policy—or, as lately, they sit in the garage inventing nothing while collecting a paycheck. This paycheck, while large by the standards of the average American wage earner, is tiny compared to the money they're being paid by corporations to sit there quietly while corporations like Exxon and BP destroy the planet and corporations like Walmart don't even pay their employees enough to buy food without relying on government programs.

This is not the picture of people who are trying to get something done. It is the picture of complacency—a government made up of millionaires who take their orders from billionaires, about half of whom inherited their money from their parents. The Koch brothers, the Waltons—they inherited their money—they don't know shit about the virtual myth of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." They don't know shit. They never started a business from scratch. They never worked in a company they didn't own. Their parents were rich—that's the only reason they're rich. Their riches didn't take skill, intelligence, hard work—all those values that are put in place to keep poor people working for the rich, nursing the hope that someday they'll be rich too. Check your email: The American Dream has always been a lie to keep poor people working for rich people in perpetuity with no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—at least not for you.

170

One day, after the meditation portion of the AA meeting I go to, is over, I quietly get up and leave the room. I have already stopped talking to my sponsor. I have stopped telling Mom every detail of my day—it's just an opportunity for her to get upset, object, and instruct me on how better to live my life. Her advice is good, I'm just not in the mood to be taught, constantly, by others.

I post my thoughts on my blog, which I'm 99% sure no one in my family reads anyway:

Your lack of acceptance is your irrelevance

I go to an AA meeting every week at a Buddhist temple. At least I used to.

It's a meditation meeting—my favorite kind of AA meeting. I've been to similar meetings in other towns. The format is roughly half an hour of meditation followed by half an hour of people sharing their experiences with alcohol and other drugs, or their experiences with meditation.

The last time I went to this meeting, the home group member who happened to be chairing the meeting that night announced that the monks who graciously let us use their temple had asked that we not lie down during meditation, to honor their traditions.

Well, it happens that right now I only go to one meeting a week, and the reason I go to that meditation meeting is that I had been able to lie down during meditation, with my head on my meditation cushion and my body pointed into the center of our circle of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. The reason I used to lie down during that meditation is that I have tardive dyskinesia, a permanent damaging of the dopamine receptors in my brain by antipsychotic medication that was prescribed to me years ago by a psychiatrist in a psych hospital. The brain needs enough dopamine in the area in the brain where dopamine is usable, in order to coordinate muscle movements. Because of the damage to my brain, I don't have enough dopamine in the usable area. For the last two years, muscles in my mouth, lips, tongue, neck, arms, hands, shoulders, torso, stomach, eyelids! (etc.) have been clenching, moving, thrashing, sometimes punching uncontrollably. It's a significant challenge because it makes you look really crazy and a lot of people don't want to interact with a person who looks really crazy. In fact tardive dyskinesia increases your chance of suicide because being out of control of your body, socially impaired, unable to do most tasks, unable to work a job, and in constant pain does (for me) sometimes create a daunting feeling that makes me feel like it will be impossible to live the rest of my life like this.

Luckily there is good news. For most people with TD, the symptoms go away when they're sleeping. I am very fortunate that when I lie down, my clenching reduces to a level low enough that I can breathe through it, consciously making it go away. When I sit or stand, the clenching returns instantly, but when I lie on my back or my front, my clenching lessens to a level where I can type with both hands, talk on the phone, use a touch screen device somewhat accurately, drink liquids (only with a straw, though—without the straw I spill!!), and eat (though sometimes with a different utensil than I'd use otherwise). Lying down has helped keep me sane while my mom and I work with doctors to try to find ways to lessen the symptoms of this permanent brain damage that was done by one of my psych meds [Note that I am unwilling to mention the psych med by name that all of my doctors tell me caused my TD—in this world, even though I am the injured party, I know there is a chance that if I mention the medicine that fucked up my dopamine receptors, the manufacturer of that medicine might be able to sue me and win (what, exactly?)—but think about that for a second: it is prudent for me not to offend the manufacturer of a medicine that hurt me.]

So I lie down 23 hours a day, about. When I'm sleeping I lie on my back, and most of my waking hours I spend lying on my front, my neck propped up by pillows. I stand and walk for 5 minutes here or there. I try to sit up for part of lunch. But I can't sit for an hour—sitting for half an hour produces severe muscle spasms and pain.

My meditation meeting—the only AA meeting I was going to—was a lifesaver. I could lie down for the first 30 minutes, in the dark, when everybody should be paying attention to their own meditation and not worrying about anyone else's meditation. I never fell asleep during meditation, I didn't snore. And by the way, there's another guy in that meeting who lies down or sort of leans on his pillow during meditation—he recently had a heart attack and my view is that anything we can do to accommodate him, to keep him with us longer, we should do.

The last time I went to this meeting, I heard the announcement that we were being asked by the monks not to lie down during meditation in order to honor their traditions, I said to myself: Ok, I'll see if I can make it the whole hour sitting up. I would consider it potentially a lot ruder to lie down during the discussion period than the meditation period—when someone is telling me their pain, their joy, their wisdom, I want to look into that person's eyes. So I sat for that half an hour meditation. It started out uncomfortable, then painful, and then I heard myself, in my mind, use the word "torture" to describe what I was feeling. And when I realized that's how bad it was, I made the decision to leave when the meditation was over. That was the hardest meditation sit I've ever had, and I can assure you I was not calmly focusing on my breathing—the type of meditation this group recommends.

As soon as the ending bell rang, while the lights were still dim, I gathered my things and left the beautiful meditation space these monks let us use for free. Normally a 12-step group pays a small amount of rent to the owner of the space where they meet. These monks refuse to accept money from us—they're literally giving us the use of their space for one hour a week—we just give our rent money to other AA groups. After the meditation, I went outside and—since I can't drive safely with TD—my mom drove me home.

Now, I don't know if the monks who run that temple actually made the no-lying-down request (they're not present in the temple while we run our group—are they spying on us through the windows?) or if that was just the excuse made by someone or someones in our AA group wanting to impose that restriction because they felt lying down disrespected their rules of meditation, or what—I have no idea. But I do know this: I'll not pick a fight with a monk.

=)

Here's how I know that my spiritual practice is working: I didn't feel mad about this event. I don't feel mad now. I haven't felt mad for one iota of a second between then and now. That's a big change for me—I used to be an expert at anger, and I am intentionally unlearning that skill, every day. There's more: I did not then, nor now, nor in-between, feel any need to discuss, with anyone in that AA group or with the monks of that temple, how this restriction has affected me. I feel no need to judge them. I'm not even curious why they think lying down precludes one from meditating, in the large sense. So that's my meditation. Pema Chödrön wrote a book called Don't Bite the Hook and you can pretty much get the point of the entire book just by the title: The world is full of people driving crazy and talking crazy and acting crazy and, generally, all sorts of situations that are trying to drag you from your path. To drag you from your path. This thing about not lying down during meditation could have been a hook I bit. In fact, even a year ago I think I would have bitten it. But it's just like trolls on the net or my racist uncle: those are hooks that invite me into conversations that I don't want to have. So today I don't have those conversations. I respect those monks—I love them even. And I love that AA group—there was a sweet spot for me about a couple months ago where I really felt at home there. I'm not going to question any of them about any of their actions. I'm not going to tell them the effect this new rule has had on me: either I go only for the second half of the meeting, or I stop going..but I'll figure that out.

Know what I will question, curiously, quizzically, peacefully, and theoretically in this blog?

I will question if the monks of that temple believe that people in wheelchairs, people on stretchers, people who cannot sit still (or sit at all) because of Parkinson's, TD, Lithium tremors, or whatever reason, are not able to properly meditate or are not worthy to meditate in their space. I would imagine there are people lying in hospital beds who find comfort in meditation. If my psychiatrist needs to do a standing, three-breath meditation before she steps into a psych-ward emergency, I don't think I could find it in myself to tell her she's doing meditation wrong. And if I was in a war zone, I might find myself standing or lying, holding a weapon..and I might meditate before I killed..or before I decided not to.

I will question what would have happened if that AA group had decided on some form of meditation other than seated, breath-focused meditation? I've heard from the founders of the group that in their beginning they tried walking, lying, sitting, chanting, and all kinds of meditations before deciding to go for the old standby.

I will question what those monks are doing observing and meddling in our meeting. The AA meeting we hold in their space is not their meeting. If they came in and told us not to talk about addiction we'd probably have to find another space to meet in. They're giving us a space, and in accepting that we didn't consent to the requirement that we meditate using their definition of the word.

I will question Christian churches whose members (according to stories told me by my mom, who has been a pastor for 20 years)..why members of churches say that children are not welcome in their church if they wear street shoes or sneakers or if they silently use their mobile devices and game devices during church. The church is dying. "Somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 churches close their doors every year." If you love going to church, if that is a crucial part of your spiritual journey, why would you do things that make children feel unwelcome? Ever consider that you might be making their parents feel unwelcome, and that those are the people whose tithes pay your pastor and keep the lights on?

I will question this Pope—even though compared to every other pope I know about (which, trust me, isn't a lot of popes!!), this Pope has done more acceptance and change than I even thought a Pope could do, given the past performance of other popes. But, hello, Catholic Church, women can't be priests?????!!!!!!!! What period of geologic history do you think you're existing in? I'll try to refrain from any further insult of your tradition, but let it be known that every time I consider that massive level of rejection of slightly more than half of the human beings that you believe your God created..I laugh. I laugh out loud because even with the immense amount of good you do, your refusal to accept the knowledge and wisdom and perspective that women could offer as priests in your church..makes you absolutely, completely, 100% irrelevant to me.

The list goes on. We humans have been so historically unaccepting of each other, it blows the thinking person's mind. We kill each other because we're different. I weep for this planet, I do; I lament the possibility that we might continue on our current course. We could be having such a party on this Earth, the biggest in the solar system (as far as we know =), with everyone adopting Live and let live and not being so damn fearful of what we don't understand. The concepts are simple—people have known them for longer than we can comprehend, likely past the beginning of written history. When someone is different, we can either learn about them—in which case our compassion will almost universally increase—or we can just stand back, scared as shit, launching drone strikes on people we've never even tried to get to know. People often call my ultra-pacifist views naive. Dude, thinking we can all love each other and create a world that works together like magic is not naive.

Thinking that there's a right and a wrong way to meditate is naive—Buddha would laugh his fat belly right into space if he heard monks telling someone who can't sit up that they must sit up to meditate. Those monks don't even know their own tradition.

Christians don't either. They don't even know their own tradition. I hate to be the pantheist in the room telling Christians this, but if you read the Bible you would know that Jesus wasn't a friend to the rich..and he was a friend to children above all, and sinners and women and all the people you don't accept. The bottom line to Jesus' teachings is love—that's indisputable. So, all my fellow humans who hate gays and blacks and Muslims and Mexicans and capitalists and socialists and the poor and disabled and those you yourself maimed by voting for war..well, I'll try to put this gently, but: Jesus would put his arms around you and embrace you like he embraced all sinners and he would tell you to change your ways. If you hate, you are incorrect in calling yourself a Christian.

I don't hate Buddhist monks, I don't hate Catholics, I don't hate the Pope, I don't hate Christians. I love the good that you do. But your lack of acceptance is your irrelevance. The fewer people you accept, the less your relevance will be, and, eventually—if you keep that direction—you will disappear.

Wanna know why? Because the party will have moved elsewhere. And we will be rocking the house and singing and loving and accepting Everything and Everyone and that's called Love and the more you Love something the more Wonderful it Becomes. Hate never watered any plant I saw—maybe a dead one. To extremely loosely and slightly poetically paraphrase Jesus (and perhaps to provide a radical love-oriented interpretation of this scripture), I think the rain loves the trees and it doesn't care which trees it falls on. Imagine if the rain decided not to fall on certain types of trees because it did not accept them—I think that would be a) an unnatural, senseless, extraordinarily difficult and unnecessary detour, and b) the silliest thing I've ever heard of.

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Glory comes to the house, I happen to have just walked into my room and close the door—which I never do, so it was meant to be. Glory comes down on her high horse telling us that I misunderstood the no-lying-down rule and I was being arrogant and I'm sure she had some pithyism for what arrogance is the opposite of. Glory assumed my mom, being closer to Glory's age than my own, would see reason and be on Glory's side.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

My mom is smarter than all these motherfuckers combined.

She tells Glory that actually, yeah, you all did create a meeting which excluded my son. My mom parries with Glory while I practice the restraint of staying in my room because I knew if I left it, I would yell Glory off our porch and back into the seventh level of hell. I got no love for this sort of thing. And Glory, if I was being arrogant you would know it because you would feel the skin burning off your face and making the consistency of crispy bacon—mmm, just how I like it. But I'm practicing staying chill about things so I don't even worry about it. I do some other work and my mom knocks on my door when Glory is gone.

I thank her profusely for handling that.

An NA guy in Tucson banged on my door for like 30 minutes because I skipped a meeting..boundaries, people! Fuck.

Instead of arguing with Glory myself, or arguing with anyone, or going to the next meditation meeting and stating my case, or venting with Mom, I post again in my blog—a creative, constructive act—where people who want to read what I have to say, can, and people who don't want to read what I have to say, don't have to.

See? The reason I did that?

I'm done fighting the world. My mom says she was about my age when she, too, decided to give up the fight. See, I don't care if that AA group ever understands why I left. I have no desire to be in conflict with them, even to fight for something that was helping me. I am perfectly content to just say goodbye.

And if you ever disrespect me, I can cut you off like that. I can walk away from you forever—never say another word to you—and feel fine about it. Because you need me more than I need you, not the other way around.

Here's my post:

Why smart people don't like AA

As I said before, I didn't have any intention of discussing this with anyone from AA, even though sharing my thoughts might be useful to that group or me—it's basically a conversation I don't want to have. I'm not an AA activist or leader or meeting founder; I don't want to reform AA, I was just going there to get help getting sober. I haven't gone back to the meditation meeting or gone to any AA meeting since the no-lying-down rule was announced. But my astute sponsor and I have discussed this briefly in two or three text messages. I'm leaving out the beginning of our interchange as it is non-substantive, but this, my next-to-last reply, exemplifies the exchange and expands a little on my earlier article.

I don't think you are hearing what I'm saying. Several members of the group told me that at the beginning, they/you tried different types of meditation—sitting, standing, walking, lying, chanting, etc—before settling on seated, breath-focused meditation. What if we had chosen lying or walking meditation and the monks didn't approve? J. leans or lies down and the guy has recently had a heart attack. Do we accommodate him? I think we should. What if someone came to the meeting on a stretcher? I have a disability that makes sitting for an hour torturously painful. By accepting the monks' dictum, by remaining in that space under this rule, we as an AA group are saying: we don't accept just everyone in this group. Now, in addition to the only requirement for membership (a desire to stop drinking) we have another requirement: the ability to sit up for an hour. We are allowing the monks to make us less accepting. The AA meeting isn't the monks' meeting—it's AA's meeting. And, frankly, for us to go along with their rule and to remain in that space compromises the independence of the group. We're no longer independent: our host is setting rules for our meeting. This eats away at our integrity simply because it introduces another requirement for membership when we clearly state at every meeting that there is only one. So, I don't feel welcome there, I can't actually sit through a meeting, and I don't feel like (metaphorically) bending over backward and, say, showing up at 7:30 to participate in just the discussion, being able to sit for half an hour, just not a full one. I need that meeting. It was helping to keep me sober. Now the meeting doesn't accept me as a member because these particular monks have declared that there are wrong ways to meditate, or they have imposed their meditation traditions on us..which by the way, I think Buddha would find absurd—obviously, by reading enough Buddhist tradition, anyone would know that there is no right or wrong way to meditate. I will not return to that meeting, because its integrity is no longer intact. I'm not angry nor do I have any negative feelings about this—I simply cannot fulfill the new, additional requirement for membership in that AA group. I wish everyone in the meeting, and the monks who host you, sobriety and serenity. With firmness, and love, Matthew T.

Normally I wouldn't publish someone else's texts to me—it undermines one of my basic desires, which is for psychological intimacy with others, especially gaining enough of someone's trust that they tell me their most intimate stories—but the response I got from my sponsor is so illustrative of why smart people don't like AA that I am breaking my own rule in this case for the general education of anyone reading this. My sponsor's reply:

You are welcome to think as you please but IMHO, you are using this issue to withdraw and make your leaving us easier to handle. The monks are very kindly and generously allowing us to use their SACRED space. If they had seen us lying down on the first time we tried it, they would have said something then. Meanwhile, A. or C. was going to talk to T.—one of the monks and explain your disability AND btw, they really only object to FEET POINTING AT THE BUDDHA. So all we would have needed to do is have you sit on the other side of the circle!! Any facility that allows us to have meetings has a perfect right to make a few rules and it has nothing to do with the third tradition of AA. You chose to become offended & apparently have forgotten that AA, that mtg in particular and the spiritual aura of the temple helped you stay sober for over a year. My hope for you is that after the trauma of moving is done, you will feel more gratitude and less self-righteous indignation. It is the only way you will grow spiritually and stay happily sober. I'm very sorry that the group was robbed of the opportunity to tell you goodbye. And that you didn't take the opportunity to grow in understanding. As your sponsor I have a responsibility to be honest with you and that's what I'm trying to do now. And I still love you!

And my final reply:

You're just wrong about how I feel. You're making that up in your own mind and you are not more informed about how I feel than I am. I'm not offended, as you claim, and I think if you read my message and then you read your message, you will see that the one with the heated tone is yours, not mine. Nothing I said was self-righteous or indignant, G.—read it again—it just wasn't. I'm going to have to say goodbye to you now because you are being irrational [and using all caps] and I can't proceed with you that way. I haven't forgotten the help you or that group has given me. I will always be thankful but this is the last I will interact with you. —Matthew T.

So call me Spock. I mean you could make a pretty good argument that the title of this article is self-righteous and indignant—even though there's a much better argument that it's not.

AA lays out a set of guidelines at the beginning of each meeting and then its members proceed to almost universally ignore them. For a critical thinker, that creates a discordance or poses a question: Why do we say "no crosstalk" and then proceed to crosstalk through the entire meeting. (Crosstalk, in AA, is when you either interrupt someone while they're sharing or you use your share to talk directly to someone, responding to what they said or giving them advice instead of sharing your own experience, strength, and hope, which is the most useful kind of share you can do in an AA meeting. We don't come there for advice. We come there to hear others' stories and share our own. An AA meeting is not a discussion.)

We crosstalk all the time in AA meetings. I've done it. Sometimes you just can't help yourself. And what do you expect from a bunch of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts?—We're not necessarily the most polite or rule-abiding people. But it's a problem for me, a cousin of mine, and some other smart people I've met in AA, to say at the beginning of each meeting, "no crosstalk," and then to sit through a meeting full of crosstalk. You get one or the other, you can't have both: either eliminate the rule against crosstalk or have the moderator stop crosstalk when it happens (which some moderators do).

Let me tell you about a time when the moderator of a group allowed egregious crosstalk to happen, initiated by a long-time member of AA toward a newcomer (me). I'll illustrate this with the text of a note I wrote to the regional AA office in Baton Rouge. By writing this note, I broke AA's tradition of anonymity (whatever happens in a meeting stays in a meeting and some other tenets which I am also breaking by publicly identifying myself as a former? AA member on this blog). I realize the hypocrisy of this, as I criticize others for breaking AA rules, and I have weighed the pros and cons and I believe I am making the choice that will result in the greater good. Here's the note:

I attended the Wednesday night men's meeting last night for the first time. I shared. Directly after my share, an old-timer shared. He looked directly at me and used his share time not to talk about himself and his journey but to give me advice on how to fix myself.

In my share I mentioned that I have some uncontrollable muscle movements that my psychiatrist thinks are a side effect of the antipsychotic medication I take.

This AA member suggested, in his share, that my muscle movements were caused by alcohol alone and were not a side effect of my antipsychotic medication.

He then suggested that along with sobriety, I should stop my psychiatric medications..and that this would be an appropriate solution for me.

An AA member like this is doing more harm than good. He is not abiding by the group's primary purpose, to help the newcomer. Instead he is turning away the newcomer by crosstalking me in my first visit to the men's meeting and using his share time to give me direct advice instead of sharing his experience, strength, and hope. In every meeting we stress that crosstalk is ill-advised. And yet, this senior member of AA crosstalks me in his share.

Additionally, he is giving me potentially fatal advice. A bipolar patient, for example, who stops taking his lithium, has an increased chance of suicide. Bipolar disorder is an organic brain disorder..sobriety doesn't fix it. It is highly inappropriate for an AA member to give this advice, unless that AA member is a psychiatrist.

What this AA member did erases any credibility he might have ever had with me. The fact that his crosstalk was allowed to go on, unchecked by the meeting chair, erases the credibility of that group. I will not have anything to do with that AA member, ever, and I will not return to that meeting.

Please hear this report as a helpful reflection on something that went wrong, and use it to help make our fellowship better.

Sincerely,
Matthew T.

Do you start to see why smart people don't like AA? Of course you will not be literal, and will allow me my tongue-in-cheek title. I certainly don't imply that anyone who likes AA isn't "smart"—a term I couldn't define even if I wanted to. But when a non-psychiatrist, elder, respected member of an AA meeting crosstalks his share at me, telling me nothing about his own journey to sobriety (which might have been useful information to me), denies that I have a disability (I have several—one is tardive dyskinesia), tells me that stopping drinking will fix my supposedly non-disability movement disorder (which it seems he has mistaken for delirium tremens, a condition I have never experienced even after my heaviest periods of drinking and which by the way looks nothing like tardive dyskinesia), and then this clueless person advises me to stop taking my psych meds, opting for sobriety alone as the solution to all my problems..that has to cause a smart person to wonder what the fuck they are doing in AA!

Do you hear self-righteous indignation there? What I hear is common sense. Of course one does not want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but let me inform you that I have been to just over 1,000 AA and NA meetings, and that guy—that old-timer telling me to stop my lithium—he is not an outlier. There are a lot of wonderful and a few wise people in these groups, and in my experience being in community with them can help you get clean and sober if you want to. But there is simply, for me, too high a level of inconsistency and manipulation and bending of the rules that I always come to the conclusion that I cannot allow such a high level of nonsensical junk to enter my mind. About 3/4 of my sponsors have gone out of their way to make their religion and/or politics an issue between us—when I never brought it up and they never should have brought it up. I remember a sponsor who didn't do this. That sponsor kept it simple, which almost no one in Alcoholics Anonymous seems able to do. Whenever you hear anyone in AA say, "It's not about the drinking"—beware. Of course it's about the drinking: that's why people go to AA, because we're alcoholics and when we drink we can't stop and we destroy our lives and hurt everyone around us and we need help stopping or else we'll die. Look, I can philosophize the whiskers off a cat but that has nothing to do with sobriety. Have I enjoyed the more heady and philosophical people I've met in AA? Absolutely. But guess what?—Those are the ones who keep it simple in practice. As one such addict says, I didn't have a theory of addiction, so I don't need a theory of sobriety. I had a practice of addiction; now I have a practice of sobriety

People who disagree with what I just said will counter by saying that really it's a spiritual problem that we alcoholics are trying in vain to solve with alcohol. Yeah? I happen to agree that that is a fantastic paradigm. But, oddly, I've never heard a single recovering alcoholic suggest that alcohol might be the cause of their spiritual problems. Yes, loneliness and hyper-individuality and selfishness and depression and mental illness might all be termed "spiritual problems" that some of us try to solve by drinking ridiculous amounts of alcohol. And some of us eventually learn that alcohol just isn't the right tool for solving those problems. But is the root the spiritual problem or is the root addictive substances? I don't think that there is a simple answer—or any answer—to that question. Just as surely as people with many years of sobriety insist that "It's not about the drinking" but rather a spiritual problem at root, I can tell you that if I start out with relatively few spiritual problems and, because of proximity, I begin using an addictive substance like alcohol or cocaine, I will rapidly develop some extremely-hard-to-solve spiritual problems.

To go to 1,000+ 12-step meetings and hear approximately eight times that number of shares where people say a little tidbit about their drinking life, their sober life, or how they got from one to the other (and sometimes back) is something that has changed me forever. So far, this 14 months of clean and sober time that I have right now is the longest I've had since I started drinking. I don't want to drink. And the careful reader of this post will recall something I said early on, in my text to my former sponsor: "I need that meeting. It was helping to keep me sober." I am not against AA. I need AA. I needed the sponsor I just said goodbye to. I needed the support I was getting from AA friends from that meeting. But if you think I'm going to monkey around about whether it's just lying down during meditation or pointing one's feet at the statue of Buddha, then you don't know me. If it was about where reclining meditators' feet were pointing, then that should have been the verbiage used in the initial announcement. That is not the verbiage that was used. What was said was The monks don't want us lying down during meditation because it goes against their traditions That excludes me from the meeting. It's cool. I'm not drinking over it. I'm not mad. I'm a little sad that my sponsor and I had such a beautiful beginning and such an ugly end—but you know what, that is just one of the asymmetries of our world, and I accept it.

Maybe a good title for this post would be "Why smart people don't like anything". Kidding, kind of. Smart isn't really the right word. I'm not saying I'm some high-class motherfucker like the chaps on the top deck of Titanic. For example, one time I was drunk driving through Hollywood and I stopped behind a Carl's Jr., let myself inside the fence that surrounded their dumpsters, dropped my pants and took a dump right there on the asphalt—I had to shit that bad. I could tell you a hundred stories like that and worse but I'm hoping that particular admission will make you hate me less when I say that why smart people don't like AA is really an issue of class.

Like: when you're my sponsor, and you say that Jesus got you clean, not AA, that means you have a coarse understanding of the game we're playing as sponsor/sponsee. By class I mean delicacy, awareness, finesse. For example, none of my friends would ever just go up to a woman and touch her breasts without asking. But there are people who do that. They have no class. And they are not my friends. Take the best and leave the rest is an adage that applies to AA especially well. But you can only ignore so much. And when smart people, or people with class, delicacy, awareness, finesse..when they go to AA or NA, it's a shock because for all the good that is in their literature and in the people there who have miraculously stopped their insane drug behavior for years and continue to approach the goal of the 12 steps, which is to be a compassionate person..there is also this unacceptable level of inconsistency, irrelevancy, hypocrisy, pompousness, oblivion to others' speech and needs, and, in the case of the self-appointed psychiatrists, real life-threatening danger for the innocent.

Ok, this blogger is a bit long-winded, so what I suggest here is we take a break consisting of you going and getting a phatty-phat blunt or a crack stem or a meth pipe or just some good old-fashioned cocaine. I want you to chop that shit up, cut of 1/3 of a plastic straw, and suck than shit up your nose. I do recommend that you do all this while smoking a Kamel Red, drinking a fifth of Jack, and..what's left..just go buck wild because this blog is gonna run on for a while.

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Everyone feeling refreshed? Excellent. Let's resume the polite dialectical smackdown of your host and author, Mr Matthew Q. Temple, MFBA, PQRSTU, LOL.

Part of the dynamic in play here is that you have to respect people while you're helping them. Just because you're the doctor and I'm the patient does not mean that you may not be unknowingly offending my delicacy, awareness, finesse, or smarts. AA people who have wisdom around sobriety often are completely unaware that they are playing the part of the bull in the china shop around classy people. If I'm your math tutor, and I teach you math but insult your race, then I have precluded my ability to be a good math tutor to you. Being sick doesn't make you dumb. It doesn't make you less than those who can heal or teach you. Think of Will in Good Will Hunting. People with less finesse than he had, offended him such that they could not help him (because they were unable to earn his respect—they were a joke to him). Will was sick, yes, but what he needed was—not a therapist as smart as him, but—a therapist who respected him, had more life experience than him, and who had awareness and finesse in spades. That's a tall order—the fact is people like that are in short supply. If you're broad minded, complex, intelligent, then you're going to have a hard time finding a therapist. Because, like in Good Will Hunting, in therapy, in the teacher/student relationship, in the sponsor/sponsee relationship, in the parent/child relationship, in the boss/worker relationship, and often in love relationships, there is an element of who's on top (of the conversation). These relationships are characterized by complex power-exchange dynamics and while at our best we allow others to make mistakes, we forgive them, we learn, and we move on..often who's on top (who is in control, who has the most power) is set early on in the relationship and it is very hard for the participant with less power to gain the upper hand. Sometimes (especially with love relationships) the power balance changes frequently and rapidly throughout the duration of the relationship. But sometimes the power difference grows so great that the person in power either sticks around because she finds pleasure in abusing her weakly positioned partner, or she leaves because there is no longer interest or challenge in the relationship for her. When I'm the more powerful one in a relationship, let's say a sponsor/sponsee relationship where I am the sponsee, the moment my sponsor indicates to me, through their words or actions, that they think they are the more powerful one in the relationship, I decide that this person is not a good sponsor for me. They are showing me that they think they are on top, and showing me that they don't know that I am on top, and that precludes a lot of the kinds of conversations I want to have. They basically don't know what's up. The smarter you are, the more emotional depth you have, the broader swath of the cultural world you have experienced, the harder it is for people to help you. Of course I listen to lots of people, and I believe this is worthwhile because everyone has had experiences I haven't, so everyone has much to teach me! But when an AA sponsor stops listening to me, stops respecting me, starts talking to me as though they are the parent and I am the child (a relationship where the parent almost always has the power), and I am actually on top, then the relationship is over. That's because, as I said in the beginning of this paragraph, "you have to respect people while you're helping them." If you disrespect the people you're helping and they're on bottom, they will stay and allow you to help them. If you disrespect someone you're helping and they're on top, they will walk away..out of your hospital, off of your therapist's couch, out through the double doors of the Buddhist temple that hosts your AA meeting, and you will never see them again..

I have heard many people (other than me) say that sobriety and AA principles are harder for smart people to accomplish and accept. I remember talking in a courtyard after a meeting in Tucson and I was explaining some of my thoughts about steps I was taking that helped me stay sober and grow spiritually. These were plans and actions that were helping me live a more joyous life. And this young, NA-brainwashed know-it-all said—as he held up his NA "big book" and knocked a knuckle against its hard cover—"But the steps are all right here, man. That's the beauty of it. You don't have to think up your own plan. It's already been figured out."

And you know what, he's right. You don't have to think for yourself, you don't have to think at all. The 12 steps are brilliant. The whole AA program is brilliant. But guess what? So am I.

I'll work a template that works, but I'm not going to stop evaluating, I'm not going to stop thinking, I'm not going to stop inventing. Some AA people say that nothing they thought before they got into AA was right—it was all "stinkin' thinking" Well, my friends, that just doesn't happen to be the case for me. Most of my thoughts were better than what's in the AA book, better than anything any AAer has ever said to me—I thought philosophical, logical, artistic thoughts that are on a level higher than anyone I've ever met. Sound like righteous indignation? Well try being someone who doesn't just color inside the lines—imagine that, for a second. Imagine if you could sit with your friend and prove certain theories in respected math books wrong. How can a person like that feel at home in AA, or any religion that's overly dependent on a fixed text?

The lockstep response of an AAer to a newcomer saying something like what I just said is to try to disarm and scold the person for thinking they are (the AAer's actual words) "terminally unique". Right, I get the point: we have to get over thinking that we aren't connected to the rest of humanity by common strengths and weaknesses. Terminal uniqueness is used as a way for a recovering alcoholic to believe that because of their individuality, the program won't work for them. Terminal uniqueness is at base a fear that you are doomed in a way that others aren't.

But what I'm talking about is that some people are more unique than others. I'm not suggesting to myself that my exceptional uniqueness is a good reason for me to drink! I'm just saying that in AA meetings, I don't encounter people who have deep skill in multiple areas, are as smart as me, who have produced the amount of writing/thinking output that I have, or who have worked technically difficult jobs. It would be unreasonable to expect to meet people like me in any context that I know of, except my family or possibly Twitter. I'm not dissing simple/manual jobs, either. I learned a whole philosophy from washing dishes. But my mind has gone to places that normal people's haven't. I've built my own web server in C. Made a regular expression engine in less than a thousand lines of code—you probably don't even know what a regular expression is. And that's ok. All I'm saying is it doesn't take deep and broad smarts to be an insurance adjuster or a project manager or a medical biller. I'm not putting down any of those things!—we're all necessary and valuable—I'm just saying that for most of you, when we talk, I can figure you out in three seconds, and if we talked for fifty years, you'd never figure me out at all—you'd never really know me.

Enough arrogance for you? Keep sippin' that Jack, motherfucker.

Most people can follow a program. AA is a program; it's a 12-step program. When people encounter it, it sometimes helps them because they follow the steps. But I can write programs, programs that are 100,000 lines long and do profoundly complex things. That's where my mind is. This isn't bragging—this is me asking you to understand me. This article isn't titled "Why AA sucks and is doomed and whoever invented it or follows it should be shot". It's titled "Why smart people don't like AA". I know sobriety and serenity are hard for everyone. I'm simply talking about some of the reasons AA is distasteful, hard to swallow, for smart people. It doesn't work as well for smart people—it isn't as good a fit for us as it is for more regular, mentally healthy people of normal intelligence.

For that young man who was thumping his NA book at me, scolding me for having my own thoughts, I am extremely glad he has NA and that it's helping him. But the illogic is glaring: NA wisely reminds addicts at every meeting that "alcohol is a drug" [as much as heroin or coke]. Yet cigarettes are somehow exempt from NA's program. There's a sensible side to this: cigarettes won't alter your consciousness to the level that you'll crash your car or murder your neighbors while you're hallucinating or make you say terrible things to your kids. But they will kill you. Maybe not quickly, but 1/5 of all deaths in the US are due to cigarette smoking. How is that a compassionate act?—to live a shorter life for the people who love you, for yourself. Also, smoking doesn't just kill you—secondhand smoke kills 41,000 people in the United States annually—how is that a compassionate act? Also still, nicotine is unquestionably addictive. So you've got a highly addictive mixture that doesn't just kill the user, it also kills people nearby—most "hard" drugs don't even have that property: you're using and I'm standing next to you and your drug is killing us both! Here's my quick letter to NA: Dear NA, Cigarettes are a drug. Love, Matthew Temple, former user of just about every drug imaginable. I'm not judging NA—I used to smoke. I am simply, logically saying that NA's cigarette exemption is bullshit. One definition of bullshit is "stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense". By using the word "bullshit" I am not being self-righteous or indignant, I am concluding the brief logical argument preceding that shows that cigarettes are a drug and saying that NA's cigarette exemption is "nonsense".

NA people, including NA sponsors, generally hold the belief that when quitting heroin (or any "hard" drug), it is acceptable or even helpful to lean on a supposedly lesser substance or practice, especially cigarettes. Quitting heroin is hard—I deserve cigarettes as a comfort blanket while I am successfully abstaining from the greater evils I am sympathetic to this logic. In my early twenties I posted to my blog something like As a former drug addict, it is important to understand the necessity of being an alcoholic I gave up weed, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, opium, cigarettes and "just drank alcohol". For me this was an extremely bad trade. Probably the whole paradigm of trading one addiction for another was a bad idea for me, because I am an addict. Straight up, though, if smoking cigarettes helps you psychologically to quit heroin, and then you quit cigarettes, more power to you. Quitting drugs is dicey at the least and damn near impossible at the worst, so I don't knock the lesser-drug-as-a-temporary-crutch method if you can't just stop using all addictive/harmful drugs at once. But for NA people, including moderators and sponsors, to fail to openly, overtly, plainly classify cigarettes as a drug, is bullshit. It's a program of complete honesty (that's what you say about NA in every meeting)—so don't lie to yourself about tobacco and nicotine.

AA people carry their books with them, have tiny print versions, large-print versions, PDFs on their phones. It's brilliant. It works for some people. I admit I have the PDF on my phone as well. But I don't fit into that little book. I recognize that it contains a lot of wisdom. I read it. I gain wisdom. But AA is so outdated. I mean, the readings use male pronouns for God—that's unforgivable in 2016. Even to only use the word "god" to refer to the unnamable, is just archaic to the point of being unacceptable to the thinking person.

Worse, AA suffers from the same lack-of-drug-definition problem as NA. It's Alcoholics Anonymous, so (no shit) a lot of people in AA smoke pot or do other addictive/harmful drugs.

You remember that girl from your childhood who grew up conservative Christian until high school, then she was the wildest, sexiest, baddest and hottest kid in the 10th grade—biting your neck in the hallway thinking she was a vampire and kissing girls and wearing fishnet tights and short skirts and sexy underwear and generally being the most desirable piece of ass and brains in your class..then you run into her six years later and she's a conservative Christian again, now with two kids, married obviously, dressed like an Amish person? You're awkwardly talking to her husband thinking you've probably done things to his wife that he'll never get to do now that she's returned to her childhood value system.

Well, I just want you to know that I am not that girl.

I used drugs when I wanted to. Some results were great. Some results were horrible. I am clearly an addict, so sadly I can't "enjoy responsibly". But if you can, I am sincerely happy for you, because I know the enjoyment that drugs have brought me. For me the negatives outweighed the positives (for addictive/harmful drugs), and for today I'm clean and sober—and that's all I know, that today I'm going to stay clean and sober. I don't worry about tomorrow and I plan for it as little as possible.

When I talk about AA people who smoke weed, I am not judging them or even saying they shouldn't use. I hope you hear that in this article. Some AAers interpret it as a program of abstinence from alcohol only, some interpret it as a program of abstinence from all drugs except cigarettes, like NA. There's hot debate about using narcotic painkillers after surgery, during childbirth, or while passing a kidney stone. Does using prescribed pain medication as directed reset your sobriety date? Who knows. Using one drug, then withdrawing from it, can trigger an addict to seek more or other drugs—no doubt it's a risky business. I'm sure there are a small number of AA people who are still using crystal meth and calling themselves sober because they don't drink alcohol. And if that works for you, go you. To me what's important is to be somewhat accurate, somewhat consistent.

Pot, the most common drug I'm aware of "sober" AAers using, is addictive for some people (just like alcohol is addictive for some people—not everyone is an alcoholic). Pot can cause psychosis in healthy people and increase psychosis in already psychotic people. Long-term use can increase the chance of developing schizophrenia. You can find studies that contradict those results. On the one hand, it is my distinct observation that everyday pot smokers, over some years, become quite dull mentally, quite slow, and quite uninteresting. And they lose their ambition (maybe this is healthy, who knows!). On the other hand, this 125-year-old woman thinks smoking pot every day is the reason she lived that long. Just because she thinks it doesn't make it so, but it's an interesting case to consider.

AAers can smoke pot all they want, and the only angle from which I care is that when they share in a meeting, they're sharing from and about a different kind of sobriety than I am. If I got to pick another non-alcohol drug that was ok to do, I could quit alcohol or any other drug instantly. In fact that's how I quit smoking: I decided I was getting more out of drinking than smoking, and that I would stop smoking and drink twice as much alcohol. =) True story. I'm not saying that was the most brilliant plan I ever came up with—but I quit smoking easily and haven't smoked since. It's just a little bit of insanity to sit in a room of sober alcoholics and not know what other addictive/harmful drugs some of them may be using. I'm not the judge, I'm not the ruler, I'm just saying: when people are potentially using various types of drugs (but dutifully excluding alcohol) then what kind of meeting is going to result? What types of sobriety is a person discussing when they share their experience, strength, and hope?

It doesn't matter, though—it's an unsolvable problem. Everyone has different brain structures and chemicals running through their brains. I have bipolar disorder, OCD, and tardive dyskinesia—those are all brain disorders having to do with brain structures and neurotransmitters and who knows what. Even if we both abstain from all drugs, my brain structure differs significantly from a person with no mental illness—I suspect that what we experience as sobriety differs profoundly. Also, I take a handful of non-recreational, non-addictive, prescribed psychiatric medications that alter my brain at the most fundamental levels—I can assure you that without them, whether I drank alcohol or not, I would not be serene..at all. In one sense, if I stop drinking but I need Vicodin as a crutch, then I'm only playing Whac-A-Mole: knock one addiction down and another pops up!—That's not progress! But I think we can all learn something about not taking ourselves (or our programs) too seriously (or too literally), from a fact about Bill W., AA's founder: and that is that the king of sobriety himself was a huge fan of LSD—he even thought it might help cure alcoholism, a theory that has since been proven scientifically. Everybody has to do what works for them. I'm not going to go into my whole personal drug philosophy, but suffice it to say, I can't drink. And I need help staying sober.

I need AA, but I can't accept AA—and my last AA group doesn't accept me. Honestly, if your statue of Buddha is so sacred, you are a fool. The religion isn't in the statue—it's in you. To say that me pointing my feet at a statue of the founder of your religion, goes against your traditions..that is low-class, indelicate, unaware, coarse, religious-extremist-type shit just as bad as right-wing evangelical Christians, jihadists, fuckin' terrorist ideologues everywhere. And if you think it's an acceptable solution to ask reclining meditators to sit on a certain side of the circle so our feet don't face Buddha—you're wrong. That makes some people more welcome than others, by taking away a right from some AA members that other AA members retain—the right to sit on any empty cushion in the circle.

Who knew Buddhists could be so pedantic! Who knew recovering alcoholics could be so spineless! And since I have a word for everyone else, I'll give you one for me: iconoclast. Fuck your statues of Buddha, Jesus, Mary, and everyone else. If you think Buddha would give a shit where my feet are, in relation to a statue of his body, you clearly don't even have a full pair of marbles to clack together inside your echoey little head. Maybe I am self-righteous and indignant, but if it took me melting down every religious statue ever cast to stay sober and never drunk drive again, I'll bet Buddha, Jesus, and every other top-shelf spiritual teacher in the history of the world would think first about the pedestrians I'll never kill driving my car in a blackout drunk and without hesitation they would SHOUT "Melt those motherfuckers down!"

Look, I never said this was going to be straight narrative all the way through. See, you get your straight narrative in Part I. Then, in Part II, the text becomes more fractured as my character enters the insane asylum—it's more about the psychological inner world of the character: what's his diagnosis, where did all this inner disorder come from? So you get stories from childhood..the relationship with the dad. And then at some point supposedly I'm cured—HAHA—or at least medicated enough and therapied enough to get out of the hospital. So—voila, Part III!!!—is how someone with those experiences reacts with a normal world. (You should be imagining this whole paragraph narrated by Heath Ledger's Joker voice.) Try it. "Normal world." You, me, and the Joker have a secret that there is no such thing as a "normal world"—[Joker laugh]—it's all crazy people—[hee hee hee]. And what happens (still Joker voice) when you put a Matthew together with a Rusty. Or his whole family. Or societal institutions with senseless rules. Chaos.

Can there even be anything but chaos for a Matthew in this so-called "normal world" of yours? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [endless Joker laugh]. Bottomless hole, dropping to the center of the Earth.

173

I hate those AA platitudes: "stinkin' thinkin.' " "Being alone in my head is a horrible place to be." "Pride is the opposite of pity." No, fuck, you, you must have never been inside my head because my head is a glorious place to be. Some people in AA assert that all of their thinking was useless before they got into AA, that all their decisions were wrong.

That's just not the case for me. I kept going to work and I programmed a shit-ton of C and C

At least two of my novels I wrote tipsy or drunk. They wouldn't be what they are if I had written them sober—in fact there's no way to separate those novels from my drinking. Without my drinking, those two novels wouldn't exist. So I recoil at the statement that someone's entire life was one-hundred-percent fucked before they got to AA. Today I choose not to drink or do other drugs. It works better for me this way—it serves my overall goals better. But drinking wasn't one-hundred percent bad or AA wouldn't exist at all—we were all getting something good out of that drug, at least for a while. Otherwise it would be easy to quit. I've gotten help and community and encouragement and friendship from twelve-step programs, but I have to depart, conceptually, from their whole thing when people start saying things like everything I thought was wrong before I stopped drinking. I can't relate to that.

It's not my experience, it's not me. Yeah, smoking crystal meth fucked me up big time, but I moved on, I stopped using, I got another job. I could still direct short films and write screenplays and make love to women and write hundreds and hundreds of pages of useful insight while I was working on my sixth or tenth or twelfth martini at the Arclight bar in Hollywood. I made new friends, got my hair cut, invented new types of one-dimensional cellular automata, got high marks in class, traded techniques with major directors. I certainly don't think hard drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, are the thing for me now, but I would be a liar if I said that when I was using drugs my entire brain and all its thoughts were nonfunction, bullshit, scat.

So when AA and AA people say inaccurate things like that, their credibility goes out the window with me. I mean, to say that you can't develop spiritually while on drugs? The planet seems to have been designed to provide us with certain plants that lead us to the most spiritual experience possible. I'm sorry, but if you haven't eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms, you don't know shit about this life. If AA people would be more reasonable with their statements and say, I find I am more consistent in my spiritual and other work practices now that I am sober, I'd be like, Cheers, mate.

But when AA people say that alcohol stunts all spiritual growth? I guess they've never heard of John Denver? Billy Joel? Ernest Hemingway? Janis Joplin? Amy Winehouse? I think it's fair to say that active drunks and drug addicts have come up with much of the greatest art ever produced. And let me tell you a little secret: it's not just artists. It's engineers, mathematicians, teachers, even spiritual teachers—it's fucking everybody. So to say that alcohol and spirituality are completely at odds is just a lie that makes people like me not want to go to meetings. I don't want to kill somebody drunk driving in a blackout—that's why I stopped drinking. If AA would keep shit practical then I would keep going, but when all it is, is amateur philosopher hour, I'm out. I'm not angry about being out. I'm not going to drink over being out. I'm just out. I can do just for today on my own—at least for a while.

Salinger writes, "You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes."

I think this curse applies to me.

174

Oh and by the way if you're one of those people who are like, Well, what good is it to make great music like Amy Winehouse but die when you're twenty-seven? Fool, the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long! When I told my grandmother about Jean-Michel Basquiat, I mentioned that he died of a heroin overdose at twenty-seven and she shook her head judgmentally and said, "It's too bad that someone with so much talent has so little common sense." I guess that's one way to look at it.

But the way I look at it (and I didn't say this to my grandmother) Jean-Michel Basquiat affected the world, the entire future of the human species, from the time for which he lived, forward, to infinity. In our collective culture, JMB will never be forgotten. He added a thousand paintings to the archive of human history, paintings so powerful that when I go to a museum show of Basquiat, I bring sunglasses—'cause that shit is high-voltage emotional power lines that draws the fucking soul of me almost right out of my body—and I cry. In my entire life the best thing my grandmother ever did for me is give birth to my mom and keep a fridge full of Fla-Vor-Ice in the freezer when we were kids. I love my grandmother, but she is not the candle that burned twice as bright. No judgement to her for her path—I'd like to live a long time, too.

But no judgment on Winehouse, Basquiat, Cobain—please. Their way of living is far more beautiful and generous and I believe, for those of you who believe in God, their way of living is far more pleasing to God than living to be ninety, crotchety, angry, bigoted, close minded, your only activities are reading the Bible and watching Fox News because you like the feeling of being superior to someone, even if all your facts are wrong. I don't want to judge my grandmother, but I don't truly think she has any upper ground on our great dead artists who never lived to be thirty but made an indelible make on..let's not say the world, let's just say me..I love my grandmother but she does not evoke emotion from me, she does not make me feel ecstasy, or more human, or even fear (which is actually the name for beauty). My grandmother doesn't make me feel that. Kurt Cobain does. And when I say fear I don't mean the fear that keeps you locked in a room watching terror theatre and billionaires play chess with what was supposed to be a democracy.

When I say fear I mean when you see someone so beautiful, so true in their actions, so pure of heart that they put everyone else to shame..and they can't even help it. Maybe you were a child, at the park, and you saw a young woman on a bench and your four-year-old self just knew that she was an angel. And you told your mom, and she didn't get it (because adults never do) but you will always know, for the rest of your suffering life, that at four you could see angels, and you might make it to your grave before you can teach yourself to see them again. Or maybe it's the power of a healer—the healing personality types—and when you're full of ache and bile from hateful work you do just to survive..when all you're doing is keeping your body alive so that someday someone with more of that holy power than you will inspire you—will breathe life into you—and maybe it happens when the healer hugs not you, but someone you love so much that you could never reach.

Maybe it's you seeing your daughter first find something she loves to do, at thirty-six years old, after living in half the states in the country and being so lost and how can you stand to see your daughter so lost and so hurt and nothing you can do. And, lo and behold, one day the sun never sets, and your pain which is just a reflection of her pain..evaporates..the light just never stayed long enough for her pain to just go away..that is what was needed, nothing more than the miracle of a fifty-hour day, and what was caught in lock step and dying in the Garden of Eden suddenly moves into a sandstorm and flourishes like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors and she grows..and grows..and grows..and what had seemed like a useless person, that only the wisest could see all along, now everyone can see, all those skills that the capitalist economy that was supposed to find the best solutions never found a use for, now eclipse anything ever produced in a factory. Maybe it's that.

Or maybe it's a blind musician you've been going to see and to listen to and to dance with and to invent songs with since you were a child, and he was vibrant and young until thirty years later, in a state a stranger to you both, you see an old man who believes in a old God that you long ago left behind..but this man, who cannot see, plays keyboards and plays them like those power lines I was talking about in conjunction with Basquiat a minute ago. I knew an artist, Scott, he shared my love for JMB. He saw me carrying one of his books and he said something like, "That man was plugged in to the source." And that's how this blind musician is. He doesn't play Yamahas and Kurzweils and Korgs—he plays high voltage, and if there wasn't a foot of rubber separating him from the Earth, just playing he'd die. This man makes eighty-year-olds drop their canes, get up, and fucking dance. And I realized, looking at the older him from the older me, that the reason this man is blind is that the light is coming through him! So much of his God, so much of my Universe and my Everything and my dad's Great Mystery and whatever Basquiat was plugged in to, is coming through this spirit I am watching, listening to, channeling power..even in his faded state from that young man I used to play with as a kid, this simple human is channeling so much god power that it blinded him. That's what happened to him. It's no chance that this man is a blind musician. Of course not. We know that from our world's blind musicians, who number in the hundreds even if you only count the famous ones. The one I'm speaking of isn't famous—only in church circles. His name is Ken Medema, and his songs (as someone once taught me about literature) don't contain information—they contain power. He sings about us all being "bound together and woven with love." He sings about homelessness by spiraling his voice upward in something not a wail, not a simple scream from human to human, but some primal scream to God Himself (as I imagine Ken imagines his God), and he makes a sound that sounds like I have felt living outside myself without a job or money or any way to get plugged back into what we lie to ourselves is a society but is nothing close—we are merely an economy that throws away people who don't have salable skills, or whose minds are sick. This blind man singing about homelessness screams: "I WANT HOOOOOME!!" and it is like an animal demand—not anything a human would ever be honest enough to say—but the way a bear or a lion or—yes!—maybe an elephant would make this sound with her trunk, raising it into the air, straight up, this elephant calling on its god—and if an elephant has a god, you know it's powerful. That is the god I pray to, the god of the elephants. I pray to the god whose voice sounds like the sound that would occur if all the animals and all the people on this tiny planet sang, all at the same time, the same, towering note, something that the Princess would sing from The NeverEnding Story, when all of creation had been reduced to a single, glowing, grain of sand—a single ember—and it was destroyed because the animal closest to god—us—us gods had forgotten the most important things: hope, compassion, love. And before that last spark of the universe goes out, it takes all of us, in unison, asking the god of elephants and whales and the god of volcanoes and hurricanes, to save us from our own terrifying lack of belief.

---

When my dad and my stepmom saw Lost in Translation, I asked them what they thought and my stepmom said, "Oh, my, god, I wished they would have fucked already." My dad said the same thing. Where was the sex? What did their relationship consist of if they didn't have sex?

I looked at these two people, who I previously understood, who I previously had a relationship with, and I said (to myself): You shallow motherfuckers. You didn't get the film. You have no idea what the movie was about. The whole point of the movie is they didn't have sex. If they had had sex it would have ruined the whole film. The point (if you want to know) of the goddamn movie is when they're lying in bed together, they have a deep conversation, he touches her foot—idly, as they both fall asleep—and they don't have sex.

I looked at my dad, at my stepmom Eva, and I thought: Who are you people? How shallow can you get?? But with me and Gretchen the story was just the opposite. I wish that from the first night we met, Gretchen and I had been having sex. Then at least I would have gotten something out of the relationship.

175

Lying on the bed in some Comfort Suites in Nashville:

From: Matthew
To: Kristi

Subject: Writing from Nashville

This might be a short email. But how can I not write you from a Nashville hotel during my first time ever in this city? My mom and I are here to look for an apartment and for her to meet her new church members. Today was a hard day physically because I spend most every day lying on my stomach typing and today was about nine hours of driving, which Mom did all of (I'm barred from driving by my psychiatrist), and a lot more walking and standing than I'm used to. I know it sounds ridiculous but the tardive dyskinesia makes me clench and shake and like a few minutes ago I just fell off the bed I was lying on. I try to laugh about it, but this morning I involuntarily punched the tip of a plastic straw (hard plastic) and it broke the skin..I hit it that hard. I'm trying new medicine but as far as I can tell, the medicine that caused this, caused permanent damage to my brain, and it can be addressed but never fixed. But then I've read that sometimes it just goes away when your stress goes away. So I don't know why I'm telling you about this. Who cares? I'm human, I'm going to die eventually. Am I too prideful that I think I deserve to be healthy? I feel some conflict around my mental illnesses that I don't normally feel. I had an intense experience recently where I went without my Klonopin for one day because of doctor and insurance company fuck ups, and I had such an intense dream I felt like it was a vision from god or my subconscious or maybe just a crazy Klonopin withdrawal dream..but it was beyond a dream..it was as consciousness-testing as a hallucinogenic trip. I felt like my mind was being pushed farther than I generally want it to be pushed. But I took notes and I'm going to make a novella out of it in a few years when I'm done with my current projects. This is the third or fourth time I've had that kind of vision, not related to drug withdrawal before, but I mean at the end of this vision, I saw a book cover with a title on it, like my subconscious (or whatever) was telling me: write a book based on this vision and by the way HERE'S THE TITLE!! I mean, who cares where that vision came from, it's become part of my process occasionally (last time was about five years ago) to see some vision that I believe is telling me what to write. I know that might sound crazy but please know that I am sane enough to take any of these metaphors of visions (from god, from my subconscious, induced by psychiatric drug withdrawal, whatever)..I take any of those metaphors with a grain of salt. It's not important to me to figure out which one is more true, but I am listening to the message. I wrote about ten pages of notes while I was still withdrawing from the anti-anxiety medicine and I'm taking what I can from the experience. I mean if I'm going to get pushed to the limit psychologically, I'm going to take the story from the vision with me. Which is probably just what my subconscious wanted me to do. Life is on hard mode right now. I'm just hoping I live a good while longer so I can do what I want to do with my writing and possibly, I'd like to fall in love again, if I meet a person I can genuinely do that with/feel that way about. I'm a big fan of Tennessee accents, so I figure my chances are going up coincidentally with this move.

I hope you're well.

Love,

Matthew

176

Mom got a job. We had to leave Baton Rouge because there was no work there.

We're in Nashville now..alive..doing what I love to do most. I eat, and I shit, and I go to sleep. I make smalltalk with everyone, grocery checkers, restaurant servers, neighbors in the apartment complex. I go to therapy and about every other session I laugh, every other session I cry.

Since you last met me in Vermont, I haven't wanted to kill myself (except this one little time), and I've written many more books. I have been back to the mental hospital, but not for long. My occasional visits have been week-long check-ups for mania and depression. Through trial and error, my psychiatrists and I have found medicine that works for me. It doesn't cut out my mood swings, but it lessens the amplitude of their curve. I have learned not to resist my medication, but to live with it, to trust it, and to love it.

I made a friend. It's my neighbor Ida. We got to know each other gradually, me saying hi from a distance, then stopping by at her porch for short conversations. I discovered right away she's a touch person like me—we hug and grab arms every time we say hello and every time we say goodbye.

"I need touch, Matthew."

"So do I."

My parents don't touch, and to me its a vacuum of a certain kind of love, that human touch. I need it and I have to get it somewhere. So now I get my hugs from Ida, and it's good.

I tell Ida, "I'm getting this feeling I used to get in Vermont. This feeling of doom, like everything's about to end." I've had that feeling all my life.

Ida says, "You're different in your mind, aren't you."

I say, "Yes."

Then I stand there with tears welling. And I say:

"My therapist back in Ohio saw me looking terribly depressed and desperate and desolate and dead when I walked into her office one time for an appointment. She asked me what was wrong and we talked through it and at the end of the session as I was leaving she said: 'Matthew. You know that look I saw on your face when you came through that door today? I don't ever want to see that face again.' By which she meant I needed to take care of myself, to keep myself above a certain level of sadness, and that that work needed to be done by me, regardless of whether I was seeing a therapist."

Ida says, "I know."

And then I understand that she really does know. She tells me she had a daughter with bipolar.

"She used to run up and down the street naked before she killed herself."

"Oh, Ida."

We grab arms.

But we don't always go deep—just 80% of the time. And in general Ida sits on her porch and smokes. If she has her back turned out, then I walk on by. If she's facing out toward the parking lot, then I stop and talk.

By now, the tardive dyskinesia caused by an antipsychotic medication prescribed at the Refuge causes me spasming so bad, I spend twenty-three hours a day lying down—I lie on my back at night to sleep and on my floor during the day to type. And as I tell Ida my troubles she tells me hers.

She's lost two daughters. One was bipolar. That one committed suicide. Ida have our optimism in common. We have our compassion. And we're also connected through this illness, bipolar disorder, which caused my friend's daughter to run down the street naked when manic, catching the attention of police, ending up in mental hospitals, and taking her own life. One out of every five people with bipolar disorder dies by suicide..which tells me that there are Idas everywhere, mothers and brothers and grandfathers and sisters of people with bipolar disorder who have died by suicide. I sit with Ida and cry for her loss—a child, a whole person, a whole life, she can never get back.

And Ida comforts me on days when my mind is my enemy, and it tells me that my family would be better off without me, and that the rational course is for me to die..today. Me and that woman grab each other's arms and we keep each other alive and on this plane and breathing and relating to others and doing the business of life and generally living, moment by moment sometimes, sometimes as much as day by day.

And that's how we make it through. There is no grand strength. There is no master plan. We just walk on our own paths, side by side. And eventually we lose each other, and eventually we fall and things break that can never be recovered. And some day we sit down, or lie down, for the last time, and in some kind of personal silence we take our last breath. Then nothing more can be healed, and nothing more can be set right, and we are the history of our grandchildren—all we are is stories told by our kids as our kids remember them—inaccurate, funny maybe, sad. Just some kids playing in the sprinkler and their parents trying to pass on what was so great or what was so monstrous about nana and papaw..but no one really cares. Even the bipolar mania stories no one wants to hear. Until one day, one of the grandkids grows up and gets the diagnosis themselves..then everything that little grandchild can learn about her bipolar grandfather is gold because any information she learns about him is information about herself—and it's information that could save her life.

177

Just texted aunt Susan about one of our favorite movies, Trading Places. We love—our whole family loves—the scene in the train car. But Susan refuses to talk to me about real stuff—she just ignores me, avoids me—and so I think of her as not a real person. I hate that, but that's the way it is. I mean there's no real relationship there, no intimacy, and I don't know why. Mom says it's not about me—that's how Susan is with everyone these days. So I guess I shouldn't worry that it's because she still thinks of me as a kid, or that I have bipolar—it really might have nothing to do with me. But I hate it. I expect that I'll have more intimacy with people in my family than it really turns out I have. But that's probably a totally unrealistic expectation.

Susan gets a part in a play. It's a comedy—perfect for her—in the family she's considered the funny one. My mom is the smart one. Paula is the pretty one. Susan is the funny one. So I text her my hopes, my wishes, that all is going well.

Me: I hope you had a great play last night!! theatre emoji

Weeks pass. No response.

I don't block her number this time, but, yeah, something within me closes down with Susan. Maybe it's ego—and if it is that's ok—but when I write you a message I typically expect a response—in this case a simple fucking thank you would do just fine.

178

Four years I kept a promise to myself not to read Dad's rare email or to write him or call him (he never calls me) or to think about him too much. Counter to my intuition, this worked—my life is instantly more peaceful when he's evicted. But one day my mom was asking something about Dad—his present location—and I thought I could answer her question based on the preview I had seen of one of Dad's messages. So I opened up his email—and years worth of emotion—and for a few days I was in a Dad funk. His latest message was as always self-centered and impersonal. I made the mistake of opening myself up more by writing him back:

From: Matthew
To: Van
Bcc: Leona, Joanne

Subject: re: family news

Dad,

We don't have an active relationship and haven't for many years now. You disbelieve truths about your treatment of me as a child and blame it on my bipolar disorder—you have shown you're unwilling to come to terms with your part in our relationship, or to accept difficult truths about yourself. You didn't support me in finding a decent college to go to..as soon as I returned from OU, you wanted me out of the house as soon as possible. While Joanne and Leona had a home to return to during college breaks, you quickly moved on to living with your girlfriends and your new wife—there's no way I could have gone to college because I had no place to stay during breaks.

You have shown me since an early age that you didn't respect my intelligence. You showed me this by giving me childish answers to intelligent questions I asked of you. You didn't recognize that even at about three years old, I understood things better than you did—you never took me seriously.

Over the years, I've heard stories from Joanne and Leona about interactions you had with them when they were children. As I hear more and more of the story from my sisters and mom, I have a clearer and clearer idea of what you do and how you operate. You deny your mystery trips to Florida when we were kids, but I have seen the letters you wrote to Mom, in your handwriting, and I've seen the envelopes they came in, postmarked from Florida. Even when indisputable evidence is in your face, you incredibly deny the truth!! I have heard incredible stories from my sisters and mom about times when you fucked with their heads by lying to them..including some of these stories where you played with the truth with one of us when we were children.

That kind of playing with the truth has likely had long-term effects on your children. A psychiatrist of mine believes that your manipulation of the truth with me is the reason I am psychotic—that I am somewhat unable to determine what is the truth and what is not. So maybe you thought you were just playing innocent games by using deception and lies with your children, but that behavior has very likely contributed to all our psychological instability.

You had a chance, when you remarried, to proactively blend the families so that we were all in loving, equal, accepting relationships. Typically, most men just move on to their next family, cutting ties with the last, and that is almost exactly what you have done. This was a huge missed opportunity that was your responsibility to make happen.

Even up to four years ago, the last time you and I spoke on the phone, you denied events that occurred between you and I during the potty-training period of my childhood. Make no mistake: you can run and hide from what you did (for example: gruffly yell at me while forcing me to hand wash my shitty underwear in the toilet water, and gruffly yell at me not to do it again), but that was a humiliation that has deeply informed my relationship patterns throughout the course of my life. Only in my thirties have I been able to collapse some of my relationship pattern tendencies that you taught me so early by demonstrating the humiliator/humiliated pattern.

You have deeply hurt me—and I don't mean you hurt my feelings. I mean you have played a crucial part in creating a human being who has needed therapy and inpatient psychiatric care and may need that for the rest of my life. I have no expectation that this note will be the catalyst that will get you to start taking responsibility for how you've behaved toward us kids and Mom—if history is any lesson you'll ignore me and make up reasons why I'm wrong and you have nothing to take responsibility for. Until tonight, I haven't read any of your messages for about four years. The reason for that is that when you write, all you write about is your job. You don't write to me about our relationship. At this point, I don't blame you—we don't have much of a relationship anymore. Two emails a year isn't a relationship. Not asking me about me or my feelings isn't a relationship. You've had my phone number for four years since my suicide attempt and have never once called me to see how I was—what kind of message are you trying to send to me with that inaction? And by the way, what kind of person are you that you would let others in our family help with my healthcare expenses while you contribute zero? Since you last saw me, a prescribed medicine has given me a physical disability that makes me unable to work. I am horizontal twenty-three hours a day. I'm applying for disability. My life has undergone a drastic change—imagine for a moment that I might need my dad at a time like this, a unique male adult to talk to. Imagine how lonely I feel without the presence of my same-sex parent!! Don't underestimate the effect of that..you should know something about this from studying psychology, no? [His BS is in psychology.]

In my late twenties and early thirties I tried for about five years to build a relationship with you and you were the very definition of a deadbeat—you just aren't present emotionally and that doesn't work for me. Everyone in our immediate family can vouch for the fact that during those years I called and emailed you and gave you every chance to respond and be in relationship with me and you dropped the ball. Since the weeks following my suicide attempt, I haven't called you or responded to any of your emails. I just archive them without reading because I know that they will be about your job, be emotionless, or they will be an attempt to hurt or blame me. This rather lengthy note to you is to politely and simply ask you to stop emailing me—you're wasting your time. Our relationship has been over for a long time. I wish you the best—just not with me.

I hated myself for opening up to him again—opening up to him has historically just been an opportunity for him to attack me emotionally, to let me know by what he said that I was a low priority for him. In fact, I'm not even on his list. But after a few days passed, the hole surrounding my Dad feelings closed up again, and I re-committed to letting him go. In every way that matters to me, he's already dead. And once I resumed my pattern of non-contact, my peace around Dad returned.

And at some point I realized that the model Joanne and I had discussed over the phone in my early days in Brattleboro—with Dad as the ultimate disapprover and Mom as the ultimate approver—was a true model, but it wasn't the only one to consider. As I've aged, I've met and learned of many divorced parents who maintain civil relationships with each other, either because they genuinely like each other and are capable of being friends or because doing so helps their children. My parents, on the other hand, maintain zero contact—I think that hurts my life picture, and maybe that of my sisters.

As is typical of me, I expressed my feelings about this through writing, hopefully doing so with less and less anger through time:

From: Matthew
To: Sharon, Van
Cc: Leona, Joanne

Subject: parenting

I think you all could have done better in the divorce, by at least maintaining alignment in your role as parents. Some people get divorced and maintain contact or civility so that they can be there for their kids. I think you should have done that. The way you have done it, it creates a very not-there feeling of home and family in not just me but in my siblings, I am coming to understand. Just a piece of feedback: it would help your children if you still acted in a couple as our parents, as you are, and always will be, the couple that created us. It doesn't mean you have to be buddy buddy, but some civil relationship that underlies your continued parenting of your adult children, is something I expect from my parents.

Also, I am disappointed in you, Dad, for being so out of contact. Louise [Dad's sister] recently wrote me because she hadn't heard from Kristi [Louise's daughter] in a week and they were worried about her. I realized, in this, that if I went missing for a week, Dad, you wouldn't realize I was missing. And I found that disappointing. For all of Kristi's difficulty, Louise still is in enough contact with her, apparently, to notice when she goes missing. Dad, we haven't been in contact at all this calendar year. Do you know where I am? My way of seeing parenting is that a parent should be interested enough in their children that they need to know what's up with their kids. I'm disappointed that this is not the case with us.

MT

Mom responded to the three kids with an amazingly logical, appropriately apologetic, just plain loving note. I instantly felt ten times better.

Dad never responded—but you already knew that, didn't you? I mean why, oh why, oh why would you expect anything different, little Alice? But guess what, oh father, neglectful Queen of Hearts, your absence doesn't hurt this Alice anymore—my feelings for you are almost dead, now just embers in a snowstorm. I searched for you over half a lifetime..but the trail's gone cold. I am no longer searching for you, but if you ever decide to look for me, the door is always open.

179

Ida opens up to me and tells me her daughter's name was Grace.

"The one..?"

"The bipolar one, that's right."

"Mmm..Grace," I say. "That's a beautiful name, Ida."

"She used to think she was a god. Matthew! She'd write these crazy texts and show 'em to me and I could hardly believe what she had written. Tiny little words—you could hardly read them. And what she had written, it was like holy/unholy at the same time. Did you ever think you were God?"

"No, I never did. But I feel more spiritual when I'm manic and I write scared texts and give them to people, like I gave my friend Shringara one time this thing I called The Prophecy of Sticks. She must have thought I was crazy, on some level—though on some level it made sense to her, too."

"She was open."

"Big time."

"Yup."

"All my friends were. But we were on a lot of drugs, too."

"That's what bipolar people do, 'cause you're trying to regulate."

"Yeah it's hard to resist the urge to take the edge off mania with alcohol. Unfortunately it works really well."

Sometimes I go and sit with Ida and we just grab each other's arms and squeeze as tight as we can and an old black woman and a young white man hold each other and cry. Then I get up, shaky from dyskinesia, tell Ida I love her, and I go back to my apartment to write.

180

Brattleboro was a great and hard year for me.

Since I lived there, there have been two suicide attempts at the Refuge. I certainly thought about killing myself while I was there. I've certainly hammered into your head by now that one in five people with bipolar disorder end their own lives. Those are not good odds. I take lithium and other drugs that, statistically, should lengthen my life compared to people who live with bipolar unmedicated. I do it for myself. I do it for my family and friends.

Life is short. Most people never even live it.

Bipolar has a flip side to all the horror—as one of my sister's university professors said, "You've never lived till you've been bipolar." There is no question, bipolar disorder offers the best and the worst of life. It seems, from the point of view of a person with bipolar disorder, that everyone else is dead—the normal rhythms of life strike a bipolar person as never enough: never enough joy, never enough pain. We don't understand what life would be like if it weren't a carousel come off the hinges, horses flying into the sky, us still riding them—even if we ride them to our deaths. Mania contains an element of fearlessness which is too much—it causes us to make deadly choices. But there is a lesson in that lethal level of fearlessness—life isn't meant to be lived in fear. Fear, not hate, is the opposite of love. And from the deadly fearlessness of mania, normal people can learn to fear a little less, love a little more.

---

I tell my doctor my analogy for bipolar: a bipolar brain is like a Formula 1 race car. It goes really fast but needs all kinds of technicians to tune it constantly or it might blow up.

He laughs.

"We're upping your Klonopin from three to four milligrams."

"Ok but I want to be careful with this," I say. "I'm a recovering alcoholic, I go to AA meetings, I don't want to become addicted to something new."

My doctor says, "Let me explain the difference between addiction and dependence. Addiction," he says, "is where you see drug-seeking behavior—when you want more of a substance. Dependence is where when you take the drug away away, you see withdrawal symptoms. So you can be dependent..without being addicted."

Sounds dicey to me but I say, "Ok."

We occasionally run out of medicine because we forget we have extra or the doctor prescribes it wrong or the insurance company won't pay for it. And it's a big deal to me—for everyone else it's a problem but for me it's fucking with my consciousness. Coming from someone who's taken serious drugs, trust me, psych meds are serious drugs. They get their fingers deep within your mind. For me, coming off of an anti-anxiety or antipsychotic drug is as hard as coming off of heroin or coke. Different, but equally difficult.

181

My sister Leona calls me "misunderstood" but won't read my writing because her husband told her it's too dark (for an educated, mature adult to read?). She told me he recommended she not read the one book of mine he's read. I listen to her horror stories with the TSA but she won't listen to my horror stories about AA. I'm expected to keep up on her blog but she doesn't read mine.

When she gave me literature about her son's, my nephew's, sensory processing disorder, I read each brochure from cover to cover so I could better understand his experience and be sensitive to that during our interactions. Then I reported back to her and repeated salient points, asking her to verify that I had learned the information correctly. We went over scenarios of how I might behave if Daniel did certain things unexpectedly. Over time, I took Leona and James's pointers on how to speak to Daniel to their liking. I did what they said to the best of my ability even when I totally disagreed with their parenting tactics. But when I sent Leona links to a couple of the best summary brochures on bipolar disorder that I knew of, she never even responded to the email. Maybe she read the brochures, maybe she didn't—maybe she thinks there's nothing there for her to learn since she studied nursing—the point is I have no idea because she never wrote me back. And my book—the one that got published—Leona's husband read it and said he liked it but advised Leona not to read it because it's "too dark." You know, to a point I understand protecting yourself psychologically from things that might harm you..but what if those dark things are your brother's every waking reality. You're protecting your mental health by not reading what I write—maybe that's why I'm so fucking misunderstood! It's cool. I understand. I respect you protecting your mental state. But if you don't listen to what I say, then don't blame me for being misunderstood..in that case I'm misunderstood because of your limitation and squeamishness about—for lack of a better term—real shit!

Consider for a minute that your life might be easier than mine.

Do you contemplate suicide every day?

Almost every day?

Always when depressed, sometimes when manic?

Well I do.

And you can avoid thinking about that all you want, and I hope it's never the case for you—but it is the case for me. What's dark to you is just daily life for me.

---

And one more thing regarding being misunderstood. Have you ever heard of parents being misunderstood? The parent of a child, who either feeds the child and changes the child's diaper all day; or the parent of a child who works a job that is not their first choice of jobs, all day, to make money to buy food and diapers for said child. Have you ever heard of a person like that being misunderstood? (Typically, your answer here is going to be no.) You know why that is? Because everybody understands what parents do. We know how you made that baby—it's not a secret! It may not be easy to raise a child, but it's fairly well understood what the process involves. It's an essential process. I imagine that having kids is the most satisfying thing a human can do. I'm not saying it's not beautiful. I'm not saying it's not essential. But one thing parents generally are not is misunderstood.

People question you getting a tattoo more than they question you getting pregnant, even though creating a human is way more impactful on the world than getting a tattoo. People just naturally understand that people are gonna have kids. They congratulate you on it when it requires absolutely no mental creativity or innovation or insight. A sperm, an egg, time, pain, patience, stability, love—it requires these things. Maybe some knowledge from a book. Help from doctors. But there's nothing original about making a baby. Look how many people do it—it must be one of the most common activities in the world! And yet, how excited do grandmothers get when they become a grandmother? They focus on the grandbaby. They express happiness toward the parents. And (I know I'm losing a lot of you here) all this love and congratulation and happiness comes to parents and children for something that basically just happens naturally. People like to fuck. Babies happen. You want me to praise you for that?

Who is misunderstood? (And of course there's an overlap with parents.) People who do things creative and original with their minds and bodies. Gymnasts. Cellists. Fashion designers. Composers. Painters. Poets. Actors. Those are the people whose parents say, "You want to do what with your life?" "But you have the brain to be a surgeon and you're going to waste it on improv?" (But it's not a waste, Mom—it's what I love.) Those are the people who are misunderstood. They have to go against the trend to do what makes them feel like themselves. Doubtless parenting is grueling, but it is decisively going with the flow.

My objective here is not to diss parents, parenting, or children—we obviously need all of those! But it is to ask parents like my sister Leona who called me and my other sister misanthropic for not having partners and kids, who critiques me for feeling misunderstood yet—I feel—makes little effort to understand me..to make that effort. I actually don't care if you understand me, but I would prefer if you didn't go so far as to insult me for occasionally feeling misunderstood. I am misunderstood! I've lived this way long enough that I don't need you (all) to understand me, but I would appreciate not being dinged! for suggesting from time to time, gently, that perhaps you have no idea what I'm talking about!

I will spare you the complete list of my credentials for misanthropy, but suffice it to say that I have done many things that most of you will never understand. I'll never explain them to a wide audience—there's no wide audience that's interested. Say life is a party. I may be standing in the shadows of the party while you're glowing at its center. The pregnant daughter will always get more attention than the choreographer daughter—because everyone understands babies and no one understands choreography! But that's ok. Please: you have your fun, I'll have mine. All I'm asking is can you please not insult me for how I'm living my life?

182

Everything is blamed on my bipolar.

If Leona and I are having a legitimate argument on a legitimate topic, we can spin ourselves out in infinite circles, each thinking the other doesn't understand the other's point. It really won't end and I, at least, feel more and more judged and less and less valued by the other party.

So sometimes I decide to solve these problematic communications with my sister or mom by asserting the simplistic-but-true bipolar paradigm. Oh, the simplistic-but-true bipolar paradigm is: I have bipolar so everything I said is wrong and everything you said is right, congratulations. I send this one text and everything is fine:

I think I've just been having a bipolar episode and am just now figuring it out. I'm sorry for everything. You all are saintly for putting up with me.

See? This way everything gets blamed on me and nobody else has to take any responsibility. Works like a charm.

A few minutes later my sister sends me this message:

I love you tons. Take extra good care of yourself today!

What did I tell you? Re-frame the situation with me as the problematic member of the family and everyone else my helpers and victims, and—suddenly!—everyone's happy. See, people like to be on top—they like to be needed, wise, perfect, while others are needy, foolish, and flawed.

This is what I text my Mom:

I'm sorry for everything. As I'm feeling better, I don't even know if I know what's been happening the last day and I think maybe it was all just a bipolar episode on my part. I think I should be institutionalized but I feel a duty to write my books so for now I'm asking if I can still live with you and I did learn a couple things I can do to interact with you in less offensive ways. But the changes in my mental state do seem to indicate that I'm not someone that people want to deal with (that I'm "crazy"). I was texting Leona earlier and I suggested we stop because things I was saying were upsetting her. She was upsetting me too but the difference is I just absorb it and let the other person do whatever they're doing..most of the time.

Mom wrote back, "We got this," and brought home Taco Bell and we had a little Project Runway party in the living room.

All our problems are solved.

But why?

What changed?

Was the whole event caused by my bipolar? Did Mom and Leona really say some unreasonable and inconsistent things to me? Is all this being morphed for me by the mirror maze that is my mind? What's true?

Well, it all is. It's true that I'm bipolar and I have mood episodes and symptoms like fast and forced talking that make me difficult to deal with. Did my fast talking irritate Mom yesterday and start our fight? Maybe. Is my family tired of dealing with the threat of suicide hanging over their heads? Probably.

But just because I'm sick doesn't make me dumb. I'll take responsibility for as much as possible, but even though no one wants to hear me say it, I am not the only one complicit in these communicatory kinks we run into sometimes. Does my having a mental disorder invalidate everything I say? Hardly. Are my relatives freed from their inconsistencies, their responsibilities, just because I'm ill? You better believe they're not. But when I try to proceed with them as though we are jointly responsible for issues that occur within the family, no one wants to do that. When I volunteer myself as the source of all evil, people jump right on that fucking paradigm.

Here's the thing, though: I don't know what happened with that fight. Everything seems better now, in my mind. Is this because Mom and I made up and I took responsibility so that Leona didn't have to have a real conversation with me about the fact that, essentially, I read up on her life but she doesn't read up on mine? Did the external change in circumstances make my mind feel better? Or did my mind exit some kind of bipolar mini-loop, and because of that internal change, now everything external seems better to me?

Did the fight cause my mind to go crazy, or did my crazy mind cause the fight?

I'll never know.

And come on, it's the real world—chances are, the answer ain't no simple either/or like I presented above.

When I reveal the weight-bearer game to Leona, she flips.

Leona: So you've been lying to me this whole time?

ME: I've been lying to everybody my whole life!

Leona: And what's the point of that? You have to lie to get people to like you?

ME: Leona, if I told the truth I see, not only would no one like me, I'd be dead by noon on the end of the first day.

183

I just want to walk into the mountains and never come back. Some children, when they're young, they imagine getting married, they imagine their career—like they want to be a firefighter or a jockey or an undertaker. I never imagined any of those things. I imagined how I wanted to die..I just wanted to walk into the wilderness and refuse to eat and sleep on the ground and wait until the cold or the snow or some wild animal or hunger killed me. I definitely don't want to be buried. I don't want to be cremated, either. I want to be eaten by a wolf, and feel that kindred mammal slice into my neck with her fangs and the blood of her sync with the blood of me, so that for a moment our heartbeats would be the same, and then I would be dead, a piece of meat dragged over a distance of miles for baby wolves to dine on. In fact, I think if I could have traded today, what really happened with me today (which was a day of such success it's probably the most fortuitous and full and amazing day I've had in years), I think I'd choose to die with the wolf.

That's what it's like to be bipolar. Your emotions don't correspond to what is going on around you. It's like the weather—people personalize it and think that the rain is somehow executing a personal grudge against them ("It's trying to stop me from getting to work!")—when really the weather means nothing. So a normal person's emotions correlate to the events they're part of. But you never ask a bipolar person why they're crying. I mean, you can ask, but the thing is..there's no answer. I'm sad for no reason today. Everything good happened. A whole day of good things, progress, people helping me and loving me and being patient with me and being my friends and my mom and my doctor—and I'd rather die. That's how I feel tonight, for no reason. I'd trade this beautiful day to end my consciousness forever—and I feel sick for that, I hate myself for it, I feel that my carcass doesn't deserve to live because I am foolish enough to play with death, which is incredibly insulting to the amazingness that is life. I don't know if there's a god or if aliens designed us or if traditional evolution somehow resulted in such an exquisite tragedy as me. However I got here, I hate myself for not loving life to the proper amount..and I think the proper amount is pretty high. If the rest of the world had to live up to the standards I hold myself to, there wouldn't be a lot of people left.

And there won't be a lot of people left anyway, because we're killing the Earth. I wouldn't worry about the Illuminati or the Rothschilds doing some kind of population-reduction thing. I wouldn't worry about nuclear war. I think we have much worse problems with methane gas releasing from the melting polar ice caps. Or, really, the ultimate danger to humanity is a virus. It's just going to be a virus. It'll start one day, and three days later there won't be any more people. All your underground cities and places you thought you were going to scurry off Congress to, some scientists and a bunch of CIA agents. You'll all be dead with a simple virus, and the world will be quiet again, and the elephants and the whales will rule the world, and the libraries and the internet will stand still. No one will ever request another web page. And all those books we wrote will never be read. And it will be beautiful.

184

The cops come to the house based on an email I send. That's what I said. The cops come to the house based on an email I send. The email even said, "I'm not suicidal." But still the cops come to the house because my doctor's secretary has been instructed to cover her ass. This cops-coming-to-the-house thing is a big deal, because it's part of why Mom decides to kick me out of the house, but anyway..I'll get to that email in a minute, but for now..

From: Matthew
To: Sharon

Subject: Xenazine

I'm taking four of those a day. I think I'm supposed to be taking three? Will you help me figure it out tomorrow? [Actually, there's no uncertainty: I'm supposed to be taking three a day, Mom messed up, and we're putting more dopamine into my brain than prescribed.]

Thanks,

MT

I confide in Joanne.

From: Matthew
To: Joanne

Subject: also

Mom insists that she dole out the psych meds when, weekly, we fill my pill boxes—one box for vitamins/supplements, one box for psych meds or more accurately, prescribed medications. I do the vitamins, Mom does the psych meds—it makes her "feel better". I agree it's better to have two sets of eyes on all of this. But the implication that she as a mentally healthy person will make fewer mistakes doling out pills is false. She has twice recently made serious mistakes, either giving me too much of a medicine that increases dopamine in the brain, or not noticing that we had more of a medicine and causing me to quit suddenly a medicine that you are not supposed to quit suddenly and which, being without, caused me major conscious disturbances on par with taking a small dose of hallucinogen. Then I was just double-checking the supply and found that this whole time I was unfortunately off my medicine, we actually had it all along. I'm not dinging Mom. Everyone makes mistakes. But here are two cases of her missing something that I noticed (eventually) by observing what she had not, and yet she's discounting my ability to do something that in this case she was mistaken at and I discovered her mistakes. So am I the invalid she thinks I am? I'm going to have to say no. And if she wants to continue, I am going to graciously trust her to continue to dole out the psych meds..we do it every Sunday morning so it'll be coming up soon here. Mistakes happen. No big deal. I still trust her. But when/if I make a mistake like that, she blames bipolar and uses as an excuse for her to think I am that much more helpless and dependent on her and an excuse for problems in her life. Yesterday she actually said that taking me to therapy was a significant reason she didn't have time to take better care of her own life. Wrong. She works about three hours a day at her office and plays games on her iPad the rest of the day, most days. I didn't believe that she blamed my therapy trip for why she didn't have time to take care of her own life. She has gotten into this model of caretaker for the sick when really I only need help with a few things. Leona got into the same model with me and I was riding my bike to the grocery store and all my doctors' appointments..at the end she wasn't even paying for my medicine so mostly what she was doing was unnecessarily worrying about a self-sufficient person!!! This is the type of thing that has caused me to lock Mom out of my medical records and make me keep my new diagnostic information to myself..though obviously I'm reaching out to help by even mentioning that there is such information. Very obvious, very stupid move on my part. I hate myself for giving everyone so many chances. I'm sorry I talked so much in Twitter messages and here..not for your sake, but for my own. This might be the part where I metaphorically move to the mountain.

Once, Mom and I misunderstood the doctor's instructions and went down on my Klonopin dose instead of going up, as the doctor had clearly prescribed. He had me taking fewer pills, but they were a higher-dose pill—and both my mom and I missed it. Within a day my clenching was worse and my pain was way worse. We went back to the doctor and he corrected our mistake.

The second time was also a mistake, but it may have been worse. Klonopin is a medicine you're not supposed to stop taking suddenly—you have to taper it down gradually. One time Mom, who fills the prescription medicine pill box while I fill the vitamin one, said we had run out of Klonopin and for two long days over a weekend I suddenly stopped taking Klonopin. The first day we watched James Bond movies in the living room. I think we watched four. I was lying there unable to focus, not in pain this time but shaking and feeling like I had taken a small dose of recreational hallucinogen. One day felt like six. I could never get comfortable in my mind. It's similar to the feeling of stopping an antipsychotic suddenly as well—look online and everyone will tell you it feels like you took a half-dose of mushrooms or LSD: you never visually trip but you get that general weird feeling, fucking with time, like you're hyper-aware, more aware of sounds and colors—and unable to filter irrelevant sounds. I remember camping deep in the woods with a friend the first time I took mushrooms. The road was so far away we didn't hear it all week—until we took mushrooms. Then suddenly it sounded like the cars were right on top of us, like that road was fifty feet away! It's the same thing in mania, or when stopping Klonopin or an antipsychotic: suddenly sounds your brain is filtering out completely, you become aware of. It makes it really hard to function. In mania, you're drawn to lights, thinking they have special significance—which does not help you function or survive in the world. I have to wear sunglasses in malls and grocery stores, outside, anywhere brightly lit. You realize, going through such experiences, that your brain is doing you the favor, very often, of ignoring some things for you so that you can pay attention to some others.

Anyway, my whole point to this is that time we thought we were out of Klonopin and I had two days of hellish weird tripping where I'd ask Mom if she thought I was doing ok and she'd say, "You seem like you're doing just fine to me—one of your best days in a long time."—of course, to her I was doing fine, because I was being passive and quiet, while to me I was in sub-tripping hell—but that time, on the third day, I looked through the psych med bag and there was a full bottle of Klonopin in there!!

I said, "Mom, I have some news."

"Good or bad?"

"Well..both."

And I told her that while I was fishing through the psych medicine bag for no particular reason except taking inventory to see what we needed to refill, I discovered that this whole two-day sudden stop of Klonopin was completely unnecessary because there was another full bottle of the stuff in here the whole time!!

She apologized for not seeing and I said, "That's ok. No problem. It was half-luck that I found it myself."

I took one pill—one 1 mg Klonopin—and thirty minutes later I felt fine. We restocked the prescription med pill box and I was back on all my meds, feeling fine.

It was after that Klonopin mix-up that my irritable mania started. I'm not saying the gap in Klonopin caused the irritability that ultimately is being given as the reason Mom wants me out of our apartment—in fact, I don't think that was the cause of that irritability—but what do I know? Mom, a few times, has made medicine mistakes which I eventually caught, or caught when I went to take my medicine and the pill box didn't jive with the iPhone app where I have every dose, every medicine, every time slot meticulously programmed and which I check with the medicine that goes into my hand and into my mouth and into my stomach..we don't do this willy-nilly around here, but my point is that for all we know, Mom's Klonopin mistake could have been the cause of the irritability that got me kicked out. I'm not saying it did. I'm just saying: we're a team, here, and we're imperfect, and unplanned fluctuations in hardcore psych meds are apt to affect a person's brain.

The medicine would be done more accurately if I just did it all myself, as I did for many years. Because I'm the one who takes my medicine, I am infinitely familiarized with it day after day after day—what each pill looks like, both its names, and when I take it throughout the day—I know my medicine better than anyone. I could fill both my vitamin and prescription pill boxes without looking at any reference cards, phone apps, or labels on the bottles. But somewhere in there Mom decided that it would be better if she did the prescription meds and I did the vitamins. I like the company, I like feeling like we're doing this together. But somewhere, I think, there's this idea that I'm ill and because I'm ill I'm less capable, when that's only partly true. There are just some things that I'm not as good at as the mentally healthy person—there are many things that I do better than the average person, mentally ill or not.

185

Texts with Mom—Christmas Eve—nighttime.

ME: Mom, this conversation about group homes, the general lack of certainty, and related factors..it's eating me up inside so I'm giving you advance [warning] that I might need to check myself into a mental hospital soon, or leave Nashville on my own, or something..I don't think I can continue this discussion with you and Lea about me like I'm some kind of animal to be put into which zoo.

Getting evicted from my Vermont apartment was a factor in me becoming suicidal. I'm not suicidal now but I am at risk for becoming suicidal with all this uncertainty about where I'll be able to live. I have to be safe with myself and that may mean going to the hospital.

Mom: You are not shelter insecure now, and the idea is to make sure you won't be.

ME: That's not how it seems. It seems like we had an agreement that we'd live here for a couple years and then decide to do something different at that point. Now you're saying I'm interfering with your ability to work. Maybe that's true. But we didn't make it two years. We made it seven weeks before we're talking about me having to move out of our apartment, btw—I pay half the rent. It just feels like I got inconvenient for you and you're unloading me.

Just..if I got to the hospital tonight or soon, please don't throw away my stuff. Please let me come back and get them before I leave Nashville.

It's going to be tough living life without either parent, but I can do it. I'll have to, it sounds like you're saying.

Mom: Do you feel like you need to go to a hospital?

ME: I'll make that decision.

Mom: The things that you are saying and proposing don't seem to be the best for you.

ME: What you would you know about what's best for me? Is being told I have to leave my current home the best for me? No.

I gotta stop this discussion so I'm not accused of being manic later. End of conversation.

If I go to the hospital, will you promise to let me come back in for 20 minutes to get my laptop and a backpack? I know you said earlier if I leave don't come back, but I don't want to lose my laptop.

My whole work continuity is messed up here..I can't edit my book because it feels like a snake is eating my stomach from the inside due to the living location uncertainty. So there's no point of me being here since you and I are no longer friendly, and I can't work.

Mom: We are friendly. I didn't know you couldn't work.

I go to bed at this point.

Mom: Are you OK?? Please let me know.

Christmas Day—early, early morning.

ME: I'm ok in an immediate sense. The last few nights my emotions have been going crazy around bedtime. It could be partially a medication effect..two Klonopin and a Latuda all in the space of two hours. And I'm just stressed with the situation. I can't relax enough to edit. At least yesterday I couldn't, worrying that basically my life is going to end in some horrible hotel for the disabled and I won't have you or any family members or even Lea or my current doctors to know that it happened. Portland is a bad idea. Leona and James can barely take care of themselves, Joanne is in some kind of a blackout, relationship-wise, my favorite alcoholic cousin lives there. I don't want to drink again. Maybe Nashville is better. It's all just too much for me to think about and I have too little data to figure it out. Yes, we were friendly last night during the tornado warning and that was fun.

I would love to have a relaxed low-key Christmas and not be constantly worried if you wanting me out of the the house means you're writing me off. I guess I'm 37, I probably shouldn't care, but I feel like my adventure to Baton Rouge left everyone I knew there hating me more than they did before I got three. I know they don't hate me, but we sure don't see eye to eye. That's hard for me.

I want you and I to be able to enjoy each other as we age.

Also I want there to be peace for the next few days or however long it is until we find my next place to put me. I know I'm a problem..can't work..sometimes suicidal..it's got to be hell even knowing me.

I'm sorry about that.

I hate myself for it.

We had a good year in Baton Rouge together. I'll always remember that, even though you had the stress of being unable to find a job..which was just a crazy crazy situation. I wish it had been easier and we were still there in some ways but I'm glad you found this church, I hope it goes amazingly for you—you so deserve it, Mom. I want your life to be wonderful.

I guess I had some anger last night around being forced to move again so soon. I don't feel it now. I hope it doesn't come again tonight. I wish I had Joanne's ability to completely do her own thing and ignore everyone else but that's not how I do it. I feel other people's feelings too strongly. Maybe you could give me a timeframe..like will I be here for another 20 days so I can finish my fourth draft of this book? It's actually very difficult work for me in the sense that I have to have a certain amount of mental emptiness to be able to work on it—when I'm in turmoil about my basic needs it is more difficult for me to have a thoughtful, measured editing session.

And my writing work may not matter to many people, but it does matter to me. To me it's an important matter. Not that I have to be serious about it all the time, but in the sense that it's sacred work to me. I don't expect anybody else to understand that but it is, it is to me.

I don't want to worry you but yes, I am in a danger zone. I am not suicidal, I do not want to drink, but not knowing where and if I'm going to be able to live physically is extremely stressful to me in a way that makes me start to consider suicide and also say "fuck it" to why I'm not drinking. If my life is close to being in danger or being over through homelessness or running out of medicine and being in pain and unable to move, then why not drink? I'm now in a situation where I can't become homeless..I must follow whatever procedure society requires me to follow in order to get my medications. Rationally, I don't think going off them is an option..I perceive that if I did, I would be more crippled than I am now and in more pain, like I was in 2014 at the Ranchwood house..I was looking through old pictures as I organized everything into albums the other day and there are pictures there of me with an ice pack on my left neck and shoulder area..I remember I was in so much pain I finally couldn't sleep because of it and asked to go to the ER, which eventually led to finding Dr. Montgomery and getting insurance, etc.

I'm on a much better path now, medically. Even though it may be worsening the underlying TD, being back on an antipsychotic has been amazing. I'm in so much less pain! I'm still in pain all the time, but it has subsided to an aching in my arms and back and not a constant sharp pain. Also I'm having hardly any joint pain..I was having pain in my elbows constantly from over-flexing them..that is much much lessened.

Staying in Nashville..idk. Maybe I should just say if you and Lea are calling the shots that Nashville or Portland are both ok. I don't really feel close to say James especially but also Lily..they both have smarts but are so dull some of the time. I sent an email including them both with some very unusual aphorisms by a guy with the last name of Cioran, I think, and their responses were so pedestrian it made me want to gouge my eyes out and hang out with Oedipus rather than hear another dull, imagination-less word either of them had to say. I get that kind of writerly discussion on Twitter, though—and even there it's rare and from a select few. That's good enough; I shouldn't be looking for it in my family.

The thing with the aphorism email..it was like I said, here's a list of Lamborghinis that I thought were neat and Lily's response was the equivalent of: Well, I don't really like Lamborghinis, maybe I'm not enough of a car person, but here's this Subaru that I really like, what do you think of that? And it was a nice Subaru she shared..a Thurman aphorism which is truly excellent. But what frustrated me..and it's possibly a generational thing..is how divergent her response was. I thought: how do you get along at ExxonMobil unable to stick to the topic at hand? I think both divergently and convergently, which is unusual. But this wasn't a bubble-gum conversation, a streetwise conversation where anything goes. It was a formal discussion about Cioran aphorisms and she just shat all over it (my interpretation of her actions, the story I'm telling based on her actions). In The Secret History, Donna Tartt talks about this difference in terms of the classical mind and the modern mind..

Joanne pointed out to me a decade ago that in that paradigm, I have a classical mind. I remain on topic long enough to complete an argument, thought, project. I value divergent thinking and I spend a fair amount of my time doing it. In some cases, divergence writes your first draft and convergence edits it. But I just cannot stand impertinent divergence and it is present more in some of the younger generations..which is too bad because it means that they are less able to create what you and I might call a final product. They're diverging all over the place such that if you ask them to write an essay on a certain topic they might be able to write an essay, but it certainly won't be on that topic. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with this, it just clashes with how I do things.

This moving thing throws my life into turmoil. It's very stressful. None of us knows if I can even get accepted to one of these places here, in Portland, anywhere. And it feels kind of like I'm being dropped off and never picked back up again. I've already been written off by one of my parents. If that were to happen between you and me, let's just say it would change my world view drastically. Because then Dad wouldn't be an outlier. It would be clear that it's more the case that most people don't want to be around me. In that case then suddenly maybe Dad was right to abandon me as an adult because I'm bipolar and schizophrenic (even though I don't feel that way, those are the words we use to call what I am).

I wish Joanne was speaking with me beyond five-minute phone conversations (literally—"It's Joanne, do you mind if we have a five-minute conversation?"—"Uh, sure, Joanne, that'd be fine.") because then I might know whether she's staying in Portland. It's not anybody's job to "support" me or be a "family support" and please I'm sure you know this but let us let the conversation reflect that support goes both ways. I supported Leona as much as she supported me when I lived up there. I did an incredible amount of work with James moving them to their new house. I watched Daniel all day while Leona was in her room drinking—a little drinking, not a lot, but still. She had me on a clock and I followed it because I needed a place to stay. But if Daniel shat and I wasn't there to catch it, Leona chewed my head off (in yelling) (actual example). She expected me to control when he took a shit. And I know I was a kind and trusted presence to him even at that age because he wanted me, not either of his parents, to take him to the bathroom when he needed to pee when he was potty training—or to take the tray part of his training potty to the bathroom to be flushed, rather.

I don't know what's it's like now, but when I lived with the Rhimes, they were (Leona was) too overdone to have a friend over for dinner. That's how tapped out she was energy-wise.

So, we might be able to be family friends, but I don't see them being "supports" for me any more than they are now.

I do think it would be awesome to be close to a growing Daniel, and perhaps a growing Joel. I think we could all support each other through conversation.

I wish I could discuss all this lightly, but because I don't have a job, this isn't a fun decision for me—it's a life and death one—at least that's how I perceive it. I am leaning more and more toward—if we do this at all—a place that has a 24-hour support person. If the living situation doesn't have that, then I might as well be living on my own or with housemates.

I'm sorry about last night. I just got freaked out and it it bugs me that this "solution" seems to solve your problems, not mine, even though I'm the one who has to do most of the changing. You'll be in a better situation, able to travel without worrying about me..even though the other day, two Nashville police officers, a crisis team worker, and an RN all spoke with me and decided that I was ok in the sense that I wasn't suicidal and didn't need to be hospitalized. And all because of a colorful email I sent..the irony is not that others in our family are so rock-solid sane that they would never send a colorful email..it's that—you, Joanne, Leona excluded—they can't even write a coherent email at all. They're less in danger of being considered ill because their brains can't express things on the level that mine can!! If you don't write anything, then no one will ever think anything you write is crazy. That doesn't mean the non-writer is doing anything like living a successful life, it just means they've decided, essentially, to sit out the hand at the game of life.

So they won't be considered a crazy poker player—that's only because they're not playing!!!!

Lack of failure through chronic non-participation, chronic inaction, is not success.

My writer friends, my male and female, older, sage, published, philosophical friends on Twitter think I'm crazy for taking as much medicine as I do and they think it's absurd the way I'm treated by my families..specifically, that the myth is supported that I am less than or handicapped. Now I don't listen to everything those friends say and I'm perfectly fine with the medicine I'm on right now. But their other point makes me think. I am, alongside you and Joanne, one of the most capable people in the family. Yes, absolutely I am "mentally ill" but I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who has had a career with the overall difficulty and depth that you, Joanne, or I have had. Susan couldn't even format her own résumé. She asked me to, I made it look wonderful, that got her an interview, she got herself the job she has now. But still I was treated like I was totally incapable of anything but taking out the trash (and even that I was often reminded I was doing incorrectly). Susan did say thank you for me formatting her résumé (into a consummate professional form and I didn't just format it, I re-wrote it to be correct, language-wise and better technical-description-wise..it took five hours) but instead of a thank you I would like to be treated with respect. By you too. You told me the other day because I was too young and didn't have the wisdom you and your siblings possessed that you didn't want to hear any more of my ideas about your family dynamics. Ok, if you don't want me to talk about something because it bothers you, I won't talk about it. But please, let's not pretend that any sibling of yours is wiser than me?! You are the only one in that crowd who is wiser than me.

Give me that, at least. Rusty is wiser than me. Please, make a case for that, that would hold up in front of Joanne and Leona, for instance. The statement you made to me was bogus.

I knew for weeks before you told me that you wanted us to come up with a plan for me not living here, that that was on the horizon. I applied for a low-income building in Brattleboro and have their return letter in my room to prove it. I did that three weeks before you said we need a plan for you to leave. So, I am not stupid. I don't believe you want to kick me out, but in some ways that would be better for me because there would be less uncertainty. The current plan has me waiting one week, one month, six months, who knows? That is extremely stressful for me, the one who will be doing the moving. I recognize that as safer, physically, for me, though, and would like for this to be more of a long-term plan, as you stated. But let's get on it. Let's look at that website Lea sent together or separately and apply for whatever we need to apply for. Or look at Portland facilities and get on their waiting lists. I want to get back to a stable situation like I had before this all came up so that I can get into a routine and know what to expect throughout the day and modulate my energy so I can work. The best thing for me?..is to stay right here. I want that to be known as part of this narrative. I like this room. I like living with you (except to the degree to which I am causing you problems), I like my bed and these quilts and my writing space on the floor. I have gotten a ton of work done since we've been here..partially because I was manic. And I am so so sorry for the toll that had on you—it's mortifying to me. But this is not my choice. It's your choice. And I'm happy to go along with it. But this is not what I want. I will do it, I will adapt, I will survive (probably), and I will likely thrive. But I'm doing this because you asked me to, not because I would have ever come up with this in my wildest dreams.

And also, being robbed of Dr. H's cutting-edge techniques may have a major negative impact on my life. I'm not asking you to feel guilty and I hope you don't—that's just a probable side-effect of this move for me. But I want to acknowledge that as a loss for me and my treatment and my future mental health. It's a loss for me and therefore for all of us.

I'm petty stumped by this decision. Nashville or Portland with assistance from from you, Lea, possibly Leona in getting into a supervised apartment building for disabled people..versus just going on my own, ASAP, to Brattleboro or more likely Tucson, where I could probably get an apartment for less than $500/month, ride my bike or walk to doctor's appointments, assuming they're close enough, re-connect with my NA community there. It's a tough one, and there's the implicit decision of how much I rely on yours and Lea's advice and how much I just split from that program and go on my own, find new therapists and doctors when I move to Tucson. I hate to say what I'm about to say next, because I don't want to be so reserved, but I am getting older and in things involving physical challenges, I am less of an adventurer now. It's hard for me to sit. It's hard for me to stand. So the idea of moving to Tucson on my own, while I think the town would be great for me in ways that Portland won't (lots of NA meetings within a bike-able area, for instance), I don't know that moving to a city "on my own" is the best idea—if I did it, it would certainly be the physically hardest move I ever made.

I'm going to stop writing now—I don't even know if you'll read these all. You really offended me with that remark about not being on the level enough to make my piercing observations about your siblings. I wish you had just asked me not to make my observations because you simply don't want to hear them. But, I mean, Mom, you started me programming, and you'll always have that awesome place in my programming career, but I've gone so deep into that world that even Bob, who is also called a programmer, would have no idea what I'm talking about if I showed him the work I did for Optimistic (for example). So, the truth is, you don't even know anything about the realm of thought that I've participated in within programming—you don't even know me in that way—you never will. I would not claim to know you theologically—you have so much knowledge and time spent thinking in that area that you will run circles around me in that domain for the rest of our lives. My point is simply that you don't even know my thought world intimately enough to understand what I do in at least two and probably more like five domains. This is not with the purpose of inflating my ego, but to question how you can make a remark about the relative wisdom of me and someone else when the fact is none of you have ever even done what it is that I have done successfully. We love each other, we care about each other, but you don't even know my mind well enough to make statements about it. So I just find it very hard to swallow that you would use my lack of wisdom or lack of knowledge or my youth or inexperience as a reason why you don't care to hear my opinions on your siblings. As far as I know, I'm the only person on this side of the family who has worked for multiple Fortune 500 companies..which, believe me, is a joke in my mind..but it's just an example of how much larger my world is than yours or any of our family members in that way. And it goes both ways: I don't know how to do what Susan does. But I bet I could learn it in fewer lifetimes than it would take her to do what I've done programming. So don't tell me that I lack the wisdom or the experience—I think you know that's not true. There is only one person with more wisdom in this family than me—and that's you. Learning from you is part of the reason I stick around. Needing your help is another. I'm sorry we have to part ways but I am glad that it will be better for you..and by extension, whatever is better for you will make me happier, because getting in your way causes me nothing but stress.

I agree with you, (to paraphrase) whatever we can do to get back into a loving, mother-son relationship, let's do it. Our relationship (our former relationship) was the most valuable one I had. So I'll do anything you say to restore it, even if it means living in the woods behind the apartment starting in one hour. Why don't you and Lea or just you decide what needs to happen to fix our relationship and I'll do whatever that is.

I suppose one of the difficult requirements of being my friend is wading through approximately 4,000 words of text messages each and every day. But I don't fuck around. Text is my life. Get on that communication horse, kid—we're going for a pony ride.

I say to my mom through her open door, "Good morning, Mom." Even though we make eye contact, she doesn't say anything back.

The most positive spin I can put on this is that she is so into her writing that she is not aware of the nearby, outside world. This trait has been passed down to her three children, or learned by us. They key is you can't take it personal. It doesn't mean that I don't matter. It just means she's in her own world that is not permeable by her firstborn's greeting words.

186

It's hard when you've spent your whole life able to move freely—and in addition to that think well in many ways—a machine like most of us. And then, by taking a psych med prescribed by a doctor, I am one of the ones affected by one of that long list of side effects we all laugh about on TV. Oh and the side effect is that I clench and jerk like a monster. Used to be I could just up and go wherever I wanted, traverse the country like a free man. Now I'm a turtle with one leg and a broken shell.

From: Matthew
To: Sharon, Lea (my therapist)

Subject: let's simplify this whole situation

I sent Mom many messages yesterday and early this morning and the thinking I did therein helped me clarify my thoughts on the whole Matthew needs to find a new place to live situation. Here's my simplified outlook:

My life can happen anywhere. I am versatile and can do my work and meet people and enjoy any location.

My primary goal here is

to relieve my Mom's stress about being unable to be my primary caretaker and her inability to go on business trips because at least the two of you agree that it isn't wise to leave me alone

to restore (if possible) the type of relationship Mom and I once had where we are able to have fun together and enjoy each other's company (even if it's over the phone due to living in different cities)

I am confounded by the options in this situation. My closest (older, wiser, published, thinker-type advisors online) would certainly say—or have said—that it's my life and I should do what I want. I'm going to go against that advice for now and do whatever you two recommend, because of (2), my primary goal, which is to restore or recreate a healthy relationship with my mom. I don't think I need as much supervision as you two think I do—that is part of your goal and your view, not mine. My goal is for me and Mom's relationship to be happy. Whatever needs to happen for that to be possible (if it is possible—Mom?) I will do, even if it means I have to start camping in the woods behind our apartment today.

Matthew

No one responds. Turtle limps on.

187

Here's my orchestra warming up, getting ready to write the email that will actually have cops show up at my door.

From: Matthew
To: Sharon, Susan
Cc: Bob
Bcc: The World

Subject: relevant articles on classifying "episodes" and "psychosis"

Aunt Susan, Mother Sharon,

One of the issues that circles around some of our discussions recently is how you presume to classify my behavior as "an episode" or "psychotic".

It might seem simple to you to make that determination.

But it's really not as simple as you think.

Let's leave aside the basic DSM criteria-based diagnostic tools for one second—as you'll see all of those concepts are wrapped up in the more general philosophical view of classification I am talking about.

Here's a post I wrote about nine years ago that explains, in technical detail, why me doing something you think is odd (or you can't predict) does not mean that you have enough knowledge to classify my behavior (as psychotic or anything else):

[thread deleted]

(Be sure to read the whole page, including others' dissenting and supporting comments, and my years-later reply at the end of the thread addressing those comments.)

See, a test maker isn't really ever classifying test takers into categories of intelligence (or psychosis or whatever) by grading a test (or evaluating a person's behavior). The only thing a test maker is testing is whether the test taker knows (and chooses to repeat) what the test maker is thinking. That's quite different.

And if you take the time to read my article, you will see that the situation test makers find themselves in is entirely more tenuous than is generally thought—especially with highly unpredictable test takers!

And until you have thought through this philosophy of diagnosis and classification as deeply as I have (as indicated by the article linked above and a couple other articles I might link to below), I ask that while you make your classifications of me, that you keep in mind that it is quite possible that I have thought through this type of situation far more rigorously than you.

If you are interested in having detailed, logical conversations with me about "episodes" and "psychosis", rather than just throwing words around willy-nilly, I suggest familiarizing yourself with my thoughts in that article. Then we will be in a scientific, meaningful conversation instead of a mud fight. And if you are unwilling or unable or do not have time to read my very well organized, written, and published thoughts on this subject, then I ask you to consider that at least part of the reason you do not understand what I am saying to you lately is that I simply know more about the subject at hand and you are unable (or much more likely) able but unwilling to delve as deeply as I have into the subject of diagnosis and classification and therefore what I am saying is senseless to you not due to my psychosis but rather your lack of education.

So take a ride with me: read the linked articles, see deeper into what it means to classify a complex system and what some of the limits of doing that are.

Or: remain uneducated about my thoughts on this subject and just throw around potshots when really you don't even know the meaning of the terms you are using, or the limits of classification in general.

To each their own,

Matthew

Additional reading:

Disorder and the Doctrine of Ethical Treatment

Set Inference

P.S. Just because I'm sick doesn't make me stupid. I need your help, yes, and I am thankful you are willing to love and help me. But when you treat me as though I am mentally inferior to you, my willingness to stick around evaporates like gasoline on a sidewalk.

Here's the email that I sent that had my doctor call the cops to my door. I'm obviously not trying to impress you by including this. It is grandiose (you might call it egotistical), it is angry, crazy, grasping at straws. But it's a good look at the output of mania, and I'm sharing it for that reason.

From: Matthew
To: Sharon, Susan
Cc: Lily, Joanne, Leona, Lea, Dr. H, Kristi, Victoria (nurse from old doctor's office, Lee (old doctor), James, Van, Joel (cousin)

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

Aunt Susan and Mother Sharon,

Why don't you think about this for a while:

Foresight of a container

It's a little something I made up, it's exceedingly simple, but I only know one other person who I've ever met who can readily understand it. And she's a close relative of mine, probably much smarter than me.

I just feel and hear in your words this superiority coming from both of you—possibly well-intentioned, but unwelcome. I don't mind when people are not as smart as me, but when people are not as smart as me and they think they are, or especially when they insult me, I do have a problem with that.

Here's one for you:

Cor3

It's a classifier—it can tell if I'm psychotic or having an episode better than either of you two can. I invented it. It is, in this narrow sense, smarter than any of us. In fact, if you can find someone, anyone, in your lifetime, who can explain how it works (here's the C code to help them out: inferno/cor3/actor.c and inferno/cor3/actor.c), I will embalm my left testicle and give it to you as a reward. I am confident in offering this reward because that invention is a masterpiece of logic, and you would have to scour the globe to find someone with a mind clear enough and simple enough to understand it—even though almost anyone who looks at the description would think it is too simple to do anything, it is actually one of the most useful classifiers in the world.

Point being: just because I have a mental illness (wait, no, like three or four mental illnesses) doesn't mean you get to talk down to me. I rely upon external feedback to know how I'm doing, but when I sense you're manipulating me or using me as the identified patient, those are the nights when I seriously consider packing a backpack, going off my medicine, and seeing how long I can last in the woods with my array of illnesses. I want to collaborate with you, but, "I'll not be juggled with." —Shakespeare in Hamlet.

Sincerely,

Matthew Temple

P.S. I know you all are doing your best. Unfortunately on the other side of the equation you've got me, for whom few people's best is good enough (certainly not my own). I am at a breaking point. I have been pushed too far. I think sometimes I am being pushed. Not by a person, or people, necessarily. But I think often the stories we tell where a person jumped (metaphorically, of course, in terms of their life progression)..they were actually pushed. I feel pushed right now. I need extra help. And if you can't give it to me, please just tell me and I'll leave. I've been homeless before and I'm not afraid of being homeless again. As well, I've stayed in five different mental hospitals so I have a small mental map of where I might find refuge or a starting point. I'd like to simply stay in my room in Nashville, but I will not choose to continue to live in a house where "Every single night's a fight" —Fiona Apple of course. I don't relish my presence causing my mom trouble—it tears me up. I'm going to stay in my room with the door closed and locked [because I literally thought my mom was mad enough at me and hated me enough that she might try to come in my room and kill me]. Please just give me a break.

END OF COMMUNICATION—FOREVER—HAVEN'T I WRITTEN ENOUGH—EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW ME DON'T EVEN KNOW ME—GOODBYE—I AM NOT SUICIDAL BUT I WOULD PREFER IF MY FAMILY WOULD JUST EXECUTE ME BECAUSE IT WOULD BE THE ULTIMATE REFLECTION OF THE TRUTH THAT I AM OF NO USE TO THEM

Any questions?

(Note: if you would like two police officers to come to your house banging on the door the next morning, write this note and cc your doctor. Edit. Then press send.)

188

I wake up to a call from my doctor.

"Do you know that you're manic?"

"Um..well..I've known for a while I had some of the checklist items, but..did I know I was manic—fully manic—I guess I do not know that."

"Well you are. I want you to get off the phone with me and call your counselor and have her get you in touch with the crisis team. She'll know what I'm talking about."

"Yeah, I know what crisis teams are."

"You need to take this seriously. You're in a very dangerous state."

"Well, look, my counselor happens to be calling now so I'm gonna switch over."

"Ok. Take care of yourself, Matthew."

I'm on the phone with my counselor for a couple of minutes when there's a loud banging on the door. I get up from my computer and go to the front door. Out a side window I can see a police officer.

"I've got to go, the police are banging on the door."

"Ok, call me back."

"I will, I'll call you back as soon as I'm done with this."

"Ok, Matthew. Find a psychiatrist."

"I will. Bye Lea."

I put my cell phone in my pocket and open the door.

"Mr. Temple?"

"Yeah. That's me. Come in, come in."

"Thank you."

Skip skip skip skip skip skip skip. I convince two Nashville police officers, a mental health crisis team member who they have me call, and my therapist, all, that I am not suicidal and do not need to be 5150'd to the nearest psych hospital. I said I convinced them—maybe that's a Freudian slip. I did not convince them, I told them the facts about my mental state and they decided not to take me away.

I decide not to call my mom at work and go out of my way to tell her the Nashville PoPo were at our apartment this morning—I let her be. But she finds out in some email I send and this turns out to be much worse. People who aren't chronically suicidal (or criminals) aren't used to the police showing up at their apartment all the time. I've been through this before, with the police showing up and (usually) taking me to a psych hospital—my mom has not.

From: Matthew
To: My doctor's office

Subject: thank you all

I apologize for being alarmist and saying scary things in the email I sent yesterday. But the reason I cc'd you was to get your input/feedback—that was no accident. My family rarely communicates with me and I admit that just knowing that my health providers care about me, that the police who showed up earlier care about me at least enough to do their job, makes me feel much calmer now than I did this morning. I am not blaming anyone here, not blaming my family—I accept all the blame because I am hard to deal with and culturally unacceptable, etc. But I can't deny, and I want you to know, that your giving a crap about me made a real difference for me today.

Thank you.

No one writes me back—if you haven't figured it out by now everyone thinks I'm fucking crazy! Plus nobody writes anybody back these days—it's not seen to have enough utility.

I chat with my friend Davina about the police visit right after it happens.

ME: photo Look I made blue cheese burgers coffee and I added Colby Jack and fried eggs and red pepper for good measure. I'm excited, I admit! =) [Huh..I was cooking back then. I've since decided that cooking any way but the microwave is too dangerous with my shaking/clenching/flailing arms.]

Davina: That's fucking amazing!

ME: Yeah! Just now eating it bc the police came to my door! I must stop sending scary emails. I am sorry to you, and everyone, for doing that.

Davina: The police came to your door over your email??

ME: Yes. I gotta stop sending emails and put it in my books.

Davina: How the fuck did your email warrant the police coming?

ME: The part where I said I thought my family executing me would be an appropriate way for them to reflect how little regard they have for me. But I specifically said right before that I am not suicidal!!

Davina: Who called the police?

ME: I'm not surprised. But I gotta play my cards closer to my chest, just talk to you and my cousin Kristi, who both understand. One of my doctor's nurses.

Davina: That's so fucked up.

ME: I agree. Sign of the times. Family members don't talk to each other, we go to talk to therapists and police individually, then try to come together to be family..and wonder why it doesn't work.

Davina: I guess it makes sense that a nurse would call it's kind of her job. Why did you include her or your doctor?

ME: But I do not like scaring my family..ugh =( I do love pretty much everyone except pure bastards. I included my doctor so that that would review my state—I wanted their input/evaluation.

Davina: Oh I see.

ME: Yeah I mean I do want their help and recognize that I have signs of mania right now. So..I wanted them to see it bc I wanted their opinion.

Davina: Well I guess you got it.

ME: Hahahahaha lol you a funny girl =) I guess I did. I actually feel better knowing that my doctor gives a shit.

Davina: Well yes that's good to know.

ME: Yeah I mean I need help. But I'm ok for now. He told me to take an extra lithium. I agreed. I'm gonna do that now. Me, my mom, and my Louisiana psychiatrist discussed that on our last visit and the psychiatrist left it up to me. I decided I didn't need it. But I'll take this doctor's recommendation. I don't think lithium is going to slow this mind down to lethargy or uselessness. I want to be a better person, Davina, even though a lot of me is ok!

Davina: We should all have that attitude.

ME: Yeah, actually, yeah!!! =)

Mom drives me to an inpatient facility to see a nurse practitioner. This is the night of the police visit. The NP sees me privately. After an hour and a half interview she says, "Well, you're definitely manic!" but decides I don't need inpatient care.

Davina: How's it goin'?

ME: Hi! It's going well. Worked all afternoon and got an appointment with a psychiatrist who might be able to adjust my medicine to help..me?..hopefully me and everyone but especially me. Actually I feel quite a lot less agitated just taking an extra lithium per my regular doctor's suggestion.

Davina: I'm so glad thats helping. Good boo.

ME: Mom is either in need of help and/or (probably and) being a real tricky bitch. Speaking so quietly I can't possibly hear her. Refusing to speak, even with the NP we met with just now she was morose, said as few words as possible. Looks horrible emotionally yet when I ask if there's anything I can do, says no. I'm used to this from childhood..she did that to my dad all the time. Refuse to engage or accept help, but make sure everyone else knows she's miserable.

I feel sorry for her. But I can't help.

With this extra lithium in me what she's doing isn't agitating me or my mania..I think..I think that's what's going on. Like she said a fight-starting remark a minute ago and I was chill enough to politely deflect it. Easily.

Thanks for being glad for me, baby =)

I feel fine now. Not agitated. Not scared of Mom. My door is open again.

Davina: Right. Well I'm so happy to hear that you're able to let things go easier. I'm sorry your mom is having a hard time. That's great! Maybe your mom needs lithium too.

ME: Me too and me too. Ha! Maybe! I don't wish anything bad for her you know that. I adore her, love her, probably idolize her too much!!

Davina: Lol.

ME: I hate to see her like this but I can't fix it. I can't even talk to her bc she won't let me in. Nothing I can do about that though. Gotta focus on my own health.

Davina: Yes you're doing your best for yourself and too bad you mom isn't doing the same for herself.

ME: It's sad. And I'm a fucked-up fatherfucker so if I think it's sad, it's really fucking sad! I've been taking it on me and not getting my needs met, feeling like she's upset because of me.

Davina: Yeah but I truly don't think it's because of you it's just that you happen to be in her line of fire.

ME: Yes, that sounds smart!

189

I call my therapist. Get voicemail.

From: Matthew
To: Lea

Subject: I left a long message

so long it cut me off

sorry

let's just cancel our appointment

working with you has been very helpful to me but I don't even know if I'm going to be living in Tennessee next week, so, I have to cancel

and apologize

I just didn't have my life together enough to even be able to attend counseling regularly

I am sorry

---

From: Matthew
To: Lea

Subject: I left a long message

Called a bunch of psychiatrists, none with appointments in 2015. One recommended I go to Sentential Hospital because they would have on-call psychiatrists I could see. Went there. Actually it's an inpatient psych hospital. An LPN or LN or RN or some kind of an N named Alice did a thorough interview, informed me as Dr. H did earlier over the phone that I am manic. They both asked me if I agreed and I said I had noticed some of the signs of mania but hadn't gone through the DSM checklist to see if I met the full criteria but I said that yes I agreed with their assessments, trusted those assessments. Alice, my mom, and I discussed whether inpatient treatment was necessary. Our consensus was that it was not. Alice was able to help us set up an appointment tomorrow (Friday) morning with a psychiatrist who can possibly make a medicine change—and who takes my insurance!! Mom reported to Alice that she thought today was the first day she saw a slowdown or a calming in my behavior. I openly speculated that this might have been an effect of the additional 600 mg of lithium I took with lunch per Dr. H's instructions. I internally speculate that while the way I went about doing it was rude, evil, transgressive, or whatever you want to call it, that my email yesterday saying my part on some unrights, released me from some of the silent weight-bearing that I do in this family. Last night I slept for eleven hours, the longest I've slept in months.

---

From: Lea
To: Matthew

Subject: I left a long message

I'm glad you are seeing a psychiatrist tomorrow! Yes I knew you were manic!! Hence why I kept bringing up the psychiatrist every session. I also think you are having psychotic features during your manic symptoms if you are still seeing the patterns on the wall. Tell them everything you tell me. Good luck and see you Tuesday!

---

From: Matthew
To: Lea

Subject: I left a long message

Yes everyone knew I was manic but me! When the two police officers showed up at my apartment this morning I started to get the picture!! Ok, I'll tell them, tomorrow, everything I told you. Thanks for your help because, gosh, I need a lot of it. See you Tuesday.

---

From: Matthew
To: Kristi

Subject: relevant articles on classifying "episodes" and "psychosis"

Couple of cops showed up at my door this morning and I called my doctor and he was like, "You are manic. Do you think you are?" And I was like, Hmm, somebody obviously thinks there's a danger here, since these two police officers are considering taking me with them. So..cutting out a lot of detail..I ended up taking an extra lithium and everything turned fine..in my mind, I'm totally on top of things. Even tonight, Mom made a fight-inviting remark and I was so chill and on top of things in my mind that I kindly and quickly deflected it. No fight. Mom's doing a bunch of weird emotional tactics I remember her doing to Dad when I was young and I now have the presence of mind to know that it has nothing to do with me and she's going to have to help herself out of that little snarl. It's suddenly easy for me not to be drawn in..and she can see it, too, she went to her room and I hope she's getting good rest and will feel better, too, tomorrow. You're right about compassion, it's a quality I still don't quite do all the time, and yeah, Mom and aunt Susan, and everyone, deserves it from me. Obviously that's a hard one for me, but I'm still willing to learn.

I hope the best for you with your job..wishes for a promotion! Or transfer! =)

Thanks for sticking with me, Kristi, I know I've been really off lately. [I wanted to put an emoticon, but there's no emoticon for that.]

Text to Kane (AA sponsor):

ME: I was in a psych evaluation today to see if they were going to lock me up in a mental ward and when they got to the question about alcohol or drug use and I said I hadn't drank in 16 months and hadn't used other drugs in many years, I leaned back in that chair and had a silent celebration. That is something I am overjoyed about no matter if they put me in a psych ward or not. I'm not drunk. I mean, fucking yeah!!!!

So, you know, this is how it goes with me. A couple of cops here, an extra lithium there, total family destruction and complete loss of any respect anyone might have ever had of me, here. But fuck that shit. If you are still worried about what other people think about you, you are an amateur, my friend—being crazy will teach you that right quick.

190

Aftermath.

From: James (my sister Leona's husband)

To: Matthew

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

Google Inbox has been kind enough to suggest these helpful replies to your email [I love this! | Thanks for the tip! | Thanks for sharing!] A masterpiece of logic this app is not. Funny though. Kinda. Because I hesitate to laugh while you're in such a hard place.

I know it doesn't actually matter all that much, like, pragmatically, but I super (super) care about you. I hope you can somehow find a way through this shit. It sounds like people aren't treating you the way you really need to be treated right now, and that, in a word, sucks.

Anyway. I'm not sure what I can offer that would be helpful. Other than a virtual hug. No pressure on that though. Just a virtual hug offer. Hope things get easier for you soon.

I am going to review your source code tonight, though. I'm coming for that left testicle, brother.

---

From: Matthew
To: James

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

The left testicle is yours for a reasonable discussion of how cor3 works!! It's a beauty, too—the testicle (see attached photo) just a joke obviously—I attached no such photo.

Actually, your saying you care about me super super much is of the utmost importance James. That and your virtual hug are the kinds of things that can keep me here a little longer.

Super (super) thanks,

And love,

Your Idiot Whatever the fuck I am to you,

Matthew

---

From: James
To: Matthew

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

And hey, watch who you're calling an idiot. Be gentle to Matthew, ok? He's the only whatever-the-fuck I've got \<3

---

From: James
To: Matthew

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

So, I just have one question. What does score_solutions look like for "I'm psychotic or having an episode"?

P.S. If I'm bothering you, please feel free to tell me to fuck off. I was assuming the whole "end of communication forever" thing was directed at the originally addressed recipients (I was a lucky fucking cc) ;) But I do want to be cautious not to overstep or pile on any extra shit.

---

From: Matthew
To: James

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

Well, today it looked like two police officers banging on my door, coming in and telling me to call my doctor, who then said, "You are manic. Are you aware of that?"

And you're not bothering me. Please don't fuck off. Please stay in my life, even though I am fucked up some of the time.

My doc upped my lithium and I got better right away. Mom said I seemed calmer. I was suddenly able to deflect fight-bait that she laid out easily and kindly. She was critical as hell of me and my grapefruit juice in a pitcher etc. etc., railing at me over nothings, but with a little extra salt in my brain I was loving and able to deflect. She realized this and stopped trying, went to her room. There's more to tell about her but I'll swerve back to me and say I have a psychiatrist appt. in the morning to do a little more adjustment to the meds and it is amazing and confounding how dependent I am on a little salt to think and act rationally.

How is your evening, may I ask?

I was in the process of cancelling all my doctor's and therapist's appointments, cancelling my health insurance, and as soon as I got my Ally bank card in the mail I was going to pack a backpack with just my laptop, get on a place, and fly to another city and never speak to my family again. And somehow try to survive, without doctors or lithium or my antidepressant.

That is mania.

My doctor called and asked me to trust him, that my plan was not a good one, that I was manic, and I said ok, I trust you, I'll do what you suggest. He suggested I take an extra lithium at lunch and now, in the evening of that day, I feel totally different. I feel embarrassed, but I don't feel like I have to leave town just because Mom is being critical and moody. Now suddenly I have kind and loving ways to deflect all that and until she actually kicks me out, I feel like I deserve to live here—I'm paying rent, I'm not hurting her.

Her health is her responsibility, and she clearly doesn't want input from me on that or anything else. She's skulking in her room now, making it exceedingly clear that she's unhappy. But she's not talking to me about it, so I can only respect her space, hope for the best, and spend my energy helping myself.

From: Matthew
To: James

Subject: oh experts on my mentality (and others who get to watch my demise—lucky fucking you)

Basically, score_solution for "I'm psychotic or having an episode" looks like this:

[commion image of girl who drew a concentration camp when asked to draw her home]

Matthew

That's no shit right there.

191

The manic apology email. Better stock up on Ho Hos and build a campfire before you jump into this one. See, if you were reading this in the age of paper books, you could tear out each page after reading it and add it to the flames. But, you can't, so you suck.

From: Matthew
To: Matthew
Bcc: Everyone

Subject: Manic apology email

Ever have one of those days where you wake up to cops banging on your door telling you to call your doctor and your doctor says, "You are manic. Do you know that?" Well, I have those days from time to time, and for me, yesterday was one of them.

This is not the first time police have come to my house in roughly this same capacity over an email I sent or a phone call I made. Sometimes I end up in a locked ward because I'm deemed a danger to myself or others. Sometimes I walk away, with everyone's trust that I will be safe enough to handle the situation while outpatient with the help of my caretakers and close relatives.

Yesterday morning and the night before I was in the process of cancelling all my doctor's and therapist's appointments, cancelling my health insurance—to save money and because they were completely unnecessary—and I was going to pack a backpack with just my laptop, get on a plane, and fly to another city and never speak to my family again. Somehow I would try to survive without doctors or lithium or my antidepressant, and if I failed—I didn't care.

Apparently, that is mania.

It's impossible for me to tell because it feels normal to me. The high I felt yesterday, feeling suicidally depressed, and normal—while they are all distinct feelings for me—all feel normal to me. I can distinguish between them to some degree, but none of them seems out of order. All those states seem acceptable and natural in my mind.

My doctor asked me to trust him that my plan of stopping treatment and leaving town was not a good one, trust him that I was manic. My counsellor and an RN at a psych hospital told me the same thing. And I said ok, I trust you, I'll do what you suggest. Doc suggested I take an extra lithium at lunch and by yesterday afternoon and through yesterday evening, I felt totally different—the extra lithium calmed me down, it seems to me.

I feel embarrassed, I feel bad for my mom especially who has been living with me for however long this has been going on (I've been sleeping four hours a night and waking fully rested almost every night for over a month, so that's a clue), and I am sorry to the rest of you for sending an email (or two, or more—I don't know) with language that is rude, scary, outside of cultural norms, containing violent metaphors. But right now I do not feel like I have to leave town because I am intolerable to everyone who knows me, and useless, and incompatible, and simply a pain in the side to others such that communication with them is pointless. I'm probably still manic, but I am calmed down a little. I only slept briefly again last night, but I feel great—I've felt great for months—I've written something like six-hundred pages in the last forty days; the only thing that's felt horrible is that I can see I'm driving my mom crazy, which tears me to my core—but which I haven't been able to fix, no matter what I try. The extra lithium helped yesterday. Mom and I have an appointment with a psychiatrist later today to discuss possible further medicine changes.

[That's the summary. If you're running to catch a plane, this is a good place to stop. If you're on a layover and you just finished your Dean Koontz novel, you might find time to delve a little deeper.]

When police officers show up at my apartment saying my doctor is worried about me, and I call my doctor and he says, "You are manic. Are you aware of that?" and I realize that my therapist has told me I'm manic and then an independent RN gives me a two-hour interview and tells me that I am "definitely manic," and also asks me if I think I'm manic, it is a strange situation for me. I did not expect any of that. I did not think that RN, especially, would think I was manic—we had a perfectly normal interview. I didn't see anything manic about my behavior with her. The content of what I said and the manner in which I said it seemed to me acceptable, safe, and unremarkable.

If this is manic, then I've been manic a lot of my life since at least the tenth grade and had no idea until recently.

That is one of the very tricky things about bipolar disorder: as my doctor puts it, my sense organ is broken—I'm not in the best position to judge my own state. I have read, insidiously, that denying that you're manic is one of the symptoms of being manic! ("..even when family and friends recognize mood swings, the individual will often deny that anything is wrong.")

I'd known for days I had some of the features of mania, but I hadn't looked at the DSM checklist (the next to latest version) to see if I met the full diagnostic criteria for mania—and if I had thought I was anywhere near mania, I would have been going to the checklist to self-diagnose. I thought I had some mild features, two or three bullet points, but not enough for a diagnosis of full mania. I'm simplifying the diagnostic criteria a little for brevity, but this is close to true: you need to display four out of the eight criteria for at least one week to be diagnosed manic—in my opinion, now that I look at it, I've had at least seven out of the eight criteria for at least five weeks. And here's a little glimpse into my bipolar brain: when I read those criteria right now, I don't consider many of them to be negatives—I consider them to be desirable qualities of a vibrant human being.

I have to face the idea that what I feel is going on with me and what others feel is going on with me is sometimes very very different. I trust my doctors, I trust my therapist, I trust that RN I met today, but trusting even my closest family members to give an objective evaluation of me is more difficult because we have such emotional relationships that by definition we are not dispassionate with respect to each other. We have long, complex histories and we share the same genes and generational behavioral patterns, so it's harder for me to believe that family members have the capability to be objective about my state—I trust my close family members to a large degree, but I can't trust them 100%. If that is hurtful, I am truly sorry. I ask that those of you I have active relationships with continue to give me feedback when you think I need it, because I do trust you to a great degree—and I need your help to arrive at any kind of objectivity. You certainly don't owe me that, so if you don't feel like helping me see that I might be in a dangerous position, so be it. That's your business, not mine.

I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder about ten years ago, and my life has been a new kind of odyssey since then. I'm finally understanding that bipolar behavior seems crazy or weird to observers on the outside. I have to say I think that non-bipolar behavior seems crazy and weird to me. It's seems very nonsensical, illiterate, unpoetic, extremely boring, and dull and unintelligent. And yet the extra little elemental pill my doctor asked me to take yesterday improved my whole outlook in less than an hour, so I trust him to do things that will help me, to have my best interest at heart. Non-bipolar people have saved my life at least a couple of times with their processes and their studies, so of course I see myself as needing them—I also think the world of mentally healthy people would be a lot less human without some mentally ill people in it. And even though I think it should be obvious to any intelligent person that the terms mentally healthy and mentally ill are grossly simplistic, totally gross misnomers, I can believe that in some ways bipolar is a disorder, even though it affords clear advantages.

I think the hard thing for bipolar people to understand is that bipolar is a major disorder, that it's a deadly, life-destroying, debilitating illness, not solvable by oneself, not solvable without medicine, not solvable through thought alone.

I think the hard pill for people without bipolar disorder to swallow is that bipolar disorder gives a person major advantages in terms of creative intelligence, problem solving, emotional power, and just plain old joy—but only when we're not trying to kill ourselves.

It's a mad situation—nothing clear-cut about it. The disease costs the US $45 billion dollars a year according to an old estimate, makes a person 20 to 30 times more likely to kill themself, and costs employers double what major depression costs in terms of sick days. "While the vast majority of people who are violent do not have mental illness, people with mental illness are five times more likely to be murdered than mentally healthy people and "people with severe mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or psychosis are 2.5 times more likely to be attacked, raped, or mugged than the general population." Conservatively, fifteen to twenty percent of people with bipolar kill themselves. That might seem like something society would obviously want to treat (or eradicate). But do we really want to take away all the demons of [these famous people with bipolar disorder]? As Jessie says in Transsiberian, "Kill off all my demons, Roy, and my angels might die, too."

In my mania, bipolar disorder presents itself not as my condition but as other people's limitations—which is infuriating to me, that I would ever think that way—I want to focus on myself, my own healing, not blame other people. I hate that I've ever done that—and I do it all the time.

All of this, all of it, is true at the same time. In the world I live in, I cannot afford to be so naive as to think that even true contradictions indicate that either side is wrong. It is quite clear to me that multiple simultaneous contradictory truths exist side by side in our world—even the world outside of the bipolar mind.

When that RN, at the end of yesterday's two-hour interview, said, "Well you're definitely manic," I wondered, What did I say or do in the last two hours that gave you that impression? I have read the criteria for mania many times. But here I must admit that my ability to evaluate this aspect of myself breaks down. Because to me it still seemed like I partially met some of the criteria for mania, but what I felt like did not feel manic to me. It felt very very normal.

I used to assume, during periods when when I did hard drugs (I include alcohol and some other drugs despite their legality in the US), that everyone was doing hard drugs. Not literally that they were doing hard drugs, but that they had the same mentality, the same general outlook on the world as I did when I was doing hard drugs. I couldn't comprehend that someone might be walking down the street with no reason or outlook like my own—to me everyone must have been wanting, lacking, needing some kind of drug to have fun. But they weren't. Most people were in a totally different mentality—like to them it was important to walk down the street to go to school, to get some flim-flam degree that I would look down on them and their whole life for caring about. That's where my mentality was.

It's the same with mania (or depression, but I'm increasingly manic and less and less depressed in recent years). I feel like everyone is thinking pretty much like I am, has similar goals and similar views on life. But that's totally not true. And while I like normal people and am friendly with normal people and sometimes respect the intelligence of normal people, (mentally healthy people), I find them all boring—they're too simple. I think I've only ever been interested in crazy people, especially people on the bipolar spectrum. Everyone else seems dead to me. Unless you're bipolar, I just can't get it up.

I am saying I'm sorry: I am sorry. This note is my most recent apology for my most recent bipolar mood episode (mania or depression). This might be your first time receiving one of these from me, it might be your twentieth. My email archives are full of them—that is painful for you, insulting, tiring, inconvenient. For me it is tragic. You might worry your heart out over me (if you're my mom or someone close who does truly love me)—that is bad. This is worse: I lose friends, family, apartments, cars, jobs, the chance at schooling, and even my ability to make money and live in the so-called normal world (which to me is an insane world) even though I have lucrative skills.

I am not asking for your forgiveness, pity, acceptance of me, or understanding. This is an apology, not an offer of psychic indentured servitude, not an invitation to be psychologically abused by you. Unless you have something really significant to say, and you're pretty sure I'm not already automatically deleting your incoming mail, would you please just ignore or accept this apology in your own mind and not start a discussion with me? That would really be best for me. To those of you who are in active relationships with me, who write to me often and respond meaningfully and peacefully to me when I write to you or call you or text you or video chat you, please feel free to respond (preferably in the comments of this post, not as a private email reply—be public, be bold, be willing to put your name beside your words in a context that opens them up to scrutiny—I have). But if you're only kind of peripherally involved with me, and you don't have something of substance to add, please ask yourself what your real reason for responding to my apology would be, unless it is to simply and sincerely accept it.

To prevent myself from communicating with some of you and your family in disrespectful ways, I have already quit Facebook (a year and a half ago), and yesterday I cleared out a lot of contact information so that those of you I am especially mad at will not receive any more communication from me (I hope—I plead with myself and the universe to make this true). After I send this note I will take additional steps so that it will be harder/impossible for me to communicate with those of you who have unquestionably, in archived writing, used my mental diagnoses as insults or to try to create a power imbalance—that's not cool and you don't get to play that game with me anymore. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee my own proper, cultured, appropriate, polite, societally-neutered behavior with just my brain, so I have to delete contact information as a kind of training wheel to help me not say mean things to those of you who have taken psychological aim at me in your own moments of weakness. Rest assured, I have no intention of hurting any of you in any way—I know that in some cases I have hurt you psychologically, and for that I am truly sorry.

Matthew

Feel pretty lonely at this point in my development. Like there's no real closeness between me and any of these people. But I feel like I've gotten an inch wiser.

192

I added this reminder to my inbox:

Stay in my room with the door closed. Don't answer any calls, emails, do not make any. Discuss nothing of substance with anyone especially Mom.

Then I was on my blog, just checking something, and I noticed my manic apology email post had a comment. No one ever comments on my stuff. Hardly anyone even reads my stuff. So I checked it out, and it was from my cousin Lily, and I read it, and was astonished:

Lily: I said this to you already but I'll say again that I am happy that you are feeling better and you have a plan to work through things.

Also I don't feel you owe me an apology so I don't even know if this post is directed at me, but you emailed me the link, so many some of it is? I see the challenge in you writing this post—you are addressing a wide range of people/relationships and you have a lot to say to each person but are trying to say it all with one post. It is also a challenge for me to read it and figure out in what category you consider me. I think you are requesting me to comment here instead of in an email so I am doing that.

I hesitated to do this for a few reasons. First, I know so little about everything that is related to you—how could I really have anything to say when I truly know nothing about the situation. Second, as you mentioned, writing publicly puts me in a position to be evaluated by others—namely family members that I do not feel know me so would not be able to read anything I write in the correct context—and why would I want to do that? Third, I am unsure of how you might be evaluating me or might use my words against me in the future.

Then I realized that all three of these reasons (and the others I didn't list) are just messy ways to say that my main driver for not commenting here was fear, and since I've been really trying to kick fear's ass lately I changed my mind and decided to write. If it opens a can of worms, so be it. Please also know that I am invested and I do care about you as my cousin but I also have other commitments so my replies can be significantly delayed.

I agreed with many things you wrote in this post. Terms like "healthy" and "sick" are too simplified by many. I also see the beauty in what you describe is the creative chaos of mania—that if you didn't experience the highs/lows you would essentially be dead. I recognize that many people live very stable, predictable, "boring" lives and that you happily will never choose to live that way. You are more alive, thoughtful, aware, and compassionate than the majority of "normal people" I know—most are Christians—that seem to "have it all" in life at a quick glance. Writing emails with you has challenged me in a way not many people have to be more aware, thoughtful, compassionate, etc. BTW I really enjoyed your post on compassion. I can relate to feeling very out of place in the world (I know that might be hard for you to believe but as you know things are not always what they appear to be)—the idea that you are surviving in this mess of a world with only your mind to help you through—maybe I'm wrong but I don't see you leaning on a higher power very much—is absolutely something I cannot comprehend. I am so weak I could never do it.

[My husband] went hunting today so I had a few hours to read, and the more I read, the more damaged I felt our relationship became. Not sure if this is my fault or yours—are you just being yourself and I am mind fucking myself or are you really doing some damage? I am still not sure. I questioned—do you view me as "normal" or boring or of lesser intelligence? I guess your view of me shouldn't matter, but this sparked some self-reflection in me—what drove the choices I've made, the fact that my life has been mostly predictable, and what my future holds. Is it so bad to keep a stable job? Choose to marry out of a desire for a solid relationship and someone I was sure wouldn't ever leave me? I started asking myself these questions which then revealed to me how insecure I must be to allow your potential views (not even confirmed real views) of me to question myself on this level (or is this what is called being challenged and actually learning about yourself and why you do what you do and this is self-analysis eventually a good thing? I don't know). The truth is it scares me to think that you might see me—like, as in, truly SEE ME and psychoanalyze me (since you are somewhat of an expert after everything you have read / been through) if I shared anything about my life or how I wound up where I am or what I want to do next. I guess that means I don't trust you enough to self disclose significantly and I think it is a shame because as I stated you do challenge me, and I think those challenges make for real character building. Oh what potential for some awesome stuff on the other side of fear.

I have always felt we were equals, but now I'm not so sure you feel that way.

I hope this isn't out of place or insulting to you because that is not how I mean it at all—but the more I read the more you reminded me of the character Carrie in Homeland. And it feels strange to me that I am only primarily able to relate you and the experiences you describe through a fictional person.

I know very little about you. As you said in a previous post—one could be in your life for many many years and still never know you because of the complex framework that is you. I would not disagree with that and I think this is something about yourself to be embraced. You don't need me to tell you that you are talented. Another reason I hesitated to reply here is because let's face it—you are an incredible writer and I am not. I don't do a good job at translating what I really mean into words. It took me hours to construct this post—I worry I'll write something which will make a reader assume I am x y z or that I mean x y z when I'm not and I don't. Also all of this is unedited so it is scrambled and not linear and I am holding so many contradicting ideas/feelings in one place. So now you see why I can't always write back the way I want to—I do not write all day for a living and I can't spend every Saturday like this. You are more experienced than me and you have indeed spent much more time contemplating and philosophizing than I ever will so I can't stop thinking about how elementary (and full of errors because who has time to proofread!) anything I write to you must seem. This is much of why it took me so long to reach out and email with you in the first place. Before we started communicating via email I was only aware—through sometimes third or fourth hand knowledge, that you were a writer, that you had a tendency to be unstable and that in an effort to disassociate from the family you changed your name but then changed it back at some point. I'm glad I know more about you now.

I started thinking about the measuring sticks we use to evaluate ourselves. When I was younger, the primary measuring stick was the measuring stick of predictability—your parents expect you home at a certain time and if you follow these rules and do what they say because you trust them, you are predictable and "good". (Or am I confused, and the stick was really using my parents to determine if I was good—it was the desire for them to tell me "You're ok". In any case, we both valued predictability and I was predictable and so "I'm ok" and I think I grew up with a good self image.) Then as I got older the primary measuring stick was one of niceness. If I was nice I was good regardless of how I truly felt. But I didn't like that because I wasn't always thinking nice things and sometimes I wanted to kick someone in the face but I would still smile and be nice to him. Then the stick was a "love stick"—can you love everyone no matter what? Oh and make sure you put yourself last while you are loving others. That didn't really work so instead these days I'm using a "grow stick"—how much can I learn, how much can I open my mind, how much of my current reality can I improve / change by using new approaches as I grow instead of repeating the same cycle over and over. This creates conflict of course because others expect (remember the predictability stick) you to react a certain way and when you don't it throws everything out of balance.

When I re-read this, I wonder how it became "all about me" but I guess I learned that from you—to talk more about yourself instead of talking about other people's situations as a way to share. I used to think this made a person self-centered. For every word I wrote, I read 100 of yours so in reality there is a lot of "listening" involved before there is a lot of writing about what I think / feel. I think being self-aware is the first step to being able to be aware of others. To be self aware, you have to think a lot about yourself—your own thoughts, motives, reasons for your actions, etc. and I wasn't encouraged to do that for most of my life to avoid becoming self-centered. You helped me release myself of that belief and it has helped me.

You are in my prayers and I am always wishing the very best for you.

Love,
Lily

A comment like this, a reply of this depth and length is not the sort of comment you respond to tomorrow. It's the sort of comment you respond to right away.

Dear Lily,

I feel honored that you wrote such a deep and thoughtful reply to my frantic apology. Thank you for being patient enough with me and caring enough to stay in relationship with me while I am at times such a chaotic person. I wish I could be more stable for you and others, but look, you—you particularly—are still here, talking with me, and that is a fountain of blessings to me. Thank you for your staying power!

I'm going to respond to some of your points:

Please email anytime if it makes you more comfortable. I like public communication because it precludes triangles and secrets and it keeps me honest. If I say something publicly to you, then I cannot say a contradiction to someone else publicly or privately. I am not going out of my way to evaluate you, though I do have a tendency to classify everything under the sun—to be obsessed with status. It's a lesson for me not to do this. I have no intention of using your words against you, but, yes, if for some reason I was mad, I might do that too—I don't want to, but it's a possibility. The other reason I prodded you and others to reply publicly is I think, certainly in the case of what you wrote, that it's valuable for others to read. It's an education for people you and I will never meet.

You have my mad respect for kicking fear's ass. I am a beginner at doing the same thing. Currently failing miserably =) I'm afraid of my doctors, my mom, that anything I say that's critical of them (even if it's empirically true) will be interpreted as a feature of my bipolar illness, so, way more than I should, I just keep my knowledge to myself to avoid conflict with them. If I was in a position of greater power I would never do this, but I perceive myself as being completely dependent on others at this point, and I have succumbed to fear so great that I don't even speak the truth when I know it's the truth for fear of others' judgment and anger.

Writing emails with you has challenged me, too, in the best ways. You keep me on my toes, say things I don't expect and never thought of—I learn from you. You have my thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts, feelings, perspectives to me. You have benefited me greatly, and given me that benefit freely, and I am indebted. Or just: thankful and happy to have had the writing interchanges we've had.

I don't have any answers on the higher power thing. I stopped being a Christian when I was in the tenth grade and I am an atheist and a god-is-everything and everything-is-god pantheist. I still pray, stating what I am thankful for to the universe. I don't believe anyone is listening, but I believe the act of prayer puts me in the mindset I want to be in—gratitude. I've slipped a bit from this practice and you're reminding me to get back to it. But, yeah, no, I don't believe in God. I'm always open to new information, though, and I've seen some YouTube videos on aliens and DMT that do not make me believe in God or a soul—but they make me wonder.

I think your life is beautiful, Lily! Every interaction I've had with you, you've been loving and empathetic and smart and you work to include everyone at the table in the conversation. I think you're awesome, actually =) I am not judging your life choices in any way—to each their own. I don't think people really have a choice. I mean, of course everyone makes lots of choices, but aren't you also compelled to do to the best thing you know is possible? And some people's lives go through drastic changes and some people's don't. I love making money. I worked at an options trading company in my early 20s because it was a field I was interested in and I thought the work would be challenging. Years later, the activities of that company and others like it caused tons of Americans to lose their homes. So..I mean, I took money from them and helped them do what they do, so I'm a tiny bit complicit in that huge piece of American corporate crime. I don't feel bad about it one bit—at the time I had no comprehension of the big picture of what we were doing (even though my bosses told me—I didn't believe it). I think people who think they can do everything they want and also act completely within their morals are, by and large, dreaming. I do think acting in accordance with your values is essential to happiness, though. But to me life tends to be a restaurant where every dish on the menu contains foods I like and foods I don't—and at this restaurant there are no substitutions and you have to clean your plate!! You wrote: "Oh what potential for some awesome stuff on the other side of fear." I am not trying to psychoanalyze you, now or ever, but I could never think that someone who wrote that was normal or boring or of lesser intelligence than me.

I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm trying to get over it. I just spent 12 years working for companies where really lazy, sloppy, unintelligent, imprecise, ass-kissing, lying, time-wasting folks took my childhood fantasy that work was going to be like a heist movie, like Ocean's Eleven or Sneakers, where some mastermind gathers a team of diverse skills and they all work together toward the same goal in a cooperative manner and come away with the coup of making something great happen in the world..and those companies and the people they were made of showed me that no matter where I worked, I was not going to be a member of an elite, collaborative safe-cracking team. That was a ridiculously unrealistic, idealistic hope of mine. And it was dashed. And I am left with so many memories of people in my own company or my own family working against me, or working against the family or company in general, and I have contempt for those people and razor-fine detectors for people like them so that as I meet folks who do not have pure intentions for empathy and collaboration, I can cut them out of my life as soon as possible—or, if I'm not having a good day, I can berate them until they cry, start to hate my fucking guts, and hopefully get the fuck out of my way. Very mature, no? I am working on this by myself and in therapy and through not using alcohol (no judgement—but I'm an alcoholic, so I can't drink). I am trying to be a more loving, compassionate person and I am finding it nearly impossible with some people. But the weakness and lack of an effective strategy is mine. It's not my place to judge, to be incredulous at another, but I still do it sometimes because it gets me high. Now that's a scary drug.

Cousin, I cannot truly see you and I don't have any special insight into you. I just like talking with you =)

I apologize for the intelligent/boring/normal people talk. In some ways it's a defense mechanism, which you have obviously made your way through. It's a way to intimidate people who aren't savvy enough or bold enough to really engage with me. It's fucked up—I'm going to try to stop doing it. It's also part of the bipolar experience, I think: right now I'm coming down from a manic state into a normal state (hopefully!) and the contrast is so stark that..well..I myself am not currently suicidal..but most bipolar suicides occur during the transition out of mania because mania feels so good that, by comparison, living normally seems pointless, unbearably mundane. So I have in my own consciousness several (or many, a gradient of) states and there is an implicit categorization that I do of myself (obviously everyone does this but I think it's more pronounced in bipolar people, to our detriment). I hate, for example, the awful terminology of people who are "woke" versus people who are not—I believe that we all have great potential spiritually and in every other way. But I can't deny that I've met a few people in life who are more turned on and aware by far than everyone else I've ever met. I'm sure they are not all bipolar, so please allow me to walk back the suggestion in my apology email/post that this lightness is reserved for people with bipolar disorder. That just cannot be entirely accurate. Forget the bipolar club.

"Another reason I hesitated to reply here is because let's face it—you are an incredible writer and I am not." I'm not buying this—I don't think it's true. Your comment here is fantastically written and I already know you're a writer because you want to (and do) write. You have selected yourself into the role. It's like coolness in high school—no one confers it upon you..you confer it upon yourself. I expect to read your books in our lifetimes, Lily. Oh, and thank you for the compliment! I accept! =)

I've never seen Homeland!! Do you believe that?? I really want to. I'll check Netflix or cable and make an effort to watch some of it, at least.

I'm so glad we're getting to know each other better through text. You're extraordinary, remember it. And don't let some manic immature anger on my part make you doubt that. It is you who is the more mature. Your paragraph on measuring sticks—Lily, wow—that gives me chills. It belongs in a sermon, or a philosophy, or maybe a really deep and reflective memoir!!! =)

Look, I'm doing my best and my best isn't that good right now. Thanks for holding on—I need you, cousin, as I need the rest of my family and friends. It's no excuse, but it is an explanation: I am speaking to you through a tunnel of crazy and lately the tunnel has been very shaky and at those times I don't even know what I'm saying. It's horrific from my point of view—because I can see that it is painful from yours.

Love,

cousin Matthew

A day later Lily wrote back with this little gem:

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." —Hemingway

Matthew LETS BE RARE!! I believe in your best if you believe in mine. Thank you for this exchange. You are brilliant. That is all.

Love,

Lily

To which I replied:

"Let's be rare!!" That's my new toast, Lily—I love it! I believe in your best, whole hog!! No reservations!! You're helping me believe in mine. This exchange has been magical—you've got me choked up and energized. Thank you, cousin. You are phenomenal. See you in email =) \<3

My sister and her husband responded in email, briefly but wonderfully.

But Lily did what a thinker would do, did what someone who cared would do. She thought deeply, she took time, she expressed herself precisely and honestly and vulnerably. That's what's required to get my attention these days. I am not drawn as simply as a moth to a flame. I do not go out of my way for people who don't go out of their way for me. That manic apology email wasn't a test. It was a manic apology email. But my brilliant cousin Lily decided that I was important enough to write to, or that it was important enough for her to show me what she was made of, show me how she felt hurt by what I said, and to lump in the good with the bad, which shows a realistic understanding of the world.

I divide people into many categories, but this is one of the most important: People who are willing to write and People who aren't. Writing isn't just another thing you learn in school. There is a fundamental difference in how you participate with history based on whether you are willing to publish your signed thoughts in writing..or not. I consider a person more of a person who is willing to communicate in public, in permanence. Otherwise you are just hiding.

I only like bold people.

People who are unafraid.

If you're not willing to say the hard thing, to the hard person, then what are you? I say you are nothing. Only the one who stands up against racism in their family is real—everyone else is fake! They aren't even real people. If you believe something, then say it in a way that can never be taken back. Otherwise you are sitting at the kiddies table.

193

I see a psychiatrist. He interviews me, makes a medicine change. I report this to my mother and caretakers. The extra lithium makes me take a nap today and while part of me feels this is the classic lithium exchange (dull me out enough that others don't have a problem with my wonderful energy) I don't mind getting the sleep and a nap a day won't interfere with my writing. I am genuinely glad Mom didn't have to deal with me this afternoon—'cause I was sleeping.

Mom continues her morose expressions, one-word answers to the two questions I dared to ask her just now. The windshield cracked this morning—I asked her if she had luck finding someone to fix it. One-word answer. In the two-exchange talk that followed, where I [joyfully but restrainedly] asked her if there'd be singing at tonight's Christmas concert at her church, and wished her enjoyment of the concert, she did not look at me, but kept her eyes firmly planted on her laptop. Very early today I wrote her a generous, apologetic text about my grocery store freak out—she has offered me not a crumb of relief in the way of forgiveness, not even an emoji of acknowledgment.

I just said pleasantly but gently, "Good morning, Mom."

She said sarcastically, "Good morning Matthew."

I said, "How'd you sleep?"

She defensively said, "Good," like I was asking her an inappropriately intimate question, and offensively said, "How'd you sleep?" as if out of a duty to heinous pleasantries or as a turnabout or attack in a sporting event, to turn the attention away from inappropriately being on her and more appropriately being on me—the one we need to be worried about.

I said, "Good," and smiled, and left the room.

That's what it's like, too: like any focus I put on her she is resentful of, because she is the caretaker and I am the sick to such a degree that for me to even ask her how she slept upsets the dynamic she prefers, of her being the mental health supreme being and me being a schizophrenic ant.

To me that does not indicate mental health for my mom. But it's not my place to say. I'll focus on myself, steer clear of her, and celebrate the fact that I'm now in a mental state where her little remarks don't compel me to respond in a way that participates in the fight that is constantly invited here, in this apartment, in the car, anywhere we go.

In general, I like to be with people who I can say Good morning to without it being a negatively charged experience.

I'm just trying to say something nice, you know, it's not complicated.

I'm not able to help, my help is not wanted, but I'm more able now to leave her actions uninterpreted, not taken personally, and live my life around her without halting myself to a screeching stop just because she's being so impersonal.

The medicine changes and psychiatrist are good for me in this dynamic, because (at least temporarily) I'm fixed. The doctors consider my issues momentarily addressed, and we haven't had any fighting at the house because I've had the wherewithal to stay above it, deflect, ignore, and not enter a situation I would be blamed for. If Mom was hoping I'd self-destruct and leave, that's looking unlikely. I'm genuinely happy about this, and for reasons having nothing to do with Mom. I want this move to Nashville to be successful for me. Mom and I not arguing over petty things, my mania being even partly addressed, makes it less likely that there'll be a reason for me to leave this apartment, wherever that reason might come from. I showed Mom my new health insurance cards active January 1st and I celebrated—she made no positive retort. I hope she's ok, I wish I could do something to help her if she even needs any help, but she does not frolic with me these days. I am some kind of criminal, ward, or enemy and she refuses to mingle with my sort.

Something has changed for me, though—it may be as simple as the extra lithium started yesterday—but whatever it is, I am glad, because I feel my head is above water, I feel in control of my own ability to start and stop speaking, to hold my tongue, to feel like the floor isn't about to drop out from under me with my living situation; and that feels good. I'm not about to say or write some unexpected thing to someone I know—I can control my social speech to manipulate another's impression of me, to do what is expected so as not to draw attention, and I genuinely don't feel compelled to speak and write antisocial things. In a way it's very very good..in a way it's very very sad. But given the world I live in, this puts me in a position where I am less likely to be rotting in a psych ward and more likely to be writing and doing my thing.

I text Davina.

ME: After those medicine changes, it feels like my head's above water, instead of being partway drowning—that simile is almost perfect for the change.

Davina: I'm so so happy for you Matthew—it gives me peace.

ME: Yes! Thank you! Peace for us both!!

I sent the same text to my mom. She didn't respond in text or verbally.

I asked her at 10am this morning if she could drive me to the Apple store. She said she didn't have time. Then she sat on the couch for five hours watching Hallmark movies she'd already seen. Actually she wasn't even watching them. She was playing games on her iPad with her headphones in, movies playing in the background. And you know what, I don't slight her for that—it's her call whether she has time to take me somewhere, her call what she wants to do with her day.

I'm dependent on her, though—she controls whether I'm able to leave the house and travel a significant distance. And at 3 o'clock when she was rushing to get out the door to her church function, she was questioning me about why it was so urgent that I pick up my stuff from the Apple store today.

I was very calm.

I said, "It's not urgent."

She said, "Well if it could wait until tomorrow that would be better because I don't have time to work out extra credit cards and I just haven't had time today to do anything but I can take you tomorrow."

I said, "That's great."

She had already walked away without waiting for my response and she came back, fussing in her purse and said:

"I didn't hear that?"

And at perfect conversational tone, in perfect neutrality and with thankfulness and pleasantry, I said, "That's great."

It was like she wanted to be frustrated, but there was nothing about me to be frustrated with, so she left.

I had sent her some text messages, the one about how I felt like my head was above water after this medicine change. One asking her if I could use her credit card to pay for an Uber trip to the Apple store tonight since Uber wouldn't take my SSDI debit card and I would transfer her the amount of the ride as soon as I returned. She was like huffing, telling me she just hadn't had any time today and all this bullshit. She's my mom—she knows I've had medicine changes. In my mind if she cared about me she would have proactively asked me how the medicine changes were going—you know? We've had weeks of fighting, probably partially because I was manic, and now that we're on our third day of not a single fight, I don't know, if I was a mother living with my child—even a 37-year-old who under other circumstances wouldn't be my dependent—I think I'd ask:

"Hey, how are those medicine changes going? How do you feel? Are you doing ok on different doses and entirely new medications you've never been on before?"

I think I would ask that if I cared.

Instead she ignores me all day. Literally says nothing to me after the seven words she begrudgingly pulled out in response to my light and pleasant good mornings..until she is late, running out the door, and insinuating that my request for help with an Uber ride has to do with urgency—I must have my Apple products tonight—when to me it has to do with independence—I'd like to be able to do something today, that I wanted to do today.

I'm not independent. I don't care if I get my new laptop today or tomorrow. But it does hurt when I have a mom who knows how crucial psych meds are to my peace and the peace of our household, and she never even asks how the medicine changes are going that are supposed to make me more palatable for her to be around. That's what those changes were for: I was manic and driving her crazy. Well I'm far less manic now, on half my antidepressant, time and a half of my lithium, and back on a schizophrenic-sized dose of a recently-released antipsychotic. Do I ever hear her say, "Things are going better?" or "We haven't fought in three days!" No. And it gives me the distinct impression that, for whatever reason, we're not in this together.

The reason I sent that text saying that I was doing better on my meds was the hope of starting a small exchange with my mother about the fact that I (at least) was feeling better. I'm gonna move on, I'm not gonna let it ruin my night or even a minute of my night, but her not even acknowledging my statement that I feel better—it hurts.

---

Doing medicine with Mom early Sunday morning, I say I'm glad we've had four going on five days of not arguing.

She says that's not the case.

By checking dates on email, I determine that it's been 2.5 days, which seems pretty indisputable given the data I have.

She says, "I'll give you that."

She says the sap on her energy affects her in her church situation, in her other relationships. I suggest that I'm probably still manic, it's just that at the point of taking an extra lithium (now 1800 mg/day up from 1200 mg/day) my mania just switched from an agitated mania to a euphoric one. I admit to her that more than ever before I am aware that I don't know when I'm manic, and wonder how far back this has been going on..10th grade? Was my head-shaving, while morally inert and culturally shocking only to a minority, a manic act? I don't know. I don't know how long this has been going on. My parents didn't think to take me to a psychiatrist, so they must not have thought my behavior was shocking, didn't know how to recognize mental illness, or maybe just didn't have time to focus on my problems.

Mom said she felt like I trampled over her, up her as if she were a staircase, and she got the shit kicked out of her while I arrived at this euphoric mania where I possibly now stand.

I apologized and said that I felt I was in an impossible situation.

She said she appreciated my apology and lamented that while right now I know that I need to rely on outside perspectives, that when I'm highly manic again, I will forget, I won't believe I'm manic, etc.

I brought up forced talking/pressured speech and said I was sorry, but at the time, I was compelled to speak or write everything I was thinking. I said I knew I hurt her, and I apologized again.

She said we need to dispel the myth or the romanticizing that she's so wonderful for me and such a good effect on me and is so helpful: she cried and said that what she was doing and who she is were just making things worse.

I was receptive and comforting but had the presence of mind to not say what I was thinking, which is that she was particularly agitating me in a way that few other people in my lifetime ever have..really the only one I can think of is Rishi. With most people, I think even when I'm manic, I'm quite calm and polite and loving. But even though I love Rishi and I love my mom, they are sick people, too, and they press my buttons on purpose and play all sorts of games from their childhoods and marriages and I don't respond well to that kind of convoluted antagonistic behavior whether I'm manic or not.

---

A dangling thought: when I said we hadn't argued in four days and Mom said I was wrong, the way she went about it was as if the purpose of doing that was to prove that I was bipolar. But if Mom had made a similar statement I thought was wrong, I likely would have never mentioned it to her—because what would be the point? To prove to her that she's fallible by illuminating her mistake? No. I just assume we're all human and make mistakes. I don't point them out unless it's useful to do so. But when you're bipolar, it's like people have this sick need to prove to you all the time that you're ill. It's like Ah-hah! You're wrong! I've proved that you're bipolar and by virtue of not having a diagnosed mental illness I am superior to you! How is that healthy, useful, positive? At times it is helpful to know..Oh, my timeframe is off here. But I encounter illogic all the time and usually I keep my mouth shut and let the person figure it out for themselves..or not! Perhaps it's just a matter of style.

194

I decide to write Lily again. Maybe it was presumptuous.

From: Matthew
To: Lily

Subject: Act 2

Dear Lily,

I think that was Act 1 of our correspondence. Perhaps this is Act 2.

I'll start slow.

After however many weeks of mania, some medicine changes seem to me and to my mother to be calming me down. I've been getting 2-4 hours of sleep a night for the last 50 days and last night I got 8 hours 20 minutes. I feel quite different and much better just with a full night's sleep.

Mom is upset with me, won't talk, won't accept my apology, which I offer every day. Yesterday I even offered to clean her car or her bathroom as a symbol of my apology, and she said she couldn't think of any penance that would be sufficient to right my wrongs.

So..I will not be apologizing to her again. I'm not gonna beg forever for someone's forgiveness, especially when I offer to do work as a sign of my apology. I mean, that's all I can offer. I'm sorry I've hurt her—and I don't even know what I did to hurt her. I know I talked too much, force-talked a lot for a number of weeks. That's annoying. But I didn't say, "F

---

you!" or anything like that..I just know my nature and no matter how wild I got, I don't feel that toward her so I know I wouldn't say it. I remember a couple of the things I felt compelled to say, like I said I think she has a subtle underlying hatred of men—which I still think is true, and who can blame her with her alcoholic father and workaholic husband. I happen to have a subtle underlying hatred of men myself, you know, so I'm not saying I can't relate. But she denied this vehemently and she's the expert on herself, so I must defer to her if she says she doesn't. But I see in her behaviors that she doesn't—maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there.

And the bottom line is I don't know what I said to her that was so awful that we never cook, watch TV, talk, or do anything together anymore. She is in her room with the door shut and I am in my room with the door shut. This morning I went out and sat in a chair in the breakfast nook. Mom was in the kitchen.

She said, "What?"

I said, "What do you mean, what?"

She said, "You just look like you sat down like you have something you're about to say."

And I said, "I'm here to get the trash can to take it out and I'm waiting for you to be done in the kitchen."

I didn't want to crowd her. But it's just so tense between us. Like she thinks I have some kind of motive or something—my present motive is not to get kicked out of my apartment because she decides I'm intolerable. So I'm giving her lots of space and I'm ok with that. I have work to do, she has work to do. I feel like she's being abusive to me, though—she never responds to anything positive I say, even "Thank you." It's like she's trying to deny that there is anything cheerful or good about me, and will only discuss problems or medicine or mania or doctor's or therapist's appointments. If I say, "I hope you have a good day," she scowls and does not respond verbally. Like: How dare you say something nice to me.

So I must have really hurt her feelings, and I don't completely know why (mania isn't quite like a drunk blackout, but it does negatively affect your memory). She won't tell me, she won't talk to me. It really hurts me because—if you want the truth—she's my favorite person in the world and I love being around her and hearing her thoughts and watching Deal or No Deal with her!! And we don't do that anymore! So the once-fun house is dead. I really love my room and I do not want to leave, so I'm just hoping against hope that she will let me live here even if she's hurt by me or mad at me or if she doesn't need me anymore because she has a whole life with her job now, where during the year in Baton Rouge, she couldn't find a job, so we were kind of forced to just give up in a way and have fun while she moved various job applications forward.

Yesterday I started editing Davina's memoir (this is the fourth draft that either of us has done). It has 37 chapters and my goal is to do one or two each day. I could probably do more, but I'm steering away from my tendency to obsess and be a workaholic like my dad, and I'm keeping it to one, two, or less if the chapter is really long. But I did two yesterday and two today, so I'm 4/37 of the way through this draft. I'm making pretty minor changes: adding and removing commas, substituting dashes for commas and vice versa, correcting spelling errors of which there have been like two, and adding commas, sentences, and italics for clarity of reading (especially reading aloud or with a voice in your head). It feels good. She and I started this project almost exactly two years ago, and to me it feels like it's settling down into a stable piece of text. I'm really enjoying the process. I read aloud because it helps me slow down and not skip words, and it's interesting to read the story rather than write it =)

Tonight I go to my counsellor. I'm trying to keep my head clear and not plan what I want to talk about. I feel worried that she'll judge me because last week she found out how crazy I really am (something people seem to like to remind me that I don't even know) but I know that's silly to worry about her judging me—she's there to help and she's a good counsellor for me and I've been doing the meditation exercises she suggested for me and those have been helpful and fun, really—they're in my calendar with a reminder for 8am each morning. I've been looking forward to this counseling visit basically since the last one, since I've been such a crazy and destructive force and I need all the help I can get. I'm seeing her once a week right now, whereas I only see my PCP once a month, so my Lea visits are my main source of mental health help right now.

I saw a new psychiatrist last Friday and he made medicine changes. I liked him. He seemed like he really cared—ditto his office manager. He put me back on antipsychotics (but a new one) and even though that combined with the Xenazine I take for tardive dyskinesia have a strong possibility of worsening the TD, I'm just taking it for now because in the past antipsychotics have given me a lot of sanity—they just make my world feel more solid. I sent a note to my caretakers mentioning the interaction warning between Latuda and Xenazine that my medicine program showed me, and said, look, y'all, I'm doing everything you say, taking all medicines as prescribed, like clockwork, but would you please give another look at this "Severe Interaction Warning" that my database alerted me of? Sometimes I feel like they don't give enough precision to their care, sometimes I do. But I'm always surprised when doctors seem to take lightly putting a person on many medicines at once. As a former recreational drug user, I know that one of the cardinal rules of drug use in general is Take as few types of drugs as you can at one time. You don't get drunk and then shoot heroin..you know?..I mean it's an obvious property of complex systems that little changes can cause big results, and you don't want to make twelve different little changes at once when you could only make two. But, you know what, they're the doctors, I'm not. I've alerted them to the interaction warning, and I'm gonna let them take it from there. It's too much for me, it's inappropriate for me, to take on the weight of the doctor's role. I'm the patient. I'll try to remember that I'm the patient.

I've been listening to tracks off an album called Calmsound. It's one of two ambient environmental soundtrack albums I bought right after my last visit to the Brattleboro Refuge, the main hospital I stayed at (was detained at!) in Vermont. While I was in there, in the morning meetings, we'd go around in a circle and say our name, what we were thankful for, and our coping skill. It's funny to feel like an adult in some ways, someone capable of doing hard things in a corporate environment (something you know about! =) without ever naming or being aware of my coping skills. How do I cope with bullshit in a meeting? I mean, it just comes naturally!! Who can't do that? But there is a cutting back to childhood when you are locked in a psych ward. You don't have your power clothes, you really don't have anything except a marble composition book you can get from the nurses' station and certain other niceties you can check out. For instance, there was a ward radio, and this bipolar woman named Faith, the only only other bipolar person there (instantly making us best friends)..Faith would check out the radio and lie her head down on a table next to it and sing. That radio was Faith's coping "skill"/device. When she had music, it was the calmest I ever saw her. And I found a device that worked for me too: this little sound machine. It had four settings: forest, desert, ocean, and something else. But I liked the ocean one. And I got over my self-consciousness and I just fuckin' carried that thing around everywhere I went, set it on the table at low volume with others eating breakfast right there, and asked if they minded. And they didn't, of course, because they saw this over-medicated, out-of-control, psychotic bipolar adult act a little calmer when I had the sounds of the ocean playing. I slept with it all night long, on, playing the sounds of the ocean. So, my reminder for myself, kept by my email program for the last few weeks, a reminder I recently deleted, said, "Stay in my room with the door closed. Don't answer any calls, emails, do not make any. Discuss nothing of substance with anyone especially Mom." That was my reminder to try to encourage myself not to come into contact with anyone lest I might hurt them (or in the long term, me). I failed miserably at following that reminder. So today I'm making a new reminder and it's just going to say, "Listen to the sounds of the ocean." I might even take it with me to counseling tonight, and to listen to on my earbuds in the grocery store because I need soothing, and that soothes me just a little bit.

In my dream, I was in a house, and my dad was up a floor. Someone went out to get alcohol, and while they were gone I noticed that there was blood seeping through the walls from upstairs and Dad came down and he said, You're not taking pictures, are you? And I said, No. And I knew since he wasn't bleeding that that was someone else's blood, there was a corpse upstairs. And I documented the shit out of it, making sure every picture was in focus, because I didn't think it was right to kill anyone, even if you were my dad. But I found something aesthetically beautiful about the red and orange color on grody sheetrock and a porcelain bathtub. Weirdly, in the dream, my main concern wasn't the body or the alcohol or my dad, it was that I had to get every single picture perfectly in focus. The screen on my phone had that old circular viewfinder that used to be in film cameras, and I was obsessed with making sure every photographs was perfectly in focus. This is probably simply pulled directly from my waking life mind: I can't stand pictures that are out of focus! Lol. I mean even in a movie I love, In Bruges for example, there's one shot that's out of focus and it takes me out of the reality of the movie for a few seconds. I did photography in high school, and we developed and printed our own pictures, and that's where my obsession with focused images or prints comes from, I'm sure. But it's not a terrorizing obsession—it's a joyful one.

I like your mind, my cousin. I am so thankful for our correspondence. Your Hemingway quote was perfect. Let's be rare!—Ok, I'll be rare with you. And let's find as many rare people as we can to be friends with us, to be family with us. I get sad sometimes when I think of the dynamics of the generations before us..and I get scared when I think I might be helping to make the dynamics of our generation worse. But overall I am thankful for our parents and uncles and aunts and grandmother, and nephews and such. I think we are doing the best we can, and actually I think it's pretty damn good. But..I think I can do better. And I plan to gently work on myself so that I can walk this journey deeper and more serenely.

Love,

Matthew

After this, our communication fizzled. The one shark had jumped over the other shark, or whatever they say.

195

I'm editing and I get a text. It's from Leona!

Leona: What are you up to today?

ME: Right now I'm watching YouTubers tell their mental illness stories.

Leona: That sounds interesting.

ME: Earlier I watched a movie with Davina and ate sausages!!!

Leona: Oh, fun!

ME: Yes it calms me when I'm at mental health extremes to hear others' stories.

Leona: I'm sure! That makes sense.

ME: Reading the textbook description gives you one point of view, but people telling their stories rounds it out for me.

I feel good though. With this new medicine change, Mom and I haven't argued in three days!!

I'm able to deflect and ignore her moroseness.

And criticality.

It just doesn't warrant a response for me anymore, so no argument happens.

Definitely takes two to tango.

What about you? Whatcha doin'?

Leona: That's so great to hear! I'm really glad you're feeling better.

I was just getting my nostril piercing jewelry adjusted. They put in a loose stud initially to account for swelling and then it starts to feel annoying and sticking out of the inside of the noise randomly so it's feeling much better already!

ME: I think she's unhappy..with me..with her church..with Tennessee..? I don't know. But she's not having much to give these days. I'm trying to stay out of her path. When I say nice encouraging or pleasant things she ignores me or responds like how dare I say good morning to her. It's been rough. But I'm telling you, with these new medicine changes, it doesn't get to me. I wish I could do something though. I don't like to see her unhappy.

Wow, ok, I'm glad it's feeling better!!! =)

This counselor once said to me, You know what it means when someone treats you well?

I said what.

She said: It means that they're having a good day. And if they treat you poorly, it doesn't mean anything about you. It just means they're having a bad day.

Leona: That's very true. You have a wise counselor.

ME: I think so too. It took me a while to accept that one. Anyway I can only control myself, and that not even 100%, but I got the help I needed, got new medicine, and I'm not having pressured speech anymore..which I was having really bad..so regardless of Mom's feelings about me, I'm able to treat her better like not feeling compelled to speak/write everything I think. I feel bad that I'm so hard to be around, but I'm doing what I can to manage my symptoms. This has been a severe mania, I think, though I've mostly seemed fine to me! But it's coming on five weeks now where there were only three days I slept for more than four hours, and I wake up at 2:30am and have energy for the whole day. It's great for me but not for those around me. Anyway. Sorry so long winded.

I want to treat Mom the best I can..and everyone, of course.

Leona: I know you do. I'm sorry it's been so hard.

ME: Thank you \<3

That means a lot.

It's horrifying to find out that I'm manic and didn't know it, and all the while I'm destroying relationships with the people I love. To work against that..it's like impossible odds.

Leona: I wish there was a system in place for us to be able to give you feedback without it hurting your feelings or making you more upset. That part is the hardest for me.

ME: Yes, that is hard. I'm sorry if/that I haven't been open to your valid, constructive feedback in the past, Leona. I know you want to help—and I want your help! What can I do better, or try to do better, just in our particular pair relationship?

Leona: I wish you could leave my past indiscretions in the past.

ME: Ok. I hear you. We've dealt with the past and I will do my best to never mention the non-stellar moments again, I will.

I'm sorry.

Leona: I'm sorry too.

I just want to feel forgiven.

ME: Totally fine. You are forgiven. I'm not mad about that. I'm so sorry I've brought it up again. I'm going to do my best to leave it behind. I love you and respect you so much and that was five years ago. In all fairness to us all, there should be a statute of limitations on these things that is much shorter—like a day. I'm so sorry I hurt you by bringing it up again. Consider the waves to have washed the shore clean, ok?

Leona: You've got it. [wave emoji]

ME: =D

Leona: It helps to just hear you say that you do forgive me. I still feel a lot of regret and shame about past things..

ME: Oh, well let's let it go together? I have been the worst brother and son imaginable, but even if no one else forgives me, I'm going to forgive myself so that I am not so burdened that I cannot live today. Let's do that together. tear

Leona: You have NOT been the worst.

ME: Ok =)

Just hearing Leona say that I have not been the worst possible brother heals me a lot.

196

I'm having a great day. Good editing. Good fourth therapy session. Lea says she knew from session one that I was manic, and it kept getting worse and worse each time she saw me—she knew I needed an antipsychotic. And she says this fourth visit I'm the best she's seen me, and I can tell, too—our conversation is pleasant and organic and efficient. She gives me tons of suggestions and I remember them, excited to try them out.

Then Mom and I go grocery shopping, doing our separate-carts thing and I have trouble, at one point feeling like sitting down on the floor next to my cart and calling my therapist and telling her I can't do it anymore..but I don't. I find most of my items and Mom even helps me find the few remaining ones that are housed in sections of the store I never would have imagined.

Then I ask if we can drive through Burger King—I want some comfort food. And we do. We drive through and get food. Making a left turn out of the shopping center, another car swerves into the lane our car is entering and Mom swerves to avoid hitting them. A little bit of Coke spills from the top of my plastic cup where they had filled it beyond the brim. Mom yells at me for putting the straw into the Coke.

"That's why we usually wait till we get home to mess with the drinks!"

"Mom, there was Coke on top of the cup before I put the straw in—me putting the straw in didn't decrease or increase the amount of Coke on top of the cup!"

"This is why I wish you would ask me if you need help with something like there being Coke on the top of the cup. I could have helped you remove it or told you to wait till we got home!"

"I don't believe you're blaming me for the Coke spilling! It has nothing to do with me! It's the one car that swerved and then we swerved and then a little bit of Coke from the top of the glass, that was put there by the Burger King employee—"

"You just need to ask for help when there's something you can't handle!"

"Oh my god, Mom—no, you know what, I'm not gonna argue with you about this. You're right. I should have asked for help. I'm sorry. Next time I'll ask for help. Ok? I apologize. I will clean up the Coke when we get home and next time we're in a similar situation, I will ask for help."

I used her terminology—"ask for help"—even though I think it's ridiculous for a 37 year old to ask his Mom for help removing some extra Coke from the top of a plastic lid. I am mentally ill—I am not a three year old. But I agreed with everything she said. I said I would clean it up when we got home—the tiny amount of Coke that had spilled on the passenger seat but mostly on my pants—and she shut up about it. Kind of hard to argue with someone who is agreeing with everything you say.

And you better believe that's my new strategy for dealing with everything Mom. See? I don't have an intrinsic need to be right. I have an intrinsic need for peace. It's much less important for me that people have the right idea about me than that I get to do what I want to do without being surrounded by turmoil. And there is a secret weapon for diffusing every fight: let the other person win. There is not that kind of pride in me that gives a fuck whether I win or lose petty battles. My focus lies elsewhere. I want my peaceful room where I can write—where I am writing this now. And if I can win one more day writing in this peaceful room, I will lose a hundred petty battles to get there.

197

Word circles.

From: Matthew
To: Sharon

Subject: I want you to know that I heard what you said..

..and I'm asking for clarification. You would like me to tell my professional caregivers that as long as the way we're all going about things is causing you such extreme stress, that I am not well taken care of because the fact that you are worn to the bone makes things unstable for me?

Is that what you're saying?

I love you, Mom. I want to get this right. And I don't want to be the cause of your stress. That is a very unhappy moment for me.

Matthew

---

From: Sharon
To: Matthew

Subject: I want you to know that I heard what you said..

Thank you for listening and for caring and for asking for clarification.

I concede that your stability factors are best figured out between you and your professional caregivers.

I love you, Matthew.

I'll drive you anywhere you want/need to go. I can do that. That's all I've got at the moment.

---

From: Matthew
To: Sharon

Subject: I want you to know that I heard what you said..

> I concede that your stability factors are best figured out between you and your professional caregivers.

It's hard to tell, isn't it? Sometimes it seems you and occasionally I have insight or a level of caring they don't. Myself, I have to just give up 90% at this point to the professionals. They haven't always done me the best, but they know more than I do in general about their subject area..and that 10% I'm reserving is when I have a red flag from a medicine interaction database or I have knowledge that they don't have about my medical history. I am conceding with you, and acknowledging that trusting them is difficult and not completely rational, perhaps.

I will listen anytime, the best I can, only when wanted. And thank you for the driving me places—it's totally appreciated. cries Look, let's please just give the current situation some time. I want to stay out of your way psychologically/physically so you can do what you need/want to do without me getting in the way (not said self-deprecatingly..I just want to give you space). I know we're not matched up right now, or anymore, or whatever it turns out to be. But I would like to live peacefully (I'll do my best—which sucks) in this place for a while. I love my room, I like being able to work on my book here and crawl into a bed here where I feel safe. I won't ask anything of you except driving to a minimal set of appointments and—I hope—just the ability to live in this room for now—not forever, just for now, please.

I have been trying to keep conversations I start to a minimum—I'll keep doing that for as long as need be.

I love you, too. I will try to be gentle with you, hands off, and not assume much closeness. I want you to be worry free so you can do your work.

I want to do my work too. I'm going do that for as long as I can.

Then we text:

ME: I'm so sorry I've been worrying you, Mom, I don't want that. I'm doing what I can in terms of going to my doctors and therapist, taking the drugs and using the strategies they provide, and I'm trying to be my best for you—not arguing with you, not over-talking you, trying to be polite but not overbearing. I plan to give you as much space as you want, and help get whatever and as many types of external help to guide my wellness so that—I hope, too—we can relate as mother and son again. There's no ultimate reason you need to worry about my every minute. I will do what I can.

Mom: I appreciate your desire and work to do your part.

???—@!#%$^—???

198

Susan writes me back a few days later about my request for her to either cancel or let me pay for my part of the phone service:

From: Susan [at her work email address—freak]
To: Matthew
Cc: Sharon

Subject: Mom says what if her phone is at work

Matthew,

I don't hate you. I could never hate you. I love you! I still remember when I found out you were born and I ran across the street jumping and yelling "I'm an aunt!!" And the first time I held you was in Alexandria, LA..in a hotel room..My heart loves you more today than I did even then.

I can't force you to keep the phone but as I said in the text, I want you to have it. I understand that you are feeling uncomfortable and unhappy with our relationship and that makes you uncomfortable having the phone. I feel like there is very little I can do to make your situation better but the phone is a small thing I can do..hopefully it makes some small part of your struggle easier.

[Susan's work email signature block—Why do people write personal email from their work accounts? It's like such a basic thing.]

From: Matthew
To: Susan
Cc: Sharon

Subject: Mom says what if her phone is at work

Ok. Thank you for saying that. I love you too even though our relationship makes me cry.

I would be in bad shape without a phone and phone service, so thank you for the gift. I just don't want to feel beholden and I don't want it to come back on me someday where I screw up in y'all's eyes and someone says, "You failed and we've been buying you phone service all this time!" or I succeed and you think you have some ownership in it because you helped me out. But unfortunately I have been in such a position of weakness that I have had to take y'all's help—creating psychological entanglements that at least I would have avoided if possible—all the same I am deeply and simply thankful for your help.

I think severing my family relationships as much as possible is a good idea but unfortunately I can't do that due to my illnesses which you routinely use as an excuse to avoid admitting your own issues. I think, I hope, that my illnesses will kill me ASAP so that we will all be free of me.

It lifts my spirits to hear you say you love me, so thank you so preciously for saying that, even as we necessarily drift apart due to our various paths in life and divergent brain developments. I think we are as far apart as we've ever been in terms of being able to understand each other, but I love you too, wish you the very best, and will be happy to use this phone to coordinate doctors appointments for the rest of what I hope will be a long life, but will (statistically) probably be a rather short one.

I give up,

Matthew

I don't really give up, that's just an idiotic communication method of being ultra-pessimistic to disarm any pessimistic tactics the other person might have been able to try. But if I'm already as low as I can go, they can't make me go any lower, so they won't try, even though I'm really not that low—it's just a defense mechanism for a very scared human being.

You know what's fucking disgusting, though? People who love to talk about my issues but are never willing to talk about their own.

199

I love to write emails. To me, a thing happens when it happens in writing. To bad the people I want to communicate with most, don't feel the same way.

From: Matthew
To: Van, Sharon, Joanne, Leona

Subject: family is supposed to stay together

Ours has done the opposite: splinter.

I hold you all responsible, and myself.

And most of all our parents, for breaking the vow of marriage. Marriage exists for stability in society. By splitting, you two have decreased the stability of society especially your three children. I will never forgive you for this. To cut contact, even after divorce, is unforgivable to the children..it says that you reject that we are still a family in the sense that we were formed as a family, which is still true. I hate you both for breaking this contact and hold you very very low for your laziness and fear.

As for our siblings, we fail at friendly relations as well.

It sickens me, it weakens me, it turns me into an orphan.

Matthew

200

I remember watching The Joy Luck Club with my dad—this is in high school—and afterward he asked me if I liked it and I said yes and he obviously didn't from what he said and the fact that he was sighing and groaning and adjusting himself on the couch through the whole thing..and he accused me of liking it only because it was artsy and I wanted to be like "those artsy people." But I did like it, I liked it simply and sincerely, and he didn't, and instead of it being just a matter of preference (or ability to comprehend) he used it as a way of accusing me of being pretentious and accusing me of liking something just because I wanted to be part of a particular crowd.

I bet he doesn't even remember that, but it'll always be with me, a little sign that my dad doesn't support my artsy and exotic side, that he doesn't subscribe to deeper art or appreciate it whether it comes from me or someone else..that I'll always be a stranger to him in that way.

In terms of splintering, my dad is the worst offender. He won't call me. He's had my number for years and he will not pick up the phone and call me.

201

The current thinking is I have not Bipolar I with Psychotic Features, the previous best description of my mental type (let's discard the term illness, shall we?), but that now I have a Bipolar-type Schizoaffective state of mind. NAMI says that schizoaffective in general occurs in about 0.3% of the population and that men and women experience it at the same rate. Here are the symptoms, according to NAMI:

Hallucinations, which are seeing or hearing things that aren't there. [I sometimes have a visual hallucination which is like a fast-motion monochromatic petri-dish effect on top of existing textures in a color lighter than the actual surface, usually a wall painted with a roller or a fibrous piece of paper]—this only appears sometimes, when I am especially agitated or euphoric, in other words: manic. I also have a constant hallucination (actually I think it's more accurately described as an illusion in that it is a misperception of something that is really there, unlike my previously-described hallucination, which consists of an extra layer of moving texture which seems to exist only in my mind). Anyway this secondary disturbance is the illusion that a Jackson Pollock poster is 3d—dimensionally deep, when it is really flat: my brain presents the paint drips not as compressed into one layer, but separated such that the first drips painted seem to recede, while the last drips painted appear on top, or closer to me. This is constant, has been like this since the poster was given to me, and has not ever appeared flat, as I would expect a poster appear. It does not disturb me; it is fascinating, but I have learned not to become fixated on it to the point of distraction.]

Delusions, which are false, fixed beliefs that are held regardless of contradictory evidence. [Not sure you could ever positively say you had a delusion, since you would believe it, and would not ever really be able to believe it was truly, certainly, objectively false. Hence, I don't see how I can discuss this further!]

Disorganized thinking. A person may switch very quickly from one topic to another or provide answers that are completely unrelated. [This symptom definition is so shortsighted. I get feedback from people sometimes that they do not understand how what I am now talking about is related to what I was talking about before. That does not mean that the topics are unrelated. It just means I have neglected to explain, or they have neglected to see, the path connecting them. I travel very quickly through logically-related topics and just because I surface somewhere far down the chain does not mean there is no logical path between them. Me operating at a quicker speed than you does not mean that I am disorganized!! Providing answers that are completely unrelated is also not so cut and dried. I usually extend the courtesy to others of moving with them through a dialogue at a similar (usually slow) pace so that they will perceive continuity in the dialogue. This is a courtesy—it is not something I owe you. Is it always] my job to adjust to your limitations? Or is it sometimes your turn to keep up with me? Also, in rare cases, I will simply respond with nonsense to a person I feel is incredibly stupid or boring, who presents no opportunity for an interesting conversation for me. It is a way for me to entertain myself in the face of psychologically deadly banality, a combination offensive/defensive move that is extremely effective as only extremely intelligent, playful people can tolerate or enjoy nonsense..most people will find themselves unable to participate in a nonsense dialogue and will leave you alone.]

Manic behavior. If a person has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder: bipolar type they will experience feelings of euphoria [Oh yeah—got it. I was feeling agitated by what I perceived as my Mom's fight-inducing questions. Then my doctors "fixed" my mania with medicine changes (more lithium, less Lexapro, and the addition of Latuda (which may be short-lived since Risperdal caused me TD.)) Now, I'm either less manic and perhaps less irritable because of that, or my agitated mania has turned to euphoric mania]—which is what I think has happened—and I am loving this state and hope it never goes away. I perceive my mom's behavior exactly the same as before, it just doesn't bother me. She is still morose, uncommunicative, and launching barbed, fight-inviting critiques of me, but I have the presence of mind to deflect them lovingly and easily, and my euphoria is so lightweight that its balloon cannot be punctured by anything, certainly nothing she says or her complex fight patterns which I recognize right out of the playbook she used with Dad. For instance, let everyone know nonverbally that you are feeling put upon, victimized, and hurt beyond belief, but refuse to talk to the person you are blaming your own feelings on when they try to help you. Basically, act wounded to the point of emotional death, make it clear which party has wounded you through little remarks, but refuse to participate in the solution—maintain with your nonverbal cues, facial expression, flashing accusing eyes, physical distance, that you are the hurt party—but keep your supposed tormenter at a distance by turning down every effort they make to love and help you. Yeah, that shit don't work on me in a euphoric mania. In my agitated mania, I was helpless to my mom taking out her own unhappiness with the move (most likely) on me..every little stir of the knife and I felt compelled to respond, so we were in a constant of argument. Now that my doctors ostensibly fixed me, a) Mom has less to critique of me—I'm fixed, the doctors said so, so she can't blame my mental state since it's purportedly fixed, according to the doctors!, and b) My head's above water again, so to speak. I'm happy as a bird in the sky, my mom could say I've always hated you since you were a baby and by the way we shot heroin into your eyes as an infant and sexually abused you by sticking cotton swabs up your penis, and I'd be like, cool, you want some coffee?—I'm making a pot. In this state my shit is unfuckable. I care about my mom. I want her to get happier, but I'm not about re-enter her world of nebulous blame and sadness.], racing thoughts [Lol. I've never had the experience of racing thoughts. Caretakers have told me my speech or production rate of writing or drawings or paintings indicated to them I had racing thoughts, but to me my thoughts have always felt exactly the right speed, and they always go the same speed—warp zillion. Unless I'm depressed or sleepy], increased risky behavior [Fool, you don't know what risky behavior] is until you've spent a night with me] and other symptoms of mania [NAMI, you're copping out on me here. Specifics or just delete the clause!]

Here are the causes of schizoaffective disorder, according to NAMI:

The exact cause of schizoaffective disorder is unknown [Yeah, we know, psychiatrists don't know a whole lot about what causes the diseases they treat or how their medicines work—"it works on neurotransmitters" is pretty much all anyone knows about any psych med at this point in history]. A combination of causes may contribute to the development of schizoaffective disorder.

Genetics. Schizoaffective disorder tends to run in families. This does not mean that if a relative has an illness, you will absolutely get it. But it does mean that there is a greater chance of you developing the illness. Yeah, got some relatives diagnosed bipolar, never heard any schizoaffective cats tho. Fifty percent of people with serious mental illness go untreated even in high-income countries..so we're not really aware, as a society, who half of our mentally ill even are. I know some people in my family that I think are mentally ill but I think they are afraid to be categorized in that way (understandably). But that's not me—I'm the guy that sits in the front row, raises my hand first, and says, "I'm fucked up. Can you help me?" It's a great skill for survival, trust me—much greater than hiding real problems and letting them grow in the dark into unsolvable problems.]

Brain chemistry and structure. Brain function and structure may be different in ways that science is only beginning to understand. Brain scans are helping to advance research in this area. [Blah, science: hurry up.]

Stress. Stressful events such as a death in the family, end of a marriage or loss of a job can trigger symptoms or an onset of the illness. [I've had more than my fair share of these stressors, to be sure. Leaving out the majorly stressful events and listing the two salient super-stressful events, I would say the death of my girlfriend Rebecca and my suicide attempt and subsequent psych hospital stays were the two most stressful events in my life.]

Drug use. Psychoactive drugs such as LSD have been linked to the development of schizoaffective disorder. [Tricky, tricky. Yeah, I've done LSD twice, mushrooms eight times. But the vast majority of psychoactive drugs I've used have been mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, antidepressants..my hallucinations started when I was in a mental hospital and I was on a shitload of serotonergic drugs at once]—I never hallucinated before that, not as a usual matter. I'm not saying eating mushrooms eight times didn't affect my mind—it did, in wonderful ways, in scary ways, in ways I don't understand. But all the street drugs I've ever taken, you take them, they cause a certain feeling, then the feeling goes away. Only after my psych hospital stays did I start having hallucinations that persisted after I stopped taking the drugs they prescribed!! I don't know for sure what caused my persistent hallucinations. It could be that stressors, as mentioned above, further developed my bipolar schizoaffective. It could be street drugs. It could be the slew of psychoactive drugs given to me by psychiatrists to be taken eight and ten at the same time. It's probably a combination of all three. But I've done a decent amount of street drugs, and all of those combined is probably one or two percent of all the psychoactive drugs I've done in my life—the vast majority have been prescribed by doctors. I just want us to be careful where we point the finger on "psychoactive drugs"—you know what I'm saying, NAMI?]

This is what NAMI about diagnosis of schizoaffective.

Schizoaffective disorder can be difficult to diagnose because it has symptoms of both schizophrenia and either depression or bipolar disorder. There are two major types of schizoaffective disorder: bipolar type and depressive type. To be diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder a person must have the following symptoms.

A period during which there is a major mood disorder, either depression or mania, that occurs at the same time that symptoms of schizophrenia are present. [Even though I feel under control, the appearance of police at my door just yesterday and my doctor's statement to me over the phone of "You are manic. Do you know that?" I think is sufficient to say that I'm manic. I was about to sever all ties in Tennessee and go to the airport to fly..where? That's a rash decision of the type I've made many times before that is a symptom of mania. Anyway, yes, mania, we got that. Also in the last approximately fifty days, I've slept for 2-4 hours only, feeling completely rested. Only a handful of days did I take naps. Only three days during that period did I sleep for six or more hours. Is this mania occurring at the same time as symptoms of schizophrenia? My therapist obviously thinks so since she suggested the diagnosis of schizoaffective, but she hasn't told me why. I guess if you count an obviously flat Jackson Pollock print appearing at though I could put my fist inside it and touch between the layers of paint..I mean if you count that as a hallucination, then I suppose that's a sign of schizophrenia. And it is a sign of schizophrenia as opposed to the psychosis of bipolar mania because I had that poster for about a year before my sleep was disturbed or I had agitated or euphoric mania and the poster has been 3d for me from the moment I took it out of the tube. I think I can say yes to this symptom. Also, I remember some period earlier this year when I thought that music was transmitted through tattoos. This was during waking hours, with over a year sober off alcohol and many years sober off street drugs. Yes, I think this symptom is a yes.]

Delusions or hallucinations for two or more weeks in the absence of a major mood episode. [I don't believe I can evaluate which of my presently-held thoughts are delusions, but between the texture hallucination and my Jackson Pollock illusion/hallucination, I'm pretty sure this criteria is met. I think my doctors and therapist would think it is met. I'm a little shakier on whether it's met—but that in itself is probably indicative of psychosis in the sense that I can't commit to one version of reality on these possible hallucinations. Let's say the best my self-diagnosis can do is] maybe to yes on this symptom.]

Symptoms that meet criteria for a major mood episode are present for the majority of the total duration of the illness. I have already said that in my opinion I met the DSM IV criteria for a manic episode for at least the last five weeks, so this criteria is met, in my opinion.

The abuse of drugs or a medication are not responsible for the symptoms. [This sentence is written ambiguously but I have not used any drugs except my prescribed medication in many years, have been sober for a year and four months, no longer smoke, take no over-the-counter medicines, limit caffeine, and I am not abusing my prescribed medication. Whether my medication is responsible for the symptoms, I have no way of knowing—that's part of what makes this whole thing so insidious. Once you start treatment for an illness, it becomes impossible to say what's responsible for what. The act of isolating your variables could be life-threatening. So, I dare to say that even my doctors cannot answer the question implicit in this criteria.]

There were symptoms of schizophrenia as early as the second or third grade (reading in the library, isolated, instead of playing with the children outside during recess) but due to ignorance, probably, not teacher, not parent noticed this as a sign of mental illness. I was, through neglect, through chance, allowed to grow up mentally ill with my illness not only untreated but accepted by the adults around me. They were so ignorant and accepting and loving that they never considered I might be developing a problem!!

And let's talk about that Risperdal withdrawal, shall we? When my psychiatrist took me off Risperdal and put me on Saphris, I felt it in my brain, like I felt the change, and it felt like I was going to die..hallucinations..bugs..drew dots on the ceiling so I could test whether they stayed the same or turned into bugs..seeing bugs on the floor and little snakes while Susan, Mom, and I were out shopping..holding onto my mom's sleeve like a kid and apologizing, apologizing, always apologizing..seeing flashes of light in the living room while I sat, manic, for days on end on the couch enhancing my mood with coffee reading every single Tweet that came by all day when I followed three-hundred fifty people. Maybe that's why I got banished from the couch: my grandmom didn't like her manic grandson spending every waking hour on the couch doing weird hallucinating manic shit, drinking eight cups of coffee a day..excuse me but try being bipolar someday, see if you don't sometimes feel like doing things a little differently.

202

I decide to tell my family.

From: Matthew
To: Leona, Sharon, Joanne

Subject: New diagnosis

When I was in Los Angeles 10 years ago I saw a billboard: all pink, with white lettering that said, "i break up in email." It was edgy at the time, because back then 90% of Americans would have considered it rude to break up in email. Not anymore! And that is my introduction to this email, in which I am telling you significant news that 10 years ago you would most likely tell someone in person.

I have a new diagnosis. It is called schizoaffective disorder, and it's actually quite difficult to give a brief definition of it because its definition in the DSM has recently changed, and the latest definition is frankly quite involved, compared to the checklist-style definitions of say bipolar disorder or major depression. But if you'll allow me a little inaccuracy, schizoaffective means a person displays psychosis (hallucinations and/or delusions) outside of a mood episode, where with strict bipolar disorder, psychosis only occurs during depression and/or mania. And with strict schizophrenia, there is no mood component (other than a flat affect).

I had already pretty much figured this out from my own reading, and observation of myself, so the diagnosis doesn't surprise me [Perhaps that's why on occasion schizophrenic people have really gotten under my skin—because I am one].

The medication I'm taking is already targeted to treat schizoaffective disorder as well as we can, given that antipsychotics are off the table (because they caused my tardive dyskinesia, as far as anyone knows). But me and my doctors have been "treating the symptoms, not the diagnosis" for the last five years or so, so we've been treating the right thing even though we may not have arrived at the right name for it (and may not have even now).

Unfortunately our culture holds mental illnesses in a hierarchy, and has strong associations for them. If you're bipolar, you're Van Gogh; if you're schizophrenic, you're a crazy homeless person who thinks he's a prophet. I don't hold these associations strictly—I doubt you do either—but this new diagnosis does present additional opportunity for abuse (of me) by those who know me. Dad strongly abused his knowledge of my bipolar diagnosis, using it to claim that his potty-training humiliations of me never occurred, and that they are merely bipolar delusions. I think he and I both know that his assertion is not true. My wonderful aunt Susan, whom I will always love, even made fun of my bipolar disorder in a derisive way in text messages to me. If you want proof, I will show you the messages—this is no delusion. So there is real risk in me revealing this information, even to my closest family (note the small number of you who are left in this group by viewing the To: line of this note).

But I have basically come to the conclusion that I don't care. I'm telling you my truth, my new diagnosis, and I will not try to exert any control over you with respect to what you do with it. That is none of my business, I have learned in recent years. Treat me how you will, tell who you will—I trust you to do the best thing for yourselves. I have learned through observation of myself that while I may become discouraged from time to time, that nothing—not mental illness, not homelessness, not death of my favorite people, not being fired, not being insulted, not a lack of protection by my elders—nothing has stopped me. I always get up and keep going and when I realized that, a certain type of fear left my life: I never have to fear that I will encounter something that will make me give up. It's not in my nature.

It would be helpful to me if you would take it upon yourselves to do a small amount of reading (I recommend the complete Wikipedia page on schizoaffective. However, I don't expect you to do that. I am not being sarcastic when I say that I know it is difficult to take ten minutes out of our seemingly busy 2015 lives to read some information on a family member's life-shortening, poorly understood, major mental illness. So, if you don't read it, I understand, and I won't be checking up on you.

I love you three, and will love you my whole life,

Matthew

Only Leona responds. I don't take it personally. I take it to mean that people are tired of and/or unable to interact with me. They think I'm crazy, not worth their time. They just don't write as much as I do—email, novel, whatever—they're just not into writing people back when people write them. Whatever it is, after so much non-response I'm getting used to it. It stops bothering me.

Mom admits she didn't read the Wiki page and starts an argument at 6:32am the next morning questioning the validity of the diagnosis. Not anything feeling-based to start with, not checking on how I'm doing with this, but a factual interrogation about my conversations with my doctors.

Joanne, as usual, really since childhood, is absent—no response to this for days and days. And even though I need her help the most, I don't blame her, because I know what she faced growing up from Dad and Mom, because I was there, right beside her—we faced the same things.

Texts to Leona:

ME: I thought if I stopped drinking that would help me be a good uncle. But it just uncovers mental illness that has been there forever and is a lot worse than my drinking behavior. I'm cutting communication with everyone who doesn't really understand me. That includes your family. I'm sorry I won't be able to be in your sons' lives, because they are beautiful and their beauty reflects on you and James. Goodbye.

I'm blocking you so please don't text me anymore.

I didn't actually block her. I'll never block one of my sisters. This is just my immature way of saying I feel hurt very badly.

I'm sorry. I just can't function as I have been. It's too fake..

And I feel like I've been treated very badly by my family and I can't allow that to continue.

Bye again.

And I won't text Daniel, so don't worry about me contaminating him.

Text to Mom:

ME: I'm blocking you so please don't text me anymore.

I didn't actually block her. We have to communicate to live together. But our communication is fucked anyway. I foolishly asked Susan to turn off my phone service and she might actually do it..I also asked if I could pay for part of the phone service—more than Mom has offered to do—and Susan never responded..she won't even give me the opportunity to contribute, so how am I a real part of this family?

I talked about this with my therapist. She asked me what I wanted—what I wasn't getting—and after some work together we settled on me wanting to be allowed by my mom to be part of the conversation and the family—two things she has specifically held me away from. She's not the only one who does this. GranGran, Susan, Bob, Rusty, all of them as well treat me as a second-class member of the family by not involving me in the conversation.

You know what, though, if I honestly ask myself the question: What do I want from Susan, Paula, or Rusty, the answer is nothing. What, in the whole history of our relationships, have they, or Dad even, ever given me? Like Joanne says, they're non-rent-paying tenants. Evict 'em. And strangely, Joanne herself, in her almost total lack of communication with me since she moved to Portland, has become one of those, too.

To: Joanne

Subject: I don't have much to say but I'll give you the update

Here, Joanne, this is just my generic update letter that I send people. Normally I wouldn't send you something so boilerplate but I thought it might be a good way for you to familiarize yourself with the facts before/if you call today. I will try not to speak, but just listen to what's going on with you, as my story is pretty well laid out here. Feel free to share this with Leona if you want—I don't care. This may sound grandiose or egotistical, and you may not want this title at all!, but it's the truth: you're one of the few people in our nuclear or extended family that is even qualified to talk with me as an equal. Few people are ready to hear what I have to say or able to say anything relevant to the world I live in. Most others are mere simpletons. And while I can love a simpleton, I will not abide being insulted by one.

Packing is almost undone but we still have a bunch of empty boxes we're giving away, a few at a time, to a guy at Mom's church who wants them.

I'm seeing a doctor here who does neurofeedback—they put an EEG cap on you and show you some kind of a reward on the screen and it reprograms your brain to do what you want it to do. The doctor seems very smart so I guess it's worth a try. He also sold us a zillion new supplements. I'm taking them but I suppose I'm suspicious it's all a big scam where he makes money, I lose money, and I don't get any better in the long term. So I'm sure it's obvious to you that I have a pessimistic attitude toward it. Maybe that's because they're very disorganized. It's like..this genius doctor comes in and wows me with great new technology but then forgets to refill my medicine so we have to call them and do it over the phone. I think it's fair to say their process is lacking. But, I do understand what it's like to be so excited about something that you lose track of the nuts and bolts. But the nuts and bolts are what makes the big plan possible, in my mind, so we can't forget them. People talk about being a big picture thinker or a details person..honestly, without both, how can you get anything done??

I'm seeing a counsellor. That is going very well. Well worth the money—and she doesn't take insurance! She's given me good insight and mental exercises I can do to stave off a manic episode or any type of "flying off the handle." I'm seeing her once a week for now. Will switch to twice a week later. We both agreed on this.

Mom and I are not getting along. For the year we lived together in Baton Rouge, we had approximately five rough, or arguing, days—I know because I kept notes. Here, we've argued heatedly or significantly about half of the one month we've been here.

It's wearing me out.

I'll respect her privacy and not repeat exactly what she said, but she has let me know quite clearly that her driving me to therapy (once a week) and the doctor (once a month) are major impediments to her living her own life.

She views me as an invalid, mentally and physically. I do need help with some physical things, because of my tardive dyskinesia. But she told me yesterday that because I am younger and less wise than she and her siblings, that she doesn't want to hear my opinions on them. For the record, all I was telling her is that I don't want to go to Baton Rouge for my birthday! I just don't want to stay in that house, for various reasons (that have to do with her siblings).

She is critical of my sobriety, saying things like, Well, is there ever going to come a day when you can be around, say, Susan, while she's drinking and it not be a problem for you? And I'm like, Mom, you don't understand alcoholism if you're asking that question. When I'm around people who are having fun drinking (or not drinking) I want to have fun with them, do what they're doing. That doesn't mean that if I'm around alcohol, I'll necessarily drink—but why would I want to put myself in a situation that even stresses me in that way?

I've been sober for 1 year and 4 months as of yesterday and I'm not about to put that at risk. I'm not asking her to understand what it's like for me as an alcoholic/addict, but I am asking her to respect what I need to do to stay sober, and unbelievably she isn't respecting that!! She thinks I should be "over it" by now and I tell her, Mom, I'm an alcoholic, I'll never be over it. There's no graduation from "addict" to "ok again"—I stay sober by making a commitment each morning to stay sober just for that day. I've been to over 1,000 AA and NA meetings over the years and that's how people who stay sober do it.

Anyway. =/ Not happy. If I could, I would move away from Mom since she constantly shows me how disgusted and unhappy she is with me. The other day we drove to Wendy's. Everything I said—zero response from her. When she spoke to me, I spoke back. She makes a point never to say "You're welcome" when I say "Thank you." She requested that I not say, "I hope you have a nice day," because it's "patronizing." I wish she would ask me to leave because I would in a heartbeat. But I don't want to leave..this is my home, too—I like my little room—I live here—I'm in the middle of writing a book, etc.! And I pay half the rent and everything else, so I'm not about to leave her in the lurch.

And if that wasn't bad enough, I've been diagnosed with a new mental disorder. I'm removing my medical release forms that allow Mom to discuss my medical situation with my doc and counsellor because she, Dad, Leona, and others in the extended family have all used my existing diagnoses to marginalize and discount someone who frankly has a lot of love, experience, and talent to offer (and I do offer it generously), and I'm not interested in giving people who do that one more reason to think that I'm less capable than them (or than I am), so I'm keeping this new diagnosis to myself.

I hope your world is better than mine is at the moment,

But, though sharp-tongued, I'm actually feeling quite alive!,

Matthew

No response. I don't know if my sister is just out of pocket with her own stress, doesn't care to receive email from me anymore, what. I-d-k.

203

Now I'm technically a pastor's kid and there are all kinds of stereotypes that go along with being a pastor's kid: we're the wildest people you'll ever meet, the most a-Christian, etc. but my mom became a pastor when I was in high school so I didn't grow up a pastor's kid, and so I can cross through that boundary like it's permeable—I can be a pastor's kid or not, depending on what I want.

Now generally the belief is that the goal of the steps in 12-step programs is to go from being a selfish person to being a compassionate person. But I met a guy in NA who said this: It's a program of recovery, but what are we recovering? And his opinion is that we are recovering the self we were when we were a child.

So you see, even though my movements are severely impaired right now, I wasn't born that way, and therefore I don't think of myself as a person whose movements are severely impaired. I am in touch with my idea of myself as a child, before tardive dyskinesia. I operate as a spastic, but I don't think of myself as one. That's why I think recovering that image and that feeling and that essence of yourself as a child is so important. Because things go wrong. And if there was anything good that came before, we need to hold onto that like the mast of a sinking ship. Because the ship is sinking. And we are going to drown. But between now and then, it's important to—and it's possible to—feel as much of that recovered childlike self as we can.

So I'm not a spastic, and you're not fat, and you never got raped and mugged and robbed and cheated on and fired and I was never homeless and no one was ever hungry. We're the children we recovered by some process—at least we can act that way. And I think by acting that way, we can feel that way, too.

204

Parking lot at Costco.

"Well," my mom says.

"Well what."

"There have been other factors."

"Ok. What kind of factors are you thinking of?"

"Well..all the drugs you did."

"All the dr—Mom, I never did that many drugs. When I did, I did them to excess, that's for sure, but it's not like this whole time I've been out there just constantly doing drugs, you know—I've worked jobs, I've made art, I've been in relationships—the only drug I ever did on a daily basis for any length of time is alcohol."

"But do you think the drugs you have done might have contributed to.."

"To what?"

"To your mental illness?"

"To this new diagnosis of schizoaffective? To schizophrenia?"

"Yes!"

"No. No Mom. Schizophrenia is like bipolar disorder: it's genetics plus environmental factors, probably stress, trauma—"

"Which could be the result of drugs."

"Well, yes, if you have a traumatic experience as a result of taking drugs, that's a traumatic experience just like if you have a traumatic experience as a result of being beat up at school, or as a result of moving from one town to another, or having a friend die. But the only specific correlation I know of between drugs and schizophrenia is if you smoke pot in your late teens..that's positively correlated with developing schizophrenia later in life. But I never smoked pot in my teens, I've hardly smoked any pot at all! And when I did smoke it, it was way past my late teens, so I doubt that the little pot I smoked in my early-to-mid twenties had anything to do with there being a schizophrenic component to my illness!"

"Ok. I'd like to..wrap up this conversation so we can go into the store," my Mom says, as we're nearing the doors.

And I say, "There are lots of correlations. You wanna hear one?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"I'd just like to have some completeness to this conversation."

"I'd like closure. Are closure and completeness close enough that we can stop this and go shopping?"

"I just think it would fill out the roundness of the topics we're throwing around to mention another correlation.."

"And that is?"

"..sorry I was breathing. Childhood intelligence—high intelligence in children—is associated with adulthood mania, whether as part of bipolar disorder or not. So on the one hand we have the urge to say: Hey, teens, don't smoke pot because you're increasing your chances of developing schizophrenia. Are we also gonna say: Hey, kids, don't have high intelligence as a child because it might make you manic as an adult!"

"Who's saying this?"

"Anyone could be."

"But who is actually saying this?"

"It's a theoretical situation. It's just an example."

"Of what?"

"Of how you can't separate the perceived negatives from the perceived positives in these real-world mixed-bag situations—"

"What situations?"

"Mental illness, intelligence, artistic and scientific aptitude, predictors of job performance—"

"I just want to buy some coffee filters for the house, Matthew, so that when you wake up in the middle of the night to continue these deep thoughts or when I wake up in the morning to begin my day, there will be coffee filters we can put in the coffee maker to make coffee."

"Ok. That's fine. Do you want me to get a cart?"

"I want us to finish this conversation before we go in the store."

"What's wrong with talking about this inside the store?"

"I just want to leave this topic of discussion right here before we go in, ok?"

"Are you embarrassed that some strangers will overhear us talking about drug stuff or mental illness?"

"No."

"Those are important topics to me. The idea that you want to keep them under lock and key—"

"I don't want to keep them under lock and key!"

"Then why can't we talk about it inside the store?"

"I don't know. I don't know, ok?"

"Is it because your dad always made a scene in public places and you construe having an edgy conversation as an embarrassing event?"

"Matt. Can we. Please. Just drop it."

"Yeah ok."

"Thank you."

"But I'm noticing a pattern here."

"Great!"

Mom stops walking. She won't get any closer to the Costco, or even the Costco employees working outside, as long as we're talking.

"We can go inside," I say.

"What's your..pattern?" she says, wiping a tear from her eye.

It fails me, how this is an emotional situation, but I don't doubt that for her it is.

"What's your pattern."

I exhale.

"It's not that you don't like talking inside a store."

"No?"

"No, it's not, Mom. It's that you don't like to talk about anything that might be controversial or might get you looked at by other customers. I think you're overly concerned with what perfect strangers might think of you."

"I think you're manic and you don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, thanks for sharing."

"Yeah, and you know what else?"

"Please, tell me. If you don't think I'm so manic I won't be able to understand you."

Mom looks at me with knives in her eyes.

"It's not just about me," she says, weepy. "I don't want to make people around us uncomfortable."

"Like the other day at Starbucks."

"Like the other day at Starbucks," she says, crying.

"Mom. No one's even listening to what we say when we're standing right next to them. Also, I wasn't saying things like all babies should smoke pot or anything like that. I was quoting scientific data showing that cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy are safer than cigarettes and alcohol."

"Please. Can we stop. Now."

"Yes. We can stop. I'll stop. But I think you need to ask yourself why you're so opposed to that particular piece of scientific data."

"I'm sure you have a theory that explains me down into a pile of salt."

"I think you have difficulty accepting that on the drug issue—among many other issues—that our government has lied to us and, just to collect taxes, has specifically kept alcohol and cigarettes off the drug classification lists. It's in US law—I can send you the statute if you want—"

"No thank you," she sniffs.

"I think it's hard for you because your dad died of alcoholism and if he and we and the whole country had a fair chance at seeing how scientists would have classified the danger of alcohol, we would have seen that it is more dangerous than drugs that people have spent their lives in jail just for possessing—drugs that no one has ever died from. And basically your dad died because the US made a calculated choice to hide the dangers of that drug to increase tax revenue!"

My mom has her glasses off and she's wiping both eyes.

Her fucking make-up is running.

I feel terrible.

She looks at me like: Are you done?

I just stay quiet. I shake my head. This is the central problem of this whole fucking family. No one will have an open conversation with you. They expect that they can keep everything shallow, never touch anything painful, anything true, and somehow by doing this they will resolve their issues and everyone will have authentic relationships with each other. I can't fucking stand it. Politeness is literally the death of that and millions of other families. I vow to never be contracted so tightly to politeness that I can't have an honest conversation. Anywhere. The parking lot. The car. Inside the motherfucking Costco. Effing Christ. Who cares what some random shoppers in Costco overhear us saying. Who cares what they think of us. You know what? My mom, my grandmom, they dress up to go to the drive-thru at McDonald's. No shit. If I'm driving through a fast food restaurant, I don't even wear shoes. When I lived with my grandmother, she'd want me to dress up to go to our local Mexican restaurant. I've lived in big cities—she hasn't. I know what restaurants you're supposed to dress up for and El Rancho isn't one of them. My family—and they've both told me this freely and also denied it when I brought it back up with them—my family is overly concerned with appearances. Keeping up appearances. It is more important to them to look good for strangers—to look like a healthy family—than it is for them to do any real work toward becoming a healthy family. I guess I must have detected this young and rebelled against it—my philosophy is to dress down as much as possible, to (as Tyler Durden suggests) "let that which does not matter truly slide." And in place of all that bullshit, focus on the real relationship. Have I spoken with my aunt today? My sister? Have I refrained from drink, given that my whole family is an alcoholic?

Yes I have.

205

Mom and my therapist decide I shouldn't be left home alone while my mom travels to see her mom. Mom uses this as more ammunition against me, reasoning why I have to move out of our apartment.

See, if I go on this trip to Baton Rouge with my mom, Mom and her siblings have to admit that their relationships, actions, environment is hostile toward someone who is trying to heal themself—specifically someone who is trying to stay sober. I'm viewed as a problem element (and I am) because I'm a catalyst who is (very unwelcomely) reflecting some of the broken systems. Before my uncle Rusty and I had our spat on Facebook, Rusty and my mom didn't even have each other's phone numbers—that was a total shock to me. I thought I was growing up into an environment where my parent, aunts, and uncle were all communicating..that they had at least worked things out between them well enough to function as family even though they have differing political positions. Not the case. That my mother and her brother talk at all now is probably a direct result of my calling Rusty out on his bullshit years ago.

The irony in this family is so thick it's straight-up comical: my grandfather—all of their dad—died of alcoholism. And yet when someone in the family gets clean, that is not seen by most people as a good thing—it's seen as a threat to their way of life.

I suggested Mom and I go to therapy together. The second time I suggested it, she agreed.

ME: Actually, with all that I'm paying for already, I'm not sure I can afford half of another therapy regimen. If we don't go, it could be harmful to our relationship. If we do go it might harm it too. It's not simple for me to know what's best for me in this situation. The best I can do right now I think is live here with my door closed, avoid unnecessary discussions, and keep myself in a position where I'm getting the medical care I'm getting. I need to keep myself physically alive and I can't be homeless or without transportation and do that with a high degree of certainty. That's the best I can do at the moment. I wish you happiness in everything, job, family, everything.

Sharon: Ready to go to the driver's license place?

ME: Yes I'll be right there.

I guess what I was talking about in my text didn't deserve a response?

Next day:

ME: Did you mail the letter to Canada? Sorry to ask you on an already-charged day, but it would help me if I knew that was on its way. Thanks.

(no response, ever)

ME: I heard you say you want good things. So do I, for you and for me, and I would sacrifice my life in an instant if it meant good things would come to you.

(no response, ever)

Next day:

ME: Susan's probably going to delete my phone and sell the hardware soon, so I'm gonna have to use your phone to make doctor calls.

I'll just stop texting and I already stopped Twitter.

So. No problem.

One must have integrity though. And I'm not going to have someone who isn't really an ally paying my phone bill.

(no response, ever)

ME: Is there a cardboard box I can use as a laundry basket?

Sharon: Pick one. I'm heading home now.

Later on, about a trip to my counsellor, which she is unfortunately driving me to, putting her yet again in a position where she can hold these types of favors against me—for instance, saying that she isn't able to take care of her personal needs because she drive me to therapy once a week:

Sharon: I suggest that we leave a little before 4:00. Traffic is a little heavy.

ME: Probably best to avoid the roads altogether, then.

Can you ride a horse?

Sharon: We can handle it in the car.

Boring! Total lack of playfulness and creativity. This is where my life motto comes in: You think I'm crazy. I think you're boring. That's the story of so many of my interactions.

To: Sharon

Subject: All I want is a quiet place to write

I like this room. I was naively hopeful that this would be a good place for me to live. The actual unfolding of events between you and me has been horrifying, guilt-inducing, destabilizing. But me moving or becoming homeless right now seems dangerous and possibly fatal. And I want to live.

Please I'll not speak to you and I'll eat whatever is in the house, keep my door closed as much as possible, and try to finish this current book (4-5 months). Please let's do that at least until this book is finished, and after that I will get out of your hair so you have less to worry about and you'll have more resources and time to do your life, which I want you to be able to focus on..not your mentally ill adult son.

Ok? No need to respond. And please no more texts as Susan is about to cut me off of the phone plan. I offered to pay her a reasonable fee to cover my usage but naturally she didn't respond. Why would she? She doesn't respect me. You don't seem to either. I'm cutting off all communication with people who have shown that they don't take me seriously. I don't even think you know anything about me. Smh.

---

To: Sharon

Subject: All I want is a quiet place to write

I feel safe in this room. It terrifies me to think of being stripped of it and being in group home, hospital, homeless. This allows me to feel a touch of dignity, like I'm a real person.

It kills me that I am unable to please you. It almost kills me in my sleep each night to know that I displease my mother. But if you are no longer happy having me around, please just be direct and tell me. It seems obvious that you no longer approve of me for some reason. I'm not asking what it is. Maybe I'm finally too crazy for anyone to live with or stand. In that case I have a list of homes for the mentally ill. Maybe Lea can get me into one of those. I don't know. It's new territory for me. Just please don't throw away my mail..I was almost to the point of having a bank account again, which felt good, also like I was a real person, or had a shot at being one.

I desperately pray that things gets worked out for us both. It's a rotten life sometimes.

---

To: Sharon

Subject: Just please don't make me leave

I haven't had a safe place to sleep in a long time.

And we can solve your upstairs neighbor's problem. I'll talk to them if you want. We can address that.

---

To: Susan

Subject: Mom says what if her phone is at work

So maybe you can let me pay you a portion of the phone bill each month.

I just want things to be fair, and they certainly don't seem that way to me now.

I know you hate me but maybe you could respond to my mom and let me know how much you want each month for my usage.

---

To: Joanne

Subject: I've been trying to get in contact with you but I can't

I just wanted to say goodbye. Mom was talking tonight in language like "if you leave then don't come back" so unfortunately what could have been an idyllic writing period for me in Nashville is more and more likely to turn into a period of homelessness, which without my medicine I will not survive. Goodbye. I love you. I'm not suicidal, I just don't have the resources to make it on my own. Susan will be disconnecting this phone soon since I am not actually wanted (even by Mom) as part of their family. I hope you have a healthy life.

Matthew

---

To: Joanne

Subject: I've been trying to get in contact with you but I can't

I tried offering Susan a reasonable amount of money to pay for my part of the phone bill because I feel bad about her paying for both me and Mom's phone bill, but Susan won't respond to me. Even when I'm offering to pay for my part of a service I use, my own aunt won't call me back. I don't think that's my fault, I don't think I can take responsibility for the unfairness of the situation if she won't even communicate with me to let me pay a fair amount of the phone bill. I can't pretend things are working when they aren't.

---

To: Susan
Cc: Sharon

Subject: re: Mom says what if her phone is at work

Alright, since you haven't responded I'm just going to send you a small check every month in the interest of fairness. If you decide to cancel the phone, that's fine too.

Subtext: I don't care. Fuck you. I don't give a fuck. I wanted to actually put that in the email but I'm trying to be a more reasonable person than my gut instincts would have me be.

From: Matthew
To: Sharon, Leona

Subject: this is how I feel in general, embodied as Tori Amos lyrics

If you don't like me just a little

Why do you hang around?

You can say it one more time

What you don't like

Let me hear it one more time then

have a seat while I

take to the sky

more: (Lyrics to Tori Amos' Take to the Sky)

(No response, naturally.)

Also note that Mom is ok with using this phone service without paying Susan, so in a way I'm offering more respect to Susan than my mom is. Now, Mom says Susan doesn't care about the money, and that may be true. But my interpretation of the situation is I've got an aunt who doesn't respect me enough to let me be part of the conversation. That hurts, and it makes me want to stop talking to that whole fucking family—which I did when I was eighteen..and you know what, that was a smart idea back then and I knew I was never really part of that family, in other people's eyes, and that's why I stopped talking with them. They've never been welcoming. They've never been home. I knew that at eighteen. I knew it with Rusty at four or five. The only reason I gave them a second chance in my thirties is Leona kicked me out of her house and I had nowhere else to go but my aunt and uncle's house in Baton Rouge.

206

I reach out for help and support from people I know.

From: Matthew
To: Some people

Subject: bipolar support and generally shaken (the solar system party email)

Mom and I have had a rough time of it lately. For a while it was rough because (probably) I was in an irritable mania and Mom was irritating me (partly because of my bipolar mood, partly because she is overdone with the move and with me and who knows what).

Last night we had the second of two apologetic conversations, this one really productive seeming to me. She said she didn't ever want to leave me without a parent if I needed one, and she apologized for not speaking anything of substance with me for days—for totally not being there. We talked about making a bipolar response plan, or a set of numbers to call, basically, in case she thinks I need to be hospitalized and I'm not thinking reasonably. I said I would do that and I spent like six hours this morning putting together a "bipolar wellness plan" based on NAMI guidelines for creating such documents. It has several types of critical information that could be used by me and/or her if either of us thinks I'm in a bipolar mood state and we want to clarify that suspicion or get professional help.

I went to her and told her about it this morning and wanted to send her the link and she melted down and reverted to her earlier position which is that she can drive me to a few places but she can't be available to help notice if I'm in a bipolar state or reflect back to me that information or call a caretaker if I'm not listening. I put this wellness plan together to try to reduce danger and annoyance to everyone, and she told me that I can't count on her for anything except driving me to appointments. No other support. Not a hug. Not a call to a crisis line or my therapist or doctor. She said she thinks she has "lost herself" and I know I said some hard-truth-type things to her while I was talking uncontrollably during this last mania, but (to the best of my memory and to the best of her willingness to say and as I review my sent email) I didn't say f-you or anything like that. I said things like, "I think you have a subtle underlying opposition to men." Now that's accusative, but it's not an insult, and if she disagrees, she can say so. I have a subtle underlying opposition, distrust, and hatred of men myself.

But this morning she told me she's not there for me and she's not going to be there for me. I can't rely on her to call 911 if I need to be hospitalized. And I feel like I just lost my second parent. And I wish she would take better care of herself—which might sound weird coming from me ("the sick one"), but it shouldn't: I see a psychiatrist and a counsellor weekly, my PCP monthly, take my Rx meds and my vitamins by the hour (which Mom rarely does, I know from much living with her—maybe you know this, too). It's like..well I was gonna say it's sad and it is because I like Mom, I love Mom, and her current behavior indicates she's so low on reserve power that we're never going to have a fun day ever again. A couple days ago I offered her some of my pineapple slices and she interrupted me and yelled at me saying, "No, I'm not going to eat your food!" And in my mind I was like: "Ok, then just say, 'No thanks.' " I don't care. But I don't deserve to be yelled at for offering someone a slice of pineapple. I'm pretty sure even my twisted bipolar brain is spot on about that.

It's frustrating because while part of "the problem" is bipolar behaviors I can't control, I'm doing everything I can on the parts I can control. I researched how to put together a bipolar response plan, I made a document for her and me and switched to a simpler mood tracking system that I'll actually be able to use every day (or more than once a day). Part of the reason I picked it is it has a way to share a link with Mom showing my mood in a graph or diary format (I thought I might use that when reporting to my counsellor, too!). And when I went to Mom I couldn't even get a sentence out of my mouth before she told me she doesn't want to see my bipolar wellness plan!!! WTF?? I mean, she doesn't want to bookmark a link that has my doctors', therapist's, crisis centers', and emergency contacts' phone numbers on it? Plus some other information that some random EMT or inpatient psychiatrist might find useful? It's beyond her desire or capability to basically keep an electronic MedicAlert bracelet around for her severely mentally disordered son?

The excellent thing is even though that was hurtful, confusing, generally shaking, I'm in a pretty good place of strength (whether from mania or not) where I can handle this emotionally without freaking out at all in my dealings with Mom, and truthfully my inner feelings are 1) Maybe Mom needs some help, why doesn't she go to the doctor if she feels so depleted? and 2) kind of a SuperIrony, where I'm just like, ok. I feel ok. My health is being looked at, medication adjusted, my writing work getting done. I'm ok in some ways. Maybe her depletion is the cost to be paid for my feeling good, but I don't think so. I don't think I can be fairly blamed for her lack of health. But if I suggested she went to the doctor or a therapist (I did suggest that) she would/did blow up at me and blame me for her not having any time to take care of herself. I'm not upset that she's blaming me for stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with me (I have a few examples that my therapist confirmed are not my fault), I just want her, and me, and everything, to be well.

And, ironically, this three-page resource guide she won't read contains sections not only on, "How to support a person when they are experiencing a bipolar episode," and "Coping skills for a person with bipolar disorder," but also sections oriented toward, "Keeping healthy as a caregiver." I made it for both of us.

Writing this helped. When I started out I thought I'd be sadder than it turns out I am. I'm difficult to deal with, no doubt—I have bipolar-type schizoaffective disorder. Mom has lost herself (her words)—that's no joke. I'm sorry that you and Mom and everyone I've ever met has had to deal with the hard parts about my unusual mind. But those hard parts are rare—the great parts are sweeping and eclectic and beautiful and brilliant. And you know what's great? I don't have terminal cancer. And even if you do, my friend, I find this to be a day worthy of celebration. We're all going to die, we're all going to make mistakes. In my strong opinion we should forgive as quickly and truly as possible, hug, and get back to the greatest party in the solar system (that we know about). That's certainly what I'm going to do.

Matthew

---

From: Matthew
To: Leona

Subject: bipolar support and generally shaken (the solar system party email)

I had originally figured this would be of most use to the person observing me the most, but now that Mom has taken herself off the duty roster, perhaps you could give me feedback if you notice anything awry. Part of the idea of this isn't in the paper itself, but in my signifying my formal willingness to be open to someone else's ideas about how balanced a state I'm in. The document is supposed to help the caretaker/observer by providing easy-to-reach lists of the bipolar mania/hypomania/depression/mixed episode symptoms. I thought that would help Mom 'cause she's saying I wasn't listening to her, but she never said she thought I was manic and I should call xyz doctor. That document would have helped that to happen. And there are resources on there for the patient, me, as well. This is a no-pressure-type deal, Leona, but if you feel like observing bipolar-related stuff to me, from your vantage point, I am formally attempting to be open to that—although, as Mom rightly points out, when one is manic one forgets these types of intentions. But I know that all animals can learn to do something by repetition, even break strong evolutionary instincts (in the case of intelligent animals). So this document is the first bookmark on my bookmarks page..I'm making a habit to review it and put those symptom lists right in front of my face, so easy for me to check that even if I'm manic, I want to be able to check 7/8 items off the list, for example, and know it myself even when the science says I shouldn't be able to know.

[URL redacted because the document contains phone numbers]

From: Leona
To: Matthew

Subject: bipolar support and generally shaken (the solar system party email)

Yes, I can do this for you. \<3

Thanks, Leona \<3

207

My hurt with Leona rises again.

From: Matthew
To: Leona

Subject: I am hurt

by the fact that you are going to group therapy with Joanne. Was I not important enough to try to have a relationship with? Would you ever kick Joanne out of your house for no logical reason like you did me? It just stings that I don't feel you care about me as much as you do her, given your increased tolerance of her and increased effort (couples therapy) with her that you didn't afford me. You don't owe me an explanation, but I just want you to know that it hurts me.

Matthew

---

To: Leona

Subject: re: I am hurt

Like, for instance, you gave me a hard time if I stayed in my room. So I was with you (and wanted to be, mostly) all day helping you take care of Daniel. So why is it not a problem (or it's allowed) for Joanne to do what you were up my butt about when I did..like when I sometimes slept a lot in the afternoons, you were all over me about how you were worried about me, etc.? Should I have laid down my own will more strongly, as Joanne does, and just done what I wanted? I did so much of what you wanted me to do while I was there, in order to please you, and you treated me so unfairly at the end. I'm glad Joanne's getting better treatment (as I think I stated in a much earlier email that I hoped she would)..it just really hurts me to see how much more accepting of her you are—or at least how much more leeway you give her. It's hard for me to wonder if you..I don't know..just..why there's such a difference. Those are just my feelings. I don't expect a response, I just want to express how I feel about this to you.

---

To: Leona:

Subject: I am hurt

Or: is Joanne with you all day taking care of your children? Will you be asking Joanne to mow your entire lawn using a manual lawnmower?? Etcetera, etcetera. I had two hours a day for my writing..during Daniel's nap..the rest of the time I was working. Joanne doesn't even speak to you all (that's what you've told me) and she gets the royal treatment of couples therapy? It just makes me think you don't value me as much as her (our relationship as much as yours and hers). Maybe I'm making up the wrong story in my mind to go with these facts. Idk. But the way I'm interpreting what I'm seeing, really, really hurts me.

---

From: Leona
To: Matthew

Subject: I am hurt

Dear Matthew,

The arrangement between me and Joanne is very different than the arrangement when you were living here. We negotiated terms ahead of time and we have a barter agreement. When you were living here it was because you had no other place to go and you were threatening to be out on the streets. We were all in crisis mode, helping you get the medical care and prescriptions that you needed, checking you into the hospital, etc.

Aside from that, you and I have a different relationship than Joanne and I have. (We're closer, in many ways, and it's easier for us to talk to each other openly, which is what we're working on in counseling: how to talk frankly with each other.) And beyond that, I'm a different person now than I was when you were living here. The two times are very difficult for me to compare, because they're so very different from each other.

I never meant to do anything that made you feel like you shouldn't be alone in your room if you wanted to. I was concerned about you sleeping so much, not because I was upset with you for sleeping, but because I care about you and I wanted to know that you were ok. I thought that you spent time in the living room with me and Daniel because you wanted to. We watched tv together, we made meals and got takeout together..I was under the impression that this is how you wanted to spend your time and I never faulted you your writing times. You were always welcome to decline watching Daniel or mowing the lawn if you didn't want to. At the time, it seemed as if you were more than willing and happy to do these things to help us out.

I would be happy to go to therapy together with you if you want. When you were living here, you were going to counseling on your own and I was going to see Debra and James and I were seeing Debra, too. We were in the thick of trying to get services for Daniel, taking him to multiple OT appointments per week..AND we bought a house and moved. There was a LOT going on in my life that had nothing to do with you. And I was also caring for you and supporting you..I bought you a custom-made bike. You picked out a bed that you liked and we got that for you [I had nothing to do with picking out that bed]. I bought you a bunch of clothes. Whenever we went to the grocery store, I bought you whatever you wanted [I was using my own food benefit card]. There was always a stack of prepaid MAX tickets by the door so you could go on the train whenever and wherever you wanted. You were never left out of any takeout meals, and I drove you through and paid for fast food several times even when I wasn't getting anything for myself. I was so happy to do these things for and with you, and to this day I'm glad to have given to you everything I did! These are things that Joanne doesn't have that you did. The two arrangements are different in a lot of ways.

I feel like we just weren't in the place to do counseling together at that time. I know I was dealing with a lot, myself. Maybe I wasn't in the place of feeling like I could give more to our relationship because I was overextended. I don't remember you expressing an interest in us going to therapy together at the time, either.

I value you and our relationship very VERY much. I'm still very sorry about the way things ended here when you left, and I've apologized many times and I thought you'd forgiven me, but I'll apologize again: I'm so sorry for the way I behaved. I hate the way things ended. I was feeling very triggered at the moment when you left the house and that had nothing to do with you, and I'm sorry you were on the receiving end of that awfulness.

From my perspective, I didn't kick you out. James offered for you to pack a bag and you declined. He offered to drive you to the airport and you declined. I was expecting for you to come back home to Portland at the end of the two weeks in Baton Rouge, but you decided not to come back and I was very sad and shocked by that. I thought our relationship was more resilient than that.. But I packed up all of your things and shipped them to you so you would have them, including medications.

We've been over and over this in the past three years and I really wish we could move forward and stop dwelling on the past. I am only human and I make mistakes. I would hope you could extend some grace my way and forgive me for not being perfect, for making mistakes, for being fallible. I don't bring up over and over all the things you've done to hurt me over the years, and I would appreciate the same from you. I'm being open and honest and forthright with you. Please, let's move forward together.

I love you,

Leona

Leona texts me the next morning in response to my saying that I'm cutting off contact with her family and I won't text Daniel because even though I haven't drank alcohol for well over a year, I don't consider myself safe because of worsening bipolar, or schizoaffective, or whatever it is.

Leona: I'm really sad to wake up to see this. I hope you will change your mind because we all love you very much and want you to be in our lives.

ME: Do you really? Because according to a lot of people in the family, I'm too fucked up to be around. I don't want to hurt anyone else, so I run to the idea of seclusion. All you mostly healthy people can have a great life together, and I'll just go to a hospital or something.

You might actually be the last one who loves me.

Leona: Yes, I really love you! I really want you in my life!

I also want you to feel supported and maybe family aren't the best people to provide that for you? I don't know.

I know I'm not the last person who loves you. James and Daniel and Joel and Joanne love you. Mom loves you. Susan and Bob and GranGran love you. Dad loves you! We might not (all or always) be loving you in the ways that speak best to you, but I know I'm trying. And some of the others just don't know what to do, how to best show you how much we love you.

I hope I'm not hurting you further. I'm really trying here.

ME: I don't want to hurt you either, so I'm going to save my protests against the statements you just made and not say them. Instead I'll say this: you're not hurting me further. I feel we are resilient now, more than we were five years ago. I've been bragging to Mom how even when we don't see eye to eye, we continue to return to communication with each other. I am very happy with how our relationship has developed, Leona—it's wonderful as far as I'm concerned, the best relationship I have going at the moment!! =) So feel good! I absolutely want you to know that I am not going to text or respond to Daniel when I know that I'm not in a normal stable state, which obviously I am not right now. It destroys my mental fabric, it feels like, to think that I might not ever be a good uncle to your boys, but I love them enough that thinking about it makes me cry as I'm writing this. It makes no sense for me to compare Joanne's stay with my stay at your house, if only for the reason that it's five years later and we're all different people..plus all the other really good reasons you gave. I remember some of the facts differently. I understand some of the power dynamics between you me and James differently..maybe not better..but differently, and I'm going to leave those alone, too. I love you. Let's keep texting as we feel like it.

Leona: Sure, I understand that we will see and experience things differently and I was just presenting my perspective.

I love you too. I trust you to make good decisions when it comes to my kids. I have never had any doubts about that.

ME: I appreciate and value and honor and even believe your perspective over mine in some cases!! =)

Thanks for trusting me with your kids. That means a lot.

Leona: Are you doing okay? Is there anything else I can do to be supportive of you today?

ME: I'm doing better than the vast majority of people on this planet, so yes, I am doing ok. Thank you. I have all that I need. But very nice of you to ask =) Thanks.

How are you doing today?

Leona: I'm okay. Slept well last night for the first time in quite a while, so I'm really grateful for that.

ME: Good!! I remember our talk about that recently (yesterday I think?)—I'm glad you slept!!

Leona: Thank you!

ME: You're welcome! I know it makes a big difference in your next day!

Leona: Very much so, thank you.

ME: Of course.

208

When I send Susan and Bob nice thank you for letting me stay with you emails, they just don't respond. That stings. Am I not worth a quick "you're welcome?" Guess not.

But I have a new guideline in my mind: not to interpret other people's behavior. There are a million reasons why neither my aunt or uncle responded to my thank you note, and most of them have nothing to do with me. I know now (and sometimes even remember) to not make up stories in my head about what other people's behavior means—it's a losing proposition.

But some things you can make rudimentary conclusions on. And when an aunt and an uncle both fail to respond to a warmly written thank you note from their nephew, I make the rudimentary conclusion that these are failing, nonfunctional people, who don't have loaded the programs of basic decency within their brains. And that is a type of person I want nothing to do with.

209

Email from Mom:

From: Sharon
To: Matthew

Subject: Respecting your food needs

Matthew, I did hear what you said last night about food, which is a very personal and important thing. Even though it has not always gone well, I do want to respect your needs and support your needs. This is not my apartment and it's not my refrigerator.

As a visible apology of my thoughtlessness in not making room for you and your stuff in the fridge, I have taken a lot of stuff out of the fridge and labeled a shelf for you and one for me, and a drawer for you and one for me. Also there is a half top shelf for each of us for drinks and tall things. The things in the door are available for both of us to use and either of us can put things there, of course.

[The real effect this had on me was to make me think of Mom and I as more separate, more like roommates and less like family. Separate shelves, etc. It's not like we were eating each other's food. To me, this makes everything so much less personal..and it eats at me.]

Also, as a sign that I do care about your food needs, I have two offers for today: One is that, on the way back from the driver's license place today, I will buy you food at a fast food place of your choice.

And then, when I get home this afternoon, I will drive you to the grocery store and then, as much as you want me to do so, stay out of the way (and out of sight) while you buy food for you with your food stamps. We can make that a regular outing, adding it into our "things to do" when we set our calendars for the week. Or spur of the moment trips are fine, too.

Another thing I will offer is to cook for you whatever food you buy for yourself, if and when you ever want me to do that.

I hope you will hear in this all the love that I want to show to you in practical ways regarding our living situation. I also think this will take some pressure off of me—the pressure of really wanting to provide good food for us and not feeling confident about that sometimes.

Of course, if there is anything more or different that would make it even better for you, things can be adjusted.

See you soon.

Love,

MOM

And then my replies, three smashed into one:

From: Matthew
To: Sharon

Subject: Respecting your food needs

Unfortunately I took your good intentions and couldn't handle them so just drop me on the side of the road somewhere. You can have my stuff.

You wrote me such a nice email me I'm sorry I trashed your intentions on the way to the DMV. That was horrible of me. I'd say I'm sorry but it probably wouldn't have any value anymore coming from me.

I'm going to keep this email around to remind me that you care because unfortunately my brain keeps convincing me otherwise and that is totally unfair to you. Smh.

We go to the grocery. Mom grabs a cart, as usual, which I thought was—as usual—our cart. Then she says,

"Ok, get your cart!"

And I was like what?? We always shop together.

I hadn't read her email carefully.

I don't do well with change.

I grabbed a cart and basically flipped out in the grocery store. I thought she was trying to draw a line between us, and that she was saying that she didn't enjoy shopping with me. For me, it had always been something we did together—a social activity. And that she was terminating this social activity with me hurt me and made me basically flip the fuck out in the grocery store.

I was driving the cart around every which way, putting nothing in it, desperately trying to get one of my sisters on the phone for psychological support.

Later, a text from me to Mom:

ME: The refrigerator sections are working great for me—I hope they are for you, too. I re-read your food email and you do say that you were taking me on an independent-ish shopping trip and talked about giving me space if I wanted it. I did read your whole email but just must not have understood at the time what seems clear to me now when I read it. So..I am so sorry I flipped out. I shouldn't have been surprised; you laid it all out for me in the email. I am horrified that I treated you the way I did. I am sorry. I didn't realize I was confused.

Fuck. Another fuck fuck fuck by Matthew Temple, Idiot of the Fucking Century. Shoot me in the fucking head.

I mean I really wish I didn't exist at times like this. It would be so much easier for everybody.

210

I'm going to tell you the weirdest hallucination I ever saw. Most hallucinations look like hallucinations, at least on a reasonable dose of mushrooms or LSD..but if you take too much, or you trip too long, you don't even know you're tripping anymore.

It was this tear I saw coming out of Ashley's eye because she wiped it away. If she took her finger away, it was gone, her skin looked dry. But if she wiped the tear away, I could see that it was there. It was completely photo-realistic, visual-realistic, no psychedelic patterns or movements..and seeing that, I realized how deep the rabbit hole of the mind goes, how much processing the brain is doing to what you see with your eye before you see it with your mind.

Hallucination, psychosis, is not skin deep, it's deep deep, it's deep like you don't know that you're hallucinating, you don't know that you're delusional. A moderate amount or even a double dose of LSD is like a child's toy compared to sober psychosis or an overdose of hallucinogens. A double dose of LSD is intense but you still know you're tripping. An overdose of mushrooms, or severe natural psychosis, and you don't know where the edges are..you have no handle on reality..reality isn't there for you anymore and it's like you never knew it existed.

I have this Jackson Pollock print that Joanne gave me and when I look at it, it doesn't look flat—it looks 3d. Like instead of the end result of Pollock's paint splatters, I see the order in which he painted them. Based on their technical definitions, I think this is an illusion rather than a hallucination, because in a hallucination you see something for which no stimulus is present, but in this case the stimulus is present, it's just that—like that tear hallucination—my brain is doing some amazing sort of processing between my eye and my mind. There's nothing disturbing to me about how it looks. I know this must have happened to my brain at some point because I've seen Jackson Pollocks before and they didn't do this. It might have something to do with the way this one is printed. But while it isn't scary, the fact that I see Jackson Pollocks in 3d while other people see them flat is a reminder that my brain is off—it's either another example of psychosis or maybe an example of a particular kind of visual brilliance. I checked the internet and couldn't find anyone else describing this experience. I know that this is new for me because I remember seeing flat Pollocks before—the point is, what other experiences am I having that are different (psychotically and/or brilliantly) that I don't know about?

What other ways has my brain warped or grown, due to psych meds, bipolar disorder, recreational drugs, or just natural development by exercising certain types of cognition..that may be different than the ways others think or experience the world? Just like that tear hallucination, I think I know enough to know that at least with some types of experience, thought, cognition, I might never have occasion to realize that I'm thinking in an unusual way, whether psychotic or brilliant. They say the scary thing about being crazy is that you wouldn't know. It's hard to imagine. But I think it's true. And I think the same thing is true about being brilliant, too.

211

One day I'm feeling nostalgic for Vermont, and Brattleboro, and even the Refuge and everyone it contained, and I Google Grace, the heroin addict who fed me Skittles. The one with the perfect face. The one who, when I saw her in meetings, I wanted to be her.

So I searched her name.

And what I found gave me pangs for a life I'll never have.

Everything was colorful. Everything was beautiful. Everything was free.

It was pictures:

Grace posing in sunglasses.

Grace smoking a cigarette.

Grace's famous beauty mark, right below the eye.

Grace freezing in a red coat, looking like Little Red Riding Hood.

Grace's face grown older. A restaurant she worked at.

Then trips to tropical places, Grace hugging her grandmother goodbye, pushing her dad in a shopping cart, her boyfriend driving a truck.

Grace sitting in a tree.

Grace saying bye to Brattleboro.

Grace in Los Angeles, fake scared as a fake Hannibal Lecter fake chokes her. Hugging a stormtrooper.

Grace standing on a rooftop—looks like Central America. Pink dress, like something out of Miami Vice.

A picture of a drink in the background, and in the foreground, a wrist bearing a bracelet with the Serenity Prayer on it. Damn, that girl's still sober. It's almost too much for me to take, seeing this happy girl-turned-woman apparently living a happy life. I know from therapy that I'm not supposed to compare my insides to someone else's outsides, and stalking Grace's Instagram definitely counts as doing that. But, life, oh life, why am I not like Grace? Why couldn't the first time I quit using drugs have been the last time I quit using drugs? I see that either I'm a lot stupider than Grace or maybe I have a deeper hole to fill or badder monsters that I'm running from. Or maybe I just never worked the program.

And then my jealousy slides away, because fuck, I love that girl. I loved her as an addict and I loved her in detox and I love her happy, on Instagram, with captions like "Found a shark tooth on the beach! #treasures" and the picture of the tooth to go with it. Is she in Hawaii? Australia?

There's a Zen garden, swept in lines and circles.

And just Grace smiling.

She's in Japan.

Back in Vermont ("#brrrrrrrrmont"). Pictures of snow.

Pictures of ostriches—one going one way, one going the other.

Then gorgeous shots of Grace, underwater self-portraits of her surrounded by schools of fish. Grace shining a flashlight into the darkness of a coral tangle. Funny captions for a NO TRESPASSING sign she found underwater.

Grace feeding some kind of mammal I've never seen before, and this thing eating out of her hand.

And more and more and more. Beaches. Cats. Friends. This is the life Grace has been living all this time. Six days ago she was in south Florida, scuba diving. The caption says "Blue Heron Bridge, into the abyss" and it's the portrait of freedom. Some diver, Grace or her friend, legs outstretched, arms outstretched, swimming between columns under the deep blue sea. Ocean floor covered with green. Algae. Diffuse light. Scenes so well composed they look like they're from a video game.

I close the browser window.

While Grace has been doing "Blue Heron Bridge, into the abyss," I've been in and out of mental hospitals, my still-living body passed between relatives until everyone in the house gets sick of me, resents my existence, hates every detail of everything I do, from the fact that I sit on the couch to the way I rock in the rocking chair—they even hate the way I do their chores for them and they go around behind me silently correcting my work, until all humans cease any activity with me, and I succumb to drinking in my room, hiding from what to me is the intolerable noise of partisan politics and daytime television and angry voices on the radio playing twenty-four hours a day in my grandmother's bedroom. In some kind of shock, some kind of pre-death waking coma, I watch the same movie on repeat for six months and drink, and drink, and drink until I should be dead. And let me mention that just like when I'm manic and psychotic I watch The Matrix, The Truman Show, Inception, when I was drinking so much this last time I watched Flight—a movie about an alcoholic who gets sober. It kills me: I know what I need to do, I'm just too scared to do it. When I looked at those pictures of Grace from the last few years, her life just seemed so bright and happy and so free compared to mine..like she had some universal capability that I lacked—for living, for loving, for being ok.

For a tenth of a second I hate myself for not being beautiful, young, female, desirable, and clean for the last five years. Well, I've been clean, just not sober, only sober for fifteen months, and my life hasn't bloomed into something carefree and gorgeous, like Grace seems to be. But she was gorgeous sitting sullen in an NA meeting in the Refuge lunchroom, as far as I was concerned. I wish her a hundred times the happiness her pictures indicate to me.

And thanks for the Skittles!—which is another way to say: Thanks for not treating me like a predatory piece of shit, even though you were a girl and I was a guy. Outside the rooms, you would have been a youngish girl holding all the sexual coin and I would have been an old, fat, psychotic drunk who would have killed to do heroin with you. But in NA, we were both just addicts trying to get one day clean, and we set aside all the male/female bullshit (mostly) and when we held hands to say the Serenity Prayer, our focus was on the fucking prayer. I hate myself for that tenth of a second of jealousy and self-hatred and I remember what Jack said when that funky human caterpillar (with Grace at its head) came dancing down the hallway of Tyler 1. He said:

---

"You see? The people on this floor are basically ok except they're drug addicts. When they stop using drugs, three days later, they're fine. Look!—Happy people! They'll go on to live normal lives, if they can keep from using drugs. That's Tyler 1. That's one thing rewarding about working down here: within the space of a week, you get so see someone who is fucked out of their brain, and in a series of days, with a little help—some medicinal, sometimes just some love from the mental health techs like me, you know, just someone to say You're a worthwhile person and The world needs you—you see someone go from completely nonfunctional to someone you can place right back in the world and they're useful at their jobs, they make up with the people they've hurt, and that's it. Of course a lot of them come back. But the ones who can simply manage to stay sober and refrain from using drugs..they're golden. That's Tyler 1," he said. "People on Tyler 1, when they stop using drugs, their lives get better. There's no underlying mental health problem besides addiction. I mean drugs are addicting to anyone who tries them, no? This hospital believes in the addict brain model—some people are addicts, some people are not. Most of the rest of the world doesn't subscribe to that model—only Americans think the addict has a special brain. In Europe and elsewhere, we believe addiction is like the flu: it's all a matter of exposure. If you're around people who have the flu, your chances of getting the flu go way up. If you find yourself in close proximity to addictive substances, your chances of becoming addicted to them go way up. So if you have a basically healthy brain, and you stop using drugs, your life gets better. But Tyler 2 is a different story. It's not as fun to work there. Addicts can get better. People with schizophrenia do not get better. They can take medication and suppress the symptoms maybe enough to live among normal people for a while before they end up back in the hospital. But they don't get better—the underlying problem never goes away. Same with bipolar disorder my friend."

Jack puts his hand on my shoulder.

"You're not a Tyler 1 person, I am sorry to say. You are a Tyler 2 person. And as your psychiatrists have been telling you since your first hospitalization in LA—I've read your chart in detail—your drinking is a problem, yes, but it's not the primary problem. And that's why it's so hard for you to stop drinking. Your friend Grace, there, head of the crazy caterpillar—look how happy she is. When she stops using, her life gets better—and right away—so she has an instant reason, an instant motivator, to stay clean. But you, when you stop using, your life gets worse. Grace's problem is that she uses heroin—don't tell anyone I told you that."

"I know what she uses."

"I figured you did. Just don't get me fired, ok?"

"I won't."

"But alcohol isn't your problem, my Faulkner-reading friend. Nor cocaine, nor crystal meth, nor any of the others in the pantheon of drugs you are attracted to. You are covering up a much deeper problem, and I've seen this before, but you know I will never lie to you—the longer you stay sober and clean off those drugs, the harder it's going to get to live with your bipolar disorder. Were you using when you tried to kill yourself?"

"No. I was completely sober, no drugs."

"That's what I read. I just wanted to hear it from you. In my country, we don't encourage people with mental illness to be completely sober off alcohol or drugs. It's unreasonable, in my opinion. Alcohol can be a disinhibitor, I know that's what everybody around here says. And it's true, it's true. But if you were drinking that night would you have attempted suicide?"

"I don't know."

"Your best guess."

"Probably not, no. I would have had the motivation to go to the bar and spend some money, forget my problems, maybe meet some girl, which I would have failed at, and probably I would have passed out by myself at home and woken up feeling fine the next morning."

"I agree. I'm not telling you to drink. Do what works for you. But don't take everything you hear in this hospital as the gospel truth. Sometimes when we try to cleanse every problem out of you we create new ones even worse."

"Ok."

"But Matthew, there is a reason they call bipolar disorder one of the three major mental illnesses. You wanted to kill yourself three months ago?—You will want to kill yourself for the rest of your life. But you survived. And if you can survive not the act next time, but the urge.."

---

Jack's words fade in my mind. I've played them back so many times that I'm sure my paraphrasing is radical at this point. But the basic point is intact, and it's one of the most profound points I've learned on my mental health/addiction journey: People in Tyler 1, when they stop using drugs, they get better. People in Tyler 2, when they stop using drugs, they get worse.

To some of you that probably sounds like a copout excuse for mentally ill people to keep using drugs. No. We have to stop using the dangerous/addictive drugs so that we can uncover the monster of major depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. We have to see how we act without those drugs, which we desperately needed to survive. It's a very risky business. Alcohol dulls my mania..like..magically. So in some ways I'm much more under control when I drink. But alcohol is a monster too, and I can't control it. Some years I drink within some type of limits. Some years I can't control my drinking in any meaningful way. So I can't do it. And even though I'm not going to meetings now, I'm sober for today, and that, for me, is an accomplishment worth celebrating. So I say a little, "Good job, Matthew," in my head and pretend to pat myself on the back.

But my bipolar is worse than ever.

I am paranoid.

I am psychotic.

I sleep two to four hours a night—for 60 days, I've slept two hours almost every night. I go to bed at nine. I wake up at eleven. Totally refreshed. Totally energetic.

Instead of writing my normal two or three pages a day I write ten. Some days I write twenty. Some days I write forty.

I've almost ruined my relationship with my Mom by talking a mile a minute when she's decompressing from work and by interacting with her in a paranoid mode where I think a simple question from her is her trying to gather information on my mental health so that she can decide when to try to force me into a hospitalization—sometimes I have the perspective to realize this is not the case. But it's insulting to her that I think she has those motives—but I can't tell whether she does or not. That's psychosis; I am unable to properly distinguish between reality and imagination.

As I fill out doctor's admissions forms, I see what my handwriting looks like: it looks like the handwriting of a crazy person, it looks like the handwriting of someone with a disorganized mind. I write in the margins, filling every space on the page with corrections to the form's grammar and syntax, with random pieces of information about myself, with messages I'm desperately trying to communicate to my doctors but that I know I'll forget once we're in the office setting.

In person, I often appear calm, but I need these people to know that it's chaotic in here, inside my mind.

I had to stop watching a movie with Davina yesterday because what was going on inside my head was far more interesting and far more intense than the content of the movie—and it was a good movie, at least good enough to keep my attention on a non-psychotic day.

I find myself looking at the patterns on the walls when Mom is standing in my doorway talking to me—the patterns are moving again, a sign that I'm manic—and I can't pay full attention to the real conversation my real mom is having with me because I'm distracted by a texture hallucination on my walls that isn't really there to anyone but me.

And it's that way in general: what's going on inside my mind is more engrossing than what's going on without—and with very few exceptions that has been the case since early elementary school, since first or second grade. That's not social behavior and it doesn't help you succeed in this world. But it's been the way I am my whole life and I don't think it's about to change anytime soon. Or..ever.

I don't want to trade places with Grace. It's a miraculous thing to see someone you were in NA meetings with, in detox with, now scuba diving, escaped Brattleboro, ends up in Florida, walking Florida beaches, finding shark teeth. Every smile I saw on that woman's face made an equal smile on mine. I'm not saying Grace's life is easy—I don't know much about her mind or heart or history. But I will thank the universe that I was wrong about Grace, that at least based on her Instagram pictures she seems like a Tyler 1 person, and it seems like she might be clean and happy and living the Serenity Prayer, day by motherfucking day. Every piece of my heart goes out to that relative stranger, that she encounter happiness with every step she ever takes from here on out to the end.

---

And I have to go easy on myself for being a Tyler 2 person, who can barely make it from one psychiatrist's appointment to the next without acting in some unexpected antisocial destructive way. I communicate with people in accusatory ways, damning ways, sometimes benevolent but psychotically weird ways such that the recipients of my communication just don't respond. Then I get angry because I demand respect from everyone who knows me and any lack of respect is an affront that must be brought into the light, humiliated, and punished, the person's faults paraded before their relatives and friends. That's how sick I am. And that's fifteen months clean and sober, multiple doctors, medicines, AA meetings, meditation, spiritual books, etc. I'm just a crazy mother fucker, and the only people who want to be around crazy motherfuckers are other crazy motherfuckers. But I don't want to hang around crazy motherfuckers, because I want to get less crazy, so I don't hang around anyone.

It's hard to live your life if you compare it to others who have more money, more sanity, more sex. But when it comes down to it, I'm doing what I want to do—write. I get to do work every single day that gives my life meaning..or gives me the feeling that my life is meaningful. I am happy about that. And I don't pity myself. My life so far has been fantastic, and the general trend at least is that it gets better every year. So what I have a major mental illness—some people have terminal cancer. I'm lucky. I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate, at least for this day, to be able to think clearly enough to write this sentence, this paragraph, this book. I've written something like eleven or twelve books—and for someone whose dream since the tenth grade was to write a book, that makes me one of the wealthiest people I know. My internal life is sometimes crazy active, but at least it's active—that's the only way I can imagine myself to be.

Bon voyage, Grace.

I have closed the browser window and will never Google you again, my friend, but I wish you happy times, wherever you go—and thank you for being a fraction of my life.

212

I used to break people down with my words, tear them piece by piece, using the verbal part of my SAT score to make someone who crossed me feel—not just like a piece of shit—but like a tiny puddle of rat piss with a fly sitting in it, shitting in the rat piss and drinking it at the same time. I'm observant—from the moment I meet you I am learning and remembering everything there is to know about you, and my memory is like an elephant's—I never forget. So people feel close to me, they feel special, because I remembered stuff they said when they thought no one was paying attention. I'm a great person to talk to when you're having problems. I'll let you cry on my shoulder. I'll keep your secrets. And usually that's the way it goes.

But if you cross me, if you fuck with me at work, if you work against me, then I do this little thing I joke about with my sister by reaching around to the back of my head, at the top of my neck, and taking hold of one of those little YKKs and slowly unzipping my Matthew suit, brain first, all the way across to the front of my head, down my forehead, all the way down my face, and I plainly unzip the devil. Because that's what's inside of me. And that's what comes out when people push me. I don't like to be pushed. I actually tell people this. And then they push and push and push and I'm nice and nice and nice until one day—the YKK. Unzip the devil. Except my devil isn't an assassin. He's not a ninja. He's not a CIA torturer. He's a litigator. Yeah. He's a lawyer, the kind who puts you on the stand and asks you questions until you turn into a pile of rat shit with a butterfly sitting on top who gets stung by a scorpion five times its size and when the butterfly gets stung, the rat shit feels the sting.

An example: one time I was in Home Depot with my friend Mike. We were looking at floor tiles for a film set we were building. I had my backpack on—a red JanSport—and this guy and his girlfriend come by and as they pass, the guy pushes my backpack with the edge of his cart.

I looked at Mike. He saw what happened. The aisle was plenty wide—in fact it was a double wide aisle—so there was plenty of room for this guy and his girlfriend to pass us on the left without touching me. I could speculate on why he did this, but, realistically, he probably didn't mean anything by it. Realistically, he probably just has no spatial reasoning ability in his subpar brain and he pushed me by accident.

But he pushed me.

His cart touched my bag and my body and he didn't say "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry" or "Oops" or "Whoops" or "Geez" or any of the civilized things he could have said to make the situation right.

No. This asshole kept driving his cart with a superior posture and a smug face with his unfortunate girlfriend lagging behind him at a subservient distance and I waited till this guy and his girlfriend rounded the aisle and they were across from me and Mike, on the other side of where the tiles were. The aisle was half height so he could see me and he was looking at me and I was looking at him and I pointed in his fucking face and I said:

"You better watch yourself."

This Hollywood faggot cocks his head and says: "Excuse me?"

"You touched my bag with your cart and you didn't say anything."

"I don't have to say shit to you."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

I look around. I look at Mike. I consider the number of bow saws and cordless drills and nail guns that are practically within my hand inside this fucking store. And I can see by the look on Mike's face that he's got my back. And, no offense to this guy's girlfriend, but it's two guys against a guy and a girl and Mike and I were always drunk and usually not that far from our last lines of coke and I'm thinking the odds are stacking up in my favor and I want a fucking Sorry from this dickfuck so I say:

"You must really want to suck my cock."

"What the fuck did you just say to me?"

"Well, I gave you a chance to say you're sorry and you declined that option."

"Yes I decline that option. What are you, a couple of faggots?"

Mike steps forward.

"You got a problem with faggots?"

He says it in this real sweet voice. I love Mike.

"I wasn't talking to you," says the guy.

And Mike says: "Well you're talking to me now. You hit my friend's backpack—you practically ran into him with your cart—and when he asks you for a simple Sorry you can't be man enough to say, 'I'm sorry'? And now you suggest that me and my friend are faggots? You know what I have a problem with?"

The guy sighs.

"I got a problem with people who got a problem with faggots. What do you think, Matt, do you think this guy is gonna have to suck two dicks today?"

"You know what I think?"

"What do you think?" Mike echoes.

"I think—" I start.

But the guy starts walking away.

"Hey, dickstick, stop rolling that cart or you'll be dead before you reach register twelve."

He stops moving.

I look straight in this motherfucker's eyes.

"Thank you. I think..and this is just my intuition..and I'm a very intuitive person—"

Mike says, "He is a very intuitive person."

"I think that your girlfriend there—"

"Don't talk about my fucking girlfriend.

"No, see, I talk about whatever I want, and you listen..that's how we play this game. What I think is that your girlfriend there hasn't been properly fucked in a long, long time, and I think by the end of this little interaction of ours I will have your girl's number and you will be sucking my friend's dick. You like to have your dick sucked, don't you Mike?"

"I love it."

"You cum a lot when you cum, don't you, Mike?"

"I could prob'ly fill this whole faggot's mouth up in a single shot."

The girl says, "Baby, let's just go."

"Does he eat you out?"

"I will fuck you up," says this Hollywood assman.

I laugh, as always like fucking De Niro in Cape Fear—the only thing I'm missing is the cigar.

"All I want from you is a simple, 'I'm sorry, man, I hit you with my cart and I'm offering you a simple little bit of civility' that doesn't emasculate you, doesn't make you less of a man, it just makes you a guy..who's a little bit less of an asshole..than the guy you actually are. You wouldn't give me that. So now I'm talking to your girl. And you will stand there with your hands on that idiot cart and you will listen and you will keep your mouth shut—"

"Or else what?"

"Well, I was getting to that, but you interrupted me, so you have actually delayed yourself and you're gonna be in this store a couple of seconds longer than you would have if you hadn't interrupted me."

The guy starts pushing his cart away from his girlfriend.

"Ah ah!" I say.

"I wouldn't move that cart," Mike says.

"No," I say. "Don't move the cart."

"Baby just go," the woman says.

"No," I say. "Don't go." I say this like I would to a small child. "Now your cocksucking boyfriend is not eating your pussy properly, isn't that right."

The guy is like five shades redder than the last time I mentioned him eating out his girl's pussy.

"Come on, baby," the guy says.

"I wouldn't do that," I say.

"Why not," this guy says.

"Tell 'em, Mike."

This guy looks at my friend and says, "What, Mike, what are you gonna do?"

"It's not what I'm gonna do."

He points his thumb at me.

"It's what he's gonna do."

"Ok, what is he gonna do."

"Why don't you ask him."

The guy and his girlfriend just look at me like they're sorry they woke up that day. Poor motherfuckers. They thought they were just going to Home Depot to pick up some mini blinds, but the real mistake was that this meek little kind little simple little girl got together with a fuckstick who is either passive-aggressively trying to pick fights or is just too mentally handicapped to push a cart through a store without accidentally bumping into psychopaths like my friend and I.

Everyone's waiting for me, looking at me.

"Ok so under the passenger seat of our car—which is a rental—"

"I don't want to hear about your fucking car.

"See you keep interrupting me. And every time you interrupt me, that's another time my faggot friend is going to whack off in your face. We're up to three now—"

"We're up to two," says this asshole.

"We were up to two, but when you said, 'We're up to two,' you interrupted me, so that makes three. See? I'm like the Oracle from The Matrix—have you seen The Matrix?"

"Ok what's under the passenger seat of your car, which is a rental."

"I'm glad you asked. What's under there is a crowbar."

"So?"

"So if you and your hot little piece of ass make a run for the parking lot, we're gonna make a run for the parking lot, and I'm gonna get that crowbar and—"

"You're gonna beat in the windows of my Porsche."

"Ohohoho!" I laugh. "First of all, you interrupted me again. Mike, get your dick out. Secondly, you Hollywood piece of shit.." I laugh again. I'm doubling over. I can hardly breathe. "..hahaha. Do you know how low you are on the moral totem pole for bringing up what kind of car you drive while someone is sincerely telling you how you're going to die?"

---

The girl tries pushing her boyfriend, cart and all, but the guy won't budge. His ego is in it now, and there's nothing easier to manipulate than a man who has his ego invested in a fight.

"What did you say to me?"

"You heard me. You and your girl make a run for the parking lot no I'm not going to fuck up your Porsche. Ahhhh..ohhhhh..you're killing me with this Porsche shit. You're obviously not trying to impress her..'cause presumably she already knows you have a Porsche since she's sucked your dick in it a million times while in the bedroom you fail to return the favor—

"You don't know that."

"I would seriously advise you to stop interrupting me."

"Fuck you," he says, but there's a crack in it.

"No, I'm gonna fuck you..in the face..with my crowbar. Then my friend here is gonna jack off in your broken face while your girlfriend watches. Then we're going to kill you by injecting your jugular with a massive overdose of coke—Mike do we still have coke in the car?"

"Plenty."

"So you're going to die in the parking lot of Home Depot and your last thought is gonna be of me reaching these two fingers up inside your girl's pussy and rubbing her just right on that clump of nerves that's on the upper side, right there on the top of the pussy, just opposite the clitoris. That's what the G-spot is—a lot of guys don't know that—Mike, did you know that?"

"Oh yeah."

Mike rocks back and forth of his heels.

"And while you're lying out there in the Home Depot parking lot with your head beat in unrecognizably I'm going to be pulling my rental out onto Sunset Boulevard and me Mike and your girl—faggots that we all are—are gonna rent a room at the Hilton just down the street. You know the one?"

"Yeah."

He rolls his eyes.

"We're gonna get a nice big suite, we're gonna get your girl drunk, we're gonna do some recreational drugs, we're gonna fuck your girlfriend in both holes—"

"Three holes," Mike says.

"Three, four, depends on how you look at it," I say. "We'll make more. But I am going to make damn sure that your girlfriend doesn't think about you while we're making her cum over and over and over. In fact it doesn't look like she's thinking much about you right now—"

The guy almost jumps over the tile display.

His girlfriend barely holds him back.

"Let's just go baby!"

"Not before he says he's sorry!! Otherwise it'll be heart attack in the parking lot and I will make you cum, baby, about seventeen times in a row."

The guys arms are flailing and he's kicking the baseboard of the tile display and he's just screaming obscenities. I can't even describe what he said 'cause it was something like:

"COCKSUCKING BITCH ASSHOLE FUCK MY MOTHER YOU FAGGOT ASSHOLE IF YOU TOUCH MY GIRLFRIEND—"

"She's practically not even your girlfriend anymore. She's got my cock in her mouth. Let's all visualize that."

And he's like: "I WILL FUCK YOU SO HARD THREATEN ME I'M CALLING SECURITY MOTHERFUCKERS YOU CAN'T TREAT ME LIKE THIS I'M FROM BEVERLY HILLS."

"Just 'cause you're from Beverly Hills doesn't mean you can eat pussy. I'm gonna get this real crack ho bitch that me and Mike like to shoot coke with and we're gonna start you out eating her ass. You should really learn to eat ass before you eat pussy it's sort of like a 101 class as opposed to a 400-level class. And when you eat a crack ho's ass, she always grateful. That's what we're gonna set you up with, kind of like a starter course, while me and my friend go to work on your girlfriend. She looks kind of meek—you ever think about the first time she got fucked and wish you were there? I know it wasn't you. And I bet that motherfucker's cock was so big it tore that little pussy that you don't even know how to fuck properly and your girl was bleeding the first time she had that big bad black cock in her."

"I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!"

"BABY LET'S GO!!"

This guy is throwing tile samples all over both aisles, ripping his own hair out. The top button of his shirt has come undone.

"I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!!"

"All I'm asking for is a simple sorry for brushing my bag with your cart. What is it that makes that so hard for you?"

He's just panting now, his girl's arms around him, holding him back and she's looking me in the eye.

"Can I ask your name? I'm not gonna fuck with you."

"Crystal."

"Crystal, is this the first time he's 'accidentally' bumped into someone in a store with his cart—was this an accident?—or do we have a little passive-aggressive thing going on here? Somebody looking for a fight."

"He's done it before."

The guy looks straight up and says: "Crystal!!!"

"It's true, baby. Now can we just go?"

"Yes, you can go. Once he says he's sorry."

"I'm not saying I'm sorry."

And Crystal says, "Are you really a psychopath?"

And I say, "Crystal, psychopath is one of those words, like narcotic or genius, that has had so many definitions throughout history that it's really best not used at all. That term has become so loaded with meanings that it hardly means anything at all. If you look those words up in a dictionary when you get home I think you'll see what I mean."

"Ok," Crystal says. "I understand what you mean. I'm not stupid."

"I can see that."

"You said 'when you get home.' Are you gonna let us go home?"

"I'm gonna let you go home after I make you cum seventeen times. But him I'm not letting go any further than the parking lot unless he says he's sorry."

The girl shakes her head.

"Can I ask you one question—no bullshit?"

"Yes."

"And you'll answer with the truth, just the simple truth?"

"Yes, absolutely."

"Ok," she says.

She breathes out sharply.

"Is there really a crowbar under the passenger seat of your rental?"

"Yes there is."

"Baby just say you're sorry."

He looks at her.

"Please, baby, just say you're sorry and let's leave. Don't provoke them. Just say you're sorry like your mama told you how to say it when you're young."

The asshole says very slowly: "My 'mama' never taught me to say 'I'm sorry.' "

And I don't say this, but I think to myself: This is the root of this whole altercation. This Hollywood rich kid—I'm sorry, Beverly Hills rich kid—never learned to say I'm sorry. And I don't like to be pushed. Put those two together and you have a Home Depot customer service nightmare.

The guy says "I'm sorry" under his breath and starts pushing the cart away from us without his girlfriend.

Mike says: "Louder, asshole!"

And the guy yells, "I'm sorry!!" and it echoes throughout the store.

His girlfriend shakes her head at us and goes after her guy.

---

Mike and I are unable to find a tile we like for the set we're trying to build. As we make a left turn out of the Home Depot parking lot onto Sunset Boulevard, Mike says:

"Don't take this the wrong way, but every time we leave the house I feel like it's a toss-up between you and I to see which one of us gonna get us both killed."

"You're right. I don't take it personally. I'm sorry. I'm a very angry person, Mike."

"I know." He laughs. "I've know that since the day I met you."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Since when exactly?"

"You wanna know the exact moment?"

"If you remember it!"

"Well, we were eating Baja Fresh with Mhanna and Pete, and Mhanna said something you didn't agree with—it was something about a film, I think it was about Mean Girls or 2001 or something—do you remember that?"

"No."

"Well Mhanna said he liked a certain film and you looked at him like he had just said the dumbest thing that had ever been said in the history of filmmaking."

"Well..Mhanna and I have different ideas about what makes a great film, and just because Stanley Kubrick does it, does not necessarily make it the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of filmmaking."

"You don't like Stanley Kubrick?"

"I love Stanley Kubrick. Love love love. But there are some parts of 2001 that are just too damn long. Period. You know. For today's appetite. And believe me, I've heard the argument a thousand ways, but how fucking long does it take to introduce a spaceship??? Maybe if it's nineteen sixty-eight and you're popping ludes and tripping on acid and smoking pot and your girlfriend's hand is on your dick and she uses that long-ass scene as an opportunity to get you to cum all over her hand, then yeah, maybe it's a great scene. But Mhanna is of the age that he's hero-worshipping Kubrick just because he's a 'great filmmaker' but just because you're a great filmmaker doesn't mean everything you do is great. And Mean Girls is not a masterpiece. It's very funny. But it's not a masterpiece. It's a future cult classic. Which is respectable. But it's not a masterpiece."

We drive up to the parking lot at Sunset and Vine. We always go to the same restaurant for lunch. The food's ok, the wine is great, and you can smoke outside which is perfect for us since we're both trying to get cancer.

"Something else I wanted to ask you."

"What, Mike?"

"Do you have a problem with niggers?"

"Do you have a problem with faggots?"

"No, but I mean, deep down, do you have a problem with black people?"

"Of course not. Why are you asking me this?"

" 'Cause you always talk about black dicks recently."

"I think you mean black cocks."

"I'm serious."

---

"Well, I'll tell you. I got that one from Rishi. I'm sure she'd tell you differently but when we were breaking up she was always telling me about other guys' cocks she'd fucked or was fucking or that she wanted to fuck. And the way I remember it she was telling me about some black guy's cock she fucked and she was describing it in infinite detail, it's length, it's girth, the way it felt in her hands, the way it felt in her mouth, and how much she liked to be fucked by a big black cock. And I'm like, 'Rishi, why are you telling me this?' And she's like, 'I don't know. We weren't talking about anything else.' And I'm like, 'When you say something, do you imagine what the effect might be on the other person, 'cause that's called empathy.' And she's like, 'I'm sorry if you're uncomfortable with me talking about other guys' cocks.' And I'm like, 'Rishi, I just don't see how it's relevant to us. How does the fact that you fucked a big black cock relate to us?' And she's like, 'Well, it's just something I wanted to talk about. If you have something you want to talk about, I'll listen.' 'Just not cocks, ok?' 'Why are you so bothered by other men's cocks? Do you feel you're inadequate?' 'Rishi, do you cum when we fuck?' 'Baby you know that I cum.' 'Do you cum a lot?' 'You know that I do.' 'Do you know that I do?' 'Of course! Remember when you came seven times in one day?' 'I'll never forget it. So, if I'm cumming at least once when we fuck and you're cumming once or twice, then why would I feel inadequate about my dick?' 'Oh, baby,' she says. 'I cum three or four times when we fuck. You always make me cum.' 'Then why are we talking about black cocks?' I said. But she wouldn't leave it alone. We're sitting in Groundwork, on that one couch? And I was programming some of my snail puzzles and she kept going on and on about black cocks and then I went a little crazy, I'll admit, and I kind of went on this poetic monologue about black cocks and Rishi's many relationships to them. I couldn't help it. She was driving me crazy talking about other men, I'm like, either shut up, or take me home and fuck me, or get off the couch and go fuck some black cocks while I program!! That girl was crazy about stuff like that. When we lived in Tucson, she'd come home and tell me that some guy flirted with her in the grocery store. I'd be like, 'So what?' She'd be like, 'He wanted to fuck me.' I'd be like, 'What do you want me to do, Rishi, follow you around and rough up every guy that wants to fuck you? Girls flirt with me all the time in the grocery store. They want to fuck me, I want to fuck them. You know what the difference is between you and me?' Rishi said, 'What?' I said, 'By the time I come home to you at the end of the day, I've forgotten about all those girls, and I want to fuck you. But when you come home to me, you're still thinking about that guy in the grocery store who flirted with you. And—and—what's worse—you feel the need to tell me about it.' "

"So you don't have a problem with black people?"

"No. Look, the only people who have ever beat me up or chased me home from school and one time if was four guys against one—four black, one white—do you think that had anything to do with color? Maybe it did and maybe it didn't but I don't go around hating black people just because in high school four black kids beat the shit out of me. I think beating someone up is a stupid thing to do, and I think those kids were stupid for doing that to me, but their stupidity has more to do with being poor than being black. Stupid white people too. Am I acting racist lately or something?"

"No, it's just that guy back there, when you told him that his girlfriend lost her virginity to a black guy..it just made me wonder.."

"If I dislike black people?"

"I just wondered why you said that, is all."

"I said that because I was guessing that he would have trouble with the image of a black guy taking his girl's virginity."

"I think you guessed right."

"Yeah, what a fucker."

"You know what else I think? And don't take this the wrong way."

"Mike. How long have we known each other?"

"Well. I think you might need therapy."

I look at Mike and can feel the laughter welling up inside us both.

"Might?" I say.

And we're both cracking up.

---

We get a table at our favorite restaurant, outside, so we can smoke. We order bottles of wine and appetizers and pasta and lamb and Mike pulls out a Camel Light and I pull out a Kamel Red and we smoke and it's sunny and each of us has a friend and life is beautiful.

Until these bitch-ass motherfuckers sitting several tables away from us start talk really loudly about the smoke, especially the woman, who says, "I thought smoking was illegal in LA. I don't want to get cancer just because somebody has to break the law to smoke on the veranda. Ugh. Some people have no respect for other people's lives, even. I would never date a man who smokes—I heard it shrinks your peen."

I look at Mike.

Mike looks at me.

I smile.

And Mike opens his mouth.

He shouts back at the woman: "Uh..miss! Miss? First of all, it's Mountain Dew that shrinks your peen, and if you'd like to step into the bathroom I will be happy to demonstrate to you that I don't drink Mountain Dew. Secondly, this isn't a veranda, it's a patio—if you need further explanation of those terms, my friend here is very smart and I'm sure he can clear up the exact definitions for you but I grew up in the Bay Area and growing up in the Bay Area gave me an intrinsic—is that the right word?"

I nod, chuckling silently.

"Anyway a veranda has a roof, doesn't it?"

I nod. I'm smiling hard—I love my friend.

"So miss, if you don't mind, I would appreciate it if you would refer to this as a patio as that is the correct term and just to support everyone's understanding of what the fuck you're talking about. You show me one piece of research that says cigarettes cause cancer and I will put this cigarette out right away. I wouldn't want to offend you or give you cancer while you're eating—what is that, a chicken salad?"

"It's just a salad."

"Is your boyfriend worried you'll get fat or something?"

I hear a chair slide along the brick floor of the patio.

I turn around.

This executive-type dude in a dark suit stands up and says:

"I'm her husband."

I point my cigarette at him and I say: "Husband!"

I snap to get his attention.

"Look at me. Smoking is legal on this patio so you better sit back down and shut your wife up or I'm going to go out to my car—which is a rental—and I'm going to get my crowbar. So eat your lunch, no more comments about the smoke, and keep the volume down in general or I'm going to have to beat your face in in front of your wife and all these nice people. I will cover your check to offset the fact that we're giving you cancer."

"You don't need to cover our check."

"No I will cover your check and get your wife something to eat. She looks like an American Apparel model on crack. In fact, she looks like a skinny, skinny boy—you actually like to fuck that?"

The guy starts toward us.

But I shout: "Franco!"

The owner comes over. He gives me a big hug and greets me by name and kisses me on the cheeks and Mike looks like he's about to hang himself because, even though Mike is with me almost every time I come to Franco's, Franco always showers me with the hellos he showers on his own family—and completely ignores Mike. It's a puzzle we haven't been able to figure out, and Mike takes it very personally.

"Matthew, is everything good? What can I get you?"

The husband of this cancer-phobic couple has been standing behind Franco this whole time.

"Franco, this is my friend Dick."

"Hello Dick!"

Franco shakes his hand.

"Any friend of Matthew's is a friend of mine!"

The guy kind of smirks—like someone who never learned to smirk properly. Absent mother, I'm thinking.

"Franco, Dick's little boy is very hungry."

I direct Franco's attention to Dick's wife, and Franco looks at her.

"She would like the gorgonzola pasta and they would each like a bottle of wine."

"One bottle of wine for them to share?"

"No, they each need one."

"No we don't."

"Yes, you do. And I'll cover their check."

"No. You won't."

"Yes. I will."

I smoked my cigarette and me and Dick had a little staring contest.

And Dick was silent.

Franco led the man back to his seat, got the woman something real to eat, and, even though it was confusing even for the sommelier, they each had a bottle of wine. I paid for their meal. And Mike and I sat there and smoked. And you know what we didn't hear? Some bitch whining about our cigarette smoke, some high-dollar executive telling me what his wife will and will not eat. I tell you. That was how I did it back then. I wanted to control you, humiliate you, and silence you. That's really what I wanted—for everyone to stop bugging me and shut the fuck up.

213

For me, in my mind, things are sometimes simple, things are sometimes complex. A very small number of people augment my desired state of mind, and most people detract from it.

Back then, the righteous smackdown was still alive. Actually it was out of control like Audrey II (from Little Shop of Horrors?). Mike was right, he and I were risking our lives every time we left the apartment. We weren't fighters. We were just angry. And each of our anger was comedy to the other. We weren't about to beat someone's head in with a crowbar—we just discovered that everyone, bar none, was more afraid of conflict than we were. People are afraid. They're really afraid. And we were drunk enough and high enough and young enough to think it was funny to take out our own sadness on other people by doing crazy aggressive shit that these other people did not see coming when they woke up in the morning.

Internally, each in a slightly different way, Mike and I were out of control. Our feeble solution was to impose some chaotic control over others. It got us high. If we weren't pretending to be psychopaths, if we weren't drinking and shooting stuff into our veins, we would have been standing in a church crying our eyes out with a bunch of other out-of-control addicts—which I did, later. I don't know about Mike. He sent me an email years ago, saying that you don't meet too many people in life you connect with, and it was a shame to waste a friendship over the stupid shit that ended ours. He was right—it was a mature position. I guess he grew. I guess I did, too. But I didn't want to be his friend anymore.

Dr. Meggs cut right to the heart of things with me. In the first hour we spoke, she somehow asked the right questions to get me to tell her about my potty-training experiences with Dad, and she told me that we learn how to relate to others in the first relationships we participate in as small children. Dad had taught me the humiliator-humiliated pattern by standing over me, shouting at me and forcing my hands to clean the shit out of my big-boy underwear when I went poop in them. And I remember squatting over a heating vent, looking out the huge picture windows on our foresty street with big yards and almost no traffic. And I remember shitting in my underwear, feeling the hot feces spread over my bottom and legs. And it gave me pleasure..to know that it would infuriate my father.

You have to ask yourself, who's controlling who in that game—who's training who? When I shit in my undies you can force me to clean it out with my hands in the toilet while you yell at me. But by shitting where I'm not supposed to, I can control you, Dad—I can make you angry, make your face red and your veins pop out and make you lose control of your emotion and the consciousness that governs correct behavior. Even by making you treat me badly, in a way, I'm in control!

But I didn't want to be humiliated. That was the role my dad forced me to play, as he humiliated me by making me touch my own shit while he watched and controlled me by yelling at me and scaring me.

So for decades, I learned to play the other side of that game. I learned how to humiliate my dad, first of all—learned all of his buttons and weaknesses. I loved learning our family history—partly because I'm interested in where I came from, what makes me tick, but partly, I have to admit as I write these pages, I needed that history to know how to hurt my dad. Every story about how his sisters humiliated him by forcing him against his will to wear girls' clothes and then prancing him around before his parents for their disapproval, every piece of information like: in my dad's family, the girls got to go to out-of-state colleges (good colleges) while the boys had to go to the college in Ruston, Louisiana (a lesser, state college)..stuff like that is fascinating just because I want to decipher the sickness of my family, of my now-dead grandparents, or my father, of myself. But it's also ammunition. Every little thing I know about my dad, that I learn from him, my mom, my sisters, his sisters, old letters—all that stuff is power—it's power that I can use to change the game. And that childish satisfaction of changing the game so that I was the humiliator and he was the humiliated..was all the satisfaction I could get for a long time. Simply making him hurt—even while he was still making me hurt!—it didn't make me happy, but it gave me some control. And I was willing to settle for that little bit of control because I didn't have the psychological tools to negotiate anything greater.

It is said that the basic structure of all comedy is the structure of making the powerful fall. When the king falls off his horse, that's comedy because with all his power, the king is unable to avoid the simple mistake of falling. That makes us laugh because essentially we have no power. Regardless of your worldly trappings, your bank balance, your reputation, a human being basically has nothing. Is in control of nothing. We can't stop ourselves from getting sick, from ultimately dying. We can't stop tragedies from happening to those we love. We can't choose our parents. We can't raise perfect kids. So according to this theory that what underlies all humor is seeing the powerful fall, I think humor in general is a lightness and a realism—it's an admission of death, of imperfection. But instead of being sad, it makes us laugh, because instead of lying to ourselves, we're telling the truth.

And according to this theory, I've had a pretty funny life, because I've been trying to make the powerful fall since I was two years old. My dad does such a good job of humiliating himself that he stopped being the main target of my humiliation once I went to college. But the lesson he taught me—which my tiny mind interpreted as: never be humiliated, always be the humiliator—was learned so well, fucking ingrained in me so well and so deep that I was never aware that I was even doing it until after I tried to kill myself and a smart psychiatrist heard this pattern in the very first stories I told her. Like they say, a fish has no idea what water is—humiliating others was like water to me. I did it so often and so well I didn't even know I was doing it.

I loved the story of The Emperor's New Clothes by the formidable Hans Christian Andersen. My bosses were like the emperor: Ray, a boss I had, was such a pompous ass, he knew nothing but didn't know that he knew nothing. No skills as a programmer, politically gullible, when he heard on the radio that his idol, Rush Limbaugh, was a drug addict, he went into denial, dissociated. A guy who used to be such a capitalist-flag-waving workaholic that he missed his wife giving birth to their second child, Ray fractured over the years. Instead of working late each night for the owner of our company who lived in sunny Florida, while we worked in icy Ohio, Ray started doing thirty minutes of work a day and played chintzy MMORPGs all day at his desk. He put a two-hundred gallon saltwater fish tank in his office and spent hours searching for just the right fish on the internet. But Ray loved to insult me, make fun of me, steal my ideas and present them to the owner as though they were his, never mentioning my name. What did I do? I did what I learned as a child!—I humiliated him. In meetings with the whole company present, I pointed out logical errors in his project planning documents and his software designs and his code. I said things and showed things and asked questions of him in front of others that were designed to reveal his actual stupidity. I revealed his secrets to fellow employees, to the owner. This last got me fired. Our owner Jim was loyal to Ray, even though Ray was a fuck up. I wasn't about to have some faker take credit for my ideas. The audacity that I would revel, in a send-to-all email, that Ray was lying in saying he came up with an idea, when I had been presenting it to him for months and for months he denied me, telling me my idea was unworkable and we'd never implement it. Then he comes out and says: I've had this great idea that we're all going to do! When I publicly crucified Ray for either stealing my idea or being so brain-dead that he didn't remember it was mine, it was too much for Jim. The owner fired me.

I've quit a lot of jobs—been fired from two—and while there is the inconvenience of figuring out where my next meal is coming from, quitting and even being fired has always been an extremely pleasurable thing for me—it means that I won't have to deal with those nonsense people anymore. Like Hannibal Lecter, mediocrity exasperates me.

---

On the flip side, to live by this pattern my dad taught me, it is essential to never be humiliated. My method for this was twofold:

Be perfect. This is extremely labor-intensive but it is possible for a smart person to do. At work, I always made sure my code was perfect—I thought about it from so many perspectives that a whole company of programmers would never think about it that much. I developed rigorous, brilliant, flawless thought—even people who like to debate don't like to debate me because I wear them out. I never get tired. I never get outdone. I never let you think of something I haven't already thought of first. As I said, this is extremely labor-intensive and, really, no way to live.

Second method for never being humiliated. Just don't give a fuck. Minimize, in your mind, the importance of other people's opinions of you, of their judgements, their praise. Basically don't give a fuck about anyone else. Develop such a strong internal guide and self-assessment that your ship can't be tossed about by the waves. Just don't care what people think. Ignore other people, and almost everything they say—because almost everything they say is junk. Unlike (1), I think (2) is a pretty good way to live your life.

I have humiliated many people—mostly coworkers and uncles, people who think they have more power than me, who are actually a lot feebler than they know, and I am happy to perform the service of knocking them down off their self-constructed pedestal, ideally for everyone to see. I'm not going to go into any more examples—just imagine me, with this hurtful technique that I go around using on people, getting my satisfaction out of knowing that people who tried to hurt me got hurt worse.

Benign people or people who work with me, I gave my whole life to. People who work against me when, if I was never provoked, I would never hurt a hair on anyone's head?—I had a special hate for those people, and, unfortunately, usually I had the tools to make them comedy..to reveal to those whose opinions they valued and needed..that they weren't heroes..they were pieces of shit. It's a fucking horrible thing to do, but it's the best I knew how to do at the time. As the sage Maya Angelou wrote: "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."

It took me trying to kill myself and having a sharp-as-a-tack psychiatrist hold a mirror up to my humiliator-humiliated pattern to even start to unravel that rat's maze of automatic behavior wired into my brain. I didn't get it when my doctor first showed it to me—oh, I got it intellectually, sure, but to get it from the mind to the fingers, that took about five more years of thinking, especially this last crucial year of living with my mom (read: 99% psychologically safe environment), being sober for longer than I have before (helps thinking!), and doing some sort of spiritual program (AA and meditation, in my case—which I failed at miserably, but at least with meditation, I'm pretty sure that's the whole point).

214

And there came a day when Mike and had our last words. I asked him if it was true that he had been talking bad about me to our common film school friends—if he was talking behind my back.

Mike's last words to me were to tell me that yes, he was talking shit about me behind my back.

And my last words to him were to kick his bedroom door in, splintering the wood, beating the shit out of this cheap-ass hollow door until there was no door, no door handle, only a partial frame and a pile of firewood in the larger of the two bedrooms in our Valley Village apartment.

Earlier that night, I was passed out drunk. The instant Mike came home he barged into my room and turned on the light and we were in each other's faces in a yelling match. I asked him what he said to these assholes who used to be my friends too and he went on and on about how he thought I was stealing his soap and I was like:

"Mike, I'm not stealing your soap!"

I laugh hilariously.

"Then what do you bathe with?"

"I use shampoo."

"For your whole body?"

"Yes, look at the label. It's combination body wash and shampoo—this has been around for a while now."

"So you haven't been using my special soap, in the eggshell dish?"

"No one's using your soap, Mike."

"What about my shampoo?"

"I don't use your shampoo."

"Then why is it going down so quickly? One day it's like up to here..and the next day..it's like all the way down here!!"

"It's prob'ly because you take two-hour showers and you're jerking off with the stuff."

Mike looks at me like he's ready to hit me and I just shake my head.

Hit me and you will see the wrath. You see this zipper starting at the back of my head? The devil will come out and kill your privileged ass.

"I just don't see how a grown man takes so many baths," he says.

"What?!"

I'm laughing so hard.

"Well I never see you take a shower."

"Sandow, bathing is a cultural thing. It's culturally specific. Some Europeans bathe twice a day—that's two baths. In fact, in Medieval times, the church banned bathing for a variety of reasons including that they believed disease was passed through water, so more bathing meant more diseases, aside from the fact that they wanted to discourage people from having sex in public baths. Women were banned from bathing. Then I guess it was just a bunch of guys sitting round getting clean and jerking each other off."

"Ok, but..we're not in Medieval Europe. We're in America. People here take showers."

"I take showers too but I find baths meditative."

"Uh-huh."

"What is your point here? Are you telling me you would like me to take more showers, less baths—is my ratio off for you?"

"No, asshole, what I'm saying is: I know you're not into the whole use-soap-every-day thing, but in a bath, how can you be sure you're getting clean? I mean aren't you bathing in your own scum? And if you've taken a shit since the last time you took a bath, aren't you bathing in your own shit?"

"Mike, when you take a shit, do you wipe your ass afterward?"

"What is this, some Pulp Fiction-style question where I answer and then you turn my answer into a joke?"

"No, Mike, this has nothing to do with Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, Samuel L. Jackson, or what Marsellus Wallace looks like. I'm just asking you, when you wipe your ass, do you stop when the last wipe has shit on it, or do you keep going until you get a clean piece of toilet paper?"

"This is some Pulp Fiction-style shit. I'm not playing along with this."

"Play along or don't play along, all I'm saying is when I take a shit, I clean my ass sufficiently that if I take a bath at some point in the future, I am not bathing in my own shit, as you suggested."

"But your ass isn't perfectly clean."

"No one's ass is perfectly clean, except an infant baby that's never taken a shit in its short little life. That's the only time in your whole life your ass is perfectly clean—enemas and cleanses aside. At every moment after the point at which that baby takes its first shit, its ass is not perfectly clean. But unless you have a gaping asshole, or else you're taking a shit in the bathtub while you're in there, the fact that prior to that bath, at some time, I have taken a shit, does not mean that I am bathing in my own shit. And on the matter of bath scum that you seem so concerned I am bathing in, be advised that you can clean something with something else that isn't perfectly clean and still get that original thing perfectly clean. The sponge behind the kitchen sink was only perfectly clean before we ever used it, and yet—through the magic of soap—that now-dirty sponge can still get our dishes as clean as you could get them with a brand new sponge—do you see my point?"

"Whatever. I can't even deal with you right now. You and Courtney always get me in these smart people conversations where by the end I don't even know what we started out talking about. It makes my head hurt."

"Is this the type of shit you've been talking to Brock and Jay about? Telling them I'm stealing the soap from your eggshell dish?"

"Yes, ok, and I have the right to talk to them about whatever I want."

"Yeah but don't you see how that feels to me? When you talk to them about it, it's you insulting me and accusing me of something I didn't do. If you had talked to me we could have cleared it up because I don't like your special soap in your eggshell dish or your faggoty brand of body wash anyway—Jesus, what man uses strawberry body wash?!"

"What man takes a bath instead of a shower?"

"Did you really go to Jay and Brock to talk shit about me instead of talking to me to my face?"

"Well, to be honest, Matt, you're kinda scary to talk to."

"And you think Jay and Brock are easier to talk to?"

"Yeah. Definitely. They're more like normal-type guys."

"You think their company suits you better?"

"Honestly, I do."

"You wanna know what I think about that?"

"What?" he asked.

And I braced my hands on my own door frame and kicked that motherfucker's door in. It didn't break all in once piece. I had to keep kicking it and kicking it and beating it with my hands and once Mike called me a "Psychopath!" I started beating his door in with my head. "Like that??!! Is that what you think a psychopath does, you stupid faggot!!??" He collected his cigs and his favorite baseball cap—Oakland A's maybe..I don't know..I don't even know what sport that is..or if it's really a team—but he snugly put on this cap that made him feel like he was some kind of baller, some sports-related character that he idolized in his simple fucking brain. He left and slammed the door so hard that the apartment number (16) fell off the door—previously it had been nailed in place but Michael slammed the door so hard that the nails came out of the wood.

---

As for me, I beat that faggot's bedroom door into firewood—just splinters and hardware. Then I got incredibly drunk and started texting Mike to watch himself and maybe don't come home tonight and then I tried to get under his skin reminding him that he used to sleep on the same mattress with his friend Mario when they were growing up shooting meth together, so I texted Mike and called him a faggot and said it's ok that you're gay, Mike, you don't have to hide it, and then I remembered how he had shown me Brokeback Mountain and instead of him sitting in the chair and me sitting on the beanbag, we had both sat on the couch and talked intimately about the movie afterward. I wasn't sure if he was making a pass at me and in real life—in my real mind—I didn't give a shit if Mike was was gay or straight or bi. But that night I was pulling out the stops to try and get under that motherfuckers's skin for talking shit about me behind my back. I'll admit I'm a crazy motherfucker, but I do have rules for friendships and loyalty is rule number one. The fucker was poisoning Brock and Jay against me with lies! Now, granted, Jay is just a two-faced movie lover who fucks sixteen-year-old virgins for the same reason he fucks fifty-year-old former Victoria's Secret models—the status. I have just as much estimation of Jay as I do of a tadpole randomly picked from any fishing pond in North America. I mean the guy pronounces "Orangina" not as orangEEna, the correct way of saying it, but purposely as oranJIna, because it rhymes with vaGIna—then he shrugs his shoulders, squints his eyes, and giggles like a little child. I struggle for the footing I would need to respect a guy like that. And Brock—who fucking cares.

But I did care what Mike thought of me, and he had let me know in a series of recent arguments that he thought his cinematography career was advancing in such a way that he had lapped me. He was the artist now and I was a no-talent piece of shit. Of course your film career is going well, Mike—your daddy's rich and your uncle is Jerry Bruckheimer. Oh and news flash: I'm the only one, out of all your LA friends, who didn't give a shit who your uncle was. You think Jay "Orangina" Cheramie would be hanging around you if your uncle wasn't Jerry Bruckheimer? Wake the fuck up.

I suppose my texts must have gotten violent. I got a call from my friend Ashley.

"Want me to come pick you up?"

"No, I'm watching the Lakers. Lamar Odom is a genius."

"You can watch the Lakers at our house," Ashley sing-songs.

"I'm good."

"Actually, I'm going to come pick you up. Mike is scared to come home."

"Tell him to come home! I have lots to say to that motherfucker!!"

"Are you drinking? That's a stupid question. Of course you're drinking. Look, I'm picking you up. The Lakers will be waiting for you at our house."

"Ok."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

In the time it took Ashley to get to me and Mike's apartment, I managed to unplug all the cords from the PlayStation, all the TVs, the refrigerator, microwave, and any lamps Mike might want to use. Then I went into Mike's bedroom (this is how drunk I was) and I stood on his bed and pissed all over his comforter, his pillows, his clothes, everything.

Sometimes I lose control.

I do crazy things.

I hate myself for them afterwards.

Usually other people forgive me—but usually I don't forgive myself. I live with the knowledge that I'm intolerable as a friend, a lover, an employee. What can I say? I'm fucking crazy. Nobody wants to deal with that.

Even me. I don't want to live like this. I have suicidal-level self-hatred very, very often. I should probably be in a secure wing of some hospital to protect me from myself. But there are no laptops in a psych ward, no internet, no cell phones. And there are a handful of people out here who still put up with me. They say they love me, they say they always will. But I don't believe them. I can't—my illness tells me they're lying, that they're not real people, that they're stand-ins, actors playing roles. My doctor isn't really my doctor—she's just playing the role of my doctor. I'm not really her patient—I'm just playing the role of her patient. My mother isn't really my mother..she doesn't really love me..she's just appeasing me, waiting around until I die. Then she'll go off to play the role of mother in someone else's life.

215

Then one day I was talking with my mom, and I don't know but something in the conversation just clicked me into place. It was very simple. I said: You know, I've been locked into this humiliator-humiliated pattern for so long, but I'm on a new kick now—I don't want to hurt people. It might be as simple as age, but there comes a time where a lot of people stop fighting—in a good way. It doesn't mean I don't have things I'm working on with great passion. It doesn't mean I'm resigned to death. It means that certain arguments that I would have gotten into when I was younger, I don't get into now. Because I don't want to, I don't have to, and because they don't serve me. When people fight me, I don't have to fight them—and I don't anymore, ever. I just don't do that type of interaction. I do other things instead =)

So there's a new game I've learned to play: it's called do nothing. Let the other person spin their wheels, wear themselves out, talk to someone else other than me.

Or, there's this game I like called flow. It very literally is the opposite of fight.

But none of that is the point.

What clicked in that conversation with my mom—and I cried when I told her what I was realizing about myself in that moment—is that I'm putting down the humiliator role forever. With everyone. I'm never going to do that again. That's just half of it, though. The reason I'm putting down humiliation is that I am learning compassion (for everyone) and once I get that, of course I don't want to hurt or humiliate everyone. It is obvious to me now in a way that it wasn't long ago, that we are all one organism—the whole universe, the Everything, god, whatever you call it, it's all one living thing—and to hurt part of it hurts all of it and to heal part of it heals all of it. I don't want to hate anymore. I don't want to humiliate. I want to heal and I want to build.

And I think of some of the people who do that so well, people I have known. Like Mike's and my sad comedy, some of the most insidiously powerful healers I have come across are also the people feeling the most hurt. Role-playing games get this right: the black mage deals the most damage, but has the least defense. The white mage heals her companions, but takes the most hate from the monster you're fighting. My friend Rebecca was a white mage. She took so much heat that she died before her twenty-first birthday—but before that she healed people. She healed strangers. She healed me. Words and actions she took in this life guide me to this day, so much so that in a very real sense she lives within me.

I can be that black mage and I can be that white mage. I can destroy—good god, can I destroy. But that's me on a bad day, the me who no reasonable person would fight because reasonable people perceive themselves as having something to lose whereas (on a bad day) I care so little about myself that I'll kill us both just to destroy you—I count that as winning. (I'm in a psych ward for trying to kill myself, remember?) But that's not all of who I am. When someone I love is doing something hard, like raising a child or writing a book, I have another role, other than destruction, that I play so well and so naturally and that is so satisfying to me that I can't ignore it. In fact I want to water it, help it grow new pathways in my brain.

This is the part where I start crying.

Because this new role, or at least this underdeveloped role, is actually built into my core as deeply as the role of humiliator. I'm not sure I can say where it came from, except to guess that it came from my mom (and maybe a little bit from my dad when we were really young). But remember in the beginning when I told you that Joanne and I think that we had the perfect upbringing to become artist—one parent who disapproves of everything you do, no matter what you do, and one parent who would approve of anything we did, no matter what it was. I'm not trying to say my mom is all good and my dad is all bad—obviously life is not that simple. Both of my parents ignored us more than I think they should—and they still do. But opposite my dad's chronic pattern of humiliation, passed down to him by his sisters, his parents, who knows who..opposite that pattern was another pattern, which my mother exemplifies, which Rebecca exemplifies, which my massage therapist Libby exemplifies, and the reason I like these women, the root reason, the reason at the core, is that they're playing out a role that I want to play, intentionally, in my life.

It is the opposite of humiliator—and that's why it's so fucking powerful to me. The humiliator makes you feel bad about yourself—I want to make you feel good about yourself. The humiliator rubs your face in everything you did wrong—I want to raise your face to show you everything you do well. The humiliator wants you to lose—I want you to win. And so I am intentionally trading humiliator in..for cheerleader.

That's right, I'm hanging up the whip and picking up a pair of pompoms.

It's really quite natural for me—I've been doing it all along. I encourage my sisters. I encourage my mom. I encourage all writers, everywhere, because I feel their task so deeply. So my white mage has been here all along—he's just been playing second fiddle to my black mage who thought winning was impossible and blowing everything up (including myself) was a decent alternative.

I'm not doing that anymore—I can't. I've realized how bad it was making me feel, and how guilty, and how angry, and I have realized that I cannot live with anger, because anger makes me want to kill myself..and for me, killing myself isn't a fantasy..it's something where thoughts turn into actions and actions, if I go there again, may erase me sooner than I and some other people might want me to go. So I can't live in anger! Anger is literally deadly for me. I've had to find a new way to live. And step by step I am finding it.

I've given an example of an altercation I had ten years ago with my friend Mike in a Home Depot in Los Angeles. Now I'm going to give an example of a conversation I had tonight on Twitter. This is the actual conversation, just copied and pasted from my Twitter window to here:

MarieLamb: There was a time when nothing was impossible.

Matthew: I believe that time will come again.

MarieLamb: I hope so dear. It seems so difficult now, if not impossible :/

Matthew: Yes, I know that feeling which is why your Tweet resonated so perfectly with me. You said "hope"—I think that's the key.

MarieLamb: Hope, yes.

Matthew: Keep your hope like the spark of the universe the Childlike Empress holds in the NeverEnding Story..nothing is lost.

MarieLamb: This was so beautiful. Thank you.

Matthew: You're welcome. A deep bow to you =) \<3

MarieLamb: Same here.

That's me acting as a cheerleader. I'm playing a new role now. I can't cheerlead everyone—it's not appropriate. I still have to deal with people who are actively trying to hurt me, but now I "turn to the side," as Mamet's character says in Redbelt. "Everything has a force. Embrace it or deflect it..why oppose it?" I used to oppose it. Now I deflect it—I turn to the side.

I'm doing this for myself—because of how it makes me feel.

One of the wisest people I've ever met said of herself, "The reason I feel this way right now is because I want to feel this way." I don't think that's literally true for everyone at all times—bipolar disorder, for example, changes your brain at such a basic level that sometimes your thoughts and feelings are absolutely out of your control—but I think what she said contains a profound truth. There is a sense in which my early experiences with my dad gave me a deep need not to be humiliated—and my solution was to become the humiliator. I needed—I wanted—to feel the power side of the humiliator-humiliated relationship pattern. Now that need has expired, and I want to feel something new.

I told Joanne I had to retire the righteous smackdown.

"Really?" she said.

"Yeah, I'm working on being less angry."

She said she respects any decision I make.

And one day as I'm telling Leona about my manic symptoms, ideas of reference (over a breakfast casserole coincidence) she says it's funny, because she's never experienced anything like that. Maybe I'm wrong about her automatic diagnosis of bipolar due to elevated mood on antidepressants—like my doctor says, my sensing organ is broken. Who am I to diagnose my sister? Or maybe she has mood disturbances without psychosis. Or maybe I shouldn't be worried about it—that's her, I'm me, I gotta let her do her thing and focus on my own life.

---

Text to Mom:

ME: I wanted to tell you that I had an unusually good day yesterday, psychologically. Some evidence: I spoke with Leona on the phone without using my earbuds and didn't even notice we had talked for 55 minutes before Leona pointed out that we had gone over my usual half an hour limit..I didn't feel tired or drained by the conversation as I lately typically have by long phone conversations. Also I took a couple of breaks because I was feeling happy with where my book is going, laid down for a while without sleeping or working, then later watched part of Frozen..it's been a while since I did that. And this morning when I think about calling to get more tetrabenazine and more Lexapro, I don't feel overwhelmed, I feel capable. Maybe the rests were why I felt good. Maybe the Earthing. Maybe you being back. I'm not sure. But I wanted to file a special report with you on How Things Are Going For Me, just so you'd know.

---

About half the time I still don't believe I have this disease.

I asked my new doctor if maybe when he did the brain scan it wouldn't show that extra activity in the frontal lobe and we would know I'm not bipolar. And my doctor was like, "Oh, you're bipolar!" I'm always looking for a different diagnosis. But I never get one.

And then eventually I did, but it's not what I expect.

I was always looking for a diagnosis that's not bipolar—that I don't have bipolar disorder, that I'm well.

Instead, with the new DSM and a longer history of psychiatric observation, I get the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder—bipolar-type schizoaffective to be precise—it should be clear from your reading of previous sections that this means you show signs of bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia.

My diagnosis had changed again, from bipolar II to bipolar I to something even scarier.

Be careful what you wish for.

216

I am worried about antipsychotics worsening my TD.

From: Matthew
To: Lea, Doctor H, Sharon

Subject: medicine interaction question

My new psychiatrist, Dr. O (phone number), whose email address I do not have, prescribed me 40 mg Latuda daily with dinner as I noted in a previous email.

When entering Latuda into my medicine app (Mango Health) this morning, the app provided a severe interaction warning between Latuda and Xenazine, which as you know I take 12.5 mg of 3x daily. In brief, it says Xenazine can increase Latuda's TD side effect.

I trust my doctors and take medicine as prescribed, but I feel in this case I need to ask you all to give a second look at this decision—everyone together. As you know, I have suffered from TD for two years now, caused by taking the antipsychotic Risperdal, and this has had a major effect on my life: I can't drive, which affects my ability to attend support groups, social events, even medical and therapeutic appointments. It affects my mother since she drives me when I do go places. Also, the appearance of TD is an impediment to social relationships, which is of very high cost to my life.

Antipsychotics work well for me in terms of creating a more solid conscious experience. But the cost of years of constant uncontrollable clenching movements and the resulting pain is too high—not worth the benefit, from my point of view.

I will continue taking all medicines as prescribed by my care team, but I think I would be remiss if I didn't ask you all to consider and discuss the trade offs of this one with me.

Thank you,

Matthew Temple

---

From: Matthew
To: Lea, Doctor H, Sharon

Subject: medicine interaction question

Also, regarding Xenazine, the Louisiana neurologist who prescribed it indicated that it would have a major effect of lessening my TD symptoms, and this has not been the case (at all). This raises a number of questions for me.

My current plan is to find a local neurologist to discuss the Xenazine plan with. The medicine is expensive and if it's not helping, I'd rather discontinue it secondarily for cost reasons but primarily to reduce the complexity of the psychiatric medicine effects and interactions in my brain.

I'm planning to look for a neurologist. Does that sound like a good plan to you? I am trying to rely on you all more as I become more aware that I don't know when my judgement is sound and when it is not.

Please advise,

Matthew Temple

My therapist, my doctor, no one responded to this, me raising a concern about a possibly severe interaction between two of my medications.

217

And once my mania started to die down, my mom hit me with a new piece of information.

"I need you to find a new place to live.."

Assisted living?

Group home?

None of us knows but it becomes important to get me out of the apartment shared with my mother because she can't be my primary caretaker, can't stomach watching me deteriorate, is interrupted in her job functions by driving me to the doctor, etcetefuckingra.

From: Matthew
To: Sharon
Cc: Lea

Subject: Very worried about this plan

Will there be a pharmacy within walking distance? If I'm still dependent on Mom to get to my doctor, then why live in Nashville at all? Better for me to just move on my own to a pedestrian-friendly city and get doctors within walking distance. This just does not seem completely thought out to me.

---

From: Matthew
To: Sharon
Cc: Lea

Subject: Very worried about this plan

For now I'm trusting you and, at 37, I'm doing what you say—so please don't call the police or anything—I'm just raising some concerns. If this move means I'm unable to get my medicine, then there's no point, as without it I can't operate at all.

---

From: Matthew
To: Lea, Sharon

Subject: Very worried about this plan

I'm at my most optimistic before noon..I should leave questions like these to the morning. But as I read over the actual concerns expressed in my previous quick notes, I believe they're valid. I'm not going to live in fear, so I'll stick with the plan you all have developed, but I think the question of how/if I'm going to be able to get around is a relevant one. I will live this one day at a time, figure it out one day at a time, but if I have to switch doctors and psychiatrists to be closer to this "group home," that's another set of changes, in addition to having to move again so soon, that is intrinsically stressful. Deal-with-able, but intrinsically stressful nonetheless. No doubt any mentally well person will think I'm worrying too much—and perhaps I am. But for me, if this move to a group home or monitored apartment or whatever leaves me more isolated, I think for me it will not have been an improvement. I trust you two women, older, wiser than me, and I'm going along with your plan because I believe you have my best interests at heart and better vantage points from which to see my problems (which is difficult to admit) but I am asking you to see that this is something I have never done before and I am having some fear reaction to it. What if Mom, who is mobile under her own power, moves out of Nashville for another church somewhere else? Then I'll be living in a city with no local family supports. I know I'd survive, I might even thrive, but it's not a city our family is committed to as strongly as we are Portland. I'm not so bad at looking ahead to what might be happening in the future—I've been applying to low-income housing in Brattleboro Vermont as early as a few weeks ago, knowing this shift was likely, and what seems like it has a great chance of happening is that after this church, Mom will go to Portland, but due to the nature of group homes, I won't be able to just pick up and go. I might be able to find a similar situation there or I might not. Or maybe it would be better for me not to live in the same city as the majority of my family. I don't know. I know I'm jumping ahead, worrying about and trying to plan tomorrow, which makes no sense. I'll try to stop that here, but will you please take into account, with me, as we move forward day to day, my specific concerns about transportation, access to a pharmacy, and whether I'd have to switch doctors/therapist as part of this move to a group home or monitored apartment?

Thanks,

Matthew

---

From: Sharon
To: Matthew
Cc: Lea

Subject: Very worried about this plan

You raise very valid concerns, and those concerns surely need to be addressed as plans are made.

What I have in mind for you is a long-term sustainable living arrangement that meets as many of your needs, and satisfies as many of your desires, as possible.

You are right to think beyond me being in Nashville. My contract is for 2 years. It may go longer, and it's possible it could end sooner. It is certain that I will be moving again. How often, and to where, is unknown. Even more uncertain is whether that next place will be good for your life, and if the move itself would hurt you.

(That said, I do like Nashville and the church I'm serving. If it works out for me to stay here for a while, I would be happy with that. If it works out that you and I are in the same city, I will be delighted! If it works out that you are somewhere else. we will stay connected in every possible way.)

I have thought that I would end up in Portland at some point, but I don't really know when or if that will actually happen. Leona & James are most likely going to stay there. Long-term family support will come from those who are in your generation, or younger.

My suggestion would be to think in terms of making one move to where you see yourself for the long term—either in Nashville or to your more ideal setting—and putting everything in place there.

Would it be good to put your concerns in the form of a list of wants and needs that can be a guiding reference?

Love,

MOM

---

From: Lea
To: Sharon, Matthew

Subject: Very worried about this plan

Yes all are very good points. Thank you Sharon for your input very well said. To my knowledge with group homes, unless things have changed, they are not prisons. So you have a choice to end your contract and move. These are all questions though to ask when you interview with the group home people when you decide where you want to live. And if you read all the links on the "about them" sections from the link I sent you, it clearly states they have transportation to and from doctors appointments. So, you will get your medication. I don't know about Portland, but from my understanding Oregon, especially the Portland area, is more advanced than Tennessee, so I would gather they would have more than ample resources. :)

As far as changing providers. More than likely you will have to change your PCP and psychiatrist. You pay me out of pocket now, so that's not a change but your frequency wouldn't be as much the more settled. Also some group homes have counselors already so you may get the services already there. If decide to stay ask your psychiatrist if he takes Tenncare, but if you move out of state, that would be a change anyway and a given adjustment. I hope this helps and eases some fears.

---

From: Matthew
To: Lea, Sharon

Subject: Very worried about this plan

It does help, yes. Thank you. I'll try to keep my potential fears as questions and not worry about the future. That's hard, but possible. Thank you both,

Matthew

——

From: Matthew
To: Sharon

Cc: Lea

My suggestion would be to think in terms of making one move to where you see yourself for the long term—either in Nashville or to your more ideal setting—and putting everything in place there.*

With you not committed to staying in Nashville, no offense to Nashville, but the only reason I came to Nashville was to be with you. So Nashville is a city that I know nothing about where at some point I will have no family. I like it here so far, but TBQH me being on my own again, in some city where I have no family, seems like a very bad idea. I love Brattleboro Vermont, but feeling like I was "out there" with no family "support" is part of why I felt so alone preceding my suicide attempt. Ditto LA—had lots of fun but felt very alone.

My ideal city is Tucson but since I don't have family there that's probably not the best idea—though I do have tons of NA people there who would love to see me back and support me. And Tucson is the right size city for me to make friends in. I always make friends when I'm there. Back on an antipsychotic, I could probably ride a bike soon—making all of Tucson accessible. Rent is cheap. The NA community is sublime—tons of meetings, very spiritual. I love the weather. Etc Etc. I see myself there eventually. Part of me thinks I should just move there, live on my own, find doctors, use NA as support, and live in a city and geography and climate that really suits me. There's a hostel where I could stay while looking for a place. I know it well. A lot of me wants to do this.

I guess we're all thinking Portland is the best bet for family "supports". I'm not sure how supportive Leona and James have energy to be..to Joanne..to me..to anyone..you know? They love us, but frankly "supportive" is not how I would describe the two of them. Like most of our family, they/we are very self-absorbed and don't even hear each other when the other one is talking half the time. But for family company, I think Portland is the best bet. [I am a little snit.]

We have all discussed how it adds some meaning to my life to function as an uncle—that is truly joyful for me and I plan to do my part to be loving towards those kids and parents and my sister for the rest of my life, wherever we all are. But that's a plus for Portland.

Cousin Kristi is in Portland. Kristi is a writer, we talk about writing a lot. Kristi is also the only living family member I know who could probably drink me under the table. (Not literally, as she weighs 90 lbs, but you get my point.) I love relating to Kristi at a distance. I believe I have had (with a light touch) some positive effect on her lessening her drinking (though that's of course not my primary focus). I do not think Kristi is a significant threat to my sobriety, but I think we need to meet in public or always have a third non-drinker around. Specifically, if Evan (her fiancé) goes away on business, the answer to an invitation to spend time just me and Kristi (whether out and about or at their house) needs to be a strict no. If I follow that rule, I don't expect Kristi's drinking will be anywhere near sufficient to affect a relapse for me. When I lived in Portland before, she was drinking, I was sober, we hung out in coffeehouses (with her drunk) and it was not a problem.

My main trigger to drink is not other people drinking—though if they're close friends or family and true alcoholics, that's an extremely dangerous situation for me. My main trigger to drink is my housing situation being in jeopardy. We have the fortune to be observing me under this condition right now. Not tonight, but the previous two nights, I had cravings to drink as a reaction to my stress about not knowing where I'll be living soon, and I had the means to cab it to a store and buy alcohol, but very quickly decided not to because I know that is not going to help my situation—I know it would make it worse. So, as always I am on the just-for-today sobriety program and as such will not make any promises about what I'm going to do tomorrow, but I have recently survived two nights of the first real alcohol (drug) cravings I've felt during this one-year, four-month period of cleanliness and sobriety. Tonight the same conditions for stress exist, and I have decided not to consider those conditions a problem, and I have no urge to drink (drug).

Everyone I've ever met (except me) thinks Portland is the bee's knees. I really don't think it's that special—it's hipster and pretentious and expensive and very spread out. It's touted as bicycle friendly yet it's very dangerous to ride your bike there (I know from experience). But some of the most important people in my life are there right now—the greatest concentration of family is there, including Baton Rouge, as far as I know—so my thinking mind meekly gives a vote for Portland as the best location for me, though I smh at leaving Nashville so quickly, and wonder why I don't just thank you all for your offers of help and move back to Tucson.

Would it be good to put your concerns in the form of a list of wants and needs that can be a guiding reference?

Sure. I'm going to do this very quickly and put this email thread out of my head for a while because while these are important things for us all to figure out, I'm finding that having an email thread with the words "very worried" in my inbox is not helping me to create the kind of emotion I want to be feeling on a moment-to-moment basis! (My bad!)

This is what I'm looking for, based on our talks:

I want to feel physically safe with the neighborhood and my fellow residents. I've lived in some tough neighborhoods so you'll find I'm not a finicky customer in this department.

I want my things to be safe. I have one important possession: my laptop. That's what I use to write. I absolutely have to live in a place where every time I go home, my laptop is still there.

I have to have a way to get to a PCP, therapist, psychiatrist, and neurologist. It can't be a ridiculous amount of travel time. I'm not going to take a one-hour bus ride to get to a ten-minute psychiatrist's appointment. This might sound picky but I just need my time to be well spent, not wasted. If this is not possible in Nashville then maybe we do need to look at other cities. Idk. Maybe these days I can find a psychiatrist online, who meets over video chat? That might open up our options.

It can't be in the middle of nowhere. It needs to be in a walkable neighborhood or city center.

It has to have internet. I'm a writer, a thinker. I need internet in order to be a productive member of society.

Perhaps this is obvious, but I want either a support person on site or a help number I can call—otherwise what's the point of me living in this type of arrangement? The reason we're doing this is I need more supervision, right? (Is that right? Is that the reason we are doing this? Can you two confirm this for me?) So then I guess there needs to be this supervision or else we are doing something that makes no sense.

That's it. I'm flexible in every other way. I'll even flex on the things above if it helps solve whatever problem we are trying to solve—please be very honest with me: what problem are we trying to solve?. I am a trooper. I'm adaptable. I'm long-winded. ;-)

Matthew

218

Paranoia: And perhaps, when Mom finally tells me we need to have a plan for me to live somewhere else, and she and I and Lea discuss it, I mention that I already applied for low-income housing in Vermont three weeks ago—the situation was obvious to me waaay before it "happened"..but it had happened for me a long time ago. Mom was waiting for me to do something really crazy so she could blame the move-out on me. I waited her out—I didn't do anything really crazy. I was never deemed a danger to myself or others. And once I got the right medicine in me, I calmed down. It was two weeks later that she told me she wanted me to find another place to live. She still blamed it on me and my bipolar, even though bipolar episodes are rare and during this one, I never even raised my voice at her—the one who suffered most was me.

My mother is the most intuitive person I know. But I am my mother's son. And in business situations, and in relationships, and even between me and her, I know the score long before anyone ever puts any words on the table. The trick is to say nothing about what you know—if you say what's going to happen in the future and you turn out to be right, people don't interpret that as predicting the future..they interpret it as you made this happen. You wanted this to happen three weeks ago and you did whatever actions were necessary to make it happen—they even accuse you of doing it subconsciously. So you have to wait till after the thing has happened, then take out your sealed envelope containing your prediction—your letter from the Brattleboro Vermont Department of Housing, for example, showing that you already started what they're suggesting we start doing tomorrow..three weeks ago.

Or better yet, never say a word.

I can't predict the future. But an event extends beyond the borders we normally delineate it with. You know how like birds and deer and stuff will run out of a forest before there's a fire, or how animals act differently before a storm or volcano? That's not them predicting the future—they are part of the edges of the event. When the birds start leaving the forest, even before there's a single flame, that's part of the forest fire. I can feel things like that so intuitively—my intuition is built so strong—that I can tell what people are planning to do before they know what they're planning to do. On my Myers-Briggs profile, which is ENFP, every letter is close to the center. So for my E, I'm not a strong extrovert. I'm an extrovert who's close to the line—not that far from being an introvert. Three of my letters are like that. I always test as an ENFP—have every single time I've taken the test. But one of my letters—the N (iNtuition)—is not near the center, it's not near the line. My N is so far N it can't get any farther away from the opposite end of the spectrum: S (or Sensing). You could say that S's like details and N's look at the forest instead of the trees. Well, I see the details. Oh yeah. You see, I don't believe that intuition is mystical magical mumbo jumbo. I believe it's our short name for someone who takes in so many details and can process so much more data that the average person, that they know something in a way that seems mystical to those who can't process at that level. Intuition isn't opaque to me—it's built on details. It's a brain that can integrate so many data streams at once that it starts to know things that it doesn't know how it knows. But that doesn't mean they have ESP. It means they crunch more numbers than anybody else—automatically—that when someone tells me that she thinks I need to find a place to live that isn't here, I was already on the internet looking at affordable housing and group homes twenty-one days ago. I didn't read your mind—I read the details of our interaction that you weren't even aware were there.

219

I knew something was missing in me, for the longest time. And I knew what it was, too—it was compassion. And I remembered that sometime while I was in Brattleboro, I had figured out a way for me to feel compassion—some thought, some cognitive method, that would enable to me to feel compassion for everyone in the world, from my closest lover to my uncle Rusty.

But I had forgotten.

How could I have forgotten something so important? And I felt, in these years in between, that since I had forgotten my method for feeling compassion, that I had lost my ability to feel compassion—and that might have been true.

Compassion is such an attractive trait to me.

I believe compassion has a magnifying resonance.

It was lost to me, though, I forgot how to feel it—but then I remembered. Somewhere in a Tweet, last August:

When I think, everyone is doing the best they can do, that is one way that I start to feel compassion.

And do you believe I forgot it again? This time two months went by and I was without my fundamental reason for compassion and my belief that I could feel and act compassionately.

The next time I remembered it, I wrote a post. It was crucial to me. I couldn't afford to forget it again, so I wrote it down in a way that I would never forget.

The only thing I know about compassion

I'm not a mean person—never have been. Most people probably think I already am a compassionate person. I don't usually do things to hurt people—sometimes I strike back when someone hurts me..I'm doing that less and less. So when I say I only know one thing about compassion, I don't mean I was the kid on the playground picking fights. I wasn't. In fact my mom likes to tell a story where she goes to pick me up from kindergarten and my teacher runs up to my mom and says, "Guess what! You won't believe it! I had to make Matthew sit on the sidewalk for a time out because he pushed someone!!" My kindergarten teacher was glowing because I was always so well behaved—like perfectly well behaved—that she considered me pushing another student a sign of growth, somehow, like I was getting outside of my shell.

I don't remember this event at all. The details may be inaccurate. I might have said something mean instead of pushing someone—who knows. My mom and I have always considered my teacher's framing of the incident to be..odd.

And there are ways in which my actions are undeniably compassionate. I am an empathetic person—of course I make a faux pas from time to time, but I've never worried that I might fundamentally lack empathy. I naturally feel other people's feelings and care about them—deeply—sometimes so much that I take on their feelings as my own. I'm learning to do that less as well.

But there's a difference between empathy and compassion.

Empathy, accrding to WIkipedia is the "capacity to understand another person's point of view".

Compassion is much more.

The New Oxford American Dictionary says compassion is "sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others". Etymologically, that same dictionary says that compassion comes from the Latin word "compati" which means "suffer with".

I pretty much hate that definition of compassion because it includes the word pity and I don't ever want to be on either side of that concept. Pitying someone else implies superiority—if I pity your life, it implies my life is better than yours. Who am I to pity you? And I don't want your pity, because it implies that my life would be better if it didn't contain the particular sufferings that I endure. Maybe I have enough love and pride for my life that I don't think it's logical for anyone to pity me. I wouldn't trade my life for another's—so I must not think my life is worse than any other's, or that any other's life is better than mine. To me, pity is an insult—and it's an insult that doesn't make any logical sense because you can't trade lives with another.

Wiktionary says compassion is a "deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it". I like that definition more. But it doesn't include a couple of aspects that I consider essential to compassion.

It doesn't say that compassion is love, which my vague mental definition of compassion has always encompassed. If you have compassion for someone, don't you love them too? I think you do.

My vague mental definition of compassion has also always included the concept of universality—I think that compassion is a quality of the beholder that necessarily applies to all people, all beings, all things..everything the beholder interacts with..everything the beholder is aware of. How can you be compassionate toward one person but not toward another? I think if my so-called compassion only applies to some, then I'm not really a fully compassionate person.

And that last, self-imposed requirement in my own definition of compassion has led me to believe that I lacked compassion, that my selective compassion didn't fulfill my own definition of compassion, and that therefore I was not capable of compassion as I defined the term.

That was a problem for me.

I don't like to feel hate—me hating someone else. It doesn't take much experience as a human being to learn that when you hate someone else, you're the one that hate is tearing down. Hate can hurt the other person—but it always hurts you more.

I found myself, for so long, loving some and hating others. Having compassion for some but not for others. And I didn't see a way out of this because the people I hated (or didn't like) were people who were—either in friendships or coworker situations, or family relationships—these people I hated were people who were treating me or my other friends disrespectfully and disloyally; they were people who were afraid that my competency would make them look bad to the boss, and who actively worked against me to discount my contributions to the companies I worked for; they were family members who because of their own mental illness were fucking with my psyche from the moment I was born.

I felt that, by my universality requirement for compassion, I, in order to be fully compassionate, had to love these people instead of hate them. And I didn't know how I could authentically love someone who (to me) seemed unquestionably not to have my best interests at heart.

My therapists encouraged me to drop the universality condition of my definition of compassion. They said I did not have to love everyone, especially people who were hurting me, that in fact the best thing to do was to exit those people from my life as soon as possible and never look back.

But I don't always do what my therapists tell me. I take from them the wisdom that I like and I use my own devices to come up with my own ways to live my life. Hate carries weight. And for me, even my lack of universal compassion carried weight. I like the way love feels. I spend as much time around people I love and who love me back because, basically, I think that's the point of life—to love. I want to have the strength (or whatever is necessary) to feel compassion for everyone I've met, even the backstabbing friends and the corrupt bosses and the abusive father. Without that universal compassion, even if I'm not actively hating my corrupt boss, for example, there is still the weight of not being able to feel love for him. That might sound crazy, but it's true for me. I know I can't and won't connect with and deeply love everyone I meet, but when I sit in a conference room with someone who is actively fucking me over, I might not feel hate but I certainly don't feel love and that lack of love taxes me.

This is why my therapists suggested exiting all haters from my life and never looking back. That works for some people—I did that with my dad and it has been one of the most surprising and magical actions I have ever taken. I released myself from the internalized, culturally inspired requirement that I was obligated to be in a relationship with my dad. It took years of negotiating with myself and giving my dad chances to step up and show some love. To stop trying went against my instinct—but my instinct was wrong. When I try in vain to relate to a dad who, by his actions, clearly doesn't want to relate to me, it creates emotional turmoil. When I filter his email and refrain from contacting him or giving him much thought, it creates emotional peace. So there's a case where I could do what my therapists suggested and exit a hurtful person from my life—and it worked like a charm.

But that's harder to do with other people—like your boss, when you need the job. The guy is going to be in my face every day, working against me because he perceives me as a threat to his position and his fragile ego. I don't want to spend the years I work at that company feeling low-level hatred toward someone I work closely with, even though maybe it's justified 'cause he's hurting me.

I'm not looking to become Jesus. I'm not looking to become Mother Teresa either. I'm also not looking to become Gandhi. But I do want their compassion. Not to save the world, or even part of it—as each of them did—but to save myself from the burden of hate, low-level hate, dislike, or anything of the sort.

It's about the experience I want to have, each day that I live this life. I want to feel amiability, like, love, companionship—all of those with some people—and I want to feel universal, loving compassion for everyone who takes up space in my mind.

Yes, that is what I want—and nothing less.

Now let me humbly refer you to the title of this post, which is "The only thing I know about compassion".

I only know one thing about compassion.

I struggled for years to figure out what was missing in me that made it so I did not or could not feel this universal, loving compassion for everyone I knew.

One thing I knew, that became crystal clear in therapy, is that I didn't have compassion for myself. And, from there, it didn't take any therapist to tell me that until I found a way to feel compassion for myself, I would be unable to feel it for anyone else.

Still I had the same problem, just now aimed at me instead of others: What qualities are lacking in me that make me not feel compassion for myself?—that in fact make me not only often dislike myself but sometimes hate myself. I looked at the things I had done, focusing mostly on the selfish, ignorant, careless, destructive things, and I hated myself because I imagined I could have done better and yet I hadn't. I saw myself as a creature of wasted potential, someone who had been gifted extraordinarily—by genetics or upbringing or god or however you think that happens—and who had wasted those gifts and become nothing. That was my evaluation. Most people who knew me—friends, coworkers, and family—had a higher estimation of me than I did. I have hated myself my whole life and most of the time I didn't even know why.

(That was part one—the problem. Stick with me. Next is part two—a solution:)

Better stick to a glass of water for this one. Go ahead. I'll wait.

220

[Clears throat]

To me, one of the greatest pieces of wisdom comes from the sage: Maya Angelou:

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better. —Maya_Angelou).

I'd heard this quote many times, in many forms. And none of those times that I heard it or read it or thought through it did I learn the only thing I know about compassion. But this simple-seeming piece of knowledge seeded itself in my brain and then was activated by other simple phrases that people often speak, and that I often heard, and that I finally listened to.

People often say, "You did the best you could," to make you feel better after a failure or a loss in a competitive match or at the end of a relationship. When we fuck up, kind people often let us off the hook and say: "Well, she did the best she could."

I don't remember specifically when this clicked together for me with my search for the feeling of universal, loving compassion, but it finally did.

If I look at myself, and I say: "I'm doing the best I can" then I have no reason to hate myself. Everyone is doing the best they can. People do not say, well, I could do this best action I can think of, or I can do this piece-of-shit action that perversely popped into my head. Maybe a person has an evil set of values, like Hitler—but even Hitler was doing the best that he could. That was just the best that a very, very sick person could do. He was striving to do the best he could!

And so am I. And so are my friends. And so are my coworkers. And so is my dad. And our best sometimes sucks. I violate my own morals from time to time, when I am tempted, but I have the choice of holding myself to an impossible standard, or assessing my imperfect self realistically and saying—declaring, admitting—that I am doing the best that I can. How can I hate someone who is doing the best that they can? It would make no sense. The best we can is the best we can—by definition we can do no better.

Now let me re-evaluate the case of my rotten coworker. He is lying to the boss about my performance, withholding information essential for me to do my job, and generally being a jackass. What I assumed before is that he was choosing to fuck with me: that he had two choices: stop feeling threatened by me and function cooperatively as a member of a team, or protect his fragile sense of self by proactively, daily, using any means necessary to make me look bad to the boss. What I assumed was wrong. He didn't have a choice. He was doing the best he could—like everyone.

If I look at it that way, it's no longer rational for me to be mad at him—or anyone. My friends are doing the best they can. My family is doing the best they can. I am doing the best that I can.

Let's go back to that Wiktionary definition of compassion. It says that compassion is a "deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it".

My dad's decision to abandon me psychologically as an adult, his mental sicknesses, his humiliating treatment of me as a child..are the best that he can do. With this new tool of understanding people not as intentionally evil or intentionally boring or intentionally unsatisfying in whatever way, I can feel compassion, in all the senses that I require, even for someone who is actively trying to hurt me. Now, what my therapists said is true, and I'll rephrase it: If there's a snake in the grass, go play in another yard. No, I won't allow disrespectful, hurtful people to interact with me. Those people must be kept at a distance, evicted from the apartments of my consciousness, kept in cages, locked in imaginary chests and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

But I can feel compassion for them—universal, loving compassion.

Do I have a "deep awareness of the suffering of" my dad? Yes I do—he wouldn't behave the way he does if he wasn't suffering terribly. Is it "coupled with the wish to relieve [that suffering]"? Absolutely. I have no capability to relieve my dad's suffering (or almost anyone's) but I would if I could, and I wish I could. Those two features satisfy Wiktionary's definition of compassion.

How about my two additional features?

Love. Do I feel love for my dad? Yes.

Universality. Can I feel this type of compassion for everyone I meet, regardless of their actions, traits, character, or any aspect of them? Yes, I can.

And that is all I have to say. That is the only thing I know about compassion: that everyone is doing the best they can, and that simple fact is reason enough for everyone to deserve compassion, because it paints the picture of a person as someone limited, someone always striving, and someone always falling short of every expectation levied on them, by themself or others. That predicament invites empathy from anyone who is capable of feeling it, because we see that we are in the same predicament. That Latin root, "compati", meaning "suffer with" starts to make a whole lot of sense.

And perhaps that is the ultimate root of compassion: seeing that everyone else is in the same mess I'm in..the mess of falling short, the mess of missing the mark..we're all suffering through the same predicament. It's easy to feel compassion for those who heal us and help us. It's easy to feel compassion for the benign and the weak. But it is difficult for the rich to feel compassion for the poor, and it is difficult for the poor to feel compassion for the rich. It tests the limits of human capacity to feel compassion for those who hurt us. But, for me, getting past the illusion that someone has chosen to do their worst, and realizing that everyone is choosing to do their best, and that everyone falls short of their best most of the time—that is the key that is allowing me to set aside all of my anger and all of my hatred for everyone I've ever known, and instead walk a simple path upon which I am learning to feel universal, loving compassion.

I'm not doing this for anyone else. I'm doing it for me—because it gives me joy. It lightens my load. It's just the new way I do business.

It turns out that I did have a lack of compassion. But it wasn't a character flaw. It wasn't a moral failing. I was just missing a simple piece of information, which is that this whole array of behavior, from Gandhi to Hitler to a lion catching an antelope..is just everyone doing the best that they can.

221

As they say, sometimes giving up is essential to carrying on. I had to give up my idea that people are out to get me in order to carry on just one tiny step closer to compassion.

When I flip through my notebooks from Brattleboro, I find all sorts of interesting things. Like this little idea:

power is the method

by which you rise from the ashes

and so the only ones who have it

are those who come from ash

Or the idea that instead of being the child of Hannibal Lecter and Björk, I'm what would result if Lindsay Lohan and Bobby Fischer had a baby. I know I wrote that while I was inside the Refuge. Later I would consider that I was the offspring of Buddha and Eminem.

On November 9, 2011, I wrote:

I feel better today, and after the meeting with Dr. Meggs just now, than I have in a while.

I wonder what we talked about in that meeting!

There's a note I guess I took from some class. It talks about power versus control:

A boat on the ocean has power

But it is not in control

What genius thought of that? There are all sorts of inspirational sayings that I copied from the social workers' door, which was just plastered with the stuff. Even the best of it seems trite to me now. But my own notes still make sense to me, all these years later:

To forget how I remember feeling and feel exactly how I feel now—that is the ticket; that is the joy.

Or:

See myself in the purest, greatest, most enlightened, most developed light—see everyone that way.

That's what I was writing when I was in the mental institution.

Some of the stuff in that notebook is me eternally rehashing my relationship with my dad—a relationship that should be exceedingly clear to me by now, but isn't! This is from November 11:

I'm upset with my family for not being more active with me. I feel like after a suicide attempt, that I need and want more care. Kristi's dad drove across the country to get her, when she was forty years old—and I feel slighted, jilted, that my dad is so hands off. I feel like he doesn't care.

Some of what's in that notebook is scary:

WRite A progRam

thAt reprogrAms my BrAin

WRite A progrAm that

reprogrAms my BrAiN

WRite A progrAm thAt reprogrAms my BrAiN

That, written over and over, page after page. My own name, written twenty times in a row, as if I was trying to remind myself of who I was.

Maybe this excerpt will give you some idea of mania:

Stressmajor stress of lateAnd cracks at the seams3 days into rising energythat kind of manic LOVE I know so wellcoming from behind my sleep and my eyesand curling my bloodcurdling the blood in my motherfucking veinsAnd maybe getting me mad enough to writewhich should always be done from angerAnd fireAnd a need to destroy

It's a crazy notebook. Ideas for a screenplay that is so sick that no one would ever produce it. My design for a program that simulated manic depression in four states—the same four states that my latest doctor mentioned to me a week ago when describing his theory of bipolar disorder. The mental health techs, when they saw me working on that notebook, called it my "plans for a nuclear submarine." It has ideas for creating conscious computers, it contains philosophical adages, notes of hope for the future, book ideas, journal entries, fragments of conversation (ME: When I love something, I love it—Spots: I know, I've read your books). There are conversations challenging the devil ("I'm gonna make this the greatest thing that ever happened to me. You're gonna take me down??? With what?"). And some pages just look like the neatest scrawls ever, combined alien script and jibberish.

But that's not what I went looking for. I went looking for something very specific. Here it is, near the end of my journal:

reaching, as I've wanted to for a while, some compassionA key thought therein beingeveryone is doing their bestbecause even when people are being vicious or offensive, we are still doing our best—or else we would be doing better—and so everyone deserves compassioneven when—or especially when—we fall shortI'm thankful for the gift of feeling this wayit's good for me

I wrote that on my last night at the Brattleboro Refuge—December 14, 2011. Maybe I had to make seven trips into that psych hospital to come out with this one piece of wisdom. I think if that's the only thing I had found in my seven trips, it would have been worth it.

It used to be my job to come to you—I needed you more. Now it is your job to come to me.

See? All the way back in 2011, when I was 33 years old, on my 12,389th day of life, I finally figured out for myself that the root of compassion is understanding that everyone is doing their best, that we all fall short of perfection, and that we're all in this together.

It took me a billion seconds of living to figure that out.

222

Sometimes Mom and I have fights, and I can't tell who's helping who, who needs who more, and I don't want to figure it out. I don't want to deal with the psychology of someone who's endured decades of parental neglect and an abusive husband who just happens to be my dad. I feel, at 38, exactly the way I felt when I was 15—I don't want to be part of this family. We don't love each other—we're just sick. I want to walk away from it all—just disappear into the night.

I have enough in my bank account to get a cab to the airport and a flight to Tucson or Brattleboro—two of the only places I might be able to live on my own with my disabilities. If I went to Brattleboro, I could go back to the Refuge, tell them I'm suicidal, or maybe create a diabolical asymmetry and kill myself in the same place I tried to kill myself before—the Refuge lawn—but this time I'll succeed. I don't really want to go back to the hospital.

But there's a tree there I'd like to kiss before I die.

Mom and I argue..even if I say something nice to her she gets mad. Basically if I upset the caretaker/invalid model with anyone, they get upset. Hard to believe that a sick person has something to offer you from time to time!

But there is one thing I kept from the Refuge that contains a miracle, and I look at it when I feel like I've accomplished nothing. My Refuge crisis plan..I found it while looking for my pill splitter in my moving boxes and I sat down and read it and remembered these feelings and how it was when I first began to feel them.

What are some affirmations you can use to feel better about yourself and the world.

It's important that I'm alive. It's meaningful that I'm alive. I deserve goodness in my life. I deserve a place to live. I deserve to live easily. I deserve to live peacefully. I deserve meaningful work. I deserve to love and be loved. My consciousness, my experience, is valuable and meaningful for its own sake.

I am amazing.

My brow makes little lines. My eyes water. I bite the inside of my lips. Reading this makes me realize that something has changed from the night I attempted suicide to now..that night I didn't care about losing the awareness in my head. What awareness I had was all pain and I wanted it to end. And now, most of the time, I carry around with me a delicate bubble of consciousness which I like—actually, love—I love being me, I love this incredible experience of being..of watching a movie..of talking to another human..of walking to get the mail. I want it to keep going. I want to see what happens next even if it's something I don't like. That's the opposite of being suicidal—not being able to stand being in the current moment or one moment more. Seeing my Refuge Crisis Plan, I realize that somehow, over the last five years, I learned to do the most important thing I had written on that plan: feel that my own consciousness was of value.

---

I fold the crisis plan gently and put it back in my treasure box.

But my good feelings don't last long. No amount of erudition, no body of knowledge, is ever going to change the fact that my mind goes to the highest places imaginable, flies me around, then drops me without warning.

ME: I hate myself so much.

Mom: I'm sorry. Is there anything that will help you feel better right now.

ME: Decapitation.

Mom: OK this is concerning me very much.

ME: Why? I'm fine I just need to listen to music and calm down.

Mom: Talking about hurting yourself. Sounds like a good plan.

ME: I wasn't talking about hurting myself! Be accurate. I can't decapitate myself. People are very lazy readers.

Mom: OK.

ME: I'm sorry for concerning you. I forget you might actually care.

Mom: Are you able to do the good things you can for yourself now?

ME: Mom that's so general I can't respond to it but don't worry about me I'm fine.

Mom: OK.

After that, to everything I said, no matter what I said, Mom just said, "OK." But you can't blame her, I mean, when I read a couple of things I wrote in that text exchange I come to the quick conclusion that the person called "ME" is off his head and I am not proud to be him.

ME: If I was you, I would want to get rid of me too. Why don't you just drop me at a hospital tonight and be done with it? You don't ever have to have me back.

Mom: Because I still think there are better alternatives.

ME: Ok. Well, for me, I don't need to go to the hospital, I just didn't know if we needed to do that for you. I'll leave you alone. I'm sorry.

Mom: OK.

ME: I'm sorry for being so negative the second half of the day. I am truly sorry. I deserve the lowest of the low. You deserve the best of the best.

Mom: I understand. I think you deserve a break. I hope you can relax and rest.

ME: You don't understand. Be well advised of that. You have no idea what is inside my mind. No idea. Never have. Don't expect you to. [Tough customer]

And while I'm at it, I might as well mark the end one of the closest relationships I have had in this life, that with Joanne, my sister closest in age. Five months ago, when she moved from NYC to Portland, she became unresponsive to texts, emails, phone calls. She responds to Mom and Leona's texts but not mine—Suzy, that stings. One of my favorite people basically cut our ties without ever even telling me why.

I text her:

ME: Joanne, this is unfortunate, but you have essentially ended our communication since you moved to Portland. This has hurt my feelings very deeply. I wish I knew why. But in lieu of any reaching out or explanation from you (which there has been none) I am concluding our conversation with this message. Part of being a rent-paying tenant with me is regular conversation. When that disappears, then the relationship is over. Goodbye and good luck.

223

I take the trash out and see Ida sitting on her porch.

We walk for a while.

Ida always tries to hide her cigarettes and the fact that she's been smoking. When she sees me coming, she puts out her cigarette and stows it behind her. She thinks she'll corrupt me.

I lean over her railing.

"My mom and I had a fight last night."

"What was you fighting about?"

"I don't even know, but before this we didn't fight for a year, and I'll tell you, Ida, I was this close to waiting till she went to bed, calling a cab to the airport, flying somewhere with a decent mental hospital, and checking myself in."

Ida looks, listens, waits.

"Ok, you know what, that's not the truth. I never lied to you before and I'm not gonna lie to you now. I wasn't going to check myself into a mental hospital. I was gonna go there and kill myself."

I single tear drops from Ida's eye, and I feel really bad I told her. This woman shouldn't have to put up with my shit. She's got enough shit of her own.

But Ida nods—she knew I was going to say that. She goes ahead and pulls out her cig and re-lights it. It's too much to handle without a cigarette.

She breathes in and her cigarette crackles. She ashes over the railing.

"But you didn't do it. You had the impulse but you didn't do it. That's the important thing."

"The only reason I didn't do it is I don't want to screw my mom over financially on this lease."

And I think a while, and Ida smokes.

"But that's not actually true. I want a home. This place—that little room I have—is my home. I don't want to be forced to leave my home just because my mom doesn't like me."

"Of course she likes you. She's just stressed because of her new job. In fact, you're probably your mother's best friend."

I think about how unrealistic my plan is. And some story slips in there about my cousin Kristi ending up at an airport in Nashville with a ticket to Australia. She had a husband. She had a job. She was just going to walk away from it all. I don't even know if this story's true—it's just the one I heard. And while, yes, right now, I have enough money in my account to get me to Tucson or Brattleboro, the only places I think I might be able to live alone, that's not true. Once I got there, my disability isn't enough for me to live alone. With just that income, I'll be living with somebody for the rest of my life. And how would I get to the grocery store? With my clenching, I can't drive a car. I can't even ride a bike.

And Brattleboro, oh Brattleboro, I couldn't live there—the sidewalk ice would kill me, I have so little balance.

For a second I think of Faith, listening to the ward radio, singing, and I wonder where she is today.

"I don't know, Ida, I don't know. I know my mother loves me but I get the feeling at the same time that she detests me, that I disgust her. We were in the store and I was picking out juice and I looked up and she had this look on her face like What the hell are you doing? I don't know if she was upset because I was putting something in the cart that she didn't expect, but she gave me a definite look—a look you don't give to your child. And I was paying for the groceries, so what does she care?"

"Now hold on Matthew—"

"She wants—also—she wants, she needs for there to be an emotional power difference between us."

"She'll always be your mom."

"That's exactly what she said. But why does a grown woman not hug me, not accept compliments or encouragement from me—she's allowed to encourage me, but every nice thing I say to her, she ignores. Blank face. No response. If I say, Mom, I need help with my medication, she jumps to the alarm. If I say, I'm glad you had a good day today or You seem happy..nothing. She stares at her iPad. Will not respond. It's like she can't handle the fact that I could help her just as she helps me. I think that's abuse, in a relationship, to hold someone at a distance like that. She's comfortable with being the caretaker of a sick son, but every offer I make to do something to help her, she ignores, declines, gets offended by—"

"Matthew—"

"To me it's a world with no conscience, no grit—"

"Matthew, stop. You're taking something simple and turning it into something complicated. Your mother loves you, ok—I know that because I've been a mother. She's just worried about you."

"Well I don't mean to worry her."

"But you can't help it. With your condition. Hell, you worry me."

I laugh.

I learned recently of a suicide, and while we chalk it up to "depression" and wash our hands of it, I find that it's some of our best people who kill themselves, and I feel that that is partially biological, yes, but also partly because of the way the world is..because there isn't room for odd people and sensitive people and beautiful people. I think that we need cures for biological depression, but I also think that it is all of our responsibility to make the world less hostile, and make more room for everybody, psychologically, economically, academically, socially. It is all of our responsibility to do this, so that the world (and life) can be great for all of us, not just some of us.

Forgive my typos. It's not that I'm lazy it's just that I'm crying so hard, writing you, that I cannot see the screen.

"Did you go to college?" Ida asks me.

"Uh..a little," I laugh. "I went to film school."

"So you got your education."

"I guess. But. My real education is all the stupid things I've ever done."

"You a smart man, Matthew."

I sit down on the porch chair next to Ida.

I think about me.

I think about bipolar disorder.

I think about Spots and I imagine her mom killing herself.

I imagine Spots dead somewhere already—!

I grip the porch railing and hope that girl is off living the life somewhere: I revise my earlier position..I don't care who's fucking her as long as she's forgettin' about the past and enjoying the hell out of this moment.

And yes my selfish self reviews every image I can find of her, especially the one of her at the pottery wheel, but I move on.

And I think about myself in the back of an ambulance with a significant amount of Vistaril in my system, and my life intentionally threatened by me whether I did it right or not!

And I say Why would I do that?!

I could have lost my life in the back of an ambulance in a tiny town in southern Vermont.

And Ida's tiny porch. And Ida'a cigarette smoke. And just these gorgeous sunset clouds and the two of us sitting there watching the show.

I think of Ida telling me—she lost a daughter to bipolar—she committed suicide.

Ida can tell what I'm thinking and she reaches her frail shaky arm out and I grab her arm with my strong shaky young arm and we grab each other's arms and when I grip that old woman she grips me just as strongly back.

"You know when they down, they down," Ida says. "And when they up, they up!"

We both laughing and crying at the same time.

Ida's shaking her head.

"She used to run naked down the street. Caught the attention of the police."

"Yeah I bet."

"Then ended up in the mental institution. Then she killed herself."

I look Ida in the face.

"There's nothing you can say," she says, letting me off the hook. "There ain't nothing you can say to that. When your time comes, your time comes."

I think the event of Rebecca dying kindled my bipolar once, and then the event of my suicide attempt kindled it a second time. Now I'm fully crazy, and I need to avoid like the plague any traumatic event that would kindle me a third time.

(And there have probably been many mini kindling events all throughout: hospital stays, medical detoxes, work firings and quittings, drug experiences, major hallucinations on crystal meth, jumping off my balcony and hurting my wrist..though according to the doctors it's just fine..but to me it hurts like hell!)

From the beginning of this story to the end, my major psych diagnosis will have changed three times, I will have moved four times, I'll end up writing this text in Nashville, Tennessee—unable to type sitting up, I will lie on the floor to write each day, and I will be the happiest man in the world.

Ida and I sit there like that, holding each other's forearms. We sit on her porch watching a Tennessee storm roll in. The clouds are so dark blue they're almost black. And by turns, we tell each other stories of the people we've lost—of her other child she lost, of my girlfriend, of my friends. She offers me a cigarette—I realize it's been over a year and a half since I drank or smoked, and five years since I smoked that crack in Vermont.

Ida smokes and I think through all the mortality statistics I know about bipolar. Bottom line: bipolar kills through suicide, and people who have bipolar disorder are way more likely to kill themselves than people who don't. There are situational suicides, but the current research shows that 90% of suicides involve people with a major mental illness—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. As I look at the clouds coming toward us, knowing it's about to rain, I'm glad that the paradigm around suicide has moved from blaming the victim to treating potential victims, since most of them have one of a very small set of mental illnesses.

I feel good lately, not depressed. But I know it's possible that a time will come again when I believe things like: My family would be better off without me. That's a killer, right there—that belief has almost killed me several times. And I know that the next time I believe that idea, I won't have the perspective I have now—I won't be able to see that the belief is false.

That is the hell of psychosis, whether it occurs in depression or mania—like Praga Khan sang: My mind is my enemy. You don't know what's true or false. You think you're Jesus. You take off your clothes. People around you get scared when you say things you think are funny!

The storm comes in on me and Ida. We move our chairs back as far as possible but our feet are still getting drenched.

"We're both wearing sandals," Ida says. She sees I'm deep in thought. "What you thinkin' bout? Bipolar stuff?"

"Yeah."

She takes my hand and puts it on the arm of her plastic chair. She puts her arm on top of mine.

"Don't you worry about that stuff for now, ya hear? Just sit back and watch this storm with an old woman. I don't know how many more of these I'm gonna get to see before I pass."

So that's what we do, me and Ida, we watch the storm come and drench us while we hold hands and I can see Ida leaning into the storm, like she's going somewhere, like in our own ways we've each come face to face with the storm that is finally going to kill us.

I lean in with her, and grip her hand, and I feel like we're two travelers who have decided not to be afraid of the floods and the rain, or of the blistering sun..who have decided not to safely shelter in, but to live outside (at least for a moment on her porch) and let the acid in the rain touch our skin and wear it away a little bitty bit every time a drop hits us.

And with what Ida said about watching as many storms as she can before she goes, I feel like we're stealing time from the gods—or from the devils—taking what we can from the now before it all goes away.

And I should tell you something about my theory of mass media. I don't believe mass-media is aimed the masses, but is actually a one-to-one message, across the universe, from one ideal writer of a particular story to one ideal reader of that particular story..so you see..this book is aimed..at you.

Strength flows through our arms, then we both grip the porch railing.

Rain is drenching me and my friend.

"I'm trying to explain the whole scope of everything in the book, you see, from growing up to never knowing what was wrong with me to being diagnosed to losing my job to getting unemployment to moving to Vermont and then never being able to get my life together in my early thirties, just like I could never get it together in my early twenties with money and with jobs, it's like I was destined not to be able to get it together, ever, and then there were all the hospitals and I tried to kill myself—no, I tried to kill myself, then there were all the hospitals. Fuck, Ida, I try and I try and I still can't explain it."

A gravelly, old woman, cigarette voice tells me:

"You don't need to, Matthew—I understand."

Then Ida takes my hand.

---

And that, dear friends, concludes what in my mind I call the Brattleboro Stories. You might think I have not made good on my promise implicit in using Tarantino's quote from True Romance that *\that's the way things go, but remember, sometimes they go the other way, too* But I will point out that in the depths of this story I was willing to take my life—that's the way things go—and by its end, yes, it may not be the case that my fortunes had improved..in fact my financial situation, my mental diagnoses, my physical state, are much worse at the end of this story than its beginning. But one thing is better: my fire.

My fire has returned from that suicidal night, and it makes an unbearable prospect like being homeless, bearable, for instead of saying: here, I cannot handle being unable to sit, to stand, to walk, to not convulse, and yet also be offered the prospect of homelessness..so I will kill myself. Or I need help so bad from this hospital that I will kill myself to get in it.

No. My mom has just had a conversation with me reminding me I need to leave this apartment as soon as possible. I don't feel despair. I'm on Google searching for assisted living places across the country. I have hope I'll find one that works.

And if I don't, fuck it. I have paid for enough time in this room—and stolen enough now from the universe—to write this book ;-)

I will never fold as easily as I once did.

If it comes to it, I'll live outside.

I've done it before and I'll do it again.

I feel a spark inside me that wants to live.

Even if it hurts from here to the end.

I won't fall over like a house of cards.

I will be a thorn in the side of life until it finally has enough of my pricking and reaches down and pulls me out and thumps me away for good. So have things gone one way and then, for once, gone the other way for me?

I'll say they have.

---

One last thing.

You should never bargain with the devil.

But the thing is, she seems to be bargaining with me.

So I say to you, Little Miss Trouble: I'm gonna keep doing my thing as long as I'm breathing.

And you—Little Miss—can bring it on.