last buoy

i think they were onto something when they created padded rooms. there's times when the blood in my brain runs too hot and banging my head against a wall seems like the only way to get relief. on fire? tuck and roll. anxious? padded room. these solutions are primevally simple.

i know this makes me sound insane, but there are people out there who think homeopathy can cure mental illness (or anything else for that matter), so i could sound a lot worse. 

these days i am thinking a lot about how addiction is a derived problem. what i mean is that addiction is simply a coping mechanism for some original problem, like depression. i get what people mean when they say that addiction is a disease, but i think it's more the medicine. the medicine is poison of course, and it will kill you slowly, but if you're going to take it away, you need to replace it with more medicine. sometimes that's ayahuasca and a good spiritual beating; sometimes that's swapping one drug for antidepressants. pick your poison, as they say. 

i miss my grandma so much. i miss her in what i want to tell her, and i miss her in the things i would keep to myself. i don't need to beat my head against padded wallpaper. i just want to lay my head on her chest and listen to her humming and the loud chime of her bangles as she pats my back. her rocking back and forth is my lifeboat.  

Plato's concept of the two halves is a nice sentiment, but i've learned that love will not make me whole. this is because there's a part of me that belongs to my racing heart, sweaty palms, and the taste of nausea. there's a part of me that lives for destruction, and sometimes all of my energy is spent battening down the hatches. the storm cools my blood, and even the warmest of touches can't stand it. 

i want to be a better swimmer.

i want to be your last buoy in an endless ocean. just wait for the storm to roll out...

hey captain, i’ll meet you overboard

Well, I had a cigarette today. I can’t find my stupid vape, so I’m just saying it didn’t count. I was reading back my posts and realized that on April 3rd I said I had quit cigarettes - and it admittedly is written with some dramatic conviction that I only vaguely remember having - but that honestly didn’t last very long. I quit for real awhile ago. And now I’m confessing my sin today. 

I’m typing this on my phone because I’m moving and my laptop is dead. I have this constant discomfort, like a hamster in a cage that’s too small. I can’t stand having some of my things in one apartment and some in another. Lima is mirroring my restlessness. But it’ll all be done tomorrow, and I’m just glad I’m not doing it alone. 

One thing I know but have a hard time accepting is that I really hate living alone. I sometimes dramatically say that I CAN’T live alone, which just simply can’t be true. But I wouldn’t know, actually, because I’ve always lived either with my parents, or roommates, or dorm mates, or a partner. I used to have a really hard time even sleeping alone in a room. I would be scared to fall asleep, because I’d be anxious about having a bad dream, or something bad happening to me and no one being around. Clearly I am medicated now. But I still get visions of me being alone at home and dying of a heart attack or bleeding out from a wound because no one was around to dial 911. This is all to say that given how anxious I was being alone as a kid, I imagine I would just go insane if I lived alone. Hopefully I’ll never have to lean into that insanity.

Speaking of insanity, I manically cut my bangs on Friday night and within a few hours the regret had crept up on me, hot and uncomfortable. They are so bad and beyond fixing. But the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is about 6 weeks. At that point I’ll seek professional help and maybe have some cute curtain bangs for fall. This whole post is just about confession it seems… hopefully it can be about reconciliation too, my dear reader…

Everything will be right in the world when I finish moving all my shit into the apartment tomorrow and sit on my living room floor with a cold Heineken. And if it isn’t, at least I’ll finally be able to find my vape in the rubble…

suck it up, cry baby

it's really beautiful how, without fail, i tend to mourn past versions of myself. what i mean to say is, i'll look at an old photo of me and think of that me so fondly. i'll be so kind to her, and wonder where that me went. i'll say, "she was so pretty, she was so gentle, she was so intelligent. i'm a shell of her." i do this without fail every 6 months to one year. there are certain versions i like better than others. there are some that i look back on with the keen sting of hindsight, and laugh her off as a more naive but bright-eyed version of myself. the beauty of this is, these past versions of myself didn't always like the present edition. all i needed was time and wisdom for the self-loathing to fade away. i don't know what this says about me.

lately my fixation has been my hair. i miss my long hair. it was fun and debaucherous and i want to be fun and debaucherous again. instead, in the words of charles darwin, i am very poorly and very stupid and hate everybody and everything. i've been having the kind of anxiety attacks that make me feel detached from reality, and all the things in my house and the lines on my face seem foreign, and i feel like everyone in my life is out to get me. and then i come down and i make some food and have some ginger tea and i remember that you need to be patient while peeling hard boiled eggs. 

i am consumed with anxiety and sadness lately and i know you're not supposed to, but i feel sorry for myself. sometimes it feels good to feel sorry for yourself. to admit that it's hard. to not feel so alone. i don't normally invite others in. i suffer alone, because that's how i know how to survive. but it's lonely being the last buoy in an endless ocean. and eventually i fill up like a rain basin and it makes a mess everywhere and i finally understand everything but i need a shop vac to clean it all up. i'm starting to realize that if there's anything people should know about me, it's that i'm emotional. a warning label, E M O T I O N A L.

i've been gone a long time, i know. i've been so full of words but they wouldn't leave my head. i sat lima in my lap and listened to class of 2013 by mitski and cried my eyes out. then the words poured out. 

what else to say? it's getting colder. i haven't been counting the days of quitting. abstinence is a choice, attraction is an impulse. 

i get a twinge of fear whenever i eat a creme saver

when i was a small child, i choked on a hard candy in the middle of a restaurant and my great aunt had to do the heimlich on me. my grandma absolutely lost her shit, acted like i was dying. i think that's probably why i thought i was. i remember having a very calm yet terrifying thought that i was gonna die if somebody didn't do something. the more i think about it, it's probably the closest to a near death experience i've ever had. what makes it more surreal is that i remember it so vaguely (probably because i was so young) that for a long time i figured i just made it up or dreamt it one night. no, it just faded, like all memories do.

i sometimes think of my life as beginning differently after that incident. everything proceeding is A.N.D. (after nearly dying). since i started this era, i've had a complicated relationship with wanting to stay in it. but i actually quit cigarettes cold turkey about a month ago (i don't remember the exact date - just remember that day i threw my pack that still had 4 precious cigs in it right into the garbage). i would say i'm doing this for my health, which i mostly am, but i'm also doing it because i know that everyone around me is annoyed by the habit. luke's relief when i quit was enough for me to not touch them again. 

spring is here. sort of. been listening to a lot of tori amos. trying to stay out of trouble. my mom's 10 year old dog (and one of my few loves in this world) might have 3 months or 3 years to live, and we won't know in about a month or so. i'm not sure what i'll do when it's his time. probably lose it. probably smoke a cigarette. i don't know. he tore his acl and needs to be carried up and down the stairs by two people (one if that person is particularly strong). he doesn't flail or seem too distressed when we carry him - he just goes catatonic, as if he knows we're just helping him. sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cry. 

been thinking about those tori amos lyrics - "this isn't really happening - you bet your life it is..."

similar feeling as to when my grandma died, just being pulled along the course of life whether i like it or not. i truly have no say in this ride, and you bet your life it'll just keep dragging me behind it. and i'll never get out the grass stains. 

hello void

hello void.

i am typing this post in mostly lowercase letters because: 1. chic acrylic nails 2. general laziness 3. I admittedly type with mostly two fingers anyway bc I hated typing class in elementary school and my whole life have been rebelling against what I felt was an oppressive five finger method. 

also, dear reader, by general laziness i really mean general (major?) depression. i've really been into shock videos lately, which i think is just a form of self harm for me. it's like i'm trying to override the trauma i already have. but alas, i just get nightmares. it's effed up to type that out.... but i'm effed up at the moment. i have ze blues. and, as i write this blog, ze period cramps. so - no philosophy or poetry or revelry today. that's part of why i'm writing to you, dear void, because sometimes the tree just needs to fall in the forest and not give two shits whether anyone heard it. my go-to when in ze depression hole has historically been to make like Fleance and fly fly fly.... and i was given that opportunity when Luke said he wants to fly off to saudi arabia in a few weeks. but i have no vacation pay left, and no other legit reason to take an unpaid week off. can't help but think they'd love me in saudi though.... she ain't got a license to drive! 

lately when i leave work i've been feeling an immense pressure in my chest, like a stack of books is resting on it. this anxious feeling is an old friend, unfortunately. i have a ridiculous and selfish urge to go completely off the rails - to grab this old friend by the wrist and party till the sun comes up (and by party i mean smoke weed until i'm comatose and treat night like day and day like night). but i won't and can't do that. instead i'll take my ass to therapy. kicking and screaming maybe. 

to top it all off, summer could not come sooner. it's actually a comforting thought that an unstoppable, inevitable force like a change of season will brighten my mood. it's an inevitability that i'll be happier. never before heard of in this story, dear reader. i am ready to traipse around toronto in minimal clothing and smoke cigarettes as i please. 9pm on the half sunlit porch... ahhhhh. another summer means a year of working, which kinda feels like just existing. i've been thinking perhaps i don't want to go to grad school, perhaps i don't want to follow the career path i thought i would... and maybe flitting around the non-profit sector is where i should reside. whatever i choose, wherever i go, i know i'll be doing something helpful in this horrible world... so no complaints here. 

well. i think ze depression is here to stay for now. correction: here to squat. the worst of it will be gone soon though. a stay at a cottage over the weekend with no skiing but the aura of what it would be like to be someone who skis shall force some serotonin into my brain methinks. i think around this time last year i was cleaning out my grandma's apartment. weirdly, i kind of want to go back to that time... not because i want that pain again, but because it was a sort of justified purgatory. i existed for one thing and one thing only. a one track mind. 

that carpeted floor sounds pretty comfortable at the moment. 

in other news, morrissey posted an open letter to johnny marr and it cracked me up. "It was YOU who played guitar on ‘Golden Lights’ - not me." el oh el. honestly, the unabashed-ness of this letter was mostly what inspired me to start blogging like this. so i will sign off like the insane man himself:

McKenzie. February 2022. 

If a double decker bus…

To be honest, I always thought that love - real, true, honest love - would heal all of my pain. That all of the suffering that I’ve felt in my life would right itself like a wilted plant after a hefty watering. I came up with this idea when I was 13. I knew nothing about anything. In the love I experienced after this age, I did feel a weight lifted. I felt a shift in my guttural universe. But I always thought - too bad, we got so close. The pain remained. Better luck next time. I am destined to be Sylvia Plath: one day you’ll find me with my head stuck in the oven.  

I kept hope, because I noticed that the love I felt from person to person kept getting deeper, which meant to me that it would keep chipping at the pain until it was gone. Right now, I’m experiencing the most intense and indelible love I have ever felt. It has blown everything out of the water; it feels like how love in movies looks. And the pain is not only there; I have realized that none of the pain ever left. Love doesn’t have the power to remove pain. Love has an even better capability: it strengthens itself through common suffering. And we have both suffered. We can both say, I understand, and mean it. The pain I carry has been tinted with love. I've been thinking about how Michelangelo managed to draw the torture of Tityus in such a beautiful and erotic manner that it convinces us of the ambivalence of love. "Who will win out between sweetness and sorrow?" 

Before you, I have never looked at someone and felt true terror and awe for the intensity of the feeling. It is a primordial emotion. It’s what Stephen Chbosky means when he writes, “and in that moment, we were infinite”.  Before you, I’ve never had a kiss that felt like it belonged at the end credits. Before you, I don’t think I was even really alive. When I am at a loss for words, when words would disgrace the name of the feeling, I know now that must be love. There is no doubt. It is a clear sky as far as the eye can see. 

….crashes into us 
to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die 

that joke isn't funny anymore

i am coming to you from the hull of a sailboat. it's midnight, and the waves are gently and recklessly tossing the boat from side to side. i'm eating gas station m&ms and the sky is imposing. jung claims that a common cycle of myths involving a hero who gets lost at sea, eaten by a sea creature, and then slices his way out when the creature lands on the shore, with the amniotic quality of water and the sea creature as a symbol for the womb, points to a longing to attain rebirth through the return to the mother’s womb. love is dynamic: it can be lost, longed for, and reborn. and so can i. 

people change. this is a fact of life that, when you're 19 and heartbroken, is hard to swallow. but now i'm 22 and jaded, and i'm the one who's changed. pain is almost always the main catalyst for change. my short life has been full of pain, and the worst pain i ever felt happened on january 29. profound loss leads to profound suffering leads to profound change. but the last phase of this progression happens in the same way that the leaves on the trees change from green to orange: slowly and imperceptibly. in the short time i've had recently to catch my breath, pull up a chair, and put a hand on my own shoulder, i've realized that the person i sit across from is entirely different than the one i knew before january 29. this, incredibly, is how i've gained a small bit of self-compassion (something that has felt elusive for so long). i think it's because i am so curious to get acquainted with the stranger in front of me. 

i am the fucking architect. i've written that before, but it's never felt so true. even if other people respect you, you can always be the one to steal your own autonomy. it is also true that the only person you can count on to be there in the end is you. you have to live with yourself. i'm taking everything back, even the dog, dumbass. 

i drink a lot more coffee and smoke a lot more weed now. i'm on antidepressants that work, and left a relationship that doesn't anymore. my ship was a tempest. i am free, even if i still have pain inside me. my phone is currently turned off and it's a strangely small slice of peace that i needed. i'm so tired of answering to others, because it also means waiting for them to answer to me. my heart does it naturally. so sometimes, i need to turn everything off and watch my cat sleep - he doesn't answer to anyone. 

jung also says that "it is difficult to imagine that this rich world has become too poor to offer an object for the love of human atoms". i have to agree. he thinks our unconscious is a wanderer - trying to come back to love, to the world, to understanding, which is really an enfolding, being held in your mother's arms. have you ever just laid beside someone in silence? with only the sound of your breathing, experiencing the world separately, together. have you ever just let the waves rock you to sleep? 

i've seen this happen in other people's lives
and now it's happening in mine