MY BOY

I'm just watching the Tigers game and got excited when my dude hit one out of the park....He is up as we speak with 1 out and runners on 2nd and 3rd......and he took a walk!! I am in love with this man. Best.Centerfielder.In.Baseball. Polanco steps up after Curtis and smacks a single into left...Grandy is the f'ing catalyst.

Faith

I manned up and held the man, Evan Gryzmala. Previous to this I was just a baby dropper, but Evan is the most incredible little thing I have ever seen...and yeah, he's wearing a Marshawn Lynch onesie.



Tinny and Evan Grizz....Is that a mohawk I see???


Me, the proud parents, and Evan...He's saying "what up?"


A better look at the Marshawn Lynch jersey and the mammoth hands of Neal holding him....As Danielle's Dad was saying, holding a baby can melt even the biggest of dudes.

#48

In studying, each day something is gained.
In following the Tao, each day something is lost.
Lost and again lost.
Until there is nothing left to do.
Not-doing, nothing is left undone.
You can possess the world by never manipulating it.
No matter how much you manipulate
You can never possess the world.

-- Lao Tzu

It Does Get Worse

It's funny, the lyric from Counting Crows, "it's 4:30 A.M on a Tuesday...it doesn't get much worse than this."

Wellll, it's 4:17 A.M on a Tuesday, and it is pretty bad. If it does get much worse than this, I don't want to be around to see it. I'm done. I am the point where I'm just looking for my punch card and once I find it, I'll grab it and punch out of this bitch.

I'm at a breaking point...How many breaking points can someone honestly get to? I can't do this anymore. It's been more than 4 months of my life living with this. It's so unbelievably hard for me to live most days that I don't have words to explain how it feels. I don't know how else to say it. Think of the worst day you'd have to go through, short of those transcendent days where you find out you've lost someone close to you.

Just a day where you wake up, and genuinely don't feel like doing a god damned thing. That's my best day.

Kristin was gone for 3 days, Friday to Sunday. I came home Thursday from Cleveland at around 9:00 and I didn't leave the fucking house until Sunday when she was already home...And when I did, it was a shatter to my psyche. Just more of the bullshit of living here. It reinforced to me that I am making the right decision, but at the same time, it makes me want to not be part of this world any more. I had the strength to leave the crib, and take part in the world, and it fucking ended in shit. Why even bother?

Friday night I grabbed my keys after getting out of the shower. I could feel "it" coming but I thought meeting friends at the bar was going to be the trick. I broke down, on my knees, literally, crying on the floor, for no reason. I was going to see people who genuinely love and accept me...I didn't make it out the door. We weren't going to get hammered, just people were looking out for me and wanted to talk, and I don't feel worthy of that. I don't. I just don't...They should leave me alone. You all should.

So, I cried for a good chunk of Friday night, and when I wasn't bawling, I was just numbly existing. Same with Saturday. I woke up and just go through life numb. I like Tiger games, I like the normal stuff, but to say there is a cloud hanging over everything in my life is an unbelievable understatement. I enjoy the game, I enjoy my roadies, but there is this feeling of an impending finality to it all. It's going to be over, and then back to...DEPRESSION. YES!

That shit isn't worth it. The occasional good hours are covered in a black sheath of grim finality, and the moments when I'm not jadedly enjoying myself, I am numb, just waiting to get my 11 hours of medically-induced sleep...or existing because I am supposed to. (It is officially 4:30 A.M on a Tuesday as I type this).

Want the rest of that depressing lyric? It's pretty phenomenally bleak...."In beds in little rooms in the middle of these lives which are completely meaningless." I'm tortured and I don't understand how to get to the end of this without doing something drastic. Is drastic this Michigan and then whatever trek? If it is, then why do I cry every time I get into bed with her?

It's like sitting in Cleveland, in beautiful weather, but knowing that the game would end and I'd have the drive back home waiting for me, and the waking up to myself on Friday morning to get to. I know there is just impending shit, and that's what life is...it really is. Life is just a string of impending shit.

If life is glorious we should do what makes us happy right? This construct of greed, and more, more, more and doing what other people think or say you're "supposed" to do is a mother-fucking lie.

I want to watch the Tigers play every single game in person (insert your own example of what life would really make you happy). That can't happen because of the practicality of life I suppose right? You don't want to go to work in a cube. Who the fuck does? It's all an ends to a mean...but what mean? Substance or surface? Mostly, 99.9% surface for most of us.


"Why am I fighting to live, if I'm just living to fight
Why am I trying to see, when there aint nothing in sight
Why am I trying to give, when no one gives me a try
Why am I dying to live, if I'm just living to die?
someone tell me why" -- TAS

Rock Bottom Keeps Getting Deeper

Just when I think it can't get worse, it does.

Friday night into Saturday morning, I could not sleep. Like, could not, I mean, physically it wasn't happening...The light switch was stuck on "on" and nothing I could do would make it get to "off,"

It's 6 o'clock in the morning, and the sun is up amid thunderstorms and rain. Metaphorically the sun never really rose for me. It was still really dark eventhough it was daylight, and I was still awake....Crying...Hard. To me it was still Friday despite it being Saturday for the people in cars driving by the apartment.

The suicidal thoughts came raging back, as vivid and as real as ever. I journalled and cried, and could not get out of my head what a mess I am. I went to take some of my Klonopin and had a handful in my hand ready to just go at it, finally see what an attempt is like. I put most of them away and took 2. Maybe the suicidal attempt is this profound depth that I need to reach before it can all turn around? I've thought a bunch of times that I was at rock bottom, but nope. Weeks later, rock bottom is deeper and harder than it was last time. This was as close as I came to a realistic attempt and I wonder now if I just didn't do it because I'm smart enough to know that the amount I had wasn't enough to do the trick? I don't want my stomach pumped, I want to die to kill my pain.

This can't lead me back to BryLin...Nothing there is going to help me with this. I want to throw all of the pills out and do this, heal, holisticlly. The meds, other than seeming fairly ineffective, make me feel like such a waste when it's time to pick up the script bottle and take some more. Even looking at them I have to shake my head. Taking these meds make me FEEL depressed just from the shear standpoint of I HAVE to take them.

Taking them is like a sledgehammer to my psyche. Having a good day right, "don't forget to take your meds that were prescribed to you for your suicidal depression." Lovely right?

I should wear a wristband, like a Livestrong bracelet, that reminds me I have major depression...but the bottles really do the trick. Maybe a hat? A t-shirt? I guess wearing my Tiger's Pudge Rodriguez t-shirt can serve that purpose...because seeing him in Yankee pinstripes is suicidally depressing.

What got me feeling a little better today was, again, music. I don't know that anyone out there rightfully could dislike Amos Lee's music...He's got to be one of the best songwriters I have ever heard, and his voice is so damn good it frustrates me! His song "Supply and Demand" while meditating was spot on...here are the lyrics:

Somethin’ gotta give with the way I’m livin’
Seems I’m gettin’ down everyday
The more I strive, the less I’m alive
And seems i’m gettin’ further away

Oh well all my superstitions and my crazy suspicions
Of the people that I care about
I been doin’ more screamin’ than i been doin’ dreamin’
And I think it’s time I figured it out

Yeah baby I need a plan to understand
That life ain’t only supply and demand

I been goin’ joggin’ in the park after dark
Draggin’ ’round with me my ball and chain
Took southern skies to make me realize
That I’m causin’ myself this pain

The woman that I’m lovin’ yeah I’m pushin’ and shovin’
Getting further on by the day
And I can’t understand how the heart of this man
Ever let it end up this way

Yeah baby I need a plan to understand
That life ain’t only supply and demand

When the road gest dark and lonesome dear
You can find me here
But honey you don’t know where I am
You need a friend yeeaahh

Life ain’t easy in fact I know it’s kinda sleazy
When you’re the big man in town
Shakin’ religions and makin’ decisions
You never get to slow on down

Well your wife and your baby you tell them yeah well maybe
I’ll meet y’all at a weekend resort
Put your eyes on the prize and you can realize
Your little girl’s life’s so short

Brother you need a plan to understand
That life ain’t only supply and demand
Yeah sister you need a plan to understand
That life ain’t only supply and demand

Hey, you better figure it out now
You know you ain’t comin’ back down, yeah
You better figure it out now
You know you ain’t comin’ back down

Amazing stuff right? That's where I was when I was working 50-60 hour weeks and money obsessed. I lost me. My eyes were "on the prize" I thought. The prize though was so mis-guided and un-genuine. My prize was to live how everyone else thought I should. Fitting into the construct of life that it seems is way too set up for depression and loss of self. "Life ain't always supply and demand."

The real prize, like my boy says, is when you realize how short your little girl's life is. I see it so clearly now. I used to go a month or close to two even without seeing my niece and nephew and it stuns me how fast they grow up. I was busy working, chasing dollars, and all of a sudden my nephew is the smartest 12 year old I think I have ever met, and my niece seriously could make the finals of "Last Comic Standing." She is the funniest freaking little girl I have ever met. She is seriously funnier than a lot, probably the majority of, adults that I know.

I walked into the room on Tuesday to see her and she says "what's up big pimpin'?" to me. Ridiculous. (I did teach her it, months ago, but she still remembers it and greeted me with it...silly). Yeah, and at my nephew's soccer games, she sings "Glory Glory Man United" or West Ham United's "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles."

I was working every day, sometimes without a day off for more than 5 or 6 weeks. Money was fantastic, but I wasn't living...that's the best part...When you ask my niece "what's up big pimpin'?" her reply is "nothing baby, just livin'." She has the answer...She's Amos Lee...Just live. She's my little "biku" (Buddhist word for seeker of enlightenment).

That's why my trips are so great. I am just living...on my terms and NOBODY else's. If I want to go to the hotel bar after check-in, I will. If I just stay in my room, take Seroquel and sleep for 11 hours, fine. It's on my terms. That's what I've lost. Living life, day-to-day life, on my terms. I love the road trips more than anything. There were summers where we probably hit close to 20 major league baseball games. Last two seasons (before this season) I think we MAYBE went to 3 or 4. I stopped writing, I stopped doing what I enjoyed...I lost myself and that's nobody else's fault. I have to take a step back and fight the fuck out of this. I wish it was as simple as something physical, I'd just go Brett Favre and take pain-killers. I have to fight myself mentally though.

Maybe my crescendo is Edward Norton in "Fight Club." I have to just go into my parking lot hammered and beat the shit out of the insane part of me. Beat it to death, physically. That would have been me early this morning, at 7am, in the parking lot punching myself in the head, breaking my own nose...Expelling the demons physically, because the drugs aren't working.