Better Living Through Chemistry; Or, how I stopped fearing the very much known and started to embrace my imbalance.

Before I started my career as a writer, my professional life was a disaster.  Writing has ruined that.  Now my life is a seemingly surreal series of events woven together by adorable, crafty little elves that work at once both deftly and without cigarette breaks.  My life is full of stories, potentially.  Given the right angle, everyone has a story.  And some have a story without an angle, more circular in narrative, I suppose.  There aren't any stories about ship captains, though.  That is where everyone gets it wrong.

Writing has helped me to value human life and even corporations if for nothing more than their potential for satirical send-up.

Another thing that helps me value human life is a prescription for, and the recommended daily ingestion of, a certain blue and green capsule that fights like the devil against the forces of anxiety and major depressive disorder that threaten to jab a million hate-spears into my brain.  Specifically, the parts of the brain that regulate mood and the sort of anxiety that accompanies being a shivering mass of human being.  Yes, this little botanical (maybe?) serves to block out the naturally dark chemicals and wave a red flag in front of the blessed ones, urging them toward their appropriate receptors like a neurological matador.  Either that, or it simply increases the amounts of the optimistic chemicals, I am honestly a little fuzzy on the science.  Nevertheless, I imagine from time to time that the blue portion of the pill sends a torrent of soothing water at the gloomy little soldiers of depression, washing them upon an island positively shamrocked with verdant low-lying vegetation (obviously, the green part of the pill) lightly swept now and again by careful breezes, lending it the eerily calming sensation of being alive, which it obviously is.  Everything is alive.  Even granite countertops.  Just not ship captains, they are positively dead.

The pill ingested, the veil lifts.  Not quickly.  Not even noticeably at first.  So in that respect, "the veil lifts" is an absolutely shitty metaphor.  Another equally shitty way I have heard it described is the "fog clears".  No.  I don't really know what the hell any of this would have to do with fog clearing.  Most people have no literal reference for that anyway.  Be honest, when was the last time you got to sit somewhere and witness clearing fog?  Maybe if you're from the Bay Area or something, or perhaps near the Puget Sound, but in Oklahoma we get fog like twice a year and usually I sleep through it.  Besides it sounds like some kind of shit a ship captain would say anyway.  Fuck him.

Anyway, so psycho-chemical-retreading is neither "lifty" fog nor its cousin, the equally, albeit more lacy, clearing veil.  It is more of a gradual, quiet loss of hatred.

Here's how it happens.  At first, you might notice something that would normally inspire all amounts of rage and/or hostility, like a poorly executed traffic circle or the prattling on of a self-aggrandizing pet food lobbyist.  Things that in the past would have never escaped an audible swipe.  But this time, nothing seems worth putting forth the effort to upsettedness.  Then, a really strange thing occurs.  Your brain realizes that it almost got worked up over the ingredients in a loaf of artisan bread, or how you never lettered in lacrosse because your high school only recognized it as a "club sport" or whatever (meanwhile the football team just couldn't have enough fucking different versions of their "road uniforms"), and it looks at itself, your brain, and kind of softly laughs.  That's exactly how it happens.  That's right, your present brain looks at the memory of your past brain and chuckles a bit, somewhat patronizingly, too.  Just a little.  It doesn't overdo it like some kind of pretentious ship captain or anything like that.  Just enough to let you know how smart you were to quit being on of the biggest pricks in the world and start to get help for your chemical imbalance.  It is a kind of knowing laugh.  The kind of laugh that you laugh now when you hear people who are younger than you complain about stuff like entrance exams, or how their crippling huffing addiction came about as a result of not being able to find enough activities in which to engage their free time.

So what the hell does any of this have to do writing?

I can hear you now.  You're saying, "Kudos to you, friend.  It sounds like your propensity for being a gigantic ass has been at least partially masked by employing the use of psycho-pharmacological mood-altering super-mind-fucking pills which at best will work for the time being, but must bring along to the impromptu daily chemistry experiment that is now taking place in your skull-hole a host of concerning side effects that if not at any time physically debilitating, than almost certainly sexually embarrassing. Great.  Good for you.  But this enlightenment of ennui is manufactured, it is not the byproduct of an artistic mind.  What's wrong with you, besides the established?"

To which I say, "That's just like you to shit all over this, ship captain!"

The overarching truth is that without writing, I may never have acquiesced to the science fair that is now being conducted daily in my wrinkly-pinkly brain.  And without writing, I wouldn't be able to accurately explain this brave new world to others with the obvious efficiency and precision of a laser-guided laser.   Writing has demanded that I expose the parts of myself that are vulnerable, squishy and otherwise ludicrous.  It is truly the only way I know to convey information of interest.  Nobody wants to read about how great you feel all the time and that you just don't know why, but things just kinda-sorta naturally work out for you.  People want guts strewn about and feelings ricocheting off of every possible surface (I am speaking somewhat figuratively, but it has not escaped my attention that a lot of people, "Gamers", I think they call themselves, actually like the literal spreading of guts, at least from what I can gather from the television commercials that ran during the most recent Super Bowl).

"Yes," you say, "people do seem to respond to emotion and the exposure of certain basic human qualities.  They long for a witness.  A translator who might illustrate that in one manner or another, we are all flawed, all scared to our wits and yet, all capable of a sort of redemption, a modicum of peace if not outright transcendence.  So, seeing how you have achieved this by simply taking a time-released capsule, why should we listen to anything you have to say?"

"Oh, you nautical hobgoblin - I swear." (fist shaking).

Why should anyone listen to me?  They shouldn't.  I shudder to imagine what state the world should find itself in if I have become required reading.  But here is what I have a need to confess.  If others find it useful, I am glad.  If they find it impotent and laughable, I would suggest that they keep their damn mouths shut on the matter.

What I must confess is that once I found my passion (which, incidentally, I had known for my entire life but was simply too fearful to name it), I had barely the strength left to pursue it.  Once I had been given the chance to pursue my dream, I nearly sabotaged it for lack of mental health.  But for some reason, I chose to ask for help.  And for some other reasons, I continue to choose to ask for help.  The pills help.  For now (which is really all there ever is), they help.  And I only need them to help for now.  I am not looking for a lifetime guarantee.  I don't need to conquer Everest, I just needed to quit carrying it around for a bit.  Writing about it helps.  The pills help.

Perhaps the toughest thing I have done is to try and learn to surrender.  I am still miserable at it, but I am trying.  I had to surrender to the fact that I couldn't manage my mental health on my own at this time in order to manage my mental health on my own at this time.  That's the trick.  It was either that, or purchase a boat, hire a crew and become the captain of a ship.