There is what I would call an “epic” amount of bullshit about mental illness out there. From the coldly clinical to the touchy feely helpless victim crap, you can easily get lost in the minutia with a simple Google search. And at various points I’ve plunged into the murky waters of online psychology journals and patient support sites to either enhance my own understanding of myself or sometimes, yes, to get a little sympathy from people with similar issues.

But I don’t do that anymore. The science end is interesting but useless on a personal level and the fellow crazies are often locked in a hopeless pattern of sympathy dependence. Really, if your mind or emotions are distorting your world on a day to day basis and you’re seeking something constructive to get you through, there’s not much there beyond statistical data, the hug seeking chimps behind the numbers, and a sea of aggressive snake oil salesmen.

My personal diagnostic history, ever changing according to which therapist I’ve been talking to, goes something like this: PTSD, OCD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Depression. But let’s forget those fun little diagnostic labels and focus on the truth of my reality, most of the time I’m dragging my tense and twisted insides through the day with no hope of feeling anything but that debilitating ache of perpetual stress. Everything from going to work to eating lunch or writing this blog is preceded by a dark storm cloud of dread. It colors my thinking, my emotional reactions, my behavior, and my view of…Well…Everything. It’s so omnipresent in my life that I often deal with the paradox of not noticing the way it’s coloring my life because anxiety is the noise floor/base line that must be tuned out to function.

But I’m lucky, I do function. In my teens and early twenties I self medicated (anxiety has given me a heavy predisposition to drug addiction) and now as a bonafide grownup, I’m simply medicated. I have a rich creative life, a decent job, a wife, kids, house, cat, car, etc. and all of it achieved in spite of the tons of weight pressing down on my shoulders. Yay triumph over adversity! But the weight is still there and the accomplishments are all undermined by the life draining despair that lingers no matter what positives exist in my life.

Imagine, you just got a blow job on your private jet as you get ready to parachute into a pile of money surrounded by your adoring fans. I assume most people would feel absolute bliss but if you’re like me, you’ll ruin it. Your twisting guts will bring a hint of darkness and some thought will materialize. Maybe it’s “I’ve become the shallow pop star I have always mocked, I’m horrible”, or it could be “in spite of all of this I’m eventually going to die and be forgotten”, or perhaps it’s as simple as “shit I’m running out of cigarettes.” Whatever it is, it seems like the thought creates the anxiety and not the other way around. So whatever you happen to achieve in life, you can’t completely enjoy it because of the intrinsically dark nature of…well…everything. Like everyone, you believe your conclusions are correct and that your emotions are a reaction to something real.

Sounds pretty fucking horrible, huh? Well, it is. I hate it and I envy all those empty drones milling around in their shallow lives, enjoying every second of it. I envy them even while I enjoy hating them. But I can’t be like them and in reaction to that fundamental truth, I seem to have compensated by building a personality, identity, and outlook that derives satisfaction from being a dark hateful bastard. And you know what? It, combined with a single non-destructive escape I’ll get to in a moment, works.

If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em. Or maybe just verbally assault their every assumption. Shock them with whatever you can get away with. I mean, if I couldn’t be part of the happy crowd, I’d embrace others who shared my cynical view of life. Punks, outcasts, dissidents, anti-heroes, villains, crass comedians, subversives, debasers, weirdoes, freaks, monsters, losers, beaten artists, poets, mutants, bikers, rockers, geeks, crazies, addicts, fringe intellectuals, sexual deviants, these are all my people. We are the marginalized, the shunned, the rejected, and without ever saying it, we’ve all agreed to not judge each other. We’ve created a community to get the small sense of belonging we require without our assumptions being challenged and this is both effective and self perpetuating.

The second thing that’s kept me alive is perhaps a little more unique to me. Somewhere inside, past the darkness, curled up between my frontal lobe and the largely neglected pleasure center of my brain, is my happy place. This is where I chronically daydream about unwritten characters, unfilmed movies, unrecorded songs, potentially doctored photos, possible blog entries, and amusing Facebook status updates. I spend as many conscious hours in this happy place as I do dealing with the external world and this will never change. It can’t. I’m completely addicted to the fantasies the creative process enables and it’s this one thing, this one precious and sacred little thing that has expanded my identity beyond my angst and given me the hope and pride I need to survive.

That’s why it’s ok that I’m not that successful, that most movies remain unmade, and that nobody is going to read this blog. It’s also why I don’t give a fuck that you have some harsh criticism of me or this blog entry. It’s why I don’t care if I offend you or use the word fuck constantly. It’s even why I don’t care that I’m posting this highly personal information on the internet. The combination of being stuck outside the mainstream and locked in my own head has had the benefit of setting me free.

So there it is, a broad stoke view of my experience with being nuts. Obviously, I shared this because of the time I spent in my head composing it. And maybe your experience is different, maybe you can’t relate, maybe you sympathize, or maybe you think I’m wrong. Great, I’m very happy for you. And I hope you don’t mind that I don’t give a fuck what you think. Unless you like what I said, then I’d love to hear it (ok, coping mechanism three is an addiction to praise).