Ruthless Banalities

"So do it," he says.

As if writing is something to be turned on like a hot young school girl. It isn't. Expression takes time, thought, discipline. There is a lot more to it than even I, an experienced writer, ever imagined.

Two years ago, I thought my illness was holding me back, so I turned to medications to right my mind and feel normal...like everyone else. Big mistake. What I didn't reason was that normal people just can't write. It's not their thing. Sure they have thoughts and feelings and ideas they want to express, but there is never any depth to it.

Just look at Facebook.

Describe tidbits of your life in 240 characters or less, and wait for the comments from friends and friends of friends to pile up, telling you what an insightful person you are. But there is no insight. There are only ruthless banalities that expose the meaninglessness of people's thoughts. So what if you went to such and such place with so and so to eat whatever. What does that say about you? So you're feeling down and disrespected, the people you thought were friends were merely enemies under the sheeps wool. They betrayed you, hurt you, and now you must tell a world of strangers the generic wrong that has been committed against you.

Facebook is the crack of writing. It's a quick, cheap fix that makes a person feel like something more than he is without allowing for the thoughtful introspection our minds require. And I find myself addicted.

Short bursts of creative genius that flame out in a few sentences, their potential never fully realized, glow for a few seconds in cyberspace. But no one notices. No one cares. All anyone wants to know is - what is happening at this exact moment?

There is a dearth of depth in this world, and social networking exacerbates the issue by convincing people that every day trivialities are worth noting. What does that say about your life? I want to know YOU, and there's nothing in the ultra-yummy chicken and pasta you made and ate for dinner tonight that says anything other than you like to cook, and you think you're the bomb in the kitchen. That's egotistical.

It's not the kind of egotism that goes into real writing, the kind that goes on here. This brand takes a special sort of conceit that only another writer can appreciate. This isn't what I'm thinking of now. This is what I have been thinking for a long time. It's a process of elimination to weed out what I'm certain nobody cares about to get to the ideas that I believe everyone should hear.

Let it out. Open the flood gates to the inner consciousness and allow the words of discontent and dissatisfaction scream forth a quiet torment.

What I do is not what I am.

My mistake with the medication was believing that it would fix me, cure me of the ills that made me something different than mainstream normality. But it was those ills that made me special, that made me unique in a world of bland thoughts that pervade time and space and kill the innerness that we all should share. I believed that I would be even better if I could just gain control of the chaos in my mind. But look at me. I have written nothing of consequence in the nearly two years I have been on drugs. (Oh, the hypocrisy.)

I am a free man.

I cannot be bound by addiction nor enslaved by what "most people" want to think of as "the way you should be." I have my own way, and it worked for me for years, and now SNRIs, antipsychotics, and social media has robbed me of the ability to release the depths of the chaotic torment into swirls of words and subtle wisdom gained from years of being abnormal.

I have a choice, of course, to stay the course and fit in with the general population and be liked for my sense of humor and random take on the world, but that only makes me a garden variety cynic. I don't want to be someone who sees the bad in everything when there is beauty to be found in the hard aspects of life that nobody wants to read. I want to raise my voice, not silence it...not censor it nor truncate it.

So today I went off meds for the first time since November 2009, and I feel much better than I did yesterday. I have thoughts again. My subconscious bubbles to the surface - not like it used to quite yet - but with flashes of what's deep inside that I was discouraged from expressing for so long. I'll be back on them Monday for work. This is just the start of another process. I don't want to be drugged anymore. I don't want my self to be someone else, someone that someone else wants me to be or says I should be.

My identity is based on my ability to extract the tiny sparks of artistic freedom from a well of depression and angst - to find the glow in the distant darkness. I can't stand that my mind has been narrowed to the point that I can only think in short terms and small talk. It's a crime against nature to contain the wondrous tiger in a cage for people to gawk at and marvel at, as if they're seeing its true majesty behind shatterproof glass and unbendable bars.

My mind paces between the confines of thick walls of dopamine suppressors, and I think back to the wild jungle that I used to occupy. I want out. I want my freedom. I don't want to share myself if it means only showing glimpses of my reality that no one understands.

What I have written on my crack addiction is not who I am. I am not simply a status update for people to judge worthy of their comments. I am a wild, living being with dreams bigger than the space on which I have to write. Let me be who I am, and appreciate the untamed beauty of what I portray, even if you don't understand it. Don't ask me to fit into your world for your attention-deprived entertainment.

I am more than an update. I am a human being.

There. I did it.