Changing the World with Whatever Comes to Mind

(potential trigger warning: depressing thoughts)

Where I’ve Been

Lately, I’ve been in one of the roughest rough patches I’ve ever experienced. Both in my writing life and in my personal life. I can’t relax anymore. I don’t think I know how to tell my body to relax anymore. I’m in a constant state of anxiety and worrying about what’s around every corner. Every step I take feels weighted with hesitation in the expectation that, ultimately, it might be getting me nowhere. At the rate I feel this world is chipping away at my abilities and chances to reach out to fellow creatives and build something important, I feel like I’m going nowhere fast.

This year is supposed to see me turn 30. It might see me have to drop out of my MFA program. It might see me become homeless. That is, if nothing changes soon. Very soon. I’m talking like within the next two weeks.

I guess for you to understand more completely what I’m going through now, it would be good to take a step back and catch you up a little.

At the end of last year, I decided to leave my job in a big company where I felt neglected and mistreated, where I’d had the displeasure to work around a couple of managers and a group of coworkers who had decided they would treat me as lesser than them because of my queer identity. It wasn’t everybody at that job, but it was enough people to chip away at my happiness at said job. They talked down to me, yelled at me in front of other employees, made fun of the way I identify, and every day I kept going back in for more. Why? Because I had bills to pay. I was getting paychecks that, to be honest, were only just enough so that I could keep going back.

Then, I’d had the chance with a couple of job opportunities. I was starting to try to do freelance writing and editing work, and I was being put under the impression by one company that I would get a job with them. That job seemed decent. It was a remote position. I looked forward to working from home and on my own schedule. It all looked so good. I quit my crummy part-time job at the big corporation because the mistreatment was escalating, and my mental faculties couldn’t take it anymore.

But then, that remote job fell through. The impression I was under, that I was getting the job, was not accurate. There was some amount of misinformation or misunderstanding on how things worked. Either way, I was instantly solely reliant on freelancing, which, even on a good day, is a volatile world.

I’ve been freelancing for four months now, making very little out of it, if I’m honest. I’ve spent the entire time also trying to get another job anywhere else so that I could have something more reliable. No matter how hard I try, how good my cover letter is, how many times I call and talk directly to the management, I am consistently receiving the same “We appreciate your interest, but we’ve chosen LITERALLY ANYONE BUT YOU” email/call/text/bird-delivered-letter, what have you.

You get the idea.

I’ve been trying to do things my way, make money with the abilities I have: writing, editing, proofreading, customer service skills, etc. I’m trying my hardest. I’m trying everything I can think of, and yet nothing has been working out, and it feels like it’s been such a long time of trying.

I don’t want to have to drop out of my MFA program. I don’t want to have to beg my family for funding—which they don’t have, by the way—to go back across the world to live with them again for the first time in so many years. I don’t want to know what I’ll have to go through if that doesn’t work out. I don’t want to know what I’ll have to go through if none of this works out. I’m trying so damn hard every day.

It’s affected my ability to get my homework done in a timely manner. I still manage to get it done before it’s due, somehow, miraculously—well, most of the time, anyway—but it’s always at the last minute at best, and that adds to my stress levels. It’s affected my ability to keep posting on this website as regularly as I’d like, and I am sorry about that.

Explaining the Break

A little over a month ago, right when I started this break from my blog, I went to the ER at 3 am. Maybe an hour or so before, my breath stopped coming easily, my chest hurt, my hands shook uncontrollably. I got clammy and concerned, which made things worse. Breathing got harder. My chest hurt more. My head started to hurt. My hands shook worse, and then I knew I needed help. I grabbed my jacket and made my way upstairs and banged on the kitchen wall that’s the shared wall with my roommate’s bedroom. I cried out for help and banged on the wall as hard as my shaky, weak hands could possibly go. My roommate didn’t hear for a while, but I kept hitting the wall and screaming louder for help. I wouldn’t dare go into the roommate’s bedroom as I didn’t want to catch them in a state of undress. It took long enough for my roommate to wake up, that I’d started to hope my pleas would alert the neighbors, and they might come knock on the door to ask what was happening, but eventually my roommate did wake up, and I told them I needed to go to the ER.

My roommate helped me down to their truck, at which point I struggled to even sit properly in the truck. The shaking was getting worse. The breathing was getting worse. I took it slow, but I had lost all sense of time by that point, so I don’t know how long it actually took for me to get in the seat and buckle up.

On the way to the ER, there was a moment, just before the exit off the highway that I would liken to one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. The tremors in my hands spread across my entire body. My heartbeat got more chaotic. I lost feeling in my body everywhere below my sternum. And then my body locked up. My hands wouldn’t move, my fingers all frozen in a sort of deformed claw-grip, and I couldn’t relax them. I managed to relay all of these feelings to my roommate as they drove, but I couldn’t move my head, either, by this point. I could talk and kind of look around, but everything else felt broken. I felt like I was about to let go of this life.

What I did not convey to my roommate, and what I have not conveyed to anyone until now, is this: at the worst moments of these feelings, when my body was frozen up, and I was convinced I was dying, I had an out-of-body moment, not the first in my life, but perhaps the most impactful. I was suddenly, if only for a quick moment, okay with dying. I felt a peace I’ve only ever felt in deep meditation. But then, almost as suddenly, I had a strong vision of what it would look like if I was to die right then. I saw how affected my family and friends would have been if I was to die in that moment. I saw that this moment, sitting in the passenger seat with my roommate I’ve known for less than a year driving me to the ER, not even halfway done with this MFA program, not having published any significant work—by which, I mean any of the novels I have planned that I need to work on before I die—this was not the moment for me to die. I willed myself to stay alive longer. The out-of-body experience ended, I came back to my body, and we arrived at the ER. At this point, I regained movement in my body. I was still shaking all over, but I could move again.

I trudged through the cold, windy grit of Spokane sidewalks around the corner and into the ER waiting room, and I told the lady at the desk what was happening to me. I don’t know how long we waited to be treated, my sense of time was still gone. By the time they did finally see me, I was starting to feel a little better, but not completely. They took my vitals and despite my difficulty breathing and the pain in my chest, they told me everything was okay. Over a bit more time and questioning, the doctor eventually told me that I’d had an acute anxiety attack and gave me a prescription for anxiety meds. I was relieved, but it didn’t explain the out-of-body experience or the fact of how convinced I was that I was about to die. I haven’t, in my entire life, felt anything as bad as I’d felt that night.

Trying to Find the Upswing

I will admit, times have been bleak since that ER trip. I still struggle just to pay bills. I struggle to get reliable income to help pay said bills. I still worry daily about what the future has in store for me.

Sometimes it gets so bleak I wonder if I should have just accepted death that night on the way to the ER.

The good news is that I managed to get a little job at a local used bookstore, which I am absolutely in love with. I enjoy being around all of the people I work with, and I enjoy being around the growing local business atmosphere. However, as we’re a small store, my bosses currently can’t give me enough hours to live off of. I’m making about half of what I need to make ends meet right now, and a third of what I’d like to be making to be able to pay off a debt to a friend, and about a fourth of what I’d like to be making in order to take care of all bills, that debt, and to live with some amount of comfort.

By comfort, I mean being able to eat normal food regularly and to buy new clothes every now and then. For the most part, I’ve been wearing clothes I’ve had for over a decade. Sure, I have a few articles of clothes that my parents or grandparents manage to pick up for me, a shirt here, a belt there, a pair of work shoes, but my wardrobe is still mostly articles of clothing from when I was forty pounds heavier than I am now. For the most part, none of it fits right. None of it looks all that good on me. All of it is from a time before I fully realized my queer identity to the degree that I have now, and so most of the style doesn’t even feel like me anymore. I can’t have confidence going anywhere in clothes that aren’t for me.

And then there’s the food. I would say an average of three nights a week, I eat popcorn for dinner. Most days I have one meal for the day. When it isn’t popcorn, it’s two eggs and two pieces of bread, or a bagel, or a small bowl of cereal, or a couple of chicken tenders.

I don’t get to eat much. I can’t afford it. It has affected my mood. It has affected my confidence. It has affected my strength to do much of anything, mentally and physically.

It’s been a hell of a time, literally.

It’s been a part of why I continue to lose hope, why I occasionally feel like maybe I should have died that night, why I continue to cower in terror of what the future has in store for me, no matter how hard I try to get better work, to change my life around, to find the upswing that I so very much hope is on the way.

It’s also part of why I’m doing this now. I’m going to try to do this blog again during any possible free time I might find, but I’m also going to do something extra for you amazing people who are kind enough to read these. I’m going to attach a Patreon account to this project and set up a link on the home page, and every post to this blog will get an audio version, recorded by myself. You’ll be able to come to my Patreon, show some support there, help me try to get by a little better, and you’ll get to hear the audio versions of these posts.

I seriously need every bit of support and help anyone can possibly give right now. Help me get this right. If you have any connections you can pull to help me get a job writing or editing anywhere, or maybe break into comic book writing, television/film writing, both of which I would love to do, or really any other kinds of creative projects I can get in on. I have so many ideas and plans for so many things I want to write and work on, and—despite what a good deal of this post might suggest, in terms of where my mind is focused—I do have a lot of positivity to share. Even when I’m feeling at my worst, if I’m around others, all I want to do is spread positivity and have a good laugh and have fun, creative projects or not.

For instance, we recently had a big writing event here in town through the University I attend. I spent most of Saturday out with friends from the program, we went to some authors-in-conversation type events, and during down time we went out to a local bar for some drinks and good conversation. It was a big help to my mental state, for sure. Being around these great friends again, talking about writing or plans over the summer or just general conversation. Their love and support and positivity boosted my mood and helped me start to get more of this work done, including getting back to this blog.

I couldn’t do what I do without these friends in my life, and the same goes for all of you, reading or listening right now.

No matter what kind of support you give, be it Patreon or simply by reading the posts regularly, I’ll appreciate you all the same. Every one of you, family, friends, acquaintances, internet strangers, no matter what kind of relationship we may or may not have, you are so very much appreciated. I love all of you so much. I consider you all my friends, and I get by with a little help from my friends.

Recently, I also reconnected more with a friend who I haven’t been able to talk to much all that regularly for the past couple of years, and he has showed me such incredible support, the kind that I hope I can one day repay, if all works out. I also had another friend of mine help me out a little bit with being able to get groceries for the week, and that was also greatly appreciated, and I hope to get to repay that friend someday, as well. I can’t do what I do without that support. I wouldn’t even be able to keep going on without support like that. I might not still be here if it wasn’t for those connections and the strength of love I feel from friends and family in these times of need.

I struggle so much sometimes. Living like I’ve been living takes a toll on my mental health, and so sometimes it’s hard to remember that strength of love, and sometimes I have moments of weakness due to that toll taken on my mental health, and I get depressed and just want to disappear, but I tell you right now, when I am in a better place, mentally and emotionally, and I’m thinking clearly, I know I don’t want to disappear. I just want to keep writing and trying my absolute hardest to get a regular income so that I can keep going and finish this MFA program and get that degree and publish more work and hopefully someday get my novels published.

Whatever kind of support you can give will always be appreciated more than I can fully express. Whether it’s financial support, reading these posts, helping me get connected to a writing or editing gig somewhere, or simply by sending some positive vibes. No matter what it is, I’ll always be so thankful to have you in my life in some way. If it weren’t for you all, my friends and family, I wouldn’t be here right now. I get by with a lot of help from my friends, actually, and I appreciate every one of you so very much. I can never fully express how grateful I am to you, but thank you. Thank you for helping keep me around. Thank you for everything.

I love you.