Dear Erin,
It has been on some shade of delinquency on my part that the story had not continued until now. I have lost my job, about 5 days after I sent you that letter. I have been striving for employment, and just recently bailed out by my parents, who I am now groveling at the feet of. In a spiritual sense. They have preserved my little life yet again, believing, as I do, that work will find me soon.
I wrote a very dark and sensual piece of poetry A while back, when I was considering writing out my history entirety in verse. I came up with a poetic summary. I have included it at the end of this email, but I am unsure if you have seen it on my blog already. I do not know the level to which you have been digging through old posts. They are quite abundant, and a task that neither my mom or dad or wife are capable of fully comprehending. I write for myself, mostly, to cope with a symptom that strikes me, that deeply affects my functionality in some new unexpected way. I try to express the depth of my sorrow, the elation and pain and sunshiny days as well. I am biased, naturally, and horribly opinionated. So I rant from time to time.
My blog is the current instrument by which I have become married. I know right? What?
So, this girl (see lonely, lost, depressed and very frustrated) was looking through WordPress blogs that caught her eye. Mine was one that even drew out real actual comments from her, which to me is rad, and a great honor to have someone comment publicly on your shit. I respond to my commentators, naturally. DinoJax, as she was then, start chatting, I send her an email asking to be her friend who has a keen understanding of mental illness (that we both suffer from some form of). I say something like: nur, um, maybe we could, uh, yeah… be like friend and stuff and talk and stuff to to to to like cope with OMG my hair is on fire! BAI!
We were similarly engineered and similarly traumatized individuals. I saw in her writing (because I blog-stalked her) a fantastic person just smothered in an environment rife with toxicity. She lived in Gainesville, Florida. A swamp with a college town built through it. I am paraphrasing. She hated her life there, and was slowly wilting away. Our talks deepened until we called each other for the first time. Then I bought her a computer with a webcam (because she spilled coffee on her only other one) so we could skype with each other. And BOOM. Love. I fell in love with her over the course of 2 months. Or, more or less, 2 weeks in. Then I started REALLY seeing her life and her style, personality, and I fell even deeper. We were attracted to each other, and I was totally willing to break my world in half for this girl. She got me, and got who I was, and looked at me stark naked and said “Yep.”
Metaphorically speaking, anyway.
So, I came up with a plan, that after making initial communication with her on November 5th, I would ask her to move in with me and pack her whole fucking life into 2 big suitcases and a Cat. THEN, please get on 2 planes and travel all the way across the country to be with me, having never sniffed my hair, having never seen me in person, just, boom, do it. I laid it out there. I loved her and was never going to stop. I had to have her in my life, and MY environment out here was 12 billion times better than anything she had going on in Florida. So, we did it. The single hugest balls-to-the-walls life-changing thingy doo-dad I ever tried to do.
And It has worked unbelievably well. I have achieved a level of freedom, independent thought and financial success that I had never before thought possible. My meds have offered some serenity from symptoms. My balance on said medication razor is wavering though, mostly because the brain is constantly changing, and nothing ever works forever, it just, stops, sometimes, and all the symptoms can come rushing back in all at once. Or cycling from elated with joy to imploding with sorrow in a span of an hour, that continues on this way for days. Unmedicated is being totally unable to function. At this point, I struggle. I cry excessively, at simple things, like the end of Frozen and The Last Unicorn, and because I get scared about bad things happening to people I love, and sometimes I sob because I feel unworthy of the very blessed and wonderful life I have lived. Despite acute pain and unnecessary (hindsight) venture into premature independence, I have recoiled to strike hard into success. I vie for identity somewhat lost to me through a deep unmedicated cycle 2012 – 2013. I just smoked pot, and lived with my parents, and struggled to find the courage to come out of that room. I was so scared, so lost. I had no idea how to stop the constant discourse in my mind. Pending decisions, fantastically horrible thoughts, regrets spewing over the cauldron and the stink of reprisal heavy in the air. I deserved to suffer. I had earned this misery.
But I got on meds, and was re-diagnosed rapidly. With my 12 years of experience in dealing with this disorder, I usually have a pretty good idea what meds to use to treat it. Based on individual metabolic processes and responses (side-effects) to the medication. Everybody responds differently. My wife’s meds are different than mine. We address symptoms as they arise, attempting to maximize the potential of several neurochemical transmitters in our malfunctioning brains. It’s a battle against time, because the brain always grows. This tips the balance. I fall from the edge.
Life is good, though. I’m working on being a consistent, high-functioning mentally ill person. I know I can do that, and more. I can achieve significance, and will, to lives, and gain experience through action, and find the depths of my emotions, and so on. I want to live a full life, one that I at least had a chance to be happy. So, I’ve been looking for my love, because I’m such a ridiculous romantic goo-hearted slobber-fool person, I really just need to find someone to shower with puppy love. Jacqueline had never had anyone love her as much as I do. I’m crazy about that girl. She’s my forever one. We married 3-12-13. Coming up on a year pretty soon.
Since our initial contact in November, she (timeline) moved here on January 4th, and married me 2 months and 8 days later. Sweet.
I have come to understand that I would not be fully able to comprehend happiness, if I had not (or do not, as the case may be) experienced the deep depressed lows that come with the wrong treatment plan, or death, or accumulation of regret, or trauma. Whatever the instigator, there are few things more horrible than the level of darkest sadness. Right? But without knowing, distinctly, what that felt like, I can compare the difference with love, and see how real and amazing love can be, and how very good I am at loving someone, and how I am very effeminate and impassioned and driven and brave. It is vastly different, because my personality exists in the light of love, and does not resemble even the same person when it is depressed. I disappear into nothing and become a shell of a person. This is what I endeavor to avoid. I fight my depression, and I will never stop. I admire my wife for this reason as well. She gives her all, every day, and I love her for how hard she tries. For her own sake. And I for mine.
Adieu
_____
2002-2007
Going back there:
Like steam; beads down glass,
Crushed, small breathing,
Bricked against the cold of ice.
Bare shivers climb–
Dying of exposure–
Locked out of home,
Seeking payphone forgiveness.
Biting back reasons,
Not to regret.
Originally: spun, wayward,
On a slicing wire through time,
Chance, risk;
Struggling to the premises, fading.
Brisk, bone-deep shakes,
Drive the pursuit of goals.
Aspiring eyes, welled, trying,
Daunted by respect for want.
Fooled for love-like states–
Stealing irresponsible moments,
To taste her heated moans,
Cast in binding-bliss–
Dry, waterless roots of resent, choking.
A purpose lost through trial,
Ignorant and capsized–
Chemically wooed,
Dizzy, misguided synapses–
Firing belligerently.
Romanced for rot,
Eating its sweet succulents.
Infectious pus spewing,
Fetid, mashed, intestinal wastes,
Swallowing the bitter-bile, thumping–
Hot blood,
Churning heart irregularly–
Throbbing in outrage,
Burnt by promise.
Married in, for, by… disgust.
Soulless, slipping into alleys–
Emptied through waste-ways,
Stained, parcels left alone in rooms,
Possessions strewn with disregard.
The sallow, bleeding papered-walls,
Spattered with hateful stains,
Strike a blow across my face.
Breaking the world, for her.
Down.
Things fell far from recollection.
Her sex viperous, uncoiled.
Still a yearning somewhere primal,
In unrequited hardness–
Driving wild, weedy undesired growth,
Poisoned by the circumstance.
Surrendering lifelessly,
To ever-aching thrusts–
Of regurgitated desires.
Then,
Eyes to not forget:
Burrowing with unspoken–
Sensual keenness, open, desperately–
Acknowledging a presence inside–
Releasing into her private warmth,
Grasping sweat-soaked touches–
Consumed by sensation,
Trusting.
Absolved of secrets,
Twisted…
After, bloated disregard,
Conscious of scattered lusts–
Responsible for my own want,
Tasked by a new stare,
Vexed, glowering with spat-out pity–
A face of words,
A ring thrown on the floor.
Coughing on bitter soil-dust,
In realization as moments blur–
Squandered days it seems…
Mounting, uneven scores,
Towards the future, now smeared,
Stranded silence.
Nobly striving–
For a dim yesterday.
The torpor-dreams of corpses,
Swamped, in the peat-murk of decay,
Sinking into the now.
Abandoned.
Sought for no longer,
Waiting–
Stubbornly surrendering,
To a rescue.
Neurochemically Challenged 
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