TARANTULA VACCINATION

FRIENDS,

I've been threatening to write something serious about mental illness/depression/anxiety for quite awhile now. This is a topic that everyone should have an opinion about, if not a firsthand account of.

I was a person who struggled pretty hard against depression & anger & gender dysphoria all my life. Sure that sucks, but the beauty I now see in it is that I was ABLE TO STRUGGLE AGAINST IT. I fought it on my own with a very determined nervous system, a heaping self-prescribed dosage of alcohol, and ART of all kinds.

On top of (or in spite of) all that, I found someone to be in love with and to share the dreams and disappointments life serves up in unscheduled increments. In other words, I was finally able to feel that thing called "happiness"--the thing I saw other people enjoying all around me for years. The thing my mom practically demanded of me but I could never deliver. Happiness.

I treasured my happiness, and I even took measures to guard it from the world by retreating more into the love & art and backing away from society's noise. 

I believed that as long as I was surrounded by art & love & quietude, the happiness would keep paying its dividends into my nervous depository. And it did for a long time.

Beautiful cherries

Then in 2014…something happened. I don't really know what. I won't even try to describe it, but something in my nervous system went haywire and no art, no love, no amount of positive thinking, no amount of delirious exercising or exorcising could make it go away.

And though I'd sworn off the mental health professionals many years ago (for good reason), things finally got critical enough that I surrendered to those very professionals. I probably surrendered to them in the nick of time too--I couldn't have gone another week without the medication I was given. I wouldn't be here now writing this enchanting & profound piece of bloggery.

[As unserious as that sounds, I am totally serious.]

But here's what I'm seeing & hearing all around me: more people than ever struggling with a degree of depression or anxiety that cannot be conquered in old familiar ways. 

We all struggle. Struggling is what we do most. But we're usually up to the task. We don't like it, but we put one foot in front of the other until we can have that drink, or call that friend, or gaze at that porn video rubbing our gooey crotches until they explode.

All that self-ministration is failing to deliver the needed respite from stress levels that can barely be graphed.

Alien ministrations

Here's another thing--I see men struggling more. More than women. More than I've ever seen men (admit to) struggling. 

I think mental health is something women may have a leg up on because they've historically been allowed to explore it. To be vulnerable, needy, or emotional. To seek help. I see women more able to handle stress in these times because they have done the hard work of evolving through the stigma of it.

I don't want to "genderify" mental illness too much. But in this age of the "internet confessional" I have feasted my eyes on lots of male vulnerability I didn't know was there. I've read your manifestos, bros.

And I feel your pain. I am a feminist who also champions men's rights. Or am I a "masculist" who champions women's rights? I'm not sure yet. But…I've slipped & slidden across the gender divide many times and I get that society places a lot of pressure on both genders to be a certain way. 

I can also see how these enforced, abstract gender roles can easily go from complementary to antagonistic. This is another thing I've seen flying around on the internet too much--lots of rancor in the binary. 

It makes a genderqueer like me very sad. But I'm also hopeful that this is just a big paroxysm of evolution. Women have fought hard to have their voices heard, to be granted the rights and the protections they've been granted. And I have been in that fight from the time I was a small child who was told that girls & women were some sort of "inferior other." 

Gender roles as presented to me when I first arrived on Earth

Now women are tough, bad ass bitches--though there is still much to fight for. 

I think we've reached a plateau where women will not be able to advance until men are able to fix what is wrong on their side of the binary scale. These sprees of violence perpetrated on large groups of people and often ending in suicide, this backlash against political correctness, the abuse of power in business and law enforcement, the fact that we've been at war for 15 years--

--these are all largely "men's issues." And they have grown to monstrous proportions. These things will not change unless men are allowed to let their inner momma's boys be heard. This may be quite annoying until we get used to it. Remember how women were called "shrill" when they spoke up about abuse & inequality? Well…men will probably be called "whiny" if they speak up about what they need…I have heard/seen the word "whiny" applied to men who speak up about…anything.

We don't like a whiny man in our society. Just like we don't like a shrill woman. Too bad. We need to whine & be shrill when the greater good is at stake. So…next time you hear a man whining---listen. Try to respond with something besides "Stop whining & man up."

In the 90s & 00s I remember the benevolent "male feminists" who fought alongside women in their riot to be heard. Sure they may've just been in it for the sex, but I think we've evolved past that insipid pay-off mentality, (haven't we??) I think it's time for women to "woman-up" and be "female masculists" or whatever we want to call it.

Fight for the rights of all of us to be equally tough/ equally vulnerable/equally paid/equally responsible for the human race. Fight for the right of all of us to be sane & healthy & at peace with ourselves so that we may be at peace with each other.

Well…that was my big important blog about mental health, as always viewed from my gendery microscope. All opposition in the world begins & ends with that most fundamental double standard of all…

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AND NOW!!!! If your attention span is not spent like a $1.97 at Wal-mart…here is some stream of consciousness:

Excessive force from the spirit world. As opposed to a war in the flesh it is appropriate to bare all. To lay all your cards on the bathroom floor and wear your uniform in the shower. Unlike hand to hand combat there is only one mortal in the game---and you're it. In both types of war you must be on high alert, listening for bootsteps, crunching leaves, pindrops or IEDS. But spirits will show you pictures in your dreams, and you must follow their command. There will be no shouting sergeants or practice raids. Only a soggy pillow and the haunting sense of deja vu--you've done this before in broken frames. Now you have to do it in one take. 11-9-15

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Yesterday,

I was injected w/ tarantula venom. Those of you who think I always speak in code be gratified for this is code for something. And those of you who know the code--I accept your congratulations. Code is metaphor for code; metaphor is code for metaphor. But it's all imagery to me. And it's powerful & evocative & disruptive & clever & it's not quite as forgiving as political correctness, yet it's not as fascist as blowing hard just because you can afford to get sued by a globeful of people and not be eating from a dumpster.

Hooray for tarantula venom!

XO,

Today 12-8-15

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Cecil & Pixel

Bye, folks, bye! bye! bye!!! I'll see you next time in the Octopus Squishery