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3.4 Million Canadians suffer from poor mental health and 66% of them fear the stigma associated with this disease and the potential alienation from friends, family, loved ones and the people they see everyday.
This is not acceptable.
Help spread the word.
fredsillustration asked: Is your brother really josh martinez ? Its only becasue he has been a great influence for me and he got me into hiphop and rap sorry if this is a stupid question also i really enjoy the way you write. Thanks and sorry again :)
Yup he is indeed my brother. Sorry for the late reply.
thetuliptouch asked: I just wanted to say thank you. I found your blog by accident whilst searching insomnia (my favourite thing to with insomnia) and one of your posts appeared. It apparently failed to save and I had to spend a long time searching for it again. You perfectly describe that moment when you start to fall asleep, the moment when your thoughts become distorted and unreal. Where you describe buying tomatoes before a school trip? I don't know if everybody gets to experience that feeling, where you know you are beginning to dream. It's kind of beautiful in a messed up way.
Anyway, to get to the point of this message. I found your blog, and it's inspiring, and not just in the I have nothing to do at 2 in the morning way. It is beautifully written, and when I work out how to get to the beginning of it, I'm going to read all of it, from the start.
And I know it's on the Internet for millions of people to read, but I just wanted to say, thank you for sharing it with me.
Michelle x
Thanks a lot Michelle. You really made my day. On my website Colony-of-losers.com there is a whole section about my time dealing with my nervous breakdown. It’s called the Cure. Join my facebook group and follow along. Man I just sounded like a corporate whore there for a second. Insomnia was the worst thing I ever had to deal with in my life. I tried basically everything I could to make it better. For me insomnia was part of an anxiety disorder. Once I got medicated I stopped having problems sleeping. I wouldn’t recommend the massive research. You aren’t going to find anything you haven’t already find. No miracle cure behind having good sleeping……(fuck I can’t remember the term…I bet you know it…..) it’s not habits..it’s similar to tidiness. Basically putting aside your life for a couple hours before you sleep, rigging up some psychological cues to tell your body you are going to sleep and not lying in bed while you can’t. I was down to 2 hours a day by the end. Hard to be a human when that’s your life. I had kidney stones and insomnia is the worst thing I have ever dealt with.
November 23rd,2009 The little girl bike is not properly suited to my body’s weight and height. I am a grizzly bear balanced on a unicycle. Only this bear has no fucking idea of what he is doing and is a few second from falling on his ass. I have never learned how to ride a bike. Tonight I’m going to learn even if it kills me. My friend “Paddy” is with me. He is not on a little girl’s bike. He is riding his state of the art stunt bike, doing little tricks in the air, making me look like a dipshit. His girlfriend shouts encouragement at me from the wings. In that pitch black November night anything is possible. Trying to figure out the best way to sit and not fall is my first task. This results in lots of angling towards the side and frantic putting down of my feet. “Come on you’re getting it,” says Paddy. “I’m doing fucking great,” I say, huffing and puffing. When I was 13, I was in a nationally syndicated Macdonald’s commercial. As a result I was able to afford a lot of happy meals and a lot of sad teenage nights resulted from said purchases. To put it bluntly I was 5’1, had bitch tits and a big ass in high school. Though now I’m skinny as a horny Jew can be, I haven’t excercised in a long time. “I’m king of the fucking world, Paddy.” “Sure you are, just need to get you around the block and you can see it all,” he says. “Race ya,” I say, and with a frantic burst of speed I take off. I’m hoping that somehow that moment when I know how to do this will happen and the rest will take care of itself. This is generally the way I deal with conflict. Race into it and hope I figure it out along the way. Unfortunately there is a tree racing towards me that disagrees with my logic. “Slow down, your head is too big for a fucking helmet,” he says. I skid to a stop saved by my quick feet that barely fit on the little girl pedals. “Gotta protect those brains,” says Paddy. “Otherwise how the fuck are you going to write this screenplay?” “Good point,” I say. “Let’s go again.” Just before this adventure, one of my best friends asked me to start writing a screenplay. Whether it was because of my talent or his love for me I don’t quite know. Two years previously we had lived together. Faced with the utter pointlessness of getting an arts education he played Halo. With an IQ of 170 he didn’t feel like playing academic reinder games in classrooms filled with 19 year old philosophy students. So he played Halo until he became a ranked player. So he played Halo until he flunked out of school and lost half of his trust fund. So he played Halo until there was nothing left of the cushions that let him make his way easily through life. In the shattered remains of the good fortune he was born with, he became a man. He took a shit job at a local production company as a computer analyst and worked his ass off until he became invaluable. Within a year he was producing commercials and award winning short films. This is the King in the world of shit I referred to in my first post. And he is my brother who offered me a chance at my dreams in the grips of my worst nightmare. I stagger off the bike, reeking of Old Spice and sweat. “You going to give up?” asks Paddy. “I’m going to take a break,” I say, struggling to catch my breath. “Get on the bike,” he says. “We’ll have drinks afterward and we’ll celebrate.” “Alright.” “We’ll ride to the liquor store.” “It is going to be a long time at this rate,” I say. “All the time in the world.” I want to ask him what happens if I fall and crack my skull. I want to ask him if the reason why I can’t seem to ride this fucking little girl bike is that I’m sure I going to fall. Instead I get back on the bike and continue to embarrass myself. ************************************************************************************************** “Mikey,” says my brother. “What you so scared of?” “I don’t know,” I say. It’s vaguely humiliating explaining my poor mental state to my brother. Though I explain it to everyone. I have always felt that the only way to be a man is to be honest about what you are feeling even if you fee like shit. “I don’t feel like I’m going to amount to anything. Just going to fucking die in Halifax, sucking on the family tit. Now I’m this scared guy and I feel like my whole life has already passed me by.” “Dude, you are fucking 25,” says my brother, Matty Kimber aka Josh Martinez. “Everyone goes through this.. I’m still going through this. I’m 31 and I’m still a kid, Mikey. You got a lot of years to go before you can say you aren’t going to amount to anything. ” “I can’t do fucking anything,” I say. I notice how pathetic it sounds. Lucid moments when I realize how fucked I am and how silly it is occur too often. “Only because you’ve never tried,” he says. “You didn’t cook once while you were up here. You spent a fucking grand on food. You can. You just don’t. You eat like shit and you have a heart problem.” People sometimes call me Minimartinez due to the way my voice mimics my brother’s intonations almost exactly. As a child he was my hero. The badass brother that somehow managed to travel the world and never get a real job. As I grew up we lost touch. I saw him only on family vacations where his time was divided between haunting the ghost city that used to be his home and hanging with the family he saw once a year. Being so disconnected from people that actually knew him meant that he reverted to 18-year-old rebel Matty the moment he walked through the door. I was too young to know that he was digging into that reality, that old life, wanting to somehow uncover lost pieces of himself in the familiarity of family. That the way he regressed was a desire to bury himself deep in a world that actually loved him enough to tolerate his bullshit. For a while we weren’t very close. He moved away before I grew up and had the impression I remained the gullible kid he tortured for sport. Living a life of the day to day scam of becoming a celebrity meant that he sometimes treated people he loved in ways he shouldn’t. This involved becoming temporarily involved with a girl I once thought I was in love with. I said stupid words about how if he didn’t change he wouldn’t be my brother anymore. And he actually listened and now here we are. I’m calling him via skype and leaning on him in my time of need. “Mikey, you were fucked up here too,” he says. “Spitting blood in the fucking toilet every day. You spent your whole time working on your book and you didn’t see the fucking city. You gotta get out of that head. You gotta get out of this city.” “I guess so…..” “Dude when you let yourself go things just happen for you,” he says, using the same tones I do to woo people. “You’re a charming little asshole with all the sneaky tricks that I got. People can’t help but love you, little man.” I’m taller than he is. Somethings don’t change even when they do. “You’re scared of life because you hide from it. You don’t know how to drive a car. How to ride a bike. Do it. Don’t be scared of it. You haven’t left the country and seen the world like Emily and I did. You think you can’t. Just fucking do it. Take your girl and go to Japan. Just do it. Take a risk and you’ll realize there is nothing to be scared about. Dude, you are a fucking Kimber. The world is going to love you. You just gotta get out and see it. ” I’m on the edge of tears. The possibility of a reality where this exists feels so close I could reach out and touch it. “Thanks,” I say. “I been a dip shit enough to know when to tell the truth,” he says. “You can do anything. You aren’t a kid anymore and its time you saw that. I love you Mikey. I always got your back.” “I’m going to do it,” I say. “What’s first?” he asks. “I’m going to sign up for driver school,” I say. “Fucking right. What’s next?” he asks. “I’m going to learn to cook,” I say. “Chicks love that shit,” he says. “I’m going to go to Japan and I’m going to teach English and see the fucking world,” I say. “There we go, Mikey,” he says. “Nothing stopping you from doing it, but doing it.” *********************************************************************************************** We zig-zag a few feet at a time towards our destination. Learning to ride a bike is easier for a six year old. They don’t have so far to fall. Same is true with learning life lessons. As you get older you have more to lose and you become more used to your failings. For me this bike ride isn’t a happy go lucky adventure on a November night. This is a race against my own expectations for myself. Laughing like a madman, lit on one rum and coke, I’m ready to change my life. Dead trees line the walkway of the city where I have lived my whole life. I feel like I’ll never escape this place. Houses built in the fifties filled with new families, all stuck in the same trap they were born into. A life where the familiar kills you and courage dies with each and every day. I have always wanted to be a hero and never been much of a real person. When I was a kid I was convinced I might be the next messiah until I turned 12 and an angel never came. I thought I was going to be the youngest published author until every year I got older and the day didn’t come. I thought I was going to write my book in a year and it took eight. A million times I thought I was going to find a woman, sweep her off her feet and find love and sex at the same time. Years went by and I kept making up love and watching the fictions fall apart. As I got older I became convinced I was never going to find love. Somehow it found me. She was everything I wanted. A poet with the body of a porn star. No testing or convincing. Just love. Geronimo! Falling from a cliff hoping I’d never land. Tonight I’m going to learn how to ride a bike and I’m going to save my world from the dead trees and houses that become traps. I’m going to race past all the times I told myself I couldn’t, past the girls I loved that didn’t love me back, past the point I said I would never pass beyond. Into madness, love and loss. And the liquor store. Paddy stops, awe-stricken. My feet are peddling. I’m in motion. Racing past the bright lights that hang from dead trees like crucified angels. The ground moves with me. Every speed bump just adds momentum. I’m flying. I can do this. I can fucking do it. I can do anything. Crack. The bike spins out from under me and I crash to the ground. It hurts. It hurts a lot. Paddy skids to a stop, gets off his bike and runs over. “You okay?” he asks. My body is scratched the fuck up. My knees hurt and I’m momentarily out of breath. I turn over and see his concern. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
Source: colony-of-losers.com
November 19th, 2009 My girlfriend kisses me on the mouth and leaves me alone with her mother. It’s one in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten yet or slept. “Betty” is blond with a streak of silver hair with big glasses and crystal blue eyes. Put simply she is one of the nicest women in the world. She has that sort of dignity where you can’t imagine her farting. I remember the day we went on a long walk through the forest guided by two yippity schnauzers. At the end of the walk we came to the unfortunately named Tea Bag Lake. I remember when she asked what tea bagging meant and the slight hesitation before her daughter explained. Right now, there is a lot to explain. My kitchen is dirty and I’m very conscious of this. Dishes are piled up from the night before and maybe the night before that. The table has remnants of Diana honey garlic sauce and crumbs from last nights chicken wangs. Betty’s home is very clean, polished and organized down to the last detail. The first time I stayed over at her parent’s house I got a drive home from her father. He joked that he hadn’t killed anyone in a while. This is significantly more awkward. “So I have heard that you aren’t feeling that well,” she says. “You want tea?” I ask. She looks down at my selection of herbal teas and shakes her head. “Nothing caffeinated?” she asks. “I don’t like the hippy crap.” “Caffeine’s bad for anxiety,” I say. She nods and leaves it at that. “This is a really nice place,” she says. I appreciate the lie. Her home is a menagerie of antiques themed around the color blue. There are cups, vases, cookie jars, vases, all in a vast assortment of the same dark blue. The family meals around her table make June Cleaver look like a pill popping hooker serving her fifties family from a trash can. She often cooks a main course(always something including pig to appeal to her daughter’s Jewish boyfriend), then provides several different kinds of salad as well as multiple starch options. Dessert is the diabetic coma you dream of. Her family happens to not only love each other but also like each other and not in the way most families do. Best friends bonded by blood and bullshit. Every Sunday they get together for eight hours of laughs, music, drinks and delicious dinner. Dinnertime is a competition to see who can say the most hilarious joke, most offensive story and the best insult. For the most part I tried to be the best Mike Kimber I could be. Today I’m shaking, sleepless and nervous. I worry I’m not making the best impression. At least I changed out of my PJ’s. “Yeah I haven’t been feeling that well,” I say. “I have trouble sleeping. I can’t concentrate. I don’t enjoy anything I used to. I can’t stop feeling like this.” “Anything big happen to trigger it?” she asks. I shake my head. “What does it feel like?” she asks. “I’m scared all the time. Thinking about what could happen if I do this or I do that,” I say. “It’s like I want to run as fast as I possibly can only I can’t because I’m running away from myself and the faster I go the worse it gets. The idea of being with people makes me really nervous.” “That doesn’t sound too pleasant,” she says. “I’ve heard a lot of people talk like that. Most of them got better.” Her relaxed tones ease the tension. “I don’t want to be like this,” I say. “Who would?” she asks. “ Betty has worked many long hours counseling suicidal teenagers in British Columbia. According to her daughter half the town owed their lives to Betty’s care. Now she’s moved to Nova Scotia and the government has decided she lacks the qualifications to do the job she has excelled at for more than 20 years. Her crystal blue eyes take in the dirty dishes, frown and look back at me. “Have you been avoiding situations that make you nervous?” she asks. “Yeah.” “Why?” she asks. “I feel like I’m a burden to everyone I talk to,” I say. “I’ve known you for a couple months and you’ve never been a burden,” she says. “You eat a lot of cake but that’s not a problem. You seem like a pretty good guy. Why do you think you are a burden?” “I can’t handle myself. I just talk about how fucked up I am all the time,” I say. They say you are supposed to talk about what you feel and think because then you don’t suppress it. But when the only thing you talk about is your anxiety it is impossible to get away from it. Putting this into words is difficult for me on absolutely no sleep. “I don’t want to ask for attention or pity when my life is really good. I should be happy. I should be the way I was.” “And what were you?” she asks. “Happy. Confident. Me,” I say. “Someone people can talk to. Normal.” It’s still hard for me to think about who I used to be. How many times I could have changed and somehow avoided going through all of this. On my off days, it feels like I gave myself cancer. Anxiety is very similar to any addiction. You habituate yourself to it. Worry over my worry had gone on for almost three weeks at this time. It takes three weeks to make a habit. And some addictions you can’t break. “I don’t really laugh anymore,” I say. I can hear Radiohead playing in the background. “I’m not here. This isn’t happening.” I want to make jokes and make this all okay but when you can’t laugh it’s hard to say something funny. “When I laugh I’m just doing it to fill in the space.” My girlfriend makes me laugh but in our relationship she has always done the impossible. “And you want to avoid people?” she asks. “I don’t want to be a burden,” I say. “I feel like I’m going to crack up and people will look at me like I’m crazy. People handle shit all the time. Why can’t I? Why am I like this? Why did I do this to myself?” I stop. Too many questions. No stopping for answers. I’m flipping out and I don’t want to. “You aren’t weak. This isn’t your fault,” she says. “You didn’t wake up one morning and decide you wanted to be scared all the time. You tried to do what would make you happy and you have a genetic predisposition towards anxiety. That’s not your fault. And you can deal with this.” The warmth in her voice has slipped down her family tree and into the heart of the woman I love. I can hear the same intonations, the same pauses and inflects of feeling. For a brief I can see what an amazing woman my girlfriend will be in thirty years. I wonder who I will be in thirty years. “You have to stop avoiding the things that you are scared of,” she says. “That’s a trademark of anxiety. You feed it every time you give in. You feel better for a minute and it’s harder next time. The more you face what scares you the less power it holds. Eventually you familiarize yourself with what you fear and it doesn’t scare you as much.” I’ve already started pushing my girlfriend away. The idea that I’m hurting the people I love makes me try to do the noble thing and push away the only people who can help me. With a few words her mother stopped me from pushing away the best thing in my life. “Am I going to have live like this forever?” I ask. “No. It sounds like you need to go on an SSRI,” she says. Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor for you lucky motherfuckers who have no idea what I’m talking about. Builds a barricade that keeps your happy chemicals in place. “Your brain chemicals sometimes throw you through a loop. But it only takes a couple weeks for meds to kick in and you’ll feel like yourself again. Once that happens you should go for some CBT. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. You can learn methods to deal with your anxious thoughts. Techniques you can learn so that you can keep control of your life,” she says. I have heard too many bad stories about medication to believe medication will help me. The one that scares me most is the likelihood of sexual side effects. I find it awkward to ask about this but good or bad it is in my nature to ask such questions. “What about your sex life?” I ask. “Feeling like this wrecks a person’s sex drive. You’ll feel better about yourself,” she says, not missing a beat. “And you can talk to them about that fear. There are medications with less risk.” “And you feel better?” I ask. She nods. “Whether you take medication or not you will eventually feel better,” she says. “Everything passes. Even this.”
Source: colony-of-losers.com
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November 19th, 2009 Go to sleep. Go to fucking sleep. A signal has been sent from my brain to my body that if I fall asleep something bad is going to happen. My bed has suddenly become a prison. My conscious mind is telling my body that there is nothing wrong. I’m lying next to my beautiful girlfriend who is only now fallen asleep. Minutes before we were laughing. On the floor is the evidence. On a piece of computer paper is my attempt at an illustration. On it is a very poor picture of a girl with big boobs and an incredible smile that takes up half of her face. An arrow next to it that has her name attached. Another chicken scratch arrow points down to a poorly scribbled picture of a rose. “Roses are red, violets are blue and beautiful girls deserve flowers, so obviously so do you. Unfortunately I’m broke right now. Take this one in place. IOU: Rose on Friday.” She laughed, we kissed, and we got naked. Now I’m panicking to the sound of her slow calming breaths. None of the typical signs of panic show. I’m consciously holding my body still. Telling myself it will be fine. Taking slow deep breaths which truth to be told I’m not good at taking. I loud breathe. I’m surprised she doesn’t wake up. I have tried everything to get better. Only I have made things worse. Michael Kimber’s gorgeous Jewish body was used to the shit he did to it. My brain and body adjusted to a regular diet of high fat take out meals, intense caffeine and tons of pot. The abuse was taken as love. Now kindness has thrown off my sleep schedule, marijuana withdrawal is causing me intense anxiety on top of the anxiety I am trying to reduce and my body isn’t used to meals that only have vegetables. I want to sleep so badly. 1:22. Lots of time. I read the pamphlet they gave me at the community health center about insomnia. I’m going over it as I toss and turn. Hoping I find the magic off switch and my brain turns off. According to the god that lives in the pamphlet: You have to set a sleep schedule, do the same rituals to cue your body to approaching sleep. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Have a warm cup of tea. Take an hour off the end of your day to calm yourself down from everything that stresses you. 1:41. Insomniac time isn’t the same as normal time. Marked by frantic monitoring of your alarm clock and minutes that feel like hours and nights that feel like years. The watched kettle never boils and boredom when focused on begins to burn. You can feel every second pass and the second that slips away from you is one less second you get to sleep. And that second gets added on the other end. Another second you are awake and another second you will be awake. Don’t look at the fucking clock. You’re just torturing yourself. Concentrate on the side of your body that is touching hers. Remember what it feels like to fall asleep with her arms around you, back when you had a single bed and you both slept on top of each other because you didn’t have any choice. Don’t check the clock. Nothing has changed since the last time. It won’t make you feel any better. 1:45. Covers are really hot. I put my leg out and glory in the faint chill on my legs. Toss and turn for another twenty minutes. Search for some way to get comfortable. Panic is starting to build. No matter how hard you close your eyelids or how many fucking sheep you count nothing is going to change. JUST RELAX. Try some of that visualization shit public speaking woman taught you. Cool beach. Waves crashing. Deep relaxing breaths. She is sleeping. My tossing and turning is going to wake her up. Back to the beach. Waves. Her in a swimsuit. Holding her. Laughing. It all so seems so long ago. I stop thinking for a few moments. Sleep comes in ready to take me where I’m looking to go. When you first start to fall asleep your brain loses focus. Ideas and scenarios that would never happen in real life begin to unfold. Why do I need to buy pickles before the class trip? We gotta go get the tomatoes before the teachers come. Only I can pin point the exact second when this happens. I get really happy that I’m finally going to sleep and then it slips away. Now conscious thought disappears for a while. Just the dark clouds of anger and frustration. It’s this empty place that somehow feels claustrophobic at the same time. Like you wish you could meet the person who is doing this to you. As if Dr. Mengele will walk out from behind the curtain, explain his torturous experiment and then you can righteously beat the shit out of him. Only Mengele is you and there is no experiment. Its just life and for some reason its yours. Anxiety picks your brain up and puts it on that rollercoaster ride. Consequences are methodically and unreasonably added and subtracted as you skidded on the rails, screeching towards some imagined point of no return. I open my eyes. How long has it been since I last checked? How long have I been tossing and turning. 3:45. I am past the point where I will sleep. Go to the bathroom. Kick over books. Box of drowsy antihistamines I used to get to sleep the night before. Past the bottle of Clonazepam I’m too scared to touch. Spill over glass of water. Great. She doesn’t wake up. Tippy-toe to the bathroom. Drink a little water. Take a piss. Go back to bed. Slowly go under the covers. Listen to her breathe. You never dreamed you would have a girl like this. Now you just have to sleep and it can all be okay. I think that if I manage to stay in bed my body will relax and I will get some sleep. This is standard insomniac bullshit. Pavlov’s dogs drool when they hear a bell, because they associate the bell with being fed. Our bodies associate the bed with sleep. The longer you stay awake in bed the more frayed that association becomes. They tell you to get up and go into another room if you can’t sleep after a half hour. Do some relaxing shit and then go back to sleep. I suck at this. More hours pass. Every second carefully measured on my clock. Fear reaching a ceiling. I can’t feel good about myself when I’m not sleeping and my problems seem to big for me to handle by myself. Each second makes them bigger and me smaller until I’m razor thin and I can’t see the world outside my anxiety. And I have five more hours left to go. If only I could just sleep. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning and she turns over and smiles at me. The stress from my worry has made me tense my forehead. “How’d you sleep?” This is the question that everyone will ask me in the upcoming weeks. I hate lying to her and I want to. “Little bit.” “Not at all?” she asks. I nod. “Are you okay?” she asks. I shake my head. She takes me in her arms, pressing my stomach to her chest, hands rustling my hair, taking the tension away. I’m very close to crying and I don’t want to. The last few weeks have been filled with lies I believed were true at the time. I can’t tell you how many times I told her that things were getting better. If I don’t sleep I’m tired till numb if I can avoid the panic. If I do sleep I wake up with electricity sizzling in my skin and I can’t stand still or stand to be around people. “It’s going to be ok.” I start laughing which is the closest thing I can do to crying. The border between the two is beginning to collapse. “You’ve got your family behind you,” she says and covers my body with hers. “You’ve got a lot of friends who love you and think you are fucking awesome. Why do you think I am with you? Nobody has ever treated me as good as you do. You know who you are. Your fucking Michael Kimber and that means something.” When I was a kid I used to play video games at Dmitri’s Pizza. One was called Star Destroyer or some shit. I’m some awesome pilot flying a plane that has some super duper death ray and I’m defending the motherfucking planet earth from the murderous bastards who want to take away our ability to pollute and eat greasy pizza. Millions of planes come at me and I keep killing. For years I had the highest score in the whole joint. When I got sick it was like the gun stopped working. My fears would just keep coming no matter how much logic I fired at them. Friends and family took the guns and told me that I was safe. The sky was lit with lazers I couldn’t see. I was a brick wall. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” I say. “You should have someone who isn’t like this. You didn’t sign up for this.” I hate the idea of hurting her more than I do hurting myself. “I signed up for you and this is you and I love you and I love you more because you need it and I need you,” she says. “Whatever happens we’ll get through it together.” I believe her. This is her magic. When no one else can reach me she can. “Should I call my mom?” she asks. Her mother is a psychiatric nurse and has worked for years guiding troubled kids through their teenage years. Pride is no longer a factor. I want help and I want someone who isn’t going to put a slide show on. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” I say. She goes looking for her cell phone amidst the wreckage of my room.
Source: colony-of-losers.com
November 18th, 2009 “Where are the nuts?” I ask the clerk. He looks at me like I’m an idiot. I realize I’m not being specific enough. “The almonds.” He points to an aisle at the end of the gigantic store. “Thanks,” I say and begin my journey. There is a chemical in your brain called GABA. Consider this to be the holy grail of calm, cool and collected. Without it, you will have anxiety symptoms, irritability, lowered sex drive and even seizures. You can buy GABA in its pure chemical form but it has trouble breaking the blood-brain barrier. Which is why I need almonds. My body can break down the GABA in the almonds. I recognize I’m being irrational. That doesn’t change my belief that somehow this might help me step back from the dream my life has become. Being anxious all the time requires an extreme amount of energy. That hot coffee injected into your skin , tingling and kicking in your brain, depletes your cortisol levels and leaves you feeling anything from completely exhausted to amped out of your mind. Right now I’m amped. A Kimber blur moves across the Shopper’s Drug Mart, eyes keen for a first glimpse of almonds. A homely senior citizen gives me a look as I pass him by. His ear hair is in an angry curl and his weathered lips open to say something. Before the arteries in his desiccated body can grind together so his douche-bag lungs can take in the air necessary to say whatever it is he feels, I’m half away across the store. By the time he mumbles to himself, “Slow down. These aisles is walking aisles…” I’m passed the puberty explosion working the cosmetics counter and the mother of three yelling at her children to “just pick one candy and let’s get the hell out of here.” And then I look down and see the almonds. Salted almonds. I don’t want thesalted almonds. Saturated fats and sodium take a lot of energy to break down and are bad for people suffering anxiety. Yes, I do realize I’m the same Mike Kimber who has lived on fatty fast food for years and years. But now, in one week, I will make up for all my sins. I finally find the unsalted almonds. My friend is looking through the huge vitamin section hoping to find a cure for his (recent dramatic mood shifts. He is 25, shockingly good looking, and possesses a maturity beyond most people our age. Most schools would offer a lot of money for him to attend their schools. None of this matters. He is worried about his future and a general sense of having no idea where he is going in life. As a result he is driving me to the Shopper’s Drug Mart. We recognize what we are doing is stupid but don’t quite know what else to do. We have become brothers in brooding, worried that our worry will worry our girlfriends, friends and family. One day he comforts me. The next I comfort him. He drives me out of town so we can take nature walks as the first snow falls. He smokes joints and I watch him. I recently decided to quit. The consequences of this haven’t shown up yet. He’s holding a bottle of 5-HTP. According to the internet this will raise his serotonin levels. Depleted serotonin results in depression-like symptoms, trouble sleeping, lack of enjoyment of things you used to take pleasure in. My friend knows this because I know this. I’m the expert on all things depression related. My training in journalism has equipped me with excellent research skills. As such I have read everything there is to read on the topic, and there is a lot. I’ve unfortunately forgotten all the lessons I learned concerning reputable sources. “You should have been on the track team,” says my pal, with a laugh. “I’m in excellent shape,” I say, flexing my gigantic muscles. “What can I say?” If you haven’t met me in my person I guess I should describe myself. I’m ripped. Maybe the strongest person you have ever met. I could lift a 20-ton truck and spin it in the air to save an orphan’s life. My abs resemble Super Macho Man’s from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. My pecs can wink at a beautiful blond from 30 paces and drive her mad with desire. And if you have met me and know that is total bullshit, keep it to yourself. In truth, I’ve been described as the Jewish Macauly Culkin equipped with a ginger beard. I’ve also been called Steve Buscemi by people ignorant of my beauty, and Edward Norton by people who wear glasses and aren’t fucking stupid. I smell like bacon and eggs and Old Spice. My hair can get floppy and when I want to look my best I put on a Western Shirt that I feel makes me look independent. I have more chest hair than you would expect but not to the extent that a bear would try to mate with me. “You got your nuts?” he asks. “Almonds… and yes I have my nuts,” I say. “Circumcised not castrated. I have so much to teach you about being a Jew.” My girlfriend always teases me about being a fake Jew. She worked in a Jewish bakery and knows more about my culture than I do. “What else?” he asks. He knows I have a list. “Seasons change,” I say. “Need that Vitamin D, homie.” He grabs it. One for each of us. $9.95 per bottle. “What else?” he asks. “B Vitamins,” I say. B Vitamins are the standard recommendation for people who suffer anxiety and don’t want medication. B vitamins keep you calm, turn fats and proteins into energy and help you maintain a decent level of cortisol. They also cost $12.95. But again you can’t really put a price on your mental health. Vitamin E is good sexual health. Same price. I feel like a kid in a dentist’s office. Then we get to the hippies drug counter. This is where they keep the serious shit. St John’s Wort. Rhodiola. Super vitamins. Substances that take three weeks to build up and hypothetically serve the same purpose as drugs like Prozac and Wellbutrin. I bring them up to the pharmacist. “Do these work?” I ask. He looks at the S.t John’s Wort, snickers and goes straight faced. “For some people,” he says. Really? “The thing most people don’t realize is that vitamins and herbs are medicine,” he says. “Same as something your doctor would give you a prescription for. See where it says that it works for some people. That side effects may vary? Well they do. A lot of people feel really sick when they start taking this stuff and it takes weeks to work. Only it’s not regulated like prescription medication and can be contaminated.” “I see,” I say. “So it’s bullshit?” He doesn’t say anything. I leave the hippie voodoo behind, grab my vitamins, almonds and make my way to the cash register. We get in his car, get into our mental health goodies and talk about how great it is going to be when this is over. While popping vitamins we have the momentary excitement that they’ll work. Only I don’t feel any different. And the almonds disappear and the anxiety stays. . When I get home I go on the internet again. I have an assignment in my email. I get back to work on a self-help article I am writing for a little petty cash. For a quick buck I go on the net and find two articles on the assigned topic. I paraphrase what they say. Someone else did the same thing to create the articles I steal from. Somewhere along the line they stole from someone who knew something. Thus people like me get their advice from a broken telephone. I’m both the dealer and the addict. I know this but I’m hooked. I just can’t stop looking for an answer. And on continues the story of a man who thinks life is a question.
Source: colony-of-losers.com
The room is completely empty except a very jowly woman readying her presentation. Empty chairs surround the circular table where other people should be sitting. I’m in a self-help group and I am the only one who showed up for class. Her presentation is Power Point and she makes jokes about how she is not good with computers. “I’m such a luddite,” she says. “So is my mom.” She smiles and I half expect her to tell me that she had a mother too. She has been delaying beginning the presentation for ten minutes in the hopes that other people will show up. She checks her watch once more. Ten minutes have passed since we first sat down. About twenty seconds since she last checked her watch. “Well at least this means I don’t have to worry about my fear of public speaking,” she chortles. Her jowls shake and it reminds me of ass cheeks clapping for some reason. I dutifully laugh trying to fight my desire to run from the room screaming loud enough that they bring someone competent to help me. Instead I sit and wait. “Everyone gets worried sometime,” she says. “That’s perfectly normal.” Silence. I hate being condescended to and remind myself that I have gone crazy. Society does this to my newfound people all the time. You can’t call a girl fat, in intelligent places you can’t call gay people fags or black people n-bombs but anywhere in this world you can talk down to people with mental illness. She might not be condescending. She might just be dumb. Or I might be abnormally sensitive and taking a very cliché line personally. “Been in the city long?” she asks . “My whole life,” I say. I wonder if I’m supposed to make jokes. “I hate Barrett’s Privateers. I’m that Nova Scotian. Every time I hear that song I want to kill myself.” Oops. I can tell from her expression that was the wrong thing to say. “Just kidding.” She doesn’t laugh at my joke but instead looks down at her presentation notes. “I’m almost ready to start,” she says. “I am not that good at public speaking. My fear.” “I’m not scared of public speaking,” I say. “Just about everything else though.” “We’ll see if we can help with that,” she says and passes me a pamphlet. The pamphlet says something along the lines of: So You Live With Anxiety. Click. The first panel of her presentation says: So You Live With Anxiety. “So you live with anxiety,” she begins. She proceeds to read word for word from the screen what is in front of me on a piece of paper and projected on a screen next to her head. I read much faster than she talks and very quickly have nothing to do. Interesting points are made. Alcohol and marijuana are bad for anxiety. Limit your caffeine intake because it can cause insomnia. Make sure you set a sleep schedule. Do things you love doing. There is a list of things one can do to alleviate anxiety. Breath deeply. Hold your breath in your belly and count to 5 and then exhale twice as long. This releases tension you keep in your chest. Go for long walks because the activity of walking releases chemicals that cause relaxation. Half way down the page hidden from prying eyes is the word masturbation. I consider asking her about the proper method of jerking off. I feel she is an expert. I wait to see if she says it as she goes over the list of relaxation techniques. She doesn’t. I tell myself to pay attention and stop being an asshole. I need help and she is trying to provide it. She finishes the list and looks around the room. “Does anyone have any questions?” she asks. Do you realize I am the only one here? There is a reason why mental hospitals are filled with the homeless and psychologists’ offices are filled with successful people with anxiety disorders who somehow function in their day-to-day lives. Proper care matters and if you don’t have money you are unlikely to receive until it’s too late. Poor people have to rely on the system to help and the system in Nova Scotia is totally and completely fucked. The problem is not necessarily due to the incompetence of the workers though in my experience that certainly wasn’t lacking. It is the incredible burden placed on the system by the epidemic proportions of the mental health crisis we are facing. Each year the numbers seeking treatment grow exponentially and the money for mental health doesn’t grow in proportion. 1 in 5 people deal with a mental illness in their life. My guess is that a lot of the rest just don’t deal with it. Why? It’s a fucking inconvenience getting treatment. To be admitted to a mental institution you must show that you are a clear and present danger to yourself. Not simply that you are suicidal but that you have a plan and intend to act on it in the very near future. Having spent a long day trying to convince workers that my suicidal little brother Nole indeed wanted to kill himself, being turned away for having not proved our case, I had a slight clue that getting help was not as easy as it appeared in the movies I watched. For those of who don’t present a clear and present danger to ourselves and aren’t looking to be committed, the system faces an incredible backlog. To see a qualified psychologist I was facing a wait of six months. The alternative was going to self-help groups and this meant discussing my very intimate problems with complete and total strangers. Or in my case one counselor who had a fear of public speaking. “It’s important to think positive thoughts,” she says. “It’s called happiness because it is not what happens to you, it how you feel about what happened. It’s your decision.” She beams. Happens doesn’t equal happiness. Brilliant. I can tell she feels this has gone very well. I have been nodding over and over again with each point to show that I’m paying attention. I’m not. Paying attention is not an easy thing for me right now. My thoughts are totally and completely consumed with trying to solve the problem of what is going in my head. What is going on in my head is a torturous circle. It begins with why do I feel like this? My mind frantically goes over everything that could possibly be upsetting me and then the circle spins again. My mind focuses on these negative things trying to provide solutions that life just doesn’t offer. Then I get angry with myself. Why the fuck am I so depressed? Am I one of those little emo assholes who listens to Radiohead on repeat, smears my black make up and takes cold showers to feel alive? The anger turns to guilt. Why do I feel sorry for myself? Pretty tough being a spoiled middle class white kid. They should hold a fucking telethon for me. Bono should save his pubes to raise money for me. The guilt is heavy and builds each day. I think of what I’m doing to my mother and father who I collapsed in tears in front of at a Chinese restaurant a few days earlier. About my incredible girlfriend who has been with me through thick and thin. She doesn’t deserve to be with someone who can’t at the very least gain control of himself. I was so happy. Why did this have to happen? Which nun did I spit on? My greatest and most present worry is that the worry will never stop. As a result I have trouble listening to what anyone in my life is actually saying. When I am not worrying for a few minutes I will suddenly think I feel better. I feel good now. Then I start monitoring it and it sinks back to shit. “The most important thing is the now,” she says. I tuned in when she saidmost important thing. I thought she was going to tell me what I needed to know to get over this. The simple secret that everyone knows and won’t fucking tell me. “Right now?” I ask. Stop being an asshole. “Each and every moment,” she says. I feel like giving her a standing ovation. Instead we do a deep breathing exercise. Where she has me imagine I’m on a beach. Can I hear the waves? I can’t. I can just hear the radiator turning on and her watch ticking. Can you smell the sunscreen on your skin? I nod my head. Can you smell the ocean? Salt and spray. I almost can. I want to. So badly. Can you feeling the sun on your skin? My cheek is hot. I remember being on the beach with my girlfriend the summer before. We had a couple’s day with her best friend and her boyfriend. The morning began with fresh fruit, eggs, bacon, raisin bread(prepared by me..fuck can I toast) yogurt and eggs and three different kinds of juice. Ketchup on everything. Onto the beach where we played in the waves. She was wearing a yellow bikini and looked so beautiful. You know that sort of beautiful where you don’t feel like life is real and you are just a character in a play and you can’t believe some dumb ass gave you this part. The type of beautiful that is strange and exotic and somehow home. I took her in my arms, muscles tensing, and the beautiful soft fullness of her body as light as air, warm to the touch in the cold salt water of the ocean. My nipples sharp, hers diamond. Laughing so loudly that the whole beach turned and looked at us. I lifted her above my head and she felt like nothing balanced in my hands. When we got back from the beach I received a phone call. My parents had been in a car crash. They had flipped their car, launching them 20 feet into the air, spun them round and round, flips like gods flicking coins into the air, heads or tails, dead or alive. Bounce. Crash. Flip. Land on their backs, upside down, dangling from a thoroughly destroyed vehicle. My mom breaks her wrist. My dad is covered in scratches. Both survive when they should have died. While we laughed and screamed on the beach. A few centimeters left or right my parents would have died. I wanted to go back there. Push through the sands of time and end up on that beach forever. Where the weight of my love was nothing. Where we feasted and laughed until we couldn’t stop because we never knew that life could be this good. Where my parents were invincible and car crashes couldn’t kill a Kimber. Now I was killing myself and I couldn’t stop. The relaxation ceased and the tension renewed itself. “And when I count to ten you’ll come back and you’ll feel the relaxation wash over you in waves….”
Source: colony-of-losers.com
November 3, 2009 Trying to find the date my life changed has obsessed me since things began spinning out of control. I felt if I could find the exact place and time where the balances tipped I could reach out and grab hold of that Archimedes point and shift the universe back in my favor. Unfortunately it is not that easy to pinpoint. There are seven years of ups and downs, a hundred moments where I should have, could have and absolutely wished I realized I had a problem and didn’t. Instead this story focuses on when I realized I needed to get help and how I found it. It is day three on my internship at the local paper. My body has a built in biological clock, set to piss me off by waking me up every hour on the hour, to make sure I don’t sleep through my alarm clock. The last two nights my girlfriend has been able to get me to go back to sleep by cuddling me when I wake up. I remember thinking look down at her as the sun slowly rose to meet the early hours of the morning that I was the luckiest man in the world, sleeping with her arm over my chest, feeling her pulse syncopating with my heartbeat. The next night we slept at my place, only I couldn’t sleep at all. On my clothing covered floor, past the collection of roach joints, water jug begging to be spilled by my sleepy klutzy self lies two discarded wigs, one red, one blue. For Halloween my girlfriend and I had gone as characters from Jem and the Holograms. I of course had gone as a bearded Kimber and more closely resembled the dude from Police Academy that set Jay Leno’s set on fire. The fire engine red of my room shines in the dying darkness of a new day. My alarm clock goes off. “Fuck,” she says and turns over, pushing the blanket covers off of her back, revealing the silk soft skin from her back and shoulders where her short shiksa blond hair rests in early morning tangle. “Good morning,” I say, noticing my voice is shaky and wondering why. The alarm clock continues to punch me in the brain. I get up and go turn off the alarm clock. And I suddenly feel this strength surge of adrenaline in my arm. Like someone injected caffeine into my veins intravenously. My stomach fills with acid and I know I am going to throw up. Fuck. “Sleepy time,” she says. “Have a good day at work.” I don’t have the time to tell her anything reassuring. I run to my bathroom and began emptying my stomach of burning hot yellow bile, trying to catch my breath and find it impossible. The muscles in my stomach tighten and seize like I am in the middle of a push up. My lungs gasp for air. Leg can’t stop shaking. Cue more vomiting. This is not a quiet process and when I enter the room she is looking at me with worry filling her ocean blue eyes. The worry is not simply based on how nauseating it is to hear someone puking their guts out. “Are you okay?” she asks. Another injection of coffee directly into my veins. I can feel the adrenaline sliding up from my fingertips up to my elbow to my shoulders to my neck and directly into my brain. I’m running and standing still. “I’m fine,” I say and my voice cracks as I have entered a new and terrifying form of puberty. My legs shake. She looks down. “Twitch much?” she asks and I laugh. Most things can be changed with a few words from her. She takes my hand and guides me back to bed. “What’s wrong?” she asks. Before we met, I woke up most mornings with a tightness in my stomach and a terrible urge to vomit up my stomach lining. My roommates Hermit and EMC discovered this upon moving in with me. They briefly considered that I had a secret drinking problem taking into account my early morn retching. For the first six months of our relationship it went away the second I opened up my eyes and say the most beautiful girl in the world lying next to me. Only today is not an ordinary day. The season has changed and my mind is experiencing a change in its spectrum of light. “I don’t know,” I say and I don’t and it scares me and my heart responds beats faster and faster. I tell myself there is nothing to worry about but my inner voice doesn’t speak in reassurance but in a panicked tone racing along with my heartbeat. It’s angry and shaken and it scares me even more to realize how scared I am. “Come on babe,” she says. “Everything is ok.” I’m experiencing for the first time in my life what I came to refer to as the slide. This is the process of reassuring yourself into utter panic. My hurried voice begging everything to return to normal becomes a preacher of utter and total chaos. Feeling the floor coming out from under me. “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s not what we talked about last night,” she says. “You know how I feel.” On November 1st, my best friend and former roommate Herman Dagwood moved in with my girlfriend. This had nothing to do with me. His previous slumlord had refused to provide his apartment with heat and it was two months before he was given a functioning refrigerator. However like anyone in a relationship I didn’t go into it without my own fears and insecurities. The last girl I had been in love with fell in love with my childhood best friend. As a result I had an ingrained fear that this girl who I loved more than anything else in the world would do the same with my present best friend. As I have a strange desire to be aggressively and senselessly honest with the people I love the first moment this feeling began to occur to me I went to my girlfriend in order to explain my fear and move past it. She laughed at me a little and humoured my insanity as she tends to. We kissed and we moved past it. And I thought I had. “No,” I say. “I was acting ridiculous.” And I was. There is little to no correlation between the two situations. Logically I knew the difference and where my feelings came from. However at the mention of our discussion yesterday my blood begins to boil in my veins. I sit down. She rubs my back. Kisses my ear. It feels like her cool breath is moving through my skin touching my veins and putting out the fires inside me. I believe her and I know what she’s saying is true and more than anything I don’t want to feel like this. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? “I can’t go in for work today,” I say. It’s the third day of my internship. Six months past my 25th birthday. I have no idea what I’m doing with my life and it scares me half to death. “Why?” she asks. “I don’t feel good,” I say. “I feel really fucked up.” “You can’t go to work?” she asks. “No.” As if pleased with my response my body decides to throw another surge of adrenaline at me. My insides are building a staircase to my brain, increasing the pressure with the roof offering no signs of giving way. I lie back down on my bed, trying to stands still and failing. “You ok?” she asks. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? And she means something different. She kisses my lips and it makes me feel better but it’s like the refreshing feel of rain while you are bathing in lava. “No,” I say. “I don’t think I am.” “We’ll figure it out,” she says and kisses me again. “Just relax.” I get up and call my work and tell them I am not feeling well. Next I call my parents and tell them I think something has gone wrong. And now begins the story of the long search for the cure and the people who helped me to stop looking.
Source: colony-of-losers.com
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I’m in my first year of university. My body is slung over the railing that runs up and down Middle Bay, the residence building that I live in at King’s College, looking down at a spot that has been littered with vomit by very wealthy people for several generations. Breathing is difficult and not just because I’m laughing hysterically. Two friends watch me from a few steps up also laughing. I’m laughing because I think I am going to die. They are laughing because they are on acid. My heart is beating a mile a minute and dragging me along kicking and screaming with it. My pulse goes off in shotgun blasts followed by machine gun rat-tat-tat. My head is spinning and my hands that grip the railing are tingling. My legs that no longer lift me are giving way. “What’s so funny?” asks my red eyed, red haired friend. “She thinks of me as her brother,” I say. I try to explain more but cannot because my heart is beating too fast and my sadness is coming out as upside down tears, rushing out of my partially numb lips. The railing makes a shrieking sound that implies it might give. “Who does?” asks my friend. “Not his sister,” asks his similarly intoxicated friend. “Right?” “202, 480….no that’s not right.” Both are on acid. One is working on a math problem that involves the amount of people that have ever stood in the exact spot I am standing in. My red haired friend ceases his ground breaking mathematical contemplation and turns his attention back to me. “You okay?” he asks. “I was on MSN with “Chantelle”. You know how my heart has been doing this funny thing lately?” He nods. “Well I wondered if I could make it go faster. So I thought, “Fuck it. I’m going to tell her that I like her and see what happens.” They nod their heads in unison. “And then what happened?” they ask eagerly. “She tells me that she thinks of me as a brother and I think I might be dying,” I say and break into hysterical laughter. The words hurt and so does my chest. It feels like I am being punched from the inside. Ping. Another response from MSN. Ping. Ping. She’s in a chatty mood. “Sounds like you’ve got mail,” says the red haired, red eyed acidhead. “Yup.” “I hear love is worth dying for,” says the red haired, red-eyed acidhead. “That song is by Thunder. They rock,” says his free flying accomplice. Fucking hilarious. I cannot stop laughing. I wonder if anyone has ever died laughing. I can’t quite explain what it’s like when you think you are going to have a heart attack. My laughter was composed of a couple levels of thought. One is that I am young and shouldn’t have to be dealing with this and its fucking ridiculous that I am. Two, that there is no reason I should be this nervous about a girl I have known for a couple months not wanting to take a ride on the Jewish rollercoaster. Three, imagine if I die in front of these fucking lunatics. I didn’t. My heart beat was between two and three times what a human heart should be for the next few weeks, mysteriously returning to normal a few days after my 19th birthday. My parents were justifiably concerned. A lengthy investigation was launched into the mystery of Michael Gray Kimber’s manic heartbeat. Buddhists were consulted and ordered to hold a meditation circle in my honour. Lettuce was eaten in place of breakfast specials and a search through the medical system began. The search included EKG’s, heart monitors strapped to my chest, blood tests and years of worry. See my family has a history of two medical conditions. My grand uncle died at the age of 27 of a heart attack. My grandfather before he was 60 years old. I had a heart murmur that didn’t explain the palpatitations. With no medical explanation for my problem I was prescribed beta-blockers that slowed my heartbeat and dulled my feelings. My doctor told me I should quit smoking pot. She didn’t tell me why. I was 19 and taking philosophy. With the knowledge that my cholesterol was okay I continued eating delicious breakfast specials. Having been caused no problems by marijuana with the exception of terrible shits from hastily ordered garlic fingers I continued to smoke lots and lots of weed. According to most studies concerning people that suffer extreme anxiety the first signs show themselves seven years before anything is done to address them. That panicked night was a little more than seven years ago. This story began with my heart and ended up in my head. First my heart. At the age of 25 I fell in love for the first time. I mean not just wanting to be loved, chasing some unrequited dream that was in fact safety from the manic beat of my heart. But the “everything you ever wanted and never thought you could have” sort of love. In years previous I had lived safely. Heart an ordered machine slowed down by beta-blockers and the idiocy of a romantic. I wrote thousands of pages, trying to take my miniscule experience and make myself understand that to be in the world means being hurt. They say you feel love in your heart. I think the metaphor works only because the blood that feeds your entire body is pumped through this disgusted breakfast covered artery. What began as a nervous feeling on a blind date became a wave that gave me a funny excited nauseous feeling from head to toe. I felt it in my eyelids when I could barely close them I was so determined for it not to be a dream. I felt it in my lungs when I laughed in that strange arrogant tone that people get when they first fall in love. Like their entire life was a joke and they finally get the punch line. That roller coaster ride feeling in the pit of my kidneys when I felt the shit I had believed all my life about myself scream up and take away my courage. I felt it in the wildfire tangle of my thoughts rearranging themselves, turning mathematics into poetry in the rush of warm blood. In my fingertips as I felt her heart beat through her hands. Two machines working to create the same soul shaking affect. I was more alive in myself and in her than I have ever been alone. Only like a starving man given food, I gorged and became consumed by my consumption. A good many people die of hyperventilation following a near drowning. The problem is that they aren’t used to breathing after so long holding their breath. They take in too much air and then the game is on. Facing the future, love and my own demons, November 3rd, 2009 began a frantic descent through the terrors of my genetic heritage, my fears, insecurities all in the hopes of coming back to that love and that future I so desperately wanted to get to. My family also have a multi generational history of crippling anxiety disorders. I recently discovered that beta-blockers off label function is to control anxiety. Face to face with everything I ever dreamed about I lost the ability to sleep. This is the beginning of the journey. At its heart, Colony of Losers is a love story. Not simply for the woman I loved more than I thought possible but for the friends who reminded me who I was when I forgot. Come along for the ride and discover the story behind Colony of Losers and Michael Gray Kimber’s panicked fall into adulthood.
Source: colony-of-losers.com
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