Tag Archives: evil

Little Sam (Little Devil)

On the drive back to Jacksonville tonight, I wrote in my journal. At one point in the process, I felt like I’d had a major breakthrough. Now – just a couple hours later – I’m not so sure. In either case, I think it’s worth sharing. And (above all) what matters is that I was feeling tremendous anxiety when I started and (at least a semblance of) peace when I was done.

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Journal: Christmas 2013

The last time I made a playlist was July. The music I like gives most people anxiety but it’s an extremely rare occasion when it has that effect on me. But I’m feeling way too fragile right now to risk hearing anything that I’m not totally prepared for. I need really to be comforted right now and I’m counting on this music to do it.

We just hit the part of the highway with no lights. I’m writing in total darkness now.

Heather’s so sweet. I know she never intends to do me any harm. That’s why it’s hard to leave her. I don’t know if I understand love so – sadly – it has to be a practical consideration.

I know I can’t ever be alone. I fall in “love” way too fast. So if I’m gonna be with someone, it should (probably?) be her…

She’s not great at making me feel loved, which is something I desperately need. But maybe that sort of thing goes both ways. Maybe a girl that was better at making me feel loved would also be great at hurting me if/when she wanted to. Fuck. I can be (or am) such a fragile fucking baby.

I met this girl in November. She took in the whole story behind Autobiography and pointed at the girl in it. “That’s your mom,” she said.

I didn’t like that. I’m pretty sure my disgust registered on my face before I could even think to mask it. With a smile, I responded: “I reject that. I don’t agree at all.” I had just met this girl. What the fuck?

“That’s fine,” she said. “You can reject it. But it’s still true.”
When I shot down her interpretation, I meant what I said. But – of course – she’s fucking right. As much as it’s killed me to realize that and as much as I hate to admit it.

When my mom used to constantly badger me about how much I hated her, I’d tell her I loved her and ask her to stop. I really didn’t hate her. But I kind of do now.

It’s one thing to have an intellectual understanding that your parents did their best – and to use that to “forgive” them. It’s another thing to really make sense of everything emotionally, connect all the dots, and really get a grip on it. ‘Cause when you realize now that I’ve realized that it’s not about the individual incidents of especially fucked up shit that she did, it’s about the life-threatening defects ingrained into my every fiber that she cut in and fucking cultivated for years… It’s about the fact that every time I feel rejected by Heather in the slightest, I wanna run away from home all over again.

I told Heather again yesterday that she hadn’t done anything wrong – we’re just not a good match because she doesn’t have the kind of affectionate personality that I need to feel loved. She responded that she loves me 500% and didn’t I know that? I told her that I had that information in my brain but that I don’t often feel it. Shit – how could I?

No one’s ever gonna be able to do anything that’ll make me feel loved all the time. Just as my art (which is really just the maintenance of my (relative) sanity) is a full-time job, another person couldn’t possibly give me what I need unless that was their full-time job too. Or – more accurately – were on call 24/7. ‘Cause a lot of the time I need to be left alone to “work” (paint, write, or do various backend business-of-art or website kinds of tasks). But the second I need love, if [insert the name of any girl I’ve ever been with here] can’t deliver exactly to my specifications in that instant… well, then IT’S NOT WORKING AND WE’RE JUST NOT RIGHT FOR EACH OTHER.

So – contrary to my understanding up ’til this moment – this is on me more than it’s on Heather and it’s not some incurable defect that she needs to be solely responsible for maintaining an awareness of and behaving accordingly (because she “signed up for it” by getting involved with someone who’s so openly an emotional basketcase). I need to step back in these moments and remind myself of these things of which I need to be reminded. Still, if she’s my partner, she does need to be “in it” with me and make a little more of an effort to actually express that love she says she has for me. She can be pretty cold. And in some of those moments, there’s not gonna be anything I can do to not feel unattractive, unloved, and unwanted. Worthless, and undeserving of love. This new understanding of myself won’t always be enough. Sometimes feelings are more important than facts.

This is a real breakthrough for me. Right now, in this moment. It’s not the only one from the last 48 hours though.

Driving to Manatee from Jacksonville, we had another of our four hour drives without speaking. Not in as hostile a way, but things were tense so I kept busy as she drove and, when I took the wheel, she slept. Then, when we got to the Owens, I went in alone without a goodbye. (We both just looked at each other, waiting for the other to initiate it, as I collected my things from the backseat). Then she went to her parents’. I did my thing with the Owens and with my friends in Sarasota and we didn’t see each other for two days. We didn’t spend the holiday (which means nothing to me but something to her) together. The few texts we exchanged were not especially productive.

I opened up to some friends yesterday and acknowledged that a lot of the problem – what I felt – was sexual rejection. I’ll decide in an instant, at anytime, that I want to fool around, make some gesture toward that, she’ll shoot me down for whatever reason, and I’ll feel like shit. In her defense, I know where and when she will/would be in the right frame of mind for that and I rarely act on it because it’s when I’ll usually be busy working. Our schedules are wildly different and I need to work on compromising mine more, seeing as hers is handed down from a company and mind can be whatever the fuck I want it to be. It sucks but I feel constantly burdened with a need to be productive and I’m rarely willing to set aside and stop working because I’m terrified that I won’t be able to get back on course fast enough once I’m free to pick back up.

“It’s harder to be yourself than it is to be anybody else.” My problems are so petty, small, and (really) within the bounds of my control. Still, they’re monumental monster motherfuckers and THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES WITH WHICH ANY HUMAN BEING HAS EVER BEEN FACED. I say that jokingly but it’s equally true and false. It’s real and it’s a struggle that won’t ever end. It’ll only morph and evolve. As I do…

I got away from myself and the other “breakthrough” to which I alluded. I was talking to some friends about this stuff yesterday and the response I got went from “you gotta end it (for your own sake)” to “you gotta end it (for her sake).” At one point in the conversation, the feedback I was getting, the direction that the conversation had taken, and the things coming out of my own mouth had me feeling like the most sociopathic, seriously damaged, selfish mental case on the planet. I felt like a calculating monster with an impressively evil skill-set, who was so distinct from normal people that he didn’t even have the slightest idea or awareness of what he was doing or the full implications of his decisions and behavior. I felt sicker than I’ve ever felt – like I could be some murderer, smiling at the cameras.

I probably could be. I just remembered – I had been thinking about conscience just earlier in the day. Some friend of Clifford’s murdered his girlfriend and then turned himself in. What a sap, I thought, when Mclane told me about it. What a weak human being.

I considered it further: I would never do that. You buckle down and live with the secret. No good comes from that confession; just move forward, asshole.

Well – not really. He needed to be caught; I mean, he’s clearly dangerous. But if I killed someone, I should just move forward… Learn from my mistake and accept that the consequence for my actions is having another fascinating story that I can’t ever share with the world.

WHAT’S WORSE THAN THAT?

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So… that’s what I wrote as we made our way back to Jacksonville tonight. I probably started around 9pm and put the pen down a little after 10…

I looked in my other notebook at the pieces I have left to add to the website and – given everything I wrote about tonight – one of them jumped off the page and struck me as being a perfect fit.

(Relatively) early in my stay at Tranquil Shores, we got an assignment, in art therapy group – to make a figure of our “inner-child.” Like most of my inner-child stuff, I focused on myself at age four.

"Little Sam (Little Devil)." 11/7/12. Tin foil, masking tape, felt, marker, glue. 4" (tall).
“Little Sam (Little Devil).” 11/7/12. Tin foil, masking tape, felt, marker, glue. 4″ (tall).

This thing isn’t totally devoid of substantive meaning but – obviously – this wasn’t an especially probing assignment. It was mostly fun though and I felt pretty pleased with myself when I finished it.

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  • When I typed up my journal entry, I linked to a few entries which struck me as relevant.
  • After I journaled, I felt well enough to skip around and listen to songs that would have made me nervous earlier in the night. One of them was “Debt” by Pipsqueak, the acoustic band which was initially just the kid that sang in Snuggle (and – more recently – Murmurs) but now has a second member, playing cello and also singing. It was great before and it’s great now.

Mother’s Day

"Mother's Day Card 2013." 5/11/13. Pen. 5x7".
“Mother’s Day.” 5/11/13. Pen. 5×7″.

I didn’t draw this for the person that gave birth to me; it was for someone that’s actually treated me like a son (for just under a decade now). Without her support (and the support of her family – which I consider my family as well – my real family) I don’t know where I’d be today. Probably dead. I was sifting through images, looking for one to share in tonight’s entry when I saw it. Given my day, it seemed sort of appropriate… And I mean that: only sort of. Because it’s something I made for someone who’s shown me unconditional love – someone that’s been a force of good in my life. And today was about something completely different

 

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I spent just over three hours today sitting in my seat on the airplane, scratching contempt out into notebooks. A flight’s never gone by so fast. And I had already spent a good deal of time writing about it earlier this morning – when I woke up to find a mean, shitty, evil comment left on my website last night around 3AM (by the bag of shit that likes to call herself my mom). I’ve tried to be patient and compassionate with her over the years. I’ve tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and cut her some slack because – in her own shitty way – I’m sure she loves me and I’m sure she’s doing her best. But her “best” is really fucking terrible and I give up. I’m not going to wear myself out, trying to have some semblance of a relationship with someone that won’t call me (or even pick up my calls) – preferring instead to communicate with me solely by way of spiteful, fucked up comments posted publicly on the internet. She’s always insisted that I hate her – and ranted at me (mostly through Facebook, until I blocked her) about how I’m dead set on convincing the world what a terrible human being she is. Up until now, that couldn’t have been less true. (Run a search on this website for the word “mom”; I haven’t tried it yet, but – of more than 150 entries on just about every subject – I’m pretty sure there’ll be little to any results and I’m almost positive there won’t be anything that fits her description of my writing). I mean – FUCK – she managed to interpret last night’s entry as some kind of coded disrespectful insult against her…   It was just a picture of me with my hair combed, wearing a suit! That’s some schizophrenic level shit further up the charts than anything I ever imagined even at my most drug-addled and sleep deprived. This person isn’t well (obviously) but mental illness can only excuse so much – and it’s not a free pass into my life.

Can you tell that this shit upsets me? That it hurts me? I had no intention of writing more than a quick blurb but I get worked up just thinking about it. She’s really fucking awful and – for my own sake – I can’t afford her any place (at all) in my life anymore. I don’t enjoy focusing on this kind of negativity. It wears me out. It’s bad for me.

I deleted her comment, changed the setting on my website [from now on, comments have to be “approved” before they’ll appear on the site], and I erased her from my phone.

Maybe – later in the week – I’ll share some of the stuff I wrote today. Or maybe I’ll really give her the evidence she wants (to support her ideas about my writing) and post a list of every rotten thing she did to me when I was a little kid. Granted – that’d be some spiteful, unhealthy, feed-the-hate kinda shit on my part – but it might feel good to put it out there….

I try to be loving with every thing that I do. I’m not being loving right now – and I hate that I’m feeling this way. But – honestly… her death would be welcome news. (And I’ve felt that way for a long time). It used to be that I knew how miserable she was and I couldn’t envision a scenario in which she’d ever get the kind of help she’d need to change and find happiness; it was a compassion thing – the same as the consolation that comes with the death of a sick pet (“at least the suffering is over”). But now… today… – I’d just be relieved to know that I’ll never again have to worry about her trying to hurt me.

Some people are just too hard to love. I guess I’m going to try to focus on the people that I can love – focus on the things in my life that are good. And hopefully all this evil, rotten shit will pass and I go back to pretending she doesn’t exist.

[Update: I think I just managed to block her IP address which will be good insofar as it prevents her from ever seeing anything I make/write and having any reason to comment AND insofar as it eliminates any desire in me to post anything solely out of spite, since she’d never see it anyway].

Life is Stupid

"Life is Stupid." 11/16/12. Pen. 7½x10¾ “.
“Life is Stupid.” 11/16/12. Pen. 7½x10¾ “.

I’m still not ready to share my painting from yesterday so here’s one of my earliest drawings. It’s almost a year old now.

Since I don’t have anything worthwhile to say about it, here’s an excerpt from my life story project, written right around the time that I drew this.

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Speaking of my stupid smirk – my stupid crooked smile – it’s not natural. It was practiced. I used to smile like a human being. At sixteen though, I trained my face to smile with just one side of my mouth. I think I thought it made me look more devious. I remember it was really hard at first but I practiced it for so long – consciously forced myself to smile that that way for so long – that I can’t help it now. That says something about me, I think. About how concerned I was with making a certain kind of impression – and not a good one. It also suggests that I’m tremendously fake. Honest people don’t think about smiling as they do it and, thus, wouldn’t have a moment to decide what kind of smile to display. But me: every time I smiled, I chose to go with that one. My smiles were premeditated. They were very conscious responses. With me, it’s all planned; it’s all pretend.

Group Therapy

"Group Therapy." 12/8/12. Colored pencil. Ink outline.  5½x4¼”.
“Group Therapy.” 12/8/12. Colored pencil. Ink outline. 5½x4¼”.

While in rehab last year, I drew a cartoon for a Christmas card to send my friends. It’s me and Santa hanging out with The Devil, Borderline Personality Disorder, an undefined higher power, a Disney-fied syringe full of heroin, myself at age four, an identity issue monster, and two girls that I’m either in love with, trying to fuck, or just looking to get some kind of self-esteem bump out of.

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We didn’t have a community event that week so I had Saturday almost entirely to myself. After trying and failing to create something a little more self-serving, I decided to do something nice. I drew this – my most detailed piece up to that point – for a card I could send to all the people I care about. My list had 110 names on it. That wouldn’t have been all that difficult had I not made it into the most emotionally intensive project ever. If these were people I cared about, I decided, then I should write each of them a letter letting them know why I cared about them, just how much I appreciated them, or [you get the idea]. It was more than I could handle. In the end, I got around 60 cards written (and about 55 actually mailed out). The people that have meant the most to me over the years: their cards were the hardest to write. I forced myself to scratch a few of those out early in, but others I kept putting off ’til I could find what I needed to give it the focus and honesty it deserved. Since I had about 50 names left to cross out when I threw in the towel though, some of those people never got any card at all.

As a whole, this was one of the toughest things I ever tried my hand at. Though I ultimately fell short, I’m still really glad that I did it. The 50 or so people that did receive cards – well, that’s still something.

For the backs of the cards, I traced the Traffic Street logo (with one modification) and the barcode from a box of Cap'n Crunch.
For the backs of the cards, I traced the Traffic Street logo (with one modification) and the barcode from a box of Cap’n Crunch.

As for the content of the image, sitting around me are physical manifestations of all of my “issues.” From the bottom-right, we’ve got Satan as my dark, sarcastic, attention-seeking behavior;  the mask I made in our expressive art group on identity [it’s not up on the site yet and won’t be ’til I can summon some bravery]; a syringe filled with heroin; the ghost that I used in this period as a symbol for borderline personality disorder; Santa’s just hangin’ out ’cause it’s like, Christmas, yo;  the girl represents different issues with sex, love, and codependency; the empty chair is for my [then] undefined higher power; the little kid is me at four years old, an age that came up a lot in the course of my treatment and that a lot of my core beliefs can be traced back to; and the second girl is for sex, love, and codependency. Yeah – two chairs for that set of issues. They come up a lot.

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Status update (10/30/13): This isn’t exactly my strongest entry but I don’t have much in me tonight. I feel pretty hollow right now. [More on that later, I suppose]. Earlier today I was extremely productive though and got a lot of writing and editing done. I’m really happy about that. While most of that work isn’t anything I want to share here yet,  I did completely overhaul the statement for one piece, edit the fuck out of another, and add a good amount to a third.

Diagram of Sickle Cell-Affected Brain

"Diagram of Sickle Cell-Affected Brain." 12/17/12. Colored pencil, ink, collage. 8x7½".
“Diagram of Sickle Cell-Affected Brain.” 12/17/12. Colored pencil, ink, collage. 8×7½”.

This was an assignment at the end of group one day. I forget the specifics, but I think it pretty much amounted to “here’s the outline of your brain – fill it in.”

While everything here is rooted in truth, there’s obviously a self-deprecating humor underlying it all.

I started to write up a statement but so much felt redundant when taken in conjunction with a lot of my other writing that’s already online here. Since it’s really sort of an index  of my brain anyway though, I decided to use this entry as a sort of directory. In the course of compiling it, however, I came to realize a few things…

First, I’m great at pointing out those weaknesses of mine that make me sympathetic (lovable), but am significantly less inclined to open up and and shine a spotlight on my more deplorable faults and flaws. Especially when it comes to dishonesty, manipulation, or anytime I’ve caused another person harm.

Second, when it comes to the things that have really hurt me: same problem. Hurts that I’ve conquered, I’ll talk about all day long because it feels like victory –  but the things that really left a scar: not so much. I’m embarrassed by them and they make me feel weak. (This is especially true of events from childhood that now seem petty or trivial).

Third, for a recovering heroin addict that still thinks about heroin on a daily (if not hourly) basis, I don’t seem to ever write about heroin, except in the past tense, like when I’m telling a story.

Fourth, while I’ve shared more of my thoughts on it than a lot of people ever will, I’m still pretty meek when it comes to writing about sex – at least relative to my approach to lots of other socially taboo subjects.

Anyway, here’s the little directory I put together with regard to each “segment” of my brain, as depicted in this drawing from December, although a few are either curiously thin or entirely absent…

Lovesickness (girls, relationships, and associated consequences)

  1. “Autobiography” (also re: “strategizing”)
  2. “Girls Are Not Pokemon”
  3. “Little Vomit-Colored Hearts”
  4. “Another Opportunity For Growth”
  5. “14”
  6. “The Island in Pinocchio Where Bad Kids Go to Be Bad”
  7. “Pulp”
  8. “Chrissy Fit”

 

Hope and faith

  1. “No Accident”
  2. “Maybe I Don’t Believe in God”
  3. “Everything Works Out Exactly As It Should”
  4. “Whatevermind”

 

Fear and doubt

  1. “Blueprint For a Successful Evening”
  2. “Ugly and Dreading Everything to Come”
  3. “Moving Boxes”

 

Peace / acceptance

  1. “Bug Problem”
  2. “Bright Side Nihilism: (Syria +/= Video Music Awards) < The Dog Peed on the Futon”
  3. “Whatevermind II (pinkhairdontcare)”

 

Staying sick

  1. “Still Sick (The Illest)”
  2. “My Treatment Plan”
  3. “All I Really Need to Know I Learned From a Drunk 14 Year Old at the Mall”
  4. “You Make Me a Worse Person (I’ll Feed My Negativity and Roast in My Fucking Hate)”

 

Self-image

  1. “Insecure and Overwhelmed”
  2. “Values Are For Shoppers”
  3. “Beachtown Graffiti”

 

Evil, sarcasm, provocation

  1. “Evil”
  2. “Merry Christmas 2K12”
  3. “Funny”
  4. “Toilet Humor (Sex With Children)”

 

Sex

  1. “Hard Feelings”

 

Neurotic and/or compulsive behavior

  1. “The No Self-Esteem Engine”
  2. “Walgreens is Dicks; I’m Irresponsible”
  3. This… what you’re reading right now… the fact that I’m still making this fucking list when I know that I really ought to stop, elaborate on the things that warrant elaboration and not just keep thinking up pieces that fall under each of these headings. But I’ve made it this far and I don’t want to feel like this was all for nothing….

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It was at this point that I paused and rewrote the introduction to this entry so as to include the things I learned about myself in the course of “curating” this directory. Although, remember – you can always use the search box at the bottom of every page to find content related to whatever you might be interested in. The tags just below the title of each entry can be useful too, although I haven’t always done a great job of using them as well as I really should. (I know of at least one tag that’s never been misapplied to an unrelated entry though)…

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tipjarThis entry is TOTALLY two to three hours past due but I was locked out of the site for a few hours on account of all the super 1337 h4x0r5 that have been fucking up my shit (and my webhost’s server) these last few days. I’m just glad they weren’t able to do any serious damage, so I’m not gonna bum out over the little stuff.

Ali-Jae

"Ali-Jae." 7/22/13. Pencil and pen on newsprint. 8x13".
“Ali-Jae.” 7/22/13. Pencil and pen on newsprint. 8×13″.

I sat next to Ali-Jae in fifth grade science class. She knew who No Use For a Name and Ten Foot Pole were, which – of course – automatically made her the coolest person that ten year-old Sam had ever met.

About ten years later, somebody told me: “Ali-Jae is a Republican and a Christian now.”

I thought they were fucking with me! But it was true! I figured it was some kind of a weird phase; it’d only be a matter of time before she snapped out of it and went back to normal.

But she didn’t… Instead, she became a major obstacle in my endeavors to brand all Republicans as soulless destroyers of human life and (to a lesser extent) all Christians as passive and thoughtless. There was just no way to reconcile her existence with my ideas. Eventually, I had to grow up (just a little bit) and change the way I thought about other human beings.

Which is bullshit, man. (Life is so much easier in black and white).

Oh well – it’s still cool. People are people, I guess.

—–

Speaking of which…

The final lyric in this song (“People” by Andrew Jackson Jihad) – “I have faith in my fellow man and I only hope he has faith in me” – (I think) is wonderful. At least in an aspirational sense. It’s not too far off from something I wrote in my statement for “Tola’s Approach to Demons”:

I don’t believe in evil. I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as bad people. I have to think that way ’cause if I’m wrong, then I’m most certainly evil (I’m definitely a bad person). But I try really hard. So I give other people the benefit of the doubt. If someone does something fucked up, I choose to believe that they’re doing their best. (Their best just happens to be pretty terrible relative to average/acceptable standards). I try to keep that in mind whether we’re talking about some asshole on the sidewalk or someone like that kid that shot up Sandy Hook. It’s hard to give everyone that credit – that empathy – but I try. In return, I hope to get the same.

Humanity (as well as perception) are at the heart of a lot of Jihad songs. In “This is Not a War” (a song about the Occupy movement), Sean sings: “There is no enemy, there’s only dummies that also love their families.” And the refrain they’ve used more than any other is: “It’s harder to be yourself than it is to be anybody else.” So long as I remember to give that to other people at least as often as I give it to myself, that’s… – it’s not a bad mantra.

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(Somebody help me out… I could’ve sworn that lyric was used in a song before “Distance” and “Big Bird” but now I’m doubting myself).

Evil

"Evil." 11/1/12. Pen. 8½x11".“Evil.” 11/1/12. Pen. 8½x11″.

I didn’t like Spirituality Group because I didn’t have any spirituality. But it was Thursday afternoon at Tranquil Shores so that’s what was happening. I was especially miserable on this particular day and it got worse as group went on. Toward the end, we were given an assignment: Write a letter of forgiveness (to yourself) and share it with the group. I wouldn’t share but I kind of wrote the letter.

Dear Sam,
You are a total fucking shithead. You gave up on everything a long time ago. Though you sometimes have brief moments of optimism, they’re few, far between, and extremely short-lived. Everything you say is calculated and contrived. You may be the most dishonest asshole to ever walk the earth.
I’d like to forgive you on the grounds that you’re doing the best you can – that you can’t help but be a miserable little prick – but even that’s not true. If you wanted to be a better person, you would be.
And you’re not even nice to look at! How have you not been choked out yet? People can’t stand the fucking sight of you. Even your voice is outrageously obnoxious. Every day that you continue to live is either a slight against God or proof that he doesn’t exist – or at least doesn’t care about anything anymore. Or maybe you’re the new plague for the twenty-first century! Sent down to punish this wretched world gone awry. Only YOU are deluded enough to (even jokingly) attribute that kind of significance to your stupid presence.
All I know is that people, and the planet, would be better off without you around. Please kill yourself now.
Unfortunately, time has shown that you’re too weak to even bust that move. Seeing as you’re too pathetic to even express in words (given the limitations of human languages) I’ll forgive you. It’s a pity thing. It must be hard to be so worthless and rotten. Besides, I’m not one to hold grudges. I just hope that you’re somehow miraculously transformed or that – somewhere out there – there is some kind of hell for you to burn in one day.
Love, Sam

As a kid, I’d always said that I didn’t believe in God. Sometime in my early twenties, my position went even further. I wasn’t willing to identify with atheism because I didn’t want to stake any claim — and because I didn’t want to identify with atheists (who often seemed as righteous and fanatical as the worst evangelicals). And agnosticism was just dopey (or agnostics were anyway). They were to spirituality what undecided voters are to politics. I wasn’t undecided – I didn’t give a shit. I was a non-voter, a total non-participant. If anyone asked if I believed in God, I’d tell them it wasn’t a relevant question – that it meant nothing to me.

In trying to not be a heroin addict anymore it had become necessary to let some of that antipathy slip away. I had taken to talking about God as if I believed.

But this was Spirituality Group and I hated it. I looked at the letter I had just written and I hated that too. It was like I was trying to be clever with my self-loathing. It made me hate myself even more. I flipped over the letter and started scratching an upside-down cross onto the page, around which I wrote I FUCKING HATE GOD for making me this fucking stupid.

This was on November 1, 2012 – before I learned to use art for emotional regulation. If this is art though, then this is the first time I did it (even if by accident). After scratching down the last of my authentic expression [the words I HATE EVERYTHING] I wasn’t done but I didn’t know what to do. “What else do people consider evil?” I thought.

From that point on, each thing I wrote was sillier than the next. I wasn’t miserable anymore, I was actually having fun.

My favorite part / the coup de grace came when I snuck the least evil thing that I could think of onto the page.

HAKUNA MATATA

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