8/6/22

Ok I know I do this like literally every time I post on this blog, but I wanna talk about what this blog is supposed to be.

Not what it was last week. The probability that I will delete last weeks post is so high I literally hate it. The goal was to shed light on my experiences in dating within the LGBTQ community. What I forgot to mention is that I'm fucking stupid and apparently cant right a single congruent thought. There is a large part of me that wants to talk about real things like that, and I will continue to talk about it from time to time, but oh my fucking god?? Literally since the moment it was published I was so excited for this weeks post so I can get the taste out of my mouth. I will most likely revisit the ideas I brought in that post at some point, but not in the way I just did. I want to talk about the complexities, the hopes and pitfalls, what I did do was spend an entire blog post crying about my own life and saying literally nothing of value towards the actual topic of discussion. I promise I will really try to not be daft next time I talk about things like that but for now, lets focus on the positives.

So last Sunday I posted my blog and continued on with my day, but all last week, Monday through Friday I spend at my moms families cabin. And that's going to be the topic of discussion today. See how I'm keeping it within my mental grasp? Rather than coming off as a whiny white gay bitch who thinks his life is hard because he was assaulted a few times. Which reminds me of a side note I did want to talk about. My assault :) Lighthearted and fun right?

So for those who don't know, I do actually have some mental illness. I know crazy. I honestly don't know what I actually have, the common consensus seems to be Bipolar Personality Disorder, but I don't actually know yet as my dad doesn't really believe in that kind of stuff, I was never diagnosed with anything. The closest I've gotten to a diagnosis is my therapist telling me I had anxiety and depression, and my doctor prescribing me a shit load of different anti-depressants, but I've had discussions with my mom and therapist, and a lot of random people throughout the past few years, in which they've told me they suspect I have it and my therapist encouraged me to see a psychiatrist. At the end of the day I don't know what I have, I've taken medication for it, it didn't work, I feel like the person I am mentally aligns with things people have said about those with BPD, and I myself am pretty confident that there's more than just depression going on in there, BUT I wont publicly say I actually, really, truly have BPD until I get a diagnosis, hopefully sometime this fall since I don't need to wait for my parents permission anymore. This is relevant because after the Summer of 2020, I got really really bad. I wont go too in depth because there is a limit to what I want to talk about, but I was in a major depressive episode. A lot of this revolved around the idea of "men". I've always been a very romantically-focused person. I've said openly that I do date to marry, not in a religious way, but A: I really have no interest in getting too old, so Id like to get the show on the road as soon as possible, and B: I wholeheartedly believe my purpose in life is to love. Some people believe they're the main character, or the best friend, or the comedic relief, and obviously they can do other things beyond the blatant ties to characters in movies that these terms come from, but that's the energy they put out there when in the world. Mine is the love interest, the harlequin if you will (also this is from my perspective, like the whole "main character" shit is so annoying I know but it fits for what I'm trying to describe right now). I live alongside others, the friend, the son, the lover. And after Summer 2020, I suffered a few good hits to that part of me, the part of me that longs to be loved, and at that point I hadn't ever experiences instability to this degree. After the lockdown, I had lost most of my friends, my parents and our relationship was hanging on a thread, and I had literally no way to cope. Nothing felt good, and no matter how much I tried to keep going it seemed like life had a funny way of kicking me back down. So what does any 17 year old struggling to want to be alive do when they have nothing else to lean on? Reach even further for a hand to hold and comfort me when it felt like nobody else would. On the way home from school, October 2020, I texted my friend Collin. I had met him through a friend on valentines day in 2019 and immediately knew he wasn't my type. I saw him every now and again, he visited me a few times at work, and we developed a kind of flirty friendship. Being the only other gay man I knew, we did talk about sexual things, cause for me, I didn't have anyone else who was involved in the same community as me, and it was nice to know someone like me who wasn't 200 miles away. So I invited him over, my parents went out of town for the evening and I trusted him as a shoulder to lean on and comfort me, sexually or not, I just wanted company. Imma skip the next few key moments, for my own sake, but the gist is we were cuddling, and I knew I didn't want to go any further than that, eventually my parents got home, he tried to kiss me, I said no, he grabbed me and forced me onto him, but I was experienced in this area already, so I kicked him out. I slept in my sisters room that night. This whole fiasco however goes even further. Last Sunday I hung out with one of my friends from middle school who I'm still very close to, and we caught up and talked and just drove around. Eventually he brought up Colin. Now I knew I wasn't the only person he had gotten sexually aggressive with, but I figured it was me, and one other time when he was really trashed, regardless he's a fucking terrible human being. But my friend went on to tell me that the college he goes to, Temple in Philadelphia, has a confessions page as a lot of universities do, in which two other people came out with stories of Colin aggressing onto them too, and every time, pardon my own experience, it was the same event; he goes to a party, finds drunk people, I don't know the gender or sexuality of the people who posted about it, and tries to force himself on them. I'm not sure the extent of how badly he's hurting these people, but I do know that it really doesn't matter, if he's getting sexual with these people, repeatedly, something needs to happen. His boyfriend, who I had told about what happened with me and Colin and still stayed with Colin, posted on his story about the posts, basically telling them posting about it on social media is a bad way to tell your story. First of all, fuck you Mikey, second of all, die. That's all I have to say about Mikey. He just sucks ass. I decided to also send in a submission about Colin, I'm not sure if they've posted it or not, but I'm really hoping something happens, because I genuinely cant comprehend someone having this amount of allegations against them and just going about being happy with their life. His name is Colin Desmarais. Do with this information what you will, and go check temples confession page. 

I was supposed to tie the discussion of my mental health into my trip but it got disconnected with all this Colin talk, so just remind yourself of what I said. BPD, might not have it, might have it, definitely severely depressed. Last time we went was...drumroll... Also summer of 2020. All summer spent living almost entirely through my phone made me very reliant on the little bit of happiness I had clung onto. My phone, skating, staying up late, smoothies in the morning, all the goods. I could have none of that at the cabin, there wasn't any Wi-Fi, nor reception, only the greaseball food that hicks make covered in entirely too much butter, and a week with people I neither see often nor get along with all too well. My mom, step brothers, sister, step dad, mom's mom, mom's mom's husband, mom's sister, and mom's sister's friend, both of which are furries by the way. We all sleep in one room, and do literally nothing pretty much all day. Sit outside with my crackhead grandma just trying to stay mentally stable long enough to go home. My moms side of the family is very conservative as well, so if my comfort level wasn't low enough being 3 hours from home with literally nothing but clothing and backyard games, being queer and with people who post on Facebook about reclaiming their American culture with Confederate flags well exceeded it. Safe to say I told my mom I never wanted to go again, which honestly does suck cause I used to really love the cabin, but it simply isn't the kind of fun I like to have. This time I was fully not going to go, but I leave for college in under two weeks, and my mom probably wont see me until Christmas, it would mean a lot to her if I went, and I really do love my mom so sure, Ill go. My thought process was that it was most likely not going to be as bad as it was in 2020. I've grown a lot, I'm in a much more stable space now and I feel like I can deal with being unhappy a lot better, plus the biggest thing; I really hate my phone, so I honestly wasn't that worried about not being able to be on it. I was going to spend a week in the woods, meditation on life and focusing on rejuvenating my energy after a very draining summer. Happy thoughts. Monday we leave at around 11:30, its the same crew but my sisters boyfriend came, which I was originally dreading but he did offer a bit of comfort being not from our family. Most of Monday is spent sitting outside with my grandma, we call her "Gram" if that tells you anything, and she also is literally a "recovered" drug addict who's now a raging alcoholic, who beat cancer, and chemo, and smokes about 10 cigarettes a day, and is objectively racist despite what my stepdad says about "growing up in a different time", a dumb as fuck argument. For the sake of my vacation, I decided to also take a bit of a tolerance break, which might have made me a bit grumpier, but by Tuesday I was in a bad mood, right back into my old habits of self-pity and bitterness. Id spend most of my days just going wherever my mom went, and then eventually I just followed my sister around. The positives that came from it where really positive though. Monday Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly bad, both because of where I was -Ill give myself the grace of admitting the trip really isn't exciting- but also because of my mentality. Not at all suggesting that depression is something you can just "think positively" about, but I was actively trying to be more upbeat about how miserable I was, and that does actually really help. For me, minus the really bad cases, when I'm depressed about something, and not just depressed because my brain hates me, the best thing I can do is admit I'm sad, and carry on, and sometimes, sometimes, it helps me cope with what I'm sad about. But I think what really helped me was the last days, Wednesday evening through Thursday, I spent a lot of time with my sister, her boyfriend, and my little brother, who I do have a lot of love for despite us not having an awful lot in common, he's a really good kid. Wednesday evening we went down to the creak and swam and took pictures (see cover photo and recent Instagram post), and joked and it was just very "family", if that makes sense. I don't have a lot of moments where I feel a familiar connection, but in that moment it felt really good to just lay in the water in the sun with my siblings. Then we went down to beach part of the creek; The Mudpot. We skipped rocks and listened to music and I smoked, sunsetting, water not doing anything cause it was so low it wasn't even flowing anywhere, a very indie kid night for Christian. Thursday the four of us went to the same spot and swam down the creek back up to the cabin. I think moments like that saved the trip for me. Last year there wasn't much comradery between any of us, it was the same groupings as always, my mom sister and, my step and step brothers, and everyone else, mingling every now and again, but we mostly did our own things, and that in and of itself is enough to bum me out a little bit. I'm not the biggest fan of most of my family, but I'm already viewed, and objectively am, the odd one out, so when I'm separated from the group, even if its with the only two people I really got along with at the time, it just becomes an echo chamber of bitterness towards everything around me. And the universe spared me that this time. I honestly don't think Ill see my little brother again until Christmas, but I do really appreciate moments like those, if for nothing else but to expose him to people like me. He is and his family minus me and my mom, are THE architypes of people I actively avoid, and I worry sometimes hell follow in footsteps similar to my sister, and get engulphed by the culture surrounding him, rather than the diversity the rest of the world has to offer. So yeah, I'm very glad I got to spend time him, and maybe, just maybe, make him a little more empathetic to people different from him. 

That's really all I have to say about that, overall not as terrible as I thought it'd be, and I'm really trying to grow spiritually and mentally past the point of hating change as much as I do, cause its not always as bad as life has made it for me before. <3

Next week I'm going to probably talk about college, cause it'll be the last post I make from this house before I move. And I don't mean just cause I'm moving, my dad and stepmom are also moving, so Ill most likely never live here again. I grew up in this house, spend every night in this room (I mean obviously aside from when I was at my moms or somewhere else but you know what I mean). My mom went through a lot of houses, but that's a convoluted subject we can get into later, and this house has really been the only consistent part of my life for 18 years. Everything from when I was born, to now, has changed in some way or another, my family shrinks and grows, pets die, walls get painted, moving boxes get packed, relationships come and go, friends do as well but less often, I change. The one thing that hasn't is coming home to this room. I try not to be, but I am a very sentimental person, I care a lot for the things in my life that stay with me, call that attachment issues whatever, but saying bye to this house is going to be so genuinely hard, but once again, I'm trying to think positively. Maybe ill go more in depth next week, I hope not that would be really boring. For now lets talk media! Recently Ive been listening to lost of the girlies we all know and love. I have a playlist called "Ocean" which is entirely composed of songs and singers that I feel really speak to my femininity, which looks like a lot of Mitski, Normal Girl by SZA which I'm currently listening to as I type this, Faye Webster, Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple, Mazzy Star, the basics. Funeral is on repeat literally all the time. And also a lot of Steve Lacy and Dayglow, Lana, and Rico cause she just dropped a new album which I'm slowly warming up to. Podcasts have stayed pretty much the same, Emergency Intercom all the time. But I have a buddy (Manny Riko) who has a podcast, which I will be linking in my references, called Memento Vivere. I downloaded a bunch of episodes for my trip and a lot of what he talks about is the idea of growth. Spiritually, mentally, physically, becoming a better version of your. But its from his own experiences and the things he does to show care for those things and as someone who wants to be like that, and is working on being like that, its all very interesting to listen to. I really haven't been watching that much, Rick and Morty has been on repeat, I watched Girl Interrupted again, but Harley Quinn season three just came out and I really do love that show. During my lil "emo" phase in middle school and freshman year, when I was obsessed with Twenty One Pilots, and Melanie Martinez I was in love with Harley Quinn. Literally since Arkham Asylum came out, and I need to mention Margot Robbies Harley Quinn and I have the same personality type so silly (I'm replacing slay with silly cause omg I need to stop saying it) for me. 

Anyways thats it! I hope you all had beautiful days and a good week, you deserve it. Check the references page for pretty much anything I talk about, I finally found the squiggle pants I talked about like two or three weeks ago so theres that. Ok I love you all, have an amazing day, bye ! <3

~ Christian Reid