Ian

Before I lived in my current apartment, I lived in an apartment complex that used to be a nursing home. It wasn’t so bad despite being filled with mostly old people. I only say that because I thought I would have a lot of noise complaints against me, but ad it turns out, I was pretty quiet most of the time.

The first few weeks kind of sucked because I had no furniture. I had to sleep on the hard floor. They had carpet, but it wasn’t very thick. I might as well have concrete floors, since there wasn’t much of a difference. 

I woke up so sore. Most mornings it took me like 20 minutes just to stand. Sleeping on a floor with a steel hip did not mix at all. I ate all my meals on the floor too. Mostly just bologna sandwiches since I couldn’t afford much better while I was still getting settled in. It was cool though. I was just happy to get out of my Dad’s house.

It wasn’t until I was a few months in that I met Ian. Ian has Autism. He had to have a nurse check on him every night. He couldn’t go to the grocery store, or the library without his nurse with him. Despite all of that, he was one of the kindest souls that I ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Every morning, Ian would yell hi to me from across the room. No matter how far away he was from me. He would then proceed to show me this app on his phone. The app was actually really cool. When you spoke into it normally, it would say what you said backwards. You could also speak backward to it and it would speak back to you normally. He would show it to me every time he saw me. It didn’t bother me at all that he would sometimes show it to me 10 times a day. The reason for that is, I LOVE listening to someone talk about something that they are passionate about, or something that just makes them really happy. It just always makes me feel good to listen to that.

Ian would always tell me that I sound like this guy on a gaming channel on YouTube. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he swore up and down that I sounded like him. He always used to tell me that I was so well spoken and that I didn’t speak in Ebonics like most of the other black guys he knew. Ian had no filter. 

I didn’t get mad or offended by this because I knew what he meant. I know he will probably never read this post, but in the off chance he does, I hope he knows how much he always brightened my days. I hope he knows that no matter how much he repeated himself, it didn’t matter because I would always listen. 

I don’t see Ian anymore now that I live on a new apartment. That really sucks because these days I can use a pick-me-up. We need more people like Ian in the world. People who are just genuinely kind. I think the world would be a lot better. This is for you, Ian. Miss ya man.

-Valken

The Existential Crisis of a Depressed Man

Yeah… Go ahead. Scoff at this post. Tell me that depression and anxiety aren’t real mental illnesses. Tell me how I just need to let it go. To suck it up. Tell me how I need to just be happy because there are SO many reasons to be. Tell me how I should just be grateful to be alive. 

Yeah because being alive is the BEST thing in the world right? Not in a world where you’re not allowed to feel anything except for what everyone else feels. Like, yeah, you can be sad, but don’t you DARE be depressed. People seem to do a lot of complaining about how other people are depressed. They call them things like “big babies”, or my favorite recent term, “snowflakes.” 

It’s hilarious how people can turn something as beautiful as a snowflake into a derogatory term. Like what the fuck, people? You’d think hearing this shit enough would make me used to it to the point where I don’t care about it anymore, but you know… depression/anxiety. 

People always think that we are this way just for attention. Who the hell would even wanna FAKE this? I’m not one of those people that just self-diagnosed myself with this. I was diagnosed with both in 2007. They started me on Abilify, which I hated by the way. It basically just turned me into a human vegetable. I would just sit there staring off into space with no coherannt thought going through my head. Hmmm… sounds like the same problem I went through before they prescribed that in the first place. After a couple of more years taking a few more medications that I can’t even pronounce, I just sort of have up.

It fucking sucks when you hit that point. You just sort of stop caring. I’ve lost too many friends in my life to this. I don’t blame them. Not really. You can’t really expect anyone to live through that. The constant mood swings. The days where you sleep for 12-16 hours at a time. You can only HOPE they will still be there. So far, I only have 1 friend that I know for a FACT, will never leave. 

When did everyone else stop caring completely? There was a time in my life where I REALLY hit rock bottom and I had to sleep out of my car. I hated it because there were very few parking lots that you were allowed to sleep in. The part that sucked the MOST was, that people never asked if you were alright. No. They just immediately called the cops. Yeah… I’m sorry that I’m scaring you because I’m broke. I can understand that some people aren’t always innocent, but you didn’t even bother to ask. 

I don’t care what you think of me after reading this(Actually I kinda do). The thing is, I’m trying. I’m trying SO fucking hard to feel better about myself. It just takes time and less negative criticism. Anyways… Gotta go. Lunch break over.

-Valken

Enough

               It’s incredibly unsettling how much the people around me are beginning to bore me. I can’t even stand to talk to them for five minutes before I start wishing I hadn’t started a conversation with them. You may call this rude, or mean, but I don’t believe that to be true. I mean… No one likes talking to EVERYONE they meet. 

               Most days you’ll find me in my room. My parents always make comments about it in an attempt to get me to come up starts to have “conversations” with me, if that’s what they want to call it. I have no desire to talk to them. They’re not really interested in anything I have to say and Im DAMN sure not interested in what they have to say either. All they ever want to know is what I’ve done to make THEM more comfortable. 

               Humph…. Maybe if they showed even a little more interest in my life instead of thinking I’m weird, I would talk to them more. Every little thing I do is strange to them because THEY don’t do it. That doesn’t make it strange, just different from them. I find that the world would be super boring if we were all the same.

               What the fuck am I doing? I have to ask myself this question all the time. Every day I am doing the same thing. I go to work, come home, play video games for a few hours, go to sleep before work, go to work, repeat… This is my life every day. I complain about not having many friends, but I haven’t done anything about it.  This needs to change.

               There are people that I DO enjoy talking to though. The few friends I do have and a girl that I really like(she knows who she is). It’s strange how just one person can change your entire perspective of things. That’s nice and all, but I wish I could just be happy without that as well. Oh well… We can’t all be like that, right? 

               I just gotta take a step back and say enough is enough… Fuck all this bullshit that I deal with every day. What am I dealing with it for anyway? Why do I cling so hard to this thing people call life? Sigh… Fuck it all, right?

-Valken