Month: July 2019

When trying to explain the reality of mental illness to others, I will sometimes refer to the monkey on my back or the ape in my head. I’m certainly not a dualist, but consciousness is a strange, emergent phenomenon which regularly defies description. There seem to be layers to our minds and personalities and they […]

Given the highly subjective nature of our personal experiences, it’s often necessary to use metaphor and analogy to describe the inner workings of my dysfunctional mind. An example of this is The Sword of Damocles, which I use to describe the near-perpetual sense of dread which permeates my thoughts. It’s a reference to the ancient […]

In retrospect, I’ve always struggled with mental illness. Some of my earliest memories of elementary school were crying and begging my mom to let me stay home. I just didn’t like being there. I loved learning, but being at school was unbearable and I’d literally make myself sick worrying about it and trying to avoid […]

As an angsty young man growing up in El Paso, I remember when Barnes & Noble first came to town. I was so in awe of the cafe: it seemed full of smart, sophisticated people sipping drinks, reading books, writing novels, and having intense, intellectual discussions. Up to that point, coffee shops like that existed […]

A host of abuses and indignities have been heaped upon my member recently. Here’s the story of why. As I’ve already intimated in the previous post, I’m a bit crazy, and health anxiety in particular is something I struggle with constantly. As such, I’m very attuned to minute details and changes regarding my anatomy. What […]

I’ve had many blogs and journals over the years, but I’m trying to be more purposeful in my efforts as I get older. Writing is something I enjoy both as a creative outlet and as a form of catharsis so it seemed logical to make a new repository for my musings. Since this is a […]