Doesn’t so much matter what happened but for the first time ever on Friday evening I admitted on Twitter that not only had Adam and I had a fight but that he wouldn’t be coming home that night. Many people were very quickly very supportive and I can’t thank you enough we are both very lucky to have the friends we do. Sometimes I just get to a point where I don’t care, if people want to pretend their marriages and relationships are perfect fine so be it that works for them but I think it is unrealistic to think that an eight year relationship / [almost] five year marriage wouldn’t have a few hick-ups. Since last July, we’ve been going through the first real rough patch in our marriage and I’m quite frankly tired of pretending everything is fine. I don’t feel the need to elaborate further but I do feeI that I needed to be honest with myself about it. At this point all that really matters is that we want our marriage to work.

Friday evening also brought the horrible news that a friend had again tried to take his life. This is a friend who I’ve visited in hospital before, someone we both care for deeply, but for me when they get to the point of hospitalization there is a part of me that sometimes shuts down, I simply cannot handle it and I feel physically ill. When you are dealing with friends who suffer from depression and you yourself suffer from depression and have tried to take your own life on multiple occasions, in some cases you have no choice but to protect yourself first and immediately pull down the oxygen mask, but in others you have to put the triggers and nausea aside and step up to the plate walk into the fucking ward and visit or in this case you and your husband who you’re not really talking to spend the day following day with them.

It took a few hours for my body to relax on Saturday, for me when I hear someone say something to the affect of “a few people would’ve missed me, some I’d really hurt, most not.” I can’t deal because already losing someone to suicide was by far the worst pain I have to this day ever felt in my life, I know for a fact that any variation of that statement is bullshit. And from the most selfish place in me I won’t lose another person that way, I fucking won’t. But I also won’t not be friends with someone or abandon them because they suffer from something outside of their control.

And so today I’m freaking out a tad and feeling yet again unaccepted for my depression because I tweeted my feelings today and was instantly unfollowed by someone I’ve met so yes, I take it personally. Now, let me be clear, if someone doesn’t want to follow me on Twitter I’m fine with that, long gone are the days I’d freak out, I didn’t even understand social media back then, but fuck it, whatever, that was until today because you know what? If you know the person, even if you don’t like the person show some fucking tact, wait a few hours, don’t make it so glaringly obvious how big of an asshole you are. I get it, not everyone wants to see people who suffer from depression talk about their depression but that’s actually kinda funny too, because most people will keep following the person who suffers from Cancer and support their battle but unfollow the person struggling with depression. I’m trying to calm down and relax I obviously know I’m not in this bad of a rant mood over Twitter, I’m honestly sort of amazed I cracked this soon, normally I can hold shit it and make it a fuck lot worse before I explode so I guess I’ll call that a baby step in the right direction of feeling the feelings.

People have always called me a paranoid person.

No matter how well I am doing, of all the variables I face dealing with chronic depression I have some of the most trouble dealing with paranoia. With years of therapy I know that paranoia is actually nothing more than having a negative attentional bias towards something, not allowing myself the observation of any positive feelings to help convince myself that no, everyone does NOT hate me or think I’m stupid or useless and that I shouldn’t even be entertaining these negative thoughts and overwhelming feelings.

It doesn’t matter how much medication I’m on or not on. There is no medication that helps me with this. This is something that to different degrees I have always dealt with, but when you add anxiety into the mix, I feel like my innards are being blown up and twisted into balloon animals and not even cool ones at that. I’m allowed to take an extra clonazepam on really bad days to curb my anxiety but that still leaves me unable to eat because when I’m hit with paranoid anxiety attacks just because I can get my stomach out of the knots with the clonazepam I still can’t force myself to eat as I still feel like I am going to barf all over everything.

Recently something happened where I was bullied, badly, yet again in my life, being a few years into my thirties now just adds to my utter disappointment in myself. And it has unfortunately triggered my negative attentional bias and my anxiety to off the chart levels. Not to mention I’ve had two idiots totally fucking with me on Twitter which hasn’t helped matters.

The last two weeks have had me feeling like there is no reason for me to be here. I despise feeling like this. What happened just reminds me that no matter how much I work on myself, no matter how hard I try to work on my posture and stand up straight, no matter how many people tell me that what happened was not my fault, that it obviously is, there is obviously still something very wrong with me, after now eight years under the same psychiatrist’s care it blows my mind that I am still a target for bullies. It makes me angry it makes me feel like everything my father has ever said about me is true and that I don’t deserve good things. It brings me back to having to have exchange students, who were staying with us when I was in high school, come and get me to keep me from getting beat up. I just don’t want to deal with this anymore.

It hurts really bad.

And speaking of my father, it also makes me resent even more how far away my parents are, I deduce that no one understands my relationship with them, not Adam, not even me, but last week I needed to be able to pick up the phone so badly and just unload to my parents and I couldn’t. They are too secluded for Skype. Getting and holding a clear phone connection is a challenge, not cheap and with the time difference we are up at the same time for a very short period of time. I even know I probably would have just ended up more upset talking to them if I didn’t hear what I needed, but simply not even being able to take the chance just reminded me again yet again that they left me here, that retiring to Asia was more important than their only child and fuck it, everything hurts. I don’t know why I can’t let this illusion of my parents suddenly being ideal parents go, they did the best they could with a problem child.

This will of course pass, just not soon enough, it is hard enough to deal with these two facets of my depression but when they nail me at once I have to hang on for dear life I know that I’m not headed for break down mode, what happened is only going to make me stronger. But it sucks feeling like a loser, that is never good. Worrying constantly that people are out to destroy my reputation, worrying that some people are NEVER going to give me a second chance, worrying that people don’t want me around – what have you – is all petty and idiotic and I wish I could have a new brain.

I was, as she had bluntly put it: dead.

The end of the school day came and nothing happened. Had I relaxed? Of course not, attending school from grade six till the day I graduated was like being thrown into a different shark tank in a different country every god damned day. I never had a fucking clue what those fuckers had in store for me. The bullying I experienced in school was at such an intense level I have just started to stand up straight in the last couple of years.

A girl I had been friends with back before THE dreaded rumour, that never, not for one day, in Smithers or Terrace [only two.five hours apart] was I ever to live down, came up to my locker to talk to me. I don’t remember exactly how she got me outside, I remember she was nice to me but I wanted any positive attention I could get, so I trusted her. As we walked down the hall towards the backstairs to the door leading to the buses, a direction I did need to walk in anyway, I didn’t think anything of it until we hit the stairs.

The buses were to the left but she made me turn right and I knew instantly I was in trouble, the smokers, the bad kids, the bullies hung out round those parts and there she stood the girl who was supposed to be the ex-girlfriend. I remember she slammed me against the cement wall, she started punching my face and as I lifted my hands to defend my face she punched anywhere should could land one and was kicking me too, whilst screaming a bunch of venom at me, I did not try to fight back. Even back then with a really sore face I remember thinking why the fuck is she not mad at him? I don’t remember how I got away from her.

I remember heading back into the school, sliding down the wall, putting my head in my lap and balling. I heard the door open and froze. Outside, she hadn’t just beaten me up once, she came at me multiple times while I was trying to get away from her and the many onlookers. The girl who had lured me there in the first place must have had a change of heart, it was her who walked through the door picked me up and walked me to the principles’ office where, let’s face it, I spent a lot of time – not because I got in trouble but because I had nowhere else where I felt safe to go except the sick room, but this time the school had to call my parents.

The last time, I was off school property when I got beat up so I was able to hide it from my dad, fat lip and all for a couple of days. There was no hiding this and I was beyond horrified. Sometimes I’m really not sure how I made it to sixteen before making a valiant attempt to knock myself off. My dad had to come get me, I was a mess, crying, in pain, scared and bruising and it was because I made out with some stupid boy and my dad would know that. My being a huge loser must have been so embarrassing for my parents. Smithers is really fucking small, man. But worse than that, again, I had been a victim of violence that could by a sick and twisted individual be blamed on me. She did, the girl who shit kicked me on school property, thankfully she got suspended.

—–

I think one of the worst things is that I do try really hard to let shit go, in my offline life it isn’t even an issue. I don’t feel like that high school loser, I believe in myself, I feel capable, most days I even like myself. I’d have to say the work and relationship building with my parents is a pretty strong indication of this. But to move on in a cyber world, not a real world where you actually talk to people when you’re pissed or want some well deserved answers. Cyber people actually think you’re stalking them when you email them once to ask them why they deleted you off something, which no one has done to me lately that I care enough to ask, but catch that word there? Is was: CARE. I CARED. But do it, call me a stalker for that ONE message and have a great ol’ time believing I’m spending every moment tracking your life because I cared enough to notice that you didn’t and thought I’d ask why. By normal people standards, it is actually considered healthy you know, talking, asking questions of someone you THOUGHT you were friends with that may help you further yourself as a person. If this is the definition of a stalker we are in big big trouble people.

I’m only human, I can only take so much, I can only take the highest of highest roads for so long. I do, as we all know, suffer from some at times pretty serious mental illness, this shit eats me up inside. It burns. It hurts. I’m done sitting here taking it like a man, I was just told recently that it’s unbelievable we’ve taken this shit for so long. For a while I thought I was doing the right thing not speaking openly of the open online attacks that took place on Twitter against me. I thought I’d let it go. But I discussed things with my psychiatrist, you know the doctor you see when you recognize you need help and want to work on yourself that I’ve been seeing for well over six years now. YET, I am a terrible, just fucking terrible person right?

I realize that a lot of my extremely supportive readers that are not on Twitter are going to have no idea what I’m talking about but I can tell you this, there is no way they couldn’t have noticed my ridiculously long break from something I love doing because I don’t feel that I am being fully myself or ever can anymore, I am trying to avoid adding fuel to the drama scene, but it seems even when I think my life is drama free it turns out it isn’t, I don’t think anyone’s ever really is. And maybe I used to thrive on a little drama here and there but I’m pushing 33 fucking years old and if there is one thing I’ve learned about drama in the thirities is that it is nonsense, a blatant waste of time if you will, not something that in honest truth I want to spend an extensive amount of words on. So it pains me to give this any attention but the situation as a whole leaves me no choice.

Since June I have not posted at all on my depression, the main topic of this blog, yes I was out of the darkness for a while and had a really good go of it. But it wasn’t without its lapses, we are talking clinical depression here. I count myself very lucky to have had more good days than bad in 2009 – even with the drama surrounding my family, and other ridiculous shit online.

When I wrote this post in January about taking a woman we’d been friends with, Adam since university days myself since 2003, to child protective services it was because I was ready. I was sick of the lies being spread about me for doing the right thing and very personal things about my life where being attacked to a large online audience on her blog. And BS about what she thinks happened was being spewed to whoever would listen to her. To this day, and thanks to current events it will stay this way, we still know more about what happened than she does, her recent actions took any chance she ever had of knowing what I saw.

Her comment is actually one of the best, somewhere it states something about her being a GREAT mom now. AWESOME. That is one reason why we called, because we were worried about a BABY and she needed HELP, if you are confused at all here read the post link. The fact that we are still being villainized and hated and completely misunderstood by a large group of people who say oh we don’t want drama but just keep on fueling this fire with green wood is down right disgusting, to accuse me of being the ONLY one who is STILL keeping it going is a farce, I’m being bullied, I repeat, for doing the right thing. I have a RIGHT to stand up for myself. It is also pretty funny that her sidekick who called me insane on Twitter was nowhere to be found in those comments in January, you’d almost think they hadn’t even met yet.

Her fantasy that I’m stalking her is pretty humorous but only when you are looking in from outside the box, not when you realize it is yourself she is saying this shit about. I openly admitted that I looked at her flickr photos because I missed the kid, a child that she has lied multiple times about how much time myself and my husband spent with and her for that matter. Think just for a moment how much it would suck and how easily you’d get over a good deed being twisted to the point of your being called a stalker if I’m lucky, insert other choice words here.

The day that this attack happened, I was attempting to be the bigger person, I was talking to someone on Twitter who was friends with her and her name was IN those tweets to me, so instead of being a dick face I acknowledged her being mentioned in a tweet something like ____ is great to be friends with because she’ll give you her books when she’s done with them. I wrote that to show I could keep our shit out of the Twitter community. Suddenly I had an onslaught from the woman in the  twitter picture, a full page of tweets – leave her alone, she doesn’t want to be your friend, stop trying to contact her, other people may stand by and watch this but I’m sick of it or something that is not verbatim, I choose not to torture myself reading over that entire attack. I got really fucking mad, I told her to fuck off, to shut the fuck up, that she was just a bully, she knew NOTHING. To which the final tweet calling me insane was sent. Reading that, knowing it went straight out to close to 8,000 people instantly, there are no words. I thought when I got back from Bali I’d be fine that I could start posting again, and when I was depressed it would just happen but it isn’t happening and I’m really fucking depressed and not because of THIS per se but because I suffer from it. A mental illness that she knew damn well I suffered from, I’m not sure where she gets off attacking someone she knows is mentally ill.

And about her accusations of not leaving her new friend alone, I sent her, in the last year, two emails, one was before Twitter had what is called fixed replies so you could see people you didn’t follow talking back and forth and she was going on about Yoga and how she was going to go. I go to Yoga at the West End Community Centre, we both live in the West End, she knows where I live, I have no idea nor do I care where she lives, it would make sense this is where she’d go, I emailed her and told her when I went and stated I didn’t think we’d both be able to relax in the same class and pushed send. The other, I sent her because on my website in that comment from her in January it mentions I never told her what we did, and she had also threatened to tell the authorities that we had made a false or malicious claim if we didn’t tell her what we’d seen, with a deadline, right there on her blog. If she ever did try her claim, your guess is as good as mine. Draw your own conclusions.

I emailed her that second time because you go through shit in life and it changes you, you make mistakes you move on and you look back and you think sure, even If I’d do it again, which I would, even with all this extra pain it has caused, and not tell her first, I decided I would finally meet with her. I messaged her and told her that’d I’d tell her what we had witnessed and why we felt it necessary to phone Emergency Medical Services, I was even going to tell her why we called her in so late at night and how it was EMS who made us call child services.

But that’s stalking, it has to be when her seminars describe me as having never been close to her.

True: Emergency Medical Services does not pursue every call. Also true, lying to the government to take someone’s kid from them is not only totally gutless it carries the consequence that it’s illegal, it’s a clear risk/reward. The first thing you have to do is TELL the COPS. That part is almost laughable because I do not have the power to have them show up at her door in under twelve hours, which they did.

What I can’t stand is the above. This sidekick in the Tweet, has also intimated that we shouldn’t be put in the same room together, shit, I’ve had the cops called on me for less. Her tweet alone made me feel the pains in my face again, everybody watching and no one stepping in. It’s behaviour like this that makes me choose to be the bigger person and bow out of events I’m invited to when this bully is too, no, not because I’m scared, far from it, the truth is on my side. The point is she won’t shut up about me, so tell me why would I put myself in a room with her and induce negative energy and more rumours? My job isn’t PR, it’s monkeys.

So this post ends on the dark notes, the sad disturbing knowledge/affirmation that when it comes down to it she doesn’t want knowledge or care about the truth. She wants blood, and any hopes I held of civility were only leading me down the hall to the back stairs.

And if you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll leave you with a line of hers;

*I have SO much more than you do, 18 months later. And all it took was saying on a blog that I hated my daughter. So thank you for that, really. ~ Terra Atrill aka Zoeyjane

(*no idea where she grabbed 18 months from in January 2009 when she wrote that on my blog,  it hadn’t even been a year)

There is a small back story here, Tiana likes cupcakes, and I had sent her a re-useable bag from the distributors of the cupcakes at least one year ago now, bit longer maybe.

Today I went out with the sole purpose to take this photo because I’m having the can’t get the fuck out of the house I’m a hermit blues again. Lovely. But I am still trying to make it out and it wasn’t raining for a split second so I thought fuck it, I’ll go get the photos.

I can’t wear my wellies anymore they are shot to shit I got them in 2003 before they were cool to everyone and their mother, granted here it doesn’t really matter everyone should have a decent pair if not even a stylish pair of wellies, I quite frankly want a pair of Hunter wellies to replace my shot pair. I wore my knee high boots instead I have black leggings on today so it worked and with my black you can call it a trench coat if you don’t know what a good one should like I didn’t have to worry about my ass. I get paranoid in my black leggings ever since this happened (link).

When I got home I found myself stuck in my boot, literally, these were tailored when I got them as I have chicken legs and so they have extra lining exposed and the zipper got caught in the lining WHICH in all the years I’ve had them I’m realizing I bought them in 2000, has never happened and so I ended up making VLogBlog Five as well for your viewing pleasure.

I’ve been reading true crime novels since I was too young to read crime novels, some of my favourites are by retired FBI Profiler John Douglas, I can quote the likes of David Berkowitz (aka Son of Sam) and Charles Manson and tell you things about Aileen Wuornos that aren’t in the Hollywood-ized Monster, Ed Gein is another serial killer whom I enjoy separating the fact and the fiction on.  This is something I have always been interested in, I would have loved to have been a forensic scientist or profiler myself I dreamt about it long before I could live vicariously through the cast of the original CSI, but I’ve never been strong in math or science, I have some of the natural skills required for the career but science and math can pretty much kiss my ass.

Until earlier this year I didn’t even know we had a Police Museum even with this intense interest in the more macabre side of life and death, so when Chris Mathieson the Executive Director of the Museum sent out an invitation on Twitter I rushed to sign up and also followed The Police Museum’s twitter stream. I didn’t really have any idea what to expect but when I got to the Off the ‘Cuff blog also run by Chris and saw the tour was not only called Sins of the City but we were going to be exposed to a newly revised Sins of the City Tour, I became even more excited because they had me at Sin(s).  By this time I had already scoured the website and found the photo group on flickr and was delighted to find the museum even has a morgue!

Vancouver is a city faced with many serious problems that more than a few people would say are being pushed under the carpet, with the Olympics only months away and there being less and less talk focused on what is going to be done about the Downtown East Side it also seemed like a really good time to take a tour such as this that boasts information and true stories on and not limited to:

• Bootleggers, prohibition, and the often quirky evolution of liquor laws (and their enforcement) in the city
• The development of the early drug trade and the surprising Vancouver origins of Canada’s narcotic laws
• Racial and labour tension boiling over into demonstrations, riots and murder
• The evolution of the sex trade, from brothels to streetwalkers
• The city’s considerable predilection to gambling

You can still go from swanky rich shopping stores to junky cracked out homeless, suffering, and ignored individuals in less than a block here. I don’t have a solution, I just know that educating yourself as much as you can on something at least gives you a voice people will listen too if and when you choose to use it.

Even when guests have been in the city I’ve never taken a city tour in any form and I would take this one again it was quite simply superb. Aside from this tour offering up many stories and dispelling many myths the loads of information from the birth of Vancouver, you are even taken to the very first place a building ever stood, a ground zero of sorts from which the city grew out, you are right in the thick of it, where the good the bad and the ugly all took place, still pretty creepy regardless of what it appears as now.

Not only was Chris extremely informative, his delivery and level of enthusiasm was particularly refreshing. Chris appears to take pride in his knowledge and just wants to share it with you and share he will, there was nothing that stumped him. He knows Vancouver’s history of VICE, and then some.

Other attendees, Stacie Biehler, John Biehler, Ian A. Martin and Jon Jennings all have photos up on Flickr, there are some great shots of some of the confiscated weapons on John’s stream, and just more of the same old same old on my Flickr sin set.

Tis one thing to miss a concert of a new friend tis another to miss the CD Release party for the second full album of now official said friend.  As I tell people when they are like as if you have social anxiety if you get me out the door nine times out of ten I’m fine, plus I started to drink beer again, in extreme moderation but that does still give me loose drinking lips, but I’ve never cared much about those, my sober filter is almost as lacking anyway.

I slapped on my new blue dress over my newly not a skinny bitch just a bitch now body and headed out the door in my yellow shoes with my handsome husband.  Cost us all of ten bucks to get in and we bought the new CD which they all signed for us once I removed the 100% biodegradable film; Mojave take their pledge to the Earth extremely serious. It is pretty inspiring and made me all happy to have been wearing shoes made fully of man made materials.

I guess it goes without saying that Mojave are a local Vancouver band but I will say it anyway, Mojave are a local Vancouver band, and not only is the CD fantastic, not only are they great live, not only was it really cool to see how many of their fans came out for their party it is great that they are all down to earth and cool people.

Although we are getting better at outdoor photos we still both really suck at indoor photos and there was almost no lighting so for great band photos you want to go to PatZ flickr, these are just silly we’re dicking around although still TRYING to learn how to get this fucking thing to work indoors pictures.

Mojave play next on the 24^th of June in Vancouver at The Cellar, and their Crow’s Funeral tour starts near the end of August.

Listen and enjoy a sample of Mojave here
Buy and enjoy the new Mojave CD here
Follow Mojave on Twitter here
Read and subscribe to the Mojave blog here
Enjoy the brand new official Mojave site here

My Twitter is broken and it is driving me sort of insane. I had no idea that I had formed an addiction to it. None, for serious, but not being able to jump up at will and write 140 characters of word vomit is not FAIR. My account has been sent to engineering and there is NO WORD on how long it will take it only took me THREE attempts to get them to actually look at my page with Rok Hed as my photo to see that my page is BONKED, it is blank. Twitter hates me.

Last night we watched Doubt which was AWESOME. Highly recommend it, made for some good pillow talk.  I LOVE Amy Adams at present, she had me at Enchanted, looking at her list of movies I’m sort of late to the table on her. The rest of the cast is great, the sets are great, and I was able to visualize it on a stage as a play which made me appreciate it even more. You are welcome for that incredibly deep review I just gave it.

I am almost done reading Slaughterhouse-Five my very first ever Kurt Vonnegut novel and I am loving it and am going to have seventy-five dollars in free books coming my way soon so I may order some more of him I am thinking Cat’s Cradle?

I have only read five and this book this year so far which is pathetic but I am still so fucking depressed right now that all I really do is sit and do nothing and listen to music. It isn’t just writers block this is different. Coffee is getting cold I gotta go.  I have lost track of when I showered last so I gotta do it. OH BUT I have been changing my underwear though just fyi on that cause I know in the past I said I’d wear it like five days and shit.  I’m on too much meds for that shit and sweat too much at night, night sweets love me unlike Twitter.

PS. Not being able to Twitter about The Masters at Augusta National SUCKS ASS! Mike Weir finished at -4 today leaders are -6 at present but nice start Mikey.