CarlHoliday

There aren't many cures to depression that actually work, but I do have one that works some of the time. If conditions are right, with a rising mood or a slowly sinking one, an idea gets wrapped by tentative thoughts conducive to further exploration. Plus, word count must not be anything close to a sizeable work. Short, short stories work very well. One of the people I met at the psych farm was a cutter. He was a nice enough guy, early thirties, okay face, but had the scarred chevrons of a self-harmer. A recent one was bandaged and he picked at the dressing so much he was finally able to start pulling on the stitches. All the while he and I carry on a mindless conversation, my mind couldn't stay focused on what he was saying. It had to watch him tear at the dressing, stitches, and scar. One of the Psych Aides and asked me to leave. My new friend left the ward with a new bandage on his arm and a security guard on the other arm. But todays story goes back to an earlier boy, who by the way wasn't a cutter, but did have the means to inflict some form of self-harm. That earlier boy became the focus of an older boy or he thought the boy was older. About a year after the event in question, the boy learned they were the same age. When you have the self-esteem of dirt, the social skills of shrubbery, and you're scared shitless some boy is going to catch you admiring his nice ass, well you tend to shy away from any unexpected close contact. So, today's story is about a cutter who has a problem. A football player says he's cute (in a cuddly sort of way) and the cutter reacts in the only way he knows how. In many ways it's a sad story. Then, again, it's not a sad story at all. I guess it kind of depends on how you look at yourself.

Tom held the point of the very sharp butcher knife against the smooth skin of his right cheek. Blood trickled down from two previous cuts on his arm to the elbow where it dripped occasionally onto the tiled floor. He’d never cut his face before, preferring to keep his need hidden from unwanted eyes, but Brent was making his life difficult and cutting his face would take away the cuteness that attracted the athlete. "Hey, Tommy, you know what you are?" Brent asked the other day. "Tom, my na

A quick story about a boy who becomes the focus of another boy's attention and the destructive way he deals with it.

Mother is not happy. When Dad died a few months ago, she suddenly became the boss around here. Well, actually, she’d been boss for a long time, what with Dad out on the road all the time selling pipe, but now she was really the boss. I’m a problem. She loves me. She has to, comes with the mother job, but she’s disappointed. I can tell by the look in her eyes. I’m home. I get beat up at school and I get sent home. Somehow she doesn’t think that’s right. Of course, the bad guy went out with the

As I slip further down the slippery slope there come pauses where normal function is enabled for brief periods of time. Today I had to go to a class on time management. It was either take it now or wait until July when it will be considerably hotter. I’ve decided I do not like the hot, humid aspect of living in Dallas. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great town and would love to live here, but I’m too used to living in the Pacific Northwest where 100 degree weather is a rarity, not the norm. Besides, there’s nothing like looking out the window and seeing a high, snowcapped mountain. I didn’t call the crisis line as I’m not suicidal. I did try to get in to see my psychiatrist, but I have to wait until my appointment in June. So, I’m left to slide down as far I will go this time. I’m at level four and holding. Ideation is strong, but action is lacking. I still have a strong desire to keep on getting on. If I sink further, I will call, even if ideation is still only vague. How many clicks are there between four and five? Mostly, though, I have to solve the problem of Remembering Tim. I’ve lost all the old stuff and will have to create a new narrative. In a way this is good as I can push into uncharted territories that will have to lead to one or two inevitable conclusions. I’m fairly certain the structure of the new stuff will be radically different from what I wrote before. Right now I have four more chapters until I have to begin rebuilding the story of Geoff’s love for Tim, so I still have some time to figure out what I’m going to do. Luckily I have lots of time and focusing on what to do with Tim keeps my mind off dangerous destructive thoughts. Also, there are the anthologies. Summer is in the bag and Autumn is flitting around as it tries to achieve a story thematically related to Legends. So far I have two, maybe three, story lines that I’m trying to ferret out of a mind troubled mind.

The last office building I worked in had three sub-basements. Actually, there was a fourth one, but no one worked there othere than to check for water seepage. I had a friend who worked on Level Three and she did not like it down there because she didn't have a window to see outside. I've pretty much decided to call the crisis line tomorrow morning, unless something dramatic happens between now and then.

Sorry, couldn't help remembering the closing scenes of "Doctor Strangelove" with Vera Lynn singing We'll Meet Again over images of various nuclear tests.

“We’re going to Hold 32,” Derrick said as he walked into the office. He was taller and thinner than his partner; and, at thirty-three, had already begun to find gray hairs if he looked hard enough. “A coolant valve seems to have closed or become blocked. The twenty series holds are becoming too warm.” Jerry, who’d gone totally bald at twenty-five, looked up from a desk covered with repair chits from all over the ship. Five plumbers to take care of a ship the dimension of a good sized moon, ye

Two plumbers are sent out on a normal repair job that turns out to be quite complicated.

I know I’ve said I hate being bipolar countless times here since being diagnosed three years ago, so you are excused if you do not wish to proceed. If I called into the Veteran Crisis Line right now and they asked the inevitable question, I would have to say, on a scale of one to five, I’m at about a two with my ideation of suicide. Two’s a good number. There’s a lot of space between two and five. Been to five, it was not fun. Five is a bad number as everything is seen in terms of its potential of inflicting grievous harm. The problem is I think I’m heading to level five. It could take a few days, so there is no reason to fret. I could, just as easily bottom out tomorrow and bounce back to the banality of my usual drugged state. It’s easy to get by at level zero. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of it the past few months. I know I’m heading down, though. All the symptoms are here to support a deep, down cycle.

I wish I would’ve had my laptop when I was at the funny farm, as it is not all was lost to the vagueness of mental instability. About a week into my stay one of the resident’s, D_____, sister agreed to bring in five composition books (those with the scrambled black and white pattern on the cover), so I was able to write an entry for nearly every day after that until I finally gave up in March. D_____ is a good ol’ boy from north central Texas who is proud to say both he and his daughter received their Bachelor’s degrees from the University of North Texas. His only problem was episodes of major depression if he went off his medication, which is why he was in Terrell State Hospital. The other interesting thing about him was his interaction with the resident flamer. D_____ claimed to have friends who were gay, but he was totally intolerant of K_____ who, unfortunately, didn’t know when to turn it off. One day, in fact the day before D_____ was to leave, we were standing in line to go to lunch when K_____ got it into his head to touch D_____ on his head, neck, and butt. Of course D_____ wasn’t going to have any touching of any kind, but despite repeated requests to stop, K_____ continued until D_____ blew up and grabbed ahold of K_____. It was a wonder D_____ didn’t hit K_____. He said he wanted to, but with only a day to go, he didn’t want to risk being taken down and put in one of the calming rooms (No, the walls weren’t rubber. I checked.) Two psych aides pulled K_____ away and he began his expected claim of total innocence, which only got him threatened with an injection to calm him down. The procedure for giving a patient an injection seemed to require bull-dogging the victim to the floor followed by a number of psych aides holding him down while turning him over so the nurse could inject the medicine in the hip. Usually, all the patients were sent to their rooms before the injection was given. I guess they didn’t want to upset us. Heck, seeing some psycho go off the deep end was upsetting enough. Luckily, injections were a rare occurrence on our ward. The ward was co-ed with one wing for women and the other for men and a common dayroom. The one rule strictly enforced was no touching, but for some reason I was seen as having a good shoulder for crying on. I was yelled at a number of times, but still they came to me to have their cries. One girl was starving herself and she cried a lot because she couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After a week, she was gone, possibly to the clinic to have a tube inserted in her nose. The good thing about being sent to the fruit orchard is there are so many stories, if you pay attention, that is. Once I started my journal, practically nothing went by unnoticed.

Went to the VA hospital today for an interview about my bipolar disorder. Seems I asked them to consider this as a service-connected disability because I’d seen a psychiatrist when stationed in Abilene, Texas, back in 1971 and ’72. I thought all I was asking for was a reconsideration of the existing disability on my decrepit knees, but, no, they wanted to know everything about the nutso side of me. As interviews go, it went well, I suppose. I don’t expect anything to come of it because the maximum retention period for military medical records is 10 years, which places me way out in left field as far as looking at what the shrink had to say about me way back then. I do have a chance, though, if there is a notation in my service record of being referred to a psychiatrist. That would be sufficient for a claim to be considered. The interviewer was kind of cute in a motherly, medicinal way. I kept getting distracted by a fold in her blouse between two buttons which showed just a bit of her right breast, which, in turn, got me pondering the size of her thighs (a fetish of mine). I’d already seen her ass which hung daintily from relatively narrow hips. She was short, slender, and looked like she worked out on a regular basis. Her blonding page boy was neatly trimmed. If I was so inclined and had the means, I might have been interested in finding out her relational status with members of the male sex. The questions went back to my childhood and progressed forward to today. As usual this brought up a lot of memories I would prefer being kept under the carpet, but she had to establish the total nature of my manifestation of bipolar disorder. She was neither condescending nor seemingly interested in my answers. She just entered what I said into the computer, though her leading questions were a bit pointed sometimes. She didn’t want me holding anything back. I kind of liked her reaction when I said I knew I liked boys more than girls way back in high school, which is one of the reasons I was not involved in any, zero, activities. My self-esteem had been beaten down so much by my parents that the very thought of interacting with my peers was totally abhorrent. Besides, I didn’t want to get caught with my eyes staring at boys’ behinds. I was very much into asses back then. In fact, there was this boy in fourth, fifth, sixth, and beyond who had the cutest ass you’d ever want to ponder; and, the way he wore his Levi’s, woof, what a sight. My eyes followed him wherever he walked. Anyway, after about seventy-five minutes, she called a halt to the interrogation and set me free to wend my way back to the shelter. You’d never know it by the way the locals talk, but Dallas has a terrific transit system, which includes light-rail that actually goes somewhere, at least it goes where I want to go. My trip from the shelter to the VA Medical Center takes about an hour and that includes the fifteen minute walk to the local station. (I could ride a bus over there, but that wouldn’t get me any exercise, which I desperately need.)

The answer to life, the universe, and everything has already been established to be 42; further supposition is pointless.

I spent Christmas at The Bridge, a homeless shelter on the southern edge of downtown Dallas. I’d been brought there by the Dallas police, in lieu of going to the psych emergency room at Parkland Hospital (the local charity hospital). It seems you can’t just say you’re suicidal on Christmas Eve, you actually have to have the rope around your neck, your feet dangling over the railing, the gun at your temple, or the knife or razorblade at your wrist to get a free ride to a warm place for the night. This is not to say The Bridge wasn’t warm because it was, warm. The sleeping area is a big shed-like structure where they lay out foam mats on the concrete floor. There are gas heaters spanning the ceiling and humongous ceiling fans moving the air around. (The sign on the motor has a likeness of an ass’s behind and the words “Big Ass Fans”; honest, there is a company called the “Big Ass Fan Co.” They have a website, too. And, we all know an ass is what you need if you want to make a mule.) That was the only night I spent at that shelter. The next night I ventured out to the Union Gospel Mission, a place of long lines, peppery food, naked men, and a good night’s sleep only to be forced to get up at an ungodly hour to get naked again before hurriedly dressing so you can catch a bus back to The Bridge where you spend the day. But, today is Easter and, no, I didn’t go to church. I had enough church out at the Mission during the month of January to last me for a long, long while. The Mission preaches along a fundamentalist line, i.e., they take the Bible literally, factually, which reduces all the metaphorical stories to nothing more than pap. If you get too wrapped up in the facts, you run the risk of losing the significance of faith. (There I’ve had my sermon for the day.) Today at lunch we had a slice of ham, a dollop of fresh mashed potatoes (not that icky boxed stuffed), a serving of red beans (we get lots of beans here, lots of fiber), and a slice of white bread. Texans (maybe it’s a Southern thing) seem to be big on bread. We always get some kind of bread with lunch and dinner, usually of the white, non-fibrous variety. We also had our meal served to us by a group of do-gooders who were willing to give up a part of their Easter Sunday to come down to the Salvation Army homeless shelter and do the Christian thing. I said “thank you” anyway. I mean they could’ve been home watching the game or outback setting up the barbecue for ribs and beans later this afternoon when the kids come over with the new grandbaby.

Where have you been? The short answer is I went loopy, did some crazy shit, got myself admitted to a psychiatric ward wherein I attempted suicide (where else is the most logical place?), was sent to a state mental hospital, eventually ended up on the streets of Dallas during the day and at the Mission during the night. Finally, I found placement in a group living arrangement sponsored by the Veterans Administration and the Salvation Army. What are you doing now? Vegetating, mostly. My knees have worsened considerably to the point where I now have to wear braces, which I don’t wear unless I have to go out. If I don’t have to walk over a couple hundred feet, why wear the braces? Sick logic, I know. Are you, you know, alright in the head? Oh, sure, fine and dandy. All nice and medicated. Stuporized, you might say. Life is bland and I don’t care. So, why not stop medicating? For me, medicating the brain to bring the mind into normal alignment is a necessity. Now that I’m no longer driving trucks, it probably doesn’t matter that I don’t medicate, but I want to drive a car sometime in the future and you can’t go around oblivious to the rest of the world. I tried living unmedicated and it totally ruined my previous life. Now, I can look forward to a totally different life, not that it will be all that bad, at least it doesn't look so bad from here. Can you still write? I have been working on a memoir project to bolster my sagging sanity and starting a rewrite of The Pastel Cowboy, changing it to first person, besides changing a lot more. Tim? Well, I’ve had some ideas about Tim while my sanity was a little looser than it is now. I'd like to think the current Tim will be completed, but I can't give a certainty to that proposition. I’ve also been kicking around a short story about a couple of twelve year olds who’ve been thrown together for their teen years. It’s all very complicated about a society on a very large spaceship and boys in spokes having to grow up rimward so their testes mature properly. It’s also about spokeys being taller than rimboys besides not knowing that dirt has an odor, that the best fishing is just past the rapids, and when it’s time to go home, you won’t want to leave. You see, I’ve lost everything I’ve produced up to the point of my breakdown. It’s all gone, all of it. There was a backup, but that was at home, a place where I won’t be going ever again. “We can never go home again, Todo, I’ve broken the ruby slippers.” But, that’s okay because here at the Shelter life runs a little slower than out there in the world. I’d like to think I could’ve done my breakdown a little better, but you don’t plan these things to come to a logical conclusion. At least, I didn't fully complete the suicide attempt. Got the sheet around the neck, but was caught before I could apply the necessary pressure. Oh, yeah, they're called chemical restraints and the needle is really long to get deep in the hip. Oh, yeah, it hurts like hell, even when you asked for one. Had an anxiety attack after eating some canned pears. Honest, it was a psych ward. Crazy shit happens in those places. The one accomplishment so far is finally having the chance to read Atlas Shrugged. I should've read this years ago, but never took a class where it was required reading. Talk about dialogue, sheesh!

“How’re you doin’, Champ?” Uncle Pat said, as eight-year-old Buddy climbed into the green ’36 Ford Pickup and put his small brown valise in front of his legs. “Uh, okay, Uncle Pat,” Buddy said, trying to find some way of sitting that wouldn’t hurt so much as his uncle pulled out into traffic. He’d told his mother that it was okay with him if he didn’t go fishing, but she wanted him out of the house since his father was on another bender. “Well, you don’t look okay,” Uncle Pat said, pulling

Set in the mid-Fifties, this is a boy’s story at about age eight and details his experiences with physical abuse to the complications of sex. Warning: This story contains images of child abuse from a child’s POV, but there is lots love and learning, too.

Stark comes to mind when looking into Brandon’s bedroom: bare white walls lacking any decoration, no pictures, posters, or anything else; white bedspread pulled taut as if he was in boot camp, I’ve dropped a quarter and it bounced; two white throw rugs seem to float on a crisply polished hardwood floor; white mini-blinds always closed to prevent sunlight from brightening the room; the nightstand, bureau, and desk lack any adornment or anything that might indicate they were used by a twelve year

Two boys, best friends, about as opposite as opposite can be, hold onto their love for each other as they age toward the exit door we all seek.

The day started out like any other Saturday in Gerald's life when his eyes abruptly opened. There was no alarm, no radio, and no television making an obnoxious noise. Gerald didn't need anything to wake him up except the memory of his mother's hand slapping his left cheek, even though she hadn't been in his life for over twenty years. "Gerald! Wake up!" Her voice could have been trained for the opera. She had the talent and the dedication, but she also had a boyfriend and an insatiable desire

December 2 has always been special to Gerald Chambers and on this particular December 2 he decides to do something he hasn't done since high school. He goes for a ride in the country, but makes a couple wrong turns. He decides to ask for directions.

Do you ever get the feeling your glasses are going to drop off your face if you look down from some place high, like a bridge railing? I get that feeling. I get a lot of other feelings when I’m up high. I don’t like heights and I had to help my father string Christmas lights on the gutters every year. I had to use a twenty foot extension ladder to reach the gutters. I nearly pissed my pants every Christmas putting up and taking down those lights. “You’re a sissy, Jerry,” Dad always said. “Wha

This is a story about two friends on a very high bridge, one of whom wants to take the quick way down. The other does what is necessary.

Frost crystals sparkled in the early morning light as Patrick’s cold sneakers crunched across the frozen field. He shivered under the threadbare parka he’d found at the church hall rummage sale the day after Thanksgiving. It was a good thing he’d been saving his milk money or the dollar fifty might have been spent on more jeans. He kind of wished they’d had some underwear, though. Maybe even some worn boxers might have been worth fifty cents leaving a dollar for something else, but, no, this yea

Patrick is having a few problems his sophomore year of high school. Besides being the poorest kid in school, he's run out of underwear, and another boy keeps bugging him for a date.