lingering thoughts

                As my thoughts linger, causing cancerous lesions in my mind, my fingers hover uselessly, unsure of what to type. Unsure of how to save my life. The longer I pause, the more time the lesions have to grow and spread until they consume my entire psyche. Until they become me. Thoughts corrupting thoughts corrupting thoughts until all that remains is simply corruption. Yet still I cannot type. Still I cannot expunge and heal. The corruption lingers.

                Once, in a fit of normalcy, I scraped clean an old rusted blade. It had been hanging, worthlessly, on a wall in the old garage for years. Alone and forgotten; neglected until it became corrupted. I felt pity for it. Why, I do not know… perhaps I felt a kinship towards it; after all, I too was neglected and corrupted. Therefore, I took it off the wall, sat down, and I began to clean it. As I worked away years of rust, my mind emptied. I lost myself in the work, and I became the work. At the end, I had a blade as clean as the day it was bought, but my mind was no more clean than it had been hours ago.

                The idle work of my hands allowed me to be distracted from my thoughts. It allowed me to pretend that I was not sick.

                It was a lie, but, to borrow a phrase, it was a pretty lie.

                Of course, as soon I was done the thoughts came crashing back with almost enough force to stagger me. Unfortunately, I was prepared for that. And it is unfortunate that anyone should be prepared for the sudden crushing weight of their own thoughts. One’s own thoughts should be uplifting and weightless, not a burden to bear.

                That is how I move through life: always looking for the next activity that can lift away my burdens for a short while. In those brief periods, I can pretend to be blissfully healthy and whole.

                I wish I knew of a way that I could just sit down and scrub away the corruption in my mind. Spend an afternoon mindlessly cleaning, at the end of which I would come away clean and whole. Alas, that remains merely a fantasy. A true cleaning of the corruption would take a lifetime of effort and will, and somedays I feel as though I lack all three.

                Through my writing, I heal, and yet most days I cannot bring myself to write even a sentence! I merely stare at an empty page until my self-loathing consumes me and I am left bitter and empty.

                So few hours in a life with so many things to accomplish, yet we waste these hours on what? Work so that we can pay the bills that allow us to continue to work? I cannot remember the last time I felt truly alive—it was summer, and the sky was clear. The lake which I stood waist deep in was a mirror and I was surrounded by the heavens. Everywhere I looked, I could see the stars. I could reach out and touch them. For scant moments, I was alive. Beautifully and truly alive. Instead I just feel empty. I would not say I feel nothing, for I do feel a deep and unending regret coupled with a yearning for something more.

                Amidst the regret lays a burning desire for something better. To find someplace where I truly belong. 

Trigger Warning: Buried lies, buried life.

This is my latest published article. It touches on depression and suicidal thoughts. If you are feeling depressed or suicidal, please talk to someone.  

As we age, we often look back upon our lives and wonder what could’ve been. If we had made better choices then would we be in a better place now? If I had gone left instead of right, if I had said yes instead of no, questions like that can haunt us.  

And maybe they should.  

Over the past two years, I have done a remarkable amount of soul-searching and self-discovery. In that time I came to terms with my sexuality, my gender, and my own mental health. I started to let go of the things that were holding me back. Past events that I kept hidden from everyone, including myself, that were stunting my personal growth. I would often lie about myself in the face of questions, and over time I came to believe my own lies. I lost myself. I buried myself is actually more accurate. I buried myself under the detritus of my lies, and I suffered for that.  

At the age of six, I decided to become religious. My parents did not force religion on me; they never made me go to church, or anything like that. It was my decision. The church, especially back then, was not accepting of people outside of gender norms, and of different sexualities. I was taught that it was a sin to be gay, and that gay marriage was wrong. And I believed it. For a long time. Whenever I had doubts or thoughts regarding my own sexuality I would bury it down. Whenever I did something (hug, cuddle, etc) with a guy, I would tell myself it was because of how secure I was in my own sexuality. Whenever I expressed interests in things that were “girly”, I would tell myself it was because of how masculine I was.  

I buried myself under the lies of my own making.  

I went to a bible college (one of the best in the country) that was actively against same-sex marriage, and routinely taught that homosexuality was not just a sin, but that it was simply wrong. I remember when another school backed out of a deal with mine over our stance on same-sex marriage, and our President painted the other school the villain, and I believed him. That homosexuality was wrong was ingrained in me. I didn’t even question it.  

The church disapproves of a lot, and it hides a lot. Members with mental health problems, be they anxiety, depression, or whatever, are told to pray more, or members of the congregation pray over them. If you were suffering from depression, you just obviously weren’t being a good Christian, so you hid it. You put a smile on, and you buried how you really felt so no one else could find out. This really fucked me up. Whenever I would feel down, I would just pray and pretend that everything was better. 

But it never was. It never got better.  

I kept things buried down, simmering out of sight, just waiting to explode. I would have outbursts of emotion: anger, fear, sadness, doubt. My self-worth and confidence became non-existent, and still I buried it down. I tried to keep it hidden from everyone. I didn’t want people to worry. I didn’t want to be shunned.  

This, of course, was extraordinarily bad for my mental health. I did end up on medication, which I hated for how it made me feel like I was empty. But the medication wasn’t my lowest point. That came in October of 2006.  

I was 16, still attending church where I was seen as a leader amongst the youth, and very active in the student council at my school. I wasn’t the most popular kid in school, but all the various cliques liked me. My days of being constantly bullied were behind me, and to the people looking in, my life seemed, well, good. The fact that every second was all out warfare in my mind was not evident to people. My feelings and problems were mine, dammit. I took in everyone’s problems, but never let anyone know mine. I had to be strong for everyone. That was my job, Jesus could take my burden, I would take everyone else’s. Unsurprisingly, this was not a good choice. I just became more and more depressed and worn out. I began to have suicidal thoughts. I wanted to escape, and I didn’t know how. I thought suicide was a legitimate option.  

So I decided to do it. I was home alone. I started cleaning before my parents left for a meeting, so I had music playing as I always did. Sometime after they left, I was ready. I won’t go into the details, they’re not important, but something happened that stayed my hand: a song started playing.  

The song was “Zero” by Hawk Nelson, and it’s about the affect that suicide has on everyone else. Words have always held power to me, and these words froze me in place. The lyrics washed over me, and I wept. At the end of the song, I collapsed and cried for a long time. Since that day, there have been many times when I’ve regretted not following through, but I have never acted on it again.  

This suicide attempt is one of the things I have kept buried. My depression is one of the things I have kept buried in. I didn’t want pity, I still don’t, but burying them down was not dealing with them. They are part of me. They, in a way, help to define me, and they allow me to relate. By pretending they didn’t exist within me, I was perpetrating the stigma that exists around mental health. Not only that, I was still damaging my own.  

I was, and am, so used to keeping things buried, that I didn’t give it a second thought. For years, I kept those thoughts buried down deep. 

I feel out of the church in my early twenties. I got so tired of the hypocrisy that I was seeing in its members. All these people claiming to serve god while they just served themselves, never mind the fact that felt that god had turned his back on me. For the first time since I was six, I didn’t know the direction of my life. I had gone to school to be a youth pastor for a church and a god that I no longer trusted. All that time and money I had invested became for naught. I was rudderless.  

It was around this time that the walls I had built began to crumble, and all my latent feelings and beliefs about gender and sexuality started bubbling forth. When I was religious I had assumed that my lack of sexual attraction to people stemmed from how awesome of a Christian I was. But I wasn’t a Christian anymore, and I still wasn’t being sexually attracted to people. I thought I was broken. So I buried it. Like I always did. Bad habits are hard to break.  

As I moved away from the church, more and more of my friends were queer, so I became immersed in that world. I read papers about it, I read articles, and I researched the history and the different aspects of it. In my studies, I stumbled across an article about asexuality. It intrigued me, so I read it. And it fit. Things made sense. I wasn’t broken, I was asexual. I was excited and I read everything I could find on it! I had the beginnings of a path in front of me; I just had to follow it! I was overjoyed. 

I think I told two people. 

I was still figuring it out; it was still new and personal. And I didn’t want to share. What if I was wrong? After all, things hadn’t worked out so well for me last time I thought things made sense. I guess I was mainly scared. Part of me still believed that not being straight was a sin, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t straight.  

With this new perspective, I looked back on my life: all the times cuddling with my male roommates, all the times flirting random guys in the city. Was it possible that, not only was I asexual, but also not heteroromantic? The answer was yes. As I researched more, as I dug into myself more, I discovered that I was more panromantic than hetero.  

But how I could come to terms with this? How could I let myself be honest, not just with myself, but with everyone?  

Unfortunately, I wasn’t done with the self-discoveries.  

As I reflected on my life trying to figure out what kind of man I was, I realized that I wasn’t a man. I wasn’t a woman either though, so this discovery left me more rattled than I was before. In the midst of discovering my sexuality, I began questioning my gender. My whole life I KNEW I was a man. That’s what everyone said I was. That’s what my biology told me. Now that fact was being called into question. Gender identities weren’t taught in high school and I went to a Christian college, so this wasn’t an area I had had much experience in.  

Thank goodness for Google. 

I found non-binary on a list of genders. It fit. It made sense. All the anomalous past events—those things that ‘normal’ guys don’t do—started making sense. Slowly, after decades of lying to myself, I was beginning to truly find myself.  

Looking back now at my past, there are parts I regret. I wish I had discovered my sexuality and gender at a younger age. Maybe I would’ve liked myself more. Some days I wish I had followed through with my suicide attempt, most days I don’t, but I’m more honest about my mental health now, and it’s getting better. It’s not something that will ever go away, but it’s become something that I can admit to and deal with in a healthy manner. I’m slowly becoming more open with people, and I am becoming more comfortable with my own skin. I still dress and act like a man on a daily basis; partly because it’s habit, partly because I’m still scared to be 100% me.  

As I sit here, looking back, I have regrets. We all do. I wish I had done things differently. I wish I had handled certain situations better, and I wish I had treated certain people better. But if anyone asks me if I would go back and change anything, I say no. Everything that has happened, all the bad, all the good, all the mistakes, they all brought me to where I am today. My experiences have made me the person that I am. And now that I’m actually being honest with myself, I’m starting to like that person.  

state of hate

     While writing these blogs, a lot goes through my head. I wonder if people are actually going to read them, I wonder if people are going to send me mean messages, I wonder if I'm actually writing because I want to or out of obligation. To be honest, right now feels like I'm doing it out of obligation. I'm trying to keep myself occupied. Trying to keep my brain distracted.
      Lets talk about mean comments. I am in the process of creating an online persona. A known one. I have videos that have a fair amount of views, and I have videos with almost zero views. Same with my blog posts and all my other social media. I don't have a massive following yet. I haven't attracted the ire of the biggest assholes on the internet yet. But I'm getting big enough for the little trolls, the troll-lings (trollings?), to take notice of me. Every time I post something that has an activist angle I know I'm putting myself in someone's crosshairs. The internet can be a scary and dark place, I know all that.
      I have received a fair amount of hate online. I've been called a "liberal pussy", a coward, a traitor, an idiot, and worse for my support of the Syrian refugees. And I was called some of those things by close family friends. Honestly, the one that hurt the most was being called a traitor to Canada, simply because I wanted to help people. Which, btw, is what Canada is known for! I endured a lot of hate for supporting the refugees, but I would gladly do all of that again. That hate wasn't random. It was directed at me because I disagreed with some people on some moral issues. I've been called slurs for supporting LGBTQIA+ issues multiple times. Fun story, an American tried insulting my intelligence based on the fact that Canadians call refrigerators, fridge for short (which if you do a google search, most of the world does). Apparently in this person's state they call them "friges", which Google tells me isn't an actual word at all, and therefore that should be the proper term for the entire planet.
      Then the random hate started coming in. The hate that didn't make sense. I started getting hateful comments on my normal vlogs. I was being called homophobic slurs (I'm not gay, I'm not straight, but I'm not gay) on vlogs that were about me driving home, or going to buy milk. I found them odd and random, and would just delete them, I didn't bother reporting them to YouTube, they weren't hurting me and they weren't from the same people. But all of a sudden the hateful messages were coming from the same person. They weren't constant or consistent, so I just deleted them as usual. And then I got this one yesterday; warning, the language is horrifying: "kill yourself faggot nigger bitch". To say I was surprised by this comment is an understatement. It was on yesterday's vlog, the first one since Phantom passed away, it was sort of short, but there wasn't really any substance to it. The only point to this comment was to cause pain. I was shocked by the comment, I wasn't really hurt by it, but I was shocked that someone was telling me to go and kill myself. That was the first comment that I reported to YouTube, and this person is the first person I've blocked from commenting. I made light of the comment on Twitter, but I shouldn't have. Words like that can have a massive impact on someone's life. Where I am right now in my life, one person saying that to me didn't really have a quantifiable effect on me. If there had been a whole host of people, that would be a different story.
      I know people that have quit creating because of internet trolls. I know people who have locked themselves up because of internet trolls. I know people who have lost loved ones because of it. We have this amazing place, the internet, where we can uplift people and inspire others, but so many people use it for bad--no, evil, purposes. I always try and believe in humanity. I always say that humanity can be better, and I still do. But there are days where my belief is tested, and there are days when I don't know why I hold onto it. I hear people saying that the Earth is due for another flood (biblically speaking), and some days I have a hard time disagreeing.
       Humanity, what a bunch of assholes










sometimes.  

My New Years Resolutions

        New Years resolutions are usually a thing I avoid making, or at the most I just say that I'm going to try and be a better person. A friend recently told me that I should actually make some this year, and being the easily manipulated person that I am, I have decided to go for it.
       I was told that my resolutions should be actual goals to strive for both professionally and personally. Since I am making myself a public figure, I am posting my resolutions here, for all to see! All twenty of you that read my blog on a regular basis.

I'm just gonna list them, I was going to separate them by category, but too bad:

1. put more effort and time into my ongoing creative pursuits
1. that's YouTube, my blogs, and instagram
1. writing is separate from this
1. calm down
2. put more time and effort into my personal writings
1. that includes my poetry and personal writings (journal entries, rants, facebook status updates)
2. make my tweets more clever
3. put more effort into my online branding
1. again, that would be my blogs, my YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter
4. find a place to live in Yorkton while working for the film festival
5. set aside dedicated time for my writing for OutWords magazine
6. work out more
7. be more open with the people who matter
8. care less about the people who don't
9. be more outspoken on important issues
10. drive less
11. spend less
12. save more
13. focus on the positives, not the negatives
14. be a better friend
15. be a better person (ha! sneaked it in there)
16. put more time and effort into the writing I'm planning on publishing
1. memoir, novels, short stories
17. create better content for YouTube
18. try and actually do some of this!

There. I actually made some resolutions. Happy, Kiara?



Damn well better be, that was so out of character for me.  

My first friend, with love and loss

     My question mark is working... who thinks I can go through a whole blog without using i... this is not promising.
     My last two blogs have been fairly serious. One was about narcissism and art, the other was about terrorism and the negative affects upon society that hate has. This one should probably be less serious.
      Maybe I should go with something funny and lighthearted! Technically I should've used a question mark there, but I went for a dramatic effect instead. Don`t question it, I`m an artist.
      Instead of any of that, I am going to share with you a section from my memoir, which is what I am currently writing. The following section is about my first real friendship, and how it shaped my entire life. Ashley was the first person to read it, and she loved it. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Ashley was my first best friend. Probably my first friend period since we were the same age and neighbours, but saying she was my first best friend doesn’t sound as sad. I mean, I don’t want people feeling sorry for me yet. That’s reserved for future chapters!

Ahem. Back to the topic at hand: Ashley. Ashley was a lot like me. We even kinda looked alike (sorry Ash): wavy light blonde hair, bright eyes, our families dressed us alike, it was uncanny. I have a habit of showing people a picture of Ash and I when we were around three and asking them to point out which one I was. Much to the belittling of my already belittled ego, they often point at Ashley. I’m sure I would get a much different answer with a more modern picture (at least I’m sure Ashley hopes I would), but I enjoy my little game that allows people to take shoots at my fragile male ego.

(this is the picture. I’m on the right. I think)

We were neighbours with her grandparents, and through some stuff that is none of anyone’s business, she often stayed with them. All this time with her grandparents allowed us to spend copious amounts of time with each other. We would run around the backyard, eat cookies, drink lemonade, and everything else proper southern children were supposed to do.

Don’t look at me like that. Nanaimo is pretty south for Canada.

She was always there, and for those few years in Nanaimo, we grew up together. The foundations of who we would become were laid in our time spent together, and it would be evident, years later, that both of our foundations were fairly similar. We would both grow into the people that we are today based on the experiences and lessons we learnt together at that young age. She was my first best friend, she is my oldest friend, and to this day she is still my sister.

On a weird segue from that emotional paragraph, into something which may seem slightly incestuous now: she was also my first kiss. She says I initiated it. I’m pretty sure she did though. I was, and am, a gentleman and a scholar, and would never dream of kissing a lady without her express permission.

I was… three? Sure. We’ll say three. Ashley and I were hanging out in the massive backyard, sitting on one of the Harleys. I was looking fly as hell (as fly as anyone could in the early 90s) with my khaki shorts, white sun hat, and yellow framed shades (possibly the same ones I stared that cop down with). I was sitting in front, it was my Hog after all, and she riding behind. She looked nowhere near as fly I did. It would have been physically impossible for anyone else to look that fly in that close of proximity. Probably would’ve caused an explosion or something. I was looking back her, chatting it up, playing it super cool, when she had the nerve—the audacity!—to lean forward and give me a quick peck on the lips! I was flabbergasted! I was quite literally gobsmacked! She smacked me right on the old gob!

Of course, if you ask her, she will say that I kissed her, and probably a tomes worth of other vile lies about my character. Like that I thought Theodore the Tugboat was cooler than Thomas the Tank. Thomas the Tank for life son! Although… Theodore the Tugboat was pretty ballin’.

My time spent with Ashley was probably the most significant and important part of my early childhood. I’m not kidding about that. After we moved to Gabriola Island in 1994, I didn’t hear from her for nearly fifteen years. This was the 90s. Calling people on a different island was hassle and expensive, the internet was barely public, and even mailing letters was hard to do. So we fell out of each other’s lives.

And for fifteen years I forgot how important she was in my life. How integral she was to my state of being.

 Then, one night in grade 12, I was sitting at my computer chatting with friends on MSN (MSN was like Facebook chat, but way cooler) and Facebook, when I got a friend request and a message from some girl. The message was basically this: “Hey. My aunt says that we knew each other when we were kids.”

Enticing. So I added her, and we began messaging back and forth. As we messaged all the memories came flooding back. The fact that I called her Ash and she called me Yak. The time spent outside in the perennial sunshine of our childhood. The fact that we hadn’t seen or heard from each other in a decade and a half was not a hindrance. We were as in sync as we had been when we were four. We began calling each other, and would just spend hours chatting, catching up on the past fourteen years. My parents and I went out to Vancouver that summer (2008) to spend time with family, and Ashley and I made plans to meet up and hang out for the first time since we were four.

She was still living in Nanaimo at the time, so she came over on the ferry with her grandma, and her aunt (the one that found me on Facebook), and we all reunited at Horseshoe Bay.

I don’t know how to explain that afternoon. When we saw each other, it was as if those fourteen years had never happened. We were as comfortable with each other as we had been all those years before. Our minds were in sync. We made the same jokes. We liked the same kind of pop culture. Listened to the same genres of music. Had the same opinion on all important matters (Harry Potter and Star Wars). We acted the same as each other. We even were dressed in the same colours (honestly, it was not planned).

We were like two sides of the same person. We even liked and disliked the same foods. It was uncanny how alike we were.

We spent that afternoon making obscure pop culture references, and some not so obscure, that neither of our families got, but we understood each and every one.

When I said that those early years laid the foundations of who we would become, I wasn’t being over dramatic, or exaggerating, I was simply stating a fact. We spent almost every day of our toddlerhood together, and then the next fourteen years apart, but when we were reunited we were almost identical. Those first four years of my life were not just the foundation; they were the complete blue print of my life. Everything that I would do, everything that I would come to love and enjoy, everything I am stems from those times spent with Ashley.

Which seems like an incredible burden to place on a four year old.

I felt like a whole person that afternoon. Like all my separate parts were rejoined. That evening, when they had to get back on that ferry, we said good bye. It’s an odd experience having to say good bye to someone that you haven’t seen in so long. Someone who shaped your very being, and then was lost for over decade. How in the cosmic realm is one supposed to say good bye to that person?

With ice cream cones.

Ice cream cones answer most of life’s most pressing and existential questions.

We got ice cream, slowly walked over to the boarding area, and tearfully hugged goodbye with promises to stay in better contact.

Saying other half sounds like I’m being romantic, but that is not the case. I have no memories of my early childhood that do not include Ashley, no important, life defining early age event that did not include her in some way. She was part of me, in the same way that siblings are part of each other.

Ashley is such a fundamental part of who I am, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually told her that. To be honest, writing this chapter, short as it is, was extremely difficult. All kinds of emotions came into play, and I was flooded with old memories and more recent regrets.

We kept our promise for a while. Texting every day, calling once a week, but life, as it always does, tends to get in the way. Contact began to come more sporadically, it’s always there, but it’s a rare occurrence now. We needed to be in each other’s lives as toddlers, and we needed to be reunited on the cusp of adulthood, and we will eventually need each other again. But for now, we’re just stars in the night sky: always in sight, but never in contact.

Oops

Been a while since I've posted... Sorry guys. I am working on a bigger blog post to go along with Zakitude Specials: Coming Out Ace. Something that builds on it, and gives some more information. 

Works been going good. Mostly. 

I have a bunch of footage to edit, possibly, into two vlogs! Yay!!! 

Anyways, I guess I don't have too much to say right now. Have a good one guys!

After effects of last night

So. Pulled that all nighter last night. First one in forever. And today I am uber exhausted. We made it to 5:40, which I'm counting. That was almost 24 hours without sleep. Words aren't coming too well today, but hey. Everybody probably thinks I'm just drunk! So win-win.