GLASS HYSTERIA: BEHIND THE SCENES

I started writing Glass Hysteria in May of 2017.

I'd just been crushed by someone I completely adored, writing him a love letter, explaining all he was for me, asking him to take a chance on me. My reply was that of a cold void of silence. My sleeplessness was only intensified by this stunning rejection. I'd not slept well in the months leading up to meeting him and giving him the letter. I suppose I set myself up for despair. I'd spend days awake at a time, my mind racing, me laying on the floor or in the middle of my unmade bed while my stomach burned and I daydreamed of him wanting to get to know me or even more radical, would return my feelings. I dropped a lot of weight; in just about 3 months I'd dropped 20 pounds, perhaps a bit more. 

I started back on anti-depressants following his rejection, a botched suicide attempt brought on by said rejection and overall just worsening depression. I gained 30 pounds being on the meds and felt completely disgusted at the way that I looked. I felt as if the medications were turning me into a useless puddle of jelly. I couldn't properly communicate my feelings to my psychologist or psychopharmacologist. I didn't like the way my life was going. I didn't want to eat, but then there times where all I wanted to do was eat, to try and fill the void inside. The meds screwed with my appetite. My destructive relationship with food was once again becoming my main focus. I began to purge after eating because of the fear of being fat again began to consume me. I was falling back into a cycle of bulimic behaviour that had plagued me roughly 4 years earlier, which left me with a small tear in the back of my oesophagus and having to have my bottom front teeth completely fixed three times. 

I started drinking heavily around mid-June. I just couldn't cope with what was happening to me. I'd stopped taking the meds and had begun to drop the weight that was driving me crazy. I was not eating and sustaining myself on endless cans of diet colas & spinach salads. It was probably the worst thing that I could have been doing for myself. The weight loss made me "happy" but the self-hate that sustained my willpower not to eat specific foods was beginning to spread through me, consume my every thought. It was around this time that I began my romance with narcotics once again. I couldn't deal with the emotional agony that was tearing me apart. I had so many questions to ask him but had no way of doing so. I had so many questions for myself but was in no frame of mind to start asking. It also didn't help matters that I found myself realising that I was in love with letter boy's best mate and had low-key fancied him the entire time I was lusting for letter boy. I was a sailor with no direction, my ship rapidly approaching the rocky shore.

Actually, no. Now that I think about it, some parts of this book I started writing right after I'd released Little By Little in January of 2017. I'd gotten great inspiration from a depressive fuelled sea-side adventure. I just needed to get away. I spend my days lost and wondering on and off buses down the New England cost. I was longing for letter boy and I felt that longing so deeply that I didn't want to be at home any more. I didn't want to be close to him because that's the time that I began to realise that I truly had feelings for his best mate and had been trying to distract myself from that. My home had become a source of my emotional suffocation. 

I don't remember Christmas of that year, the last one that I spent with my grandmother. Maybe if I'd known that would be out last Christmas I'd not been drinking and caught up in my devious lust. Thinking back, all I can really remember is standing on the New Jersey shoreline on a cold January morning, pulling off my jumper and trousers and as the pinks of the morning horizon began kissing the iron-grey of the sea, dove into it.

...

I'm one of these hopeless guys who can't write without a muse. I dunno. It's either I'm in love and having sex with my own sadness, trying to seduce my euphoria or I'm completely addicted to a person. Sometimes it's some bizarre combination of the two, twisting and writhing inside me. 

I started writing Glass Hysteria,  I felt that smaller things that would come in such passionate outbursts that I thought I was on the verge of a mental breakdown over Puggy, leaving letter boy behind. I'd feel such sensations of love and lust, it was similar to being on MDMA. My head would swim. I'd hyper salivate and I'd want to scream. I'd be tearing at my hair, hitting myself. MY breathing would be shallow, almost raspy. I could feel my heart in the back of my throat and it was as if pop rocks were going off in my veins when I'd think of him. I was quite literally coming apart at the seams because I didn't know how to handle such a powerful attraction. I was experiencing so much emotional turmoil on the depressive end of the spectrum that it was hard to focus on my writing. I couldn't let out the emotions that were suffocating me in a productive way, so instead, I looked to drown them in vodka and silence them with Oxycodone tablets. 

In the clearer moments that I had, I was able to completely focus on my artistic voices. I kept getting distracted by my baking blogs, which at the time were doing so much better than any of the poetic/literature or mental health work that I'd been working on the past year. It was a tremendous blow to my self-esteem and my work ethic. Sure I loved baking and doing the sexualised, angry baking blogs, but it wasn't my real passion. Literature was. I really didn't want to go forward if it all was for nothing. Why spend my time writing and creating for an audience of ghosts? I realised that I still wanted to write as much as I bitched internally and to the few friends I have about it; my ego did get a tiny bump when a few people told me they'd been inspired by my work. (Then again they didn't specify which work...if it was one of those goddamn baking blogs, I might just go postal.) 

But it was more than just that; I felt that I needed to get these ideas and feelings out of me. I wanted to make them tangible. I wanted to see them in the physical world and not just inside my head. It wasn't just the baking blogs what were stealing my attention; I'd also gotten heavily into writing Happiness & Homicide which is a different sort of release for me. In the moments of mind-bending highs, I could spend hours just writing from Wi's point of view. His personality is basically my own and it was just so freeing to write. I actually started writing "Wil stories" in April of 2010. It started off as a complete fluke and quickly became something that I loved to write. Keep your eyes peeled for more Wil updates on Mental Masturbation. I'm working on making it a series, but who knows.

...

Behind closed doors, I'm cutting my heart out again under sunshine pink skies.

There's not been one day in the past three weeks that I've not been intoxicated. It's turning into the month of July all over again. I wasted away the month under a constant haze of alcohol and mind-numbing chemicals, all the while, complaining that I can't accomplish a thing. It was proceeded by a month of almost constant euphoria, steadily writing and accomplishing every task handed to me, despite being under the hypnotic gaze of my chemical companions. I spend the evenings drinking and swallowing anything I could get my hands on, laughing myself to the verge of insanity while my favourite childhood programmes or favourite grunge music blared around me. 

Now that I think about it, June was a similar situation just a bit more simplistic and calm. Towards the end of June I began to hear the familiar cries of escape and the urge to curl up and cry; Indulge in a sort of pity party because I couldn't actively participate in my mental health. All the while there was this low-level fascination, no obsession with killing myself. I'd run my hands over old scars, over the various methods and tools I'd used to inflict them and become giggly, almost drowning in joy that I'd done all this and still lived. Accomplished all this came to mind when really it was no sort of accomplishment at all. My forever escape. My final solution. 

Meanwhile, I'd managed to systemically dismantle three budding friendships, isolate myself further and worsen my surroundings. 'Well done, Danny. Really, bravo dear boy. Just look what you've managed to accomplish in so little time! And you said the summer was a complete waste!!" Rather than focusing on what I should have been doing, work, friendships and maintaining my health, I was nursing hangovers, self-inflicted wounds and piddle paddling in a sea of mindless distraction. Under warm summer skies and starlit summer demises, I indulged myself in another sort of death.

...

Then September came. I'd pulled back on my drinking and I'd run out of my chemical nom-noms. I was panicking. It was getting harder to get what I wanted (probably also needed) and I'd also been fired so I had no real source of income. I paddled along, free-lancing a few of my many trades, feeling almost hopeful, poetic about going away for my birthday. I was in a relatively good mood, journalling, exploring things within myself and some of the relationships that I'd cultivated over the year.

 I was writing more for Happiness & Homicide than I had over the entire summer. I was looking for new work. I was going to therapy. Things were getting a little better and it was more than the upward bump that I'd experienced in the start of August. Then I had oral surgery. While the procedure wasn't really painful and I barely felt pain afterwards, for the most part, I was given narcotics for it. I'd not told the dentist about my recent struggles or my love for all things mind-numbing and mind-altering. On some level, I knew this is the negative side of me and his self-serving agenda. They could have given me something else for the pain, but I couldn't resist the urge to sabotage myself. I took the joy and fell back into it's warm, loving arms. I could laugh so much easier. For a while, I was free again. (But was I really?) The relief would last 5-6 hours before I felt the ebbing of depression pulling at the hem of my shirtsleeve, like a child lost in the rain. I'd take his hand and we'd stroll down the cobblestones together, watching our reflections in the glass of shops, laughing as people and time became distorted around us.

October hit me like a train,

I headed to the New England coast for a bit of rest and relaxation. Under the unseasonably warm weather the first week of October, I took in the beautiful sights. I put myself out there. I made a friend. I went to a museum, the zoo and had some of the best doughnuts I've ever had, yet every night I was getting high. There was something hidden in the darkness, loneliness or boredom or something else that was terrifying me and I sought comfort in the only way that I thought I could. 

I clearly remember two evenings spent ablaze under the pink and orange New England skies as the night seduced and consumed them. My mind bloomed as the stars did above me. I was content. The urge to self-harm was far away, almost an alien notion. And in the blink of an eye, it became my refuge once again. I cried out for the cold nurture of the cold metal. I knew it was the last thing that I should have been doing, but nothing else felt right. I didn't feel like I could express the fears and emptiness that was crawling through me turning me, once again, into a citizen of the state of the undead, in a healthy manner. I knew it was horrifying to the new friends that I had; not only the sight of what I was doing to myself but the complete hopelessness they must have felt when they were unable to stop me. It's not their faults. I harbour no anger at them for their fruitless attempts to stop or comfort me. I can't even help myself. 

...

November brought tales of deeper self-hatred and confusion. I felt the weight of responsibility in my bones like never before. I was struggling to turn out blogs, let alone focus on a piece of work that's very emotionally draining to write. I was in all sorts of turmoil, completely unsure where everything was coming from or what the real motivation behind the feelings and thoughts were. I was consumed with the number of things going on, all these eyes on me and the pressure of having to hold myself together when I knew I was slipping. Rather than talk to people about how I was being beaten black and blue at both ends, I hid away in morphine and displays of outlandish behaviour. 

And when I say the behaviour was outlandish, it really means something because normally I'm so far gone from the norm, I'm basically somewhere out near Venus. I took risks that weren't necessary to curb myself of boredom, searching for some sort of meaning in anything. I still find myself in the same vicious cycle of behaviour. I start to feel the slightest bit better and then the tiniest thing can come and completely throw me out of orbit. I'd like to be able to set some time aside for myself to really focus and sort through some of these issues, but right now, that's not realistically possible. I don't really have the time when I'm supposed to be working and I really can't focus at all. I don't know where to start either. I'm running like a man with his head caught off, wildly screaming that he needs to be put together, but all hope is lost. There are also way too many people depending on me right now. Oh, running away looks so magical once again. I've spent so much of my life hiding, running and burying myself away from that I don't always possess the tools that I need to better myself, to moderate and regain control of things. On the surface, I have it all together, but down below it's like the last days of Rome. I reach for the familiarity that I believe to be helpful, but deep inside I know that more often than not, it's worsened the situation and weakened me both mentally and physically. 

...

I've been sleeping on the floor. Well no, some of the time I'd pass out on the floor. Or I'd be sleeping on an old blood-stained mattress, too tired, too weighed down and too broke to replace it. I was being crushed by my addiction and negative thinking. I was being consumed by my secrets. Locked into my cells has to be a sort of self-hating poison. As far back as I can remember, I've been drawn to, no obsessed with the negative side of things. Preoccupied with the macabre, romanticised the void. I'm not entirely sure if this was is because of how I was brought up or through some fault of my own or possibly the genetic pool of humanity. Yay existentialism and conscious awareness! 

Everyday tasks became impossible, let alone writing. Picking up laundry off the floor felt like I'd been tasked to climb Everest with a panda cub strapped to my back. (Actually, that might be pretty entertaining.) For days, I'd lay in the same clothes, sometimes stained the food from baking blogs, vomit or blood, unable to gather the energy to change. I'd either be too exhausted or just not care at all. Normally, I'm a pretty neat and organised guy. Clothing neat, books and DVDs alphabetised by title and genre. Shoes arranged by petty, childish favouritism. The room quickly became a sea of trash, clothing drugs-sometimes prescriptions I was occasionally taking, wrappers shoes and whatever else I dropped on the floor. My surroundings reflected my state of mine. I just didn't care. 

Sometimes I'd even lay in the clothing piles, too tired to pick them up. Everything just stopped mattering on a scale I'd never experienced before. Depression stripped me of my ability to care about myself or anything like never before; then anxiety would kick in at the oddest times, sending waves of panic through me over the mess or the state of myself. Then a little voice reminded me that it's all meaningless; just an endless distraction of bullshit until I die. I'd look even more grunge than Kurt Contain as I'd lay unwashed in bed, the laptop glowing, my attention focused somewhere else inside me, me not even comprehending the images on the screen. Curtains would be drawn for weeks at a time. I'd avoid the sunlight. 

For a while, I was actually afraid to leave the house. I didn't want to. It felt wrong, unsafe in some way. I'd panic at even the idea of having to leave my bedroom. I'd slip out to do the baking blogs or cook meals for the house then slink back up the staircase, lean against the wall and cry. I started having mini-panic attacks about having to go cook meals. I'd have to psych myself up. And this was even on a low dose of morphine. I can't tell you how many days mates had to force my ass out of the bed to shower, brush my teeth or eat something that would help improve the state of my health.

I decayed into the mattress for almost two months straight, while pretending on my blog and to the few people around me that things were alright, that I was starting to find myself again. I felt that I needed to hide. I was still seeing my psychologist and psyhopharmaologist, but it wasn't helpful at all. Both women angered me. It also didn't help that I wasn't comfortable wholly opening up with them. I was afraid of being locked up in a hospital again. Personally, I feel these 'hospitals' are nothing short of torture chambers. They strip you of your individuality, your rights as a human being, fill you with pills and or the empty sentiments that life gets better. Possibly worst of all is the annoying bunkmate they stick you with; and you're not allowed to know the other patient's diagnosis, and youre left wondering if you'll be attacked in the moonlight.

...

Through a haze of diet coke and morphine a lot of the framework for Glass Hysteria was built along with some of my favourite, yet most personal content. There were so many themes that I wanted to explore in this work. I wanted to pack so much into a small amount of time and one project that at times it felt like I was a kid who went off his Adderall. I knew that I just had to get away from the environment that I was in. I was aching to get away, almost completely frantic with wanting to run; I was even aroused at the idea of getting out of here and just running. I felt new experiences would spark new creativity within me. I was throwing around the idea of heading back to LA for a little bit, chilling with some of the scumbags I’d met a few years before and having a week or so of wake and bake. But I realised I was pretty much doing that same shit here and I didn’t really want to go somewhere warm. Where haven’t I been in a while? Then it hit me. I’d not been to Stockholm since October of 2012 and it was high time that I returned to fuck shit up. I couldn’t believe that it had been THAT long since I hit up some of the lands of some of my forefathers. And while I was over there, why not hit up Norway? I’d not been there before and I needed to visit there to complete my goal of going to all the Scandinavian countries. Sweden 2012, Denmark 2014, Finland 2016 and now Norway 2018.

The thing with the morphine thought-I chose to take it every day. I consciously act to numb things out. I don’t have any real physical reaction to it. Maybe I’ll get a bit of a headache but nothing like when I was coming off of heroin, and even then it wasn’t long that I used it. I’ve used it recreationally, but never really craved it physically. For me, it’s always been I want this to escape. I NEED this to escape. It’s the oddest thing. I didn’t have the problem with cigarettes when I smoked. I had my first cigarette at 13 and then started smoking at 17 and smoked until I was almost 25 years old, but never had cravings for them or thought “fuck me I need a cigarette.” Each time I lit up I was like “this will be nice.” It was kind of something to do. And yes, I did inhale. I can become addicted to a person, mentally and physically yet nothing on some of the world’s most dangerous drugs. What gives? I think drugs are a better option than a person, to be honest. There’s a better return on getting off drugs than getting off a person…but a better return on getting off with a person than getting off with drugs…Ah, language.

...

It was around mid-January that I also started writing a short segment called "Alex". It was just a little something to get my head outside of Glass Hysteria and to kind of recharge. I felt a bit tired of it, I'd shared so much on the blog that I was wondering about even finishing the book or publishing it. I didn't really know if Alex was going to take off. but I'd gotten such positive reactions from it that I decided to write and post a second segment on Mental Masturbation. It became something different from my usual styles, something somewhat playful. It was different from me and it gave me a different direction to let my juices flow in.

It's now mid-April of 2018 and the book should just be about finished now. Nope. I spent weeks jerking off in Sweden, Norway, The Faroe Islands and New England. I didn't want to work on my book. I didn't blog as much. I didn't even start the outlining of my cookbook that I wanted to start on. I've been relying more and more on lorazepam. Creating those little chocolate almond milkshakes that I make. Empty a bit of the liquid into the almond milk, add the chocolate and shake it up. More and more each time. I'm relying on it way too much. I need time to think to myself. I've just had to deal with another death and the fall out of that. I've not even been working on the Alex segments that were looking so promising. I was running away from the problems that I desperately needed to confront. I did want to. I was acting like a spoiled child; both afraid and too tired to control my mood swings. I was throwing temper tantrums, picking fights over the smallest things and fell back into drinking again.

The last two months have passed in a haze, yet it feels as if they've dragged in a few ways. Time raced while I was away, whooping it up. I was eating burgers and swilling diet Coke. Choking on disgusting sized portions of chips and chocolate; I was ruining all my hard work. yet I didn't gain any weight. I lose 7 lbs. Go figure. If I'd tried that at home, I'd have put it on and then some. What the fuck is this. At least I don't feel physically sick with grief...yet.

...

Things have fallen apart. I don't think things would go in the direction that they did. I hung onto him, desperate and clamouring, pathetic and almost willing him to love me, but still, he remained silent. I should have known that he'd never return the feelings I held for him; that it would all be just some twisted sort of game. I wish I'd been informed of this earlier so I could have walked away before I fell so hopelessly in love. But let's rewind back to early February when I was heading off to Scandinavia.

I jumped a plane Northeast to Stockholm and the second I landed I could feel myself decompressing. Things just seemed much more bright. The realities of what Id just had to deal with at home weren't hanging over me. I wasn't bogged down by the duties I was having forced upon me. For the first time since October of last year, I could catch my breath without pain.  

The cool air of Sweden was refreshing as I made my way into Stockholm. It’s been so long since I’ve been here. I finally have something to focus on besides drugs and depression. My mind was clearing a bit. I could write travel blogs, share my experiences. I’ve not really blogged that many of my travels; I only started doing it over the last year or so. I’d written a few things when I did a long tour in around 2012. I got tattooed, took in architecture, artwork and my favourite, medieval artefacts. I went to museums and galleries. For a few hours, while I was out and about, moving through the city I felt alive. I felt included, yet shy as I took in the sights with others. It’s been a long time since I felt welcomed in any sort of situation. I wandered through the city, taking photos, feeling like I was doing something worthwhile. I felt hopeful. I was still arguing with certain people, but for the most part, the hatred and emotional unrest had cooled. I felt more in control then I had in a while, but that’s really not saying much. I was still hurting myself in other ways. My diet was suffering, but I felt physically better. Despite not eating the best things for me, I had more strength than I had in a while. Maybe it was because I was walking up to 8 hours a day, sometimes more on some of them. I was out, building up my immune system touching everything, exploring. The fear that was keeping me in one room wasn’t binding me anymore. The anxiety had lessened, it was still lurking, my shyness coming out at the oddest of times. 

I went from Stockholm to Linköping via coach and loved the journey. It inspired me to write more than just the travel blogs. I wasn’t writing Alex, sure, but I was working on this book. I was able to get out some of the emotions that were building up inside me. That block that usually is there wasn’t. I was cranking out material for the book, feeling warm rushes of emotions that I was desperate to try and feel again. I was beginning to explore my photography, something I had kind of lost interest in. I guess it was because I felt it wasn’t gaining the attention that it deserved; I felt that way with a lot of my work and I still do. It only fuels the feelings of failure, not being enough and rejection that have been drilled into me since I was a young child. My mood was lifting. My mates were saying that I was getting better, making a turn for the best. I was laughing and smiling, I was feeling a sort of joy, not the unruly euphoria that usually claims me. 

When I took the train from Linköping to Oslo via train, I was ecstatic. I’d never been to Norway before. It was an entirely new world. Oslo was amazing. I felt the city moving around me as I moved inside it. I felt more of my shyness starting to break. I was welcomed there. People were kind to me, I was included in things. Sure, I went to a lot of the places alone, but people didn’t stare at me. I wasn’t singled out. 

I felt just a little awkward as I took photos, but I think many people do. In Oslo I stood before a mountain of objects, confronting my fears and thoughts that I’d not dealt with in many months. I was being forced to confront my feelings and thoughts about death in ways that I never had to before. I wasn’t being forced, but it felt as if I had no other choice. I stood there transfixed on the objects. I couldn’t move. I don’t think that I wanted to move. They were beautiful. The sadness about them was beautiful. They were filled with ghosts. Everything is filled with ghosts. I felt unsure and unsafe leaving the building. So many of my core beliefs had been shaken in that room. I thought of Barb, that I couldn’t tell her about this, the adventures. This is the first trip I’ve taken since her death. Every other time she was there ringing me each evening no matter where I was in the world wanting to know what I saw or did. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel real. 

Realising this, it made me think about the people I had in my life. What I’d been through. What I was going through. I didn’t want to let go of him, I wanted to keep holding onto the idea that everything would be okay. I was wrong to keep holding onto things and I still am wrong to do so. When does something that's supposed to be so great morph into something completely agonising? I’m almost 30 years old and I’m still struggling to work out the answers to these questions. I left Oslo for Bergen via train with a lot on my mind. I was doubting myself. I was filled with the most self-hatred since I’d left for the trip, but I never let on. Rather than spend the 7-hour journey across Norway to wallow in self-pity, I decided to film and photograph most of the journey. I saw some of the most amazing sights and took some of the most breathtaking photos I’ve ever taken. I faced new challenges shooting through snow and on a moving train, but the challenges taught me more about angles and using the setting to your advantage. I arrived in Bergen infused with a beauty for life that I’d not ever really felt. I was proud of the photos I’d taken on the journey and shared many of them on my Instagram. I felt like I’d done something beyond my skill set for the first time, took a new challenge and conquered it. People were responding to my work and it felt amazing. I felt like I was something special. For the first time in months, I wasn’t just some loser in the shadows. My photos were blowing up and my travel blogs were too. 

Bergen was gorgeous. The city was unlike any other that I’d ever been to. In the midst of feeling great, the blog going great and the book work booming, depression hit hard. What did I really have to be depressed about? I was in a beautiful place, I was on a journey that so many people would kill for and here I was suicidal and trying to hide it from the people. I was burying my sorrow inside. I wanted to cut so badly, but I knew I’d have to fly home soon and I didn’t want airport security seeing cuts if I was stopped. I didn’t want them to think I was something disgusting. I was drinking, but I wasn’t getting high. I didn’t want to risk bringing narcotics over international borders. I felt sort of better being off the morphine and lorazepam, but I wanted the little bit of relief they offered me. A friend told me that being clean would help me to stabilise my world; that I'd feel better, that maybe I could feel alive. I wanted to believe her. Part of me did. I took that chance, even though I knew what I really wanted inside. I wanted the escape they offered. I knew that it was just a torturous window into a break from life and that in the long run I was most likely only hurting myself more. I wasn’t looking forward to going back. I didn’t want to go back to the miserable, disgusting people that surround me at home. The people who continuously remind me that my existence, my life is not worth anything. I loved Bergen and heading to the airport to go home, I felt my stomach acid eating away at me.

I returned home to a critically ill grandfather who’s care I was fully in charge of. Things were on the decline and they didn’t look like they were improving. I wasn’t wanting to write. I was full of anger. Once again, I was the go-to guy for everybody’s shit. Nobody cared that I wasn’t feeling well. Again, I was told that I wasn’t that important and everyone around me was forcing me into an impossible situation. What help was I really getting? Of course, the fuck-wads around me think they did just everything they could, but really? His death was freeing in a way. It was one less burden that I had to deal with. I was falling back into the morphine. My self-harm had become my daily escape. I began cutting in new spaces. I was cutting my entire torso in the areas that weren't tattooed. My hips and stomach around the tattoos became a playground for the blade. Deep cuts upon cuts decorated me like the lights of a Christmas tree. I didn't feel them. I wanted to feel them. I wanted to feel pain as the razors ripped my skin apart, ripped me apart. I was desperate for someone, anyone to see the pain that I was in. I couldn't talk about it. I didn't know the right words. I still don't.  The pressure to perform and keep up a happy outlook was beginning to be too much. I was suffering and there was no one I could fully explain it to. I tried. I was met with laughter, denial or anger. It only moved to cement my belief that I didn't matter. The world wouldn't miss me when I was gone. I've tried for so long to fix this, but everything that I do just makes everything worse. 

 I wasn’t upset by his death, I was happy. I thought that maybe it would get better, that it would open new dialogues for me, but it didn’t. I was falling. I wanted to be left alone. I was being beaten up and rejected by the person that I trusted the most. The person that I wanted so badly to help me was actively making me worse. I don’t know either he knew this or not. A large part of me believes he did. But I’m tired. Too tired for games and lies. I began to isolate myself. I didn't want to have to see the people that knew him and knew me. I didn't want to be faced with the people who constantly defended his shitty behaviour toward me with actions while I cried myself to sleep every night. I'm too tired to cry anymore. I've poured the last little bit of all that I had, for him and for myself into this book. I will forever be grateful that I was afforded the chance to engage with him. I will always think of him as the best thing that ever happened to me, but I will also remember him as the worst. For better or for worse he's apart of me. 

…

I was supposed to finish the book months ago. It’s set to be released in a month, I’ve made the announcements and I’m still not finished. I didn’t want to finish. I’d sunk so low into the depression that I couldn’t write. I didn’t see any point. I still don’t. I’ve only finished because I was pressed to finish it. I'm glad that I did something, that I managed to finish this. Maybe it’s some of my best work, maybe it’s not. I don’t know if I’ll be working on another book like this. Probably not. I don’t see why I should have to struggle and fight for my voice to be heard when it’s constantly ignored. I can’t cope with not being enough. These books are a reminder that I am nothing and I will always be nothing. 

It’s been difficult to even write this behind the scenes bit, not only because I’ve had so much trouble remembering things and have had to read through bizarre, bodily-fluid soaked notebooks, search through hours of data (large chunks of it missing due to electronic failure) and talking to dozens of people, but because I’ve had to be more open and transparent than I’d ever been. It’s through the help of someone more amazing or braver than I could ever hope to be that I’m able to put this piece together. I struggled with writing, I struggled with my daily life. I had to hide so much of myself because I was nervous and anxious. I didn’t want to be seen as anything other than I wanted to be seen as. I was delusional really. I knew on some level that people were making me be anything that they wanted me to be. And people will always do that. It wasn’t that they’d see me as something I wasn’t but that they’d see me for something that I was, something that I was ashamed of. I still harbour a lot of shame. I don’t know if I’ll be able to let go of everything.

It's been such an overwhelming experience to write this; throughout the entire writing process, I went from the suicidal to the euphoric and back several times. I guess I really just wanted to lose myself in this work in a different way that I had in the previous works that I'd done. I really started to focus on my abilities, hone the craft, progressing in bounds that I hadn't before; though some of the work can seem a bit repetitive when compared to my previous work, the work this time comes from a new place, a new breath. I'm drawn to vivid imagery. I guess in this collection I really wanted to tell all my secrets and explore them at the same time.

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