Wake Up

I had been putting my life on hold.

I was a terrible student. People said I was smart, told me I was going to be somebody, urged me to live up to my potential, but I skipped school as often as I could get away with starting from the seventh grade. I didn't do my homework, which stacked up. I started missing crucial stuff in math class, earned a reputation as the weird kid, made enemies and alienated potential friends. I fell behind. I gave up. I dropped out.

Then college happened, and for one semester I felt like I was really going to accomplish my goal of getting a degree and leaving my shitty life behind. My anxiety got in the way--I didn't have a pen, but I couldn't bring myself to approach the nice girl sitting next to me and ask to borrow one of hers. I didn't have a study partner because I was terrified of strangers. The professor had a thick Korean accent and his descriptions of Venn diagrams would have gone right over my math-deficient head anyway. I skipped all study groups to avoid talking to people. I flunked the class, gave up on college and switched to part-time at a different school. I used my scholarship to take Japanese and Composition instead. Then I "took a semester off" because I finally realized I was having too many issues to focus on schoolwork.

For the next five years, I maintained a holding pattern. Work on the comic, do the art, hide in the bedroom, shelve the books. My only social communication was with my few friends or the people I helped at work. We moved out of the apartment where my Mom and I had weathered 9/11, and I retreated into my one-room hovel in my sister's backyard, shrugged off the lack of running water and heat, wondered if I might be autistic, came out as transgendered, dissociated and ranted on the internet and injured myself for kicks. I remember it as good times but it was really kind of pathetic. All alone in a little party house with my bad music and the undefined substances crusted into the carpet. Chest strapped flat, nails through my ears while my right eyeball flared up red and swollen every day from the layers of dust I swam through. Family drama alienated me from all relatives except my Mom. I kept in touch with the world outside through my modem.

I started going to cons. Met Seebs, Rah and Jesse for the first time at Anime Central 2004. I had been planning to stay with Rah, but when we all started talking at the tables it was nakama at first sight and we stayed in the same hotel room for the rest of the weekend. I didn't buy my next $80 bus ticket to Canada; instead Jess and Seebs brought me home from the convention to stay at their place in Saint Paul. They extended pseudopods and replaced my plans to go back to Nebraska with the urge to go native, which I did. Told my Mom I wasn't coming home except to pack my shit. She was sad, but my brother was getting out and she wanted to live with him anyway. I gleefully jettisoned my home life and never looked back. I didn't call her enough. I still feel sad that I didn't call her enough, but I just forgot. I knew I'd regret it very soon but I forgot.

Then Mom died. I went back to Nebraska to be with her during the end, got sick, came home, went back but I was too late. She died the night before I returned, and I was on the phone as it happened. The funerals weren't bad. She was polyfaithful so there were two, plus the wake where I wore an offensive T-Shirt to piss off the relatives who didn't like me anyway. My brother and I made up and I gave him a wad of money from comic fan donations to pay the funeral director for one pitiful box of ashes with a side of shitty attitude.

Now I had no connection to my past. Now I've been kissing-close to death and I realized I was wasting my life. Everything I felt was now under scrutiny as suspected bullshit. Two months later I had a petty disagreement with my childhood friend and he dumped me. I couldn't muster the willpower to apologize first like I always did, and because he never learned how to apologize at all we ended up never speaking again. One more piece of my old life fell away. Rain moved to North Carolina a few months after that, and I got depressed. I adopted a dog to force myself out of my head and being responsible for him got me through the worst of the sadness. Dogs and cats do their best to cure the blues by being small and pettable and needy, and in return we make sure their bellies stay full. It's a good trade.

The household moved to a small town where the atmosphere is much more laid-back. There are two colleges here, and I started thinking about going back to school. Thinking I didn't have what it takes to be a student, I was too old, too dumb, too anxious.

Then the accident happened, and I guess almost dying must have knocked some sense into me. Suddenly I was making plans instead of daydreaming about them. Small plans at first--see a dentist, find a good vet in town--and then larger ones followed from that. I got a therapist and a psychiatrist because I was overwhelmed, instead of hiding in my room and hoping the world would forget about me. The therapist hooked me up with health care and pointed me at assistance programs. Things became possible.

I re-established contact with my Dad, and we're slowly getting to know each other again. I really love the guy, but we've got to tread lightly for a while at least. I've always hated the idea of wasting my life, but now I feel more like there's something I can do about it. Medication helps with a lot of this, but some of it was just plain good luck.

So where am I now? Making plans. Establishing normal living activities like schedules and chores. Learning to work with the ADHD meds, and I've just started Zoloft for the social anxiety and OCD. I'm creating a new routine to replace the flawed one that was more of a prison than a refuge. There is comfort in routine, and just lately mine's been changing quite a bit and creativity has taken a backseat to the real world. I figure it's now or never--I either ride this wave or spend more years in the holding pattern. I'm impatient to get back to the old habits that I enjoy--comics and writing being the two major ones--but so far they haven't found where they fit in my new life. Creativity is kind of like a cat that will curl up in your lap if you stay put, but if you move around too much it gets pissed and wanders off for a while. Luckily creativity and cats are also sort of stupid, and will eventually come back for another try.

Hopefully within the next month or so I'll wake up with that cat back on my lap so I don't have to go chase it down like I've been doing. My comic is about to go awesome places and I'm getting annoyed by how slowly it's unfolding compared to the four-pages-a-week powerhouse of yesteryear.

Things go well at home. The Captain's nose is turning pink at the base. I still haven't mailed off the buttons for the folks who donated to get his vitiligo diagnosed, but I've got all the info here and will be getting to it as soon as I can. This damn cold isn't helping much, but it's slowly getting better.

Also, I've begun to think about college again. Scary stuff, but why not? "Too old" is bullshit anyway. I feel certain I'd make a better student in my 30s than I ever was in my teens.

That's it for now. Musings on a quiet Wednesday morning while the sky is gray and the snow is a few layers thicker than it was last time I blogged. Hope you're all well.