Introduce Yourself

'I choose to live and to grow, take and give and to move, learn and love and to cry, kill and die, and to be paranoid and to lie, hate and fear and to do what it takes to move through.' -Maynard James Keenan (Lyrics from the Tool song "46 & 2")

Part of this is about all the parts of me that need an outlet, the parts that can't be expressed in society without driving people away. Part of it is about just sharing things that I find relevant, cool, or interesting.

I am an outwardly confident person that suffers from depression. I am afraid to express it in my day to day life for fear of being judged. I, like any other human being, want to be happy and want to have harmony in my life and in my associations. These things are hard to attain when there is no harmony inside of myself.

So any readers can have a clear picture, I am an attractive and generally outgoing person. I smile a lot and have nice things to say about the people around me. I help my neighbors do things without being asked, I hold doors for strangers, and I stop when I see people stalled on the side of the road and offer them either my cell phone or a ride.

I also had a difficult childhood that I don't really talk much about, bouts with suicidal thoughts, several battles with substance abuse, and have been to court for several petty crimes. Most people who meet me now would never guess any of these things about me. I have steady employment, live in my own home, and generally appear to have a good life.

I suffer from a lot of dark thoughts. I don't look at them as a complete negative, but I feel that if I don't express them I will never understand them and as a consequence, never understand myself. Somewhere in all this inner turmoil is the person who I am meant to be. This blog is an attempt to wade into the coldest waters of my mind and heart.