Am I crazy weird?

As I’ve started opening up a little about my various absurd struggles with depression and all my weird little quirks – thanks, in large part, to Jenny Lawson making me feel like it’s okay to be broken – I’ve noticed something not good: there aren’t many dudes talking about their feelings.

Not in the way that the women are, with jagged bone honesty and brutal humor to highlight how ridiculous everything is. The few men who are writing about mental health tend to write like, well, men writing about mental health. It’s usually very cold and antiseptic, as if depression can be conquered through spreadsheets and actuarial tables.

Now, I don’t subscribe to the idea that men are from one planet and women are from another, because I really don’t think we’re all that different from each other. Not really. We tell ourselves we’re different – and, more importantly, we’re told how different we are all our lives – but it’s all just stupid marketing. Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. And that’s about as deep as it goes, except that my penis doesn’t bleed every month, and I can’t grow babies in my testicles. I suspect there was some divergent limb on the evolutionary tree that tried this once – men being the baby makers – but natural selection probably kicked in after every single dude just started lying around in the fetal position, clutching his balls and crying for days at a time every month, and nipped that in the bud.

The point is, while plenty of brilliant women are writing brilliant things on the subject, men remain pretty silent. Why? If we’re not so different, then why aren’t more men trying to do what I’m probably failing at doing?

I think it’s probably down to gender roles and behavioral psychology and stuff. You know, the same crap that tells little boys they can’t play with dolls, or that girls need princess tiaras and pink everything. But that’s all over my head, and best left to people who have, I dunno, gone to school and learned something about it or whatever. The tweed jackets with elbow patches crowd.

All I know is that writing about this crap has helped me not only keep pushing through a serious bout with depression, but with putting my entire life into ridiculous perspective. Some of the things I’ve done have just been crazy weird. Most of the things I still do are crazy weird.

I’m crazy weird.

And so are a lot of other dudes. Even if they haven’t been able to admit it yet, because no one has told them it’s okay.

Instead, we lurk over at The Bloggess or find quiet solidarity in Hyperbole and a Half, but as far as anyone else knows, we’re only there to laugh at the jokes, and all the touchy-feely stuff is for the girls. Like watching a romcom – we’ll do it as long as there’s enough John Cusack to counteract the Katherine Heigl, but we’ll pretend like we’re not really enjoying it the whole time.

Men also hide behind manly manliness, which here in the south means taking long hunting trips or talking about sports. We’ll buy things, too. Cars in the shape of a midlife penis crisis, expensive sunglasses, stupid active wear we pretend does some really cool sciency thing, but that we’re only buying for the stupid logo, etc… We’ll even plop down a stack of cash for a ridiculous ice chest because it’s the cool new thing to do. (See also: Toyota’s Scion, Ray Bans, Under Armour, Yeti Coolers…)

Which is fine, I guess. Whatever gets you through it. It’s better than breaking up with your girlfriend or cheating on your wife, like a whole lot of other dudes do along their misguided quests to find fulfillment.

But what are guys who hate brand marketing, can’t stand sports, despise trends, and would never cheat on their spouses or go to the store for a loaf of bread and not come back until 20 years later supposed to do?

Oh. Wait. I hope you’re not expecting me to have an answer for that one, because I don’t. I play video games, watch Netflix, read books and write dumb blog posts. And cookies. I eat a lot of cookies.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

The only thing better than gingerbread is nerd gingerbread.

I’m not even sure I have a valid reason to be depressed, which is how depression likes to make you feel. Sure, getting laid off and being pretty hardcore unemployable when I live in the Deep South and write about things like feelings and how stupid I think the God, Guns, and Jesus mentality is around here is probably a “valid” reason for feeling depressed, but I was depressed even before my job went to India.

I worked hard at my last job. I was called the “go to” guy of my group. I routinely resolved more cases than everyone else on my team combined. Every week. I was basically on call 24/7/365 because I was “the guy who gets things done”.

But I also had Hillbilly Voldemort.

Hillbilly Voldemort, if you’re new around here, is the name I gave to the opportunistic, slackjawed bully who was my last middle manager, before he failed upward and moved on to upper management after contract renegotiations with our client took a turn and my company ended up partnering with an outsourcing firm. And, armed with the power of layoffs, he systematically went through the company roster and eliminated everyone who was ever a threat to him, or who he just didn’t like. It was a common theme in hushed employee-to-employee conversations when it was all going down.

Someone else being laid off would ask, “Oh, hey. Did you, by any chance, ever happen to piss off Steve?”

And then The Stories would be told, and yup. Common theme.

So maybe I have a right to be depressed now, but why was I depressed back when I was making good money, before The Dark Lord rose like a pimple off the back of some slimy dude’s head?

I have no idea.

I didn’t have a bad childhood. If anything, my childhood was too good, because I constantly want to go back there. It’s why I’ve devoted countless hours to writing a nostalgia-soaked trip down memory lane. Sure, life wasn’t perfect back then, but it was a damn sight better than it usually is now.

I was such a cute kid. WITH PERFECT EARS.

Yeah, I was a goofy kid. I didn’t have many friends and I was kind of a weirdo, but my parents made time for me and made me feel loved, even if they did worry a little too much about my weirdness at times. In short, I had a nice time.

Even if I’ve filled my life with Questionable Decisions.

Even if I always worried about everything.

Even if the emotional scars left by my childhood peer groups haunt me to this day, to the point that if I ever walk near any group of people who start laughing, I’m instantly convinced they’re laughing at me, and I start running through a mental checklist of everything I’ve been doing since I’ve been in their eyeline, trying to track down exactly what it was that set them off in their open mockery of everything awful about myself. And that goes triple if it’s a giggling group of teenage girls, which is basically the scariest thing on earth.

But the way depression works – for me, at least – is that it makes me feel bad for feeling bad. Right now, I have something to be depressed about: I’m unemployed, money is running out, and I can’t find a job anywhere. So I’m good on the nodding heads and sympathetic looks from people I know front. For now. (Speaking of…if you’re looking for an employee, I’m great at IT work, systems administration, web solutions, and SharePoint. I’m comfortable working remotely, and I can even handle PR, technical writing, and making really lame jokes during awkward staff meetings. Hire me!)

All the other times, though… Times when things are good, when I’ve got money in the bank and plans on the horizon, when things are happening and all seems right with the world – those are the times when I hate myself for feeling like I hate myself.

Other people have it worse!

Be grateful for what you have!

Stop whining.

Why are you so awful?!

The shouts in my head never stop, even as some other part of my fractured psyche shouts back that I DON’T KNOW WHY.

I don’t know why I wake up every morning feeling like a failure, even on the increasingly rare mornings when I wake up after having not recently failed at anything. I don’t know why I don’t trust good days, or why I think happiness is out to get me. I don’t know why I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, the unexpected phone call, the red letter in the mail.

I DON’T KNOW WHY.

I don’t know why I feel like I haven’t accomplished a damn thing in my life, or why it feels like I peaked in high school when I really didn’t do anything in high school. I wasn’t class president, I hated pep rallies, I didn’t have many friends, and I did the bare minimum needed to pass my classes and graduate. If that’s my peak – then my life is a damn greek tragedy.

But without any of the heroic, monster-slaying bits.

I don’t know why I’m sitting here, typing this out and making myself feel worse. I don’t know why I wake up every morning, and the only thing I look forward to doing all day is going back to sleep. Or eating cookies. Preferably just before going back to sleep.

I don’t know why every post I write that gets a lot of traffic but hardly any shares feels like a waste of time. I don’t know why I keep hoping someone influential will find what I’ve written and help get me noticed. I don’t know why not being noticed makes me feel like a failure, when being noticed makes me feel like a fraud.

I don’t know why I think the success of nerds being nerds has created a bizarre tiered nerd hierarchy, where someone as awesome as Felicia Day makes me feel like even more of a loser because I’m not a cool enough nerd to roll 20-sided dice and eat cold Pop-Tarts at her super nerdy lunch table.

I DON’T KNOW WHY.

But I do know I wish other guys were talking about it. I’m sure they’re out there – and if you know of any, or if you’re one of them – please let me know. Send me an email, or leave a comment and link me in their direction. Because as great and inspirational as it is to read Jenny and Felicia and Allie, I need to know that there’s at least one other tripod out there who’s been where I’m at. Who’s going through what I’m going through. Who knows the difference between who’s and whose without having to look it up every damn time.

Ok, maybe not that last one.

But really, why isn’t there a community of struggling daddy bloggers? Or depressed single guy bloggers (who aren’t misogynistic asshats)? Or stay-at-home dads who constantly get emails from their kid’s school addressed to Moms?

Where’s my tribe?

Don’t get me wrong. I feel a great sense of community and belonging from the wonderful people who frequent the other sites I’ve mentioned, but I need more dude stories.

Are there other guys out there one leaky pipe away from a total breakdown because plumbing is terrifying? Do any other dads try to follow the “some assembly required” instructions of any given toy, only to feel like an abject failure when none of the included, easily-followable instructions make any damn sense at all? Does the thought of interacting with other dads scare the shit out of anyone else, when all anyone ever wants to talk about are hunting, sports, and cars? Are any other husbands kinda scared that writing about all your internalized oddities will freak out your wives, who will inevitably leave you for someone less weird who’s the exact opposite of you and therefore cool and sexy and everything you aren’t?

Or am I just alone out here, shouting nonsense at the heart of the world?

Because it sure feels like that, at times.

It feels like I don’t have a right to be depressed, or to worry, or to be depressed over worrying about things, and then angry at myself for being worried that I’m depressed about how much I worry.

It still feels like I’m weird for enjoying video games rather than football. It still feels like I’m weird for wanting to pet animals rather than murder them. It still feels like I’m weird for never feeling like I’m doing enough for my kid, or that everything I am doing is wrong. It still feels like I’m weird when I talk about how much I love him, or that I crave his hugs. Because none of that is man stuff.

It’s just stuff that makes me weird.

I just fixed this today. Not ideal, but it’ll quiet my head demons. FOR NOW.

And that’s not even going into all the things that make me feel crazy. Like…

• How I can’t stand for anything to be upside down, even when it’s a soggy candy bar wrapper underneath a layer of leftover spaghetti in the trash can. AND I MUST FIX IT.
• My weird fetishes for certain numbers, all of which are even. I really dig 4 and 12, for some reason.
• My equally weird aversions to other numbers, most of which are odd. Basically, any number between 1 and 25 that isn’t 4 or 12 is suspect, and should be treated with caution.
• My obsession over symmetry. Shelving, for instance, must have EXACT SPACING, and then whatever I put on them has to balance out on all sides or it’s just a nightmare and I want to burn the house down.
• My handwriting, which is just made worse by the fact that I can’t have a single unclosed letter anywhere in a word. If the circle part of a lowercase d doesn’t fully connect to the tall part, I go back over it. With fury.
• My nail biting, which is ridiculous.
• My social anxiety, which makes me fear the pizza man and has seen me hiding in my back bedroom with the door closed whenever the lawn crew has shown up when I didn’t want them to mow the grass.
• My compulsion to personify inanimate objects. I still have my two favorite stuffed animals from childhood and fuck you, THEY’RE ALIVE. Shut up.
• My crippling aversion to change, which has kept me in bad situations for a lot longer than should be legal.
• My outrage over stupid things. Like bad font choices, or crappy grammar in ad copy. THAT SOMEONE APPROVED.
• My debilitating fear of being wrong. Or looking stupid. Or being wrong because I’m stupid.
• My certainty that everyone, everywhere is always making fun of me. Especially those damn groups of giggling girls.
• My tendency toward hoarding, which has seen me digging one of my kid’s school workbooks out of the trash, after my wife thought she could quietly slip it in there and DEPRIVE ME OF MY MEMORIES.
• The weird way I have to “unwind” myself if I make a complete circle in one direction, which even extends to video games. Poor Mario. How many times have I made you run clockwise into the lava, after you narrowly dodged a koopa shell by running counter-clockwise? I AM SORRY.
• How I can never click the Save icon just once. Or even twice. And I certainly can’t stop clicking on an uneven number, so…

You get the idea.

Maybe I am alone. When you start listing out just a handful of your odd little quirks off the top of your head as bullet points, it tends to put things into perspective.

Yeah.

I’m crazy weird.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
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If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

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Always get back up.

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This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

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Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

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I'll try to not be boring.

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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.