ADIEU.

There have been several times in my life where I have wanted to not be here anymore. There have also been times when my former addiction or mental health struggles have made their way into the public sphere, which anyone who knows how to use the internet either already knows about or can find for themselves, so I won’t bore you with those details.

I have been open about my own mental and behavioral health for as long as I can remember, both in my music and in the media…mainly because there would have been no possible way for me to hide it; and making songs has always been my therapy – often the only way I am able to get the poison out.

I tried to leave this world the first time when I was 14 years old by throwing open the door of my father’s car while he was driving on the freeway and then trying to jump out of the moving vehicle at full speed. My dad held on to me and my clothing with one hand and everything he had, and somehow managed to both keep me in the car and get us to safety.

I wanted it to be over.
I wanted to leave the world.
And I still sometimes do.

The Church of Christ “therapist” I was sent to because I was depressed and locked in my room had outed me to my parents just moments before. Read the rest of this entry »

(Originally Published in Just Out Magazine, August 2012 Issue)

My beloved Pomeranian companion of the past ten years died suddenly a little over two months ago and I have yet to make heads or tails of the whole thing. Truthfully, I’ve been carrying his cremated body around in a tiny tin box ever since, sleeping with him next to me at night, and am so far having a really hard time letting him go.

During the first few weeks after his death I was in a state of sheer panic around his absence. For over a decade, silence in the house meant little dude was up to some sort of mischief or that he was in trouble, so to be suddenly surrounded by this new, impenetrable quiet has been unsettling. I found myself calling for him in the night, looking for him all over the house in the morning, and waiting to hear the pitter-patter of his paws on the hardwood floor as I opened the front door or walked to the kitchen, but he is gone.

As it turns out, I had a great deal of purpose wrapped up in taking care of this tiny creature, and I’m finding that in many ways I was dependent on the love I received from him in return. He was the only consistent thing in my life for the past decade, and without him around everything just feels harder. I have yet to make it through a full day without some sort of tearful breakdown and was unable to control said emotional outbursts at all until very recently. It sounds crazy that an animal could make me lose my mind like this, but he was so much more than a dog to me. For many years he was my child, my family, the only reason I got out of bed in the morning, and the only reason I came home at night…so to call him my “pet” minimizes the depth of our relationship.
A few weeks back while I was talking to a close friend about my inability to let Dutch go, he challenged me that maybe it was feeling too hard to do because I wasn’t actually supposed to be doing it. He suggested that, instead of working so hard to let him go, I should learn to hold onto Dutch in new ways. His body is gone, that much is certain. All that’s left is this box of ashes…which isn’t all that comforting when I stop and think about it.

So, I took his advice. I began to look for Dutch again, minus the feeling of panic those initial searches held after he passed. I started to focus on all the ways he is still here with me instead of mourning all the ways he is not, and suddenly he was Read the rest of this entry »