Mud Boggin' - Gray Young & Over-Sharing

Have you ever gotten you car stuck in mud? If you live in the more rural parts of Raleigh/Wake County or even further out, then the answer is most likely "yes".

I was born off St Mary's street, grew up off Lake Wheeler Road and later lived on the Apex side of Cary. Somehow, winding up in Cary with an Apex address lead to a High School career in Fuquay-varina. My extended family, basically everyone but my brother and I, a total of some 30ish first cousins, all live in Mount Airy, NC; aka Mayberry.  Trips "home" to Mt Airy to see family, were almost akin to safaris for my brother and I. We had grown up inside the beltline; we had access (via our parents) to infinite fast food choices and more than one grocery store. Our cousins grew up in 3 bedroom houses with 8 occupants, on farms, barefoot. mountain people. Part of us, my brother and I, were mortified at the savageness of their lives; i remember being almost a pre-teen before my grandmother got cable. My cousins would entertain us by driving us around (me horrified) on ATVs and playing hide and seek in tobacco barns. Fishing. Catching frogs.  Someone as dainty and skittish as me, was mostly terrified of 99% of the activities I found myself involved in on those trips home; my brother, who was decidedly more athletic and lithe than I (I was a total porker; focused only on beating the book club goals and playing the piano) loved these weekends home. he and my other male cousins would build fires and beat each other with wooden planks; i have no idea. I, along with my cousin Crystal, were the two youngest of the cousins. we were the babies. We would hide out in the back of my folks' minivan and play with Barbies. we were friends by default. What i mostly remember about these trips home was A) the dread of what horrendous activity involved wading in a creek was ure to arise and B) once again feeling like a total outcast, even in my own family.

My point here is this, despite the fact that I have never once in my almost 36 years, camped, or slept outdoors in any fashion, despite never once having ridden a horse, never once been in a physical fight; I know a little bit about mud. If only by proxy of my crazy redneck family. There was always a part of me that would dip a toe in the crazy pool, give it a shot, see if the rough and tumble world of the Appalachian way was in me somewhere. But any sign of potential danger or stains, and I was out. I would go crying back to my perpetually perturbed mother or my bored shitless dad, dozing on the couch. I spent 10% of every trip to mount airy as a child feeling brave and daring and the other 90% hiding in a corner with a book.

Flash forward whatever many years; we moved to the Apex-not-apex address and I was bussed to Fuquay. Again, I was entirely out of my element. The majority of my classmates, despite having grown up only 30 minutes away from me, were like aliens to me. I had never seen kids wear camouflage to school before. I never saw so many day glow orange hunting caps. Surrounded by kids, having grown up in literally the same county as I, and I couldn't understand their accents. There was more twang and drawl than I had ever heard,even in Mt Airy. As I grew and meandered into high school, I became a weirdo, or in those times, what we called "alternative". I hung out with kids who parted their hair in the middle, wore flannel and airwalks. we listened to the pixies and put beads in our hair and saved up money for lollapalooza.  We were, I have to stress, the extreme minority of that school. Although I was a fat weirdo, I did somehow manage to make friends with most everybody in that school, I would say. mostly because I didn't care. I didn't want anyone judging me, so i didn't judge anyone else. so there was, on the rare occasion, situations that arose where my best friend Christy and I would find ourselves in the baffling company of rednecks. (I never understood why Christy dated the guys she did, especially as I never went on Date One in high school, but every once in a while, she dated a redneck.) We found ourselves, on more than one occasion, doing weird shit like mud bogging. Also, it serves to be said that Fuquay, in the early 90s, was still pretty damned rural and only had a McDonalds and an ancient Harris Teeter. There were hundreds of unpaved roads. I, in my stylin' 1984 shit-brown cavalier convertible, found myself stuck in mud several times throughout my mostly innocuous high school career.

Why the history lesson? Well, yesterday Allie Brosh, of hyperbole and a half, posted a new entry about her struggle with depression. 5 people total forwarded this to me, and two things became suddenly, abundantly clear; A) it is no longer a "secret" that I am struggling with severe depression and have been for about a year now and B) it must be a trait of those of us with major depression to fulfill this compulsive need for allegory/parables/explanation... To give others around us a metaphor for what our sadness is like. This last post by Brosh is probably the closest I've ever heard anyone other than myself explain what I'm feeling (or, not feeling to be blunt) and a lot more interesting than my comparison;  feeling like my car-brain is stuck in the mud and no matter how much my friends or family try to stuff twigs or leaves under my wheels and tell me to gun it in reverse, I keep spinning my wheels, digging my car-brain further and further into the mire. Or, you know, what Allie said, better and with cute cartoons.

Part of the history lesson is also to reiterate the fact that I'm okay all alone. which is what has come to be a harsh reality over the past month or so. I terminated my romantic relationship, mostly due to the fact that I feel like a black hole of emotion and i have nothing left in me and I kinda just want to lie alone on the couch with my cat and burn through my netflix queue, eating american cheese slices straight from the packet and stop shaving my legs. So yes, burned the relationships bridge, tried to repair the previous relationship's bridge, and burnt that one beyond even dental recognition. then had my closest adult friend terminate her friendship with me, for completely valid reasons and i felt nothing. I am a big ole feelin' nothing kinda gal at the moment. I wake up, I go to work, or i don't. I have gone several days in a row when I have said little more than three or four phrases out loud. The only things I've found remotely interesting are the increasing diversity and perfection of my various Spotify playlists and going to see Gray Young. I told you before, i don't get to see U2 three times in one month, I get to see Gray Young. There aren't any bands other than the biggest band in the world and these three dudes i see almost every day that stir the kind of joy and solace in my pruney, shrivelled, numbed-out heart.

Back to the history of it all for a minute. there are certain conversations in my life that stick out like sore thumbs that my shitty brain will never let me forget. some are mundane and banal. some are horrifyingly embarrassing. some are bittersweet. I am reminded of two very important conversations as of late. The first was with my dad, when I was elementary or middle school-ish. I had realized, suddenly, that it might be a problem that I was fat; this "disability" was going to prejudice the majority of girls straining to define their coolness or dudes that would maybe kiss me behind the bleachers. I remember one of the first times I was bullied for being overweight. I cried. and it wasn't because this was painful or new information of any kind; I had been overweight my entire life... It was because I was confused. I will, 99% of the time, if you know me, cry because I am confused. and I, being the existentially overly sensitive, over thinker that I am, always believed that people were so much better than they chose to be, or chose to behave... I cried every time I was bullied, which was pretty much par for the course, even into my adulthood, because I just couldn't believe people could be so blindly cruel. Why? Why would anyone say such mean things to someone? Why would they judge me based solely on my physical appearance? My dad had picked me up from some after school function and we were almost all the way home when i burst into tears and told my dad "I don't have any friends. I don't think people like me because I'm fat" and he told me something to the effect that I would have to work harder to be interesting and smarter and I would prove them all wrong. In the mean time, I'd have to learn how to be happy alone; that one day things like that wouldn't matter... maybe.

The second conversation occurred about oh, 4 or 5 years ago? My best friend, in counseling me after yet another heartbreak, told me that she dreaded the day that all the optimism and hope was finally gone out of me; that she was worried there was going to come a day when i finally gave so much of myself to others that i didn't leave anything else for myself and I stopped believing in love. I can't help but wonder if the big part of why she made the decision to end our friendship was because it finally happened... I don't have anything left. i broke my own heart too many times. I waited too long for my "one day" and I'm out of options. I stopped believing in true love. It has taken a toll on me; emotionally, psychologically, physically, socially... I gave up on love, the one and only thing I ever believed in, so I gave up on me. When someone stops caring about themselves, it's hard and exhausting to keep reassuring them and trying to fill in the void... I understand completely...

So what's left? I think we all have bucket lists; either we wrote them down or we keep them somewhere in our brains. I wrote them all down, of course. Preposterous bullshit like visit the great wall of China.. I filled it with seemingly innocent hopes that now seem as impossible as "grow a tail"... Get married to my best friend? Have at least two kids? these are not things that seem like options anymore. I don't even cry about them anymore. I shut it all out, i shut myself down. I obsess over Spotify and I get drunk and I go to rock shows to feel some sort of something for just a minute.

The first of the two times I saw gray young this past month was at the CD release party at King's. I had, along with my ex, made Kitten Army fan club buttons. I was way too drunk, way too soon. Dana and I stood front and center and It was amazing.

the second time was during a benefit at tir na nog that tamplin threw together. Birds and arrows played first, then bronzed chorus again, then the boys. before this show, Dana and I had another one of our patented "oh god I'm so glad someone loves them as much as i do" conversations and she reminded me of the post i had made forever ago about how sometimes when i see them play, it's like poking a bruise. And a little spark of light lit up my pitch black heart for just a second and reminded me, yes. that pain is better than numb. and part of the reason i like gray young so much, is the bittersweet undertones of their music. there is literally no emotion in the world i love more than bittersweet.

I don't know if' I've made a point to emphasize that on here or not, but the best music there is, is the ones that take you so far back in your brain that you remember smells and shadows and the slightest graze of your fingertips over a memory or a love you will never have back. your grandmother's last hug, your lover's last kiss, the last sweep of your fingers through the fur of your childhood dog... whatever it is. music is the time machine; gray young has the power over me to create a song I have never heard that takes me to a different point in my life and replay the moments I'll never have again and thank god i get one more second with my friend before he died in a car wreck, or i get one more moment with my fingers splayed in the soft blonde hair across his chest before he wakes, I get that rainy Saturday morning in the house i grew up in with my brother, before the world broke us. gray young is a time machine. At this show, one of my more favorite Gray Young moments happened; I was standing front and center-ish and i must have had my eyes closed for a while and suddenly something swatted me in the face. I opened my eyes and chas was right in front of me and one of his guitar strings had popped me in the face. It was an almost painful jump back into the present... I don't know where I had gone or how long I had been missing, but I went somewhere during that show and it literally took chas smacking me in the face with his guitar to bring me back. That's pretty fucking powerful. that says more about how deep the river of my love and respect for their music flows than anything else i could write...

I'm not quite sure how to end this. I have done a lot of... sharing... on this post. I don't mind, it helps to purge every once in a while. I'm a big believer in catharsis, as many past readers know. And I don't think it's much of a secret to anyone anymore that I struggle with depression. or alcohol. or that I was once morbidly obese. or that I was in an abusive relationship and almost died. or that I loved a boy. or I loved a band. that I had beautifully patient and understanding friends that loved me as much as they could before i couldn't let them anymore. i don't mind you knowing. I don't mind being broken... i have a gray young show to look forward to. And that's something. It's enough for today.

see you on the patio.

Radiohead - Karma Police

Long ago, before I became this pinnacle of sanity you have now grown to know and love, I “dropped my basket.” I had succumbed completely to my then undiagnosed Panic disorder completely and turned my life and adrenal glands over to a drug called Effexor. This drug, while you are on it, seems to be a kind of miracle drug. Nothing switches, no wild uncontrollable thoughts about death, no racing heart and sweaty palms in otherwise safe situations; synthetic calm after years of self-torture and exhaustion. However, there was a downside or two to this “miracle drug”. My serotonin levels eventually became so evenly leveled that my brain tricked me into believing that I had no consequences what-so-ever; I was like a blank sheet of paper. I wasn’t high, I wasn’t low, and I wasn’t anything but a poor decision maker with no shoes on. I got laid off, I didn’t care. I lost my fiancé, I didn’t care. I had to move home with my parents… whatever. I didn’t wear shoes for a year or two… who cares?

Somewhere in the midst of this haze, as I found myself every day at the same damn coffee shop, doing puzzles and chain smoking, I met a girl who would become my anchor and partner in crime; Anne, who has affectionately become known as “N’abney” through a manipulated pronunciation of her first and last names. I had known her barely a heartbeat when she walked across the street and bought me a crossword puzzle dictionary from the used book store. It was love at first nerd. What followed was a then several month progression of Anne and me clinging to each other throughout our follies and downfalls. I was losing grip on life in general, Anne was lost and trying to finish school. All we knew to do was to smoke drugs and go wild and have earth shattering conversations while we bawled our eyes out in our cars.

Eventually, everything came to a head. My family was slowly cutting me off in every way. I had no money and my dad took away my cell phone first, and then my car. Anne saved the day by letting me borrow her early 80s beige town & country, affectionately known as the “Nazgul”, for the screeching death sounds it made due to its lack of power steering. My friends, one by one, took me aside and said “get your shit together or we can’t be friends anymore.” (This is a testament to how evil SSRI’s, especially Effexor, are when not properly administered or monitored.) My friends gave me an intervention over a medication my doctors intentionally put me on. Then the last straw… my health insurance granted me as a severance from my last job ran out. My parents refused to pay for the then $120/mo prescription, as there was no generic, and I literally went completely cold turkey off Effexor. You can do a quick Google search and see how dangerous and wrong and terrible this experience was for me.

Digression/point of post: one of the things I do the best and I know I do a lot is give people nicknames. Whether that nickname is something you did once that was silly or just a ridiculous mispronunciation of your name; everyone at one point or another gets a nickname from me. Some people have more than one. It’s an endearing thing I do; it means I care enough about you or something. I have only been the recipient of a nickname that stuck once, and that was from N’abney… One night in the midst of all this haze, Anne, while driving around with another of my long time best friends, Bart, called and sang the entirety of this song, all the while substituting my name in place of “Karma”. I had, at one point, had a few friends that would sing Culture Club’s “KARLA Chameleon” to me in the halls at school, but it never really caught on. Some people outside of the N’abney inner sanctum still call me “karla police” now. Piggybacking off the nickname, I once had a brilliant idea to start a cable access show where I would dress as a cop, walk around NCSU’s brickyard and stop kids listening to headphones and ask what they were listening to. If what they said did not please me, I would “arrest” them and make them listen to some Joy Division or the Buzzcocks or something. This idea, as all great ideas that rise from the haze of marijuana smoke, never came to fruition, not unlike the great “cheese as currency” debate of ’03.

I have never heard Karma Police without thinking of N’abs. I somehow have more “in jokes” with N’abney than just about anyone else in my whole life. That girl has saved my life so many times I can’t even count anymore….

N’abney & Karla Police = burning the 80s… 4ever! xoxox