Therapy

It's too easy for me to forget that this blog exists. I'll get on a roll for a few months, build up some momentum, then "reward" myself with a "break" and subsequently disappear for half a year or more. I can't say for sure why I drop off like that. I enjoy writing. I see putting my thoughts down and sharing them as a healing act, and when the going inevitably gets tough, this is the logic that I'll use as a prod to jab me back in to the game; but said logic means nothing to whatever sick entity was put in charge of scripting 2016. This year has been nothing but one devastating vicissitude bleeding with an almost competitive malevolence in to another. The reflexive result is my subconscious defensively extricating itself from any true participation in the world.

This is heartbreaking for me. Going out in to the world is what I love. Going to desperate and impractical means to enjoy life's most premium experiences is what I do. I use my insistence on participation, on not being bored ever, as the only real blueprint for escaping my blistering depression. It feels damn near impossible, however, to run tantivy in to the nurturing and inspired arms of cuisine and revelry when the hurdles I have to leap are the bodies of legends and friends maimed or killed off by illness at an age where most of us are entering our prime, my dead dog, and a formidable and growing golem of small personal defeats. The idea of spritzing in a few curative instances of luxury just feels wrong.

Defying the mandates set forth by this shitty year to stay miserable, myself and a sizable group of friends who, for their own reasons are mutually eager to bid adieu to 2016, recently set out to Madison for a midweek trip. The plan was simple enough: dinner at Forequarter followed by Car Seat Headrest playing at the Majestic. As it turns out, simple wouldn't do. The alchemized effect of this specific group of people, our commensurate measures of frustration and irrepressibility culminated in a full-scale takedown of Forequarter's menu (which it just so happens was otherworldly in it's deliciousness) and enough wine to provide the foundation for at least one near black out. After filling up on puffed beef tendon, seared scallops, steak, chicken, lamb... literally the entire damn menu with several items doubled up on plus desserts, we made our way to the show. I walked out in to perfect weather, ethereally drunk and full enough to be stoned; and if you can empathize with the latter of those two states of intoxication, we can almost definitely be friends.

The rest of the night hovers in a flickering ether for me. Fleeting moments of don't-give-a-fuck fun leading up to sloppily passing out on a friends air mattress. I closed my eyes with the spirit of a 19 year old, waking up very much in my thirties with horrible pain in my joints and head and GERD intense enough to produce a panic attack. Ultimately, I emerged from this self-induced chrysalis/iron maiden hybrid refreshed. As grey as life had been leading up to that night, was immediately hellish after, and lame as it has been ever since-it was proven to me over the course of those several hours that escape is possible.

Obviously this isn't meant to be a review of a restaurant or even a narrative of my evening. This is a reminder to me and whoever else it might resonate with that dread doesn't have to win. Fight like hell to keep the jaws of circumstance from snapping down on you; but if you start to feel consumed, it might be better to blast your way out with dynamite than negotiate with nightmares you don't always have control over.  Since I started writing this another one of my friends passed away, and another person who I didn't know personally but was close to many of my other friends also died. It's more a reminder than anything for me to continue to get out and actually enjoy life instead of letting the downsides (not matter how drastic they may be) beat me in to submission. More to come.