Dr. Wierdhate: or How I learned to stop worrying and love self-loathing

A Story by Vox Machina

Despite the misleading title this work has nothing to do with Dr. Strangelove and is not funny. You have been warned.

I thought I had lost this account; every time I logged in I received an access error. I was initially upset, some of the stuff I've written here exists in no other form, but I got over it quickly. I realized that it wouldn't really have mattered; I haven't touched a keyboard except to check my email, or look something up in months. It's not that I haven't been creative, some nights I have so many dreams I never get to sleep. I haven't been writing, and I can't say that letting my digitized thoughts get demagnetized is any different than the old analog process of forgetting them.

Writers write, by definition. When an idea strikes a willing mind; it's an act of conception, something new is born that lives on beyond just that one moment. Dreaming is masturbation; fingering the softest, weakest part of myself until It feels solid, growing more frenzied until the moment of release. I pleasure only myself and all that is produced is an excremented potential, a life that could have been. Not every life is sacred, not every life is strong enough to reach maturity, but they do all deserve the chance.

These last few months I've been afraid, I guess. What if my children aren't popular? What if they inherit they're father's failings and are born monsters? I feel like there's nothing inside of me right now that isn't toxic. Small frustrations I would have once laughed off now sink me into days of depression. Sisyphus probably thought it was just a minor setback the first couple times he lost hold, too. But enough failure wears on you; breaks you down.

I've been letting things slip, personally and professionally, giving up. I feel like Ophelia, slowing sinking deeper, watching the concerned faces of my loved ones grow murky as I slip silently into the darkness. It's getting harder to communicate; I want to tell them I'm okay. Share the same old comforting lie, but I can't force the words past the weight on my tongue. People say things to me, but I don't hear them or pay attention most of the time. It's like being on a spaceship heading further and further out, until conversation is rendered all but impossible by the signal lag, and prohibitively energy expensive. Most of the time I don't feel it’s worth the effort to try to explain myself.

When I am there, when I rise up out of the water, when I return to my proper orbit, I'm reminded why I left. I need cool, dark, empty places to control the fires raging inside of me. I never used to get angry, but I'm angry now. I take everything personally; from every pointless war, to every abused child, to every thoughtless word. There is a scream building inside of me, a primal scream, that first ancient scream that's been echoing through humanity since we learned enough to know that the world is a different place on the other side of our eyes.

I want to scream until the echoes deafen me. I want to scream until the blood vessels in my eyes burst and I see only crimson. I want to scream until my teeth shatter, and my lungs explode, until my vocal chords snap. Then I'll finally be free of sensory input and the pain that it brings. Free to dream.