Last night, I was suicidal.

What happened was this : in a moment of weakness when I was feeling really down on myself, I stupidly sent out an email to a bunch of my teachers asking them if there was any chance I could get a recommendation from any of them,

I didn’t mean to ask specifically for a recommendation. What I was really looking for was confirmation from a teacher that I had not totally fucked myself over by being such an absentminded flake during my time at VFS.

But I phrased it like a request for a recommendation, and that was not good.

Anyhow, one of the profs who replied was Ita Margalit, and she doesn’t like me. Her response, in retrospect, was not that harsh, just a little brusque.

But it hit me where I live, and sent me into a deep deep depression. Well, that and the other response I got, which was much nicer but still confirmed (to my diseased mind) that I was a massive idiot who had fucked up his entire education to the point where the whole year had been for nothing and I would never get work in the industry and it was all my fault. It felt like the world was falling down around me.

And in the midst of that sea of depression, I would have done anything to escape.

And that scared me, because I knew what that meant. It meant I was in danger and I had to be very, very careful or I might harm myself out of intense self-loathing and despair.

So I just hung in there and played my video games with compulsive fervor in order to keep my mind too busy to plan anything or do anything.

I’m glad that there was a stubborn little spark in me that remembered that this too shall pass and I would feel better later and that it was all just chemicals.

So I hung in there, and after a couple of hours on the edge of self-destruction, I  started to feel better. The depression began to drain away and reason returned and I realized that all that was at steak was teacher recommendations and I could live without those. They would have been a great start to my career, but no matter what, I was going to graduate on the 21st, I would have my diploma stating that I had passed what is largely considered to be the toughest writing program around, and I could go forward with my portfolio of writing samples and my impressive personal history of writing so many things, as well as this blog, and so forth and so on.

And I write really funny dialogue. That has to be worth someone to someone.

I can still feel the echoes of that depressive episode. It’s very painful. It will take some time for me to go back to my usual level of functioning.

I think part of the reason I crashed so hard is that I had been feeling pretty good about myself, on average, and that meant I had a long way to fall,. Until Friday’s Episode 2 class, I was feeling pretty good about my chances out there in the big bad world of entertainment. I imagined myself charming people in job interviews, delighting them with my samples, and getting in at the shit-job level that way some day.

Like it says in my resume, I will work wherever they will let me in. I am not some foolish Millennial who just assumes they will go right from school into a high paying, high status job in my field and will feel shocked and betrayed when they find out that work is like… so much work, guys!

I am happy to work long hours and do a ton of writing. It sounds like a good way to spend my days, to be honest. I like writing and I am happier doing it than doing anything else in the world. So hard work does not frighten me.

Nor does time in the writer’s room helping my colleagues with their stuff or coming up with the beats of an episode or whatever frighten me. I love Writer’s Room class, and I am perfectly content to be one person amongst many working towards a common goal.

And I am still learning, Amidst the tragic wreckage of recent depressive bouts, I have learned some harsh truths about my own cluelessness and the underlying assumption that if I screw up, I will be forgiven. I will get away with it.

So why change?

That means I will be taking a good long hard look at myself and hunting down these unworthy assumptions that can only hold me back, and replacing them with a more realistic results-based view of my place in the world.

Nobody owes me forgiveness for getting things wrong. I am lucky that I get away with it in some circumstances, but the cost is too high because it means both jettisoning my self worth and any respect people might have for me, and staying in his whiny, childlike state instead of taking control, taking responsibility, and hence taking things seriously.

Some of my mental confusion I can chalk up to my depression and the meds I take for it. Like I’ve said,. I was going around in a fog for a very long time without realizing it. It made it hard to really focus on the here and now.

But a lot of it was a choice I didn’t realize I was making. The choice to stay wide-eyed and stupid rather than focusing down on the important stuff and leaving the bullshit behind.

Growing up is like the measles : it’s painful and difficult and the older you get it, the worse it’s going to be for you.

Okay, so that’s not a perfect metaphor. But you get the gist.

Still, this whole thing has left me worried about my mental health state. If all it takes is a brusque email to send me to Suicide Island, I might need a lot more therapy before I am truly ready to face the world.

But whatever it takes, I will do it.

Because I want to feel the sun on my skin at long last.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow, homework permitting.

I graduate on the 21st.

The very next day, the 22nd, I will begin my massive mission of getting myself some god damned work. I have decided that I will heretofore refer to that date as Launch Day.

And it is exactly two weeks from today… L minus 14.

I had my first little attempt this afternoon. One of the bits of business I still have to do for Career Launch class is enter something I wrote during my time at VFS to some kind of competition and send some kind of proof to Kat, my prof.

Usually, that only entails forwarding the email the contest sends to confirm your entry into the contest to Kat. So really, no big deal.

Except that there’s zillions of contests out there and I have to choose among them.

Not easy, and the fact that I have no money for contest entry fees doesn’t help either. So far, I have not figured out the magic combination of words to compel Google to show me only contests which a) have no entry fee, b) are open right now, and c) which are open to television scripts, not just screenplays.

So that’s something I will have to work out over time.

But the real roadblock today happened when I signed up for a kickass website called InkTip. It’s a site that allows writers to post scripts (with loglines)  to their site, and producers to find said scripts when they are looking for something to produce.

So I signed up, thinking that sounded pretty smart, and then I was faced with a  screen telling me to upload a script.

And I had a complete emotional breakdown. The idea of actually exposing my work to the public made me suddenly doubt that anything I had ever written was worth anyone’s attention and I had to stop right there and do something else while I worked through the emotions it brought up.

It was basically a social anxiety attack, but with virtual exposure instead of real world.

This was unexpected but not inexplicable. There’s a pretty good reason why I am one of those writers who has written a ton of stuff without submitting it to anyone, anywhere. Like my fellow introverted scribners, I have very deep issues with people judging me, and that ties directly into with my deep feeling of worthlessness and toxicity.

That’s what the socially anxious people like myself fear exposure. To us, being seen means people knowing what a worthless and pathetic piece of shit we are and thinking that people like us should stay out of sight for the public good.

And that’s what we do. We stay out of sight. Home. Alone.

It’s the only way we can calm down.

It’s the only way we can make it through the day.

It’s the only way we can feel safe.

And even then, the fear is always there, lurking, waiting to flare up at the slightest stimulus. It’s like a really painful sunburn. The slightest things hurt.

Luckily, therapy works.  Slowly but surely, the underlying traumas are unearthed, aired, and allowed to finally express themselves fully and then fade away.

Like Nietzsche said : Reach out a hand to the ghost that haunts you.

Thanks to therapy, I know that my breakdown this afternoon is not fatal. I will get through it and probably be a little stronger for having had it. These things pass, and you don’t need to panic because you’re not “happy”.

You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. Life is supposed to have a broader emotional range than that. Accepting that life is going to suck sometimes is one of the great gifts of age. Being unhappy isn’t an emergency. All it means is that you are experiencing the proper emotion for what is happening in your life, or perhaps you are getting signals from somewhere deep into your psyche telling you that you need to work through some old stuff. The best attitude is to simply let these things pass through you, unhindered.

So I will feel kinda down and rather verklempt for a while. Then I will reach the end of that emotion, and be done with it.  And my inner burden will get just a little bit lighter.

It’s emotional emesis – puking up your poisons.

Yesterday was more than a bummer. It was also intensely frustrating. Get this :

1. We’re on break during Adaptation class. I haven’t printed out my piece yet. I have ten minutes, that should be plenty of time. But I forgot one thing : the printer at school hates me. So when I try to print my thing, the print job would just disappear from the queue. Then when I finally got it through, the printer was out of paper. Then when that got solved, it printed out my document…. in landscape mode, and in a font so big the pages of my document didn’t fit on the paper. I checked all the relevant settings – I know a little about this kind of thing – and they were all correct. Paper 8.5 X 11. Portrait mode. Right printer tray. Right printing mode. Everything was perfect. So I tried it again. Still sideways! Argh! I finally had to go get Steve, the academic assistant and master of technology, on the case. He told me to forward the document to him and he’d print it. Fine, I thought to myself. But I had forgotten something else : the school’s email system is evilly stupid. So just to forward an email, I had to find the “block pop-ups” setting and turn it off. Then it finally let me send the document to Steve, who printed it out properly. By then, break had been over for fifteen minutes and I was a nervous wreck.
2. As you know from yesterday’s blog post, when I left school I was feeling really depressed. So I decided I would go to my fave sandwich shop and get myself some of the big ginger cookies they have there that I love so much. But they didn’t have any. I really hadn’t expected that, because they had been out of them the previous day and surely they would have gotten more by the next day. But no. I hate to say it, but that place is really going down the drain lately. I get a very strong sense that there is no competent leadership and that leaves the seeming never-ending parade of twentysomethings that work there on their own. Not good.
3. I had one more task, Pick up a couple of bottles of diet cola for the weekend. No problem, I would just stop into the little convenience store I pass every day when I am coming home from school. SURPRISE! They not only don’t have the Coke Zero I usually get from there, they have absolutely nothing diet at all. Not even in cans.

So society and/or the universe was really letting me down yesterday!

Oh, and here’s that thing I did for Adaptation.

Glengarry Glen Ross Redux

God, I hate that movie.

Today’s been…. okay, apart from the emotional meltdown. But seeing as I have no work I need to be doing now (I think…. god I hope I am right), I had the spend the afternoon in the existential void that was my life before I had a ton of work to do.

So I was bored. And frustrated. I played video games, but it didn’t really make me happy. It just made the time go by faster. I even caught myself looking at my watch and calculating how much longer it would be until suppertime. Because at least that’s an event.

That’s simply not acceptable any more. It’s time I leveled up and learned how to generate my own work. Tell the Jagoff to fuck off for good, remember that I am happier working, and reject the cult of death that is depression.

I don’t want to slip through life as easily as possible any more. That route leads to death because it requires you to stifle all that would stir you to action. In other words, you have to kill your passion. But that’s not good enough any more. I want to embrace life and live. To shake off the winter chill of icy reason and get my frozen ass out into the sun where it’s warm and dry and I can feel more alive.

It’s a slow and difficult journey…. but it gets warmer with every step I take,.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.