michaelmallon.net

I feel the need to apol­o­gize in advance for what tone this blog may or may not take (I never really know going in how a mes­sage will end), but I want to make sure that to every­one who has expressed their sup­port, please under­stand that I’m grate­ful for your friend­ship, and your thoughts.

To every­one who’s sug­gested I seek coun­sel­ing, since this has come from so many of my fam­ily and close friends, clearly most peo­ple see me as hav­ing a prob­lem, and I under­stand and accept that. How­ever, I’ve had coun­sel­ing, fairly recently too, 10 weeks of it, both one-on-one and weekly group Cog­ni­tive Behav­ior Ther­apy while wait­ing to be dis­charged from the navy.

It was exactly the fact that I needed coun­sel­ing which caused me to get sep­a­rated from the navy early, and regard­less of whether that was right or wrong for me, I do know that the coun­sel­ing itself was of lit­tle ben­e­fit. Accord­ingly, I think for the time being, its not for me, espe­cially since its no longer avail­able to me at no cost, and I’d rather not spend my last dol­lar (or any­one else’s money) on a few hours of some­body telling me that which I already know, that I’m depressed, and that I should take med­ica­tion, and go fall in with the rest of the world.

I’m not even say­ing that a psychologist’s diag­no­sis or pre­scrip­tion would be wrong, to the con­trary, its highly likely that its right, as my psy­chol­o­gist in the navy rec­om­mended I see a psy­chi­a­trist and go on med­ica­tion a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent times.

Its just not “ME.”

As usual, I’ll resort to some­body else’s intel­lect to try and ade­quately sum­ma­rize my view on life:

“…I’ve never had the propen­sity to work, breed and die…”

I’m not sure I ever want to fit into day-to-day mod­ern life, and the more I search for a place to escape to (even if only tem­porar­ily), the more I real­ize there is no phys­i­cal place capa­ble of ade­quately sus­tain­ing life that hasn’t been brought under some form of government/social control.

Every­one alive today was born a pris­oner to social-contract civil-society, and I can’t yet rec­on­cile myself with that, and I’m not sure I want to live in a per­pet­u­ally decay­ing world that I’ll never be able to truly change.

It might be best to add that I don’t believe in the judeo-christian God, and I likely never will, so any argu­ment you use from a reli­gious stance, to try and tell me that any/every life is worth liv­ing, is a waste of time/breath, and I’d rather not get into a debate to try and argue the exis­tence of said God, because I believe that every­one has a right to believe what­ever they want about God, and that it alone shouldn’t pre­clude peo­ple from being friends.

I also don’t think any­one on this planet is “spe­cial” or any more impor­tant than any­one else, for any rea­son, and in fact, the very fact that we’re all “dif­fer­ent” or “unique” or what­ever adjec­tive you want to use to describe it, makes us all inher­ently the same; we all WANT to FEEL special/unique, in the face of the oth­er­wise crip­pling real­ity that none of us really are impor­tant to the uni­verse, and we are all going to die while the whole of the uni­verse won’t even reg­is­ter that any of us ever lived.

Again, I acknowl­edge that this is all likely an expres­sion of the truth that its ME that is “defec­tive” in some sense of the word. I’m just not sure if I’d rather be “nor­mal” at the sac­ri­fice of who I truly am, just to go be a part of day-to-day mod­ern soci­ety that I don’t care for in the first place.

Hon­estly, thank you, every­one, for your mes­sages, your friend­ship, and your offers of support/hospitality/etc, but right now, I just don’t think there’s any­thing that any­one else can do.

I have deci­sions I need to make before any­thing that any­body else offers in sup­port will be able to have any use­ful effect.

Right now, coun­sel­ing and med­ica­tion won’t do any­thing to help me be the “ME” that I want to be, but instead will only make me the “ME” that the DSM and Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion think I should be.

And I’m not sure that I want to be that ver­sion of “ME” yet.

“Son, look at all the peo­ple in this restau­rant
What do you think they weigh?
Out the win­dow to the park­ing lot
At their SUV’s, tak­ing all of the space

They give no fuck
They talk as loud as they want
They give no fuck
Just as long as there’s enough, for them

Gonna get on the micro­phone down at Wal-Mart
Talk about some shit that’s been on my mind
Talk about the state of this great nation of ours
Peo­ple look to your left, yeah, look to your right

They give no fuck
They buy as much as they want
They give no fuck
Just as long as there’s enough, for them

Son, look at the peo­ple lin­ing up for plas­tic
Wouldn’t you like to see them in the National Geo­graphic
Squat­ting bare ass in the dirt eat­ing rice from a bowl
With a towel on their head and maybe a bone in their nose

See that ass­hole with a peace sign on his license plate?
Giv­ing me the fin­ger and run­ning me out of his lane
God made us num­ber one ’cause he loves us the best
Well he should go bless some­one else for a while and give us a rest

(They give no)
Yeah, and every­one can see
(They give no)
We’ve eaten all that we can eat”

– Ben Folds, “All That You Can Eat”