The Perfect Machine

There are lots of things swimming around in my head today, so let's get started.  Fresh.

I pause.  Where to start?  Uh-oh.  I freeze.  Could it be?

Writer's block?  No!

Maybe.  I'll just have to try and write through it.

Got something in the mail yesterday advertising this year's Bioneers Conference in October.  Really do love that organization.  They're inspiring and informative.  They provide vision and tutelage in these days of dire conditions and underwhelming mainstream information.  They complement the movements that they feature and endorse.  It's a wonderful thing.

I'm sensing that I am going to be working on my books a lot in the coming months.  Both my picture book, that I'm  now considering as less of a children's book and more of an adult story perhaps.  I don't know.  But it is still enticing me to look at it and work on it.  I want to do more work with the illustrations, make them "pop" more.  And I'll take the copy that I made to my college reunion to get some more feedback from friends and colleagues. 

I'm also feeling myself ramp up towards writing about Greece more.  I've started a compilation file of many of the blog posts that I've done and am looking to go through and expand on things.  Writing about doing this is part of the project, too.  Making myself accountable for my brainstorms.

I'm seeing things come together for me.  I am settling into a rhythm.  I can sense a new dawning of production and creativity.  I can feel myself sprouting new limbs, fresh wings.  I am transforming into the being that I want to be, the angelic temple with fortitude and moxie.  I am coming of age, awakening from my slumber.  I am bringing forth the tools to build the temple.  I have bricks and mortar and sweat.  I have mud and guts and strength.  I bring a fountain that sustains, flowing as a river.  I am finding my way.  I am creating with the creator.  I am lifting me up and stretching my lengths.

I will be heard.  I will be read.  I will write and draw and create.  I will find the answers to my questions.  I will find the path that leads me home.  I will make the perfect breakfast.  I will drink my fill.  I will turn water into fuel.  I will my way into my future.  I make my world, my reality.  I bring it up out of the ashes and blow off the dust, and thrust it into the water to the sizzling sounds of its baptism.  It emerges still warm, fresh.  Anew with purpose.  The perfect tool.  The perfect machine.

That's me.  The Perfect Machine.  Making it perfect, one step at a time.  I will walk this perfect journey to the house that holds my ideal.  I will make the trip through the rain and the heat.  I can endure, and I will.

This too shall pass.  It will lead me to the promised land.

Through the Balcony Portal

I know I’ve written about this before, I just don’t know where to find it exactly.  When we stayed at the hotel on Samos, the main level had a bar with a large walk-through opening that led to a balcony that overlooked the ocean.  I sat and looked out through that passage and thought it to be magical; transformative.  Almost like the Looking Glass portal or some such thing.  I imagined taking a run at it and launching myself up and over the balcony and into the air, never to return to the ground.  I would take flight and find my way over and through the various realms until I was reunited with my ultimate love.

The seeds of this vision were planted by my reading of Jitterbug Perfume, where Alobar exists in a parallel universe for hundreds of years, waiting to be reunited with his long lost love.  I had visions of another character coming into existence after my taking flight.  I would separate from my body and give birth to another man’s psychosis.  This wild man of Samos would be a community vagrant, shifting around the town, surviving off the fat of the land.  The wild man of Samos would be a legend, just like the wild cat.

I would be somehow connected to both of these characters—the wild man and the soul that took flight.  I existed in metaphors with this thinking, having left my body behind at the balcony and becoming an ideal that would eventually make its way back home.  And the wild man would appear about town, not making a ruckus but being a presence enough that people would notice and wonder who he was and what his story was.

The wild man would be a lost soul, in search of the true love he had lost at the resort.  This vision tied into the vision at the water’s edge, where a royal beauty decided to walk into the water and just keep going, along the floor of the ocean, under the sea.  Did the wild man lose his one and only true love while on vacation?  Did he lose her to the ocean?

There was a vision of a hotel room, where there was a stained bedspread.  The stain looked as though it could have been blood;  it was unclear what had happened there.  But the wild man knows, and he is haunted by it.  He had been given a rose by his love, and the rose had been smashed into the bedspread by the suitcase that was hurriedly thrown onto the bed and packed with the belongings of both him and her.  He had paused to notice the stain, and fretted the demise of the gifted rose, rubbed painfully into the bedspread like a melting crayon.

The wild man would wander the town in the coming years, searching for his lost love, saying light poems to her, drinking and bathing in the fountains at the town square.  He felt that he would always love her.  He would return to the room at the hotel once a year, on the anniversary of her loss, and revisit the moments in his mind, staring into a red stain on the bed.

The wild man, it turns out, was who I might become if I were to stay and live out my life in the small resort town in Samos.  The woman that I would have lost would have been my wife, as she was adamant on returning to our life back in the United States.  There were no other options.  Either I said goodbye to her and stayed to live my lonely life as a wandering vagrant in this exotic locale, or I had to go back and face my suspended reality back home.  Or I could take flight and leave my body behind, separate my soul and entity energy from the physical being by running out the opening and jumping off the balcony.  While floating over the ground below, my soul and body would separate, and though my body would eventually have to deal with the reality of the harsh concrete below, my soul would be released, featherlike, to the wind.

My body would fall to the earth and crumple, but I would be floating, soaring.  And I would and could go anywhere that I wished to go.

So the vision wasn’t explicitly a suicidal one; it felt like I would be choosing life, eternity, happiness, magic.  There wasn’t a place in the thinking for things such as death.

A Little Work History Might Help

Start again.  Anew.  Rebirth.

With this project of my recollections from Greece and my first manic episode, I've thought that if I could just record what all I thought about at that time, there would be a book there.  But it's not happening that way.  So I need a different approach.  I think.

There were far too many thoughts to remember all at once there, during that time of duress.  You had the mingling of the cultures, the transformation from artisan to commerce economies, the lack of restful sleep.  Plus I was facing a grand transition in my career.  I had been working for the Engineering Department with the City of Santa Clara, which had been a big deal in and of itself.  I had traversed the topography of shift work for the Police Department before, suffering through a job that I had a lot of trepidation going into and a lot of dread to overcome as I became a permanent employee with the city after almost two years of working full-time but in an "as-needed" capacity.  I had worked my way into a position with the Finance Department as a utility meter reader, after a stint with the Sewer Department as an "as-needed" laborer.  This was after a period of unemployment after being laid off from my job while living in Sacramento.  I had moved back home with my parents, who were rebuilding their lives back in the south Bay Area after a long haul of eking out an existence in the Central Valley.  Funny how long it takes to get to the bottom of it all--  I could go back into details of suffrage for both of my parents in their careers, as well as with mine--  suffice it to say that we had been challenged and it took quite a transition to get back on our feet again.  I went from falling in love with a college friend who had a house in Malibu, and the possibility of relocating to the LA area (I even had a potential job transfer available) to being laid off with no prospects.  The long-distance relationship didn't last-- love couldn't conquer the distance.  So I eventually moved to Santa Clara and my aunt got me an interview for the job with the Sewer Department.  Time to start at the bottom and work my way up again.

After about five months with the Sewer Department, my limit on how many hours I could work was about up.  Just about then, I learned of the opportunity to work with the Finance Department as a meter reader.  They needed some summertime coverage, so it would be temporary, but would be quite a bit more money.  And as luck would have it, one of the permanent employees got injured, so I ended up working more.  I was making almost twice as much as I had ever made before in all my work experience, and I really liked the job.  I worked at my own pace, by myself, with no phones interrupting or supervisor's eyes leering, and I got to work outside and wear shorts.  What a coup!  I thought I had found the way to live my life.  If I could just get on as a permanent meter reader, I'd be set.

Over the course of the next year or so, I took several civil service tests to try and get on hiring lists to get in line for permanent positions with the City.  At that time, it was common knowledge that a person could gain a distinct advantage by taking any position with the City and fulfilling their one-year probation period.  Once that was achieved, an employee did not have to satisfy the one-year period again.  And if you were a permanent employee, you were given preference on the hiring lists.  Permanent employees were placed on a promotional list that was considered before the general public hiring list even got a call for an interview.  And you didn't have to score as well on the test to be placed on the promotional list-- if you just got a passing grade, you'd be added to the promotional list, and would get an interview before anybody on the regular list.  A distinct advantage indeed.

So such was the thinking behind taking as many tests as I could qualify for so that I could get a permanent position with the City and then move to the position of my choice once I had satisfied my probation.  The best laid plans...

While I was working as-needed as a meter reader I waited for the opportunity to test for the permanent position of the job I was doing and enjoying doing.  It came up once, and I did well, but since I wasn't a promotional candidate, I didn't get a call for an interview.  So when I got the opportunity to become a permanent employee as a typist clerk with the Police Department, I had to say yes.  It meant that we could qualify for a loan to buy a house, and by then I had met my wife-to-be and was building towards a life together.  It presented challenges, for sure, and I had a lot of trepidation as I said before.  But it had to be done.  It was the practical choice.

So I started work with the Police Department in November of 1997, and instantly began to dread going to work.  It was so much more stressful that meter reading, and there was danger and hazards and codes and privacy and so much to keep straight.  Plus I was working swing shift and graveyard at times.  And there was so much negativity, conflicting personalities, back-biting, and depression.  I'd get off work usually at 1:30am and go straight to the grocery store for beer or liquor and drink myself into the morning hours so I could go to sleep.  At the time, I was a newlywed and we bought a house, and soon we started to try and start a family.  I continued my efforts to find another position with the City doing something else, but it was not quick to happen.

It was about this time that we started having our difficulties with infertility.  The economy was booming in the Bay Area, and my wife was making very good money and traveling quite a bit, but she really wanted kids and we tried to make it happen.  After some time of tracking her cycles and trying on our own, we sought out help from an infertility doctor.  She had elective surgery to try and clear her tubes, we did the assisted insemination thingy, and we even got pregnant, once.  But it was a blighted ovum and we weren't blessed with a child.

By the time that we did get pregnant, I had managed a transfer from the Police Department to the Engineering Department.  Swing shift to day shift.  Back to the life of the living.  We were cautious about letting people know, but we were just too excited to keep it a secret.  So we celebrated with family and friends, and planned for the arrival of a future that never came.

When it happened, when we found out that we would be miscarrying, it was a shock and severe disappointment, for sure.  My wife was crushed.  But I felt inspired by the fact that we had succeeded to the next step and proven that we could in fact get pregnant, after a lot of infertility talk and diagnosis and plotting.  So I tried to be cheerful and encouraging as we set out on the next phase of our journey together.

I worked for the Engineering Department for a little over a year, and it proved to be just as stressful as the Police Department, but in a different way.  There weren't lives hanging in the balance on a daily basis, but there were important projects and dignitaries to deal with.   My co-worker had been hired a month before I was for the department, and all of a sudden she and I were running the show-- our supervisor left for a different position in the City, and then the department heads decided to take their over thirty years of experience and retire.  We learned on the go, and it went fast.  I continued to shop around for the right place with the city, and continued to take tests, even though the promotional rules had now changed and it was not as easy to move around (figures).  I came out number 2 on the meter reader list and was ecstatic.  Finally, I would have the chance to become a full-time permanent meter reader!

And so it went.  I accepted the position with Finance and set up my transition from Engineering.  By this time we had already been making plans to go to Greece to visit with my college buddy Armand and his wife as they celebrated their marriage in his homeland.  I would finish up my duties with Engineering and go away on vacation to Greece, and when I got back I would finally start at the job that I'd been trying to land for almost five years.  Things were falling into place, or so it seemed.

What I didn't anticipate was a medical crisis.  My mental health crisis.  One doesn't often see such things coming.  I most certainly didn't.

The Start of Mania

The first blog post that I did on Greece I believe was Long Overdue.  And indeed it was.  I also talked about what had happened to me in Greece in Celebrate September 12th.

I'm just now getting around to getting on with this project of recollection of the manic episode in Greece and the ensuing struggles for sanity and recovery.  Bear with me as I do some organizing.

For more background info, be sure to check out Don't Imagine You'll Wanna Hear This. 

And hang in there, I'm pedaling as fast as I can.

A Little Spring Cleaning

So I've been doing this blog for some time now-- I just reached a milestone of over 5,000 pageviews.  I thought I'd try and do some organizing around here-- sweep up the leaves, turn over the compost, pick up the fallen fruit, and try and make some more sense of things.  So without further adieu...

I am bipolar I, which means I am subject to the possibility of manic episodes, as well as depressive ones.  I had my first hospitalization because of a manic episode while I was traveling in Greece in the summer of 2001.  I'm hoping to write a book about the experiences I had there, chronicling the onset of illness and my recollection of events.  I have blogged about some of my experiences with mania already, but I feel that I haven't fully told the story from Greece.

I was also hospitalized back in February of 2008, when I had a manic episode and had to be taken to VMC in San Jose.  My wife called 911 after I "lost it" and pulled the television out of the entertainment center and thrust it to the ground.  I became violent and through a chair and stripped myself naked and attempted to go out of the house, all the while screaming a litany of expletives while on a tirade about how the president had violated me.  I was finally calmed, clothed, and placed in restraints on a stretcher and taken to the mental hospital.

There was a turning point for me a while back--  I write about it in the post "Now What?" It's the point where I started taking responsibility for myself and my health.  And it has brought me to this time, when I am feeling recovered.  And that is a new, unfamiliar thing for me to be experiencing.

If you'd like to know of a place to start, you gotta find it somehow.  And you might not even really be aware of it-- that you're starting something.  But you are; you're in the right place.  Trust your intuition, your heart.  And you will find your path.

For more on my experiences with my bipolar disorder, check out The Comfy Seat and Writer Writes of Whiter White. 

More Random Thoughts About Greece

Not sure if I’ve written about this already—Back in Greece, when we were in the port of Pithagoria or whatever—the place where we stayed at the hotel that was built into the hill, and there were levels, and the pool was near the beach level—where I went manic, or at least started to, for the first time such that I needed to be treated/hospitalized...  Anyway, we would go into “town” to shop and go to bars/restaurants there.  We walked along the pier and there were numerous restaurants and shops along the water’s edge.  Up the street a bit there was a shop that we went into and looked around at various goods that were being offered.  I don’t recall what we bought there, but I talked with someone who I believe was the business owner, and he wrote on my shopping bag in Greek.  I would like to get it translated.  Seems to me that his name was John, and that he had been a winemaker but his occupation had changed as the tourism of the town had become the better business opportunity.  He gave me the impression that he was a sort of artist.  I remember thinking that American Commercialism had influenced his life, and led him down the path that he did.  I sensed that he had been like a farmer or artisan, or some such “undeveloped” craftsman until capitalism had found its way to his town, his island.  I got the feeling that he wasn’t complaining, but that it had been a difficult transition.  At least, I was left with a yearning feeling for a time and place that had been lost.

Would really appreciate if somebody could translate all of this for me.  I think it's Greek, but then it's all Greek to me. (Har har.)

My State of the Union

The state of my union shall be addressed in this entry.

There is the issue of the Journal Jar.  It is openly admitted that the goal of completion was not met by the end of last year.  So a new goal has been set of completion by the end of next month.  You can follow along right here on this blog as I complete the Journal Jar entries.  So stay tuned.

Moving forward, I will actually plan on looking backward into my archives.  I have several journals that I've written in and completely filled all pages, mostly with my scribbled penmanship, but some drawings/sketches/doodles are included as well.  I will be venturing into these journals to elicit nuggets of wisdom from my past.  Some of these journals haven't been opened in almost 20 years.  Should be interesting, so stay tuned, again.

Next issue: health.  I am in need of exercise and better eating habits.  To that extent, I am making some changes, led by my energetic and positively influential wife, to include daily exercise and monitor what goes in when I eat.  Slowly but surely, change will manifest.  I had a dream about attending my high school reunion, and I was much healthier feeling and looking in it.  I plan on making the dream a reality.  I look forward to reaquainting with my Weight Watcher ways, and with my WW buddies.

I suppose I must also talk about employment.  I spoke this morning with Momentum, an organization that will help me find work.  They help folks like me with diagnoses like bipolar and schizophrenia to find jobs that work for all parties involved.  I have an appointment where I will be on stand-by, ready in case somebody cancels, on February 7th.  Otherwise I have an appointment on March 20th.  I hope to be employed doing something sooner than March.  But we'll just have to see what the market does for me.

On other fronts... I am fully anticipating correspondence from PERS very soon, though I don't have an indication of really when I should hear from them.  I am nonetheless hopeful to hear, today even, about the retirement possibilities we've investigated.  My mom thinks that they will be accommodating me, since they have gone so long without saying no already.  I hope she is correct.

Relay season is kicking off, and we should have a great (and busy) year again this year.  New wrinkles in that we have a new location.  We'll be at Cupertino High School, as DeAnza is renovating their track and field.  So things will be different, such that we won't be allowed to camp on the track/football field.  So the track and encampment areas will be separate.  This provides challenges, but we're working on being creative about how to make the party happen.  Team sponsored activity laps are one way to get everybody out there in the same place, doing things together.

And I am soon to start attending a new group that focuses on writing through mental illness, or writing for therapy.  Haven't attended yet, but it meets on Mondays and I am excited to see where it will take me and I have hopes that it will guide me in writing my book about my Greece manic episode experiences.  So I can develop even further than I have here already, with blog entries like Greased Mania and Greece: Theatre of the Mind, not to mention Greece: Blessing Ceremony and Greece: BBQ Bliss.

So if I can just keep finding ways to keep the debtors from suffocating us, I think things are going to be just fine.  But I'll keep you posted.

The Goat Lives!

Been working a lot lately on my picture book.  It's my book and I can cry if I want to.  I've got the story down to about the way that I want it, I just need to get the illustrations done and plugged in to the software that the online publishing company gives you so you can make your own book.  Thanks to the people at Blurb.com for the nifty interface.  It's kinda clumsy at times, but that might just be my computer (not enough memory).  So I'm making progress.  Added several new drawings tonight and I'm slowly making my way through the narrative.  For those who don't know, I've written a story based on an old legend about the Wild Cat of Samos.  My story focuses in on the life and self-transformation of the Wild Cat's friend, a goat.  See what I've written about it all before here .  The story has changed a bit since going to the Children's Book Writer's Conference in Big Sur last December (more about that here).  But at it's heart is a genuinely wonderful moment in time that I will treasure forever.

We were traveling in a car on the island of Samos with my good friend from college, Armand.  His dad is from the island, and we were there visiting because Armand had gotten married and had a blessing ceremony for the relatives in Greece who hadn't been able to make the ceremony in the US.  So we had jumped at the opportunity to go to Greece and have an authentic traveling experience with a built in translator and tour guide.

As we toured the island, there were several jokes that cropped up and repeated themselves, as happens in groups where the people are fun-loving and have a sense of humor.  It may even happen in groups that don't have a sense of humor and they just don't notice.  But anyway.  Under circulation was a story that one of the tourists had run across in a book about the natural history of the island.  Armand and a couple others in the car had shared some laughs about the Wild Cat of Samos (see link above for story).  But for my wife and I, it wasn't until this moment in the car that we came to know of the Wild Cat.

It seems to me that Armand was driving, but I don't know if that's so because we didn't rent cars on the island.  But anyway.  More than ten years ago and I just can't remember all the specifics.  But someone in the back seat noticed some lights glowing on the hill off in the distance.  They asked Armand, "What's that up there?  Do you know?"  To which Armand replied, "Why, that's the Raging Flaming Goat of Samos."

The car erupted in laughter and we did some other joke-bit tid-bits, including "Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!" and "$21.95 pays for the whole seat-- but you'll only need THE EDGE!!!"  We laughed long and hard, though we weren't exactly sure why.  Later, Suzy and I learned the story of the Wild Cat of Samos, and we laughed some more.  The story became a running gag.  I embellished it each time I told it, like a growing tall tale.  I had the Wild Cat working out on a stairmaster while trapped in the cave.  I must have told the Wild Cat of Samos story a dozen times to different people we were traveling with.  What I don't know is why or how Armand came up with a goat?  Just more for the humor, I guess.

So now I've created a story for the Raging Flaming Goat of Samos, with a cameo appearance by the Wild Cat of Samos, as well as the Gilarmis brothers.  Hope to have it illustrated and printed in time for Christmas this year.

Wish me luck.

Long Overdue

What in the world has been going on that could justify such a lengthy absence from contributing to my blog? Well, truth be told... nothing. There is no sufficient justification for my non-production.

I opted for other projects, I guess. Somewhat, anyway. I mean, yes I am alive and doing things... but my most common chore of late has been avoidance. Lots of video games, naps, watching sporting events or movies... All part of avoiding the work that I supposedly have such passion for...

But enough already of the self critical and self mutilation. Onward!

I had approached this blogging endeavor as a means for regularly developing my "story." My book. My memoir.

But as much as I enjoy the act of writing and recounting events and thoughts in my life, I resist the regular practice. Routine is just so confining, unnatural, bland.

Whatever. Excuses, elaborate or not, they all amass and conspire to allow my procrastination.

Again. ONWARD!

I'm overwhelmed by the project of recounting my experiences in Greece. Where to start? What to include from my background-- the shared background of my college friend and myself; the experimentation and exploration of developing world views and maturations that we shared.

Again. More non-specific superficial speculation that avoids the task at hand. Good gravy, it's such a pervasive habit!!!

To recollect... I can remember considering the trip to Greece as a "once in a lifetime" sort of experience. And now, I only hope that it's true, at least on the subject of manic episodes... But so many things converged at that point in my life that I think my recollection and the diagnosis of what happened is a watered-down, simplified "theory" of the truth.

Going back to a time when I was living in Sacramento with my college roommate, in the early 90's, I can remember a time where I was struggling with my future direction, my focus, and feeling the stress of impending debts that I had no income for. I sunk deeply inside myself, searching for a course of action. I had experienced a similar situation soon after leaving college and relocating to Sacramento with a friend from high school. I was groping around in the dark with my eyes closed, so to speak, trying to find my calling, my passion. I did a lot of writing then; writing for writing's sake. And I started to build some confidence. But the chink in my armor was that I didn't have a steady income.

I had the opportunity to spend some time at a Squaw Valley resort around this time, and did so enthusiastically. Among some of the things we did while there was hiking some of the surrounding nature trails. I can remember going out by myself, retracing some of the hike that we had been guided along earlier, my mind filled with deliberation and quandary about what I was going to do with my life when I returned to "reality," mainly how was I going to find a job to pay my bills. I stopped along one of the trails and found a rock about the size of my fist. I picked it up, without words analyzing my actions or surroundings. There was just a feeling of purpose, of something more profound than the sum of the parts-- my mind, the rock, the trail, nature, life, economic forces, etc. I crouched and placed the stone at the edge of the trail, in a little cranny that seemed to have been waiting for exactly that size rock to be placed there. There were still no words of significance dancing in my mind; only a significant feeling of purpose, of meaning, of righteousness.


It was soon after returning to "reality" that my life changed significantly-- I got a job through a temp agency which led to a permanent position, and I was off and running.

So later, after I had been laid off from the job, my unemployment benefits were running out, and I took a job that I soon realized caused me more distress that I could handle, I got in my truck and drove. I had no destination; I was just searching for direction. I drove for hours, ending up in a remote area east of Yosemite Valley. I pulled over and got out of the truck. The lack of noise was significant. No vehicles on the road, no planes in the air, no distant highway noise or urban landscape machinations.

On the side of the road, there sat a large boulder, roughly the size of a conventional washing machine. It's surface was pocked with divots from years of erosion. I knelt down and picked up a pebble and placed it in one of the small pockets at the top of the boulder, in much the same way I had done on the trail back in Squaw Valley. Again, it was all action and no conscious thought, at least in terms of verbal commands or premeditated and vocalized actions inside my head before acting. The pebble fit nicely into the pocket, and I felt a peaceful justification in having placed it there. I then returned to my truck and drove back home.

Soon after, I would change my life dramatically by moving back to the Bay Area to live with my parents, and found a job with the City of Santa Clara.

So. As you may have already guessed, I had a similar, unrehearsed, and unconscious but significant "ritualistic" occurrence while visiting Greece.

About this I will write more soon.

What of this "Tripolarity," Anyway?

For those about to rock...

It was a seemingly enough amazing vacation plan. We’d go to Greece for almost two weeks, seeing the country like no regular tourist experiences it. We’d have a native family to guide us, interpret for us, entertain us, and assist us.

It all had come together so dramatically—like a tightly written chapter in a biographer’s masterpiece. I would be ending my tenure in Engineering, one that had become increasingly more and more stressful, for the dream vacation with my wife and a friend I hadn’t seen in many years (as well as many others). And upon returning to the mainland, I’d slide into my imagined idyllic job in the Finance Department.

But just when all seemed set, and paradise found, the unfathomable, unexplainable, unplanned major fork in the road curve ball fly in the ointment outta nowhere kick in the head derailed all storylines, all realistic visions of the future.

Or so I’m told.

Yes, this is my story; but I’m still making sense of it.

If there’s sense to be made.

******************************************

He and I had attended college together; we were "Dormmates" Freshman year, "Floormates" our Sophomore year, "Housemates" our Junior year, and thus, lifetime friends. We shared in the experiences of growing up, being on our own, living and studying and trying to find the ever elusive perfection of love, wherever she was.

We had many shared friends, and even more shared experiences-- Winter break trips to Chicago and Valparasio, grand drinking excursions and loud parties, both hosted and attended. We shared a love like brothers, persisting through disagreements, arguments, and the necessary mistakes which bring great learning.

But by the end of our time in Greece together, I would be left scrambling within my mind, wondering if he was one of my best friends, or the greatest foil I'd ever ran up against.

And by no fault of his. Who knows what reality was. It didn't matter. I was living inside my head. And it didn't make sense to me.

Even though it felt like it did. Fleetingly... it was a fluid lucidity; making sense in the moment. And as time passed, context was forgotten, replaced.

I'm guessing that there was just too much coming in to make sense of. Sensory overload.

So that's what I've been trying to do over the course of the past six years-- organize, rehash, vocalize, chronicle, and analyze my recollection and tell the story that I've lived through.

Get comfortable. This could be a rough ride.