sawcebox

I forgot to take my medication last night, and thus I canceled all of today’s plans and have sat here in a cloud of self-pity, relentlessly researching Why I Am Doomed to Failure all day on the internet. The conclusions I’ve come to is that I will probably end up living in a gutter, drowning in student loan debt, and I will never be a good enough girlfriend, I am not as smart as I think I am and I am a terrible daughter.

This is ridiculous, and I’ll be fine tomorrow because I have to get out of bed to go to work (no other choice, and this is a good thing). Tuesday, Drake and Hanson (yes, motherfucking Hanson) are playing a show together, and so that should be really fucking weird, weird enough to cheer me up. I am sick of the rainy weather though. But like that piece of shit said on 4^th Avenue last night, “Smile, it could be worse.” (I really hate it when people tell me to smile. But yeah, it could be and it has been a lot worse).

Since my depression isn’t nearly as debilitating in the summer as it is in the winter, I tend to get way more shit done during the warmer months. This means PROJECTS! Last summer I started a lot of stuff that I didn’t quite finish. Some of it isn’t worth finishing anymore. But anyway, here’s a long list of things I really want to do creatively before grad school begins in September. 

1. Finish a 20-page comic. I’ve decided to ditch the panels because that’s just NOT how I operate. I am much more Julia Wertz/The Fart Party’s single panels in my style (unfortunately not in my execution). I want to make a small cartoon every day at least. I was doing this a lot towards the end of my senior year in college, and I came up with some great stuff. Unfortunately all of that stuff has been lost in the many moves I’ve gone through over the past year. Total bummer. It documented some incredibly awkward moments of my reintroduction to the single life and My First Real Crush since I met Eric in 2002 (how fucking sad is that). I basically acted like a total asshole, as many of you will remember. Oh man. Still love that dude so much, glad we are BFF4Ls.
2. Write more short stories. I haven’t written a story since I took a creative writing class back in 2007. This is so pathetic. I have a really good story brewing in my mind that is half-autobiographical about a middle school girl. I really want to explore the concept of Fandom and how a puritanical society meets hormones and creates these obsessive, fanatical phenomena we know as Justin Bieber, The Jonas Brothers, or to really throw it back for y’all, Hanson, The Backstreet Boys and N*Sync (or even Elvis and The Beatles). I think it’s such a huge part of the American hetero-female identity. This is something I’d love to expand into a novel. I really want it to be sort of a love letter to my 12 year old self, because I really didn’t love myself enough back then. I really was at my peak, too.
3. Create and foster penpal relationships. I’m looking at you, Emily. I got half way through making you a pretty amazing response to your amazingly thoughtful Christmas gift, but then my good friend Seasonal Affective Disorder made me sort of hate doing anything ever, so I never finished it and now 90% of it is out of date, and now I actually kind of hate what I made. Also, Eileen, one of my besties, is never online, which is the main way I keep up with most of my Buffalo friends, not to mention the fact that she is artsy-fartsy as all hell so I am really missing out by not exchanging sweet-ass packages with her on the reg. 

That’s basically it. I have plenty of other goals in terms of crap I want to do (such as READ MORE), but that’s another post. If you have any tips on good ways to Get Shit Done And Not Waste Your Life Twiddling Your Thumbs, please share. Unfortunately, losing internet access is not an option. :*(

Okay, I’m about to get serious here. 

A new study came out about teen suicide and bullying. It’s findings show that “as many as 44% of suicides committed by young people in the UK are due to bullying.” 

I quoted the study because, as much as I think fighting bullying is a valiant and important effort (and I say so as someone who was bullied myself as a teen), I think that using this language may be misguided. I do not believe that any suicides can be pinpointed to any one action or person and by saying that the suicides are “due to bullying” is erroneous. Suicidality is much more complex than that, and I think that this is doing teens who are obviously suffering from serious mental health issues a huge disservice.  

Granted, I do believe that bullying can in many instances push teens over the edge, and I do think that efforts to end bullying which has seemed to become much more heinous throughout the years is very important. And of course, there are the extreme situations where the bullying is so out of hand that I could see how the bullying itself could trigger an episode of depression, but I highly doubt that this is how it works the majority of the time. I just think this singular focus on the reason why these teens commit suicide really absolves parents and guardians of responsibility to become involved in these children’s lives and to get them the help they deserve and need before it’s too late. It’s placing far too much of the blame on other children, who are obviously suffering from mental health issues themselves.