SSRI

“when my brother came off his anti-depressants, he had to start dealing with the fullness of his emotions.” (recent comment by friend)

“you should stop taking those. You were meant to be the way you were.” (first boyfriend)

“I don’t think you should be taking medication. You don’t seem to have any psychological need to me.” (early on with JR)

When I was first diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, I never thought I would ever want to stop taking my medication. It seemed as if I were free to live. I felt like I finally had a “normal” thought process, and I never wanted to go back to the difficulties I had before I started taking my anti-depressants.

That was over four years ago. People I meet constantly tell me that I should not take my medication. When I first visit a psychiatrist, they wonder why I take medication. JR has changed his tune. The psychiatrists also did by the end of the appointment. In fact, I had my dosage increased at the beginning of this year after 3 years of steady dosage.

I often wonder, however, if I’m living a half-life. I feel like maybe emotions are like a sine wave, and I’m putting limits on the top and bottom. Just like I don’t have severe bouts of depression or debilitating obsessions, I wonder if I’m missing truly spectacular bursts of happiness and joy.

It’s been difficult since I transferred to my current school to always make sure that I have a current prescription. This past Christmas I went without my medication for nearly a week. The funny thing is that JR knows when I haven’t taken my medication. Often, I think, why do I need this? Things have been so stable, and do I really need these? Oddly enough, when I stop taking them, I suddenly start noticing men while I walk around, and I wonder if this is what it’s like to be in my mid-twenties. Normally, it’s just a feeling like, “oh, that’s nice.” However, after several days, my head hangs low. As I walk to the bus stop, I want to just sit down and not move. I don’t want to even put the effort into a key-stroke. I repeat things over and over and rock myself. JR was really upset the last time, and told me that he didn’t want to be around me.

I guess I just feel like half a person. Someone in disorder; someone with dis-ease. I keep wanting to stop, but then the next week, all I can do is hide under my bed covers, and try to sleep, and unlike when I’m on my pills, I’m able to cry. But I cry for no reason.

Are you a left, or are you right? Or are you switching just for tonight?

A must listen clip.

And another shameless promotion of hankey codes. Go to this page, and click on the hankey code song.

What Mormons Actually Believe (or used to)

This video will show you what mormons believe. There are several inconsistencies in that what is “official” mormon doctrine today does not deny most of these statements, but it simply takes no position. Mormon prophets have said all of these other things. People will tell you that you need to research, but if you do, you will find these accurate. Enjoy!

Could have been worse

I made it through the weekend. Part of the surprise was that the evening we arrived everyone (except one couple) asked us if we wanted to sleep in their bedroom with their kids instead of on the air mattress. I have to admit that the offer did help. However, I liked having everyone come in on my snuggling JR in bed in the morning in the living room. Things went all right. That many children age 6 and under is absolutely insane. There was much pooping, peeing, screaming, destruction, and etc.

One irksome moment: “I don’t like Bush, and the Iraq war is horrible, but I have really strong republican values.” It’s funny to me how values consist of making sure other people know that they aren’t okay and pushing them down. At least those are the only republican values I’m aware of, oh, and justifying your own excesses while others have so little.

The drive was an absolute nightmare. It took over 6 hours compared to what should have taken a little over 3. We actually spent most of the time on the way up there in bumper to bumper traffic for hours. I had no idea how bad it could be. Note to self: never move to LA.

I also played doctor quite a bit of the weekend. Both my mother and one of my brother’s had serious ear wax problems (my mother couldn’t hear out of one ear, just like had been my experience). I was a bit surprised that no one else was even slightly concerned about that but me. I took my mother to the grocery store and we got the little kit. I found that you have to warm up the ear (warm towel, sock filled with rice) and then put in the drops, and then pop your ears or fill them up with air on the inside, and then flush them out with as hot of water as you can stand and as vigorously as possible and repeat one right after the other. My mother had something about the size of a marble come out of her ear. Yes, it was disgustin, and yes, she saved it to show everyone. JR said I shouldn’t post the pictures of my ear wax, so maybe there is something genetic about this whole fascination with ear wax thing.

My brother’s girlfriend of two months, (whom my mother says my brother always wants to marry, for the love of god, go buy a condom and have sex, and don’t throw your life away just so you don’t have premarital sex) was ultimately not interesting. However, my brother treated her in true mysoginistic fashion. They were supposed to cook breakfast on Saturday, and he went out on a run and left her to cook it. And then he let her clean it up all by herself. My brother’s a real catch. JR was shocked by how terribly anti-woman all of my family is. I can only say, it shames me. Sigh.

It wasn’t terribly sad to leave them, and I was a bit tired of the constant screaming. It was nice to see them. They have changed, but I was expecting that anyway. God, I hate kids. I’m such a crotchety old guy. I mean, I don’t hate them. I just don’t want them. No way. No how.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend.

I’d also like to thank everyone for their words of encouragement. It’s very difficult for me to see my family. It helped. And yes, I do expect to be treated as an equal, and if they don’t, oh yes, I do let them know. Oh, that pissed me off too. My brother called my partner of three years to his child my friend. And I was annoyed that JR didn’t want me putting my arm around him in the family photo because he thought I was just doing it to be provocative. Yes, that’s part of it. But you know what? It fucking sucks that I have to think that in the first place, and yes, I will push because I’m just as good as all my mother-fucking straight siblings.

Variation on a theme

Perhaps I’m being too rough on my family. Whenever a friend or coworker asks me about family events and I roll my eyes, people are then surprised that my family invites my partner to most events and genuinely like him. However, I seem to focus on the disparate treatment between me and my siblings. Although my family seems to be fond of JR, there is a distinct difference between how he is treated and how my other siblings romantic interests are treated. Already, my younger brother has been pestered for pictures of his girlfriend and they have been dating, oh, two months. In fact, my nieces and nephew already know her name. And she’s coming to the reunion. Part of me just thinks this is mormon creepiness though.

Beyond this, my mother has told me that she doesn’t tell people that I’m gay. Additionally, she always refers to JR as my “special” or “good friend.” I’ve told her that even though she doesn’t think it’s anyone’s business, I find it hurtful that she will speak so openly about my siblings families and will be so silent about my own.

Part of my concern about this weekend is that so much of my family’s conversation revolves around the reinforcement and celebration (i.e. brainwashing children and trying to keep self convinced) of the mormon church. It’s not always easy to keep from engaging/throwing down when these topics come up. But I think my family understands this, and so they just don’t push it too far. I think my family understands that I make few compromises. I will never attend an event where JR would not be welcome. As a result, I have been to many mormon functions with my boyfriend in tow. JR always asked me not to be too in your face (i.e. don’t say he’s my boyfriend), but I’m tired of making euphimistic introductions. I personally wouldn’t want to go to a place where I didn’t feel comfortable introducing JR as my boyfriend/partner/husband/poopoofucker (thank you Chard Faux for the last one); however, JR does not join me in what he deems as my “extreme” views.

Maybe I just like to push buttons. Along the same line, I would prefer to hold hands in areas outside of the castro because I feel like it’s more than just affection, it’s affirmation. I believe in the feminist declaration that the personal is political, and I grow tired of preaching to the choir.

And yet, I love where I live so much. It feels like finally coming home. (am I repeating myself here again?) As a child we were taught to refer to adult mormons as Brother Lastname and Sister Lastname. Now I feel like I can use these words and really mean them about the LGBT community. More than seeing gay men suck face on the street, I smile when I see gay friends kiss each other in greeting. Perhaps it is because I have found acceptance from a lover, but not from society. I don’t know why, but somehow friendship and community mean more to me now than they did when I was a mormon and one of a few.

Oh and Deep Fabulosity says on his podcast that mormon guys are well-known for being crazy in bed. And you wonder why JR puts up with me.

Not entirely related, and I never want children, but this is just so adorable!

We respect you and your lifestyle

Actually, no, you don’t.

I’m not looking forward to next weekend. I probably should be. I will meeting up with 19 crazy people. Unfortunately, I don’t mean crazy in the wild and crazy sense. I mean my family. The mormons. The hard-core mormons.

Maybe it’s just that my therapist said that I should avoid contact with my family. But I think maybe it is more related to my obessive compulsive disorder.

What upsets me the most, is that my family thinks that they respect me. I have had many discussions with them, and I don’t believe that they do. My most recent conversation garnered no response, and I’m not surprised. Actually, I spoke to my mother about the email, and she said, “Oh [Kalvin], I love you so much. I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree.”

Part of my reason for being upset is that the mormon church continually issues statements that they are opposed to gay marriage. When prop 22 was pending in CA they actually tried to make every member go from door to door to tell people to vote for it. How is this respect?

I tell my family that I don’t go around petitioning that they should not be able to get married, that they should be relegated to some of the legal status of slaves (that’s when adults are unable to contract with each other like in Virginia), that I give 10% of my money to an orginazation that doens’t believe they should be allowed to exist, in fact doens’t believe they exist. There is no gay/lesbian identity in the mormon church: only people with same sex attraction problems. As the current “prophet”/dipshit says, there are those “so-called” gays and lesbians. I’m always amazed that most mormon kids I meet never thought of being gay as a possible identity choice (like in the way you define yourself with little words (son, brother, partner, student, pervert, alcoholic, etc).

On top of this, JR and I are supposed to sleep on an air mattress in an open room while everyone else has bedrooms. I don’t think I read too much into that when I say they are devaluing my relationship. In fact, my brothers girlfriend of two months is coming. And they just can’t wait to meet her. Who knows? Maybe in a couple months they will have had a wedding and my brother will shove his mormon dick in a little mormon teenagers pussy until he squirts his seed up in her and they make more abominable mormons. Sigh. They would love it all too much.

Marriage Equality and Pseudo-Science

I like this picture because I think there are many similarities between the anti-miscegenation pundits of the past and those who are still foes to marriage equality. More so, I like it because I think it does mostly have to do with sex more than anything else. However, in the legal world, these issues only operate beneath the surface for the most part (for a nice exception, read Bowers v. Hardwick).

I was rather upset about the NY Court of Appeals decision (that’s the top court in the NY state). Basically, they said that the state had a rational interest in upholding “traditional” marriage definitions because children are best raised in a male-female parenting home.

Massachusetts also faced the same questions, but that court chose a different path. The difficulty is that usually the constitutional challenge to marriage laws is based on whether a state has a rational reason for upholding an unequal law. Race, Gender (although they often bend the rules to the disadvantage of Transgendered individuals), religion, national origin, etc. are given higher standards of scrutiny. The dissent in MA focused on the fact that there are studies that state that it is best for a child to be raised in a “traditional” home. A later case that upheld the Florida adoption ban (Lofton) referred specifically to these studies and this case saying that a rational argument could be made.

However, this is not the case. These studies are done by pseudoscientists and are considered laughable to the scientific community. Why then should we accept reasoning from quacks as rational to denying other people’s rights? It is my belief that this is upheld because it reflects false prejudices that we already possess in society. Many gay people even possess them–internalized homophobia.

I would just like to know if these same justices would rely on these scientists’ rational studies if their own welfare and health were at stake. I’d bet money on it that they wouldn’t.

What once was lost…

Last Sunday JR and I went to the beer bust at the lone star with Dan T 40, Kelly, and Chad. We had a great time. The next morning I woke up and looked in my pocket. I had my earbuds. I did not have my nano.

JR bought me my nano this past Christmas. I’d been constantly talking about how I wanted to get one. I had entered all the contests I could to get a free one. I had actually resisted getting an ipod for a long time because I thought it was a silly techie gadget. After the little nano came out though, I thought it was something that I could just carry along in my pocket. We were having a difficult time financially after moving to SF and all the new expenses around Christmas. On Christmas I was overjoyed to find that I had received an ipod, but I immediately said that I should take it back because it was too expensive. JR was insistent, however.

The next work day, I was still on Winter break from school, and JR was at work. We had some friends flying in from Denver to visit us for a week. As I was about to pick them up from the airport I received a phone call from JR. “They fired me.” I was aghast. I was petrified. Apparently one of his coworkers had been spouting off about how much work they did and how they weren’t being appreciated, and she had sent JR a bunch of nasty emails through their company accounts about how their boss was a bitch. Well, this same complaining employee with whom JR was such a good friend, suddenly up and quit giving no notice. As a fallout, they decided that JR must not have been happy and fired him although they said it was just because they were just “going to stick with the people they had.”

The ipod meant so much. JR had sacrificed a great deal so that he could give me something that I truly wanted. Through the ipod, I began to discover podcasts. After months of commenting, one podcaster finally convinced me that I should start a blog. And I did.

I had lost my ipod. It wasn’t so much the thing as what it meant. JR had sacrificed so much for it. He had given it with so much love. I had meant to replace it just so he wouldn’t know that I had lost such a precious gift. Additionally, it was through my ipod, that I had discovered podcasts and started blogging and met so many wonderful people. This is part of why I haven’t been posting. I have felt so terribly guilty for my carelessness and my lack of respect for others.

On Friday, JR realized where the ipod was and where he had put it. He was upset that I hadn’t told him about it being gone, and now he wonders what else I haven’t been telling him.

I am truly a man of loose lips, and low morals. I don’t mean to wallow in self-pity. I’m just feeling down. JR has helped me realize that I can be very careless with other people’s feelings. This is true. It was such a joy to find my ipod when he showed me where it was. More than a piece of circuitry, it represented the love and relationships that have developed since my reciept of the little device, and I’m only sad that I haven’t treated it (and everyone else) with more respect.

Found in San Francisco…