Yin and Yolk: Tao of a Bad Egg

Pop Quiz.

What comes first: Chicken or Egg? Man or God? Love or Marriage? Greed or Jealousy? Violence or Hate? Chemical imbalance in the brain, or whatever other thing it is that has you all fucked up?

Is the world depressing? Or have I just been looking at it through suck-colored glasses?

No, no... Not "colored glasses that suck"

15 years ago my academic career was derailed because my brain stopped working.

I came to the sudden realization that my entire epistemology was based outside reality, in symbols and metaphors hitherto taken for granted as demonstrable fact. I didn't even really know what that meant yet, but it stopped me dead for a year.

Good thing it happened though.

On the plus side, total mental breakdown afforded me the opportunity to start over and see the world as beginner. Not as a child though. I think "eyes of a child" implies curiosity and hope. No, just a beginner. Or maybe a re-beginner is more to the point.

In other words, I was starting over but I still drank a lot.

And because you can't cry yourself to sleep on crack.

This breakdown had been a long time coming. I'd been a little off for most of my life already. Just needed a little push to break through and see it for myself.

 

Can't just take somebody's word for it?

A crazy person will also usually face derision. The real reason and the perceived reason will invariably be different, but who cares? Knowing won't make it suck any less.

It's a real chicken-and-egg thing, since nobody who ever tormented me bothered to explain why. In fairness, I stopped asking after the first kid said "because I hate you." 

I still don't really know for sure if I was ill and then tormented, or made sick by torment. They've both been constants since before I can remember.

So what came first? Was I already depressed before my first day of school, or was school the thing that knocked my brain out of balance? Did I trigger the OCD by falling into weird compensatory patterns that lead nowhere, or was there some other catalyst?

He doesn't know either. And he's a bit of an expert.

I'll let you know as soon as I know. Meantime, hold your breath for Dr Dre's next album.

I know, I know... He's busy being the second-best producer in the world. I say second; Quincy Jones is still alive.

Is it really important why it's there? It's there. Deal with THAT part.

In the last three years or so I've learned that OCD can be channeled the same way anger can. Anger found an outlet through music and writing. OCD found an outlet in attention to detail (which is great for production). Depression... Well, so far that's been useless.

However, I can now take what I've learned about it and - by re-presenting it in the light of (at least partial) recovery - extend some sort of hope to somebody in the Pit. That's useful, no? 

End of the day, it doesn't matter what came first. Eggs come out of the chicken, and you fry em up and eat em. If the eggs stop, you fry the chicken. Same thing.

Now ask me about my friend Arpad.

See you in another present.