**Editor’s note: I am tired. Spent. Bandwidth depleted AF. The Autumn Downswing is definitely starting to happen due to a variety of circumstantial things happening.

I mentioned in the last series of posts how I was less than pleased with the results of what I wrote and how I was struggling to find the funny. I appreciate that many of you reached out to say “suicide doesn’t need to be funny!”

I agree. It isn’t a funny subject. And it’s not something that should be treated lightly or for anyone’s amusement.

That having been said… I can’t write about these thing unless I am laughing.

And for the last two weeks I’ve been re-reading the last 5 posts to see how they feel and they’re growing on me. This whole thing is the weirdest writing experience I’ve ever had.

I have to write about something I spent 30 years not being allowed to talk about publicly without fear of abuse, rebuke, discrimination, judgment, ignorance… it’s a helluva thing to live in forced silence and then decades later try to convince yourself that there’s merit to any of this.

And the way this project has arrived on these pages is definitely not in the form or shape I had imagined it ever would for the last 30 years. The last 5 post crescendo is an example of that. I have wrestled with how to tell this story for years. 30 to be exact, he re-re-emphasized. And in the writing of it, I struggled to find humor… not so that it’s funny to read, but so that it’s funny to write. Otherwise the story can’t get written.

I can’t write depressing stuff when I’m struggling with Depression. The ONLY way I can write is if I can find some abstract hook into the material to keep myself amused and be able to view the story from outside my own experience. This often means I’m writing while in tears and having to fight to find the funny to get to the end. It also means that these pieces often are written in a style where I don’t know how it will fully arrive until I start typing away. Which is the fun element… that improvisational approach to the storytelling is what has made it possible to get this far in a story I. do. not. want. to. tell.

It makes sense why I’ve harped from the beginning that I don’t want to be here sharing this Whale Vomit… I’m curious if any of you have gone back and read it from the beginning now that there’s more content. How do those early posts sit with you the second time around when you know what the Whale Vomit is?

And in the last month we’ve had a war in Israel and voted in a Christian Nationalist Speaker of the House who actually worked with Ken Ham to get $100 Million in taxpayer funds to build a replica of Noah’s Ark in one of the poorest, most-illiterate states in the nation. This all makes my FuckingEvangelical™ senses tingle and alarm bells ring.

And so this entire effort was in the hopes I could use my story to topple this apocalyptic political cult. And the apocalyptic political cult keeps making gains as I’ve been writing these posts and it forces me to always be feeling a conflicting sense of wanting to not write any more of this… because I know at some point this will be seen by a broader audience which is going to happen in about 2 more posts (this one included) and then I’m going to have to switch to marketing this project to raise financing to get it finished.

And for the love of all that isn’t holy I can not bring myself to finish this particular post.

Originally… months ago… the plan was to do the Broken Mirror series to crescendo into the Strong Willed Child segment of ultimate finality of Volume 2. The final post of the Volume 2 messiness is supposed to be this. post. right. here.

And I can not find anything enjoyable about this particular story. This was supposed to be told in 2 parts. Part 1 would be the suicide attempt… and Part 2 would be the hospitalization afterwards.

Weeeeeeell…. Part 1 turned into a nasty 5 parter because I couldn’t find a hook into the story and it was a brutal stretch of writing that arrived in a way I was not expecting and it left me feeling very unsatisfied. Like you’ve waited 9 months to give birth and once the baby has arrived you’re happy that yes, it has ten fingers and ten toes and seems to be in good health… but the head is misshapen, there’s blood everywhere, and dad is curled in the fetal position crying.

This was not how I expected this to arrive. And so it didn’t sit well with me– like so many of these posts do when they are first bornified (birthiated?)– and I had to kinda live with the product and go back and read it and read it again and keep reading it…

All that to say, I think the last 5 posts I’m starting to feel more comfortable with and maybe they weren’t as disappointing as I felt when I wrote them. It’s hard… this is the only story like this I have and I want it to be executed at the highest level possible and when I read it to feel a sense of “alright… that work serves the magnitude and purpose in such a way I feel satisfied with the effort”.

That feeling eludes me on those last posts more than any other that I’ve written so far. And I write all of this to say that this is why I’ve been struggling to get THIS post out. I started this post a month ago when I started the first Part 1. This was the Part 2. And Holy Hell can I not find anything interesting to hook into in this particular story.

There is nothing funny about any of this. I agree with all those who have echoed that sentiment. But the inability to have joy and smiles and laughing which produces the brain chemicals necessary to survive the writing of the depressing stuff has completely hamstrung me.

And so… this feeling that I didn’t deliver on my most personal moment has made me a wee bit stage shy in getting the hospitalization story out because I can’t tell if these pieces are hitting in the way I’m hoping. If it lands with the gut punches I’m seeking. And I worry that I will be ending Volume 2 on a whimper instead of a POP/BANG.

Which is totally a Writer Head problem and I need to remind myself THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT. Always has been since Day 1. And it’s okay to fail here. It’s okay to not be perfect. It’s okay to have content be out in the world for others to see that’s in a state of incompletion. And that I have the right to revisit this and rework it later and that should give me the freedom to fail here.

But this is my least favorite story to tell. This is one that is somehow worse to revisit in my brain than the attempt– which says a LOT. That was the most unfun thing I’ve ever written in my life. But at least I was able to find a TastyLaser™ hook that could allow me to grind out the content to release it.

I’m totally paralyzed here.

And I’m also genuinely frightened at this point.

The recent turn of events gives me a queasy feeling that forces are determined to activate the American Apocalyptic Political Cult. Our enemies want us in a Civil War. They want the fundamentalists to lose their minds that it’s The End Timez™ because those people actively want the world to end because their cult tells them Jesus will come back to save the from their chaos.

And that makes me very nervous as someone critiquing this movement. I don’t want to be in the crosshairs of these people.

But I also feel a moral obligation to speak up when it’s literally my fans who I helped brainwash with propaganda entertainment and they’re the ones being led off the cliff like lemmings.

I guess one of my biggest fears is that, back when I was actively Acting, the idea of becoming known or “famous” as an artist didn’t bother me as much. Mainly because I was never really trying to be a famous actor. I just loved acting and I understood that success in that industry naturally breeds some form of public attention otherwise you’ll never have a career. The Artist IS the product in this art form.

The one thing I NEVER wanted to be famous for… the one thing I NEVER wanted to be known for… was to be famous for being mentally ill.

Like this has never worked out for me in my life. The risk here is massive… none of you can understand this who are reading this for entertainment. The stigma of these health conditions and especially the shittyness of christians and evangelicals towards people like us- it makes my mouth go dry and my fingers tremble to depress the keys.

I want to be done with this. I want it finished already so I can move on and not have to write this stuff any more. I’m so daunted by the idea we’re barely halfway done. And I both want to finish this section and am literally terrified to finish it.

And then I can’t find the funny.

And it’s becoming autumn and getting dark and the clocks are about to go backwards which always fucks me up.

Also, during the last two months our party and network of activists have been launching a recall campaign of a MAGA school board member who got elected this cycle and has turned out to be a transphobic bigot and a racist, too! And this party I’ve been working to rebuild… it’s been a nail biting experience to see if the last 5 years of my life’s work will actually pay off or not. Been feeling sick to my stomach about it for weeks now.

The deadline is in 36 hours.

How odd to be at this moment of nearly completing Volume 2 as I’m hours away from seeing whether a years long effort will pay off or not while I’m doing a simultaneous years long effort…

The Pass/Fail here is not small. Huge stakes to both.

Imagine if somehow I can actually pull all of this off.

Anyway…

I could use a pickmeup if anybody has one to spare lol.

So, apologies if this last post doesn’t land well or if it feels clunky, but the humor has left me and this one is just pure bloody grind.

Stop procrastinating, Dave.

Start bleeding.**

Let me say one thing about the word Lunatic.

I can use this word.

You can not.

If you ever use this word in front of me to describe me or any other of my fellow sufferers I. will. not. appreciate. it.

He said politely.

Same with crazy, nuts, loco, insane, ya know… any of the pejorative words we use to describe human beings suffering from one of the most devastatingly cruel illnesses known to human kind.

Consider that all of you are already awful to all of us… there’s really no need to kick us while you hold us down. You holding us down was already awful enough.

Only card carrying members of the Lounge of Lunatics can use this word.

The one pass I will give all of you do not have L-word passes… the ONLY way you can use this word in front of me is if you’re talking about this particular post and how brilliantly finally written it is.

Now having said that…

Let’s get back to the rest of this crazy fucking story.

I don’t know how long I was in the ICU.

A point to make here, that I touch on briefly in the last post, is how I suffered some brain damage as a consequence of my suicide attempt.

There would be a variety of lasting effects that would take sometimes weeks or months or years to heal… or in some cases I still have not fully healed from the event. It left gaping psychological wounds that may never heal.

The Out o’ Body Experience: Platinum Level™ affected me in profoundly spiritual and psychological ways and will til the day I die… again. (there will be an independent stand alone post ahead that will deal with that more thoroughly)

My cognition and ability to communicate was drastically compromised after this event. I processed things way, waaaay slower.

I struggled to read for several years afterwards. Which was particularly devastating– as I think you all can tell I’m a rather literary person. Loved to read. And for years afterwards I would not be able to make it through a long paragraph without forgetting everything I had read. I would end up reading the same page again and again until I would give up.

I had a hard time focusing on conversations or getting thoughts out. I would forget what we were talking about within 15 seconds of a conversation starting. Brain fog. Inability to recall things.

It fucked me up pretty good. <– Understatement of the Year 2023

So my memory is super spotty and I don’t remember much of this period of my life. Which is probably for the best… things do not suddenly start getting better in my story after this.

At some point I’m taken from the ICU and sent by ambulance– while being handcuffed to the gurney— important point here. The use of restraints is something that I become familiar with…

It won’t be the last time I feel the ZipClickity™ on my wrists.

I’m sent by ambulance to a county facility for teens somewhere in the bowels of South L.A., Inglewood maybe? Why do I remember that?

This facility was rough.

This is my 3rd different facility in 1 calendar year. I’m becoming somewhat of an expert in mental health lockdown facility hospitality at this point.

This has zero frills. This is JailLite™. All mental health lockdown facilities are JailLite™, but some are more Jail-like than others. This one… the walls are stained, the carpet torn and threadbare, broken chairs, sofas with stuffing coming out.

The security fencing was more the razor wire and chain link fence type… as opposed to more polished venues so as not to upset the neighborhoods these facilities find themselves in.

This was a basic underfunded county hospital– as I recall. I could be wrong. But it was a notable downward step. This was not the bougie $40,000 week long stay with a pool table.

The food sucked, the beds sucked, the staff sucked, the whole damn experience sucked.

Now granted… I am in the worst possible mood a human is capable of being in.

I really want you to think about this for second: I had tried to kill myself, then abandoned the plan, then still somehow managed to succeed at killing myself despite my best efforts to reverse course… and then after I killed myself..

I. STILL. LIVED.

It was a very confusing time of my life and none of this ever got processed in any way whatsoever. You move from one trauma experience straight to the next with no chance to breathe.

When you fail at suicide… it becomes the punchline of your shitty life.

You fail at everything and then you failed at even killing yourself. How fucking useless are you? Like everybody assumes that suicide is easy– including the people who think about doing it. So there’s a built in predisposition to assume that it’s this easy thing to do… so if it’s so easy… and you failed at it… how dumb do you have to be to fail at suicide?

This is a thing that follows a lot of suicide survivors in my experience.

You are not immediately taught to forgive yourself and to heal from trauma… no, no, no, no nobody gives a crap about any of that.

You don’t even get long enough to really fully absorb or process what has happened or what you’ve done or gone through.

In some countries you can be charged with a crime and sent to prison for trying to kill yourself. A handy law for enslaved populations.

The moment they can confirm you aren’t actively dying… you are shuffled off to LunaticCamp™. And I don’t want to shit on these hospitals because at least they sort of exist, but the methodology of many of these places is completely wrong. The goal is short term stays and kick you back onto the streets once it seems you are actively not likely to immediately kill yourself. If you kill yourself a month later that’s fine… just not right away or there might be lawsuits.

And at LunaticCamp™… healing isn’t really the goal. Nobody gives a crap if you just almost died. You have to go to group therapy tonight or else there’s a consequence.

So, it doesn’t matter if you’ve just harmed every cell in your body and are exhausted and depleted and vulnerable and aching and in shock from everything that has happened. I don’t recall having a single conversation with anyone at any time ever in the aftermath of this event where anybody bothered to talk with me and actually walk through what I did, what I was feeling, why I was thinking it, what my spiritual battles were… never even told anyone I Hovered™.

You’re just pushed through this system that shits you out the other end.

The days of Van Gogh getting to paint flowers at a sanitarium where you can relax for a few months and get your head chilled out and rest and respite and recover… that doesn’t exist in the USA.

This country does. not. give. a. shit. about. people. like. me.

Religious voters make certain of that.

And fuck every single one of you for it.

There’s a reason I call you motherfuckers fuckers.

An unborn fetus gets far more consideration than the sick actor kid who played Jimmy Barclay on God Almighty™’s favorite kydz radio show.

And so the ICU experience and the longer term lockdown (few weeks) is this blur experience that continues the trauma. The traumatic event did not end once I woke up.

Nope.

These are shitty hospitals to work in. The staff has my sympathy to a point.

But these hospitals are hell to be in for the patients that the staff dominate.

And not all your staffers are warm fuzzy people with good intentions. You get a lot of prison guard types, failed cops who lost the badge because they couldn’t handle their drug problem and they still miss the thrill and adrenaline rush of beating up bad guys and so they go into mental health for the paycheck and the action.

The staff at this particular facility was the worst I ever encountered.

One guy in particular was rather cruel and vicious to the kids. He had the ex-cop ex-prison guard vibes of someone on their second career path because the first one they fucked up. They’ve got a chip on their shoulder that they’re better than you. They need to be in positions of domination and authority over others.

Mental Health Industry and Drug Rehabs are full of these guys. Usually men, but not always. They lose the badge, but see an opportunity to be career adjacent. They find a new purpose in their quick recoveries and turnarounds. They always tend to be the ones that will cut you the least slack and show the least amount of mercy. They didn’t have any for themselves. Why should they for you?

They kicked their habits and straightened out their lives, do you hear me, brother? There’s always a veiled anger and hostility to all of their communication and even the inner psychology of their world views.

And you might think, well how do those folk get hired if they’re shitty?

Mental health industry of 1994 will take anyone they can get. These jobs have so much burnout and turnover.

My Religious Parent™ will later relate a conversation they had with one of the nurses…

My parent had inquired about how they deal with the stress of the job (this parent always sympathizes with the nurses more than the patients) and was shocked when a nurse said,

“You have to not care. You can’t care about these kids. They’ll break your heart every day. You have to shut it off.”

And so many of the long time nurses– the ones that do manage to stick around– have these dead eyes. They just stare straight through you, waiting for their next cigarette break. Seen too much Horrible.

A question I suppose someone will ask someday will be “Dave, when and where did you start losing your faith that God existed?”

And I will tell you, “well…”

I might be peeling an apple with a pocketknife again when we’re having this conversation…

“Hovering over your dead body… well that’s a starting point right there, yesiree.”

*Takes bite of apple slice off knife blade.*

“But the real meat of my deconstruction began in the hospitals in the United States of America. That was where I learned that God did not exist. Or if He/She/It/They existed they certainly did not care about any of us. And that his biggest supporters did not have any love for me or schizophrenia, or bipolar, or people with all manner of these conditions.”

And it becomes doubly confirmed when God Almighty™’s favorite fan club also does. not. love. you. while. singing. his. praises. and. bragging. about. all. their. healings. from. God.

There is no lower rung of the ladder. I’ll get into this more in the second half if I ever am able to write it… but mental health patients are the gutter of humanity to ALL of humanity.

Every minority group shits on mental health. Women, men, Young, Old, every religion, every nation, literally everyone is shitty to these ill people.

THAT MAKES GETTING BETTER NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, BTW.

Can you imagine the entire world treating breast cancer patients like that?

Football players wear pink FFS when none of them get breast cancer but many of them commit suicide and suffer from brain-damage-caused mental illnesses. Do we talk about this as freely?

but if you really want to know where my deconstruction began…

gather round…

Somewhere in the Universe at the party that never stops God Almighty™ is staring at the blacklight portrait of L’il Jimmy BarclayBoy™ wearing his little Red Hat with the White Bill.

He places an original 1973 first edition vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon on the turntable next to the lava lamp.

Side B.

Track 8.

If God is going to enjoy the show of watching L’il DaveyBoy ironically suffer while never bothering to help, God is certainly going to do it with the greatest musical crescendo in recorded musical history.

The Lunatic is on the grass…

The two weeks I spent in this hospital were hell. My body and brain were broken. I was trapped in an unsympathetic hellhole with 2 dozen other stressed and abused kids all suffering through their worst hells.

This hospital the kids couldn’t even really trauma bond much. The situation was so unpleasant and unkind and unloving that everyone is on edge and snapping at each other, and when you get abused you lash out at those weaker than you… it’s prison. It’s jail. It’s many of the same dynamics with many of the same unstable characters and many of the same brutal and shitty captors using the same shitty and brutal and abusive tactics.

The Lunatic is on the grass…

One of the “counselors” was an abusive psychopath.

BastardMan™ had to be on steroids or coked up or something.

He was always looking to put a kid in their place.

He reminded me of the shitty cops who work at high schools.

Remembering games…

and daisy chains and laughs…

The kind of guy whose most exciting part of his day is body-slamming a surly teenager who gives you the middle finger.

Got to keep the loonies on the path.

One of the kids broke my heart every day. He was the youngest person I ever did time with in a psych ward. Was he 9? 10?

He was tiny. Malnourished. Clearly was a kid who was being severely, severely abused. As a result he was so desperate for affection and attention that he had developed certain traits that were super easy to pick on and became annoying. This turned the whole room against him.

The Lunatic is in the hall…

If you’ve ever seen Full Metal Jacket, the way that the dimwitted and incompetent Private Pyle becomes the target of the wrath of the entire squad during basic training… the relentless abuse from superiors… and the way those in charge would force the room to turn against people who were weak and small…

The Lunatics are in my hall…

The kid would feign illness at times and other times actually be sick. But in this environment whether you were sick or not you were forced to attend every group therapy session– which is what the whole day was. One therapy session after another split into different groups and rearranged the boys the girls the older the young the family visits all while people are so fucked up they can barely talk.

The kid claimed to be sick that morning we were all gathered in the MainRoom.

He wanted to go back to bed.

BastardMan™ kicked a trash can across the room at him.

“Puke in this if you’re really sick.”

The paper holds their folded faces to the floor…

The kid leaned over the trash can and started puking.

While the therapy session continued for the next hour.

And every day the paper boy brings more.

The sounds and smells punctuating and interrupting this pointless therapy session as all the patients just wanted mercy for this poor kid that we’ve been driven to hate.

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon…

As a result a rage brews and grows inside me during my stay here. I hate this place and everyone in it. I’m in pain and nobody cares and I’m bitter and sad and lonely and terrified of being abused by BastardMan™ and I’m also twacked the fuck out after the suicide attempt. It’s brilliantly decided to stop giving me the WrongMedications™ finally, but there is no titrating off psych meds in these days. They just yank you off and give you some new concoction.

And if there is no room upon the hill…

This further destroys your moods and thinking processes so I am literally brain damaged and a total fucking emotional disaster of instability. I thought I wanted to die before all this crap happened… now I’m certain I do not want to exist any more, but I can’t do anything about that here.

So the rage smolders and grows…

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too..

I have the kind of rage of someone who recently tried to kill someone.

Succeeded, actually.

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

The rage rears its ugly head up one night in a group therapy session. One of the other kids had been bugging me for a couple days and in this environment where we’re pitted against each other I was fuming at him one night.

I’m an unstable mess and ready to pop.

The Lunatic is in my head…

He says something innocuous and I verbally lash out at him. I was out of my mind. I wasn’t even mad at him I was JUST. MAD.

I yelled.

I was shitty to him.

The Lunatic is in my head…

“OUTSIDE! NOW!!”

BastardMan™ is the lead counselor for this therapy session from hell.

And he is licking his chops ready to fuck some BadKidz™ up.

You raise the blade…

This facility had a courtyard with multiple buildings. And the therapy room we were in was on the other side of the courtyard away from the main building where the nurses station and all the sleeping barracks and MainRoom and Isolation Rooms are.

So the Yeller and the Yellee are marched out of the room to the outside interior courtyard with razorwire and chainlink fencing over us.

I remember it was night. Dark and cold.

You make the change…

BastardMan™ demands to know what the problem is right. now.

I try to de-escalate the situation I escalated since the professional wasn’t bothering to.

“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have done that. I’m unstable and angry and I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

The Yellee accepts my apology and we fist bump.

BastardMan™ seems disappointed that this has all been resolved so fast without his masterful intervening skills.

“Alright… let’s go back inside…”

You rearrange me til I’m sane.

I should have said “okay”

Instead, I said “can I have just a couple minutes out here to cool off?”

“No. Get inside. NOW.”

He places one of his gargantuan neanderthal hands on my shoulder in a VERY firm and aggressive manner. This immediately triggers the PTSD I had from having two doctors physically bracing me in a trapped, manhandled way.

Instinctively… I shrug his hand off my shoulder by dipping my shoulder out from underneath him.

And this is the moment when I will learn how some men in power just want an excuse to fuck you up. Some men… want you to resist.

Before I know what is happening this man has wrapped me up in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground. I can’t flail or move my arms. I just go limp.

He’s yelling some crash code as he rushes me to the main building 30 yards away.

The nurses through the plexiglass bulletproof window suddenly spring into action… this is a way less cool soundproof glass experience, btw.

They release the door and BastardMan™ sweating and screaming and probably somewhat aroused rushes me to an isolation room and literally throws me in the room.

And slams the door…

You lock the door…

They don’t actually use padded cells in any of the facilities I was ever in. Never saw a straight jacket. Handcuffs will do.

This room was bare cement. Cement floor. Cinderblock walls.

A mattress is bolted to the floor with industrial bolts. Maybe they were welded.

The ceiling is 12 feet above you where the only lightbulb is sunk into the ceiling with a metal cage over it in case anybody with great jumping skills wants to try and break a light bulb to cut their veins.

There’s a window of bulletproof laminated glass with wire criss-crossed in a diamond pattern embedded inside it.

No blankets.

No sheets.

Absolutely nothing in this room with which to kill oneself.

It is cold and dark. The lightbulb above does not provide much illumination.

Orange sodium lights bleeding in through the window greet me again, reminiscent of my first hospital stay a year earlier.

And throw away the key…

And it is here… in this moment… where God has finally abandoned me as thoroughly as he possibly could.

I lay on the floor where I skidded across the room.

There is a despair and rage inside me in this moment that is impossible to articulate, write, find the words for, invent new words for… I was apoplectic.

There’s someone in my head but it’s not me.

And then…

it happens…

The despair finally lands somewhere in my brain where the dam that had held back a year’s worth of fury and rage and Depression and soul sucking sorrow all poured out of me in the most massive gut wrenching sobbing attack I’ve ever experienced.

And I wail.

Convulsing.

Shaking.

I scream at the God That Has Abandoned Me™ with a fury indescribable.

And if the cloud bursts thunder in you ear…

F
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
U
C
K
!
!
!

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!?!?

You shout and no one seems to hear…

WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST LET ME DIE?!? WHY THE FUCK AM I HERE? WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANY OF THIS STUPID SHITTY LIFE?

WHERE ARE YOU?????

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!?

And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes…

I don’t want to be here any more.

Please just let me die already.

Please talk to me… I can’t take it anymore.

And.

God.

Almighty.

™.

Remained.

Fucking.

Silent.

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

When does the loss of faith begin?

When evidence overrides it.

When data shows patterns.

All that you touch

And all that you see

This would be where the first cracks in a lifelong imposed belief system would begin to show.

All that you taste

All you feel

This is where a lifetime of belief in something, when I needed that something it had failed materialize so consistently and systematically, no matter what I did God Almighty™ either genuinely does not give a shit about L’il DaveyBoy™ or perhaps we have to consider for the first time that perhaps the GodAlmighty™ I had been taught existed… maybe that was a false system…

And that’s a scary fucking thought to someone raised in an environment where you are forced to believe in higher powers and AncientBooks™

And all that you love

And all that you hate

And everyone you know is in this system and will swear to you it is real AF.

All you distrust

All you save

But say that to a 17 year old kid with
a suicide attempt
two suicide attempts
three– fucking three suicide attempts

and
a hospitalization
two hospitalizations
three– fucking three hospitalizations

And all that you give

And all that you deal

And no matter what you do God Almighty™ is not showing up one iota.

And all his people abandoned you, too!

And all that you buy

Beg, borrow or steal

And I will lose literally everything I have as this journey wears on.

EVERYTHING.

THERE WILL BE NO FACET OF MY LIFE THAT IS NOT OBLITERATED.

And all you create

And all you destroy

This incident will also end my time actively recording on Adventures in Odyssey.

I don’t know for certain but I assume calls are made and people informed of what is now happening. I will not be called in to record again for another year after this and when I do finally get the “Focus wants you again” call it will be to record the final Barclay Family episodes as my character arc is finally ended after 7 years of loyal service to my favorite thing I ever got to do.

And I know and have to assume and expect that this massive suicide attempt is the main reason that trigger finally gets pulled.

It was going to happen anyway eventually… but I also believe if I had never got sick I would still be on that show today.

Maybe they were really done with the most popular kid character in the history of the show… but they managed to find 35 years worth of stories for Connie and Eugene so I doubt it was a creative problem.

And they all know I would have done this to my dying day. I loved them all.

The loss of this was the final straw that destroyed whatever happiness my life had ever had. Mental illness would ruin and destroy every good part of my life while God Almighty™ quietly observed, eating horchata flavored TastyLasers™

And all that you do

And all that you say

The pathway out of my faith,

and the pathway that changes my politics

begins here.

Curled in the fetal position on a freezing cold and clammy cement floor in an isolation room in a psychiatric hospital for BadKidz™ days after a massive suicide attempt with an out of body experience.

A situation so BonkersSauce™ I could never have imagined it.

A curse no one would ever ask for.

A life that will become

scarlet lettered

And all that you eat

And everyone you meet (everyone you meet)

It will affect everything I ever do from this point forward.

Every relationship I will ever have will be strained and tested and broken and ended and mended and whole friend groups lost multiple times.

And all that you slight

And everyone you fight

Career opportunities shattered. Future lives flushed away. Economic destruction and brutal poverty while a show I helped build pays bills for others all over the world.

Radio stations. Christian book stores. Parent companies. Lobbying wings of parent companies. Religious University systems. Entire recording industries that benefit from the lead in of little Jimmy and family playing on the radio all over the world and being sold in collections.

And all that is now

Mental Illness will be the furnace that melts down my old life

And all that is gone

Being a mental health patient in the United States of America is the forge that will brutally beat the old life out of me and form and harden
a new form
unrecognizable from the old one.

And all that’s to come

I gave a metaphor in the beginning of this journey:

The way a tornado victim is not an expert in meteorology but knows better than a meteorologist what a tornado feels like.

What I will now experience is a life after the tornado has struck.

How do you rebuild?

How do you salvage anything when everything is destroyed beyond comprehension?

How do you put a life together while it’s still falling apart?

And everybody else your age is moving on… and you’re gonna be stuck with disaster and tragedy and absolutely nobody will give a fuck for decades.

And everything under the sun is in tune

What do you do when your entire existence is a pile of Broken Mirror pieces covered in blood and nothing is recognizable anymore?

And God Almighty™…

and all God’s Creation

does.

not.

care.

one.

bit.

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

This is the journal of the actor who played Jimmy Barclay

My name is Dave Griffin.

And I am a mental health patient in The United States of America.

And this is my story.

End.
The Prodigal
Volume 2
Broken Mirror