The Psychosis of Stability
How many horror films have you watched where you’re able to witness the main characters’ psychosis? We as viewers assume that it’s “us against the world”. “North By Northwest”, “The Shining”, “Halloween” and so forth. These characters are consumed by some kind of issue, an entity, a terror. And we see the terror, and shout at the screen “YOU DUMB SHERIFF”, or “WHY THE FUCK WON’T YOU LISTEN TO HIM?!” And we are part of this characters’ world. As much as we’d like to believe those things are happening, are they? Are we part of their world or psychosis? So you eat your popcorn and make out with your partner and talk shit at the Boogeyman on the screen and go home and go to bed and tell your friends the next day at work “yeah man that movie was pretty scary”, or “fuck no, that movie was worse than Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween’”. Irregardless (no autocorrect there, by the way), you lived in that character’s world, or perhaps, their psychosis. And maybe those things do happen. Shit in Friday the 13th II, that bitch is a fucking mess. She’s on PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATION in 1981. PEOPLE BELIEVED RONALD REGAN’S SHIT IN 1981. Perhaps everyone should’ve been on psychiatric medication…DURING THE WAR ON DRUGS, this woman was on medication and still couldn’t keep it together. Minus the whole space shuttle thing blowing up and the whole Contra shit that destroyed two continents and several countries that we’re still paying for as an American public because people had to vote in an actor, there were some good things like MTV and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”…it doesn’t matter, I’m getting sidetracked but I’m saying the fact that this broad is on drugs during the war on drugs in a horror movie, should tell you, that people were like “oh this definitely didn’t happen with this guy in a mask named Mrs. Voorhees or Jason or whatever the fuck she’s rambling about and she’s a Looney Toon. Hey housewife, let’s send our pot smoking and sexually-addled children to this murder camp since we didn’t want them in the first place and I need to fuck my secretary and your Valium and the groceries won’t do themselves”.
What’s interesting about a bad guy or a spooky entity, is that it’s something that draws us to the theater or to pay $25 on whatever streaming service we regrettably own to get lost for a couple hours. We pay to be so spooked by this creature or goblin, we may forget about our own bills or insecurities or worse, the insignificance of our own lives. I happen to be watching “The Shining” in the background. Not my favorite Stephen King by a long shot, though Stanley Kubrick walked so Wes Anderson could run and the music is wonderful. In basic terms, it’s a movie about a guy who stays in this ski lodge to write a book, with his wife and young son. Sounds innocuous enough. But the guy loses his fucking mind. Things start happening that threaten his sanity and his family; he begins to harm his son, fantasize about women coming to him, speaks abusively to his wife, and so on.
It’s a very difficult and dark metaphor for the creative process of a writer or artist with a family. When you’re a single person, you can live in your shitty apartment with four other roommates who shift ever six months and spend all the time you want creating and working a job you hate to get out the vision you have. But when you have been consumed by the psychosis of “The American Adulthood Dream”…well, you are constantly going to be pulled back into your psychosis responsibilities.
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My facebook is full of people who share memories of them from their club days, folks who need to constantly tell us they’re doing better than their club days, and people who just are no longer are on social media for “mental health purposes” which we all know is just a way of saying, “life didn’t fucking end up as cool as I thought it might but I need to pretend because these hiking photos with my husband say I do”. And that my friends is what I mean by the psychosis.
My psychosis comes in a form where my therapist (who is amazing, by the way) can send me to a place where I have to do as I’m told for 72 hours. If I say something that might be concerning, which I know what those things are, I get new hospital socks and quite frankly, I have the best pairs. The forest green from my colonoscopy is breath taking, by the way. For me, this is the equivalent of being dead. The experience, not the socks. “Oh Kerry, it’s not that bad”. That’s neat, I’ll go to work and you can get a new color of socks for me since it’s so fun for you. And that will never happen. And I see lots of happy friends, who seem to have it right and good and I love their families and lives from afar. But I do see some people, and I see them wondering about their “what if” lives. Kind of like the white-knuckling sober person, who must tell us all each and every day about their spiritual journey with their higher power. I’m sure the lady who clocked in at Delta on September 12th felt the same way, but I digress. I don’t knock anyone’s lives, but if you have to talk so much about how great it is to live your life, I bet it fucking blows. You don’t hear strippers saying how awesome it is to be a stripper do you? No. Reason 1: It’s a lot of fucking work. Reason 2: They make more than you in an hour, while studying for multiple degrees and taking care of their kids and paying their families’ mortgages while being condemned by the same people in Congress preaching to Jesus (who’s best friend may or may not would’ve had an Only Fans), while they’re hitting up TwinkieWhiteStuff96 at the convention on Grindr. And I know him and he’s well worth it by the way.
Personally, not to get political, but please take me out back and shoot me like Ole Yeller if I ever dye my hair purple and get “I have a boyfriend non-binary bangs” (no disrespect intended, it’s just a description that fits a lot of people who are trying to be non-conformist, much like all of our “pick-a-scene” brethren IE goths, punks and so forth — keep fighting the good fight at the hair salon and Piercing Pagoda) AND/OR wrap my entire F250 with Donald Trump and Jesus riding a Jet Ski, high-fiving Tom Brady and that other Christian (creepy) dude who also played football, towards the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, shooting an AK-47 into Osama Bin Laden hanging out the window of an airplane (THAT WE DEFINITLEY DIDN’T PROFIT OFF OF) with not two but FOUR twin towers surrounded by a wall with a sign that says “Fuck EBT”…I got so distracted. But yeah. Fucking kill me if I spend money on either.
Psychosis is not always the homeless gentlemen you see outside Starbucks you try your best to ignore. Have you ever thought that you are the psychosis, getting your Starbucks on a way to a job you hate, so you and your husband, who also hates his job, who never helps with any chores around the house and doesn’t fuck you properly, can yell at you when you try to plan a vacation to do something he hates while he’s playing Madden or some shit, even though the baby he said he wanted, though is more of a baby himself, needs to be fed, also seems to need to be fed but never cooks shit and the house you wanted yet can’t afford, doesn’t seem to matter because it’s pumpkin spice season and Amanda up the street needed to go to fuckin’ Home Goods? Nah me neither.
And this is not a dig at anyone…I always seem to get people hitting me up after a post. “Is this about me?”. I fully and kindly and truly supprt any individual making strides to better themselves. I mean that. I truly mean that. But if it is about you when I post something general, well, you need a therapist and maybe to not date this man, or God forbid be this woman. I just respectfully ask that everyone has more empathy and kindness. Life is not a competition. To me, life is purgatory. Congrats to everyone who quit smoking and drinking and fast food and doom scrolling and spending money on pointless stuff and go to yoga and get up at 5 am without an alarm clock and post gay ass videos about how good of parents and people they are but you know what? If you have to tell us pleebs all about it on social media? You and it might not be that great, and you suffer from the worst affliction of all - lack of self-worth and the need to fill a void with people clicking “like” because they want you to feel good about being a fucking hollow-ass idiot.
Now I’m going to browse the Versace website and make a drink and finish the application I’m working on volunteering at the animal shelter while you have nightmare about your middle-aged man child wining that he doesn’t like the flavor of Monster you put in his lunch box while simultaneously bitching that Rise Against should be in the Rock N’ Rock Hall of Fame.
*I’m going to start tagging and using images from various charities I fuck with in the image section to draw attention to their causes.