I don’t like Sunday nights. Most of them, anyway. It’s the time you’re most likely to have a heart attack. Look it up, don’t trust me to tell you the truth. Trust , but verify, people. And this post was going to be me bitching and moaning about how those Sunday nights sucked, and Monday mornings are awful, and on and on and on. And I realized, I needed to go down to the crossroads again.

People talk about the crossroads as this gigantic place, where you decided your ultimate fate. This piece is about what I’ve come to realize about the crossroads. One of them is that you never get one trip down there. There is no one decision that makes your life go down a certain way. I wish it was that easy. That you could go back, flip one switch and everything would be easy as pie.

But it never is, really? It’s why Robert Johnson’s song about them resonates so loudly with some of us. Some of you are lucky You only have to visit the crossroads every so often. Hell, some of you only have to visit every few years. Me? I go every damn day.

For me, every day is a visit to the crossroads. And every day, no matter how good, I’m going to go see the crossroads. In my mind, it looks like the intersection of the main roads in Stull, Kansas. Go look, shudder and come back. That place is even creepier in person. And who’s waiting for me there? Not the Devil. He doesn’t exist on my world. The only devils are in my skull. I call them the brain weasels. They are at the crossroads every day. They have soothing voices that are brittle and cloying. Telling me how I’ve failed, and how I’ll never do anything of substance. I could tell you who they sound exactly like, but I don’t know you well enough to tell you. Every time I go down there, I bargain for my soul. If I lose, I’m in survival mode afterwards. I’m numb, barely alive. It’s like they take my soul away.

Sunday nights are some of the worst crossroads times. That, and about 230 in the morning, if I’m alone. But about six months ago, I discovered a secret:I don’t have to go there if I don’t want to.

It shook me, and still shakes me. You don’t have to meet your inner demons. The laws and contracts you’ve made up to agree to meet them? They’re just that:figments of imagination, just like the weasels themselves.

So this Monday morning and Sunday night, don’t go to the crossroads. Don’t meet the Buddha on the road and kill him. Choose joy. Choose life, like the old shirts used to say. Embrace the ideas of pronoia, that the universe is out to give you good things. The world wants you to be miserable and cowering, hiding away, numbing yourself . At least capitalism does. It requires you to need things so it can sell them to you. Being happy is the enemy of mass consumption. Go for a walk, and touch some grass. And when the crossroad shows up on your path, you’ll know which way to turn. And it won’t be the one to lead you to despair.

No song lyric guesses this post, just a heartfelt thanks to the people who are showing me better ways to be. I’ll thank them personally in private, but they know who they are. Good night, and fuck the brain weasels.

“You should be alone, and work on yourself.” I hear it all the time. You need to be with yourself, and figure out your shit. I have yet to meet anyone who knows me who’s said that who doesn’t have an agenda: punishment.

I’ve been alone. It’s overrated. I was a single child, latchkey kid who had a hypochondriac mother and a workaholic narcissist father. I’ve been alone enough thank you. And being alone doesn’t help me on my quest.

I turn 56 in less than a week. I have a lot of acquaintances, but the number of friends and family, I can count on both hands and have fingers left over. So as I ‘m healing, I’m searching. And yeah, I want to get out and do it in person. I hid away from the world in my wounded state. But people tell me: you’re too raw, too wounded, stay home and heal.

No, I won’t. Being alone is whent he brain weasels, the RSD, and the insecurity all jump on me like the worst mental porno scene in the world. No lube or kisses to be found. But some people, this is what they want. And no, I’m not naming names. Not giving them the satisfaction.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this post. Let’s just say I’m hurting today, the brain weasels are massing, and I’m going to go to Walmart in an effort to get out and about. Again, one of these days someone will name where I get a blog title from. I might die of the shock. Good night.

I love books. I have over a thousand, roughly and I was a bookseller for every single major chain that existed in the US except Hastings. Gods did I discover that one too late. So while trying to think of something to write tonight, I started going through books I’ve sold to people. I coiudl go on about the ones I loved. But what about the ones I hated? What about the ones that made my skin crawl or just weren’t right? Considering I have books that I’m proud to own that contain necrophiliacs and fascists(know your enemy people), what could be the books that I’m sorry i ever sold to people? Here’s my top 5:

5) Sex by Madonna: Let the hate flow now. Was it daring and transgressive? To the mainstream, yes. But the movie version of Exit to Eden was more transgressive, better priced, and a better view of kink. And it had a naked Vanilla Ice. Not to mention the thing was made like shit, which is why the thing is so expensive on the collectors market, because they all fell apart. It came wrapped in foil, and I’d have felt better selling condoms.

4)Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe. Gods do I hate this book. One fothe worst things about 80’s nostalgia like Stranger Things and Ready Player One is how it turns being a nerd in the 80’s into something cool. Which absolves all the guys who used to kick my ass daily for being one of any responsibility. People forget what the Satanic Panic did to some of us. And Rona,who wrote this steaming pile, used a family tragedy(A young student who did an early version of LARP and disappeared) to make kids like me’s life worse. And she never bothered to find out what actually happened, or how a investigator found the guy flipping burgers in Maine six months later. Stopping her from having a book signing in my store in Waukegan is a point of pride for me.

3) A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer. If you think any of this is true, I bet you are in Qanon by now. Another one that fueled the Satanic Panic and had people believing Satanists were running daycare centers. I know Satanists. Most of them are stockbrokers. And don’t call them Pagans either. If you need a God to rail against, you don’t qualify. Why this book isn’t in the religious fiction section is beyond me.

2) The Anarchist’s Cookbook. I sold this book to people under protest. Not because I’m opposed to anarchists, I just find most of them entirely too strident and far too many are trust fund babies. My opposition to selling this was that the recipes are all wrong. I’d try to sell them the Poor Man James Bond series instead. Those recipes worked. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

1)The Turner Diaries by Andrew McDonald(actually William Pierce, founder of Aryan Nation) One of my worst days was having to sell this piece of racist garbage to a customer. It inspired so much hate, It isn’t even funny. When the next copy came in, due to automatic ordering systems, I hid it in the back for five years. If customers asked for it, I said we couldn’t get it. You can call me pro-censorship or an asshole, but I had to live with myself. And seeing what this country has become since, I’m not one bit sorry. I do own a copy, but that’s to remind me of what I fight against. And yeah, I stole that fucker.

That’s my worst five. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow with my favorite five, or someone will tell me where the title comes from(its a hit song from the 80’s). Until then, sleep tight.

My girlfriend just left. We had a wonderful evening, but it was time to go. She had work in the morning, i had work, and it was just… time. Walked her out to the car, said our goodbyes, and I went back upstairs. And after I closed the door, I wanted to burst into tears. Hi , my name is Trevor, and I have RSD.

RSD stands for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It’s commonly thought of as a emotional dysregulation ,related to ADHD. Basically, any rejection is seen as a catastrophe. People are sometimes told “suck it up, you’re too sensitive”. I was told that a lot. What people don’t understand is what that advice does to you, especially as a male in Western society. Suck it up becomes a prison sentence. It becomes solitary confinement.

It makes you afraid to dare, to try. It makes your world small. It makes you cling to people who treat you badly because, who else is going to have you? It’s disturbing when you realize what’s going on. You either fight, flight or fawn. RSD is associated with ADHD, but if there isn’t a link to trauma and depression, I’ll eat my hat.

So what stops RSD? Breathing exercises, which slows the panicked mind. It helps you slow down the over thinking and catastrophising that comes with this. And then you learn to talk to yourself, calmly and rationally, about what’s really going on. Then you acknowledge the thoughts, and let them go. And occasionally, you write about it.

Did I end up crying? Bawling on the couch? Sorry to disappoint some readers, but nope. I talked it over with myself, kicked the brain weasels out, and had some emotional support chocolate. As one does.

Good night, and a prize to whoever guesses first where tonight’s blog post title comes from.

This website was born in a time of loss, of fire that’s burned away a lot of my life. It’s left me with scars, but has burned away somethings that needed to go. I declared the word “flummoxed” to be my word of the year back in March, and so far, it’s proven to be amazingly accurate. So, in that spirit, and so I can get something on here today, these are the five things I think that have changed the most. NSFW ahead, you have been warned

1) I’m separated from my wife. After 20 years, we’ve agreed to end our marriage. There’s a lot I could say, but I won’t. Just know it’s painful for all of us, and respect my wishes to keep it private.

2)I now live on my own. Yes, I live away from the family. First time living completely alone since 1996. It’s freeing at times(I’m wearing a lot less clothing around the house) and lonely at others. You get used to other people, and the quiet you yearned for sometimes can really feel empty now.

3)I’ve gone back to some old favorites. I’m back to dancing a lot these days. Goth Barge and Subspace are two local groups that are really making this old carcass move. Also check out DJ Synthia and Dance Cmndr as well. You won’t be sorry.

4)I’m embracing my flaws and trying to heal them. Avoidant anxiety? Check. C-ptsd? Check. ADHD with neurospiciness? Also check. I’m working with a new therapist to try and work through this, and have been finding a new inner strength, despite some people’s efforts to keep me weak.

5).Hell has frozen over. There’s several things I’ve encountered during my life , that in the last few months, I’ve done a 180 on. I’ve dyed my hair and am painting my nails.I now enjoy edibles. Not every day, but more than I used to. And I’ve embraced the kink and poly communities. And lastly, I’m describing myself as heterocurious. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but I’m a lot more flexible than I used to be in terms of my sexuality.

Now, there’s people who will read this, and want to open their mouth and let hate and negativity spew forth. You want to do that, get your own page. I’m tired of living in denial of things I’m experiencing and feeling. This is my page, not yours.

Still trying to figure this site out, and find a theme that works for me. This is pretty, but doesn’t do the job. Can’t format to paragraphs, can’t cut and paste. So bear with me through the growing pains. But in the meantime:

I realized earlier tonight that I was talking to myself, and I heard a voice I hadn’t heard in a while: my inner teenager. You can laugh, say I’m full of it, that I’m mocking people who say they have an inner child. I do have an inner child. He’s in a safe place, with a bunch of stuffed animals and comic books. But I have an inner teenager as well. That guy’s pissed. He’s been pissed for decades. Because I haven’t done a good job of protecting either of them. I’ve let narcissists and emotional abusers run them over and hurt them repeatedly. It’s only in the last year or so that they’ve begun to speak to me, an I’m beginning to heal, to work to be a better person. So if they do speak to me, both of them are usually angry.

Except today he wasn’t. The last few days have been rough, mentally, for reasons I won’t go into. But after a few days like that, I was busy beating up on my favorite target: myself. I spiral down and am just horrible to myself. That’s why if you’re going to try and hurt me, better realize I’ve probably already said it to myself a dozen times before. I was in the thick of it, when I heard him. And he was singing.

“When you gonna make up your mind? When you gonna love you as much as I do ?” It shook me to the core. Usually he’s good for Bad Religion, like “Drunk Sincerity” or “Hooray”. But Tori? And then I realized: he was singing to me, and by extension, to himself. Stop it, he was saying. Stop hurting yourself when there’s so many people out there willing to do it for you. Love you, all the parts of you. The parts you forget in your whirlwind of trauma reactions. Love yourself, especially during the hard moments.

I went to the bathroom and had a meltdown. Not a shocker these days when I cry at the drop of a hat. But I felt better afterwards, which is happening more and more. Maybe if we all showed ourselves as much kindness as we’d like to show to others, maybe we’d all shine a little brighter and the world could be better. That’s all I got.

I had to do it, folks. I had to go and get another website. My original site is confounded in drama and I’m not sure it’s ever coming back. Like much of my life, it has changed drastically over the last six months. I want to thank those who have stuck with me during the changes, including Leesa, Tish, AJ and Aubry. I want to extend a warm welcome to those newcomers such as Scott, Dino, Jess, Victoria, Ryan, and most of all:Jasmine. More details will be coming, and I expect this will change quite a bit as I relearn WordPress and make this into what it was meant to be: A place for me to post my writing, my thoughts and my creativity.