So, I just saw "The Lion in Winter" onstage a few nights ago, my fifth live theatrical performance in just three weeks. I absolutely love the film; it's venomous banter is delightful during the holiday season. In addition to TLIW I've also seen Nevermore: The Story of Edgar Allan Poe, Little Shop of Horrors, Sondheim's Assassins, American Psycho (obviously my favorite), and a few others whose name escapes me. I'm going to see The Betty Boop musical this weekend, and I'm curious how the show presents its vintage source material to a modern audience. I mean, does anyone even know who Betty Boop was? I'm hoping they portray her as "Toot" from Drawn Together. I'm definitely in the mood for a show centered around an aging alcoholic with body shaming issues - especially if we get to see Toot "cut" herself, as she did in the show.
On the subject of cutting one's self, it's been almost four months since I was staggering through my living room one fine evening, sobbing so hard it looked like I was fucking, digging into my wrists long-ways with a kitchen knife - and leaving a trail of arterial spray throughout my house. There was blood...everywhere. On my carpet. On my walls. On my vintage toy collection. On the keyboard where I write my books. After 40+ years, my depression had finally overtaken me, and had a worried passerby not seen me with a knife on my porch (and called 911), I wouldn't be alive to write this blog. I ended up hospitalized for two solid weeks, and when my Mother was called to pick me up, she pleaded with the unit's staff not to release me. Her demeanor was so frightening, the orderly who walked me out actually pulled me aside and warned me ahead of time. "She doesn't want you released," he told me. "She wants us to keep you here - and she's almost hysterical."
The "hysterical" thing is why I was hospitalized to begin with. Writing When People Go Away marks the end of a 40-year journey (and a 30-year writing project), as my brain - literally - has been using the written word as a means to repair itself, after a severe, untreated childhood concussion. Of course, as though the brain damage weren't bad enough, I'm also the victim of Oedipal sexual abuse in the late 1970s - a series of behind-closed-doors encounters that broke my further into three different personalities. I have been suicidal since 1996, and the only thing keeping me from going through with the act was the fact that I knew I was put on this earth to be a writer - and I refused to die without writing my masterpiece.
And When People Go Away is that masterpiece.
On the subject of cutting one's self, it's been almost four months since I was staggering through my living room one fine evening, sobbing so hard it looked like I was fucking, digging into my wrists long-ways with a kitchen knife - and leaving a trail of arterial spray throughout my house. There was blood...everywhere. On my carpet. On my walls. On my vintage toy collection. On the keyboard where I write my books. After 40+ years, my depression had finally overtaken me, and had a worried passerby not seen me with a knife on my porch (and called 911), I wouldn't be alive to write this blog. I ended up hospitalized for two solid weeks, and when my Mother was called to pick me up, she pleaded with the unit's staff not to release me. Her demeanor was so frightening, the orderly who walked me out actually pulled me aside and warned me ahead of time. "She doesn't want you released," he told me. "She wants us to keep you here - and she's almost hysterical."
The "hysterical" thing is why I was hospitalized to begin with. Writing When People Go Away marks the end of a 40-year journey (and a 30-year writing project), as my brain - literally - has been using the written word as a means to repair itself, after a severe, untreated childhood concussion. Of course, as though the brain damage weren't bad enough, I'm also the victim of Oedipal sexual abuse in the late 1970s - a series of behind-closed-doors encounters that broke my further into three different personalities. I have been suicidal since 1996, and the only thing keeping me from going through with the act was the fact that I knew I was put on this earth to be a writer - and I refused to die without writing my masterpiece.
And When People Go Away is that masterpiece.
There isn't a single symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder that cannot be dismissed as alcoholism. "Missing time" is a blackout. Switching alters is "getting into character" or "putting on a game face." Forgetfulness is the expected consequence of long term drinking. Anxiety comes from DT's. Even suggesting that an alcoholic might have multiple personalities is immediately dismissed as the mother of all denial systems. And I totally agree. As a man who tried to drink himself to death, it is farrrrrrrrrrrr more likely that I'm making excuses for drunken behavior than it is that I have eleven different personalities. But the proof is in the pudding. This website contains over a decade's worth of archives, the blogs in particular, which show a broken brain that's slowly - and successfully - triaged itself back together. Take a moment to explore "Dave's Blog Archive" on the drop-down menu. If you start at the beginning, you can clearly see my personalities reintegrating, with distinctively different voices contributing to every post. You can also see my multiple personalities coming out in my cartoons over the years - especially the arrival of "Alan" who suddenly appears in my comics' David Alan Dedin signature, after 96'. DavidAlanDedin.com is a priceless "history" of the human brain healing itself after unfathomable trauma caused by what I believe is one of the worst cases of child abuse/neglect in modern history.
Chuckling. When I told Mother that this would be my last Christmas on earth, she immediately shot back that I'm always "threatening" - and that "some things never change." I guess that means my three suicide attempts, the last one causing three different hospital stays (and a big carpet cleaning bill, as Mother quickly wanted to clean up and hide the mess) were just...threats.
It's amazing how deep Catholic guilt can run.
Chuckling. When I told Mother that this would be my last Christmas on earth, she immediately shot back that I'm always "threatening" - and that "some things never change." I guess that means my three suicide attempts, the last one causing three different hospital stays (and a big carpet cleaning bill, as Mother quickly wanted to clean up and hide the mess) were just...threats.
It's amazing how deep Catholic guilt can run.
Goodbye to Beekman Place, my first novel, on display in Chicago's Leather Archive. Anyway, as I'm off to see Boop - followed by a stop at "G2" and later of course, Touche - I'm looking forward to enjoying the holiday season this year, as I'm surrounded by friends, rather than family.
- Sir Dave
- Sir Dave
