It’s time for a change.

I hate change. I remember when I was just out of elementary school, my parents got a divorce and we had to move. I remember hating nothing more than the fact that so many things were changing. New house, new friends, new school, new town. They say variety is the spice of life, but I’ve always found great peace in routine (despite my inability to have one myself, more on that later).

I don’t have to tell you that this year has been shitty. You know it. Everyone does. You know Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash this year? Feels like a lifetime ago. Before COVID, before a police officer kneeled on a black man’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. The months since March have felt all at once long and immediate. A lot has happened, and absolutely nothing has. I feel obligated to share my experiences as someone who struggles with depression in this era because I feel it has a lot of value, so that’s mostly what I’ll be talking about. By the end hopefully you’ll know why I’ve mostly been absent from social media. And for those of you who I know very closely on a personal level, hopefully you will understand why sometimes I fail to engage with our relationship, even though I want to.

My Uncle Paul died in June of this year. He was an incredible person in so many ways. When my mother told me he had cancer, in early May, I took a leave of absence from my job because the weight of everything had become so, so heavy. I was working the closing shift at a grocery store, getting home as late as 3am some nights. Dealing with the initial onslaught of insanity that was (is) the coronavirus pandemic. Yelled at by customers. Working to a sweat every day to try to keep things running as smoothly as they could. Trying to be a mentor and a friend to coworkers, my allies in struggle. It was all so exhausting. I would come home some nights and my girlfriend would just hold me as I sobbed, sometimes because I felt I was a failure and sometimes because I felt the universe was a failure.

While on my leave I took care of Uncle Paul a few times, at his apartment not far from my house. These visits weren’t hard work, at least not physically. He was already so gaunt. The cancer was ripping him apart. He was healthy as a bee not five months prior, during Christmas. Mostly, he slept. Fading in and out, smiling at me when he woke. His coffee table was covered in cards, flowers, and trinkets from all the people whose lives he’d touched. A shrine of love. It felt — and still feels — unfair. He had so much work left to do here.

The loss of Uncle Paul has rocked my being ever since. I lay in my bed, some nights, thinking about him and how much I love him. How much love he gave, never expecting anything in return. I’ve never felt loss take something from me like it did in June. But I did the work that grieving people do, and I picked myself up as best I could and went back to work.

I got a new shift, working early mornings and getting off in the early afternoon. It helped, a little. I had worked for nearly two years getting off at either 8:30AM or 12:00AM, neither of which are conducive to having much of a social life. I still had bad days, days when I wouldn’t speak much to those around me, or when I would have to go home early. I owe a lot to the people around me at that job; they were nothing but understanding every single step of the way. Things got better. I felt joy swell in me some days, mostly in the company of people I loved. Making them smile, making them laugh, listening to them, helping them.

Then, my grandmother died. More suddenly than even Uncle Paul did. She hadn’t been well for a long time. It didn’t hurt as much as Uncle Paul, but my grip on a healthy mind was tenuous at best — it only took this news to throw me off the cliff once again. Then, just a few weeks later, my dearest cat, my Sydney, passed away. She was 20 years old. She’s been with me through every single bad thing that I can remember. She was a rock in my life. A support pillar worn down by years but always standing. This was the loss that broke me completely. I wept, and wept, and wept. For all three. For these people who I loved deeply and unconditionally, and shaped who I am.

I never went back to work. Most who work there who know me haven’t seen me since my last day there. I keep meaning to go, to say hello and tell them I am alive, mostly, and maybe feel their warmth again. But this despair, this grey morass of emptiness has a vice grip on my brain. Most days, I don’t feel that I deserve their love. Their presence. I feel that I failed them. That I did so much, to try and bring them together and be kind and love — like Uncle Paul would — but it wasn’t enough. I have crumbled under the weight of everything. I remember getting a text from my old manager, asking me if I was going to come into the store any time soon. It made me cry, cry so much that he cared to send that text, and then cry because I knew that I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be there.

I hate so much that it’s harder for me. This depression, how hard it makes everything. The longer I live with it, the more I understand how much it has taken from me. When Anthony Bourdain died I remember seeing people say that they just couldn’t imagine how he could take his life, when he had so much. I can. I understand it. I know the suffering. I know the thoughts that creep like vines into a perfectly normal day and make it terrible. All too well.

Now, I’m unemployed. Because I am unemployed, I have no health insurance. No way to make the medications that clear the daze from my mind affordable. This has made me realize more than ever how twisted this place is sometimes. I can’t get my medicine, medicine I need to stay alive, unless I have a job. And the only jobs available to me with a living wage, are ones I cannot do now. So now it is a cycle, one that feels impossible to break out of. God bless my loving parents and girlfriend, who are pulling me up from drowning every day. Without them, and I mean this seriously, I do not know if I would have survived this.

I know it sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself over here. It’s all so melodramatic, and melancholy. I’m all too aware of my privileges. There are worse fates. If I ask you to do something, can you do it? Try to think about how many people feel this. 163 million people on Earth suffer this. They are stigmatized. We are not melodramatic. We are not broken geniuses, we are not pretending, we are not lazy. We are sick. All of us, I promise, would shed this if we could.

So a lot has changed. I hate it. I wish so badly to be who I thought I was. To have my Uncle back. My cat. My grandma. To let the light of their love shine through my whole body. But it won’t happen. So, I have two choices: to let the sorrow roll, and be defeated. Or, to find light in other places.

Since I left my job, I’ve spent some time thinking about where to find the light. What thing I could do, every day, that will not ruin me. I’ve come to one very obvious conclusion: I want to be like Uncle Paul. I want to be like my father. I want to love so many people. I want to build community, to bring shared love of things together. To help people. I won’t get there immediately from a career perspective (although if any of you know jobs that fit that description and want to hire me let me know!), but I do want to do something. I want to build a community. And I want you, if you are so inclined, to be a part of it.

Starting tomorrow, November 23rd, I will be streaming on Twitch every day, for 30 days. I don’t expect to make money off this, or to get hundreds of viewers at the drop of a hat. I want to do it, because it’s the best way I can think of to make a community. I want the stream to be a place where you can come chat about anything, and I will listen. Other people will listen. Maybe we can learn together, learn from each other. We can talk about the things we all love. I’d love to have you.

Tomorrow. Sometime after 3pm, at www.twitch.tv/noiseslive. I’ll probably be playing World of Warcraft to start, but I’ll play some other stuff too. Let’s build something great together. And then, maybe I can get light from you. And you can get some from me.

Thanks for reading. Be good to each other.

-Neil