Category: blog

“Is everything okay?” Anne asked me. She sat at our counter, and I stood on the other side, next to the microwave, watching my bowl of soup slowly turn around inside it.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, “I’m having a terrible day, and I know it’s because my brain is fucked up and I know it’s going to eventually get better but right now I just want to fucking scream because I feel irritable and anxious and overwhelmed and I know that there’s no logical reason to feel any of these things, but I also know that it’s my fucked up broken brain and I can’t do anything about it so I feel helpless and angry.”

I am, as you can tell, the master of the run on sentence.

“I’m trying really hard not to blow up at you for something you didn’t do, or yell at the dogs for barking, or just freaking out at everything … but it is really fucking hard and I’m just sick of this shit.”

The microwave beeped and I reached in to take the soup out.

“OUCH GODDAMMIT MOTHER FUCKER SHIT COCK FUCK SHIT FUCK!” I shouted, which is “Wil’s having a bad depression day” for “This bowl is very hot and I should have used something to protect my hands before I touched it.”

I yanked my hands out of the microwave, and took several deep breaths. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really struggling today.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“It’s not okay, but I appreciate you being patient with me.” I thought about the years — at least a decade — we were together before I got help for my depression. I thought about all the years that Anne and our kids had to deal with me freaking out at stupid things for no rational reason. I felt guilty, like I always do, even though I know that it wasn’t my fault.

I got a hot pad, and took my soup out. I waited several minutes for it to cool off, and I ate it. It was delicious.

Anne went to bed a little earlier than I did, and Seamus was snuggled up next to her when I got into bed. I slept soundly through the night, and woke up to Marlowe’s little puppy face just a few inches from mine. I kind of love it that she gets it into her head between 930 and 10 every morning that it’s time for me to get out of bed, so I get to wake up to a happy puppy every morning.

I pet her little face, and took a sort of emotional inventory. I noticed that all my systems were running normally, and the Very Bad No Good Day of Depression had passed. I felt as close to normal as I can feel, which is probably about 97% of normal (but who really wants to be completely normal anyway? Normal is boring.)

I got out of bed, made some coffee and oatmeal, and started my day. A few hours later, I went to a very important meeting. I can’t talk about the meeting I had, but it’s for something I love, something I’m super excited and proud to be part of, and something I hope I can talk about soon. The meeting could not have gone better, and as I walked to my car after it was finished, I was grateful for the incredible creative team I’m working with, and excited for our future together.

So I got better, and that’s the reason I’m putting these words down right now. I have depression, but depression doesn’t have me. I have bad days, I have really terrible days, and I have MMMMMARRAAAHHH days, like I did yesterday. Those days suck, but they always pass, and knowing why they happen, even if I can’t control them, gives me a great deal of comfort on the truly awful days.

If you’d told me yesterday, when I was at the nadir of my MMMMMARRAAAHHH that I would spend significant time today sitting in a room with people I like, alternately laughing my ass off and marveling at how clever and creative they are, I probably would have told you to stop being mean to me, because there was no way I’d ever be happy again.

And yet.

Thank you, hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-I’ve-never-met, for being kind to me when I was having a really MMMMMARRAAAHHH day. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

There’s this classic commercial with Orson Welles where he’s struggling with the whole thing, and makes this primal, existential expression of frustration that sounds like sort of like MMMMMARRAAAHHH. People look at the video and laugh at an old guy who may be drunk, but I see one of the greatest creative minds of his generation struggling like crazy to  make it through something he knows he needs to do. It’s not that hard, it shouldn’t be that hard, but still, when staring into the abyss that only he can see, MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

Today, I heavily identify with the MMMMMARRAAAHHH. I’ve spent hours trying to customize my blog, only to end up where I was, visually, about a year ago. I gave up, decided to write something instead, and just found my brain refusing to cooperate. I get out a couple of paragraphs, declare, “this is fucking stupid” and then … MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

So I’m caught in this MMMMMARRAAAHHH cycle, and this is my attempt to get out of it.

Last night, I blocked a dickhead on Twitter. I noticed that this particular dickhead declared that he was “proudly blocked by” a couple of people in his bio, and I said: These people on Twitter who proclaim that they are “proudly blocked by” people may want to reconsider their priorities in life … speaking only for myself, I block people who are dicks, and people who are obnoxious. So if that makes someone proud … um … good job?

My friend Nika observed, “@wilw Everyone wants a reason to feel important in life. Being unpleasant is one of the easiest ways to assert power.”

That made me think about how different things are now than they were

…

Annnnnd MMMMMARRAAAHHH

Jesus Shit Cock. Let me try again.

While I worked on the backend (hurr hurrr hurr) of my blog today, I thought about that exchange last night. I thought about the years I spent playing whack-a-mole with dickheads, dealing with trolls and griefers, and keeping my blog running as smoothly as I could. I thought about how much has changed since then, from a technology standpoint, a cultural standpoint, and how different my life is.

While I was having my coffee this morning, I responded to a comment on Reddit about the reasons I left Star Trek. I’ve covered this in books, so I’m not going to go into it again, but I wanted to share this part of it:

Me: The tl;dr from me is that I was treated quite badly by the producers, and they were actively sabotaging my career outside of Star Trek, preventing me from working in movies that would have been a huge boost to my standing in the industry.

Redditor: Do you think their sabotage has affected you to this day or do you think as a celebrity you have moved past it?

Me: I’ve moved past it. I have learned a lot in the years since that happened (among them the fact that all producers aren’t automatically jerks) and coming to grips with my experience back then allowed me to let it go, focus on what was important to me now, and …. [sunglasses] plot my own course in life.

Now, I’m sure that I would have a very different life if I’d been able to work in the movies they prevented me from working on. For example, I wouldn’t have wanted out of my contract, and I probably would have stayed with the show as long as they would have had me, through all the movies. I probably would have worked on other serious films, and would be in a very different place right now.

But if that had happened, I probably would have grown up to be a douchebag, because I would have been stupidly rich, stupidly famous, and I never would have grown up.

I love my life right now, and I’m grateful for the pain and the struggles that I went through to get to where I am today.

tl;dr Yeah, I’m fine.

Redditor: You’re an amazing, down-to-earth guy. I’m impressed that you’ve moved past everything as well as you have, and I’m glad that you’re doing well. I’m also glad that you appreciate what you have, because so many people don’t.

I appreciate the response and wish you nothing but happiness.

… MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

I’m not going to give up and delete this. I’m going to keep going.

My life is awesome, and I’m so grateful for all the great stuff that I get to do with it. I really, really am.

But today? Today, I just can’t shake the MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

Trigger Warning: Bullying and Abuse.

When I was in elementary school, I was bullied by the kid who lived across the street. It started the day we moved in, and it continued until the day we moved out.

His bullying was relentless: I’d be sitting in my front yard playing with my Star Wars figures, and he’d come over and start threatening to take them, break them, hurt me, whatever he had on his broken little mind, until I either started crying or ran into my house. I remember riding my Big Wheel on my sidewalk, and this kid rode up behind me on his dirt bike, crashed it into my back, knocked my legs under my big wheel, and pushed me up the sidewalk until my screams brought parents out of houses. I had skin torn off my spine, and I still have two scars on my knees, and one on the top of my left foot. He shot me with his BB gun one day, narrowly missing my eye. The one time I punched him in the nose, he ran to his dad, who came out of his house and yelled at me. I remember being terrified that he was going to hit me, or worse.

This kid was abusive and cruel. If he’d been an adult, the things he did to me would have qualified as assault, but whenever my parents confronted his parents, nothing happened. I remember being angry with them for not doing more to protect me, but realize in retrospect that they probably did everything they could; this kid’s father was a gun nut, ran with bikers, had friends in the local police department, and basically got away with anything. Eventually, I just stopped telling my parents about my bully, because he’d just bully me worse when I did.

I don’t know what happened to that kid as he grew up. His older siblings were in and out of jail a lot, has father beat his mother, and I would be very surprised if anyone in that family went on to live a happy and fulfilling life. If I’m being honest, I hope that kid is in jail somewhere where he can’t hurt anybody else.

I haven’t thought about that kid in years — these aren’t the kinds of memories that I want to revisit — but I saw some people talking about stopping bullying on Twitter today, including this from Anne:

My son was repeatedly bullied by a kid in 4th grade. The principal made excuses for the kid such as “He comes from a single parent home.”

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

I couldn’t get any teachers, counselors or even the principal to stop this kid from bullying Ryan. The kid did it for years&it was horrible

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

The school finally did suspended the kid who kept bullying Ryan in 7th grade after having to pay for medical bills for Ryan.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Ryan was shoved over a railing & hit his head,causing a concussion & whiplash. Because it happened on school grounds, they had to pay for it

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

No one should have to endure bullying. It shouldn’t take physical injury for a school to step in & stop years of emotional injury.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Be a good parent, whether you’re single or not. Teach your child to love & respect themselves enough to treat others the same way.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

I was a single parent for years. That is the worst excuse for allowing bullying, ever. I told the principal that & he had no comment.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

My mom rant is done. #StopBullying

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Anne and I are both sitting here, in our hotel in Texas, crying at these memories. Years later, bullying still hurts.

I also hadn’t thought about all the torment that Ryan had to endure, until I read Anne’s Twitter. I remembered how helpless we felt, how we tried and tried and tried to get someone at the school to do something — to do anything — to help our son, and how the school just made excuses until our son was seriously injured. The school didn’t care at all that he was emotionally abused, and never bothered to address the physical abuse until it cost them money.

The thing is, the bullying that Ryan and I both endured was entirely random. Though our experiences were roughly 20 years apart, they fit a pattern: We did nothing to deserve it. Some kid who was unhappy decided to make us a target, we were helpless to stop it, and the people we turned to who should have helped stop it either couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Just sitting here right now, remembering it, I want to go back in time and make that goddamn school, starting with the coward who was the principal at Ryan’s elementary school, do something about it, so I could save my son from suffering torment that he didn’t deserve, that no child deserves.

Ryan and I both grew up to be successful and happy adults. I don’t know what happened to my bully, but Ryan’s bully is stuck in the community he grew up in, working a dead end job. He looks miserable, and I’m not proud to admit that I’m glad. I hope he suffers for a long time. I’m ashamed to admit that whenever I see him, I want to hurt him the way he hurt my son, but it seems that life is doing that for me.

Who knows what that kid could have done with his life if he’d gotten the help he needed to choose a different path? Who knows how many other kids he hurt, because nobody did anything to stop him?

All people deserve to be happy, and all children deserve to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and free. Schools need to have clear policies in place to stop bullying. Communities need to make it very clear that bullying won’t be tolerated, and bullies — and their parents — need to be held accountable for their actions.

I often feel like Twitter hashtag things are great for making a lot of noise, but not very useful for actually accomplishing meaningful goals. I sincerely hope that this one will be different. Don’t just talk about how we need to #StopBullying, actually do something about it. Talk to parents and kids, live your life by example, and let’s break the cycle, together.

Not sure why I’m all-caps serious in the title, but it probably has something to do with not getting enough sleep last night, driving through fuckingawfulawfulawful traffic to get to work and back today (I’m in an audiobook version of a graphic novel that will come out in December and we finished it today), and the realization that it’s almost Halloween and I haven’t put up a single scary decoration, not even a list of what chicken nuggets are actually made of.

But I digress: Anne and I are coming to Texas for some shows this week with Paul and Storm. Information follows:

Thu 10/17:  Central Presbyterian Church – Austin, TX – tix: 
Fri 10/18:  Fitzgerald’s – Houston, TX – tix: 
Sun 10/20:  Granada Theater – Dallas, TX – tix:

And now here’s the sound a cow makes:

MOOOOOOOOOO

Okay, now that I’ve taken care of that business, I can go pick out and pack clothes for our trip.