How I got here.

A year or so ago I said I'd start blogging on here more often. It's been rough because I haven't had as much time to do so as I'd like, but also because writing about things a lot is...kinda hard, admittedly. I feel like I'm the kinda person that has to always have a whole lot of strong opinions. When I tweet about liking something or disliking something but not in any sorta 'firm' way, I get shouted at a lot. Folks stop by to let me know that what I like is dumb and bad and I'm responsible for my own opinion, thus I always have to defend it, thus I am always on guard. 

I've always felt on guard about everything in my life. This goes back to my childhood in Texas, having a family that was psudeo-accepting at best in a lot of regards but had the capacity to be horrible. My father used to get bitterly angry if I ate ketchup with my fries because he hated it himself. My father made me defend my own ketchup usage, imagine what he would think of me now...

I always loved performing. I spent a lot of time in theater and music. I started learning piano when I was about 7 years old and continue to play today. One time, my grandmother took me to the mall where there was a big stage -- that I had to be on. I ran away from her and onto the stage to belt out lyrics to a Carpenter's song I heard on the radio on the way over. I have always had this uncontrollable urge for attention. 

When I think about it now, I grew up with a mother that was always working and a father who never cared about me so I ended up spending a LOT of time with my grandparents. My grandmother always encouraged me to perform because I liked to do it so much, so this led to me chasing that performative thing even more than I already had the urge to do -- thus, the stage at the mall thing happened. But instead of her telling me I embarrassed her or anything, she said that she was proud of me for trying. 

CUT TO: I was 16 when my grandmother died. She spent the last couple months of her life tired at a hospice facility. We visited her every single day. Visiting her was everything I had in my life really. Luckily this hospice facility was armed to the teeth with stuff for kids to do while their loved ones died in the other room: like a home theater room. 

The day my grandmother died, my mom knew we would be spending the night and day at the hospice facility so we brought pillows and snacks and our homework and we slept there. My mom went out and got us a collection of different movies from a Blockbuster down the street and we sat and watched every last one for the entirety of the day. I remember being displeased in a couple of her choices but didn't say anything because when she handed them to me, her hands were shaking.

I barely spent time with my grandmother in her last week, mostly I just sat and stared at the television, I must have watched 50 movies. By this point I stopped doing any schoolwork and just decided to fail. I just stared at the screen trying my best to be somewhere other than where I was. I just stared at the screen trying to be someone else. Eventually I fell asleep and she died. We collected her belongings (which she had few) and we went home for the first time in what felt like years. 

I tried my best to feel nothing for the next couple years. I was in relationships but never felt any actual love but desired above all else, some kind of companionship. I wanted that feeling of being me and not having to defend that. Someone who actually wanted to celebrate me for me. Turns out that's pretty impossible when you're a teenager. I started to wonder if I was less interested in being in love with them as much as I was interested in being them -- in experiencing some kind of grand metamorphosis into something else.

I had friends in high school, but none of them knew that I was spending every day of my life in hospitals and hospice centers slowly watching the only family that I spent the majority of my life with die. I tried to give less of a shit about my own inner dysphoria and try to express myself in newer ways. I would dress up for school every day in weird ways that I thought made me like some kinda living canvas -- turns out I was just an art nerd. And I took my own share of flack for that. My friends thought it was funny to call me a faggot and kick me in the groin every few minutes. I can't even count the amount of times I lay on the ground missing a class because I couldn't breathe. These were my friends for years. 

I dabbled in being like them, big assholes that treated everyone terribly. Anyone that was different or not-male or not-hetero was treated like trash, when in truth we were the trash. We were the fucking worst, but I always felt I didn't want to be that. Slowly I started to spend more time with women as friends and slowly they took notice and found ways to treat me in worse ways. 

Eventually I realized they weren't actually my friends and were instead my abusive captors and I got the fuck out, but I went through years of this before any of that happened. Turns out, being 16 sucked, who could have guessed. I guess after that whole thing with losing all my 'friends' and using movies to cope with my own world, I sank into them in an unhealthy sorta way. I got to where I would spend all my time and money on movies and watching them. I lost relationships over it, I lost friendships over it. 

But around 17 I started a band with some friends and then that became my escape. As I write this I'm noticing myself saying words like 'escape' and realizing that, that's all I've ever really wanted. And escape from being where I am, who I am, and how I feel. We sucked but we tried our best. We would play open mic nights and drunk assholes would come up to us and tell us how terrible we were. It was relatively constant -- so we stopped going out for awhile, got good, then went back out onto the Dallas music scene and started making minor waves. But it wasn't happening as fast as I'd have liked and, being an asshole again, I broke us up. Nothing has even been good enough for me.

My mom had a boyfriend for 17 years when I was growing up that used to be in a band -- he was a monster and I hated him. I still think about him sometimes and it always hurts. He was the type to always lecture me about how everything I was doing was wrong or not good enough and would proceed to sit me down and force me to 'get good' at things. Hours would go by and he would still be grilling me about anything under the sun. One time he sat me down and forced me learn how to tell time... Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard? 

But we sat there for six or so hours while he tested my abilities to read a clock. I cried and begged him to let me go to bed but he never did -- not til he was ready. Well it was that, but way worse, with music stuff as well. He would keep me up late at night practicing and practicing and practicing. I got to a point where every ounce of joy I ever felt with my grandmother on that stage as a child was gone and replaced with an inner voice of constant doubt. It's still there today. 

After my band fell through (or I killed us) I gave up on everything. Myself, my health, my friendships, relationships, literally everything. I just watched movies. All the time, every day. I gained 40 pounds, I slept less and did nothing. I hated myself so thoroughly that I don't honestly know how I functioned. 

I started watching a lot of YouTube around this time. I was probably 20 or so. I was going to community college and taking 'bullshit' classes about philosophy and psychology (important shit I still use today!) and in between classes, I had a lot of time to myself. Thus, YouTube. I started watching a lot of different channels. Jeroen at Horrible Reviews was my savior in a lot of ways because he loved movies in a very specific way that I felt that I did. I connected with him so thoroughly that I felt that I could do it myself one day -- I mean, if we were so similar and all.

One day I just flatly asked him if I could and he told me yes. So I started that day. I made a video on Vampire's Kiss which was my current bad-movie-obsession (which I still have to this day!) But like everything in my life, this quickly dominated, became an escape, became a hiding spot from the world, then eventually the voice of dissatisfaction started to creep in again. I wasn't good enough, nothing was good enough, nothing would ever be good enough.

So I started watching more channels like that, ones that while claiming to love movies, truly read more to me today as a deep-seated hatred. And this became me as well. I could only ever see the negative, a lot of which wasn't even there. My content reflected this for awhile and I continued this downward spiral into watching shittier and shittier people that fed me more and more discontent and hatred. It ended up in that same place as when I was a teen, I've always been the kind of person that could tell they were being abused even when they were being kicked in the groin. 

I started a process of isolation and hatred that led me to hate and deny things about myself I still struggle with today. It didn't help that now I was at a university studying Journalism (quite possibly the most soul sucking major of them all, at least top 5). I did a year of Journalism, failing classes, skipping classes because I couldn't stand to be in them. Most of the time they made me angry: I would submit an article I spent months on just for it to be rejected for being too personal. They didn't like that about me, I had a hard time being objective. I got a little too close to my subjects and felt I gained a sort of understanding and wanted to share that. 

I was in the worst relationship of my life. Not really her fault in lot of ways, but the fit was generally bad. She kept me thoroughly under the microscope and I hated myself -- bad combination. She asked me with some frequency if I was gay, and I would tell her with the upmost offense "of course not." <-- the truest sign of being a man, eh?

The problem in one respect was that she knew. She could tell that this whole 'man-thing' was an act and that I was far more internal and sensitive that I led on. We were together about a year before I couldn't stand my own personal shames and feeling like I was constantly analyzed. I put a lot of blame on her when I left, but in hindsight, I was a huge problem. 

One day, a local journalist came in to give a talk on the industry and told us flat out to drop out of school. He said Journalism was the stupidest life choice he ever made. He said he wanted to be an artist, he wanted to write fiction, yet here he was, because he thought he'd never earn a living. Now he can barely afford his rent writing articles for the biggest platforms in the country. He told us to quit and pursue something else. My professor was pretty stunned but she agreed with him in a sorta way. So I quit.

At this time I was working as a photo/video journalist for a minor publication that was trying to expand their online presence. I quit that job too.

I was blank again. I had no ties to anything, I was alone. I was angry. I was scared of things I maybe didn't know about myself. I ended up back where I started. Watching movies all the time. Escaping. Making videos about how nothing was ever good enough for me. The thing I loved so much and used to escape became something that I hated, or felt like I needed to hate. So I just decided one day to get into film because I thought I could do better.

Turns out it was the best choice I ever made with my life -- it has been a fucking nightmare don't get me wrong. I quickly found out that everything I ever thought about art was bullshit and made it my mission to share this information with the general public. I made some of the best and most helpful friends I've ever had -- they changed my life, for real. I dug myself out of this horrible hole that I've been living in. I met someone that I honestly feel like I can be open with -- she knows me better than anyone and I don't know where I would be without her. And last year I accepted something about myself that I have had stirring in here my whole life. I'm non-binary. I've never been very masculine and whenever I performed as such, I hated myself -- this has always been me, I just didn't really know it. 

I know it feels like I just tied everything up in a neat, nice little bow. But there's still so much I have to work on: I still look for escapes, I still have huge dysphoria, I still feel discontent. These things are going to take time, or maybe they'll always be here. But I have a lot of people to thank for finding a place where I feel like it's okay to be me. I've always been that kid on that stage that performed with joy, it just took me forever to see that.

<3 Nyx