Part two, 2014! I’m back in the USA, no longer shitting blood and vomiting–life’s getting better, right?? Maybe you can look at the title and figure that one out….

Before I left for South America I requested off work and told my boss I was going to Peru indefinitely. For some reason she said she’d hold my job. So when I returned home I started working at the coffee shop again but the day after I got there I found out my cool boss had been transferred to another store and replaced with an ogre-looking bitch. Quickly my experience at work went from being generally pleasant to consistently stressful. Work was my refuge from the rest of my seemingly ever-disintegrating life. I didn’t make much money there and the people were often rude, but at least it was stable and I could approximate normal human relationships.

I felt like everything was spinning around me and one day I saw a reminder of a former life and I flipped out and started smashing stuff in my room, threw my phone, kicked through some glass and destroyed some large framed prints I was supposed to sell. It was the first time I snapped that and lost my temper in years. I was infuriated and then further enraged by the damage I’d caused myself. Maybe some of you can relate. Still determined to do more damage since I was having trouble making any positive effect, I asked my family to take me to the hospital.

A nurse took my vitals while I sat there shaking and answering her questions about why I wanted to die. I felt disconnected, watching myself, sad as my mother sat across from me and listened to me explain why I felt so hopeless and actively interested in leaving this world. Sad but with a clarity to see how rational I was thinking, that I don’t like the world or the way it works and I don’t want to compromise to live in it. I don’t have a family and my sporadic and unreliable friendships don’t really constitute support. Anyway, some of this is my fault, some isn’t. I’ll stop writing about this for now; I’m not blaming anyone, just trying to understand why I feel the way I do.

I got out of the hospital and decided I never want to be in a hospital again, for any reason really. It’s very difficult to be a sane (just extremely sad and with an unconventional outlook on life) and trapped in an exit-less building with drug addicts, sociopaths and social workers who have less experience dealing with mental illness than me.

So I went back to work for a week or something before I realized the environment had become too toxic and it was not getting any better. I put in my notice and decided I would do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time–live in Taiwan. There wasn’t anything really positive going on for me here so now was as good of a time as any to go for it. I researched universities and talked to some people on couchsurfing before applying to a school in Taipei. While I was waiting for a response I was thrilled when I was informed that one of my images was curated for the VSCO Grid, an online photographic community with some really cool work.

Unfortunately, this blog is taking too long, getting too long and I can no longer tell if it is interesting or not. So, let’s end the year here despite the fact that the absolute low point (probably of my life) and subsequent move to Taiwan occurred shortly after where we’re leaving off. Maybe I’ll make a Part III, maybe not.