Image by Ales Krivec.

In case you haven’t noticed, dearest motherfuckers, my mental health is kind of a hot mess. OCD, ADHD, CPTSD, OSDID, all on top of LGBT and just a dash of BDSM for flavor. It seems like every year I add a few more letters to this dizzying alphabet soup, not to mention a few more prescriptions. I thought I was fucked up back when I was afraid to leave the house, then I escaped through the closet, switched genders, and stumbled headlong down a rabbit hole of repressed childhood trauma and began sprouting personalities like fucking mushrooms.

So, yeah, I’m a little bit fucked up, in fact all five of me are. If anything, qualifying my mental state as a hot mess is kind of an understatement, especially in January when the freezing cold has the odd tendency to make that hot mess a lot hotter.

Don’t get me wrong, the trials and tribulations of Stressmas can be quite the shit show in their own right, but at least there’s fudge. Then January rears its frigid head and there is no more fudge; no more lights, no more tinsel, no more sugar cookies, no more chestnuts roasting over an open fire or shimmering candy-colored Christmas trees. Only death; cold, dark, muddy, death.

Just one long slog through three more months of winter sludge without a goddamn thing to look forward to but a light so far at the end of the tunnel that it might as well be on another fucking planet. We don’t even get snow anymore in Central Pennsylvania thanks to those climate raping parasites over at Exxon Mobil. Just dead trees with no leaves and the wind whistling Morrissey up my spine. I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m suicidal but by February the barrel of a shotgun begins to look more appetizing than a chicken fried steak.

I survive because that’s what I do; I suffer, bitch, and survive. But a lot of people don’t, and I feel for them. As fucked up as I may be, I’m not alone and I’m not just talking about the alters in my internal family collective. Depression is booming in this country and for good goddamn reason. This country and much of the world it rapes sucks. In 2023, Statista reported that an estimated 17.8% of American adults report currently suffering from depression, which is a significant increase from the 10.5% in 2015.

Armchair normies stroke their beards at such numbers and call it a crisis. I look at those numbers and all I can think is that at least 17.8% of........

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