"Ever Notice That the Initials For 'Valentine's Day' is 'VD'" is not a Good Phrase to Start That Day

I should've known that this week would be be terrible, probably the minute Patty said that very phrase. Let's recap the events that particularly screwed up my day:

1: My editor calls me after class to meet for lunch. At lunch, he tells me that I have to help our new reviewer review a game that we all thought came out the next day. This meant that I had to reserve it that day. The kicker: It doesn't come out until next week.

2: Not knowing that, I drive to the mall. I notice that my car is smoking. I thought, I just had the damn radiator fixed. Right then, I hear an explosion. One of the radiator hoses exploded, covering the under hood in coolant. I try to limp back to school, but the car stops. Long story short, my Dad picked me up, drops me off at school, and now my car is totaled. My $500 car, that I've been told is worth "$2500" in its condition now has a $4000 fix. Today, I had it towed to a junk yard for $150. Luckily, soon, I'll have a van.

3: During our critique, my sculpture told the whole class that wasn't "disciplined enough" to be an artist because my giant, plaster sculpture didn't look like my clay model that fell apart three times. Appropriately, my sculpture is a gesture of "face palming."

Those are the big three, and I want to move along here. As a lot of you know, I suffer from Depression, and a lot of things hit me more than most people. One of the biggies is that I'm single. It's irrational, I know, but I always fear of dying alone, and never having someone that I can care about. One day, I was ranting with Patty and Bink about Valentine's day. What I said, without thinking, was that I was going to "Spike my hair, dye it pink and get piercings just to rebel against it and being kicked out of the Army." Bink points at Patty, who is now on my arm, looking at me with big brown eyes, and quietly, holding back tears, says, "You'd do this for me?"

Later, talking to Bink, she mentions something that reminded me of what a friend of mine told me earlier in my life. She grabbed me by the arm and said: "Remember our first Valentine's Day together when we had started dating four years ago?" (We're not together right now, obviously.) "You remember what you bought me? An opera. A $60, to CD opera-- and my favorite one with my favorite opera singer, even! Sure, you've known me for almost 20 years, but we had just started dating, and you did that. You're going to find some one, and you're going to treat them like gold."

Eerily, I mentioned this to Jim yesterday, after he gave me a ride from school and went to Fridays for dinner. We both remembered that a friend of ours from Middle/High school told me the same thing. The amusing thing is, he was about 6'3, and Bink is 4'10". Moral of the story, listen to giants and tiny Asian women?

I guess. All I know is that my neck and knee are murdering me from pushing that damn car, and I'm looking forward to sleeping in on Friday.

Another Serious Note

I have had a few people ask me why my planned webcomic, "Muzzle," is going to take a more serious tone when it returns. To be completely honest, it's simply because of the most basic thing I could ever think to answer: it's hard to write pure comedy. It's actually why I took a break from it in the first place. But, there's a bit more to the story than that.

Right around the time I started writing it again, a few things happened in my life. I was living above a family that would purposefully start fights with anyone around them, which included blasting their TV all hours of the day and night, and blaming another neighbor. One neighbor fought back against that allegation, and suddenly moved, leaving no address, and his cat. They were getting more and more volatile towards me as the neighbors next door to me decided that, no joke, they wanted to have extremely loud sex every night. I found out later that the reason they were doing that is because they wanted others to hear them, and, at one point, hinted that they wanted another guy to join in with them. Imagine this, they got kicked out faster than the people below me. The people who moved in after that, though, were worse in that sense. That, and the fact that I was going up to my apartment, and they had a guy standing look out while a conversation was going on about something. As they left, he looked at me, said "You didn't hear anything," and scowled like he was going to kill me. This was a week before I started to move into where I'm at now.

On top of that, before that weird thing happened, something major happened in my life, and more so in Binkie's. It was something so catastrophic that I'm surprised she's been as happy as she is lately, despite being afraid at certain times. She was raped. I cannot express the shock and anger I felt when I saw her the day after. One side of her face was bruised and swollen, a broken finger, three cracked ribs, two cracked teeth, hairline fracture above the left eye... the list goes on. Needless to say, I was shocked by her reaction to it. Shortly after it had happened, Lewis Lovhaug, aka, Linkara, reviewed a "Superman" comic that pretty much involved both Superman and Big Barda being raped by each other upon the command of a mind controlling villain. The argument the ensued was that rape should never be used as a story device, or retconned into a story, just for the sake of it happening. Further more, it's never done respectfully, i.e. a woman is always the victim (except when Alan Moore's involved), it's always about sex (which it isn't, it's about anger and control), and that it's always brutal (not always bloody violence, but it does happen). Added to what just happened to her, Binkie turned to me, and calmly said, "I want my story told."

This wasn't an easy choice for her, but it wasn't out of context for her, either. Before she was raped, Binkie was a counselor for victims of both rape and child abuse. She had seen the different types of damage that had been done. But, while her story did involve the shock of everything that had happened, it wasn't about the rape, which is why I never show it in the comic. It's about something deeper. As bloody, broken, and violated as she felt, she knew that with the help of her friends, family, and whatever else would help, she'd recover. At least, what she could. She's still scarred from it, both physically and emotionally. I'm not afraid to admit that she slept in my recliner more than a few times after it had happened because she was afraid of being alone in her house. As long as I've known her, you better believe that when she wants me to do something, not just for her, but to show anyone who might read it that has been hurt that they can recover, I'm going to damn well do it. And, I'm thankful that she has that much faith in me as to know that I'd try to handle it with as much grace as possible.

There started my downward spiral to now. My Grandmother had a stroke, I had just gone through a bad break up, my Grandfather got sick, money woes... all of this, and I had to take an Army Medical Evaluation. Last month, I went through a very bad break up, and my Grandmother passed away. On top of that, I had to readjust my school schedule so I wouldn't lose my mind. Recently, stress has been piling so much that I nearly passed out on several occasions. Thankfully, we had a Winter Storm, which gave me a much needed break. Unfortunately, the radiator in my car is now toast. Just when it couldn't get any worse, it did.

I'll get back to yesterday in a minute. Today, out of the blue, Jenna, Patty, Binkie, and I decided to go on an adventure. We ended up in a pet shop, watching the world's most spastic gerbil, when I noticed my phone rang. I checked my voice mail to find out that my Mom called. I called her back and found out that my Grandfather died. He went peacefully, but it was still a massive shock to my system. I still don't know how to take it. Needless to say, since I had my Reserve Drill this weekend, I called my squad leader, and let him know what just happened. He understood, and before I said I wasn't going to be there, he told me that he'd let the higher NCO's know that I was not going. Add to that what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, I got a letter in the mail from the Army Medical Staff. Thinking that it's another survey, I open it. My jaw dropped as I read it: I was being discharged due to a permanent profile for Depression. I read this, and laughed. I've been suffering Depression for a long time, possibly since the Eighth Grade. The Army had to have known this for seven years. I have six months before my eight year contract is up, and now, they want me out because of a condition that anyone could see. This reeks of something being severely screwed up in the system. But, that's not the worst of it. No, not even close.

The worst of it is that I was on my homestretch with the Army. I was non-deployable, in a Reserve Unit that was relatively close to home, and I had only months before I was out. Despite not liking it, I was still proud of my service in the military. Hell, I have a knee injury that was made worse from the Army, which is the least of anything I've heard of. I've had at least one friend die in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I know one who was damn near killed by an IED. They were all proud of what they did. The thanks I get for my sacrifice of time in active, and in the Reserves, "Oh, you're Depressed. Therefore, despite not being suicidal, you're useless to us." This is my reply:

Are you fucking kidding me?

Right now, I'm trying to get in contact with the VA Clinic near me. I also have to fill out a form that basically says that I understand I'm being kicked out, and that I can't do anything about it. But, I served through seven years of my life, one of them in a warzone, and came out perfectly fine, save for my Depression. The fact that I defended the people I care about, and people I don't even know, meant the world to me, and it still does. But, instead of letting me finish up my last few months with dignity, the Army decides that I'm not fit for duty, despite all I went through for them. This has got to be a sick joke.

So, yeah, "Muzzle's" going to be more serious. But when things like this happen, you can't help but to laugh.