I’ve been keeping this one under wraps for far too long and I am quite pleased to make a couple of announcements. First, “The End.” “The End” is an epic poem of sorts. A lengthy unrhymed free verse poem put together from some journaling I did during and directly after my brief 2016 stay in a psychiatric ward in St. Joseph. It’s, raw, and I’ve found myself stalling on releasing this one, so that’s how I know I ought to get it out there so… I’m going to post it on the blog tomorrow, 6/2/23.
“Welcome Home” was sort of created for me to further process, and elaborate on “The End” but from the safe distance of fiction, and music. “Welcome Home” is an indie/art rock concept album about a man who comes home to live with his parents directly after a stay at a psychiatric ward. It tackles feelings of shame, and difficulty coping with a life post mental health crisis. “Welcome Home” by Justin H.K. and The Existential Dread is arriving 8/25/23 to be preceded by the single “Wrong Exit” out 6/23/23
As a bit of a preview, and to encourage anyone reading this to come back tomorrow, the foreword, to “The End”
Foreword: The End
When I first got out of the mental health facility the last thing I wanted to do was talk about my time there, and I didn’t for a while. I’d tell the people I was close to where I had been, but rarely provided much detail. I would have told you there wasn’t much to talk about. Sometimes I still feel that way, but it does no good to anyone comparing trauma, and designating which trauma is entertaining enough to share. What I have learned (kind of) is that it helps to share. It helps me, and it helps anyone else going through something similar. So share I will.
What follows is some journaling I did during, and directly after my brief stay in the St. Joseph Mental Health Unit (or whatever it’s actually called). I tried to leave most of the text alone, and do most of the editing to the structure, presenting it as a sort of unrhymed free verse poem. I did make a few editorial decisions for clarity and impact, and I’m sure I let my biases of now slip into then. I hope you can forgive me.
As for the title it’s admittedly a bit melodramatic, but that feels appropriate to me. I was inspired by some of the apocalyptic poetry I had been working on, and it got me thinking about how endings are rarely the end. Life didn’t end like I thought it might it that time, but I can’t say I’ve been quite the same person since. Plus, it sounds good.
So, some context. I had been working at a charter school in Benton Harbor, ironically called “Benton Harbor Dream Academy” teaching 9th grade Biology and 11th and 12th grade Chemistry. It was, to say the least, a rough school. I had some awful shit said or screamed at me there, mostly by the students. The principal was a barely literate, unkind man, who showed others how to fail by example. I handled things ok at first, but throughout the half a school year I worked there I began to unravel. Around winter break issues hit a peak and I began to consider suicide. My attempts to hide my depression at work were also no longer working, which ironically made my time with some of the students a bit easier. I would wake up weighed down by the dread, and at some point, I just stopped showing up. I called in for a while, but eventually I didn’t bother with that either.
I felt so incredibly lost at the time. Most of college I had wanted to be a teacher, and when it no longer felt like I could do that, I sort of lost the confidence that I could do anything. Be worth anything. My depression and anxiety cohabitated and spiraled until I wrote up a plan to kill myself. I drank, and I sat in my bathtub staring at a razor blade until eventually calling the Suicide Hotline, talking to someone, and remembering just how selfish and stupid the thing I was planning to do was. That following Monday I went to the doctor, and well, the rest will follow.
I would like to reassure you, before we begin, that I’m in a much better place now. I don’t think I’d have the strength to share this if I wasn’t. I’ve had a lot of help getting better, but the most important person in getting myself to a better place was me. As my favorite podcaster Marcus Parks says
“Your mental illness is not your fault, but it is your responsibility”
Dirt Witch Records 
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