Black. Red. Grey.

I have an AK Press t-shirt. It’s kind of grey with an artistic black and red flag across the chest and the words “Friends of AK Press” mixed in cuz….. that’s how I got it.

I like to wear this shirt. It combines my favorite colors, the red of the communists and the black of the anarchists. Mixed together they are nothing more than the grey that this shirt is mostly.

It fits me fine when my gut isn’t as big as it gets when I’m depressed, when I don’t have the time to dedicate to the things that I need to do instead of the things I have to do. The colors are about right. I tend to be a bit gray as an overall, grumpy, lumpy and about ready to die. And then I splash it all out with the black of night for my darkest times and the red for when I burn like a roman candle in the hand of crust punk waiting to launch into the oblivion of having nothing. Red. Black. Grey.

I used to see myself as a walking contradiction. In my greying years, I’ve recognized that I am more of a conglomerate of many ideas instead of the dichotomy of what I was and what I currently believe. My brain is a mish mash. There’s times I cannot, or maybe will not, do anything. Absolutely nothing. Why? Because I don’t want to. It’s not that I’m sad or that I want to end my life. I just don’t want to do anything. I sit. I drink. I lay down in bed and watch MASH for hours on end with a bottle of bourbon on my nightstand. My only care is being able to make an effort at sobriety when Mrs. Moose comes through the door. Most times I fail. Well, here’s to trying.

No, the reality of my life is that my brain is fucked and it’s also very much not fucked. I have moments of red, genius bleeding from edge to edge of the day. Excitement. Almost erotic in nature of new ideas, of moving forward, of doing everything, doing things that no one has done, of fixing things that are so broken that people gave up on years ago. Unfortunately for me and for you, is that it is also more of that black of being in bed and the grey of everything else that fills in the spaces.

I think it’s the grey of my life that makes the blacks so deep. Grey is just trying to fade into the darkness. It’s fake. It’s not much of a color. Aesthetically, it’s one of my favorites. Probably because I reside so often in that in between. It’s a color that doesn’t say anything, and I hate saying things when asked. It’s just there. Waiting. Doing what it thinks is what it does which no one ever knows what grey does. It’s just the deep aspect of having nothing to back up what it is. It’s hiding which is how I live most of my life behind a pseudonym and a name in real life that isn’t even mine. A double negative that leaves everyone in the dark. In the black.

Black is honest. It is everything. It is nothing. It’s that contrasting view that leaves one on both sides of an argument. It’s the part of life that forces us to admit that we love grey and more importantly, we can dig the shit out of red. There is nothing false about me in bed, force feeding myself booze and mass media that has no real meaning. It is what is. It’s depression at its deepest and it’s life at its most real. You cannot deny the reality of depression when you’re swimming in it. Wishing, begging yourself to go outside, to find something, anything, even if it’s grey, to get you out of this funk. And you can’t. That’s it. You can’t. You aren’t sad. You aren’t beating yourself up over the day before, the regrets of life, you’re just not doing anything because that is where you are at, deep in the black. And when that hits, I don’t know what else to do than be honest with myself. Find a bed and drink until I pass out in it.

Red. It’s the best. It’s blood. More importantly, it’s oxygenated blood. It’s blood that’s figuring shit out. It’s doing stuff. It’s that photo on Instagram and Facebook and Tumblr and twitter and whatever the fuck else the kids are doing that shows the face of what it is that I live for. It’s being outside. It’s walking into places that cars can’t go. It’s riding my bike every fucking day, because cars are fucking the bane of our existence, our slave masters. It’s looking at a problem, finding a solution and knowing that it will work, you know no one else has seen and fucking knocking it out of the park. Red is not caring that oxygenated blood is flowing from your forehead and dripping onto the ground because you know that whatever the fuck you just did, it was fucking awesome regardless if anyone knows your name or not.

Black. Red. Grey. I live for one, the rest just kind of feel in the time in between. Please forgive me as I find my bottle of bourbon.

P. L. and R.