"I am a TV savage"

I had to stop watching the news for awhile. If I watch too much TV news I just want to stick a fork in my forehead. I read the paper because I can scan the headlines and intuit the news. If I really want details I can read more. With the paper I can take it at my own pace.
I have had depression for so long, I have had to develop these strategies for coping and not allowing too much negative information in. Unfortunately I have a bad internet habit now, which really demands some new coping techniques. I find myself getting really wound in to things on the net that I probably shouldn’t.
My first experience of this was joining my first discussion group ever right after 9/11. God, that was awful. I was completely freaked at the nationalistic, jingoistic and sometimes just really stupid stuff I was watching. I became obsessed with attempting to become the voice of reason and rationality. Foolish, foolish mortal.
I became hysterical at the horrible things I was hearing people saying.
So here’s what I have learned about depression, and other mental illnesses for that matter. I went to therapist’s for years thinking I was going to get cured. I’m not likely to get cured.
What I finally realized, was that I had to release old coping skills that had arisen out of pure self preservation and become a conscious co-creator of all my coping strategies. That all that I really could hope for. To develop and continue to develop coping skills. There is not a cure. At least not yet.
I know it’s really uncool but I love TV. I leave it on all the time. I don’t actually watch much, I just have it on while I write, read, clean, play on the computer, whatever. (but not song writing) Occasionally if I’m sorting through something on discs or tapes I’ll even listen to music at the same time, but only if I’m not actually listening. Surprise, it’s on right now.
When I can I try to add a third activity. Talking on the phone is a good one. Lately I’m going through another “I hate the phone” phase though. But I love having a ton of stimuli for some reason.
I think I got this when I was a little kid. Sometimes I’d be up in the middle of the night and if I could have the TV on, chattering away in the corner it help stave off the feelings of isolation, alienation, and dissociation that came with being out in the burb’s with all the sounds of life really far away on the highway.
This may also be why I now love living next door to the tracks and hearing the train in the middle of the night. Also living downtown and hearing the stuff happening all night.
My parents had a bit of a weird TV thing. (I’m sure that’s shocking after hearing the food thing.) We had a TV room that was not the living room. They would only have one TV in the house for the longest time. An old black and white. I remember pretty clearly when we finally got colour. I remember seeing the NBC peacock when it used to spread its tail “in living colour”, for the first time.
I remember being allowed to stay up late for the moon walk for that matter.
When we moved to Ann Arbor either we got a second TV or they kept the TV in the basement I’m not sure which. But I remember being down there watching monster movies on Saturday afternoons.
I love old monster movies and Roger Corman and Hammer House of Horror. Japanese Monsters, especially Gammorah and Mothra.
I love James Bond, Our Man Flynt, and the Avengers.
Cartoons, The old Max Fleischers, his Superman is so very cool. I think Tim Burton must have watched those. The old Merrie Melodies are great. I never liked the 60’s versions of them, the Warner Brothers stuff. I liked Bugs when he would bounce all over on his head like a complete freak, so would Daffy.
When the depression became so very severe around 5th and 6th grade, I would sleep 14 hours a day, most of it in front of a turned on TV. It would make my dreams into crazy movies. For years I had a great difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality, from TV, from fantasy. Later psychedelics only increased that.
As well as I think everyone in my family used/uses voracious reading as a form of escapism also.
But to this day I will seek out good cartoons and the old favourite monsters. There is nothing that pleases more than just curling up with real popcorn with real butter and real salt watching poor old Lon Chaney fighting to not give in to the transformation, or misunderstood Boris trying to become human. Or old drug addled Bela trying not to get screwed by the Hollywood machine.