Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: #mentalhealthjourney

  • When The Jokes Stop Being Funny.

    I used to laugh at everything. Irony was my shield. Sarcasm, my second skin. But then life walked in, uninvited, and knocked the mic out of my hand.

    There was a time I could joke my way through anything.
    Grief. Guilt. Failure.
    Give me a tragedy, I’d find the punchline.
    Not because I thought it was funny—
    but because laughing meant I still had control.

    Humor was my armor.
    If I could reduce it to a one-liner,
    I didn’t have to feel it.
    I just had to deliver it.

    But eventually, the jokes stopped landing.
    Not because they weren’t clever.
    But because the pain got louder than the laugh track in my head.

    You can’t joke your way out of a child’s funeral.
    You can’t riff your way around a hollow chair at the dinner table.
    And you can’t meme your way back to who you were before everything shattered.

    There’s a point—
    when irony stops being a coping mechanism
    and starts becoming a coffin.

    It’s not edgy.
    It’s not cool.
    It’s just another way to keep people from getting too close.

    And I’ve had to reckon with that.
    Because while I was busy being the emotionally unavailable Bukowski of the grieving dads club,
    I was also bleeding underneath the punchlines.

    So now?
    Now I still laugh.
    But not to deflect.
    I laugh because some shit is absurd and crying all the time doesn’t pay the bills.
    But I’ve also learned to sit in the silence after the joke.
    To let it echo.
    To let the truth behind it hang heavy.

    And if you’ve felt that—
    if your jokes are starting to sound like pleas for help wrapped in wit—
    just know this:

    You’re not weak.
    You’re waking up.

    You don’t have to be the strong one.
    You don’t have to be the funny one.
    You just have to be real—even when it’s raw and ugly and doesn’t trend.

    That’s it for now.
    Laugh when you can.
    Cry when you need.
    Bleed in front of people who’ve earned the right to see it.
    And if the joke stops being funny?
    That’s your cue to finally speak the truth.

  • Where I Buried the Brine and the Bruises

    Born pickled
    a bundle of brine,
    spit out with the pigs,
    stepped on, tossed aside,
    buried under the muddy rugs—
    the carpet chorus muffled,
    rolled up and stained with the slap of hands,
    wet dirt naming me sinner,
    naming me fool,
    while the silence screamed back.

    Junk on my hands
    but my fists stayed open—
    bound wrists,
    tight-rope veins walking the thin edge of despair,
    slippery slopes greased by whispers,
    shadows hoarding truths
    behind my spine.

    I dreamed of the bottom of the bag—
    hiding in burlap shadows,
    draped over my shoulder,
    the sack of sorrow dragged uphill.
    The sun was a dagger,
    its glare split my skull,
    its fire pushed me to the peak
    where the earth yawned open.

    And I fell.

    Down through the dirt,
    down to the roots
    that never asked forgiveness,
    that held the mud and called it life.

    I planted my name there,
    deep in the soil.
    The weeds forgave me.

    I sprouted new hands,
    climbed the hill backward—
    not to escape
    but to meet the sunrise
    and the bruised boy
    I’d left behind.

    I held his face in my palms.
    I said, “We are here now.”
    And he disappeared
    into the light.

  • The Beast in Seat 23A

    35,000 ft up, 42 drinks down.

    Let me set the stage: an airplane, five hours from Detroit to Los Angeles. A goddamn tin can full of sleep-deprived zombies and corporate swine, all clutching their pretzels and plastic cups like sacred relics. And me—drenched in sweat, reeking of stale, cheap scotch, tearing through little airline bottles like a lunatic on death row.

    This wasn’t just drinking. No, this was a high-octane bender at 35,000 feet—a desperate attempt to defy the laws of physics and sanity. By hour three, the flight attendants were avoiding eye contact. By hour four, I was mumbling incoherent nonsense about the death of civility in America and demanding more ice. By the time we landed at LAX, I was less of a man and more of a biological weapon—a one-man disaster staggering off the plane with murder in my eyes and a thirst that could drown a small village.

    Straight to the airport bar. The bartender looked at me like I’d just crawled out of the La Brea Tar Pits, but I waved a twenty at him and demanded a double. This was the routine, the sacred ritual: land, drink, repeat. The cities changed, the bars changed, but the mission was always the same—annihilation, pure and simple.

    It wasn’t about fun. It wasn’t even about escape. It was about the necessary obliteration of self. The world was a strange, indifferent circus, and the only way to survive was to light yourself on fire and hope the flames kept the demons at bay.

    But here’s the thing: they never stayed gone for long. Sobriety didn’t come to me as some grand revelation—no white light, no epiphany. It came because one day, the demons won. They dragged me down into a pit so deep and dark that even Jack Daniels couldn’t light the way out. But even in my discombobulated subconscious, I knew there was another Jack far more important in my near future. And a Samantha, whose birth opened my eyes to real miracles and shone a spotlight on the skull and crossbones of every bottle, glowing like Las Vegas from space.

    Now, 24 years later, I’m sober. Clean. A goddamn Boy Scout. But I’m not stupid—I know the beast is still out there, pacing in the shadows, waiting for me to slip. And I won’t. Not now. Not ever. Even with the loss of my son Jack, the thought of diving back into the bottle just to escape that pain is as repulsive, grotesque, and cowardly as the former lush I used to be.

    If someone put a gun to my head and told me to drink, I’d laugh. I’d tell them to shoot, because a bullet is quick, but one drink? That’s a slow, deliberate execution—a drawn-out death sentence dressed up as a good time.

    Sobriety isn’t a victory parade. It’s a knife fight in a phone booth. But I’ll take that over waking up in an airport bathroom, trying to piece together what’s left of my soul.

    This isn’t an ode to sobriety, where I tear a rotator cuff giving myself a proverbial pat on the back. It’s an extended middle finger to the beast that once ruled my head. And if that’s not worth raising a glass of sparkling water to, I don’t know what is.

  • The Green Tablet

    The green tablet.

    All my life I stumbled, staggered like a drunk at closing time, reaching for something, anything. I’d been told to find meaning in the sermons of men, the wisdom of books, the clink of coins in a beggar’s cup

    it was all more of a junkie’s dream. The kind of thing you’d find slipped in between the folds of the Interzone, tucked inside the sweaty palm of some two-bit dealer with half his face gone, nodding off in the alley. I wasn’t looking for it, not really. But it found me. They always find you.

    Years spent in the static haze, the off-channel white noise of existence. I moved through life like a virus spreads—covert, unnoticed, but always present, always creeping. Everything felt slippery, synthetic. The streets, the people. All part of a bad signal, fuzzing in and out of view. I tried to decode it, cracked open veins and heads alike, trying to read the messages in the blood and the circuitry. It all led nowhere. Circling the drain.

    Then the tablet. Green. The color of rot, the color of new life. One third of the tricolor draped along the walls of the long, hollow corridor of time, reverberating with the somber hymns of Irish proverbs, and maybe, just maybe, carrying enough luck to turn pessimism into hope. Sort of like a coin toss, only with a tablet. I didn’t so much find it, it found me, pressed itself into my hand, throbbing like some living thing. Organic. Synthetic. All of the above. I swallowed it without thinking.

    And then the world folded in on itself, a collapsing wave. Time ceased to have meaning, space unraveled into dimensions I didn’t believe  existed—places where gravity was just another bad trip, a suggestion instead of a rule. The walls of the room bent, melted, reformed. Faces flickered, sliding in and out of their skulls. Bureaucrats with insect eyes and needle fingers. All the usual suspects.

    The tablet wasn’t knowledge. It was beyond knowledge. It was access, a key to a hidden layer of reality, a frequency just out of reach unless you knew where to tune the vibrations. And there it was—the whole system laid bare. The machinery behind the facade. The puppet strings of control, the invisible hands pulling us all in circles.

    The thing I’d been looking for in gutters and bars, in the eyes of strangers and the bottom of empty bottles. Turns out, it was the very thing that made me stop searching.

    I don’t remember what was written on it. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe it was just the act of finding it that mattered. That green tablet wasn’t salvation, not in the way they sell it in churches or schools. It was just a reminder that the world, the one I had spent years fighting, didn’t give a damn. It never would. And finally, I no longer needed it. 

    I wasn’t stumbling anymore. My new found saunter suggested confidence, not arrogance—just the ease of a man who knew the system and could slip through its cracks unnoticed, the few eyes that caught me probably green with envy. But I always looked past them, through their lost souls, and left a simple inscription on their softened brains…

    “You want out? There is no out.’”

  • My 5 and your 5.

    Somewhere uncomfortable

    I’m always five minutes late. Doesn’t matter if it’s therapy, a meeting, or a funeral—hell, I know for a fact i’ll be late to my own, if I even show up at all.

    I’ve been seeing this shrink for a while now. Good guy. Listens well, scribbles occasionally, throws a “hmm” out like he’s adding salt to a shitty dish his wife whipped up. So, one day, after the usual “you’re late again” look, he finally asks me, “James, why are you always five minutes late? No matter what time we set, it’s always the same.”

    I shrug, staring at his overly polished desk, and say, “Well, Doc, best as I can figure, my five minutes and your five minutes just aren’t the same.”

    He raises an eyebrow like I’m onto something. Like I’ve finally cracked the code to the universe of perpetual tardiness. So, I keep going.

    “See, your five minutes, it’s precise. Probably feels like 300 seconds ticking away, one, two, three. But mine? Mine could be five seconds, or five hours. I don’t feel the difference.”

    I could tell he wanted to laugh but was trying hard to remain the professional. He adjusts his glasses, the kind of move therapists do when they’re buying time to decide if they should diagnose you or just let it slide.

    “Maybe it’s because you taught me to live in the moment, Doc. You ever think about that? Maybe I’m just so focused on the now that time… bends. It warps around me like some kind of slow-motion bullet in a movie. Except, instead of dodging it, I’m just late.”

  • Lessons from the titans.

    Yo, I’m suffering. “Good” “stay hard, motherfuckers”

    Mental Toughness and Creativity: Lessons from the Titans

    Ah, creativity. A fickle mistress, a deceptive muse, a relentless tormentor. It demands from us everything and offers nothing but suffering in return. Yet, we plunge into its chaotic embrace, knowing full well that true brilliance is born from the depths of our agony. To understand this dance with madness, one must look to the hardened warriors of resilience: David Goggins, Jocko Willink, and the indefatigable Rocky Balboa. Imagine them not as athletes or soldiers but as artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Their capacity to endure, to dig deep and savor the pain, is the crucible of their greatness.

    David Goggins, a man forged in the fires of suffering, would approach creativity as he does his ultramarathons and SEAL training. His canvas is the battlefield of his mind, his brushstrokes the relentless pursuit of the impossible. Goggins would tell us that creativity is not a gift, but a grind. It is the result of thousands of hours spent honing a craft, of pushing past the point of exhaustion, of embracing the suck. His mantra, “Stay Hard,” would become the battle cry of the artist willing to bleed for their vision. Goggins teaches us that to create is to suffer, and to suffer well is to create something truly extraordinary.

    Then there’s Jocko Willink, the stoic warrior of discipline. For him, creativity is a war, a series of battles fought in the trenches of self-doubt and procrastination. Jocko’s advice is simple: get up early, show up, and do the work. He would see the blank page, the empty canvas, the silent instrument as an adversary to be conquered with relentless discipline. “Discipline equals freedom,” he preaches, and in the realm of creativity, this means mastering the basics, committing to a schedule, and attacking the process with military precision. Jocko would remind us that every masterpiece is built on a foundation of mundane, repetitive tasks executed with unwavering focus.

    And then we have Rocky Balboa, the quintessential underdog. Rocky’s story is one of grit, heart, and the indomitable human spirit. As an artist, Rocky would teach us the value of perseverance in the face of relentless failure. He would stumble, fall, and get back up, each time with a little more wisdom, a little more fire in his belly. Rocky’s motto, “It ain’t about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward,” is a testament to the resilience required in the creative journey. His work would be raw, unpolished, but bursting with authenticity and soul. Rocky shows us that the beauty of art lies not in perfection but in the relentless pursuit of one’s passion, despite the odds.

    In the end, creativity is not a serene stroll through the park but a grueling marathon, a bloody battle, a tenacious climb up an unforgiving mountain. It’s about embracing the pain, finding joy in the struggle, and knowing that every ounce of suffering is a testament to the work we’ve put in. Goggins, Willink, and Balboa each illuminate a path through this wilderness, showing us that the true artist, the true creator, is one who revels in the suffering, who finds strength in the darkness, and who emerges, bloodied but unbowed, with a masterpiece in hand. For in the crucible of our torment, we find the purest expression of our creative selves.

  • Mediocrity (Ignore Everything I Wrote)

    Mediocrity

    Embrace the futile pursuit of some obscure designer lingerie called Agent Provocateur because, obviously, the key to reviving a relationship is to awaken the lifeless corpse that’s been hiding under the covers for far too long.

    Lavish yourself with Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and the overt indulgent, creepy pedophiles at Balenziaga because materialism cures all existential despair, right? Oh, and don’t forget that iPhone 15 that never leaves the clutches of your carpal tunnel-afflicted hands, a sheer masterpiece of exploitation, crafted by modern-day sorcerer children in a sauna they call an office somewhere in a COVID-infested Chinese cellar.
    Stick it nonchalantly into your coat pocket, ignoring empathy and instead celebrating the evolution of a digitally connected sixth finger that you might as well shove up your ass before the whole shit house goes nuclear.
    Of course, we mustn’t neglect the holy trinity of social media: TikTok, SNAPCHAT, and Instagram – the ultimate trifecta of meaningless validation. Spew the vile yet mundane nothingness of your existence, writing paragraph upon paragraph in excruciating detail because nothing says ‘I’m alive’ like sharing your breakfast choices, bowel movements, and Cinnabon recipes, even if it means ignoring the glaring truth that no one gives a fuck.
    And, while you’re scrolling through the virtual assembly line of wall to wall shit, stalk ex-flames, comparing their train wrecks to your dumpster fire while subconsciously hoping for any flicker of validation.
    Get a tattoo that reads “personal privacy is for losers” as you realize all of humanity is just an Excel sheet of cold data… then get on Snapchat in hopes of squashing that mountain of anxiety growing in your chest, only to score some cheap, counterfeit Xanax made by a slimy Sinaloa cartel terrorist who’s loaded it with enough Fentanyl to wipe out an entire sorority.
    And then, in an act of pure disassociation and impulse, embrace your inner stand-up comedian, by joking about sensitive topics you scream out-loud in overcrowded elevators, “not a single fucking life matters, so why not get the abortion, or don’t, have that tax write off and let the baby change its gender when she turns four”
    Hope you get canceled because nothing’s funnier than human suffering with no hope of redemption.
    Reinvent historical events, or better yet, pretend they never happened, especially if they don’t fit the lie of your twisted narrative.
    Embrace losing yourself in the maze of a 9-to-5 cubicle farm that slowly crushes the soul from those hipster sneakers you once bought for 12 dollars at a flea market. All while telling yourself, ‘see, I’m not shallow .’
    And pass this legacy of despair down to your children because suffering is a family heirloom, after all.
    Cherish your unfulfilled promises as they gather dust alongside the mantel of participation trophies and shattered dreams.
    Bask in the glow of your own repeated failures like a moth drawn to the same broken lightbulb.
    Observe the déjà vu of history because originality is overrated, and everything new is just something old and forgotten.
    Embrace that you’re merely, at best, below average, hide your tears with a smile, kiss your loved ones goodbye, one disappointment at a time.
    Fade away into obscurity, bit by bit, until you’re nothing but a distant memory to your own mother.
    Fall in love with this joke, this depressing carnival of life, and embrace every last ounce of mediocrity straight to the grave.

  • Unconscious and Entitled

    Unconscious and Entitled

    In a dimly lit room, with the flicker of a single, dying light bulb overhead and the hum of the city’s night leaking through the cracked window, there it sits—the essence of a world spoiled to its very core, marinated in its self-entitled glory. It’s an American tradition, not the kind bound by the pages of history books or celebrated with fireworks, but the kind you see in the glazed eyes of the too-many, wandering through their days like kings of a forgotten kingdom, unaware of the ground beneath them or the sky above.

    The streets are filled with the sounds of their discontent, a chorus so constant it blends into the backdrop of daily life. “The wifi’s too slow,” they cry, in cafes where the coffee beans have traveled further than their complaints ever will. “There’s nothing good on Netflix”, they moan, flipping through a thousand channels on their flat screens that glow like false moons in their too-big houses. They drive cars that could feed families for months, to jobs they say suck the soul from their bones, not pausing to think of those who sift through bones for a meal.

    This great American spoilage, it’s not just in the things they have but in the air they breathe, taken for granted like the last cigarette in a pack, smoked without thought or care for where the next might come from. It’s in the way they view the world, through lenses tinted with convenience, unable to see the beauty in struggle, or the strength it takes to simply survive in places where the ground is harder, the water scarcer, and the sky a luxury afforded only to the dreamers.

    They throw words like “hardship” and “struggle” into conversations like loose change, not knowing the weight of those coins in pockets other than their own. They speak of rights as if they were the only ones to have them, blind to the fact that for some, rights are not a given without a battle fought every day.

    And yet, amidst this spoiled landscape, there are those who see, truly see, the absurdity of it all. They’re the ones that nod to one another in passing, those who understand that to appreciate the light, you must also know the dark. But they are the whispers in a storm of shouts, the flickers of truth in a sea of contented ignorance.

    So here’s to the spoiled, the entitled, the blissfully unaware—may you one day find the beauty in a single blade of grass, the wealth in a shared meal, the fortune in a breath of air without having to experience some godawful tragedy in order to gain perspective.

    Until then, the world waits, not so patiently, for you to regain consciousness and see the value of looking passed your sixth finger, which is now a mobile device, a screen serving as a detour to personal hell. We’re anxious for you to wake up and see that while the American Dream may have always been a nightmare, there’s so much still out there, sprawled out like a roadmap of a million smiley faces, waiting to be titillated , waiting to be traveled and truly seen.

  • Unconscious and entitled

    Unconscious and entitled

    In a dimly lit room, with the flicker of a single, dying light bulb overhead and the hum of the city’s night leaking through the cracked window, there it sits—the essence of a world spoiled to its very core, marinated in its self-entitled glory. It’s an American tradition, not the kind bound by the pages of history books or celebrated with fireworks, but the kind you see in the glazed eyes of the too-many, wandering through their days like kings of a forgotten kingdom, unaware of the ground beneath them or the sky above.

    The streets are filled with the sounds of their discontent, a chorus so constant it blends into the backdrop of daily life. “The wifi’s too slow,” they cry, in cafes where the coffee beans have traveled further than their complaints ever will. “There’s nothing good on Netflix”, they moan, flipping through a thousand channels on their flat screens that glow like false moons in their too-big houses. They drive cars that could feed families for months, to jobs they say suck the soul from their bones, not pausing to think of those who sift through bones for a meal.

    This great American spoilage, it’s not just in the things they have but in the air they breathe, taken for granted like the last cigarette in a pack, smoked without thought or care for where the next might come from. It’s in the way they view the world, through lenses tinted with convenience, unable to see the beauty in struggle, or the strength it takes to simply survive in places where the ground is harder, the water scarcer, and the sky a luxury afforded only to the dreamers.

    They throw words like “hardship” and “struggle” into conversations like loose change, not knowing the weight of those coins in pockets other than their own. They speak of rights as if they were the only ones to have them, blind to the fact that for some, rights are not a given without a battle fought every day.

    And yet, amidst this spoiled landscape, there are those who see, truly see, the absurdity of it all. They’re the ones that nod to one another in passing, those who understand that to appreciate the light, you must also know the dark. But they are the whispers in a storm of shouts, the flickers of truth in a sea of contented ignorance.

    So here’s to the spoiled, the entitled, the blissfully unaware—may you one day find the beauty in a single blade of grass, the wealth in a shared meal, the fortune in a breath of air without having to experience some godawful tragedy in order to gain perspective.

    Until then, the world waits, not so patiently, for you to regain consciousness and see the value of looking passed your sixth finger, which is now a mobile device, a screen serving as a detour to personal hell. We’re anxious for you to wake up and see that while the American Dream may have always been a nightmare, there’s so much still out there, sprawled out like a roadmap of a million smiley faces, waiting to be titillated , waiting to be traveled and truly seen.