Raw Power.

For Arle, who has never stopped believing in me.

The past few days have found me wrestling with monsters. Big questions, I mean. Important things to me that maybe don’t add up to much for others but mean a lot to myself. The battles have exhausted me, landed me in bed during daylight hours when I ought to be up doing things. I’ve found myself swiftly dropped out of a single decent moment into a different one so varied in vibe and scope and intensity that it almost seems unreal.

Depression is a strange animal. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when it is happening. And if you haven’t had your ass pummeled by it in the past then chances are that you might not even recognize it in retrospect. But lucky for me, I have been attacked. I have been cornered. I have been gut-punched and nearly destroyed by sadness so deep so often that I have become somewhat familiar with the thing if I’m being honest. To me, falling into deep depression is familiar now. Which scares the fuck out of me.

Why am I this guy?

Why have I continued to be one of those people who, despite all of the therapy and the meds, despite all of the long cool chugs from the modern self-help wells, keeps finding myself jacked up against the wall by forces dark, unforgiving, and inexplicable? The answer, even if there was one, is moot. Blues are, like anything else, shapeshifting all the time. What stands to reason today as a fundamentally sound reasoning for why a grown man might be drowning in a childlike pain today often slips into some other disguise tomorrow. Lucky enough to live through it multiple times, a victim of depression moves outwardly towards a bully light that teases with shafts of afternoon promise only to slip them all back into his dungeon pockets when good feelings seem imminent.

I don’t blame the force itself, either. The purpose of the existence of something as wickedly odd and strangely poetic as mental illness (or ‘mental health issues’, if you will) is not something that a mere mortal can ever pinpoint or explain. Those that attempt to paint even the roughest portrait of merely the essence of the thing are bound to look an ass when the work is done. String words together all you want. Hum your melodies and then lay down the tracks. Put on your eyeliner, stand in your foggy big stage lights. Try to make this blackness appeal to others so that they buy it in droves, it’s quite possible if you are good at playing the game. But in the end, you really don’t offer much up.

You Marilyn Mansun fuckface.

I rip my own veins out of my arms to get away from all that.

_____

Most people that I have known are hellbent on being liked or at least being accepted in some sort of group. This allows for a lot of things in life, chiefly: it can get you paid and get you laid. And that is really the dynamic duo at the core of existing in reality anymore. It has been for a long long time too. You need to get off so you don’t lose your goddamn mind all backed up like a sewer drain. And you need to make money so that you don’t fall away from being able to pay for the basics of survival like food, shelter, travel, iPhone, iPad, Spotify, Hulu Premium, and all that. What happens for most of us is that we consolidate our humanness, our pure natural potential for some kind of soulful growth and fantastical consciousness, into a uniquely well-defined box that we picked out off the rack. It’s the box that seems to suit us best and it allows us to define ourselves very very distinctly (so we think) by breaking us down into categories such as where we went to college/ what sports teams we root for/ what bands or artists we listen to/ where we live/ if we are married or single/ if we have kids or not/ on and on and on until you are never done deciding who the hell you are in a dizzying array of incessant choices being spit into your vantage by the godawful tornado of control called freedom or good life or happiness or whatever else the fuck they call it today with new terms being born every few seconds.

I’m not selling you anything here.

Well, except maybe a Thunder Pie subscription and then possibly some of my tangible art when I post that for sale. And also I guess I’m kind of selling you on this company Substack too, even though I don’t know much about them because they don’t give a fat rat’s titty about me even though I generate some loot for them. It ain’t enough to blip on their radar though. Isn’t that funny? You are helping out big corporate just by helping out little writer man because I like to staple myself to the sides of cunty giants barreling across the cultural landscape the same as you do, even when we have no idea what the fuck is going on!

Of course we don’t.

We were born with the intellect of a potato, dude.

And time will tell, I swear, that we only get dumber from that moment on.

So what about me? Where do I fall in the end? Do I want to be liked? Loved? Adored? If so, how much am I willing to pay to feel that?

I don’t understand any of it.

I wanted to feel love from inside of the thing, you know? The family kind. The strength of blood. The raw power of bonds born up out of true organic shared experience. I was raised up to believe that stupid shit like being in a hardscrabble rock-n-roll band with someone or having beautiful children with someone or even falling out of someone’s hot mess puss once upon a time long ago would more or less guarantee that there would be intricate connections/ tightly bound leatherish straps that held certain things together/ things that mattered/ things that counted/ things that could not dissolve because neither half of the connected cliffs would ever let them do so.

But I found out differently. Even when it seems as if things might be okay, they are not okay. Almost everyone you know and trust, they all have a point in the back of their minds where they will cut you loose without asking you what’s wrong? There is a kind of person out there who utilizes love in order to strengthen their own resolve to survive.

Do you know the kind of person I’m talking about? If you do, then you might get why I’m depressed to the point of laying in bed on sun-kissed September afternoons. But if you don’t…and I’m guessing you don’t (because you are lucky and blind or just lucky so far)…then you probably like to roll your eyes at me and think to yourself: I liked him better when he just shut up and played the guitar..

I see where you are coming from.

But fuck you.

I am not going away.

I am going to tell my story over time so that my kids understand that I was stronger than anyone. Crushed more than anyone. Fought harder to live than anyone. And died, when I died, standing taller and prouder than any of of the ones who burned the bridges and then blamed me for the fire.

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You know what I like? I like a good murder doc and some green olives with those red shits in the middle and a mushroom pizza and my Arle by my side. And some red ass wine too. I like having that red wine in the evening and if you are one of those people who doesn’t drink the wine or the alcohol anymore, well, we are no longer on the same ship, I guess. Doesn’t matter to me if it doesn’t matter to you. But I like the red wine and you have to understand that if you are going to understand me and my story.

Many times, I have tried to quit drinking for reasons I have never been too clear on. I have been able to maintain a healthy relationship with the wine (or the beer back int the day), so maybe the reasons for quitting it in the first place were ridiculous. Sometimes well-meaning people will reach out to me, or just put it all out there publicly on the social media, telling me that I ought to walk away from the wine if I want the depression to subside. I get where they are coming from but I also kind of laugh at their approach to my front porch too. I mean, motherfuckers don’t know me. People who quit drinking do that because they feel compelled to either save themselves from a bad bad storm or because they are not happy with their true selves and they are fishing for ways to show the world that they are good again.

I don’t know about you but I’m both of those things at once and pretty much 24/7 at times. And truth is: I still would rather sip at the Chianti or the Rioja come TV time than some seltzer water or whatever. Maybe that puts me on the Hemingway side of the tracks too, I don’t know. But if it does, it sure as hell has nothing to do with someone else advising me what I need to do.

My recollections of people across my life stabbing at sobriety are crystal clear. None succeeded for long. They eventually fell away from the clouds and back to the planet and when they did they were angry and thirsty and more wicked than before. I watched them drink from 3 in the afternoon until 3 in the morning. They cursed at me and blamed me for their misfortunes. Some went to the grave that way, swearing it wasn’t them/ it was me.

It was you, son, he said. You walked away from all this and now you are a lousy piece of shit.

He said this over the beeping of the heart monitor, from down under the tubes spread like cobwebs across his frail and slipping shell.

It was you, bro. It was you, man. It was you Serge. We quit drinking and then we drank again and then everything blew up and it had to be because of you since you were the one who kept looking at us like you didn’t buy any of it. Like you somehow knew that it wasn’t even just the booze, but it was the devil. The devil in our spirits. The badness in our ribs.

Christ, almighty.

Just leave me alone. Me and Arle. Our pizza and our murder docs. It’s a wonder we haven’t drank the whole goddamn town dry by now, you bastards.

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More than anything I aspire to create an unstoppable truth with my own kids and my step-kids that transcends the witchy bullshit I have had to live through. Walking away from people you once trusted because they were the people you are meant to trust is mind-numbingly difficult. It lives somewhere out beyond the visible ridge of tragedy, I swear. The loneliness that ensues after such a series of departures from family or friends in the name of survival, it has no name. It is Hell. It is unfair. It is devastatingly painful every second of every day and mostly that’s because the others take no stake in the real story. People lie all the time/ ALL the time/ just to keep their world spinning how they want it to. Most humans I have known are devout believers in the idea that looking at someone else and seeing their so-called blood on your hands is a big ass no-no.

I want something bigger. I want something better for my kids and for their world when I am gone.

I don’t care what price I have to pay to get it either. I am bound that way.

I have even had people I dated in the past come out fo the woodwork and chastise me for feeling like I had been wronged. And my own flesh and blood writing me texts and emails containing the worst kind of insults, things written in the precise spirit of destroying my sense of myself: insulting my attempts at trying to tell y truth through writing: bashing my attempts to legally support my own children: gaslighting me with tales of my own abusive behavior and my own unkindness when it was them that had done that for so very long.

I am not insane but I have been made to feel that way by design.

I did not deserve that.

I am a good dad and a decent guy and I deserved (and still deserve) to live my life peacefully the way I see fit. You don’t owe someone from your past your love and affection if you no longer feel that way about them. You just don’t. And if that makes some people uncomfortable because it inconveniences the narrative hat they’d prefer to play out (more advantageous to them!) then fuck them. No one else has the right in the is world or this life to tell you how you should be living.

Those that do, they are corrupted by an inner monologue that is one-sided and futile.

For no one can control another person forever.

In the end, it explodes in their face.

And the ravaged heart, if it manages to live, rises stronger and lovelier than anyone thought possible.
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All I can write would be truth through my eyes. I don’t need to lie or bullshit anyone. That’s the thing here. I’m an exceptional writer by many accounts, a rotten one by few. Even when I’m at my suckiest I’m still way better than others, certainly eons beyond people who might try to write about me. It isn’t boasting or hubris for me to state that. My magic , whatever i may possess, exists within my words. That’s where I can shine in this world and that is where I need to live if I ever want to march down into this valley again/ down through this miasmic mist/ me feeling sick from the years of other people smiling at the good people in my town/ other people charming the pants off of the people in my town/ other people whispering about me/ about Henry’s dad/ about Charlie’s dad/ about Milo’s (Blake’s, Violet’s) dad!/ talking smack about me and making sure that my town’s people buy it/ holding court and complimenting them so that they feel intoxicated by your presence/ THAT PERSON IS SO PERFECT! IT SIMPLY MUST BE SERGE WHO IS THE BAD GUY HERE!

Serge is disheveled and kind of hermity. Serge is talented maybe, but he’s not nearly as pretty as he once was and he isn’t seeming like he has it all together. Serge is not the kind of person we invite around anymore but that’s because we had to make our choice and we chose the one who makes us feel so good about ourselves!! Tee-hee-hee!

But think about this shit for a second, will you?

Why would dirty rundown mental case Serge be walking away from his blood family for no reason at all? You think I just lost my mind one day and quit the band I worked so hard to create? You think I’m just the kind of person who suddenly decided around the time I was getting married for the second time, this time to a thoughtful, kind, and compassionate human that I would tell my own mom to fuck off out of thin air because that’s just how I roll?!?

Come on.

You think I walked away from my brother who I shared so much in this world with simply because I wanted something outlandish from him and he wouldn’t do it so I said: OH HELL NO, BITCH! WE ARE DONE!

If you have been gushing at the altar of the opposite of me, then ask yourself two questions here.

Is Serge Bielanko someone you knew (when you knew me) to be the kind of man who would cut off his lifelong family for no reason and walk away from decades of self-made music and creativity for no reason?

Or is it possible…

Is it possible….

Is it possible…

…. that there was something else at play here?

Something where other people had to make a serious choice about their lives.

Did they want Serge or no Serge?

And is it possible that they were influenced, heavily and well so that they chose: no Serge.

Then blamed it all on me.

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It’s a lot, of course. It’s a lot to take in and why should you even give a damn, I guess.

Well, I’ll tell you why.

It’s because you might care about me. For all the right reasons. Maybe I am worth it. Maybe I am worth being alive. Maybe I’m a cool dude who got caught up in a horrible relationship and just wasn’t prepared for what someone else was capable of?

Maybe I’m telling you outright that I’m not okay.

But I want to be.

Please hear what I am saying.

_____

They chose: no Serge. Fucking cowards. Fucking pretenders now, with no Serge left in their lives. Fucking broken-hearted fools missing good ol’ Serge so goddamn much. And why? For what? For WHO? You got bamboozled because you are self-centered and lack self-awareness. You lost one of the all-time greats in your life (ME) because you were brainwashed like a dummy.

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Come at me with some other story. Any of you. I dare you. I challenge you. I beg you. I beseech you. Hear me loud and clear from down underneath all of this landslide I have been dying under for the past few years now.

Your word versus mine.

Or truth outright.

Bring it.

My kids deserve so much better than this shit show. And so do I. Depression isn’t always something easy to talk about. But I’m tired of not trying. My poisonous blues aren’t mine because I’m cruel, wrong, ignorant, unenlightened, toxic, or born under a bad sign. They are mine because I’ve been holding them in. Until now.

If you are someone or love someone who has been bamboozled by life into thinking they are the problem when- in fact- they are most certainly not, I understand. It’s almost as if a few select people have been texting one another, talking to each other over Easter hams or some shit, wink winking themselves into an unspoken conversation in which they all surmise, that in due time, Serge will probably kill himself and leave us standing there with our lies, free to memoraialize him to our benefit. All in the name of ‘Love’ and his kids.

Keep my father’s ashes. Steal my father’s money. Hell, he stole it himself. I don’t give a toss about the mists you cling to. Fuck that noise. I am a brilliant writer. I am a writer with the raw power to shake old hills down off their ancient shelf. To tumble what once was, and what seemed forever, down on top of these sleepy houses, these drowsy goobers. I can wake up what you thought was settled. I can resurrect what you thought you’d killed.

Look, friends. If you worship at the altar of someone who has hurt me, then fuck you. If you worship at the altar of someone who has told you you look cute and you just believed it because you are weak and naive, well… fuck you. Truth is, none of us is cute. And none of this is cute. None of it. I ain’t going down without telling my story. I refuse to not chronicle my truth for the ones who love me. My kids, my step-kids, my wife. Someone really did something wrong here and it wasn’t me. I am good and I am whole and I am imperfect, but I have soul.

_____

Silence, step off my chest.

Oppression, slip your binds from my wrists.

Raw power is at hand.

I have awaken for to live.

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Thank you so much for reading this piece today. I’ll never be heard and understood if I don’t start telling my truth. I don’t deserve to be treated like dog shit by folks I stood by for so very long. No one does.

If you ever feel unseen and you need to reach out to someone, reach out to me.

I will listen.

No strings attached.

Have a cool week.

Serge

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Thunder Pie is always edited by Arle Bielanko!

Subscribe to her Substack here! Letter to You!

Photos/ Art: Serge B.

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Things I Liked This Week.

• This article.

• This song.

• This Instagram page.

• This true crime doc.

• This YouTube vid.

• This podcast.

• This art.

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  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

  -Voltaire