You know how when you're lying in bed, relaxing your mind and body, and waiting to drift off to sleep

... when suddenly that one thing you did that one time years and years ago suddenly pops into your head and fills you with pulses of horror and embarrassment and then you end up lying awake for hours mortified by yourself and terrified that you're still being judged?

I still remember with piercing clarity the look of surprise and pain and disbelief on this client's face when I handed him a stack of presentation materials and somehow stabbed him--with blood! and that sickening feeling of grip when I pulled it out!--in the side of his hand with my freshly sharpened pencil. I still remember the stomach-dropping feeling of dread that that one little stab could result in massive financial carnage when this client sued us for negligence and dropped us as an agency.

And I ESPECIALLY remember the next half hour where I had to stand in my state of near-emesis in front our our bleeding, bandaged, possibly lead-poisoned client and his colleagues and MY supervisors as I presented a detailed, matrixed, multi-channel, almost-million-dollar campaign to everyone.

And Facebook not only brought it all back to me this morning, but reminded me that IT'S BEEN TEN YEARS.

Timber!

One year ago today, just hours into adding yet another new bipolar med to my ever-evolving cocktail, I stood up from a chair, walked three steps, blacked completely the hell out, fell Timber! onto the tile floor (which I cracked with my face because go big or go home), shredded myself eyebrow to chin on my shattered glasses, bit most of the way through my lip, loosened some teeth, got a concussion, and woke up in my sister's car holding a huge bloody rag to my face too confused to remember that Christmas had happened (or, for just a few glorious moments, that I was even bipolar) as she rushed me to the ER, where I looked so brutally horrifying that the nurses assumed I was the victim of a violent assault and three police officers visited my room well before the doctor showed up to give me stitches.

I came home covered in swelling and bruises and scabs and stitches and glue -- after telling the ER doctor in my foggy haze that my modeling days were over and I didn't care if he left scars all over my face but I vaguely remember him informing me that he still had a professional obligation to do his best -- and filled eyeballs-to-spine with a not-for-amateurs headache that brought crippling new levels to my understanding of pain ... and yet I still found a way to take time out of my busy schedule for a quick selfie to document the occasion for future biographers. (You're welcome, posterity!)

This Timber! event was directly linked to my new drug (called Fetzima, who sounds like a resident of the Anatevka demimonde in Fiddler on the Roof) that, as with all psychotropics, came with an alarming list of ramp-up side effects ... including abrupt blackouts. But I knew from a decade-plus of trial-and-error experience that I needed to tough out the first three or four weeks until the side effects subsided and the drug's level (or not level) of efficacy manifested (or didn't manifest) itself.

And despite its hyperdramatic entrance into the musical of my life, Fetzima more-or-less quickly proved itself to be perhaps the drug that effectively balances my serotonin and norepinephrine and keeps me (more or less) stable and engaged and functional and capable and able to go to work and do shows and take care of my parents and run races and buy shoes and buy more shoes and here I am a year later, scar-free (thanks, conscientiously ethical ER doctor!) (though it took a good six months for the scars to heal and the scar tissue where I bit through my lip to subside to the point that I could drink out of a straw again) and concussion-free (pro tip: you do NOT. EVER. want a concussion), and clearly in possession of an added year's mouth wrinkles and silver foxiness.

So if you're inclined, raise a glass and yell Timber! in my scab-free, concussion-free, fog-free, not-functional-free honor today. I'm gonna go out and keep living. Timber!

Do. Not. Even.

A pseudohuman who barely qualifies as a rudimentary intellect -- much less a functional president -- is clogging my downtown in a choking effluvium of losers (his favorite projection word!), half-wits and fiercely proud troglodytes for a rally tonight. So I'm wearing my pseudoscience T-shirt in a heartfelt tribute to them that will ironically soar miles over their echo-chamber heads.

I have rehearsal directly across the street from the man-boy rally. There are children in our show and we're all on high alert to protect them from the belligerent trash that is already littering our streets. A friend of mine was assaulted by a group of these rock dwellers as they started to coagulate downtown just hours ago. THE MINDSET OF IGNORANCE AND THE CULTURE OF PROVOCATION THIS HUMAN FILTH FOSTERS HAS ALREADY RESULTED IN THE ASSAULT OF A FRIEND OF MINE WHO WAS JUST WALKING TO HIS CAR FROM WORK.

Fair warning, trump trash: I am bigger than you, I am smarter than you, I loathe you and everything you breathe for, and if you start ANYTHING with any of my friends, show personnel, show kids or anyone else who actually matters tonight, I will finish it for you. I am not a violent person and I will contain the fury you fire up in me tonight unless you even try to start something. Then there are no rules.

You do NOT want to find out how serious I am about this.

Mr. Paul:

I don't even want to understand the vile psychopathy that caused you to think -- much less tweet to the world -- your Second Amendment justification to "shoot at the government" a year ago almost to this day. But you are the majority party of a president who just ten months ago called upon "Second Amendment people" to silence his political rivals ... the majority party of a president who blithely, recklessly bragged last year that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters" ... a majority party who works resolutely to dismantle and obstruct gun-control legislation that might very well have prevented what happened to you and your colleagues today. Your words to "shoot at the government" are as appalling as the quite literal shooting at the government this morning that you now describe as "a killing field — it’s really sick and very sad."

Really sick. Very sad.

I lost a friend in a violent terrorist attack. I lost a friend in a violent assault. I am haunted by the violent mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Pulse nightclub and countless other terrifying, preventable massacres. I don't wish violence and murder even on people for whom I have a visceral loathing. And I have a visceral loathing for you. For repeatedly -- proudly -- placing more importance on your party's interpretation of the Second Amendment and on the gun lobby and on allowing increasingly unrestricted access to assault weapons than on the safety and the very lives of our citizens. For recklessly inciting people through your position of influence and privilege to "shoot at the government." For having the gall to be shocked and appalled when the time bomb you helped build all but literally exploded in your hands this morning when an obviously disturbed man with obviously easy access to an assault weapon followed your charge and shot at the government. At you. At all of us.

Really sick. Very sad.

Measurably preventable. Immeasurably infuriating.

Irreparably heartbreaking.

Was it worth it?

Relive the horror here

No, really. That whole time you were filling the pot with water ... standing by the stove waiting for it to boil ... thinking and planning what you were going to do with it ... carrying it carefully over to the sleeping faggots so you wouldn't hurt yourself the way you intended to hurt them ...

Was it worth it?

Fifteen minutes of planning and preparation to inflict two lifetimes of agony and suffering and disfigurement and torment and humiliation. And for what? To prove that you're a man? To make sure those sleeping, defenseless faggots will forever know that they're less than human and deserving of unprovoked, unforeseeable physical violence?

It wasn't just enough to hate. And this wasn't just a fit of rage. You took time and effort to turn the ugly hatred you've been taught -- and that you chose to embrace -- into cruelty and barbarity so shocking ... so severe ... so sadistically permanent that you've physically and emotionally destroyed two lives and sent waves of horror and numbingly familiar pain into the hearts and minds of older gay people who've spent their lives suffering from and struggling to rise above your hatred and evil along with a new generation of gay kids who are just starting to learn about the hatred and evil they'll have to deal with the rest of their lives -- the hatred and evil perpetuated by you and all the people like you who work so tirelessly to make sure that the rot in their hearts and minds lives on to rot the hearts and minds of everyone else they can possibly influence.

And now. Forty years in prison. Where you'll no doubt be applauded by people like you and targeted by people who see how weak and cowardly you really are in the gay-hating/gay-obsessive hierarchy.

Fifteen minutes of planning. Two lives forever altered. A small man making a mighty splash of hatred over a new generation of gay people who can be hurt and the less-than-people who can hurt them.

All for only 40 years in prison.

Was it worth it?