In recognition of World Mental Health Day October 10, an international day for global mental health education, awareness, and advocacy against social stigma, I invited Max Blaska, writer, filmmaker, and mental health warrior, to write about his journey. This is the first of a two-part essay.

By Max Blaska

“You are not actually going to write that are you?” “You can’t ask him that, he is just going to say no and you will embarrass yourself.” “This is as good as it gets. You are going to be stuck in your dead end job forever.”

We all have these thoughts. They come and go and usually they are able to be pushed aside like those little tiny insects that congregate around light posts. But that is for normal people. For people with moderate to severe anxiety or depressive disorders, that voice is around almost 24/7.

In 2022 these thoughts almost killed me. But I decided not to let them destroy me.

That is what these essays are about. As I said, everybody has this voice but not everybody is able to show that voice on screen. My name is Max Blaska. I am a writer, filmmaker, and mental health advocate. This is a story of drive fighting entropy, happiness fighting sadness, and hope fighting despair.

Writing is hard when you have an inner critic. Every writer has one. But when you have a mental illness, that inner critic can be paralyzing. He edits everything. It makes you dread taking pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. But I can write. I have done it before.  I will do it again. I am doing it right now.

I have always been a storyteller. I directed half-written/half-improvised murder mysteries with the neighborhood kids when I was in elementary school. I can’t call myself an author. An author has discipline. My anxiety and depression make discipline very hard to come by. But I am becoming better every time I write. One of my favorite quotes is from Stephen King. “You can learn to be a writer. But you can’t learn to be a storyteller.”

It is amazing that you can live years of coasting, going to a job, watching TV, eating, and sleeping.  Each day bleeds into the next. But then something happens that changes everything.

For me it was a trip to Bangor, Maine in the summer of 2021 after the Covid restrictions were lifted.  I went with my cousin Olivia. Acadia National Park was beautiful but what really stood out was the tour of King Country with SKTours. We saw the manhole where Stephen King was inspired to write Pennywise, the human cemetery that was the location for “Pet Semetery,” and more. I told James Tinker, the tour guide, that I co-wrote four short films. He told me about the “Dollar Baby Program” in which King contracts with students and very, very independent filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories into a film for the cost of one dollar.

I knew what story I wanted to adapt immediately. “Last Rung on The Ladder” was a short story about suicide. I knew I wanted to make a film that touched on mental illness and suicide. August 2022 was going to be the 25th anniversary of my Aunt Betty’s suicide, I loved my Aunt Betty. She was the one who introduced me to Stephen King in the first place. When she babysat me, we would watch movies that 11-year-old me maybe shouldn’t have seen. She also was a mental health advocate. She struggled with bipolar disorder and was one of the pivotal figures of the mental health consumers’ movement in the ’70s through early ’90s.  She struggled with bi-polar disorder. We lost her to it in 1997.

King’s story in the “Night Shift” collection is about a high-powered attorney who gets a letter from his estranged sister. She reflects on a time when they both were kids playing a dangerous game in the barn; when the ladder she was climbing broke and she almost died. Quick thinking on her brother’s part saved her. Her last words in the letter say that it would have better if he hadn’t saved her. He received the letter after her suicide.

I wanted to show the turmoil of the brother. First I changed the brother from a lawyer to a pop psychologist, making the backdrop of the film a NAMI-like organization’s awards banquet. Larry Gatling, the brother, was receiving an award for fighting stigma of mental Illness but his own stigma against his own sister’s sex work killed her.

The previous year I was working with the Super Better therapy system. The key is to make fighting your personal demons into a game. You have secret identities, power-ups, quests, allies, and bad guys. This is when I took on the mantle of Max the Mental Health Warrior and created the Carnival Barker of Despair as a bad guy. That was the name I gave this unrelenting voice, and I made him a character in the film.

I have been battling this depression and anxiety for most of my life, I had my first anxiety attack when I was ten and had my first depressive episode when I was fourteen. I have been through many therapists and even more medications. I would get better and I would get worse. Never had serious suicide attempts. Got really close only two times. The last time in 2022.

It didn’t take long to write the script. But something was missing. The character of Kitty, the sister, just wasn’t jelling. So I asked a friend and established screenwriter Karla S. Bryant to help me. She made Kitty come alive.  Once the screenplay was finished, I found a producer and a director.

I first met the director, Jeff Blankenship, in 2015. I was at a screening of my first short film. A friend and cast member, Tim Towne, suggested that I go to lunch with a few of his friends. The Barker was screaming, “Don’t go. You will embarrass yourself.” I forced myself to go and I am glad I did. It was a meeting for the 48 Hour Film Festival where a team has to write, direct, act, edit, and score a five-to-seven-minute film in 48 hours. I joined their team and a had great time. If I had listened to that voice, I might not have ever met him. 

We cast “Last Rung” in late spring of 2022, looking forward to beginning shooting in the fall. That summer was very bad for me. A longtime friend got really sick and almost died. To help him and his wife out, I was house-sitting for them and their four dogs in a small house. They drove me crazy with their constant barking and whining.

But by the end of that summer, it looked like the project was dead. Our producer wasn’t really doing his job of getting locations, having meetings, and the other details needed to make a production.  I also realized on the anniversary of my aunt’s suicide in late August, that I was the same age she was when she ended her life. My Carnival Barker of Despair was having a field day. “You know this film will never be made, right?” “You would be better off dead.” “So, you can’t kill yourself because you don’t want to leave your parents behind. Why don’t you kill them and then kill yourself?”

This last thought scared the living daylights out of me. I committed myself to Miramont Behavioral  Health Facility. It was the worst 48 hours of my life. The screaming, the indifferent staff, the BBQ sandwiches that tasted like they went through the digestive tract already. This place was not helping me. I had to get out. Thankfully, with a lawyer’s help, I got free of the place.

I knew that I could not kill myself. That was not an option. But the film was falling apart. My decades-long friendship was falling apart. I was falling apart. I was a 45 year old single male without a job or a future who knew he couldn’t survive like this.  Something had to give. But sometimes when you are at your lowest ebb, that is when things really start to change.

To be continued…

© 2024 Max Blaska

Max Blaska is a 47-year-old writer and filmmaker who has been fighting against mental illness and the stigma that comes with it for most of his adult life. He believes that creativity is one of the most important weapons in this fight. His latest short film “Last Rung On The Ladder” is getting awards and playing the film festival circuit.