Tag: hope

Mine Own Deformity

I am simmering with rage. I am sinking to the terrible depths of despair. I am blanking into the unremarkable mess of it all, bland and unfeeling. I am barely holding back tears of burning, biting sorrow. I am frustrated. Bitter. I stumble through murky mists and sit and stare at nothing.

I am listening to a song by an old band, a favorite of mine, Burlap to Cashmere, called “Scenes”. The lyrics talk of a fight, a war, and quotes from Richard the III, a play about a twisted man who plots to be king. It is a deep cut from my teenage-hood, a turbulent time of longing, depression, and deep angst.

As befits my mood, I am listening to the song on repeat and brooding on the meaning, and mine own deformity of mind.

I don’t necessarily want to unpack and lay bare all my feelings. This isn’t that kind of post, and really, that sort of talk belongs in therapy securely locked behind patient-therapist confidentiality. What I do want to talk about is the fact that mental illness, while ever present, is not insurmountable.

I haven’t written about my unending, unyielding fight against depression in a while, but I have done so quite a bit before on this blog. Mostly I try to keep things positive, and sunward.

Lately I have noticed a trend in my life, of ups and downs, and they are becoming quite predictable. I will have a day, or two, or three if I can stretch it, of productivity, good feelings, and steady energy. Following that, I will have a few days of sleep, lethargy, and feeling out of sorts and down. This evening is the first time in a long time I have felt dark.

If this sort of talk makes you uncomfortable, welcome to my world.

I am uncomfortable most of the time, usually tempted to hate the sunlight and the happy times, because I know that night and sadness inevitably follows.

I simply mean to say that tonight I feel so much. It’s confusing, irritating, and follows a day or so of blah. It’s exhausting. I want to feel me and myself and have that stretch into an unending now-ness of being who I truly am when I can shake off all else that drags me down. But I can’t always do that.

Why type all this? Why put it out into the world and rip away the facade to show my nakedest, truest self? To declare, once more, through the darkness and negativity that I. Am. Me. This is actually the anthem of my living day, that I. Am. NOT. defined by depression. I am myself.

Honestly I don’t feel that, and the voice in my head is telling me to delete all this, that it is shit, and I shouldn’t bother. But I know that voice. It is a filthy liar, and isn’t a reflection of reality. Without straying into therapy again, I have defeated that voice, despite it’s endurance, and don’t need to listen to it. I can direct the aimlessness, dispel the murk, and march steadily towards far green countries. I am the Hero I need so desperately in the fight.

I have tattooed on my arms two Elvish phrases: aure entuluva and auta i kelomia. They mean “day shall come again” and “night is passing away” and too often I fail to read and comprehend why I have those marked forever on my body. It is for times such as these, when I need to stand and continue forwards. That’s why I keep going, because even the darkness must pass and the light will shine out the clearer in its wake.

I turn off the song, turn down the lights, and settle into bed. As Gandalf the Grey, the wise, the friend, once said: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” And I am deciding to continue to fight against my depression and have a better day with the rising of the sun.

Mental illness may feel strong, but I am stronger by far.

Check Up: 2021

I’ve been real on this blog before. Just search for “depression” and you will find a bunch of posts by me talking about my long-term association with the range of depressive expressions in life. I struggle with feeling anxiety, “classic” blues depression, and lethargy. I often sleep a lot; I can’t find the motivation to do what I want to do; and I find it difficult to engage in my hobbies and artistic endeavors. It is extremely frustrating. For instance: today I took a shower and changed my watch band, and that is the sum total of my productive energy thus far. As it goes, that is a win.

But I am increasingly dissatisfied with how my life is right now. I want to do and be more. I want to reach beyond. I want to own my depression instead of having it own me. I don’t even know if that is possible, but that is my new goal here heading into the end of 2021. Already we are eight months into the year, and I feel I haven’t really done anything.

I have a book that I am working on with my wife that I haven’t worked on in a long time. I have a book of poetry that I am trying to compile that I haven’t touched since vacation a few weeks ago. I have a podcast I want to launch in 2022. And I want to get back into building a little bit with LEGO, photographing my Star Wars Black Series action figures, LEGO minifigures, and other toys. I have dreams and aspirations. I just can’t, quite, reach them all right now.

To be fair, though, in this year thus far I have beaten Covid-19, re-launched my blog, took on a second part-time job, and had a week of vacation. So objectively I am not doing so bad from a “macro” point of view. From the microcosm of everyday life, however, I am still coming up very short. Most days I do nothing, or very little. My forays into the arts come in large segments in short amounts of time. I blog irregularly, albeit a lot more than I used to (thank you, Bluetooth keyboard!). So again, I am not doing that poorly. But I want more. So how do I get there?

I think a good first step is to check in with my doctor. Maybe there is a medication adjustment I can make. With the sleeping, perhaps I should have another sleep study done or see if my CPAP needs tweaking. I want to make sure I am solid from a medical point of view. Psychologically, I feel, even with my frustrations and inability to act, I am doing well. I don’t have the huge swings of emotion that I used to have. I don’t have a lack of direction, and I don’t have a morosity or deep blue sea of overwhelming downness. What I do have, simply, is an inability to act, to get started, and to do. And I sleep a lot. (Damn! but that is frustrating.)

The good news is I have an appointment with my doctor on Thursday. I have another side issue that has crept up that needs to be discussed, and while I am there I want to ask her about these other things, the sleepiness and the lethargy. Maybe together we can get a handle on this particular dragon and see about looting the hoard it is currently, ahem, sleeping on. I hope. The next step will come after that.

All I know is I have been beaten down and motionless for far too long. I want to get going. Hopefully with a little help, determination, and hard work (because I just know that that is going to be a part of it) I can get where I want to be. I am no stranger to hard work. Done it before; don’t enjoy it – but I can do it. If that is what it ultimately takes, I am down for it. All I really need to know is what direction to go in. Even if the going gets tough, as the old saying goes, I am tough enough to get going. (Hoo rah!) But seriously. I really want my life to change and the only way it will is to make the effort to change it.

If you are struggling, it is ok to ask for help. Help is how anyone gets anywhere. Sometimes it comes from a source you do not expect, or a direction in which you are not looking. But accept it when it arrives. Use it to launch yourself forward. Along the way, acknowledge what you are already achieving. Give yourself the credit you deserve. Just today, one of my heroes, Adam Savage, reminded me that it is a demonstrable fact that humanity minimizes success and overemphasizes failure. I have done it just here in this post. Look at how much I have actually achieved versus how much I talk about what I haven’t. So don’t do that, RedBeard, or anyone else who is listening. You are doing great! And can do better!

I head into the rest of my day with a renewed sense of purpose and a new determination. I can do this. I will check back in and let you know how I am doing, but for now, I am optimistic. I know the next step to take, so I am taking it and trusting that the rest of the steps ahead will reveal themselves. They have so far, so there is no reason to expect that they won’t in the future. As the late, great Stan Lee used to always say: “Excelsior!”

Diaspora

I feel more hopeful today, like a corner has been turned. The word of the day is diaspora and I’ve applied that idea personally. I hope you enjoy.

Time to gather my wayward-
thoughts? feelings? emotions?
However I call them, they must answer.
I need the diaspora to end.
I need myself, once scattered,
to be one and whole
for the rest of my days.

Too long I’ve been flung
wide and far on the surface
of many troubled waters.
Time to aim the flotilla home,
time to guide the armada to harbor.
Then I can scuttle the fleet,
and sail no more away from home.

The homeland lies empty, waiting.
I long to return with unity at last!

Covid-19

We are great ones for rushing
where angels fear to tread.
Although now I suppose
they are afraid to infect heaven
with our earthly woes.
Which is why Abram still awaits
his three messengers.
Even in the desert, disease spreads
like so many locusts on the breeze.

I keep hearing about distancing:
one meter, or three feet,
to avoid being walking vectors;
you know, to flatten the curve?
Since when did the news
sound like geometry class?
Ironically, school is out for spring
and possibly summer, too.
All the kid’s dreams are the nightmare.

I read the news, and read my friend’s
faces for hope. All I hear is fear.
My own is so loud it’s a wonder
I can even make out that of a planet
crying for alleviation.
We are all in the same galactic boat,
sailing on black waters.
So, stay in your bunk, and I’ll sway in mine.
Together we’ll arrive at journey’s end.

Look: many have passed into what awaits.
Many more will, too, before this ends.
We never were guaranteed the next sunrise.
It may this that sends us away.
It may be another 70 years before that great
migration of soul and spirit, that grim bus
careening through metaphysical streets reaping.
Continue to look both ways before street crossing.
Lather, rinse, repeat until it’s your time to say goodbye.

So, bring this home…
…which is where we all are anyway.
Where’s the hope, the good news,
the twinkle in the eye to show the mirth?
Is it clear skies and nature’s rebirth,
a global spring in the step
of them what survive?
Maybe. I rather think it’s the small
acts of service and love that will save us all.

Celebrating Life

On April 3rd, The Fast and the Furious 7 will hit theaters, and with it the sharp reminder of franchise star Paul Walker’s death last year. He died doing what he loved: driving.

Today, March 12th, is my birthday.

There was a time when I wasn’t sure I was going to see Furious 7. I wasn’t even sure that I was going to see today. That time was not that long ago, and I haven’t told anyone what I am about to say now, except for my therapist who helped me live through it.

Several months ago now, but still recent enough to haunt me, I was sure I was going to die, and not in any macabre way, I was sure I was going to kill myself.  I literally saw no future beyond January 1st. My depression had started to overwhelm me, and I was drowning in it. Days were literally as well as figuratively dark and cold. I looked up and saw no sky; I looked out and saw no horizon. I was alone and I was suffocating on nothing.

I had one thing before me: my sister’s wedding. I had nothing after that. I was determined that I was going to attend the wedding and have one last good time and then end it all. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” as the saying goes. I knew I was going to see my immediate family at the wedding, and so I could say one last goodbye and be done with life on this terrestrial sphere.

The wedding was as wonderful as could be. It was warm, sunny, and the happiest of occasions, but a darkness and a chill had settled in my core. I knew my days were shorter rather than longer. Once the wedding week was done so was I. I used up any positive energy I had left smiling for pictures and keeping it together so as to not ruin my sister’s big moments.

I returned from the wedding and stared down a calendar of days until the 1st of January. I manage to stave off hospitalization because I told my therapist I wouldn’t do anything to myself until at least then, but I knew that day was coming.

I welcomed it. I cherished the thought of the final release. When one has nothing to live for, one tends to think of the end as blissful nothingness. I hoped, and still do, that there is no afterlife. One life is enough pain and struggle and weariness without another life to endure. When I do die, I want that to be it, for it all to be over. I don’t want to live again, or to  live eternally. As the philosopher Yoda said on his death bed, “Forever sleep: earned it, I have.” I want to earn my forever sleep.

More than anything, that dark December of last year, I wanted my forever sleep. My weariness screamed for it.

And then, just when it was almost over, just when I had the bottle of pills in my hand, when I grew tired of setting it back down, unopened, just then I found a glimmer of something else.

Hope.

Hope for a future, for a better tomorrow shone through my deepest depression. I decided to make a radical decision for life instead of against it. I decided that January 1st was not going to be my last day on earth. I can’t tell you exactly where that minuscule drop of hope came from, or why I decided to delay death, but I did. In my mind, I simply decided to see exactly how long I could stretch life. At the time, I didn’t know how long that would be. At least another day. At most, a week. Here I am, three and a bit months later, still going.

Along the way, I decided to move to Texas, to physically grasp a brighter, warmer, sunnier future. I decided to leave all I could behind me, and strike out for something new. I am making my run for the border, eating and drinking and being merry for tomorrow I live.

In just a few weeks, I will sit down in a theater and watch the Fast and the Furious 7, and silently, simultaneously, mourn Paul Walker’s death and honor his life, and I will do what I have been doing since January 1st: I will live fast and furiously, one quarter mile at a time, until I have earned a natural end and a forever sleep.

No more do I contemplate my own death, at my hand or by Nature’s. It will come when it comes. For now, there is living to do. And never more have I been aware of that than today, on my birthday, as I turn 28 and start a brand new year. I honestly did not think I would see today, but here the sun sets and this day is almost over. Another one is coming.