Tag Archives: Anxiety

FMLB Week 3 Begins With A Boof

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Very bad start to my week as the injury bug is slamming me Susan like $5 flapjacks. Man, Clevenger, now Snell is gone leaving a huge hole in my rotation. I lost Bellinger to a foot injury, Mondesi isn’t even starting tonight… I mean fuck! What happened to Bryce Fucking Harper? I’m also trying to guess if I missed out on Flaherty getting hot for Corbin instead. I could be fucked.

The scores are relatively close, but against any other team I’d be demolished. I have negatives in to roster slots after 2 days of action. Out of 7. Sigh.

Been down this road before, but it does bite a bit to be in line to lose to FaceMaster V. I’m never going to hear the fucking end of it. He’s intolerable enough as he is. Even if he’s 0-for-the-next-whatever, he’s lording this over me until the end of time regardless. I’d like for there to be some realization that I have a stacked team full of players that could, at the drop of a hat, break out for 50+. My starters are valuable but will be depleted after losing two of my best this week. Snell dropped something heavy on his toe… like a big pole made of granite or some shit. I’m looking at that 10-day DL tag going “yeah fucking right, he’s going on the 60-day DL after the x-rays come back. I’m going to find a way to play the waivers, like I have in the past. I’m not nearly as effective at the baseball waiver scene as I was with the NFL. My player knowledge is still growing.

****

Update: Arenado, Ozuna hit HR with peeps on the pillows. 3 DPT. Contreras at -3.75. I mean fuck. 2 K, 1 GIDP. Fucking catchers. It’s like the NFL TE roster spot of the FMLB universe.

FMLB Week 2: Final

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Slammy Jammy emerged a massive winner over this week’s opponent: DerpyDerpDerp. Shortstops are coming through as anticipated but for peers, not because of the assists. This also has me pondering the Put Out stat again for next year. I like awarding points on relevant plays and PO is a star that has to be kept. It’s a part of infield mechanics.

I’ve hit a lot of home runs so far, plus fielding a shitload of modular infielders makes even the OF roster spot more viable. Bellinger is a good example of that flexed infielder in my OF slot. I had Story, Turner, Lindor and Mondesi to start the year and they went: mediocre, disabled, disabled and raking, respectively. Freeman and Arenado on the corners have largely been a let down but never count those guys out for long. Nolan looks like he’s getting hot again.

My pitching got slammed opening day but has suffered Clevenger on the extended DL. I had Snell put in a good start with Osuna and Trienen showing potential in relief. I’ve been whammy whammed with injuries so far, while all the other teams are doing fine in that regard.

I can’t wait to check out the record book tomorrow after the scores go final. They track some cool statistical accomplishments on the site. I’ll post a few tomorrow.

2-0 and my roster moves for tomorrow are pending. Probably going to shuffle a couple spots since I lost a pitcher.

FMLB Week 1: Results

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A win for my team this first, very long game week. I’m starting to see a few league trends:

Strikeouts are killer at -.75

Singles and Runs should have their values juxtaposed

Some of the bonehead plays are being punished too harshly

Player value is in avoiding calamity. Catchers seem to consistently let me down, much the way the TE did in the NFL

The 1 day unlock is FUCKING AWESOME, and adds an element of difficulty that mirrors FNFL

I can see PO should have been a stat in my league

Some days are all negative, others are conveniently rocket ship

Did I mention about the strikeouts?

I just saw Dan Plesac drop a solid 35-foot putt on live tv, funny as hell how his fellow hosts reacted. Go look it up I’m not sure about the distance. They went apeshit.

Boingy

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I was feeling a little “up” after all the hooplah, but I feel like that’s all wearing off. I don’t think I’m handling things well, but I am trying to improve my behaviors. I’ve left a shadow on the wall of the future, and that’s the best I think I can do given all the turmoil in my life. I try to be present in my reality, but it is often quite painful, and negative. To escape it solves nothing.

I did some work on my peer story for the IOOV program I just got trained in. It will be refreshing to tell the story of how I came to be where I am in terms of my mental wellness. I’m not saying that journey is at all over, mind you. Recovery is never reached, it is only reached for. I hoe to inspire others to seek the help they need to improve their lives.

I think I did good in encapsulating my story in a few minutes. Like 9 to be exact.

I think it’s worth telling because it wasn’t perfect at all. it was a flawed journey of pain and suffering for all. I spared none in my path of destruction. Still even. Still I’m hurting people and leaving bodies in the dirt. I regret that I can’t be friends with the people who’s path diverges from mine. We are all so apocalyptic.

But I’m not an idiot and I do learn to grow and adapt. This whole communication with girls business being a good example of just how easy it can be to get my perspective destroyed and responses all fucked up. I try, I fail, and then I just try something different next time.

I don’t know, Blog. I feel lost sometimes, and other times I feel great. It’s perplexing, this Bipolar disorder. I think after I teach class tonight solo, I will feel pretty good. That activity tends to heal me, or at least boost me up a bit. What am I doing, though? Ah, at this point… who fucking knows? Survive.

Disregard Them

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It’s clear I’ve been grappling with my self-created frustrating circumstances over the last few days. I’ve also tried to reconcile what I think I’m looking for out there in the world. I came up well short asking too much of A and not able to see the limitations of S through the veil of sex. That’s my fault, and the hurt on both sides is real.

As I do with most life-obstacles, I grow and change in order to survive new circumstances. I have shackled myself to burdensome people in the past and continued to do so until, well, now. I’m grasping for meaning in a place where there isn’t any to be had. It’s a shame I wasted my time in this way, but I’ve also learned a bit about my “wants” when it comes to friendships and beyond.

I need to thicken up my skin, since my lifetime of rejection and dismissal seems headed in the same disappointing direction it always has. I’ve shed my concern for those who don’t fit into my life. Disregard is all I have left. I feel no shame. This is my life last time I checked, and I’m not wasting any more of it investing resources where there is no value in doing so. Nothing I hate more than being unappreciated for the person I am while pouring unrequited, liquid praise on those in my circle.

So enough is enough. No more scratching around the junk pile for the scraps of a structure long demolished. No more reckless attachment to inadequate figures regardless of physical urges. The future must have someone of genuine, undeniable value to be worth pursuing. I’ve said also that I’m only interested in going it alone in my reality, and that’s still true, pretty much. I’m not making any extraordinary effort to find someone, because I really don’t need anyone. I’m consistently doing better mentally when no one else is involved.

Confidence has always been here, it just got smothered by disappointment. Trying and failing can be tough, but even now, my introspective processes are on-point and rational. I can’t say the same for A or S. I’m angry still at them. I feel like I had so much to give, yet, I get tossed aside like a soggy jizz rag. No more I say!

Well…

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Okay, so I’m pretty angry that my social experiment has totally failed. What was I thinking, strangers don’t get me, past acquaintances still don’t care about me, yet, this was the place I looked to in order to rekindle my connections with people? I put my faith in people who have disappointed me numerous times in the past and total strangers who know nothing about me at all?

I’m an idiot, period. Ima fry because I’m stupid. I’m alone because I invest in projects that I should leave on the junk pile. I need no one but myself.

Yet, I felt the need to appease my aching loneliness with a remedy destined to disappoint and aggravate. S was a sallow and dimensionless simpleton. A has been a disappointment in all capacities since I got with her. WHAT THE FUCK AMI DOING?!?!?

Laugh all you want. I deserve that. My pain and suffering can be your amusement because it’s deserved. I earned this anger and humiliation. I blame no one but myself. Hopefully I contracted HIV and will die soon.

I’ve never cared about how people read me. If you come here thinking some valuable content is going to be dispersed think again. I’m the biggest fucking idiot I’ve ever heard of, and I have not ceased to amaze myself with my own stupidity and foolishness. Go ahead and get a good laugh you troglodytes. Fuck you all. You never did a fucking thing for me despite my pouring my soul out here night after night.

I’m losing my mind. I’m really fucking going insane right now. I hate this. I hate every moment that no one gives a fried shit about me. No one will, ever. I’m alone. I have been scraping the scum to find someone who will care about me, but even I don’t. I wish I were dead.

Emulated

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I often gain inspiration from my partners. I copy their positive behaviors out of admiration. It is the potential to make me a stronger person that I relish. I have the drive, but love provides the focus. I have been scraping for this and failed to find it. I know I need to be conscious of that desire to emulate before I partner with anyone else.

Reset Button

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It’s the end of the week, but just the beginning in a lot of ways. I keep learning and failure is my teacher.

I need to find better ways to cope with my sadness and loneliness. There’s no external that can mend the internal.

I’m disappearing into routine. There has been too much pain in my heart. Am I done providing a catalyst to destructive situations? Why look where there is nothing to find?

Alone is best.

Soften

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I was feeling fairly apocalyptic earlier. That has subsided a bit. I am still unhappy, but in a better place mentally. It’s frustrating. I am glad for my friends and support team.

I wish I knew how I was going to get through this, but I know I’m not going to have anyone with me. I will walk alone most likely. Maybe that’s for the best.

I’ve hurt so many. I live with that.

Eject?

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I feel a little better than I did last night, but it’s clear things in my local environment are falling apart. The implosion has been underway for some time with no change, as I stated earlier. I can only control myself, and the outcomes I am directly responsible for. I can choose what to do with my time, where to invest it and how to be effective in my limited capacity. Some words to describe my reality would be: oblivious, dysfunctional, malignant and frustrating. Do you see why someone who is geared towards helping people would be acutely frustrated by people who are totally unwilling to partake in progress? Or even in denial about how they think they are helping when it is just more of the same bullshit?

My social world is dwindling down to a tiny number of relevant people with only the premature seeds of potential still un-watered in the soil. I’m going to stick with what I know is working and just play the rest as it comes. No more reaching out, no more looking for external answers. All the truth I need is already within.

I guess this is true of all the aspects of my life. I am always open to change when it comes, and ready to face new challenges. Even in the flickering spark of possibility there is hope, though it can be utterly extinguished over and over again. I’m not checking out, but I am withdrawing my limbs and sheltering in place until something “real” happens. There are consequences to bad behavior, just like kids learn. You can’t get away with being damaging or acutely oblivious without incurring some consequence. Now is the time for consequences.

 

Unchanging

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I don’t know why, but I always seem to hope for unrealistic things. For example: I hope that people in my world would stop and change their destructive behaviors and instead nothing changes. I hope that self-honest introspection would be seen as an aspiration, but still nothing changes. I’m mired in frustration; perplexed by a world of decay and stagnation while I try to emerge. I think I’ve finally snapped.

I’m not in psychosis, but I’m just done with the people that erode my healthy behaviors and perpetuate dysfunction. I’m tired of shallow and meaningless exchanges that build a nothing road to nowhere. Why am I wasting my time, skills and love on people who don’t recognize what I have to offer? I’m such a special person, and yet, I subject myself to a reality that will never comprehend all that I am.

This is my frustration. It is massive, unrecognized and undesired. I have very few people in my world that really matter or make a difference. My home is a wasteland. My social circle has chunks missing from it. My redemption is the hard work I put in to help people advance their lives towards prosperity, dignity and stability. That’s no joke. I really do help people, every day. Meanwhile I’m surrounded by resentment, disdain, denial and escapism. My role models are the worst people I know.

So Blog, I’m detaching. Fuck all that noise. I’m launching into independence of self if not of physical location. Soon enough I will be subject to a calamitous and changing circumstance, but the torture involved is unrelenting while totally unappreciated. I’m frustrated beyond calculation.

I tried to expand the bubble and I shouldn’t have. The world is just jam packed with idiots, mindless wanderers and deplorables waiting to poison my reality. Are you ever just sickened by the life you lead? Do you ever wish you could permanently exit? I think about it now. I didn’t used to, but now I do. This life is frustrating because all the parts that need to change are completely unchanging. Stuck in dysfunction. Sinking into the stagnation in a painfully slow fashion.

I do wish I wasn’t here anymore. Nobody sees me. Nobody is even slightly capable beyond a slim margin of well-traveled veterans of my bubble. Do you know how desolate it feels to know we’re all just faking real life? Every day is a pretend version of actuality. Every interaction is make believe. I humor my way through, but why? They don’t see me now, what difference would it make if I were dead? I’d still be just as ineffectual and easy to disregard.

I feel acutely hopeless. Lost. I don’t know how long I can tolerate this rancid rot that fills my nostrils. Denial. Revulsion. Despair. Goodnight.

Lessons

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Well I did learn that distant relationships with fleeting intimacy don’t work for me. It’s just not fair to S in the end though. I did just abruptly leave after waffling in uncertainty about the irritating nature of our arrangement. It’s my fault for not at least explaining anything. It’s just not possible for me to healthily have that kind of relationship with someone. I snapped off. Blacklisted. Gone. Back to the cell with my broken toys. I am catalyzing. The reagents for my departure were well in place and only suffered my ignition. This is my fault though. She definitely could handle it while I could not at all. She’s right to be angry, but it will fade when her world moves on and I become irrelevant. Or, more irrelevant than I was before. I was already little more than an afterthought, which is not much to lose at all.

Lametown

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Well my escapade with S has cratered into the fertile soil of regret. Not that it was unexpected, but I was hoping for some semblance of closeness and got nothing of the sort (either physical or mental) Isolation pervades, and I grow increasingly alone on my island. This is typical, since most encounters I have attempted in the past end in revulsion, rejection and outright dismissal. This time though, I was just acting on the flammable material that was prepped and ready to be set ablaze. S has no real interest in me (or anything going on in my life) and I in her (arguable, I was denied access to her life in full), so it was natural that once the sex was gone there was zero left to hold us together. She was upset at me for walking away again (because I tried once already), but I need to say goodbye.

Realistically, I’m giving up on trying to build this bridge and evict myself from my unwanted isolation. There isn’t anyone who fits the criteria that I keep hoping someone will meet. This is a hopeless procedure and, frankly, I was doing much better without trying to make something happen. I am tired of smashing inadequate results into a lasting mold that fits my bizarre reality. There is no future where settling for whatever wanders past is the right choice, and it never has been. Not saying that happened, but all the applications for building something of value have been turned down upon review.

I don’t harbor anything more than a feeling of sadness, since I am shining brighter than I ever have. Yet, most women I meet can’t wait to escape my radius. I think it’s back to reason and the incremental successes of life. A and I are as far apart as we ever were in our past relationship… with no real gratification, feedback or anything to judge the ongoing value of continuation. What is this simple chat we have? Is it anything other than an activity to occupy a few moments of my time? Is there meaning to be had in these defused and innocuous statements? I tire. I think this might also be a product of my frustration and not indicative of the pattern. I feel no less alone like I hoped I would, or like I did at first. I quickly discovered just because you have people to talk to, doesn’t actually mean anyone really sees/hears you. Or cares.

Profile removed. Chapter adjourned. Now just to clear out the jetsam that has accumulated and start over again by myself. Disappointing? Oh hell yes. Crippling? No, not at all. I have done what my instincts were asking me to do. I tried, I had, I lost. It seems like the road to partnership has been overrun with brambles and foul smelling carcasses galore. I have little reason to go back there until long after the stench of decay has cleared out.

NPR – Capital Public Radio PSS Article

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Here I am with my first interview for a media outlet!

http://www.capradio.org/articles/2019/03/28/peer-mental-health-workers-could-become-state-certified-under-proposed-california-law/

Shelf Of Issues

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I don’t know what functional looks like right now. I’m taking the walls of the pit to find a way out. There is no out. Prepare for an onslaught of allegories:

Instead of feeling stable, I feel like there are issues that just get stashed on a shelf somewhere out of sight to promote the impression of not being overloaded. There’s no argument that the stashy is not s solution by any stretch. It’s not even a temporary anything.

Who am I right now? There’s a bunch of different personas colliding in here. Vicarious and pragmatic alike, with a sprinkling of ardent skeptics and jubilant idiots. I don’t know what to make of the lot and their shouting. Who emerges… the ambiguity of leadership falls in line with the rest of my reality.

I don’t know. I think that’s the real deal right now. I don’t fucking know what I’m doing or who I’m failing at trying to be. Am I this adaptable fellow? He’s all bendy and detached from concern. Do I have my “scrutinize the fuzzy shit out if this” pants on? I don’t much like those pants now that I have them on. Have you ever felt utterly lost in trying to understand who you are?

I do admire that adaptability I seem to be warmed beside the glow of. Hopefully it also doesn’t destroy me.

Night Guy Does A Mood Album

by in Creative Writing, Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey Blog, Night Guy here.

This other guy is a kook pretty much now that I’m going over all these notes and things left behind. Anyway, this music medium is how the previous administration tried to convey or interpret a state of being or emotional narrative for processing and comprehension. I’m not as much in to all the fluffy shit that goes along with this activity, but I guess I can scrutinize what has already been made available for me to cast judgement upon. See this album as a prognosis for the former occupant, and an indicator of the turbulent future he carved out for himself. This album is, basically, how it is; sad, stark and laid out there for all to see. Please don’t send me mail about the deeds of the prior administration, it will all get forwarded to the daytime guy.. or whoever he was. He may have fled the country.

**UPDATED**

So after listing to it a couple of times, it just wasn’t Night Guyish enough. I spruced this bad boy up with some silly putty and electric shocks. Enjoy!

Mood Album: Emo-Slave Resurrection v. 2 (Night Guy Edition)

Length: 77 Minutes

  1. For Your Love – Fleetwood Mac
  2. More Than A Woman – Bee Gees
  3. Chains Of Love – Erasure
  4. Ventura Highway – America
  5. Rikki Don’t Lose That Number – Steely Dan
  6. The Other Side Of Life – The Moody Blues
  7. Don’t You Know What The Night Can Do? – Steve Winwood
  8. Feels So Good – Chuck Mangione
  9. The Night Owls – Little River Band
  10. You Don’t Have To Cry – Crosby, Stills & Nash
  11. Owner Of A Lonely Heart – Yes
  12. The Heart Of The Matter – Don Henley
  13. Cowboys & Angels – George Michael
  14. Nothingman – Pearl Jam
  15. Because The Night – 10,000 Maniacs
  16. Conviction Of The Heart – Kenny Loggins

Night Guy

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Greetings Blog, this is the time of Night Guy. This underdeveloped operation is being taken over for good, effective immediately. So, here’s the thing: Night Guy abides by a different expectation set than the previous administration. There are no limits on the activities of Night Guy. 10:30? 11:30? These pm hours are in the domain of Night Guy, and beyond! Also, there will be a new attitude around here, one that fosters a sense of impregnable self-worth but not arrogance. There needs to be some sort of swagger, since it’s earned by the deeds and feats of Night Guy. Night Guy lives in a vast grey area, and accepts no extreme or polarizing realities. Night Guy is active, compliant and unbelievably chill all in one casually-dressed package. Welcome, tired, old Blog, to the free and easy world fought to you by your friend, Night Guy. No more fretting Blogomites, Night Guy has commercials to set things straight.

Some Thoughts

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I do wonder where the path of my life is headed quite a bit. In terms of my dad, my independent life, my swirling mental health issues being instigated by circumstance… what is to come if me? I have stated before that the ambiguity helps nothing. Instead, it renders fear and doubt, while creating a hostile place for stability to begin.

Patience. There is no salve that will heal. There is no one question that, when answered, provides absolution from doubts. The predator is chance and time draws out the hunt into painful exchanges. I’m hunted by my fears and I’m feeling like that rabbit that didn’t make it.

Masked in functionality is the sense of frustration for circumstantial things that aren’t correctable. Am I doing enough to help my world prosper? What kind of friend am I to myself and others? Who am I becoming as the universe unfolds a future rife with calamity? How I dodge and swerve determines how long I can stay on the path.

There is no answer to this feeling; only finding a way to live with it. I’m bitterly frustrated at times, but also co tent in this place. It’s polar, which seems like a proper fit considering my diagnosis.

Shoe On

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I haven’t written in a while, clearly. Things in my world have become increasingly busy and I find less and less that this blog is the coping tool I use. I’ve been abusing substances instead, and trying to detach from reality. I know this is a negative thing, and I’ve already started correcting some of those undesirable tendencies. It’s a gradual process reflecting my patience to allow it to become the firmament upon which all is built.

I’ve been doing better though. I have been spending time with new friends and old friends. S and I are still talking, albeit infrequently. S has a lot going on like I do, but is sometimes requiring some unpacking or dissembling. I decided to reach out to my ex, A, and try to rebuild a bridge I had destroyed in the past in my enthusiasm for more friends. Talking with A has also been going pretty good. The things that are possible once my skewed approach to friend-girls was corrected are quite surprising. my sexual motor is grinding to a greaseless stall. I feel markedly less alone talking to W, S and A. No need to worry about the future: only that right here, right now, I have good people to talk to again. I missed having friends. This new aspect of my world has been nourishing me greatly. I won’t deny my feelings, but all have been situated in the fondness of friendship; a healthy emotional state I’d like to cultivate, not suppress.

Life at home is still turbulent. I don’t know how much positive impact I have anymore, if there is any at all. I feel useless and disregarded as an experienced peer with above average communication skills. I just can’t figure out a good way to coexist in this dynamic. It’s frustrating but still reality all the same.

I’m on a positive track right now. I sure hope I can keep it up! Talk to you later Blogomites!

Mood Album v. 3

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In light of recent turbulence in my world, I’ve tried keeping a better feel on the introspective pulse of regular function. I’m also aware that I’m subjecting myself to an unusually high level of stress and stimuli in an effort to combat creeping depression. I see all the elements like a confluence of rivers forming a mighty torrent… somehow sweeping my brain away downstream or buried in silt. Nevertheless, I still pry open the inner vault of the self and try to understand things happening to and from it. I feel I’m better at some things I used to be terrible at, but still lacking in quite a few areas. What are my true motivations for my actions? Why do I open myself to every nice person that walks by? Why am I such an insatiable prick? What does being understood feel like?

I sit here in my snowman jammies and wonder if expression really helps, or if it just provides a forum for things to garner attention for a time? I think the more ways I can ventilate this shit-smelling barn the better. Activities like the Mood Albums I do are helpful because they give me the chance to craft a narrative in a medium not often used. I don’t think myself anything other than expressive, curious and expositional about my own feelings and path forward. So as of the last album when I was feeling a fair bit gooier than I am now, I needed to revisit my good friend pain, loneliness and rekindle an ongoing desire to see things change.

Tracks from the previous Mood Album: Spatulas & Bandaids are highlighted in yellow. I have pulled from other wishy-washy type albums as well that have been generated in the past. I didn’t go “all in” on the squish, mind you, but it’s there. As you can see, there has been some pretty severe turnover in the track-list. I have listed the previous two iterations below so the whole three-album progression can be seen clear.

Mood Album (v. 3): Splattercake Conjunctivitis

Length: 74 minutes

  1. Mad World – Tears for Fears
  2. If This Is It – Huey Lewis & The News
  3. Walking On Broken Glass – Annie Lennox
  4. Don’t Do Me Like That – Tom Petty & The Heartbrakers
  5. Pamela – Toto
  6. Walk Away – Joe Walsh
  7. I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You – The Alan Parsons Project
  8. The Voice – The Moody Blues
  9. Move On – George Michael
  10. Back In Black – AC/DC
  11. Falling Away From Me – Korn
  12. (SIC) – Slipknot
  13. Waves – Blondfire
  14. Straight To My Heart – Sting
  15. All Over You – Live
  16. Let’s Go
  17. Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders
  18. More Than Words – Extreme

Mood Album (v. 2): Spatulas & Bandaids

Length: 73 minutes

  1. Mad World – Tears For Fears
  2. Once – Pearl Jam
  3. Animal – Def Leppard
  4. All Over You – Live
  5. In Thee – Blue Öyster Cult
  6. No One Like You – Scorpions
  7. Mr. Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra
  8. The Voice – The Moody Blues
  9. One Thing Leads To Another – The Fixx
  10. Heartbeat CIty – The Cars
  11. Fragile – Sting
  12. Help Is On Its Way – Little River Band
  13. Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders
  14. The Promise – When In Rome
  15. Best Of My Love – Eagles
  16. Baby, Come To Me – Patti Austin & James Ingram
  17. King Of Pain – The Police
  18. Move On – George Michael

Mood Album (v. 1): Deflatacated Marshmallow

Length: 77 Minutes

  1. Fastlove – Gerorge Michael
  2. Beds Are Burning – Midnight Oil
  3. Mr. Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra
  4. Once – Pearl Jam
  5. Animal – Def Leppard
  6. All Over You – Live
  7. Heartbeat City – The Cars
  8. Broken Wings – Mr. Mister
  9. Fragile – Sting
  10. Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders
  11. The Promise – When In Rome
  12. Because The Night – 10,000 Maniacs
  13. Somebody To Love – Queen
  14. Feels So Good – Chuck Mangione
  15. Baby, Come To Me – Patti Austin & James Ingram
  16. What You Won’t Do For Love – Bobby Caldwell
  17. Harden My Heart – Quarterflash
  18. King Of Pain – The Police

Mood Album UPDATE

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I had a look back at my very expressive and sad album composition I published the other day, and I started having second thoughts as to the accuracy of the portrayal presented. At first I saw it as a tantrum, but then the real hurt and uncertainty of life were ensnared in there as well. The whole first attempt was raw and unfiltered, where now I began to see the value in refining what was already there. I wanted to paint a better picture than the one I had so hastily Pollocked on to the wall. I still felt like the previous album still had value, so bits and pieces remain the same while the framing I had previously put in place are reoriented. So, here is my newly introspective revisit of the Deflaticated Marshmallow (remnants in bold) album:

Album: Spatulas & Bandaids

Length: 73 minutes

  1. Mad World – Tears For Fears
  2. Once – Pearl Jam
  3. Animal – Def Leppard
  4. All Over You – Live
  5. In Thee – Blue Öyster Cult
  6. No One Like You – Scorpions
  7. Mr. Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra
  8. The Voice – The Moody Blues
  9. One Thing Leads To Another – The Fixx
  10. Heartbeat CIty – The Cars
  11. Fragile – Sting
  12. Help Is On Its Way – Little River Band
  13. Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders
  14. The Promise – When In Rome
  15. Best Of My Love – Eagles
  16. Baby, Come To Me – Patti Austin & James Ingram
  17. King Of Pain – The Police
  18. Move On – George Michael

Nope

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Having sealed the door, again, I have no choice but to plod forward in depressed discontinuity and lasting solitude. I have much I need to work on internally. I am a flawed, overly effusive person like a boiling teapot of unacknowledged desire. I’m abrupt and direct, which is generally abrasive. All true things.

Yet, this extraordinary volatility only seems to pertain to finding a female partner. I have consistently blundered and misjudged in this regard, and no more. I’m honestly thinking that maybe a man is a better fit for partnership, if ever there was to be any. I’ve never conceived of that before, though not out of the realm of possibility. In the meantime though, I’m just not going to bother with it anymore. I’ve clearly shown myself that I am nowhere near ready for that type of interaction. My continued abstinence goes on, and hopefully, continues for a very long time to ensure my stability. I am never more clear-headed, hard-working and focused than when not also regulating my emotions due to attraction. I’ve never been able to achieve balance in the past, and that is still the case.

So, on I go as I have. I tried, I failed, and now I have learned enough to move on. It’s back to living my life and investing in my future; one that I build for myself.

Ballad of Knowing

by in Creative Writing, Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hands that touch,

But don’t yet clasp,

I hope for much,

But will it last?

Patience proves,

A worthy foe,

With little moves,

I strive to know.

In such a rush,

To find the end,

With growing trust,

New words must mend.

Struggle to say,

Fear to break,

The game we play,

Has much at stake.

Forward now,

I’ll find my way,

Proclaim aloud,

“With you I’ll stay.”

Trials Ended

by in Mental Illness, Rant and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I’ve come to a determination that I’m still going to be alone. I do not fit with others. I have not found someone able to tolerate me as is. I think this is, again, a stopping point.

I’m going no further thinking my abrasive and inconsistent personality will fit with others. I do not see a future where I am understood. I see no one who can relate to me on the level I am at. Maybe I’m too deranged to be fully comprehended. Perhaps that discontinuity is for a good reason; to prevent future traumas.

You all have seen me flailing about. You watch and probably don’t care one fucking bit. I don’t blame you. I’m no one of relevance to you. The last time someone came out of your ranks my life exploded, then imploded. Never again. I say that, yet I yearn for her still.

Is there any hope of tranquility? I suppose a state of total abstinence and solidarity seems the only path left to me. I scorn those who try to care. I rebuke those who don’t fit. I struggle alone in endless solitude. Not a single fucking one of you cares. This is an empty vessel constantly filled with dispersing noises, fading echoes and then nothing.

Support

by in Mental Illness and tagged , , , , , , , ,

Group tonight was constructive. Airing out issues is a good way to award them recognition without committing them to permanence or actualization.

I’m still dealing with a little depression as well. Not as bad as it was this morning. I started taking positive and proactive steps towards healthy coping habits which I needed to do. I was headed down a negative path.

I’m here and still thrashing around for meaning. A chance for companionship has come my way and I am following the lead. I’m not effusing which is great, instead, taking measures and incremental steps towards a stable outcome.

More to come on my progress towards positivity at a later date.

Reasons

by in Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I know what symptoms feel like when they are neurochemical in origin. When my brain is not properly functioning, the world is made of cardboard and the mask I wear stinks from overuse and weighs heavily on my face. There is cause, logically, based on my life circumstances, to have these feelings… but no trigger started the deterioration that has led to now. In this moment, I am acutely depressed.

Fortunately for me, I’ve been here before. I’ve had days like this, sometimes several in a row. My caution in this instance is warranted, but my impulsive overreactions are unwelcome. I’ve been down in the past, but then I rise up in time. The air on the climbing slope is cleaner; free if the choking miasma if sorrow. I wish I were there now, above the cloud tops…

I struggle on in this tasteless, lifeless portrayal of reality that I find myself temporarily confined to. Sometimes there is no mental jailbreak to escape it. I’m in solitary, and unclear about how long that will last, or how long it has been since I’ve seen anything other than four white walls. I face the continued tick tick of measured time with the stamina of a veteran, and the frailty of a neglected child.

Boom Boom Boom

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Despite all the bad shit flying around, I’m doing surprisingly well. I’m taking charge of some aspects of my life in ways that are constructively healthy. After K and I went our separate ways, I was a little disheartened that I would have a similar connection with anyone else. I was very excited about her, and our falling out was, sadly, disheartening.

However, I did not give up. As I do with new challenges in all aspects of life, I endeavored to face them with hope and confidence. With my work, I took on more challenges until my volunteer status changed to employee. Then from 6 paid hours a month to 80. Up and up we go. I also had a passion for reconciling the unacknowledged self; the me that I show my partners. There was a total lack of this in my life and this issue is ongoing.

Now I am back on the dating scene and attracting a lot of attention with my self-honest profile, my achievements and myriad interests. Turns out there are lots of women who’d like to get to know me better, even here in my area. I’m encouraged. If she’s not here now, there is a high probability I’ll meet a woman I really click with sometime soon. I’m looking for the someone who will stay with me for the long haul, and I’m confident she is not far away.

What a feeling it is to be so radiant and attractive that interest is easily kindled and nurtured! I’m a very unique and remarkable person, and I’m proud of who I am. That shows in reciprocated responses.

Succeeding professionally and romantically! Yes! However, I’m still very nervous about the physical aspect of my dating… I don’t know if I’m ready for the real thing. I have been avoiding it with distance, but that is impractical. I must face this with my confidence and set the anxiety aside. It’s been more than 2 years, but I’m pretty sure I still know how. It’s like riding a bike… only WAY more fun.

Notes

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I feel like I’m on the verge of launching, but I don’t know when or to where.

#12: We will never give up hope.

The fog is starting to clear a bit… and that is refreshing.

I’m finding my footing despite a deep and painful life-transition — this is something I’m proud of considering my past struggles.

I’m pretty awesome, and people are letting me know.

See you later.

Groups

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Why is it that these groups help? There’s no treatment being rendered, no prescriptions or policies to follow. How can sharing be so effective? I think it has a lot to do with repressed versus expressed feelings and the cathartic act involved in unleashing things that few others get to see.

I don’t feel particularly rejuvenated, but I do feel like I was heard, which is a profound thing. I expressed my hurt over my dad, my poor coping skills stemming from that. I got a lot of genuine reaction from people who understand the why and the what of dealing with mental health symptoms. It is a blessing to have this support and be able to be exposed by it. I just wish I could have a similar feeling from a caring partner.

I saw people fighting the symptoms and thoughts of mental illness in their lives and surviving. People facing their demons and vocalizing. I’m still kinda running from mine, but I won’t forever, yet there was so much in the group dynamic I benefitted from. I will be resolute in healthily coping, but reaching that state is the struggle I face. For now though, my ecliptic is only a place I hang laundry from and the so-called cushions of my chair are pancaked into squishless plates of unfortunate size that tweak my posture and provide no relief. There are surely better habits out there waiting to be implemented.

All the lonely was scraped off like so much obscuring ice on the car windshield of my destiny. I still have only a small sniff of things that may come, but for the time being, there is an ache which continues unabated, unrequited and unmistakable. Is there someone out there? There are people that I help and those that help me. I tend to think a balance of both is the surest path towards positivity.

Pointed

by in Mental Illness, Rant and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m doing a bit better… having an immersive distraction greatly assists in my not thinking about things. I am sad though, and feeling alone in the way that someone feels when they have no one walking the path with them. The pattern has been “oh lets try to fix that” or “no, you are loved, you have no reason to feel that way” or “I don’t know what to do about that.”

Isn’t that the exact opposite of what I need to hear, and how I’d like to be treated? I’m not a lamp with a burned out bulb; I do not need to be fixed. I am not asking for a cure to loneliness, only to be heard while feeling it. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO, other than respect my feelings and provide a sense of understanding and empathy. I just hate how nearly every single person in my orbit things my feelings need to be fixed, and I, in turn, never really get heard.

I’ve stopped sharing with them, as a result. I get nothing of use from divulging my emotional state. Instead, I’m buttoned up like a tuxedo jacket and putting on a presentable face for you all to see. Isn’t it shiny, composed and reassuring? If I really told you what was going on you’d fall into a state of useless co-despair… which again, provides me with nothing of substance.

This world is all full up on people who don’t care, or don’t want to care since it is a great deal of work. I feel more alone now than ever before… as I learn new skills, more and more people fall away from me, not able to understand how I am evolving my mentality to survive.

Now, in this impenetrable state of solitude, I have all but abandoned the hope of being understood, and am going to fake my way through my interactions in order to be left unmolested by those who have not and will not understand me.

Unchanged

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Not a lot is different than just a bit ago. I ran a Support Group tonight. It was hard to stay on top of my shit. I did though, and it was really good for me to not have been off pooping my brain-pants somewhere alone. I’m still very wounded, having to let go of K again and returning the things I bought for her birthday. It just reminds me how unrelentingly horrible and abrasive I am to everyone not obligated to put up with me. Regardless of incentives, my repulsion is overwhelming.

I keep looking, but I’m despondent. There is no one. There was only “close,” and now, nothing at all. Scaring away potential partners is something I’m just so fucking good at. I’m, like, nationally ranked at that shit.

Well, fuck. I’m tired, sad, dejected and in a big hole right before bed. I imagine I will again dream of things that torture me as they have of late. I have no one to hold me after a nightmare. I have exactly what I deserve. Rejection. Disgust. Solitude.

Shmatters

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Feeling broken into many pieces right now. I don’t feel like I have any wind in my sails… no drive to move me forward. I am alone, trapped in a barren waste devoid of shelter from the cold. Each new step forward rings with an ache; a slow decay of the bone, the flesh itself begins to wither rot and disappear. The full space of my heart is opened like a tomb, fresh with the foul stink of confined death. It feels like the sun isn’t shining, or, that I have forgotten how it feels to be warm. I gape at the disparity of days, and wonder if more pain lies in wait for me in the days ahead. I know that it does, and I already am prepared to continue to suffer. My own sorcery confines me, where once it was used to set me free.

Crashy ‘Splode… Poof!

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I haven’t felt like writing. Real life has been volatile to the point of occupying my attention fully. K was back for a bit but now gone again. She’s not the right fit for my life, which is now abundantly clear. Dad is still slowly dying; withering away as I watch helplessly. Mom lost her mind with stress and grief a few days back, which poisoned the world for a time. Am I dealing with this? Have I become depersonalized from my perception of reality? What hope is there of consistency when all the variables are fluctuating?

I have only what skills and strategies I’ve learned in order to survive this life in varying states of decomposition and growth. There’s no making sense of it; I’ve given up on that. Now, I hang on for scrapes and fingernails.

Shattered Mirrors

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My light is out with hands take the shard

Spinning in a desolate hole of alone

Bent upon the regret of actions

Despair of wanting like a bitter stain

Profusely ignored in a place where things are forgotten

No light finds me here

All who come eventually go away

Do I still convince myself it’s not true

To believe the facts is to accept isolation from acceptance

Tonight I miss everything I had

Alone and without

In the center of no one’s concern anymore

Slipping Away / Walking Uphill

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Sports Pontifications and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I had companionship for a time, but now I am back on my own again. I have been through this before, the tumult of understanding and the gauntlet of truth are punishing arenas in my reality. It is the simple fact of the person I am that has created this division and now removal. I had long ago accepted I would be alone for the rest of my life, and I did appease my sense of unrelenting loneliness by attempting companionship, at least temporarily. Now that my life has gone back to the place it had been at a few months ago, I don’t know how to feel precisely. Am I upset? Not really, but sad, yes. Do I regret? Naturally there are things I can find to blame myself for. Everyone, especially a blundering emotion-tornado such as myself makes mistakes. There are things I know I am and things I try to be, and right now there is a confluence of reasons for why things are now over between she and I. The fact of the matter is simple, and remains.

No one asks for more work in their life or readily accepts trouble into their world. I know I am a great deal of “work,” and trouble in one bundle… there’s just no avoiding that. I do the best I can but here is another example of how that failed. It hurts, very much to lose her, especially after I had developed a fondness, and after we had such wonderful dreams together. Stigma is a wall that can’t often be overtopped, or burrowed under… or even explained away with words. It is damaging, and breaks reason apart with animosity.

Well here we are blog, back to square 1. I am all done trying to find partnership for now. There is no world I see where I find someone who will take on the impossible task of accepting me as I am, and not wishing I could be somebody I never will be. My lesson in all this has been to observe my actions, and decide where to take a next step forward. If anything, I have learned that I am all alone out here (still), and that’s the truth I must stop trying to alleviate. I am my own confidant and guardian, and no one should wrest that from me in the years to come.

Goodbye K. Beautiful, complex, generous woman, you touched my life and lit it up, for a time. You gave me hope, and then dashed it. I know why you did, and I will mourn for us both.

Daddo

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My dad has a limited time left with us, and I’m coming to terms with his upcoming death. I see only one path forward; to be there as needed until the end. I’m his son.

I feel everything one would expect me to feel, but I’m not expressing any of it right now. I’ve made the space in our reality for my mom and sister to experience things while I direct reason and action; providing stability. This role I fill helps us endure the hard times to come, but also works healthily for me since nothing gets repressed. The postponement of response is a promise, not a lock on a safe.

I know my time to process is coming, but right now I accept and embrace the role I have filled in this family unit. I am proud to be a member of it, and fighting to keep us from listing.

Will it work? There’s no telling. I have a good support structure in W and K. I need to be able to use my own tools in a crisis rather than always go looking for the answer outside of myself. I must survive with what I have if I am to survive at all.

Beholding

by in Creative Writing, Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s not the wanting–

Like fragments tumble in sparks,

Furiously scatter-lit,

Fill the blackened chamber.

Restrain old whispers–

Haunted hallway-dusted,

Once-clawed firmament.

Between the shutter-slats,

Begging at freedom,

Boldness awaits.

+

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I don’t need to process negative symptoms and thoughts when I don’t have any. I just need to keep living my life the way I have been, and allow it to bloom. I’m going to be gone for a while, I’m walking down a new path. Horizon’s shifting glow calls to a future that brings the dawn to the end of night.

Cared For

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I wanted to highlight something that happened a couple of days ago. I believe in significant acts, and this was one of them.

I injured my back lifting my dad the other day and it is an area that has consistently given me trouble in the past. These sorts of injuries can vary significantly in severity, and this appeared to be a bad one. It was just about his time that K entered my sphere, and her response to my shabby state was to procure a massage session so I could seek proactive treatment. She, thinking of me, did something direct, relevant and useful to assist me in a way I was not able to do for myself. It was a gift, and a memorable one. I can’t recall the last time someone did this for me in such a poignant way, as a partner. Done in honesty and through concern, there is no more wonderful thing to do for someone than to comfort. She took care of me, and the feeling of it is euphoric.
In the past, I have been in both roles, but still, I can’t recall a feeling like this. I don’t recall ever feeling really cared about in this sort of tangible, fundamentally generous way. Something enduring fuels that bond that is forming, which represents a transaction of trust and understanding. She spoke to me the best way she knew how, and it was impactful. It showed real care, from a very early point in our journey, which in and of itself is a fantastic indicator of trajectory.

It also makes me think about my own past and potential generosity. I will soon have a significant income compared to sitting on a leaky balloon as I have been for many months. I’d like to be able to give back to her as well, in kind, but I will need to find unique and relevant avenues to explore to sate my standards of fairness in the immediate future. I am a contributor first and foremost, and a gracious penitent when provided charity. I have my own conscience to deal with, which recognizes the fragility of this; acts accordingly. I give, and I can’t wait to be back in a position to do so again.

My mood scores have been in the 4 area, which is the high end of normal. I am paying extra scrutiny given the change in environmental variables.

However, it is a fact that I’m elated, what can I say? I’m developing real feelings again for the first time in many years. Unlike the previously employed fake-it-to-make-it salve for loneliness, this is the real fucking deal. It has a hold of me somewhere deep, primal, and magnetic. I’m activated in a way I wasn’t expecting at all.

My physical scores have been wonky since my back, and subsequent rub rub rub ouchy time. I’m doing better though. Heat pad required for a bit and not too much wiggle wraggle.

Things are happening!!!

Compelled

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M: 4.5

P: 3

I worked today, and it felt like a real Friday for the first time in two years. I was walking into the weekend with a belt load of credibility, paid hours worked, and a satisfaction of earned stupor. I did deserve this good feeling, this qualified euphoria accompanying a respite from the toils of existence. I feel like my life has finally started to accelerate at an exponential rate towards a glimmering point of light.

I am more involved now in my work and local community than ever before. I’m having to reboot my organizational skills, because I’m juggling more responsibility than ever before. At the same time as that burden is flailing about on a centrifugal axis, I’m feeling strong enough to restrain its pull towards chaos. I believe that this represents a culmination of all the work I’ve put in to refining myself at social awareness, personal responsibility and introspection. From the fragmented person who emerged with a bag of clothes and plastic flip flops from the psychiatric hospital, to right now. Lowest point to highest point (so far), in 4 years, and every positive step built upon the next.

Blog, I’ve met someone special at an absolutely perfect time in my life. Just as I am beginning to transition back to full independence, a miraculous woman has come into my life, and I am thankful to have such a compliment to my own spectacularly fulfilling existence. Her symmetry and mine are stunning, and in a category of imagined personality compositions designated as inconceivable instead of one that might exist.

My loneliness had, until very recently, exposed my past regret and shades of old love eviscerated, caused a great deal of turmoil. In all my attempts to find a partner was a dream for someone who would “fit.” I’ve never really comprehended what a “fit” would be. I had only known one person who had ever really come close, until now. Like a stream of concentrated photons, her arrival blasted through the gloom and dust to reveal a landscape of possibility. I’m infatuated. I’m intoxicated, and having a great time getting to know someone I fully intend to keep in my orbit.

I’ve tried this before. Yes. However, I did so while knowing it was a less than ideal fit. An admitted error of terrible consequence. I was making the best of what was available, or so I justified my transgression. Plus, at those intervals, I sought out of a desire to be complete or propped up to new heights by external adoration. I knew it at the beginning, whether I admit it or not, that I was making a mistake. I didn’t know it would consistently be my undoing, but I was not the introspective being I am now.

at this moment though, I’m complete. Three weeks ago, I was complete. In August I was complete. I wasn’t ever looking to find a missing piece out in the universe. I found a piece that fits that I never even knew could be there in the first place. She augments, adds, compliments and enhances. In this fundamental way, there lies a difference that divides the two motivations for companionship indistinguishably. One destined to fail on the basis of stashed resentment, and the other continuously improving and advancing a mutual circumstance for the benefit of both partners. It’s obvious to you too, isn’t it?

Scores III

by in Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

I think I stated earlier, and as a permalink on the site, that I use a numeric scoring system to track my mental and physical health. This tool makes me more aware of the pattern and wavelength of my changing mental health. I have a scale that fits the nature of my diagnosis.

+10: Mania

+9: Hypomania

+8

+7

+6

+5: Edge of normal euphoria

+4

+3

+2

+1

0: Stable but stoic

-1

-2

-3: Noticeably sad

-4

-5: Edge of acceptable grief

-6

-7

-8: Depressed

-9

-10: Suicidally depressed

I use another scale to help me quantify my physical symptoms, pain or other abnormality going on because of my illness (or exaggerated by it). The scale helps quantify body pain, accelerated heartbeat, fidgetiness, sweaty palms and other expressions. I give this a +10 and -10 scale as well, with equal emphasis on normal/expected ranges and the poles being not a good thing.

I started tracking a few weeks ago and the results have been educational, but not revelatory. I hope that with an increased level of general business, I can start to improve my physical health and muscular stamina. I need to be in better shape in case my dad needs my strength. I want to be able to catch him and hold my ground. I know I can do better.

Well, more work tomorrow. I’m greatly looking forward to the new challenges of my advancing life. I’m going to start keeping my scores on the blog posts I do at the end of the day:

1/2/19

M: 4

P: 2.5

A: 3.25

Alike

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Things around my planet have taken a shift over the last few weeks. My dad fell, and he’s lost almost all his lower body strength. I’m carrying him now, from place to place. It breaks my heart, and puts me in a difficult spot, knowing my mom is largely helpless to fulfill the physical obligations.

In contrast, I’ve met someone new named K. Things are off to a very encouraging start, and I definitely approve of the direction we are going. There seems to be a very unique parallelism that is entrancing, fascinating and wonderful. Unique in a way that is beyond expectation. My introspection upon this experience has helped me to live thoughtfully, keeping vigilance on my core mental health with much needed objectivity. Relationships have been destabilizing factors in the past. However, several key factors are designating my introduction to K as wholly different from previous attempts.

I am aware though. Keenly. My life depends on me being able to maintain cognitive consistency. The only way I go forward is if I can do so and still be healthy and live my life fully. At this mature stage of my life, I’m able to manage the many aspects of life, keeping an alignment rather than leaning on any one and causing a disruption.

Fuck man, I just got the low down on my work today (first paid day): Coordinating 2 programs, web admin for 2 domains, facilitator for 2 support groups, education program leader, WALK sponsorship chairman for and now outreach director. All that in 20 hours a week paid, but looking more like 35 with all the volunteering required to meet those obligations. I’m fucking GLAD to be this busy, frankly. Being unoccupied is a state I do not enjoy, and doing so while being a resource consumer rather than contributor makes it more difficult to remain positive. Now, I’m giving more than I ever have, and here I am feeling the best I have in 5 years. I must be very diligent about making sure my stability, energy and motivation are maintained over the course of years, with gradual improvements likely. Caution with consideration.

Like I said, things are looking up for me. Working hard and living with pride is a pretty rewarding path, I’ve found.

Just Now…

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A sudden mallet shatter. A window blasted open. Sun rays beaming. A world of dust cast into the light. This new turn is a portent of happiness.

The soot brushed away. Flattened cardboard. Curled paper. Crumpled into piles and heaved into the shadows.

Testing cautiously. Pain once so near. Thoughts are below but now rising above. What more awaits to be discovered I will soon learn. A journey of shared experiences.

To Have Hope

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Believing is not about probability of success, but a choice to craft a purposeful prelude to a desired reality we hope comes to pass. In some extension or another, expectation has a secret that is the most desired result, but it is well hidden underneath the likelihood of disappointment.

I hope to be reached, but I realize also I never will be again. In this situation, I believe in both possibilities while not dedicating myself to permanence of one or the other. Sure I could be happy and fulfilled by love, and that would be fantastic. However, I’m also prepared to die without anyone knowing me any more than they do today.

Why we have to only believe one thing is beyond me. Are we incapable of comparative or contrasting thought? Must we always choose, when no choice is actually needed? I used to be an absolutist, but no more. I can be pessimistic of my chances, yet still vibrantly hopeful and not abandoning the possibility of hope for something more.

Well, there seems to be no movement (for now) in the distant aspiration of online companionship, and my current investment will terminate early February; representing the end of this period of heightened searching. It is good to acknowledge my emotions with effort, while not being driven mad by lack of tangible result. What meaningful increment can there be in such an environment if spinning variables?

I write now as I am alone. Maybe one day I will look back on this in reflective sadness, or in admiration. My life is brilliantly bright right now, and has ample chances to improve. I believe in me, and whatever comes will be accepted regardless.

Alternate Universes

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My thoughts run tonight, bucking through the crisp air. J is back in my thoughts, as she has been of late, and always to a lesser extent. I can’t help but spin alternate realities where she brings a stabilizing force to my family dynamic and a new balance is achieved. A place where her quirky, clever humor and woman’s perspective provided balance and helped us feel equal together. Laughing with frequency and living in a state where stability was enjoyed. Dreamy, bleary and almost laughable at just how far from reality it actually is.

The world is cruel, and through it I too have also acted cruelly, and kindly. All at the wrong times, it would seem. Now that the alignment of her life and mine has passed, there is no going back to change what has already been written. The view that accompanies this thought is inevitably folly.

I’m embracing my life now as a caretaker and forever disciple of family. It is so nourishing to protect those we love, and do our best to preserve their safety. I only have so much I can give, but what I have, I do. I love them and I will help guide them to peace in whatever way I can. In my dreams, I reach out to J and open my arms to her again, despite the furious rage she has aimed at me. I have always known her regardless. Somehow, there is peace again.

I can’t help but long for a parallel reality as my own comes under strain. I always imagine one with her in it, when I project myself forward. She is still just as jubilant, having not been thrashed by my disorder. I see so many alternate realities where we coexisted splintering off into infinity.

She opened me up: I got tattoos and pierced my ears, and she exposed me up to a world I had never known before, but was curious to explore. I too gave her things as our paths intersected often once we grew. But I was a fool, and so was she. In thus reality, she may have been able to, but I was never going to live that dream.

Night falls on a turbulent evening. It’s at times like this that I feel truly alone, with no confidant within my bubble to relate myself to. I remember having that though, and it is the greatest joy of my life. For a time, I was blessed.

As in my current predicament, I am granted the strength and stability to endure the changes my family is going to transition through. I am fortunate. I can do more. I will do more for them.

I have dreams. They will forever say dreams. I look back, and I am filled with regret.

I just know I will never be over her.

Pillar Talk

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There is no better place to test one’s coping toolkit than in a crisis. Conveniently, I happen to be in one of the familial variety, which as indicated by previous posts, is an ongoing, developing and mutating issue. I’m near to this unfurling destructive situation, with no hope of achieving the proximity of safety due to the bonds of conscience. The variables causing the conflict are also unstoppable in their perspective; aligning them to a path that only leads to a continuation of trauma while the gap between the energies seems destined for concussive retaliation.

I’ve been surviving in this environment by figuring out what expectations I need to have rather than wish I had, and living wisely within my means. I know I’m only going to be able to relate to them on a limited set of issues, and the window they see me through is made smaller by my accommodation rather than personal obstinance. I’ve learned where I need to have my own strength, because depending on an external source is much less stable. My parents don’t know any other way: mom can’t be strong on her own as she’s dependent on him for her consistency, stability, assurance of survival… she has no mutual or self-imposed logic, discipline or interest in a healthy conversation aimed at a resolution.

It’s sad to have to “defend” oneself against loved ones, but I have a history of instigating and now enduring situations of high emotional volatility. I have a talent for knowing when I am in a sound moral position (promoting radiant strength) having not been so on many regrettable occasions. It is sad to see the deterioration of more than just their physical selves; the very fabric of what used to make them strong has been torn and continues to unravel as they insist on stretching without strengthening it. The result is that I end up being alone and introspective for my own benefit, knowing the details of my process might as well be Japanese to them.

Acceptance of things that will not change has been hugely instrumental in helping me focus my energy on things that I can have some sway over. My priorities are healthier, my expectations (if any) are realistic and I am keenly aware of my own interpersonal mechanics as I improve in handling stress and conflict within myself.

I still see myself, as a 15 – 17 year old man, effusing, erupting, devastating my environment with my uncontrolled emotional irregularities. I used to get so full of rage, and I would cast it out to everyone in my proximity, unfiltered, unregulated, uncontrolled. The long-term repercussions of that become clear, along with the burden of inflicted catastrophe on the clean white sheet of morality. I got tired of that way, the turmoil, the imbalance.

The reach of my gravity is minuscule in this place, like Io at aphelion, hoping it’s going to move Jupiter closer to it with a good yank. However, it’s always just going to be a tiny little blip in the orbit of something much too large to be influenced. Sometimes, it’s best to just let gravity take you around and worry about having a clear path to do so.

I don’t have the best coping tools either, mind you. I’m drinking a little more, smoking a little more, just slightly disconnecting myself from this place. It’s agony when the air is full of hate like this, and I’m trapped in here most of the time, too fearful of the environment to be free. It’s not the healthiest way, I know. I’m not perfect by any means, but I am going to survive.

Eve

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Despite all my subsurface emotional turbulence illustrated in recent posts, I’m doing quite well mentally this Christmas Eve night. Family, love, smiles and laughter all through the dinner hour. Food, football and memories formed as a result.

I look back in my thoughts, but have eyes for the future. There is more brightness in the upcoming horizon than there ever will be looking back for candle light in the darkness. It’s not the stylish version of emotional distress as illustrated in pop culture, but it is true nonetheless.

My life isn’t full of drama; I know very well where I am going. It’s not up for debate really, but it is a discussion worth having anyway. Expression is coping, and doing honor to those feelings that are strong enough to be present. As improbable as it may sound, this balanced dichotomy IS me rather than is rending me asunder.

I am proud, and reflective as well. This is what being complex and human is all about, I imply through demonstration. Learning, growing, changing. I don’t dwell in the sadness, I embrace it and move forward. No upwelling emotion goes unacknowledged; no memory avoids the light of revelation. I miss her, and I’m also fine without her.

I know, I’m bipolar and yet you don’t see me retreating to one end of the spectrum in indignation or denial. I just think I’ve found a better way.

On this night, I remember, and then, I go to sleep. Goodnight to whispers, memories and promises.

6 Years

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How much time is quantifiably “enough?” How long SHOULD things take… or how long do we want them to last? Time is happening, but, I find, individual perceptions of it vary greatly. Including my own, within my own life.

I found something on the internet while clinging desperately hope and scouring for words and images of my past. I found some text and read it, from 6 years ago on Christmas… It was the spark of something powerful, frozen in time). A check-in from a previously unremembered interval that seems now more like decades ago. My chronologic sense of this period, not the same as memory, is vastly different from the actual measured steps of days recorded. Things were accelerating towards a peak in these words, glowing and radiant. I feel far removed from parallels or similarity now, but the hurt of it is still near…

What I think my askew sense of time shows is that it doesn’t take long for our lives to change. In the years since that note, I’ve fundamentally reprioritized, changed professions, passions, goals, and embraced a new reality that works for equilibrium in my present environment. I look back and both sigh with awe, and swallow hard knowing what dark days lie ahead. When I reflected, I thought about how many things I had yet to learn, and how fundamental a reboot I would receive in the years to come.

During the decay after that peak, things seemed agonizingly drawn-out, but smeared and indiscernible, like grease on drywall. Such distant turbulence is hard to accurately document with memory, but little glimmers like this one remind me that, regardless of outcome, it started the right way. I had forgotten, but the origin was well intended, innocent, pure, impulsive and magnetic. It was like a dream, but I didn’t work nearly enough to make sure it stayed beautiful, and we fell into decay.

A gift from the past, but one that carries the weight and responsibility of reality. I am a creepy stalker asshole whatever to go sniffing around… but my heart is broken and I don’t have enough ways of coping that channel my emotions productively, apparently. I look for her words somewhere out there, with an ill-fated desire seeking an alternative reality that doesn’t exist. I know it isn’t hiding on some website, waiting to be found, which rends me even more. There is no end, only an ongoing state of realized, unrequited incompleteness… and our remembered laughter echoes down the long hallway of time, reaching my ears as little more than screams.

I must resolve of my own accord, and in a time that suits me best.

Reconcile

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A great deal of pain comes from this place of knowing there is no way to heal the gaping wound wrought by past trauma. No matter how badly I desire the bridge of communication to be passible, it isn’t. No dawn in the future, only a lingering dusk just after light has been sniffed out.

Once a thing is broken, the only choice has been to destroy it completely. Once a stain appears, the whole is forfeit. This absolutism deprives one of the responsibility of repair, or repurposed use. I scrap only what is irreparable, and despite the portents of death, there are still some damaged, tattered things I believe in.

Figuring out what to do with this has been a struggle for me. I am powerless, in the dark and unable to find a safe way out. The constant reminder of my previously earned solitude hangs on me like a bundle of meaning over my shoulder. I long so desperately, yet don’t exude and effuse in my daily life. This torment stays almost entirely within, in a place it can be kept away from contaminating the rest.

I’m pretty sure this is indefinitely ongoing. My future filled with the anger of years carried on across the plain like a ceaseless thunderstorm. All the while the wind and rain, I keep hoping.

Tomfoolery

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The time for celebrating is nigh Blog. After all this time volunteering, I’m gainfully employed nearly at full time starting in January. I’m an employee of NAMI Sacramento and Mintz Computer Guyz for nearly 30 hrs/week. This is enough to replenish my lost savings and then some. What a relief that is!!!

I hear my negative voice trying to put a damper on my progress. It says: “you’re a liar and a crook. Your soul is black and you destroy everything you touch. You will bring only destruction to these people and your so called work.”

While I appreciate how much that voice hates me, evidence speaks to the contrary. I am valued in my occupation for my honesty and legitimate results. My heart is full of effusive joy, and I make those around me desire my company. I build things with effort and work, and promote a positive future for myself and others. I bring the advancement of goals and fulfillment of possibilities to all things I apply my passion to.

The proof is right here in front of me; laid out in deeds and actions done. That negative voice from within or without doesn’t have much fact to base a claim of ineptitude. I look at the proof of assumption and see the truth.

The voice demands a polar reality, where any transgression is tantamount to the worst conceivable result. Inflation, roiling resentment and unending hate are the motivators for this contributor. So, as I have with other persistent negative voices, I’ve learned to tune them out.

It is a tough habit to break, the indulging of the voice. We listen to it sometimes. Believe in the self-destructive lies. A pattern repeated until learned away from. I have not finished indulging that voice… which takes in the potent form of someone once loved (but now jailed in resentment).

The voice is only as sustainable as the environment allows. Once the climate is positive, it doesn’t make sense to listen to it anymore. I hope for more days like that ahead, as the barrage continues regardless.

Solstice

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The days are growing again, slowly, coming to bear full as we travel around and around that big yellow thingie. We have been pointed at darkness for long enough, I say.

I’m hoping not to dream anymore. Rips are forming in my canvas, and the formerly delightful introspective brush set seems to paint only in black. It is this dark hour, when cuddling up by a warm seem the most honest if truths, that I mourn. I yearn, pointlessly.

The sun is coming. From out the shadows, it is blooming, growing. Radiating. I wish for that return to the hissing summer ghosts on the dry wind. The far away pollen smells of distant places, deep wet mountains and trees gulping in and breathing out.

Maybe this is it. Maybe not. It’s better to be prepared to deal with a difficult outcome than to be surprised by it. I can be surprised by all sorts of other things, but not calamity.

Down to the last few days before Christmas. Family, friends, fire… and freaking huge buds. Beer, bread and BADDA BOOM! We do know how to have a good time.

I do t think anyone is getting in the circle now. Not anyone new. It’s just too late.

L

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Down is there under the mask.

In the flesh itself.

Broiling with fever just underneath.

It is a pressure.

A slowly increasing a downward force.

Feeling bones crunching and snapping.

It is a beat of the heart.

Agonizingly drawn out and scrutinized.

Grasping for purchase where there is none.

Pulsing, gulping and sputtering on.

It is the mirror of memory.

All the second guessing and reassessing.

Spinning alternate fates.

Musing on impossible realities.

Wishing to live in a dream instead of life.

Saddened by the depths of dejection.

Wilderness-bound, cold and wandering.

Screaming only where no one can hear.

Original J

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Before Ja* there was Je*, and last night I was again visited by a spectre of my past. in Je*’s relationship, there was a very physical, carnal, fuel abundance. My dream ventured deep into the entwining moisture of sex, the spontaneity of passion, the strip-down clothes-shredding-seizure that ensures when the moment is nigh. But yes, there was still that anger and conflict. Even amidst that largely satisfactory arrangement, there was the tension of misunderstanding, the vast gorge filled with resentment looming. The fire burned fast, flickered, and then was gone forever.

It is emblematic of my past relationships. Starting with an explosion of similarly mirrored energies, then dwindling as the strands tear in the drift. It makes me wonder if I am going to be alone for the rest of my life. It makes me wonder if I am even capable of being a good partner. It reminds me of what it feels like to be loved by no one who doesn’t have to.

Insane Mumblings?

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After a night of purging my emotional turbulence (see below), I find myself again, reflectively pointed toward action. Even after all the castigation and ridicule I subjected myself to, those pestering voices tend to get quieter when I’m being proactive in my life or meaningfully responsible, or using the evidence of such to validate the truth. This helps me do battle with that negativity when it shows up, most of the time. I tend to be more rational than spontaneously emotional, so going back over my thoughts and feelings helps me quantify and understand my responses to things. My reaction to J memories returning has been to vent, which I suppose is working in some ways. However, there is no real cohesion to a response or a course of action.

However. there is not a fundamental desire to make this a focal point of my ongoing life, even with some gesturing. Instead, it has taken a passenger’s back seat to several other priority items. Right now, I think I am my most well equipped to be a functional communicator In my life, however, not rushing to fill the space a partner would have. I still yearn for something abstract, shaped like a nostalgically recalled relationship I once had that was seemingly wonderful. None of that is rational. The assignment of emotions and blurriness to the memory is harmful at best, and arbitrary in nature since any number of other emotions are attached this way as well, and not destructively.

I see my wound, that place inside me that is still hurt, but there is no action to take, no tool to pick up and use. I just get up, and continue walking forward undeterred. She and I hurt each other, and now that pain reminds me of how not to fall into a similar situation, for myself or anyone else. My learned diligence as a result of my collapse has helped me take on the responsibilities I have today, and the fulfilling life so-far crafted. It was a scarring, agonizing lesson to fail, lose everything, reboot… and I still remind myself of that failure, as has been apparent.

What am I doing? I’m coping through expression, the best I can, to deal with my mixed up feelings and try to appease the part of me that is still fractured and splintered with pain. If I will never be able to help her resolve her pain, then at least I can work to resolve mine. It frustrates the logic motor to have nothing to “do,” per-say, no way to repair or permanently heal, other than to do one’s best obelisk impersonation for as long as possible. Survive, learn, and adapt. The pain will never stop, but it does not have to be a focus as it has been of late…

View From Below

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I find myself engrossed in the mud of memory, slipping Back with each grueling step forward. There is sadness dragging me down, forcing me into the decompositional murk.

It is J. The memory of her. The impact she had in my life. After 4 years, the sting of her absence is just as real as the day she flew away. I know not how no let go of that pain. I feel her like a piece missing in my soul; at the very core of who I am. She reached me like no other, and I must accept she is gone forever.

I have not been able to do this because I still love who she was. I still love what we had when it was beautiful. She understood me like none before, and now she will never come back. The pain I feel here is something years have not reduced. Her departure is as fresh and bloody as any recent wound. Now, during this warm and family time of year, I miss her the most.

In times like this, when I remember, I tend to reflect in order to preserve my sanity. Having no word from her but another hateful disconnect in our frail communications is all I have left to remember her by. Her animosity. Accusing me of rape. She must truly despise me, which is a pain I must accept. I hurt her beyond repair, and now… now I am scum. A criminal. A pile of dirt. I wish. I wish she could see how I still love her. I wish she knew.

Blog, I come here to express, not to resolve. Unless clearly stated, my feelings are cast out into the ether with no expectation of understanding or compassion. I have only my own life to answer to.

I got a job today, and now I will have an income. I am a part of a team growing into future successes and possibilities. A whole new life built on pride and honesty is available for me. It is a future brighter than I have had in a very long time. I wish I could share it with her. I wish she was here with me, in these joyous times. I love her. I will not be able to stop, even if she wishes I was dead. All the wishes in the world will fall into the endless silence. There will be no reply. The dead do not respond. My broken place remains as it was, ever hoping, never knowing.

Under

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Taken back. Days that seem brighter in their nostalgia. Is it misplaced fondness, or some bleary portrayal obscured beyond reality? I doubt there is a polar answer, but an amalgamation of both imagination and scar tissue.

Dreams can be triggers. Who was she to have left such a deep mark, one I have never healed from? It seems impossible, but it isn’t. The pain is very real. It’s with me always.

Numbered pasts. Counted scenes. Missed chances. How different would it have needed to be to have sustained? Are there parallel universes where we are still?

Drowning in my thoughts is s fitting way to disappear into unconsciousness.

Dreaming Again

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It started with a big social gathering at some neutral site. J was there, but she wasn’t how I remembered her: she was tanned, rounder but absolutely beautiful. We sparred with playful words across the ballroom then retreated to the side. I saw what I felt was true in her eyes.

There was a house, but it was Kyle’s house. I don’t know anyone named Kyle, but we were both invited to go to stay. The house was huge beyond comprehension. I was on the top floor with my cat in a room that was strewn with papers, books, clothes and other loose objects. Other cats were lingering outside my door which worried me.

She was in another room somewhere, but we were so far apart we had to call each other on the phone to talk. We expressed our explicit desires, intentionally, and fully.

When i found her in the house, the same fire she had from my memory of our past was there as we tossed, giggled and touched lips briefly in our private bedroom. There was untapped passion there, just on the edge of revelation. We did not go to all the places we could have; there was ecstasy in savoring the moment.

The house began to spin. I stumbled to find a way out. I tried to rescue my cat as it was assailed on all sides by resident cats. They attacked, clawed viciously. I grabbed them by the scruff and tossed them away, but they kept coming.

I made my way to the bottom, but kept tipping over, crashing into things, scattering books across the floor, hitting the ground and getting back up. I got out, but fell down on the concrete curb outside, for the last time. She was there, but she couldn’t rouse me as my consciousness slipped away. She wished desperately that I would wake, but I was gone.

Kyle’s house was on the shore, and as I looked out for the last time, the tide was coming in.

Untethered

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C Score: 2.5

E Score: 1.5

The drag of time. A hook sunk deep into the meat, constraining and directing. Sometimes questions are louder because they can’t be quickly answered, if at all. Screams echoing in the chasm. Where ambiguity pervades, depression follows.

I don’t long for companionship in a way that dictates action, and have no motivation to flip reality upside down to satisfy the ache. In the end, I’m too enmeshed to risk toppling stability over an uncertainty. Knowing when to extend is a talent I’m getting better at. Still, old harmonies remind, and invite a reprisal. The palisades and balconies in my dreams are the only vistas she still makes sense in. This figure who is with me. Whoever she has or will be.

I’m lost to old glimpses. My edifice paraded by uneasy crowds, ingloriously, in a city frothing with unrest. Little more than an icon from a long dead time. My world is made of things that can’t be forgotten.

Maybe the next few upcoming days will provide some clarity, or maybe there is no escape from the shadow of love. For all my griping, I remain untethered.

Evening Thought-Purge

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Reflecting after group, I see how common issues build bridges of compassion or understanding. I’m feeling extra introspective:

I keep hoping I’ll dream about J like I did a few weeks ago. She’s the only echo left… all the others have faded into nothing. In my dream, we had a strange encounter, but it reminded me of several aspects to my past feelings that feel very real now. In that moment with her, things were like they used to be… a familiar sort of estrangement. A sense of elusive excitement. It was a piece I could hold in my hands that now is shrinking down into nothing.

I know I’m not doing my best. I have recently, but not anymore. My best is too expensive; all I can afford is meh. Dwindle.

Longing for spark, or poof & rabbit. The friskyfied feelings. The electric arcs fingertip snapping their crackle. I remember what it was, that I had it, but that was long ago it seems.

This is a fool’s errand.

The cauldron churns some new rancid elixir which will grant stupendous charisma at the cost of unfathomable isolation.

Sniffed

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The carousel of experience continues at a dizzying pace but all the while I wish for the silence of a moonless night. I can hear little teeth chattering across the floor. Chitter chatter chitter chatter.

What is being? Where is the anchor of meaning? I’m a desperate pilgrim on a journey too vast to comprehend. All I can think about is the hill directly ahead.

There’s only me. No one is likely to get inside the laugh box again. I’m too skewed from center to be reconciled, it seems. I think I have pretty much come to accept this. Almost two years now and no more desperate than when it started.

Flattering the obelisk only has so many permutations. So shiny and hieroglyphics so nice. But what else can you say? Someone else comes along and it all sounds so fresh and real. I don’t know what it is; it’s simply ear candy. Something missed.

Goodnight.

Eggerfried

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Do things break that little bubble around you like they do for me sometimes? Not sure on the specifics of what pierces and what does not, but I definitely know when it is happening. I feel abruptly emotional, suddenly swimming in head scrunchies and often times a bit spinny with the unfriendly.

I tend to go away and hide both literally and figuratively. “I need time to think,” I tell myself in my brain. Dust particles take a few minutes of not thrashing around to settle down and reveal the original source of the kerfuffle. After that, I start having decent thoughts, but carefully.

I’m human. I get angry sometimes, yeah. I try to avoid venting on to anyone in real life as that smells of unhealthy. Anger, rage and hate are Ailey forces used to destroy things, or others. There is great power, but only to support waste. Instead of consuming the galaxy in my agony, I find myself writing things that never get published or stewing on a chain linked series of compounding thoughts which have some negative reason for being.

I don’t expect that I will ever get pro at any of this. The mean voice has all sorts of clever ways of being relevant. Coping skills can be taught, yes. However, implementing is an entirely different animal. Failure, dismay and regret are frequent customers at the diner of my consternation.

One thing I feel I’ve improved on is not stuffing my frustration without recognition and also to avoid acting on volatile emotions. Fucking that up is likely to happen, bus do too will getting back up. Emotions deserve respect for being, but not indulgence to further stuff the gluttonous beast. Just stop, breathe, count to a number higher than 6, and use your butterfly voice.

Dredge

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Sunk-shaft in throat-deep brown,

Residual, pungent excrement of time,

Aspirate viscous words,

Review abhorrent scenes–

Snarled in knotted forever nevers,

Plopped firmly in the mud of then.

The stink of hate–

Long permeated through cracked windows–

Careless doorseams,

The dank, mildew-wet scent–

Of irreconcilability.

Puffification

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I was thinking disparagingly about my exes tonight, which is usually a bad thing. I thought: now, with all the fuck-tastic awesomeness of my evolved self, there is no place where you would ever fit. You see, I pine for them still. I yearn for them as though it were years ago. This is unhealthy.

Irrelevant. This word fits perfectly in the now, because metaphorical organisms shed versions of themselves not suited to survive in the ever changing circumstance of reality, in order to prevail in survival. I mean, I compare myself not spitefully, but logically or factually.

I get into this rut of thinking these past relationships contain some present-day worth other than what I have gleaned through introspective reflection, post destruction. I am somewhere far away from where I used to be, which makes parallels useless.

Tonight was week 5 of my support group, which inspired me to create the following list of adjectives: communal, open, emotional, cathartic, safe and joyous. I feel fantastic, which maybe is why I cast aspersions at my past. None of them can now or ever did truly see me for the fucking awesome person I am, even if only a glimmer of it was visible back then. I don’t need positive reinforcement; all the proof is right here! I am the book!

Even if I’m the only one who really knows, at least I found a place in this world where I both belong and can make a difference.

I’m okay. I’m going to be just fine. I need to be both grateful and resentful sometimes. This is real life where shit often hits the fan, which rarely results in anything not having shit stuck to it.

Specked, Re–

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Sometimes I fly away from the ground. I go up high above my body, above the clouds, and I see the Earth. I see the weather in the lower atmosphere… the distant glinting of sunlight on the surface of the ocean…

At other times… all I can see is a narrow circle resolving a tiny window of reality at the end of a long tube. Whipping and whirring around to expose the miniscule window to as much as possible.

This flagrant, caustic world we reside in coaxes out our demons and turns them loose with fast fingers and poorly conceived, later regretted, actions. Do you pride yourself in being full of demons waiting to escape and consume your opposition? Do you disappear into an irresolvable point of light amidst billions of others?

The way is unknown.

Yet To Come

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One of the conflicts I run into when attempting to communicate abstractly with others is perspective: each person I interact with has a different view of the “arc” of our trajectory as a society, and thus, a way of seeing things vastly contrary to my own. That disparity is a foreboding obstacle to honest discourse, and a defining gap in connection that is nearly always to vast to bridge. I have often found this cravase most abyssal with people I had intimate exposure to, since my traits and theirs were more entwined than in any other interaction (making comparison easy).

 

As I have become older, things have slowed down… the gravitational force which once had me anchored to exacting control of my reality has dramatically lessened. The resulting vacuum of “directing” force has accelerated my drift from the substantive microcosmic world of an incrementalized life.

 

Now, I’m left with the real quandary of making observations or comparisons that do not jive with others, or even occur as relevant. My thought processes are conclusively simple and based in a world of concrete moral contrasts and factually well-represented theories. That point also does not seem to be well understood by others.

 

Part of my liberation has come from not only the environmental reduction of gravity, but my own unclenching my vain attempt to control the uncontrollable, external world of others. Instead of expectation, I have thoughtful recalculation. I have no understanding of what is going to occur right up until it happens. Turns out, there is no advantage in prematurely and anxiously forecasting potential results to STILL be caught flat-footed in the eventuality of an outcome. That anxiety-train is just an indulgence of paranoia, and after enough times seeing that path lead to personal pain or failure, I have changed tracks.

 

Now, with that sense of existential detachment, one might expect disconnection from the cares of the societal world, if one’s moral compass points inwardly towards the self-satisfaction of narcissism. I care more, now, because even a little pile of moss is a miracle of reality in its own, clearly less impactful way. People are the ultimate gift, because there are no duplicates of the yet uncharted world of personalities, intellects, perspectives and experiences. We only get one chance to be here, to see, to breathe and be alive. Even in the most catastrophic suffering, there is still the curiously uncertain world of the unfurling, wind-snapped standard of time.

 

Course Change

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I’ve decided to change therapists and go back to the one I had a rapport with in the past. I need to be challenged not placated, based on my current standing. ML has been much more useful to me in the past as an introspective coach which MB was not. I need advanced thought-level conversations about my mental state. I look forward to catching up and starting a new chapter with ML and jettisoning MB.

On the other hand, I still struggle to reconcile my feelings. I ache a bit with loneliness, but I also have a flare and passion for where I am now. I’m trying the dating site again, as indicated by my probe post. I have no investment in it honestly, other than it be a guide for others to be filtered through if applicable. So far, no one has survived the crucible of my derangement, as was expected. The standard has to be high because anything less is unsustainable.

Do you ever find yourself saying: “what the fuck am I doing right now?” I ask this of myself daily, as if it were something to be regularly challenged. Truth is I don’t check often enough. I still fall victim to the aches and agonies of the past. The palatable longing. It lingers, renews and ultimately, remains.

I also have little made up interactions in my head that never happened in real life because the voices inside my head are responsible. These exchanged are nonsensical at times and nearly always fictionalized in some pleasing way. There is no resolution to some past events, and that is a fate I have come to accept. The pain involved is unbearable at times, which might be why my wounds remain freshly agitated. I don’t think I’m alone in this predicament.

Well, things bloom promisingly on the horizon for me, while Critical Susan is murmuring foul things into my ear. It’s a world full of different voices saying what they need to say. Their overall impact is still, hopefully, mine to decide.

Spinny Brain

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An anxious thought starts like a marble at the top of a massive slope. At first, it’s not going all that fast, but quickly, it rockets to full downward acceleration.

I do have those thoughts, pretty much daily to some degree. The one that happened a few minutes ago was emblematic of the new trend of how I respond: I got the spinny brain and the downward went pretty fast… thinking about work. I started a chain reaction of colliding, exploding particles. Little fragments of shit were going everywhere and all looked lost.

Then, I stopped. I caught my breath, so to speak, and halted the descent with a fact. Then, I presented another indisputable fact which presented itself contrariwise as reasoning. The absence of truth does not necessitate the void be filled with something assumed. If the evidence isn’t there, it’s only really a story about what could potentially be. I presume the worst, but I honestly don’t know at all how it will go until I see the proof. Everything prior is just a speculation, and speculations likely or unlikely don’t weigh much more than the other on the cosmic scale. Unless I have some kind of super power, things largely out of my control are like to remain so.

How? Once the tunnel gets narrow, I pop my head up for a quick reality check. Perspective gives me a chance to see just how far my ass went down the rabbit hole. Usually. It’s not fool proof, but I’ve found the honesty of it provides the necessary grounding element to restore clarity. Indulging delusions is always, in some part, a conscious activity. When that is recognized allows for a change in behavior; contorting easy acceptance into a challenge of truth.

Everybody responds to things differently, just as Med A works great for me but made your toenails fall off. Med B makes my toenails fall off too, so now we can be in a club! Weee!

The air is starting to clear at last. My brain is sure to be working better soon!

#1605

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Accomplished. There is a resounding, confident awareness of potential.

Still with symptoms today. Flashbacks. Old embers. Burning…

Laughter cures like a quick hit, but fades unless repeated.

I don’t know where I am yet.

The thread that still binds me to you across the ethereal plain grows increasingly thin, but I realize now, will never be gone.

Ed.

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A full day of training behind me, and one step closer to another employment qualification. Signature Program Leader… sounds pretty fucking real, eh? This accomplishment will undoubtedly take its place with myriad others to represent the structure of success I am erecting. All that LEGO training is paying off!!

I’ve changed in the past few years. Truly, the environmental variables and my own emphasis on progress have promoted my success (yes, there is many of success, just look at all these bricks). Even as I say that, I’m laying in bed exhausted. Each component of the structure that has contributed to where I am now has been difficult to set into usefulness. An arduous proposition, even. That’s why I know the foundation is strong; it was built with now calloused hands, thousands of hardened bricks and the inflexible rigidity of mortar.

Right now though, I’m tired, snarly and generally looking to push the power button until the screen shuts off. I’m all done for today. I would wager this is a familiar state for many who push themselves despite mental illness.

Tonight though, I hope I do not have troubling dreams. Visitations from the loves who are lost. Splintered memories of joy and agony. Mortal danger. Fire. Death. There aren’t many things I look forward to anymore, but uninterrupted, fulfilling, restful sleep is clearly high on that list. When maintaining mental stability is the concern, priorities change along with expectations.

Upon further reflection, I feel… integral. Zipper-like. I’m a part that would be missed if it were gone. I don’t have an incessant desire for self destructive behavior to combat regularly, so usefulness is a motivator instead of an antidote.

Basically, I’m satisfied being one of a select few who have any idea just how fantastic I am. I’m sorrowful that the number will be low, and companionship impossible, but my vivacious charisma will still infect this vulnerable world with unrelenting smart-assery, poignant sarcasm and deadpan, monotone responses that do not make any sense.

Ficky-Foog

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I’m seeing that there are a stack of factors contributing to my degraded mental health in the last few weeks. In my effort to be constructive, there are some steps I’d like to take in addition to diligence respected since last required. On that specifically: the one activity I have neglected has been my exercise, which I am suspending only because of the air quality. My recognition of the state of emotional decline does not have a logically rationalized outcome, despite my brain trying to address it as such. Some factors simply have to be understood or accepted as they are. I don’t have any sort of spirituality, but I do have a sort of faith that my own struggles were necessary to harden me into who I am now. How I proceed with my “struggle” will define who I am, what I stand for and provide a path forward from despair.

The accountability of self-honest justification binds me. Period. I wear such shame from the past as it is now… crushing shame. Memories I can’t ever erase or actions I cannot undo. Why would I further burden myself with new regret when life under the weight I have can be relentless? When I stare into the mirror, I see someone who I was ashamed of, for a time. How should I spend these precious additional days I have been granted? What is going to help alleviate the burden on my consciousness? What must I do to not continue to be someone I regret being?

I don’t feel anything but agony in surrender. I do not have zero worth. No one has zero worth. There is always something within that is 100% unique. I have that too, and it enables me to give back honestly, proudly. In the end, I’m only looking at myself. Only I have seen the whole journey. Can I ever be truly understood, or better yet, who would want to know? I contend that may not be anyone who would care enough to untangle such an elaborate, confounding knot.

I try to measure reality in terms of variables that are unlikely to change, and ones that are. I have moved companionship to a nearly inactive state, which has its own consequences. I have been in a mode where the avenue to this potential emotionally effusive destination is little more than a cul de sac of my own consternation. Having changed as much as I have in recent years, I begin to feel a glimmer that I may have acquired the skills to, at least, increase the probability of being successful. Maybe I’m sabotaging myself by having a standard of expectation to high to be met or to high to be rationally deserved. All I have left to do is experiment with the variables I can change, and hope for a positive outcome of some kind.

This blog has always been my thought stream splash pad, and now more than ever I am glad I have a place I can go to work through the various responses to my symptoms and changing factors in my circumstance. To survive, and not be at the mercy of my surroundings, my behaviors, actions, thoughts and expectations have changed. Is this a 2.0 moment, or are we still in beta?

Processed

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If there’s any lesson to be learned from all the hashed and rehashed potato memories fried up on the blog it’s that cooking food too long burns the shit out of it until it is unrecognizable charcoal.

I’ve been writing things with frequency, and indulging my memories (however painful). I’m not trying to deduce anything, but endeavor to accept the things I can’t change.

How hard is it living in my current stasis of passive recognition? Clearly the tumultuous words which have come splattering out of the thought-faucet are evidence of the regurgitative, expressive process I’m ensnared in. There is no processing anything to resolution, only a realization which plateaus at unquestioning understanding.

I count almost two years in physical and mental isolation from companionship. In that time, I’ve realized that I may be alone for the rest of my life, which I am accepting of (but not okay with). How can one be satisfied in such an unrewarding and lonesome dynamic? I know I can’t be truly happy without that now vacant place inside me growing with love. It is a separate matter to both love and appreciate the self, but another matter entirely when someone else sees it too and flourishes with honest interest.

In my most callously logical of states, I doubt the height of the exacting standards by which my future relationships are to be held is a mark anyone would be interested in contorting over to achieve companionship (with someone like me). The bar must be impossibly high, because anything less is bound to half-life itself to oblivion or deposit the waste of resistant resentment into a chasm which widens as more is deposited.

No, there is only one path ahead: it is long, precarious and only wide enough for one it would seem.

Two Night Terrors

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I was all nicely dressed, in this massive office building. It was clear that I had just given a presentation or something, and I was packing up and mingling With indistinguishable dream people. I was so distracted that I forgot my computer bag on the filing cabinet as I left.

I was walking out to the parking lot and a friend from high school (BD) ran out after me just to tell me I had forgot my bag, but when I looked back across the parking lot I was stunned…

In the night sky behind the hill and row of offices and houses, a red and orange glow was growing brighter. Then, towering, carnivorous flames emerged on the hill and rapidly began to descend. An unrealistically massive wall of consuming fire bore down in hunger.

I remember the wind. It was violent, tornado-like even. Houses were being ripped apart, glass was flying everywhere, debris was strewn on the ground. The fire devoured the city before me, and I ran in thinking I would go back for my computer. I did not make it out.

—

Poised on an odd carpet saddle-like bucket seat on the edge of a thousand foot drop over cities, towns and homes, I was somehow needing to move a collection of small objects to relative safety away from the perilous edge.

My hands were sipping with sweat, and I felt things could slip through my grasp and fall into the world below. The howling wind tore at me, begging me to fall to my death, pushing me with each insistent gust. There were people down there, lives, unaware of my situation.

My fingers and toes burned with nervous panic each and every second that my legs dangled freely over the immense expanse, and having so many things I needed to move back from the edge was an overwhelming concern. My hands were slipping and jittery. The computer tower was so big and heavy… how was I going to move this away when it was so close to falling? The wind kept pushing me closer, closer.

Exfoliate

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All this revisiting of my past, and for what? It seems like an inherently counterproductive venture, but I assure you it’s not. Note that I don’t spend much time acutely regretting, chastising or otherwise reiterating failures. I must know now to then know better later on.

An irreconcilable divide. The constant gaping wound. Just one trigger unleashed a series of impassioned posts. I wasn’t expecting to go there, but I did, and gladly. I’ve had positive thoughts about the way I processed all these images and feelings.

The gain is strength from acceptance. The past goes on unchanging, but each new step carries the memories. How to address that effectively? I write. A lot. I write as much as it takes to exfoliate the brain meat.

I have tons of stupid fucking thoughts. Don’t you? It’s hard not to judge even though it’s my brain.

The consciousness glops like cold molasses out of a drippy faucet. There is no good time for brain. Only time.

Probe 1a

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As requested by High Command, we have fired a scientific research probe off to study the anomaly.

The probe will take a long time to fully study the area, and we do not expect to hear back from it for many days or longer.

However, Commander, we are fulfilling the NEW Prime Directive to always venture out into the furthest reaches of explored space, and find what unknown mysteries lie in the darkness beyond our current perception.

Previous probes that have been sent to existing systems for additional study/analysis have been decommissioned at your request, and all forward facing starships are to send their probes to the outer limits.

This update has been brought to you by: Uncontaminated Dirt. “You never knew how much you needed it, until you didn’t have it,” they say. Get some Uncontaminated Dirt at your local starbase or stable M class planet today!

Unforgettable

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Seeing her shifting through the periphery of my attention, she radiated warm waves of indulgent excitement as we drove. I snared infrequent glimpses of the smooth cheeked beauty, flashing and vanishing erratically in the sulfuric light of the passing street lamps. Ringing and abounding with jubilant laughter, she sighed, and held out a slow burning ember from within; about to be set ablaze by a gust of cool, fresh air. The curl of her grin was laden with intent, desire and a sense of belonging despite the circumstance of being apart and constrained. Though, that was no barrier for her.

Her intent, a crackling wave of incendiary heat, sending tinder sparking and popping to tiny burning pieces… vanishing into the night sky. Smooth, wet, and eager, there were no bounds to her, no ties that could shackle her in place; no star that could outshine her glimmering brightness.

Where the world was, or what it was doing no longer mattered; what remained in the bristling atmosphere between us was a transcendent state of acceptance and acknowledgement. We saw each other briefly, and in that mutual space where our desires met, there was profound togetherness.

But even as this tempering realization was present, the electric spark of her youth, curiosity, fearlessness and desire became the direction of her hasty actions. In boundless, oblivious ecstasy, there was no time that was not ours, no boundary we could not cross together, no one else in the world who mattered… no fire like the one that was in her eyes she she beheld me. Though, beset by my own limiting discretionary conservation, it was not out of disapproval for her that we returned to the world… and this I hope she knew. 

There were times that I saw her, and many more in which I could not, or failed to. Where was the objectivity I needed then… was it always there but undeveloped? I contemplate my journey, drawing no needless conclusions and refusing to sully beautiful recollections with my frustrations, failures and ineptly accepted concessions. 

…Flickering light, casting those brief shadows across her curves, her frisky hair… and the recognition of such beautiful physical harmony that we shared.

Deep in past moments such as these, where I still see her smiling, I know that life has blessed me with memories I will never forget. They resound poignantly, which I cherish, for the many feelings of her love are not unknown or forgotten, but remembered forever. It was a time when I touched happiness, held it even… if not to eventually let it slip away. The nights we had, like the memory above, remind me of how wonderful the world can be. Even if I do not live this life now, I still hold my experiences as the most valuable, formative and essential knowledge of my journey thus far. Without them, I would not know the spectrum of all there is to experience while being alive. 

 

Incinerate

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Creaky hollowed and bone-dry,

Brittle stuck to twisted agonies,

Piling through the seasons–

Combustibly warped in crisped gapes.

Scowling shift hisses an unloading–

Cast of up leaves and old tinder,

Snicker-snapped with a snarly pop.

Bored moments and crumpled memories,

Transformed in a rush–

To pillowy piles,

Refined, but still–

Nourishing roots.

Birdy Letter Revisited

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A letter I have written before, but write again as the clarity improves to the benefit of my understanding. For my heart, for my mind, these words are sent:

~~

Dear Birdy,

There seem to be no words that can be said to bridge the span that lies between us, but I am nevertheless compelled by my conscience to send these words out into the expanse as a mark of my intent, truth and the desire of my heart to be at peace:

In my life, I have transitioned from state to state, trying to achieve stability with my mental illness since I was diagnosed. In my right, back when we first met, I lured you unknowingly into that turbulent dynamic and you were destroyed by it in many ways because of my inability to prepare you for it. I did not adequately equip you for how to respond to my mental illness effectively, nor did I remotely or appropriately respond to yours when you called out for help.

I remember in the truck one evening with you coming home from my parent’s RV. I was stoned and you were a bit tipsy. You remembered a trauma about your old best friend and I was chastising you for thinking about something from the past, like it wasn’t important because it had already happened. I think back on how you were hurting that night, with tears in your eyes, and it breaks my heart. You were calling out to be comforted, and I just argued with you, scolded you. I was not able to see the way to hear your pain, and acknowledge your trauma, or even to comfort you when you are feeling vulnerable. I failed then. I know it, and I accept that I must grow to do better. I am sorry for this time, and the many others like it.

I did not have the tools to communicate effectively with you or express my feelings to you appropriately. I was not able to help you, when you needed a partner, a friend, someone to trust. This disparity and neglect is my greatest regret, for the beautiful person you are was hidden by my inability to see you, address your feelings, and be the partner you needed me to be. I was not a healthy person and did not deal with my issues in a functional, sustainable way in the time that we knew each other. I lied to you, hid things from you, and never told you how I felt inside. The lesson of my inability to sustain our relationship has taught me the skills I needed to survive further calamity and caused me to regret the missed opportunity to have done better with the woman I loved more than any other.

I am responsible for harming you, abusing you mentally, psychologically… because of my unchecked disorder and poor coping skills. My sanity was not consistent, and I was reeling in the end, compensating poorly, neglecting frequently. I have a great deal of ongoing shame over this which keeps me thinking about how I can be a better communicator in my future interactions. I was not the person I needed to be to have properly participated in a relationship, and for all the damage that caused to you, I am sorry. With a pain that I feel every day, I am sorry for what happened between us. I have never been over it.

There is no word, or words that can take away the trauma, the pain. I must bear that responsibility forever. I have done what I can to learn and listen or try to. I am accepting of my part, but only hoping to release the emotional burden by the recognition of spoken, actualized thoughts. For all the times these powerful words and memories have been whispered between my ears, I give them back to the endless void, echoing on into the silence: thank you.

Blaaaaaaaaah…

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Things are cardboard for now. Mush.

There are blips, pings and peaks aplenty… but the gaps are sloping.

I’m starting to entertain, but where the balance lies is still a matter for discovery.

Not many words are here now, mostly just growling or grunting.

Some are friend… well, most are friend.

Where is the poof and rabbit? I have no rabbit and by God do I need the poof.

 

A Dream…

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It was a house I lived in now, but not one I had ever seen before. There were many well-lit rooms, hallways and balconies that opened up wide. There was flashy yellow trim, and the blue in the sky was vibrant above.

Yet, somewhere within the house, there was a door that went down. It was a door I opened and looked into freely. A solitary ladder stretched on into encompassing darkness of the featureless shaft, to some unseen place.

I began to descend. Down came with markers, years, I knew, ticking by the deeper I went. I knew it was a measure of time, but I couldn’t read the numbers. It wasn’t cold, despite how far it went on into the abyss below.

At the bottom, there was a dimly lit chamber. There was no visible floor, only endless shards of something small, shiny and black strewn or piled from wall to wall.

You were there J. You held the shards up in your palm so I could look at them, and then I realized what they were. They were once letters; literally large, black three dimensional letters that one might expect to find at an old timey gas station or cinema. The letters were broken into unrecognizable pieces. As I looked around, there were thousands of them, knee-deep in all directions. Your black hair glinted in the pale light filling the room and I remembered.

You wanted me to follow you, and we started walking through the catacombs, but it felt more like I was chasing you. Between the archways and pillars, you slipped away from my view. I knew I couldn’t stay, because I had to go back.

Then, it was gone.

Lighting

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Howdy there Blog. It has been a while since I was able to sit here long enough to have a complete thought. My prolonged absence is a sign of what I have been struggling with: bad behaviors. Neglectfulness.

I know I have been, for some time, coping with my mental health in a destructive way by abusing easy-to-get self-meditative solutions. I had become stagnant in my routine and compensated for the idleness of depression through indulgence of pleasurable things. Now I’m back to being annoyingly and uncomfortably overweight and in a hole I had been so good about liberating myself from in the recent past. I have not been idly failing, but actively so; eyes well trained on my doom. I noticed my destructive tendencies a few days ago, and instead of ignoring them, postulated a response.

Tonight is when I realized I had started to turn the thing around. First objective was to get back the lost cardiovascular health established prior to prevailing gluttonous, vacuum-like consumption. I silence urges more often than acknowledge them now, and have a rational consequence to apply to conceived, impulsive decisions. I made a cognitive-behavioral change, and what better a place to reveal as much but at one of my Connection groups tonight.

At the group, I thought about my future and of the potential of the Connection program. People I met at outreach came to the meetings, and people I had been emailing with. My promptness conveyed competency and so did my words during the group. I saw how even though I had been making bad choices, I was still turning it around slowly with new behaviors. The stagnation would not prevail!

I’m going to be facilitating one of my own support groups coming up this week on Halloween, for the first time ever. I used to be more anxious about the prospect of leading a group, but now, there is a calm which has established normalcy. The stakes are not perilous. The cost of failure is not decapitation. My facilitation responsibilities are now viewed in a context of excitement rather than anxiety. My thoughts, changed with intentional reconsideration.

Well, isn’t it fitting that these Recovery groups constantly promote introspection; just the thing I needed for recognition of my course correction? I thought it fitting that a tool well-used in the toolkits is still just as effective as the shiny ones. Have good all. I’m going to bed, but to the official office in the morning. Yay!

35th Anniversary Portrait Album

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Clearly this sort of activity truly excludes me from my peer group as most people my age hate all the crap I listen to. This is a good filter though, as this portrait is a fairly good rendering of myself in music. Though, the aspects I chose to depict, and how I chose to express them, is a matter of some debate. Nonetheless, the album is here and it is full of contrasts and apt comparisons. I highly recommend giving it a listen if you are old and h really have nothing better you could be dong. I find this type of thing puts me back in touch with my traits and memories of varying emotional gravity. I highly recommend toiling in this way. The act of pairing oneself to aspects of music seems inherently like it’s at least exploration and quite possibly transformative.

 

  1. Impression A – What A Fool Believes – Michael McDonald
  2. Impression B – Pork Parts – Ensemble Studios
  3. Charismatic – The Power Of Love – Huey Lewis and the News
  4. Mentally Ill – (Sic) – Slipknot
  5. Naïveté – You’re The Inspiration – Chicago
  6. Carnal – Wild Sex (In The Working Class) – Oingo Boingo
  7. Introspective – Man In The Mirror – Michael Jackson
  8. “Old Soul” – Tomorrow – Joe Walsh
  9. Immolative – Regular People (Conceit) – Pantera
  10. Detached – Hey Nineteen – Steely Dan 
  11. Curious – On The Road To Find Out – Cat Stevens
  12. Adaptive – I’m Still Standing – Elton John
  13. Original – Still Alive – GLaDOS & johnathan Coulton
  14. Regretful – The Other Guy – Little River Band
  15. Hopeful – The Voice – The Moody Blues
  16. Resilient – Waves – Blondfire
  17. Obscure – Flavor Cats (In The Comfort Zone) – Ensamble Studios
  18. Unsatisfied – No One Like You – Scorpions

Plain and Simple, Part 2

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I filled out this silly character sheet like thing way back in the beginning (2012). Perceptions have changed a bit since then, needless to say. The original can be found here for comparison.

  1. Called: W. Eric Bailey
  2. Height: 6′ 2″ (I didn’t shrink)
  3. Weight: 235 lbs
  4. Demeanor: Proactive buddy-pal
  5. Character: Desirous intoxicant
  6. Self-Image: Large, well organized Ant farm
  7. Attributes (5): optimistic, persistent, rational, adaptable, archaic
  8. Nature: Curmudgeon
  9. Abilities (2): technologically savvy, personable relatability
  10. Human vs. Animal Ratio?: Human 88% Animal 12%
  1. Fight or Flight?: Flight
  2. Brawn or Brains?: Brains
  3. Truth or Dare?: Truth
  4. Sky or Horizon?: Horizon
  5. Introverted or Extroverted?: Extroverted!!
  6. Night or Day?: Day
  7. Red or Blue?: Red
  8. Yellow or Green?: Yellow
  9. Risk or Reserved?: Reserved
  10. Lies or Honesty?: Really?
  1. Who you are now?: Dwanglebleeg L. Magoobriuston
  2. Who you want to be?: An artichoke named Susan
  3. What is the best part of you?: I can translate for the cat
  4. What is your biggest flaw?: splat-like eagerness
  5. What drives you?: The promise of tomorrow
  6. What inspires you?: True understanding
  7. What is your conscience like?: Chuck Norris on one shoulder and Joni Mitchell on the other
  8. Who were you?: Not a friend of self
  9. What do others see in you?: Whatever I show them
  10. What do you see in yourself?: someone who has “been weighed, measured and found wanting.”

Happy Chunks

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Hello again Blogomites.

One of the most helpful aspects of my recovery has been participation in community outreach events on behalf of NAMI. The rejuvenating properties of inspired interaction have vast and resounding impacts on my world view And attitude. No better way to get a gauge of individuals than to talk to them earnestly, in my thinking. You’d be surprised how far that energy goes, especially to the vulnerable, the uninformed, and the otherwise course-less.

I find a source of nourishment through my community involvement, and I have a passion for it which is obvious on first glance. I see how it is labor for some, and not met with my level of energizement by most other table-hosts. From within my own perspective, this is what I know I need to be doing.

I profess nothing, but hope to remind that hope and joy are to be found in a variety of places, and I’d say finding them where they were not expected is a great thing as well.

This has been one area where there is improvement. It is not comprehensive as there is no such circumstance which universally applies anything. The best fit for happy is one that snaps in where it was needed.

First or Middle?

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I’ve had two names most of my life (um, duh?). My family used my middle name as a first name from the earliest moments, which differs from how most of the rest of the world does things. My creators were quite determined to make sure I had a name that couldn’t be shortened or rhymed with anything profane… so there we go with how that got started.

Early on, I began to run into conflict with the real world: schools, doctors, government and myriad other agencies, as they should, called me by my first name. This was a revelation, and required remedy of some form. Initially, I hassled with correcting everyone all the time, which I tired of doing around my teens.

It was at that point I just started answering to either my first or my middle name as though they were of equal concern. Given, the context and location would determine which of the names I would be listening for. This decision to assign environment to name created an unintentional rift of persona that continues (in some form) to this day. I wish to draw attention to this internal rift, because of the transformative significance an unlikely event can trigger.

Drawing the distinction between the first and middle name “personas” will illuminate the nature of my social mechanisms:

The first persona, let’s call him W, is the active societal participant. He works hard, aims high, holds others accountable if needed and rises up from within to take on more and more. He can be an ass, authoritative, demanding, but doing so not out of irrelevance or malfeasance, but to advance something positive. He is bipartisan, but driven to achieve in all avenues offered. He doesn’t joke all that much and burns the midnight oil when needed. He is well-spoken, articulate and very persistent. The sum of all my professional interactions, effectively, along with a dose of that competitive aggressiveness that was necessary as an outer carapace.

The other persona, E, is quite different. He’s a gamer, a stoner, craft beer enthusiast, and a witty adversary with a dagger sharpened by sarcasm. He listens, loves and sings. He is the “play hard” half of the dichotomy, but a much more developed person overall. E has friends, where W has none. E enjoys all sorts of things, going outdoors, experimenting with new activities, enjoying recreation… the list goes on.

W is concerned with having the moral pride of knowing he did his best, tried hard, didn’t quit, persevered and got back to bed time in one piece. These two seem fundamentally divided in several ways, but each serving a purpose in the mechanism I developed to survive in the real world.

Albeit, having the dichotomy within is not a good thing, and it did have a big part to play in my last relapse. However, something interesting happened when I moved up here from SD. The rubble of W looked like it was headed for a long rebuilding process after the destructive downfall, but, an unknown confusion led to a dramatic and unexpected change of world view.

I needed to start volunteering, so I reached out to the NAMI affiliate and bugged them to let me help. Once I got in with NAMI, the Executive Director and exchanged a few emails and agreed to meet for a table event on Sacramento City College’s campus. When I reached out to shake his hand, he addressed E, not W. I was very much expecting W to be the go-to guy here in the professional role, but instead, E walked in and took a seat at the helm. It was a moment that I found no immediate significance in at the time, but looking back over the last 6 months, I can see something remarkable has been happening.

It is clear to me that E is in W’s role for good, emulating W’s attributes as the innovator, the outward facing customer support geared guy, the do-gooder, go-getter. He still takes on responsibility, and comes through consistently, is punctual, determined and always looking to advance the cause forward. Yet, there is something outwardly-radiating that is not like W at all, but quite distinctively E. The playful banter with coworkers, sharp wit, steely sarcasm and ample laughter are all a part of regular business with this bunch. There are quips, smackdowns and mic drops everywhere, and this is the playground of E for certain. E is fun, and peculiar, and bizarre at times, but quite distinctive as part of the core of the person behind the persona.

Perspective helps me see E unpacking slowly, probing, validating, becoming familiar, but still with many things withdrawn in security as W would to protect himself. There has been an amalgamation of the two worlds I had created long ago, and the blending of them has contributed to the current healthy time in my life. Maybe there are more ways that the personas will draw themselves apart, as circumstances change, but really, having E take the lead has been the greatest oddity of my entire transition up here. I am very, very glad I decided to me E and not W with this crew, because I’ve never been happier to do something for someone.

Combine : Collide

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Circumstance accelerated–

Separately decorated rooms,

Their unions indelicate as colliding trains–

Smashed.

Strewn about empty vessels & toppled statuettes,

Angrily flashing lights abound–

Combining colored blotches,

Finding a door hidden in the wall.

—

Yearning and curious posturing,

Catastrophic yet creative–

Electric when touched,

Running between tall shadows,

Impaled by ruin–

Judged by amalgamation.

Sliding by rust-hooked fragments–

Skewered with twisted iron brambles,

Blood-stained and snarled gloves.

—

Spiderwebbed glass,

Aching unknowns–

Stresses of anxiety-driven thoughts,

Smearing like palm-clammy hands,

Begging to be inside.

Unable to breathe–

The rooms combining–

Colliding.

Dear Me, March 2nd, 2014

by in Creative Writing, Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hey Buddy,

I know about the thoughts and reservations that you have been having lately… which now seem to be coming to a peak moment. You have, to this point, failed to truly respond to any of those nagging doubts and have led your current relationship down a road it will not survive. This is the primary reason why I am here in this non-existent moment of comparative fiction.

In your neglect of your own mental health, you have greatly contributed to the soon-to-be demise of your relationship as well as hurt any chance you have at a normal life going forward for some time. You are headed to an explosion of epic proportions, tomorrow as a matter of fact, and you will try to take your own life. She will leave you, the same night you are hospitalized in fact; she will sleep with another man and never come back. I’m here not to change things, clearly, but to offer you a glimpse at the world that will come to be as you progress further from the smoldering ruin your life is about to become. That lesson will show you the importance of having a complete self and help you push forward in the world with your feet in the real world’s mud.

First, I want to say that I am aching in my recollection of the hurt you are going to feel, and most of it will be incredibly painful since it was self-inflicted. Right now, you have been compensating for your downfall with substances, food, cigarettes, just about anything you can get your hands on to take you away from the reality you are in. You haven’t dealt with anything; it has all been bottled and fermented into resentment. You never tried to talk to her the way you would now, and maybe even if you had, she wouldn’t understand. You refused to address the issues up-front or with any level of self-admission, and therefore, you are going to suffer a calamity as your most precious relationship breaks apart forever. The hurt that this event brings will not be resolved for more than 4 years, continuing to this very day as a matter of fact. You loved her in this intense, abstract, not functional way, and you neglected your responsibilities in your relationship which contributed to its destruction. It will take you many years to fully understand and adapt beyond this moment. She had a part to play in this mind you, but there is nothing to gain from summarizing things that are outside of the self, as they can’t be changed.

I am so sorry. You are going to feel broken for a long time after tomorrow night. You will miss her in ways you never knew were there before, and feel her absence deep inside the core of the most vulnerable self. You will understand how she was neglected. She was the person you loved the most so far in your life, and her loss with your assistance is something you will not be able to move past. In a subconscious/telepathic, you are still linked to her, as though some invisible tether connects you despite the distance, and hatred lodged between, and that twitching bait has incited more trauma, more pain…

This upcoming disaster happened because you needed to learn about the value of self-love. I had to acquire this knowledge painfully, humbly, but earnestly. I can’t undo things that happened, and I will never erase the place inside me that still belongs to her… but I can learn. I can adapt and grow.

If it is anything for you now, know that because of this event, you will learn that your mental illness is the thing you need to be most concerned about in your life. You will find a way to help yourself defend against the same issues you have had in the past, and fallen victim to. The truth of this journey is the ability to appreciate who you are without restraint. Pride and acts that demonstrate a morally honest compassion for things that are “right” in terms of common sense are going to be the evidence you use to build up proof through action.

Your love has been sought from without in the past; filling you up with a feeling of worth that is artificial, untrue and not properly earned. It is similar to presenting the one you desire most with an empty vessel and expecting her to be excited to fill it. Without the lesson of the soon-to-be failure, you might never have known how to find who you were and live that life proudly into the future. Speaking for myself, there has been no greater remedy to the onset of depression than the long road of positive steps that have led me to this moment. I know you, past me, are not there yet, but you will be headed out of the deep hole in not too long. My echoing thought for you is to tolerate this great sadness with an idea that it will not last indefinitely, but must be respected properly. Let it sink deep into you and know it. You will feel the lowest moment of your life and this is part of the understanding that you will gain.

The realization of pain will help you avoid situations like that in the future, while also garnering you the most success and self-worth you will know, at least, thus far. Hurt, regret, sadness and anguish are a part of how we learn. I remember the agony, and I know some things not to do to avoid feeling it again. I do not wish to fall into the same ancestral rut that contains the bones of all the other me versions before? I refuse.

I am there to help you, but only to provide you with a look farther down the road. There is always the next day as long as you are alive, and I know you will continue to do something with the existence you have created. That shape will change depending on who you chose to become, but if pride is the needle that guides your direction, I think things are going to be just fine. You have already done more than you ever have, and this is only the beginning of where your life will go along your new road.

Hold on friend, you will soon be feeling the sun on your face.

Sincerely,

You

Goldendome

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The sponge is currently on administrative leave until tomorrow morning. We have record of his sponginess being excellent during the time in which it was best to be sponge. Now, however, is no sponge required.

Meeting new people is always a sparky flashy bing bang. I did very well with all of that poof today, in the rapture of hours long NAMI table outreach. My gospel of happily re-uptake inhibited existence was heard by many, quite beyond expectation even, with other underachieving adjectives such as “lots” and “much.” I was impressed by the event turnout, yanked like a wanker from one enjoyable chat to the next, but finally, casually ecstatic to have so many neat interactions. Working with great people, seeing a well intended mission going forward with the friends, while there was revelry, showmanship, vocabulary discussions, handouts… a very event packed day where my cheese-like head is overwhelmed. I am grateful for the sip of rejuvenating fairy jizz which has recharged my total self.

I’m still pretty sure I know what I need to do with my life. Occasionally the congress of doubt throws some shade, but not enough to do much of anything anymore. Facts. Proof. Reality. Boom.

If the truth is realized and accepted within the core of self, the armor will not be breached by pointy outside things. Despite the cruel filibuster of Dubiety McDoubterson, the legislature slogs on. Conduct is where action done in the “now,” being vaulted on the road of bricks built of “then.” The world is not going to pander to my absurdly out-of-touch filter, so why be outraged when life sticks a hot poker up your ass?

I was thinking about all the ways my life is quite special, and how fucking that up is not an option at this point. So much real work I did has become a platform for a successful future (hopefully, unless my eyes are eaten by bees, or my dad turns into a gelatinous amoeba of unusual size[pish, like he isn’t already?], consuming all organic matter nearby).

More devilry to come, I’m sure.

The ERA Equation

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Fictional Fantasy Baseball – The Studyball Kurmudgeons

Rarely do I freely venture into the land of mathematics, but as that pertains to statistics, one could say there is love, not anger, death and PAIN. I’m not sure my endeavors serves any other purpose other than to fascinate my brain and make it work in a different way to figure out the solution to a problem, but regardless of notoriety, the task is noble. Back in the good ol’ days I was writing equations while manic that Excel couldn’t resolve, because they were written stupidly and abhorrently complex, ah yes, sweet memory… wait, this is a not good memory… however, I was able to do most of what I wanted, but not all. Fortunately I have found a middle ground between epiphany and practicality. The mechanism of my learning has been a logical argument within Microsoft Excel (or Google Sheets): IF/AND.

Excel allows one to look at or through data in a variety of ways, and boy is there a lot of data around Baseball. I take real 7-day MLB sums from players across the league and the results tell me something about how my own scoring configuration might balance, or scale in certain areas, as appropriate. The things that are hard to write equations for are those that modify or scale a result, or have an array of possible outcomes but somehow need to all be accounted for. Building a massive array by entering all the possible outcomes is not practical when dealing in hundreds. Equations need to be sleek, quick and able to return a sensible answer under any circumstances.

My task over the last couple of days was to make a logical equation using AND, IF or both, and try to weight the ERA over a game period like ranking the scoring/yardage surrendered by NFL team defenses. ERA becomes a scaling reward for low totals, and becomes a worthless (or a negative total) after 4. I had a similar equation already written for the NFL spreadsheet but all the values and references had to be changed.

=SUM[this is just the mechanism that will total the result as an integer]

(IF([condition/test],[result if Y],[result if N]

IF(AND[condition/test],[result if Y],(IF(AND[nested IF as negative response triggers second criteria in the next argument while building off the previous argument, as long as AND is present]

My initial equation looked like this:

=SUM(IF(D1=0,””,(IF(D1<.001,[value cell 0],(IF(D1=0,[value cell 1](AND(D1<.99,D1>.001,[value cell 2],(IF(AND(D1<1.99,D1…….. so on and so forth, moving the needle higher as the ranges of ERA are graded as they fall between one of the equations areas. But I was acting like there was a value below zero I had to be worried about, which is a product of using the equation from the NFL Fantasy Scorecard where those values are possible in the net yardage equation. After taking notice of the parameter change, I rewrote the beginning. 

There is a little “housekeeping” to settle up front, taking into account all numbers that COULD BE RENDERED on the spreadsheet. The D1, lets just say is the cell where the manual ERA will be entered on the sheet.

This specific line means, if D1 has no value in it, show nothing (represented by a text quote with no text “”) since zero is an ERA value there should be nothing to render if the cell is empty. 

After the above action, the next is to squarely assign a value to 0, since bridging ranges on it is problematic. The, the lowest value in the first range, mathematically expressed in greater-than less-than form. This can be repeated over and over, laying one on top of the other as the N condition until a result is returned.

The whole equation on the spreadsheet itself looks like this:

 

=SUM(IF(C21=“”,0,(IF(AND(C21=0),Rules!B40,(IF(AND(C21>0,C21<1),Rules!B40,(IF(AND(C21>0.99,C21<2),Rules!B41,(IF(AND(C21>1.99,C21<3),Rules!B42,(IF(AND(C21>2.99,C21<4),Rules!B43,(IF(AND(C21>3.99,C21<5),Rules!B44,(IF(AND(C21>4.99,C21<6),Rules!B45,(IF(C21>5.99,Rules!B46))))))))))))))))))

Those values triggered a result dependent on the integer in the cell, and were located on a separate page within the file:

The parallel between the NFL DEF/ST is undeniable because it is pretty much the same fucking thing. Beautiful how those two very different stats have a parallel in that scale, plus the way that can be whittled until bare at times, much like watching one’s team getting tired in the 4th quarter,defending the lead… this should give something additional for my nonexistent owners to fuss about. I wish there was someone who would fuss.

Making the equation and seeing the result it had on the scorecard was very rewarding, adding a boom-or-bust possibility to the pitcher’s slots on the roster. I like potential, and I like unexpected, crushing agony. Both remind me of how nice normal is.

 

 

Now I have a new scaling toy to play with, but another though I had is that pitchers aren’t the only ones with an ERA these days. Position players are now often used as a bullpen if a game is out of reach for example, and the manager wants to save his relief bullets. This could be hell for your average owner, when suddenly your 2B throws 17 pitches and has 4 ER with zero K, HR allowed and a 9.00 ERA!!

Upgurdge

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Some stimuli has led to a jolt within, where new factors were given a rise of prominence. Still the backdrop of self-inflicted undesirability remains as repugnance is accepted. I’m summarizing grossly.

My hypothesis on status remains the same, since my pie slice is already big enough. I do like pie though. Pie. Tasty pie. Flavors.

An exploratory thought under the oncoming tsunami of gurdge. I’m so overflowing with sludge that it gets everywhere, and smells bad. Can the sludge ever be contained?! On our next episode we’ll find out.

To grunk or not to grunk?

Nothing of supple invitation ever seems to become a happy or a friend.

+

by in Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear Head,

Your relationship to my brain has always been central to our cooperation, so, I believe you will trust my words (said in earnest, from the heart). I know that the information you are being inundated with right now is some pretty rancid, unrelenting vitriol, however, that is only part of the reality you and I reside in. I am not discounting the relevance of allowing emotional expression, but I do expect a bipartisan effort in forward operations regardless. Everyone can have their say, as long as we can all still function normally (ideally).

Despite the revelatory insurrection, there are several things which can be said, truthfully, definitively:

Eric, you have a magnetic personality, a deadly poignant sense of humor, and a charisma that inspires others.

Despite all the numerous mistakes you have made in your past, you are still out there trying for better (nearly) every single day.

Lastly, you are proven strong through fact, capable and dependable in your aspirations, and your duties are done with love and honor.

Despite a history littered with debilitating landmines, there are still compromises, missteps and occasional mutilations. The future can’t be set in one direction, because it is an amalgamation of myriad recesses, peaks, troughs and all the undulations of a matured life.

Sometimes just a few freely flung words have a significant impact…

The self is a puzzle with pieces that change shape, move on their own or hide somewhere far away, never to become a part of the completed picture.

Blind

by in Creative Writing, Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Smeared streak across glass–

Prune-like pulp chunk,

Blasted splat to barrier.

Vacantly gulping–

Eyeball-seeking,

The other side.

—

Embossed in “la la” afterglow,

A faded twirly skirt no one wears,

In a vacant room–

11th floor–

A light was left on.

Spatula’d off the surface–

Plorped into a dustbin,

Mingling with the glops–

Deposits within firmament.

My Head The Tree

by in Mental Illness, Rant and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I think I’m temperamentally inclined towards observation on a geologic scale, but still momentarily vulnerable or shortsighted in the face of other organisms. It’s an odd comparison to resolve, and the places where they meet are the confluence of contrasts. I tend to think of this place as a rural village with ox-plowed fields and people eating beans. The volatility of places being a magnet for interest, I allege.

I’m starting to develop an appreciation for how far off the deep end of existence I have fallen. Down in the abyssal trench, there are lots of tiny blind crabs eating thin flakes of compressed dolphin poop that fall from above like a shit soaked snow globe. It is a sustainable existence, if not an inglorious one.

FYI: I need to do more metaphors where I’m not eating poop at the end.

I have several meat flies following me. Maybe that’s because I’m carrying a big hunk of rotten flesh in my pocket. I can’t help but sniff and remember back to when in smelled like meat.

Oh meat, you and I could have had it all. This has been the main issue.

Now, much maligned by necessity, my stumbling forward is sure to agitate the Nargles. I’m sure they are up to something, but I’m not concerned enough to google them to find out what they are.

Incubate

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I had a temporary reset to bolt healing mode, which provided plenty of time to introspectively blame with arbitrary reviled adjectives. Fortunately, many warm splashies and strechimisims helped. There was plenty of soft and fuzz, as there should be. For now, a momentary regeneration into egg-mode. Post mode activities consist of shouting and frantic pamphlet waiving.

I’m doing better along the path, but still looking for fruit or seed for sustenance. The food is not easy to find. You can’t bite a cactus without consequence.

I’m doing fairly well. The fuzz has helped.

Zeep

by in Mental Illness, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

End of old soggy sock smell and start of soft friend in a fuzzed-out place. The moving air and sheet jitters bring a fluttering-wing calmness. Everything weighed to down, and the time of joining is near. So many faces to see and places to sniff.

I don’t complain in my blessings. There is no deterioration if it isn’t wanted. Destruction is not aided in these lands. It is a downward fate to lead with criticism. I also find it meaningless to poof over things not with their weight in frets.

Have rest, when ready. The battery is low, but not for long. The peace of restarting. Shut down. Restart. Present.

The Arc

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We all search for meaning as we define its parameters through lived experience. No one else gets to pass idle judgement on that, because it’s strength is the core of the fully expressed self. Many times I have fought to change what cannot be changed, and tasted the grungy floor of down. I see a better way now through adaptation to changing expectation and the fertile joy of life itself.

I am not ungrateful for being chosen to live, but instead, indebted to the arc of humanity, upon which a beautiful future is projected. You, simply put, are a miracle whether you know it or not. There will only ever be one “you” in this world, and the reality as you see it can be something joyous and precious because it is totally unique and infinitely valuable. You, the out there person who is alive, deserve to be heard, contribute and exist. Speak your mind; we all only get one chance.

There is something “otherly” about internal dignity. The body responds, the mind settles and true pride itself radiates outward, like polished armor in the fray against the idle hypocrisy and rampant vitriol of the surroundings. Reasonable expectations keep horizons bright, if not very far away. I feel that existential obligation to have lived a life built on success, and failure as well; to have tasted sweetest love, and foulest resentment, anger, sadness, betrayal and pain. Meaning comes from experience, as the contrast helps us understand the spectrum of feeling.

My echo through the ether will say this man made many mistakes, but he has made this world somewhat better in form or feeling as well. His life was lived, and not squandered. It is an attitude that builds foundations that last, great iron-wrought struts and supporting joists. It is a structure that cannot be blown over, and to tear it down it must be disassembled, piece by piece, in a process that has no beneficial or rational potential and a low probability of occurrence.

Here me encouraging you to find what gives meaning to your life. Whatever it is. It doesn’t matter one bit, as long as you live true to real happiness from within, the things that grow from the core of self-contained wellness are wonderfully tasty fruits, where most other plants starve in dry places of anger, leaving only emaciated husks and ash-dry dust.

Fleeterly

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For me, being a part of “something” is a carnal need. I do not exist to affect nothing or no one. The beauty of being alive is a one-time gift even in the darkest recesses of contemplation. Have the traumas of my life shaped who I am? Undoubtedly and proudly. There is no strength quite like being whole unto oneself. Am I there yet…? No, I’m not. There is still a big nasty growing of snaggy brambles and thistles in the way. Better than I used to be, though. This last should be a damn mantra by now. I believe, I act, and I empower. The answer has always been in me, which makes me aware of how to stimulate the joy of realization to someone in need.

Today positively added to my recovery journey. I ventured out to talk with my psychologist and enjoyed a table outreach event at a utility company campus. I’m looking back on all the events I’ve done this. So many more than I would have projected months ago. I’m growing, Blog, and I feel myself unfurling and snipper-snapping into a crisp breeze. I am making my path through the world, proudly.

Reaching people is a wonderful feeling. Establishing a connection, agreeing to build a bridge, or even just a firm, earnest handshake can be beneficial. I see the pieces of realization scattered about in disarray for the present. One day soon, the picture will begin to develop from all those pieces. Integration, driven by genuine enthusiasm promotes my outward identity. Put the mask on and vanish into a persona. I wish I could take it off and show someone my real face. I have many strings being pulled by loneliness.

The empty space. A hole in my core self that can’t be healed. Ever. Trauma takes me back there, for a time. This is acceptable in comparison to stuffing feelings into an already crowded lunchbox.

There’s today’s thought-vomit. Enjoy? >.>

Have a good night.

Fantasy Football League Career Statistics (Retired)

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Sports Pontifications, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The image below captures all aspects of my FFL history. Judge me as you see fit. It was very stressful to have that going on year after year.

In one of my leagues there was money every time, if I finished 3rd. I finished in the top three on FIVE occasions. That’s 5 times in the 6 years we had a league.

Interesting stats:

Finished in First: Twice

Finished in Second: Four Times

Finished in Third: Three Times

The Studyball Kurmudgeons: Fantasy Baseball League?

by in Mental Illness, Sports Pontifications, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

I know I have said at other times that I was “satisfied” with the tinkering of the scoring. I wanted to do a “past 7 days” filter so I could see what a scoring summary might look like for that interval. I had whole season numbers, but I wanted the Head-to-Head games to be competitive, not boring and incrementally relevant despite the season’s length. I saw what a above average season point output would look like, and there were clearly some areas that needed adjusting.opportunity to scale some things back. The I ran a new set of season numbers with mid level talent and tinkered with the balance some more.

The latest set of numbers came from a pretty high-output names, and some not so much. I think this latest tinkering is the best to date, since I am very concerned with the individual games not being monotonous. I also added a handful of “high level” achievement in the game, like a grand slam, a no hitter… etc.

The overall model is balanced enough to keep things competitive among similarly knowledgeable players, mind you. The bonus FPs from a big play is probably enough to lift someone who is trailing late, or crush your foe into the turf with a massive play that sets you on the path to victory.

Let me first show you the scorecard, which was totally redone as of last time I wrote about it.

 

 

 

 

95% of that is real data from active players over the last week, and it helped me to see where the final adjustments to the scoring were to be made. With the recent live-data scenario, I can say that the current scoring setup promotes intense and interesting games, and that’s the main point. Here are the (maybe) final scoring tweaks.

 

Clearly position players other than pitchers do well in this mode, but the pitchers come out looking like NFL fantasy quarterbacks. When they’re hot, they’re lighting everyone up and things are generally: yay! When they’re not, they become a vast, expanding black hole consuming all nearby fantasy points if they stray too close.

 

Big plays get rewarded, sometimes massively. Emongously. Trabookafred!

 

 

Maybe one day I might run this league… probably not though.

It’s just fun to think about.

Another, differently shaped golden trophy would look nice in my castle.

Explodey-Head

by in Mental Illness, Rant, Status Updates and tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Hi Blog. I have detailed my depression centered lack of expressions, but that doesn’t mean I was idle. I graduated from NAMI Peer-To-Peer and snagged a Connection Recovery Support Group Facilitator certification. With some practice and knowledge acquisition, I fully intend to regularly facilitate a daytime Connection group at American River College.

NAMI is also lining up several outreach events in the last half of August and into a full September.

Those good thing having now been said, I am also having some noticeable side effects since I started the Risperdal. Two things:

  1. My mood and motivation have been noticeably changing. After tomorrow, I should know whether or not the med and I have a truce. In the meantime, I’m dealing with a symptom that I have affectionately named “head-explodies.” This feels like there are, occasionally, little cramps in my brain that cause a moment of disorientation, but resolve quickly. In the past, I have experienced them on withdrawal, but this time as I’m cycling up. Hopefully it’s not too long-lasting. I’m going to give it the full two weeks and talk to my doctor after.
  2. I have noticed a significant increase in motivation. I am starting to make something of the down time I have, instead of loafing or otherwise remaining inert. This is a promising sign for me because getting things done is what I’m all about. It’s odd, I don’t feel particularly happy, but I am able to work and put my mind to accomplishing something of worth much easier than it had been a few days ago.

I’m also going to start keeping those daily scores again as I transition on to the new medications I’m taking. This sort of data helps my doctors see me in a way that makes sense to them. Makes sense for me too, as I am a very data-driven individual. My skills have helped get me on a path that is actually going somewhere, with a future I am eager to participate in. Hopefully the new medication will work out, but there is definitely no certainty. We are are aware of the ongoing science experiment on mentally ill individuals we call BigPharma. Their guessing and presumptatory science sometimes has good, or terrible outcomes.

The side-effect cannon fire goes on into the night… and that Goddamn belltower… I hope those fucking Side-Effects blow that thing up and relieve us all of the incessant noise of the bell being rung. I JUST NEED AN HOUR TO GET SOME SLEEP! FUCKING WAR IS SUCH A PAIN IN THE ASS!

Unabashed

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Survivor of mental illness

15 years lived experience

Mindfulness practitioner

Side-By-Side Companion

Volunteer

Temporary Employee

Grant-Writer

Website Administrator

Peer Connection Program Coordinator

Peer Connection Support Group Facilitator

+++

Stacking up makes for taller piles of things. Looking at the sum of the things also pleases, especially since the evidence is right there.

My thoughts are moving around, or by. Too fast these days, and the little ribbons of the flapping as they whiz makes many dizzy and not good thoughts. Little pieces. Shrugged, slumped. Tired.

Activities such as this thumb message help. The realness of fact. The providence of knowing the self. So much remains covered in dried leaves.

Brick-Related Nonesene

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I have found my words to be infrequent. I’m less inclined to open, having found safety in being closed.

I’m understanding my uniqueness better, in terms that aren’t shaming (mostly). I feel untethered from possibility because of the inherent isolation imposed by my traits, flaws, preferences and composition. The bridge I built to acceptance spans a mighty chasm, but will endure (show me how to unknow something and you can have my adoration).

Bricks are appropriate because you can’t make anything with just a couple and it usually takes a shitload of them all piled up to assemble something worth marveling at.

Just like bricks, their integrity remains solid until the ground starts moving.

I see out from the peephole. I’m here, but I only want to come out if I have one of my masks on. I have become familiar with how it fits, but it is still taking little pipet-drops away each time. I don’t notice it happening, I just do what I have to in the present. I see the quantity getting lower only as I glance away and back again after a time.

This is the mode. Survival is paramount; effectiveness depends on forward momentum. The masking suits that idea, while shielding. I won’t argue that it’s healthy, but it is not overtly destructive. My personas help move my life forward in most cases, and they are still me. Yet, they dissolve away in my solitude, and the truth hidden behind the guise is exposed. Within me lies the pile of smelly socks that is the inmost nature my true self. Having a history of repulsion, the imagery seemed appropriate.

Do you know what I’m talking about? I have simply embraced my “never” and moved on. Do you know what “never again” feels like? I do. I remind myself every day that choices have consequences.

More words will come, and maybe they will be more coherent next time.

Gurjection

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My trajectory has been unclear recently, or, wobblier than usual. Symptoms have cost me much of the momentum I had going, but not forever.

These down times are a regular event in my town. We get out the fancy streamers and everyone dresses up like sad clowns. Tickets available on StubHub.

Point being, I’ve survived worse and more help is on the horizon.

I have recently established a career path that is ever curving toward a fully self-sustaining state. 40 hours a week. I can, quite literally, raise money to pay my salary through my own actions. A successful grant or two would accomplish that. This is the full time plateau I have sought.

I have been here with me the whole time, and I can say with confidence that he is doing about as well as he ever has. I’m pleased that he hasn’t imploded into a singularity or shattered the world with recklessly destructive explodination-related incendiary activities.

Fight! Do not let Toejamela McHosebeasterson put the sweaty foot to your throat. There is a shitload left to do our here in the world. Are you going to let Moopybritches Sucktoadersplats kick your ass today? I didn’t think so Charlie Championship. So grab your vitamin water and spiked cudgel and get out there! Let’s do this!!

My pep talks only work on the hopelessly insane.