Some ridges–
Blunted by time’s decay,
Fractured rivulets across the plain,
Cavernous, engulfing.
Sometimes brushed or bruised–
Maimed and tarnished by use,
Stained, scarred–
Two canvases.
—
Alight a feather’s grace,
Delicate fingers unfurl,
Blessed the slightest droplet of dew,
Corralled briefly,
Unchanneled and free–
A transient of history engrained.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
–etched cheeks, pitted in remembrance,
Parched terrains weathered,
Outward, dusted spectacles glint–
With prismed light of the dawn.
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.
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.
I was accepted into a very selective training class to become a mentor for NAMI. This has occupational relevance as well as financial. One more step towards sustainability of independence.
A spark of direction! Purpose! The beacon attracting so promisingly in the echoing dark. It is incentive for a cause for living curiously. One never knows what is to come.
Speaking of echo… the vacillating barrier between what is pined for and what is happening continues to churn undecidedly. I have come to expect unrest as the new operating norm.
Living with uncertainty can be taxing, right?
I have terrible dreams. I see places, symbolic of present time and illusively representational of the past. Fire consumes my flesh as I die. The plummeting abyss beckons me forward, pulling me down with the incessant of gravity. Inching. These troubling portents cause dire warnings to sound out internally. The vividness of nightmares float up to momentary prominence because of the importance of the residual byproduct created by resetting the conscious mind, which provides them the necessary buoyancy to be remembered.
Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone… gone. Still I hold the thread tightly.
I haven’t seen her avatar since that night several days ago in that perplexing dream. Nothing absurd or skewered with context in the meantime. An ever pervasive fantasy to just to hear her words, know her thoughts. There is nothing. It is gone.
What will we learn when we can see far enough into the past to find out how it started? I mean, that in both a mentally local and literally cosmic sense. One day we will actually unveil the distant reaches of the past, but solely to learn a truth we had not known. One day I may be able to let go of my own reaches, for there is nothing more to be learned, and no path forward that begins there.
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?
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.
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.
Tonight enacted, lather, rinse, repeat, repeat. Shabam-mode.
A grin to a nudge is just the friend of a glance to a raised eyebrow or some such.
The contrast between masks is shocking, dizzying at times. AAH!
All this stepping leads somewhere good, right? I don’t need to know, but it would make me happy if I did I suppose.
Like I said, blah blah send the fucking probe. No one out there in whatever market, nebula or quadrant gives a flippity-fuck about me and my stupid fucking probe.
I have to try a little, that seemed inexcusable in light of bemoaning the state. Right?
Glancing is not trying. Glancing is trying to trick sorrow into having hope, while choking out any chance of there being any.
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!
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.
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.
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.
The night that creeps in is wet and chilled. The weight of it is like resin or gooey snot seeping, sludging and glopping in. The smells of the coming winter.
Do you ever feel not alone in bed at night even though you are? When the cold comes in, and it surrounds, do you feel the echo? I do. I remember, and sometimes that’s a nail in my chest, and other times it still warms me. Perception can be momentary, circumstantial.
Now, there is only a space for understanding. A process where comprehension takes a back seat and settles for not knowing where the car is going. Think too hard and the tunnel develops a slope downward. For me, I often find myself contextualizing and interpreting: wrongly, optimistically, starkly…
Logic’s devices are stunted with emotion’s geyser-like eruptions. That’s the place where the echo comes from, I feel. The indelible imprint of a soul touched, the intoxication, idiosyncrasies, passions that once flared but are long silent, and have been. Something that I have know is there, and will clearly linger for the rest of my life. What to do with all the images? Cherish, I say.
We have so little time to be alive. Only a blip. A tiny fragment of a fragment. I’ve been guilty of abusing that gift… squandering it; laying waste to it on occasion. The fact that I still have it despite myself is a thing that can’t be ignored.
But here, now… this fragile place where the remembrance is strong… she remains with me. In some delusion where peace had pervaded, the outcome was different… the story continued, but changed to survive. Again and again we see that those who are suited to adapt, endure the cycles of changing chance and circumstance. Such is the case in our lives, however brief they are.
Why? I won’t deny I missed her. She was right there with me again. It hurt to wake up. I was bleeding. I won’t forget. I dreamed for a reason; and will never deny that.
Sometimes the best thing to do is dream, for it is there where I will see her again, in a place where no new harm can be incurred.
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.
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.
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
Sometimes the dirt stays on; an unwanted passenger that degrades what it congeals upon. I feel this way with my brain: the coatings of splattered muck are easy to diagnose, or render a few good whacks upon them to dislodge.
There is are a series of security clearances and clean rooms preventing immediate action, but not deliberation. Part of me says the past is mud, the other can’t let go of the string the red balloon was tied to. He hasn’t seen the balloon in years but still holding on.
Everyone should try love on for size at some point. I found the whole thing to be an exfoliating activity which has subsequently scraped off my desire to know any more. Trauma has that effect, along with a once prominent self hate. Some things are setting while others are about to rise above the horizon.
What am I doing out here?
I remember sniffy sounds at night.
Radiant, passive, trusting.
Currently snagged in a gooey resentment.
Rejected, discarded, regretted, history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Writhing helplessly–
Interpreted by refluxing bile,
A forlorn victim of restraint,
Choked by the smothering–
Endless gnawing of memory rewritten,
Devoured in reimagined atrocities.
—
Supplementing the real,
An alternative to acceptance–
Presented like a sweet pastry,
Masking the unpalatable truth.
Changing the lie or flavor–
Pleasure wanes in rehearsal.
—
Sight shackled to what is,
An unforgiving reality–
Of pain, loneliness, yearning.
Many incinerated pieces–
Dustbin swept–
Belching presumed repugnance,
Dashed in form until particulate–
Forgotten but not gone,
Peering out from under a round stone–
Wondering…
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.
Ghost-fingers cold–
That spine-shuddering touch,
Eyes scream out in unknowing fear.
Emptied of dreams; memories–
They fall into a dark chasm,
Forsaken, purged by lightning,
Agony–
Again! Again!
Those hopes in trust–
Smeared into opaque nothingness,
Irrelevantly hoping–
Still met by a stranger,
Bereft of words,
Emotions swirling downstream.
Cast into the crucible of torment–
Straining against the surges that come.
Once proud foundations–
Crumbling decay into rot,
Detritus swept away by an outgoing tide.
Score: 3
Today was one of the better that I’ve had recently. I was active, productive and further entrenching my relevance in the workplace.
Tonight though, I’m still a little sad. I played a lot of music that brought me back. I do miss them, and their love, but the time for that has passed. I am what I have earned. I carry the weight of my decisions, every day. There are just some moral boundaries I will never cross, so no guilt or need of repentance is shielded from plain sight.
There is no point in struggling over the past, and the tendrils of regret slithering their way through it. Nothing can be resolved. Never. Wounds that don’t fester, but stay open and fresh, reminding. That is my quandary.
I have already said goodbye to them. There is no more to be done but turn away and walk into a new yet distant narrative.
Expectations should be realistic, and therefore, achievable. There is a big cookie of satisfaction for those who meet their target. I have on multiple occasions enjoyed that glorious victory cookie, but have also dropped it into the cat litterbox more than once. Goals should be achievable, not powder puff nor Mount Everest.
I feel relevant. Involved. I’m not fading away in shame, I’m thriving in the only reality I know.
12. We will never give up hope.
Scrapes of curling bitter rind.
Deliverance lashes the already bloody.
Pain, revisited, endured, revisited.
Replenished with bile, ready for the next.
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.
My emotional regulation has been “askew” as it were, but also quite volatile. I imagine my emotional planet during the Late Heavy Bombardment, with a surface slowly succumbing to a primordial molten state… I’d rather not reach that point, which is a lifeless one to say the least.
Being alive is being in the real, the now, and present in the moment of existence in which we find ourselves. When I’m experiencing symptoms, reality is often filtered through a kaleidoscope of nonsensical responses, urges, reactions, thoughts and core feelings in clear defiance of logic or common sense based coherence. There is some part of me that is going, “hey, wait a second… that sounds pretty fucked up.” That’s the logic guy, he hasn’t been corrupted yet because he is strong. That part of me is the last bastion before the deep, black chasm of forgetting.
I don’t feel under siege just yet, but the armies of darkness are out there, inching closer.
Enough of that. The truth is, there will always be a part of me that will strain, because it goes on unacknowledged. I’d say that only 1 person in my whole life even has a good understanding of my personality and not run away screaming. Others have tried, and they were repelled, tortured, and damaged in their attempts to disarm or simply survive my radioactive properties. Sadly, being Bipolar and never truly having any handle on it created the inevitable trail of bodies in my wake as I shambled recklessly along the path of life. The guilt hangs on me like a heavy sack of feed that the animals of depression plunder as I toil forward. I have managed to become strong enough to not be constantly crushed by that load, and still make something positive of my life.
I work so hard being proud of who I am, but no one sees me. I have come to a place in my life where I am okay with not being “seen.” I know what it feels like, for the brief glimmers and shining moments in my adolescence I captured lightning in my hands. I know what I felt, the power and majesty of love, and no one can take it from me. If I go on in my reality without ever having that again, I am okay with that. I will not die in ignorance of happiness.
Looking up. I know who I am. Things are hard now, but I’m doing good holding my pants on without my belt. My recent plateau of stability is eroding…
Back from event this evening, many tired. My body hurts, and breathing wildfire smoke all afternoon was not a friend. I feel stretched, like thousands of tiny hooks are trying to peel off my skin. Achy creaks and general grunty responses are commonplace.
Good was dispensed this afternoon, assuredly. I muscled up and strapped on the happy smiles professional guise. La la! Have a happy fun!
Retreating to my soft place now, I recall how I was haunted by music today. Their faces came back to me. I saw things, and felt. I remembered. It was largely not a good thing.
All day it has been this way. I need rest, peace, sleep. I tried to do a good job, and I was told that I had. Positive affirmations. Progress. Steps forward, despite foreboding
It’s just me now. There will never be another. I am all there is left. I must go forward.
Today has been difficult so far, but this afternoon’s booth duty should help that. I’m at the 24th St. bypass today at the Kumbaya Festival and I know that will keep me occupied. The festival lasts until 7 pm so I should be good and tired. I’m hearing a lot of music now, all the time today unless I am focusing on something else. Idle times bring the strings and beats of emotionally charged melodies. Lyrics marked as impactful slide next to amplified connectivity to memories, moments, good and bad. It sends me reeling at times, contrasted with a crushing weight of sadness that flattens me between hard metal plates. The defenses and constant optimistic spin has a cost, and the energy has been diminished over the last few months.
Salvation will be in the strength of will I contain in my desire to not collapse or crumble. I have taken action to remedy my neurochemical status but still have a good deal of time to go. My hope is to continue to prevail against the symptoms, the deep gravity of the abyss strengthening. There are so many things I feel pain over, for the things I have done to myself and others… there are many moments I wish had not been, but were nonetheless. Making sense of that pain has been my lesson, and it never stops hurting no matter how I cope with it. I can have benefit, but still know the ache of the sorrow. It reminds me of why I step forward.
I have no desire to fall apart, only to endure this challenge and emerge stronger. I used to quit on things, and myself, but now I know I won’t. It will be hard, yes, unavoidably so. So are all things that are truly worth having.
Tonight’s town hall had some ridiculously good moments:
-Was the only representative of NAMI there until after the event start time, and DOMINATED the organizing and preparation.
-Was called a “fine looking man” and was described as “very cool” by separate FEMALE individuals.
-Endeared myself further with my ED and accompanying staff, and will inherit the full responsibilities of my new title: Peer Connections Program Manager.
-Was thanked dozens of times by all sorts of people for my assistance, and was smiled at more times than memory can accurately retain.
-Provided solutions and tech insight for future meetings with free tech stuff given and access to a working projection system.
Basically, this was another exhibition of my invaluable self to NAMI, on a night when it was desperately needed. They would have been lost if not for me: fact.
I’m doing a good job of being introspective lately. I’m aware that depression is there, and creeping in. It invades like a tiny, little leak, reducing quantity at an undetectably slow rate. Tonight though, I felt like I gave that depression a kick in the teeth, or patched the leak with gum… or something. I was struggling, but I kept pushing forward, lifting, checking, helping, pacing… I was in motion, but, satisfyingly, thoroughly exhausted. It feels good to be deservedly tired; an ache I can reflect on and be proud of.
In the past couple years, I’ve endured doubters, neglecters, forgetters and haters. I offer no argument, for there is no debate to be had when it comes to judging the merits or flaws of my identity. This person right here is who I am: subsequently, it’s who I will continue to be for now. I would like to note that I am constantly improving to find a better way forward, but sometimes I slide down the hill into the poop-trough. My engine runs on work, commitment and respect, and makes lots of foul boy-smells come out. The fires that feed externally derived hatred from others originate from irrelevant, dry and lifeless roots of a long dead tree, reduced to little more than a pitted and rotten stump.
I’m satisfied with my integrity at this point, after years of positive reinforcement. The future is a big green arrow pointed up. Evidence being impossible to ignore while staying honest, I’m quite elated at the current direction I’m going.
Goodnight.
It has been my experience in designing fantasy scoring systems for the NFL that the weight of every statistical category must be appraised in respect to the total items being scored, roster positions available and some form of biased incentive.
It can be said, as a baseline, common events should not be comparable in worth to rare events. It is this weighting that defines the terms of competition, and an aspect I particularly relish. I have beliefs about what aspects of a given sport are more difficult to achieve versus things that should occur and do occur regularly/often. What I cultivate in participants is a similar respect for the remarkable and an interpretive invitation to strategize.
As I develop my thoughts on how to apply my prior FNFL experience to the FMLB format, I intend to be true to my signature preferences and unique interpretation of the sport (s). MLB tends to be more statistically dependent (developed) and maybe even drowning in an excess of interpretations and comparisons. I hope to cut through the bullshit and boil my league rules down to the essential, and the remarkable. The mundane have been exiled!
I use a combination of elements to determine what value to assign things: (commonality/frequency + subjective difficulty + game-flow based significance = relative weighted value). Through this, you should begin to see my perturbed view of the sport, and what makes it interesting.
Some of my preferences become apparent with how harshly things are penalized, or how they are rewarded. Based on an ideal set of player’s 2018 All-Star Break statistics (relative mid-marker), the draft will see offensive players going first, but relief pitchers among the second wave. See below for the impact on how the team should be built in terms of available point scoring potential.
Difficult plays and stats that are hard to earn are weighted, but more heavily towards the remarkable. Outfield Assists for example, as I have stated in previous posts, are pretty fucking awesome. Clearly there are more points to be scored as an offensive player, but that seems to follow logic in terms of actual gameplay. Still, I see that, if there was to be a draft, I could see multiple strategies towards some desired stat-cultivation effort to specifically target a course towards relevance, and the postseason. Plays that cause outs, or kill rallies, or erase runs are dealt with harshly.
Depending on what is being scored/weighted, the roster needs to reflect a discipline to balance, and an incentive for a diverse live draft by fairly distributing point-earning opportunities across positions. As you can probably tell from the scoring table listed above, there are some positions on the lineup card that are going to be, generally, better contributors than others. The roster below is ordered in terms of fantasy point scoring weight/ideal projected point output potential (Great, High, Average, Low-ish)
1B
2B
SS
3B
OF1
OF2
OF3
OF4
RP1
RP2
RP3
SP1
SP2
SP3
SP4
SP5
C1
C2
______
(18)
There would be 7 bench slots, rounding out the active roster at 25. There’s a certain nostalgic symbolism I wish to also encapsulate, (see the 5 man rotation, the 7th, setup and closer slots). I feel like there are 4 starting outfielders on every Major League team as a baseline based on logic, and the nature of the positions. I did not feel it necessary to be specific about the outfield positions as this level of specificity doesn’t add to the fun and makes drafting arduous because of the constraining requirements of the roster slot. In my build, OF gets to be more useful, potentially, based on a freedom to load RF or CF or whatever your preference.
C has become like FNFL TE to me now. Hit or miss, boom or bust, this roster slot looks like the one that will inevitably fuck me somehow. C rates low, even with All-Stars driving the stats, but they seem like to do so in bursts rather than consistently. Plus, this is another roster position that is most-likely to have a savvy backup on real MLB rosters.
I foresee infielders (with the exception of C1/2) being hard to find after some trends have been established. I have often wondered about free-agency and waiver pickups in FMLB. Maybe this will be something I learn about later, or maybe not at all.
Well, I think this league would be fun, but this will never happen, more than likely. Good things to think about though, and that’s really all I’m trying to do. I just want something to feel good about, and excited I guess. Things have been really hard lately, and my energy is running dangerously low. I’m going to need help soon, and this little exercise has been one of my coping activities to help myself think about something positive and fun while also innocuous. Thank you.
I always admired Calvin for his cleverness (although usually devious) and his imagination. Right now, I wish I had the same fire he has for venturing into new worlds. Frankly, imagination is a drug of escape in its own right, and has to be desired to be fulfilling. This might explain why I have been non-existent in my creative writing ventures, or gaming, or any of the peripheral fuzzy things I used to do. Real life has been fully front and center in the months since the move, and I guess it seems there is no battery for that.
Love. A strong bond as well as an aspiration for living. Over time, I have seen why it is better to invest in positive feelings, thoughts and ideas rather than negative ones. I have done better as a human being by accepting my failures and flaws, but still insisting on going forward/up. What choice is there? There is no joy to be had in suffering, darkness, and relived pain. Agony builds no bridges or houses. I was this once. I lived it. I saw where it eventually leads. I did not want that.
Life is like .0000000001 seconds long in terms of everything going on around us. Living with that knowledge doesn’t inspire any reckless or self-indulgent behavior, but instead does two things: first, it adds a level of delicate preciousness to life in its fragile, brief and fleeting existence, and second, it inspires (in me) a desire to make the most of the short time that I am given. My personal solution has been to live for others, and follow a career that satisfies the heart, and ensures stability for the future. There is a higher state of being, and it is called acceptance.
So, Blog, with that in mind, you can see why my path forward is looking so well lit as well as prosperous for the soul. I scrutinize myself from time to time with a god-like perspective, trying to liberate my thoughts from my head, it would seem. However confusing, this is working, and could be implemented as I have stated many times over.
I’ve tooted the horn too much and the dangly string is broken with the thing locked open tooting incessantly. I am made a believer of me, and that is something I have always struggled to do. When I am determined, I am capable of great things; I can forge my own future.
Today, I am the Peer Connections Program Coordinator for NAMI Sacramento. I inherit a role in which I will ensure NAMI support groups are held with at least one coordinator per meeting and hopefully two. I have also been asked to go to Grant Writing Boot Camp at the Impact Foundry, which cost my boss $250 out of pocket to enroll me. He said today “you’re worth the investment.”
TOOT!
Just like back in 2012 when I wriggled my way into a job that didn’t exist at Tech 2U, I created this role, and the only reason I have any relevance whatsoever is entirely based on merit, personality and admirable determination. I am here because I fought like hell to get here, ducking all kinds of flaming hammers along the way. It works, Blog, because it’s real: the energy to advance down this direction and shape my life this way is a reflection of who I am. This person I have become… as I look inward, I am finding a great deal of pride there, and an expression of self that has derived from a place of honesty. These things are truths, and at last, I think I am willing to concede that they are.
There has always been doubt, and undoubtedly, there always will be. Doubty Susan over there is going to have some shit to say… but whether or not I give my investment to Susan is up to me now. I have a pretty good reason not to give anything to Susan. After enough times fucking that up, I figured it out. This is how I survived mental illness… I stopped giving my money to Susan.
This new life I have seems to be headed in a markedly vertical direction, hyperbolic you might say. This was only possible because my parents were able to shelter me from homelessness when my life collapsed. They have been a safety net for me so far, and I am feeling increasingly confident that my current career will allow me to be independent, stable and self-sustaining in time. That would seem likely based on the current trajectory of events. I need a career that will not judge me for being mentally ill, but help me cope with it in a constructive way. I won’t have my parents forever, and I can’t fall off the map like I have in the future. What better way to secure stability than to make my mental health my professional occupation? I will not be cast aside or shamed for being a mentally ill person at NAMI.
My parents gave me a chance to rise up and define my place in the world, and I feel confident that I am walking a safe path toward my goals. I am a believer now, so the charisma is quite sticky.
I toot a lot less than I bemoan things, maybe because I feel still somewhat guilty and shameful of acknowledging my accomplishments?
Good morning Blog,
I don’t have much to say now. I am largely unencumbered by the presence of external factors and managing things well internally. The pace of career advancement has been good, so there’s nothing to bemoan. I feel far less than complete, however… still retaining many of the fractures of the past and the lingering smoky haze of recently charred buildings. I think my enthusiasm comes in waves, which makes sense in a symptomatic context. I am in a lull now, but just a couple weeks ago I was not. I guess the busier I am with work, the better chance I have at being stable. That could be argued as a universal truth as well among my kin.
I have chosen a path to walk that gives me the best chance to stay sane and life a full life. To have any chance to succeed, I need to stay focused on positive goals and advance progress. I have an obligation to my pride to continue to pursue an ideal path towards effectiveness, bound by morality. Helping the disadvantaged reminds me of so many things, like who I was, and the decisions I made. So many more have made far worse mistakes than I have, yet, it is not a reason for any of them to not have a chance at happiness for the rest of their lives. We go farther when everyone is participating, as it can be definitively stated that the more people one has helping build a thing, the faster that thing gets built.
I could go on and on about this. Nevertheless, I have much ahead of me yet to do some positive good, and affect change in a significant and beneficial way not for myself, but for someone who’s voice isn’t being heard. I know how it feels to not be heard, and it’s pretty much the worst.
I know inside that I have done some good already, and that my intentions are the things that hold me up with a smile. It’s not always easy to bring the energy to that template, but I try as often as is possible. When you, Blogomites, can look at yourselves in the mirror and see the scars, flaws, lines, and beauty, you have begun to see the symbolically metaphorical truth of the inner-self. I still have much to learn, but I understand more now than I ever have before. It helps to combine emotion with imagery, craft states into scenes, and dwell within the moment in a new medium to understand it better.
What remains uncertain s the shining light drawing in my moth of curiosity, hopefully not to be incinerated. Hmm, a regrettable ending, and I don’t have a relevant phoenix metaphor available now to insert here… drat.
Why are we having this debate in our country right now? Has Capitalism really become so inflated and corpse-like that it can no longer sustain? I think we have a flawed design for our society, and now that it is being exploited, we see how broken it really is. This is just the leading edge of a knife that is beginning to sink into the flesh, though, not unnoticed.
We had a good idea in making the United States a true Democratic society, with a founding document that would adapt to change, and adjust as the definition of society changed. Now, though, because of how thoroughly and completely we realized the intent of that document (rules), we have found ways to contort it into something more like a monarchy, or oligarchy of sorts.
Something that should alarm you is that the minority’s ideological power controls all branches of our government, and are successfully establishing a way to prolong that control and promote the tenants of its beliefs. It is not just that, but also the fact that a solidification of power will result in a new societal standard which is far less developed and limited in potential when compared to the current trajectory.
It comes down to something pretty simple: control. However, control has no endgame. Right now, the individuals who have their hands on the reigns of power, governmental and private, are doing what they can to make sure they stay in power. Seems logical, but not democratic. Our course is not set to the benefit of only some, because we are founded on the principles that our government, citizens and all those who come here should be proud of being or becoming American. To me, the founders designed our democracy with the intent of purging the potential for abuse in a monarchical context (with the exception of the pardon power). Pride, for me at least, does not lead me in a new desire to exploit the thing I am most proud of in order to better myself and reward those that promoted me to this platform of authority.
To contort the mechanism of election to retain control seems not very American. To strategically draw electoral district boundaries to decrease the value of some people’s vote and inflating others also seems pretty unacceptable. Slashing taxes, de-funding the federal government, gutting departments of staff/effectiveness, AND handing most of the money back to the richest, most powerful individuals and entities in our capitalist society? Why is that the thing that we are doing?
The minutia of cost-based services has become staggering, and the primary benefactors are companies, businesses, corporations that control this thing that we need or want. Even if you cut away all the fluff and said you’d only ever buy what you need, it still costs something. No one rides for free in this America. Broken toe? Hungry? Tired of being rained on while you sleep? America doesn’t want to care unless you are grinding your face off for it, and doesn’t care if you live or die while in service. Right now, those who work the hardest, break their backs and spill their blood for America are some of the poorest paid, most abandoned, forgotten people in the entire country. The human beings responsible for making sure this country keeps going forward are losing faith that anyone actually gives a flying fuck about them. Look at the way we treat our veterans: they make up a large contingent of homeless nationwide, die in veteran’s hospitals and have an alarmingly high suicide rate. These people were given a job to do, and they did it, and now their life is over.
Why do so few make so much? They were far better at understanding, adapting and exploiting the game our society plays, in which the rules allow for the most predatory, arrogant and ruthless individuals to rise to the top. These individuals have a thirst for the rewards of this permutation of society: power, land, notoriety/fame, control. Just like any fucking thing that has rules, like the Constitution, or Capitalism, once you know what the parameters are, you can find a way to exploit in to some ulterior purpose. Hackers are just this generation’s example of such a mentality driven into a niche where it is quite successful, but you can then consider the current Alt Conservative movement to be hackers of the Constitution.
Most of us just want to have a good life, full of people we love and smiling faces. We don’t need to have fortunes, power, and control. and frankly, there is strong evidence that when one of us is given such things, we are more often ruined by them. What are these things ultimately if not the transitory, sinfully gained self-declared rewards, which are ultimately spoils from the labor of many millions, all over the world? Can their hear our backs breaking as they stand atop the pile? To me, the monarchical way of thinking leads to nothing good. Tyrants are inevitably overturned, and their names disgraced through time. The oppressed never stay that way forever. The arc of humanity bends towards acceptance, because the true source of power is a people united behind belief.
I do believe that there are millions and maybe billions of disadvantaged human beings who are tired of seeing the dreams they have go beyond the limitations of what their life can allow. We cannot succeed apart, and can only realize who we are when we all come together, with conviction, and stand up for our country. We used to believe that America was a place where anyone could be anything, and in a way, that can’t ever be fully true. However, the intent behind those words was hope. For the people that grow up here, or come here from far away, they all should have that spark of hope that they can be something that they dream about being all their lives, no matter where they are from. People driven by a passion, or a calling are among the most inspiring of us all, and they know what it is to love a thing; a principle that should do more of the deciding of our direction than it currently does. We really do want everyone to come here believing that, even the asylum seeker at the Mexican border or the New York City orphan. As it stands now, that dream is nearly gone for most people here already, and currently under siege by anyone who is trying to come here.
People fret over what’s happening in the news right now. This is all so transitory. This campaign of riding a wave of racism and outrage to prolonged power is stupid and short-sighted, to put it mildly. Ideas in America are changing rapidly, with each new generation that grows up, and every immigrant who comes here to live. Hate doesn’t build anything, it can only divide us up into seething quadrants where we are easily controlled and not at all useful. In order to step forward, and redefine what America is, we all must stand together, and become a majority.
Even if decades or arcane and inhumane beliefs pervade, there is no escaping the truth that we will prevail in our ability to unite. We are all people in this country together, and this is our home. One day, I believe we will find out this truth and come to understand what one humanity looks like. Our diversity is the thing that defines us, because just as we are complex of thought, we are differential in our heritage, history, traditions, beliefs and dreams. The advantages of knowing will advance us farther than we ever knew we could go, and in that future, the fire of hatred will be long snuffed out. With all the unique perspective we bring, the community of humanity will be the real thin America will be remembered for.
My future is the concern now. Absolutes are not useful in describing the terms. The sum of regret which packmules along behind is never more than a short length of rope away. Ahead.
I don’t know how to let go; to stop caring. To cast out the dead and walk past their graves. This was a world of webbing, sticky messes that continue to be remembered. I regret it. All of it. For what it did to me, for what I became while I was with them. Unyielding, it remains. Even the good was not worth what cane after. I have tried to frame it, but fail consistently do declaw the context. Ruins.
I still have the same story, where one foot goes in front of the other. Why seems clear.
My being alone is likely. Past interfacing with others in this way has reached an all time low of usefulness. Never abandoned, but largely forgotten. Safety concerns regard the station as abandoned.
Score: +1
I did not start well and never had the energy to get going. I struggled with the things I could do, but largely loafed and yawned.
I feel tired, which is somewhat expected after working two events back to back. I am crunchy on the outside, but I do not have a Tootsie Roll center. Plans were set ablaze early as my state was poor to start the day. Improvement has a shot to be possible now that I’m going to bed.
It has been harder to get going in the morning. I do not feel spry, I feel like a bundle of dried twigs.
I’m not fully tuned out of the past yet. I still glance back, even though I know it serves little purpose. I again reaffirm my argument that because of history, nothing growing will be cultivated there. The land is patched and nutrient starved. No amount of water will result in lush new plant life. I must painfully admit this and proceed into a future without.
Such deep hatred. It’s because I have been a terrible person in my past. There is good cause. At least, ignoring any progress, a reality can be spun to cater to any need. Mine self deprecates accurately and with the intent of plowing through towards progress.
I have powered down the sensor array and diverted main power to life-support systems. Hopefully we will survive on those reserves until the rescue ships arrive.
I am endeavoring not to persist in polar judgement of things, and I do believe this is true in most recent cases. However…
I have learned that one of those areas that is still firmly polarized is my past loves. I can’t have them in my life at all, regardless of capacity. I have learned that there is no benefit in looking back, and the dead still do not rise up and walk amongst us last time I checked. The past is buried and gone, while the trigger on many memories can still be invoked and is active. This is the worrying aspect of my necessary avoidance.
The remembering is pain unrequited; a loss of unrealized potential. The devastation of a incinerated investment of love and trust, fouled by my own mistakes of circumstance. They are a disemboweled remnant of something beautiful that will never be anything more than the pile of organs and blood left splattered on the floor, regardless of my desire. I have tried too many times to resuscitate, staring the obvious impossibility down the barrel, and surprised when I’m shot in the face. I tire of this dynamic.
My own feelings are still not under control, at all. Even on a daily basis, it is a battle to go and do. The inciting agony of interference or invited contact from the past is too much to accept while straining to maintain balance. I can’t have anyone else now, and I won’t invite new people to participate in any relational capacity again. I am unfit physically and mentally for the task, and that is not debatable.
I don’t want to see, feel or think about it anymore. There is nothing there. There will not be anything in the future. I have no interest in this at all, and will avoid inviting any risk in the upcoming waning remainder.
It hurts, but “goodbye” is all that there is. I tried, but I was wrong to try. I was in poor judgement to think that the old soul would retain enough nutrients to allow something to grow. It is the past: unchanging and fading into oblivion. The future is all I have left, and I refuse to spend it pining for others.
I’ve wasted too much time as it is. The arrow points away from these contemplations, and so, I follow. Evidence says, move on… so, I try.
Sounding pang of a hammer slam–
Wailing with the escaping anguish,
The cries fade in the clattering noise.
Hollow echoes, desperate and resounding,
Hurt the stone walls with their shrieking scrapes–
Almost words, but more a feeling.
Banging on into the distance,
Rattling–
Hollow of remembrance,
Soaked in the flavors of now.
The drops peel off corners,
Plated hard and unfractured.
Puddling to be dissolved,
Nothing but the soft hiss–
Of the silence underground.
I see a way ahead that is not necessarily a pillow parade of yay and fluff all the way to Slappytown. There needs to be a significant flesh donation and ball sweat scrubbing bristle brush handle-rake of hard for much. That’s the way of meaning, and it’s always been buried under all the old snot and pungent goop we shoveled into the muckcinerator today.
I don’t know what to say about them from then. It seems like no one had a slice of cake available, or at least couldn’t wait until one got passed down. The cake was totally worth waiting for though, and Yelp reviews confirm as much for those who were there now. The words don’t come because all I can use to describe the cake are a series of guttural-unjugulations and grumbling noises.
Unlike your average biochemical spill, there are many benefits to my sudden and tsunami-like introduction to a new ecosystem. I contaminate with sticky and beguiling usefulness. I spread a contagious virus that inspires inclusion. My filthy, heaping mounds of saturated waste deposits fertilize new possibilities. Oh woe upon the day my foulness took root in the place over there! Good thing them then got as far away as they could before the everything caught fire and fwooshed to puffs.
Prosperous earthworm chug! The dirt of salvation is my poo! Victory plant, initiate maximum grow!
Blog, I’m fucking in. The inner sanctum. Me. In! My feet are standing upon sacred ground.
Established, trusted, proven, vigorous, persistent, pressing, VICTORIOUS!
I can’t explain now, but know the status is unprecedented and the future limitless. I am the disciple of fortune! I am the warrior of cause!
The possibilities are limitless!
Yes!
The confirmation has come, and the future is being built like a bastion of protection, and inevitable success/relevance.
I’m in Blog… and it’s the dream I’ve hoped for for so long. To have a life that gives, redeems, replenishes. It is all right here for me, ready.
This is the day, in which it begins.
Good morning Blog,
This dawn-less hour I am awake, beginning my day still turning over the events of the previous evening (and days prior). I think I am beyond the point of further discussion in any direct way, as there is no possible discussion to be had. I tried to leave that door open, but it was kicked shut for good.
This all got me thinking about my own destructive states, where my irreconcilable symptoms pervaded and saturated my actions to an alarming degree. I have been very combustible in years past, and I still can be if properly soaked in fuel. The paradigm of the flaming man was not that appealing, or truly representative of the whole person I am. Though, it really does take actual trench-digging labor to become introspective enough to recognize that. A lot of what helped me see what my uncontrolled illness was doing was to look no further than the scorched and incinerated crater all around me, where my friends, partners and family once stood. The fractured rubble and dust is the visible, tangible result of the damage not taking care of myself can cause.
Hence, this Blog! It was conceived as a venting waste site and a bully-pulpit for a time (conditional maturity), but has also been the documentation of a long, slow journey of self-realization and growth. Going back years, the road I walked and the steps I took towards improvement and stability are unarguably, factually, right over there in the sidebar for anyone to see. If not for this place, I would not have been able to correct the negative paradigm I had assigned to myself through unattended action. I continue to feel a sense of inner-death over the things I have done to those I professed to love. I was abusive in my depression, selfish, craven, coercive, damaging and flawed. There is no denying that my broken neurochemistry was not assisting my conscious mind in making great decisions (see suicide attempt).
I think that life is totally, locally experiential. We all interpret things differently, even from moment to moment. As our perceptions and conditions change, so to can the context of memories and trauma from the past. I have participated in this sort of exercise, especially when freshly damaged from a breakup, yelling from the stage of the Blog theater into an unhappy crowd. My perceptions were impossibly biased, rooted in denial, and staunchly defending a favorable interpretation for the sake of self-defense while acutely vulnerable.
Looking back at the hurt I caused brings up all sorts of instances and material for interpretation, as is my process. I don’t let the past lie still if there is still something there. I haven’t affixed myself to an interpretation of things that best protects my security, but rather, deals with the real events and effects I have had on others with the hope of progressing beyond it. How can I ever hope to learn from hurt, sadness and regret if I do not face those thoughts, welcome them, and accept responsibility? In the end, the paradigm of self-combustion fails when one stops lighting themselves on fire.
Carrying around the petroleum-soaked tinder of anger, hatred and resentment was the first casualty of change. These negative emotions, when harbored, cause consistent and unrelenting duress. Their validity never having been in question, the choice is to keep marching them forward as new steps are taken into the future. Logically, I introspectively assessed that I don’t have the energy to spare on such an laborious activity, fruitless as it is. The energy I spent holding on to the negative emotions I had directed at others could easily be reassigned to some other function that would be far more likely to achieve a benefit of some form. This is a conscious decision; a judgement of effectiveness and survival made internally. I am simply less likely to be consistently stable if I have an offsetting weight on me at all times that I choose not to leave on the side of the road.
The real trauma of those terrible events is a constant reminder of the validity of those moments, and should always be there in my mind somewhere. I view the memories and emotions tied to that trauma can be constructive and negative at the same time. I began to treat moments where trauma is triggered as opportunities to understand my negative responses, practice my anxiety relief techniques, and spend some time focusing on how that surge of emotions still guides (or doesn’t) my actions. There is no denying trauma is a source of consistent pain, but also, that pain is asking a question of the self.
I, personally, explore my trauma not only to comprehend the different emotional states of my life, but also to lessen the anguish of that trauma by not approaching it with reluctance/fear, but with curiosity. Ultimately, trauma is reinforced by the emotional reaction to it, and negative will compound indefinitely until the pattern is too well-ingrained to consider changing. Trauma can be dangerous if indulged, but if observed and understood, can bring stability, resolve and strength. I do go back to some of the moments of trauma in my past, recalling specific moments where I was in a desperate, dangerous states. Yes, it is painful to remember, but also, a sign of real fortitude and endurance that I can look at it at all without recoiling in horror.
I am quite familiar with the paradigm I reference, because I have been that person. I was that person not too long ago. However, I chose not to continue to remain that person and have evolved from that regrettable state into something far more sustainable. Isn’t that ultimately the goal we mentally ill have in common; to have a chance at a fulfilling life? I think it can easily said that no one particularly enjoys suffering, and neither do I. I didn’t paint a new fuzzafied reality for myself (turns out, complex thinkers don’t find delusions satisfying), I walked into the future with all my burned up ashes of truth and regret held in my arms for all to see. I have the dignity of knowing I hid nothing from you Blogosphere, and told you the truth of my story, as best I could comprehend it at the time, with each chronologically incremental post. One soggy revelation at a time, I built up my confidence into someone who’s actions speak volumes to his moral intent. This is the progression, or some facsimile of that, that I hope to not only highlight with this post, but encourage in those who are currently self-combusting (metaphorically speaking) to pursue.
Consistency of action builds a motivation which will fuel additional steps towards hope, and with the intent of establishing the currency of worth: pride.
Consider this a post a notification of Blog redaction Concerning my previous post titled I Stand, Accused and resulting comments.
In response to the comments: I am still willing to discuss my behavior in relation to my exes and how my mental illness or other states cause them harm or trauma. I think engaging in a discussion about this sort of thing could be constructive. However, I think participation is still strictly contingent upon some form of mutual respect and not complete vehemence.
I do vastly prefer constructive conversation opposed to destructive and hateful word-chucking (which is all that was fundamentally happening).
So with that, I have had a very thought-provoking and emotion-assailing 36 hours, but now the hope for useful discourse on the topic of my transgressions is gone.
I will, no doubt, have some form of ambiguous summary failing to disclose vital facts of the matter but tempting with scintillating adjectives which imply, but do not overtly suggest anything.
I’m the same me I was 30 minutes ago, and getting ready for another fun-smelling day tomorrow.
Dear Blog,
It is the pre-morning of a promising day, and I carry with me a suitcase full of arrived negativity. While I won’t discount hate just on it being itself, but I do expect an adequate discussion if there is something to revisit. I’m not shrinking from potential responsibility, but the mutuality of real dialogue seems unlikely.
So truthfully, a campaign of hate is not going to move any conversations forward.
In spite of that, I’m working at the NAMI office today to finish up some data entry from the Walk. With each incremental step, I’m enmeshing myself further in an organization driving real change in my community.
I have a lot of things I regret, and adversely, am very proud of. It’s not a polar world where all is good or all is evil. It’s a lot easier to slap on that label and disregard than it is to engage, challenge and reconcile. I realize rage of certain magnitudes has no cure, but needs to be recognized as unproductive given the multitude of other communication choices.
My life is going forward regardless. Is yours?
What is clear:
Even the slightest, tiniest, misconstrued sense of being engaged or cared about has a PROFOUND effect on output. I am more active, effusive, creative and alive when even the deception of concern is present enough to cast the illusion of reality. This should draw a flag as well for the nature of the spike.
Erratic and concerning to some degree, and undeniably significant in influence. Also potentially, quite useful if channeled effectively (or if engaged more slowly). It’s the type of bloom that would promote me more vibrantly into the world, if only I knew how to conjure the feeling within myself.
I know I’m going to be okay regardless of sunshine and good soil. To think of a time where that could be “better” seems impossible. Is this a drop of water hitting the sand and being greedily devoured into mud?
Good morning.
I have been struggling today. I’m sure all this talk of the past has likely given away the reason for my constant deliberation. It has brought words, thoughts and potent feelings back into the forefront. I don’t interpret this as a crisis, but as an opportunity to test my skills.
There is a process to moving through events, one that pays appropriate attention to their components while also softening the harshness of old wounds. Nothing in terms of circumstance will be changed by my own thoughts alone and I have long ago abandoned hope for deliberation or any sort of resolution. So, today I have been thinking, and churning. I have done the healthy physical walking thing, which has helped normalize. I did not stagnate in isolation, I had my words, and now, I’m working.
I’m NAMI Helpline guy today, and two full days at the office Tuesday – Wednesday. On Wednesday night I’m going to an LGBTQ + Mental Health meeting in the community. I did learn, after Pride, that NAMI doesn’t offer a specific program or service targeted at this population. I thought that was odd, considering the potential for Mental Illness to thrive there seems high. I’m hoping to learn a lot from the presentation and schmooze with everybody after it’s over. I did great after the NAMI status meeting helping out and being friendly with all the new people I met. I did feel very happy about myself that night, and as this week begins, I am already being similarly reinforced.
Today my only Helpline call was so gracious, and thanked me for hearing her (her son was in crisis) as she struggled through a difficult time. She wanted to know how long I would be on today, and when next I would be on the Helpline. I have had similar feedback in previous weeks, even to the point of one of them asking if I would take his brother on as a client (I did not).
I’m not a bad person. I may have been someone who has done painful, regrettable things in the past, but I am not that same personality silhouette at all at this moment. I am not living a model of continued harm to those I profess to love, and casting my personal responsibility on to others or abandoning it altogether. I have done that; it is just as gross and lacking in merit as it sounds. I have stopped being someone I did not want to be, and forged myself in to a man who is proud and has a purpose in this life. I intend to affect reality, improve the standard of living, uplift the mistreated and minorities so that all have a seat at the table of society. I feel my heart, and I’m guided by a morality and purpose that points a direction I am unequivocally proud of.
I live the life I know I need to. I am not a morose penitent resigned to guilt, achieving nothing. I am a light. I will be seen, and I am already filling the world around me with illumination. I can say that, because it’s just fucking true. A huge pile of evidence points to a man who is confident, effusive and eager to challenge the prejudicial norms of society.
I’d love to stay and chat, but I have research to do for my grant and sections to write for the submission. Hope you are up to something just as productive!
There is something fundamentally rewarding about survival through adaptation I have found. It’s a sense of worth, because many obstacles and trials were not enough to destroy the foundation and raze all that was built prior. Ruin should not be the mechanism of redemption because we do not reside in a world of unquestioned absolutes and flaming rubble. Instead, progress is quantitative; a multitude of accomplishments (theoretically) having been laid down instead, sloping upward towards a measured goal among many. This is not always easy to see, but truly can’t be destroyed without full and unquestioning self-participatory assistance.
There should be a caveat, because it’s not as simple as one small but purposeful paragraph (needless to say) to enact life-altering change. Pain is the key to recognition. Sounds unpleasant, largely, because it is (and should be). This may not be true of everyone, but hurt, regret, sorrow and suffering are an essential part of our human understanding of reality. Though we typically don’t live life at the extremes of emotional polarity, they exist as reference for when things start to stray from center. The drift of the perceived norm is the real piece to highlight, because there comes the setup for a moment when a threshold for tolerance is reached and crossed. At some interval which is different for everyone, a realization of position of the emotional pendulum is recognized. It is in this quandary of action that things become critical.
All humans are fundamentally different in countless ways, one of them being the cognitive tolerance for despair. Commonly thought of as an undesirable state, the supplicant of sorrow has a point in which the intensity and relentlessness of the state is unbearable, and in such stark contrast to the opposite end of the spectrum of feeling that dramatic action seems more tangible and needed. At this pivotal juncture, a choice can be made to continue in the current condition, or change somehow.
Again, not just as simple as a choice you make in your head and then boom, done. This revelation often comes at cost, and not always a productive result. For many (myself included) the first avenue consist largely of escape by one means or another (drugs, games, delusions, cognitive distortions), then suicide when there is no where else to go. In my own circumstance, I found that mental and physical isolation led to the trouble, a fundamental lack of constructive dialogue, as well as issues with being misunderstood and under-engaged. Plus, there are almost certainly lots of other contributors which vary per individual circumstance.
Given that death isn’t a solution to anything, and having failed at it personally, the lesson learned helps to dictate what information can be learned to push the load further uphill. Now, this moment of having been defeated in the attempt of self destruction or mutilation should serve as a marked transition point in which a new direction needs to be calculated. Or, should be. But why?
This is the most difficult part of the argument, because it relies on a person’s ability to compare alternating states of awareness in a crisis. I have never been very good at this, but the last time I hit rock bottom, it clicked. I could either stay this way, miserable, coasting just above the desire to exit existence entirely, or, to remember that feeling proud, or even positive, would be like fresh water to parched desert lips. The metaphor helps the imagination, which was a doorway, for me, towards realization and then action.
I, ultimately, wanted to feel good. I’d rather have many more days of trying for and achieving happiness than to check out of the world. The thread that kept me stitched together was hope. In and of itself, hope is too ambiguous to be useful. However, when tied to the looming mystery of the future, the window of possibility opens.
We don’t know, with any true certainty, what tomorrow will bring (unless you happen to be Madam Cleo). The fascination and promise is just as balanced between negative and positive as one would expect for normalcy in most cases. I personally hang on to that thread because I know that if I tug on it, I can take advance in a new direction. It is a hope that I am not eternally defined by the shortcomings and atrocities of my past, but rather, incentivized by fortune to make something better of the legacy thus far wrought. The ammunition to fend off advancing doubt is pride, and the individual actions that increase the evidence for having that radiant, internal confidence.
That may not appeal to someone grounded in surrender, but even the most well-established doubter can see the potential benefit of comparative reality assessments. See a future not yet realized, and head down the road towards it, I would say. It seems like a pretty fundamental adjustment to make if success is sought. I don’t pretend to be any more of an expert than my lived experience allows as I write this. I have seen, and will see, the very struggle I detail here if not within myself regularly, but in the world around me. I hope you can also see that this evidentiary argument has a real grounding in logic and constructive incrementalism. One step forward, two back, two forward, one back… and so on.
Join us. We are going into the future with the pendulum back where it belongs.
Well Blog, the truth is I’m probably not perfect. Far from it in fact. I don’t attest to be flawless, more like acutely flawed but pushing forward regardless with good intent.
I am willing to have a dialogue with anyone about anything. I’m not set in some version of reality that has to be mine. On the contrary, I have much still to learn, and remain humble in my core (despite occasional excitability).
I feel fully responsible. I have been. I have regret that pushes me forward so I can do good in the world. I want to make myself into something better than who I have been.
The only thing left is to march onward, despite pain and trauma. I hold nothing worth carrying a great distance. It is what it is, and frankly, I’m only doing a pretty good job taking steps forward.
Humble to fate, I await whatever fortune deals me. Projecting no outcome, I endeavor to do positive things for those less fortunate.
Shame can be a source for change, and I am an example of that.
___
Don’t get me wrong about the gravity of my past. It is huge, strong and a constant reminder of why I live the life I have now. I’m no model of perfection, as I view such a thing unattainable. The only structure to progress is to learn, adapt, and try again. I have taken my life a direction I am proud of, and that is something undeniably real.
I know the past is full of pain, and I’m very real about that. It is not a shame I deny, but once I have gained a great deal from. If not for my past, I could not have become who I am, which makes me thankful for that pain and the lessons it taught me. The choice to move beyond is just that, a choice, and it is one I make over and over again as the days advance. There is no arguing that the decision to fight is difficult every morning when I get up, but I do, and I still try, because I want to be proud of myself. I am not now a quitter, and I do not want to be remembered as one. If I am to be remembered beyond the time that I die, I would like people to remember how I helped my community, and shown a light onto minorities suffering with mental illness.
I need to earn the right to be here in the world, every day, and to never forget who I was.
Score: +3
Hi again Bloggyfriend.
I have been erratic mood-wise lately, but not inactive. I did very good to keep taking my medications and exercising, which helps maintain an energy baseline. This is preventative, in case short-term lulls become something more pronounced.
Today helped buoy me farther ahead in my goals for mental health community awareness, as well as providing meaningful assistance to NAMI. I met with a member of the board of directors and we started covering ways I could provide research for a grant we want to apply for as well as the document sections for the application. The one we are looking at is for 100,000 dollars and divided into 10 sub-groups county wide. In my capacity, I’ll be researching program statistics and compiling text for the grant submittal. I have rarely been more impactful in all my life, but I am still the supplicant learning and absorbing knowledge from all the amazing individuals I have met so far.
This also gets me thinking about my self-worth as I head down the road. I feel significant, but not appealing in any fundamental way. There are still holes in my armor that I work to mend, and the fiery crucible of time should assist in that process. In spite of that, I have that fundamental absence that I still struggle to comprehend. Maybe this outer-person will achieve a great deal in the world, but he would be unknown, unresolved and unwanted in a very personal way. There seems to be no escaping that, and I don’t much like the prospect of deviation.
Now, that last sentence may have been contradictory to a huge heaving pile of desire, but the truth of the comparison is relevant. The self I wear to survive in the world is different than the self I am when I am in my jams. I work my ass off, and play my ass off too. I have met some people who like to work hard, and others that all they want to do is play hard, but never both. The ideal would be to find a similarly motivated go-getter with a pension for cutting loose.
Such a person (along with all the other unreasonable measures of acceptance) does not exist. I accept that my moon girl will never be there the way I thought she might be. I don’t know why I had such silly dreams, but the shattered remains have all been swept away, and we don’t buy vases and pottery anymore.
No one likes to hear about how frustratingly lonely it is. It’s consistently not interesting to you. However, this is my Blog and my putrid vocabulary waste dump site for all time and I’ll barf on top of big piles of stale vomit for as long as it suits me. I moan and writhe in the mud of my own suffering as is mandated by the gods.
Sometimes shining the light on a thing is just what it needed to be recognized. I shine that light a lot, so I don’t build up big basements full of pickled shit log thoughts. Nothing about that’s storage of things is good, especially when the basement is full.
I’m a grant researcher and writer. That’s pretty cool. I’m a paid employee of NAMI Sacramento, which is also very neat. I have dome real plus shit in the yes column. No disregarding that.
Will there be?
No. It’s too late.
…
…
…
…
Zzzzzzzzzttt
Zuuurm
…
…
Zzzttt
…
-{===|]
In reference to last post:
After some consideration, it seemed uncalled for that I disconnect from the afore mentioned ex without at least clarifying specifically that I would be doing so. I sent a message indicating no hard feelings, but an end to an impossibly frustrating dynamic. I am moving away from the past and towards the future. Period. There is such promise, hope and potential in the days ahead. I am resolved not to spend any more time regressing, rehashing and ultimately, retraumatizing.
I don’t care how the message is received. I have extended the necessary information to not be overtly rude, while still desiring an end to any more communications. I deleted the app and will not check it again. I am resolved, but not intentionally callous or derogatory.
The faded relics of the past do not have the potency or relevance to shape the future of progress or eventual companionship. All lessons absorbed, the future is no longer imperiled by the luggage of the dead.
Score: +3
Today was not as labor-intensive as yesterday, but very invigorating. Also, tiring. Hence, the smells.
I am making progress becoming involved and relevant with NAMI. I keep promoting myself usefully and being consistently present / helpful. That seems like it has upward potential.
I also successfully resisted temptation to communicate with an ex. I just have come to realize the past has nothing left in it for me. No future path comes from there, and nothing of benefit remains. I am done, disconnected, and moving forward despite the ongoing temptation to look back. 100% purged.
That was a hard choice considering the ache of solitude, but regurgitating toxic relationships is simply never good, and no longer worth retching over.
Progress is pointed towards the future, and active involvement in life requires awareness of the goals to be achieved. No future goal is met by dwelling in lost memories unchanging.
I am pleased with my trajectory thus far. I see a lot of good to come, but I won’t get there if I don’t work my ass off.
Score: +3.5
That score might have been higher but my physical exhaustion is peaking. I had a solid 4 hours of packing and labeling today, and more tomorrow. I’m quite familiar with moving and I know the steps that need to be taken. The labor is the only obstacle.
Lots of connections are being made with relevant individuals, forwarding my career. I am more established and essential than ever before, and solidifying my status as a relevant individual in my local mental health community
Blog, right now, as I feel quite stated and exhausted, I have a sense of meaning that is hard to explain. I have an integral part to play in my community, city, county that I have yet to fully comprehend. I take steps forward, every day, to try and make a difference. This world is not right, and from whatever aspect of it that I can, I will try to change it.
I have been on and on about this. If anything, it’s evidence that I’m serious. I really do want to affect change, and I’m learning the things I’ll need to do to accomplish that. A lot of what I have left to give will be outwardly projected towards provoking action.
Tomorrow is another day of earning my worth. I demonstrate my dedication by continuing to be there, be present and helpful for an organization I believe in. One that has previously helped me immensely. I know we can bring something better to this county, and I’m determined to try.
I do, however, feel more alone than ever before. No one understands me. No one cares to know why. No one desires to know. The lack of personal interest may only be a temporary thing, subject to change. That concept is key, since I am a motivating force to help deviate from am unsuccessful norm to a productive alternative.
I wish.
There is nothing left for that. Those dreams are gone.
Time might be running out. Just do as much as can be done, and know in your heart, you did what was right. Die with honor.
Good morning Blog!
Today could be a very impactful day as I spend the bulk of it at Sacramento’s Pride Parade and Festival. In these types of settings, where the basis for success is interaction, I excel. I’m outgoing, friendly and sincere. It is easy for most people to see, because it’s true.
This could be a significant day, depending on who I meet. I have a chance to do some advocacy and hopefully, recruit some mentally heathy individuals to join the cause.
I’m a little reflective lately, as you know. I still keep wishing my exes cared about me, when they certainly do not. As time goes by, I am becoming a lot less attached to that need, and I realize it originates from the fundamental fact of loneliness. A challenge I am overcoming, however, with each new day plodding towards a future they will not be a part of.
Though, it helps that Pride is today. What a great word. It speaks of the raising up of awareness, presence and projects confidence. These are attributes I can get behind, for sure.
Have a great Sunday Blog. I’ll catch you st bed time.
There is this essential, invaluable defense against unjustified ridicule or other insane rantings from beyond the deflector shield, being unbiased knowledge of the truth of oneself. Truth is not subjective, but “interpreting” it is subject to almost nonsensical variance in meaning based on either preference, prejudice or agenda. If honesty is the policy of communication, looking out across the spectrum of delusional, insane responses to truth is both sobering and hilarious. The thesis being: prideful confidence allows for unquestioned defense from invasion of negativity from an external source.
I don’t let people’s lies and slander affect me in any significant way anymore (fuck did this take a long time to figure out). I have nothing to hide; I’ve endured the gauntlet of pain and the crucible of reconstruction. If there has been any poignant realization during all of this it is that I know, more clearly now than ever before, who I am. Coping with reality through delusion seems to be a rather popular means to and end in our “modern” society.
Without being too specific, recent events have inspired me to reiterate my stance on the truth and/or facts in general. I’m not afraid to be wrong, or of any of the actions of my past, because I am reconciled to the actual fate I have wrought, rather than the reality that makes me look good without having to do any of the legwork to make that possible. I tried to live like that, just believing what I wanted to be true, thinking people were someone they weren’t or could not ever hope to become. I eventually crashed, hard… and more than once too. No advancement of the self can be achieved if the construct of interpretation is inaccurate to what is actually going on (well, at least not for me). The only way to make a conception into reality is to do the work involved, but this is sadly impossible to do when the work is in another person’s head. All that remains is to look within.
My Blog archives are overloaded with evidence of my journey, even down to the most incremental daily steps. I have mood charts, spreadsheets and literally years of work put in to finding out who I am, who I want to be, and how I can honestly, proudly, get myself there. Months and years of introspection, analysis, argumentation, emotion, resolution and progress is what it took to advance my life away from believing in delusions and accepting the brutality and callousness of actual life on Earth. I don’t achieve any satisfaction justifying my inability to advance through the world by blaming others for my problems. Is that reassignment of responsibility easy? Fuck yes it is, like a fucking Snickers. However, it doesn’t move anything forward. It is often times the case that the people making the least progress are often the ones blaming as many others as they can for all that’s gone wrong. Our President being a fantastic example of this with a little whipped-cream white supremacy on top.
The point of this exercise is to establish a baseline interpretive guide to the ongoing success of new interactions. My attitude is twinged with what could easily be interpreted as arrogance, because there is some of that going on. When looking at two concepts of existence in such vastly irreconcilable contrast of value, I do take an opportunity to judge or label the one not worth its weight in flaming shit. It’s my choice who I choose to indulge, and deluded people are not going to take any more of my time. If anything, an individual’s desire to be “woke” from slumber is all that remains as mutual conversational territory.
From high above, it is easy enough to look down and gain perspective. It takes a lot of practice to do that. One should not see what one wants to see, but see what is actually there instead. It reveals the true darkness of the self, but also, a remarkable, beautiful confidence that radiates from within once all is accepted. This effusion continues to glow brighter as the fire is stoked with successes, adaptation, perseverance and trust.
This is the line that fosters my quasi-arrogance and sense of superiority, because (without any doubt), my way of doing things is better than what a significant sum of Americans have decided to embrace as a living mentality. Frankly, now that I understand myself, there are few things from the outside that attract much more attention that to be scoffed or outright laughed at. Think about how fucking miserable life would be if all the bad shit happening was being absorbed at intended potency? What a miserable fucking life. Instead, as the conductor of my own Locomotive, I have simply turned the screams of the roaring engine into a cacophony of giggles, and the outrage into hyperbolic bursts of cackling, wild laughter (I often extend all my fingers and hold my hands, palm up, in the air in front of my head as I laugh).
What an empowering thing to write. I am glad I am who I am now, and for all that my mistakes have taught me.
I heard the boom.
Score: +2.5
A draining day, energy wise. I had originally designed to megawalk tomorrow, but I just got fired up today. I felt the motivation to do, so I did.
I’ve done very well for myself lately. I’m active on the full-time job market and now a temporary employee of NAMI Sacramento. This is progress, true, even if not at the accelerated pace I had hoped. Still, this is a great sign ultimately.
What’s especially rewarding about integrating into this nonprofit has been a recognition of my passion to affect change and make a positive difference in my community. I have come to realize my insistence, persistence and perseverance will make me an instrument of positive action wherever I go. My future, in this current trajectory, looks very good.
I have done some introspective processing about my exes of late. As you know, I have had a difficult time detaching myself fully from concern. However, after residing with complete disconnection for several days, I have found the feeling quite reassuring. I know I can stand on my own, and finally have a confidence in my internal strength. I think I am fully releasing my preoccupation and moving forward. Even despite good intentioned probing, it has become abundantly clear not even a crumb of positive worth remains. There is nothing they have to offer that will improve my life. On my own, I’ve done fantastically for myself, and with them, I suffered until I collapsed. That should be a good piece of evidence in my advancement.
It really came together today. I pushed myself to this new, remarkable high point in my pursuit of better physical and mental health. I have grown, learned and become something much more than I was. I feel truly proud of that. 30,000 is symbolic, because I keep pushing the edge forward. Break that ceiling and advance beyond it. Something that astonishes me is seeing people holding the power to change their lives, but having no clue how to implement. It’s something I want to help people see, so they can capture control of their own destiny.
So I have said farewell to my past in a variety of ways, introspectively, analytically, in prose and verse. I’ve dealt with my past, tried to make something positive of it, and left the trash on the refuse heap where I picked it up from. I no longer waste my time on people who don’t deserve it.
I have something of indisputable value to offer, and I will offer it and I know it is already being recognized. Sometime soon, I will be affecting change in my community, and altering the landscape of mental illness awareness to those around me. It feels truly good to be part of something growing.
You know what I don’t have? Hate, resentment, stored anger and a vengeful Desire for retribution. Last time I checked, it really sucks to carry around that crap. Even a tiny bit on me has a rapid impact on my demeanor. It’s a poison that sullies observation and interpretation as long as it is present. I learned the hard way by being a perpetual asshole. After a time, that sort of life didn’t really reward me in a meaningful way. Therefore, I cast it away. What a feeling it was to let go of all that luggage.
Life only lasts a little while. I have no intent to spend my time hating others, regardless of how valid the reasons. It’s a waste of time, and doesn’t move anything forward.
Okay blog, rant over for now. I’m so yes.
Trail Shoe
1.
Magnetic sunrise,
Purples shining in reds,
Twisted sinews in roasted heat,
Delicate wet petals,
Fragrant mystery,
Deluded in flavor,
Fueled in hate.
Blasted bits scatter.
2.
Green canopies over,
Soft inviting eyes,
House of dreams,
Sparkling nights.
Fire-bright.
Disturbed underneath,
Cancerous rot–
Melting surfaces,
Forged, bludgeoned, ruined.
3.
Boundless joy–
Rising to days,
Adventures teeming–
Jubilant.
Decaying.
Festering in disinterest,
Foiled by distance,
Dry pots,
Plagued roots,
No plant will grow.
4.
Benign but present,
A foundation–
Cracked and listing,
Imperiled by slope,
Decline’s passenger–
Walking free,
Escaping the abyss.
5.
Voices remind,
Burdens of reality–
Crushed to a deserved fate.
Still,
Within, an ember–
Glowing a feint promise,
A heat unextinguished,
Flared or dormant–
The fire remains.
Score: 0
Hi there. I know I haven’t been consistent as I hoped in the documentation department. To be frank, I’ve suffered of late with the symptoms of depression, subsequently, feeling less inclined to open up and make with the words. I have also been on a streak of having to jump up and down to get noticed or listened to about how I’m feeling, and even at that, there has been marked failure. No one really seems interested in me in what is left of my circle, or anything I’m doing for that matter. My enthusiasm for forward progress has been entirely self-generated.
I feel stagnant the last few days. I also have taken note of that and executed some structural action to improve. I have dedicated a slot to creativity on Wednesdays, in which I will attempt to forward the progress of my novel. I have a temporary goal of achieving the lofty benchmark of 30,000 steps in a single day at the end of the week. I have been close before, but never above 27,000. This weekend I have volunteered to represent NAMI Sacramento at the Pride Parade and festival downtown on Sunday. Its a good opportunity to meet people and spread the gospel of mental health awareness.
I’m isolating. My interests are becoming vastly external, and devoted to the cause of doing “good” for society. My moral compass points towards justice, and my actions speak to that truth. What I thought would be a very inspiring and radiant time of my life has actually created a sort of unprecedented solitude and near-universal interpretive disinterest. Never has my “popularity” been less, and my overall relevance has been diminished to just what I believe it is. I still have a great deal of pride in myself… maybe this is folly since it seems the resounding opinion is to the contrary.
Honestly then head-voice, ask yourself: “how does one step forward of all is lost?” Basically, you don’t. I’ve been to that place. It is misery, upon torment and pain. The spiral keeps going down forever. The only way is out. The direction is up. is it hard? Yes, surely, and with the obstacles there will be many… but an end to the ongoing cycle of torment with no hope of deviation. I, head-voice of doubt, hold on to that. It is my everything. I don’t want to be a useless pile of symptomatic protoplasm. I have a mind, a perspective, and something to offer this world still. I have stared into the darkness and let myself fall. I have been to that place and come back. There is a reason for that.
I won’t give up because I’m more stubborn than all these people around me who could care less what I’m up to, or any new people I meet who try to resist my meteoric trajectory. I’m my own motivator, my own counselor. I don’t need anyone else in this life but myself, and neither should anyone out there who has half a brain. I have been burned enough times to not touch the “others oven.” I will not be deterred, and I will push forward. If there is ever to be stability and completeness in my life, it begins with a dedication to the self that is unwavering. I have begun to realize the value of constructing a massive fortress over time. Trials add bricks, which build walls higher, and thicker. Soon, there is no need for others, when all that is needed lies within a fortification that will not be penetrated or besieged.
Is it lonely? Yes head-voice, it is lonely… you and I both know that. We have been through this point many times, and I did listen to you when we tried to recreate some spark from the past. Now, however, head-voice, I am not listening to you anymore. I am hurt enough to stop trying, and that will be the end of your complaining. You and I can plainly see the facts. Moaning is not going to help convince me that siding with you is a good idea… we’re moving on and ending this post, and if you don’t stop all that fuss I’m sending you right back to your room and closing the door.
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
..
zzzzzzzzzzzzztttt
…
…
..
..
..
zzt
.
.
.
AAAAHHHH!!!!
.
.
-{===|]
Score: +2
Got extra steps and sun time in today since I had been feeling down. I called a psychiatrist and got another job interview, so I’d say that was productive. I did some good things for myself.
In other news, a spider is in my room somewhere, hidden, waiting. I had my chance to kill it, as it was a particularly unfriendly looking arachnid. However, it deployed some form of countermeasure and escaped destruction. I’m thinking Bears are behind this.
I feel pretty detached from my sexuality. After separating my focus from topics without solutions, I’ve done a lot better managing my emotions. My sex drive basically shut off, with no object of desire at all within the scope of reality, no future, no investment to make. The flame has been snuffed.
I continue to find my place in this new city of mine. Trees are friend, it has been known for some time. I’ve lost my fishing impulse. It just, doesn’t feel fun. Clearly, this is depression affecting me slightly. I can push through with simple survival in mind, and very likely be okay. I do hope to hear back from the psychiatrist next week and get something scheduled.
Though I am clearly struggling, I am coping. I express, process and move forward. My hope is to achieve stability and prosperity again, while still being able to protect those I love.
The cat, on the other hand, vexes. Since Moo bought healthier rabbit meat kibbles, they have been soundly rejected in comparison to the previous variety of fleshy rabbit freeze-dried meat hunks. As you are about to see, the fantastic enthusiasm leading up to the moment food arrives could not have been more disappointing.
(Much harder given the climate, but I need to do this to help myself right now)
————–
Friendly
Outgoing
Ambitious
Humorous
Creative
Original
Insightful
Wise
Intelligent
Sincere
Logical
Attentive
Generous
Communicative
Sexual
Emotional
Courageous
Observant
Honest
Gentile
Affectionate
Dedicated
Loyal
Determined
Optimistic
Jubilant
Effusive
Kind
Moral
Depressed
Inconsistent
Scarred
Unattractive
Overweight
Infected
Diseased
Imbalanced
Stubborn
Frustrating
Perplexing
Uninteresting
Abandoned
Reprehensible
Regretful
Tainted
Vexing
Irritating
Saddening
Undesirable
Incomprehensible
Hours in isolation reveal a place of deep ache, encompassing a gorge of emptiness within. I feel the threads of connection, thin, decayed, neglected, forgotten, but still tugging from time to time.
I wish someone was here with me. I miss having her here to be affectionate with, gliding fingers and soft kisses. That word, someone, represents such a powerful longing that I often have to stuff it away. I can’t deal with the hurt in its completeness.
I’m hopeless. I just need to come out here and express my unrequited longing. I don’t think anyone will love me again. Too much baggage. Not worth the trouble. Unable to see who I am.
I have times like this where I feel sad about being alone; especially in instances when old love emotions are brought up and the memory/reality of how it is dead comes back. The pain returns. I forgive. I transition. I stand alone. My hand is cold.
Tonight I just wish someone was making sniffy noises next to me. I miss her. Goodnight.
Then, inching towards a sullen state, a dark and vast abyss opens, consuming the road ahead, plunging all into an empty, fathomless chasm. Saddened yet aware, the scream of descent echoes off the distant walls, reminding. Into the frigid air of breathless dark, penetrating chill advances on once supple flesh. A twirling, tumbling decay like so many insects ensnared in webs to be feasted upon later, the tumult goes on. Unrecognized, unappreciated and inherently deluded, the spiral plummets to new, frigid depths of denial. With only the bottom of suffering to relate, the empty hiss disposes, loathes, resents only. A predator of wrongdoing in the deepest recesses of regret disembowels, eviscerates and consumes. Leaving only a smattering of resin, the digested supplicant is no more. Faded hopes nothing more than a bloody smear on the forgotten cave wall where no one can see.
Hi there. Positive day, lots of happy, but still sad right now. Inside, there is an ache for her. I mean the incorporeal, ideal “her” that isn’t and won’t be as well as those I have loved. My mindset of hope is actually a poison that sustains longing and causes a rot of desperation within. I have always been a lone man, different from his peers, relegated to the fringes of acceptance. I must embrace, and accept.
Solitude must somehow become a source of strength, and a determination that defines rather than diminishes. I don’t know what that transformation would be like it’s so theoretically inconceivable for me at this juncture. It’s frustrating, because it describes something I have been unable to do to this point. I can’t even make a new friend, let alone find adequate companionship.
The faltering struggle of inner-strength versus an unending, advancing tide seems inevitable. Whether drowned or washed away, the emptiness consumes all. Then it vacates, leaving a landscape stripped bare of its vitality and features in the soggy aftermath.
Behind this doubt, somewhere, is a beacon. Of late, though I know it stands like a bastion of my ongoing hope, it is obscured in a sickening miasma of discontent. There are more days surrendered to pain than ever before. More than 18 months of physical solitude seems to be a threshold that once passed, inflicts a sorrow I can’t escape.
The only remaining choice is to become it, and secure myself tightly to the boulder as it plummets to the deepest part of the ocean. Accept or perish. Perish or perish. Either way, I’m still alone.
Severed mooring–
Cast free on a drift,
Slacked touch ache,
Fading warmth fingered,
Slip the dust of her.
Currents steal futures–
Plied courseless,
Echo’s reply mocking.
Consuming cold stones,
Sinking, crushing,
Yellow to night,
Black horizon,
Dissolving–
Ahead but still behind,
Water tips in–
Gushing,
Vanish beneath,
Gulped, unnoticed.
Score: +3
Very good Monday for me in terms of forward progress. I did a full day’s worth of job searches, applications and resume work. On top of that, I was asked to be the NAMI Sacramento Program Coordinator for Peer to Peer Support Group Meetings here in town starting July 1st. This would be my first coordinator position, though still on volunteer status. Despite the lack of pay, this position is a HUGE resume line as well as the experience involved.
Big blessing of good news heaped on me today. Despite that, I am still feeling some sadness in my heart over loves lost. I really think I will never fully let go of them, despite how they hate me. All I have in my heart is care for others, there’s no room for anger. I do long to love, but I also realize I may never again.
Life took a promising step forward today. This encourages my future enthusiasm for future steps down the path of my destiny. Blog, you are seeing me grow, struggle and change into the man I want to be. I am becoming a me I will be proud of (more than I already am).
Good morning. Today is a pretty relevant day. “Soldier” has got to be the most dangerous, archaic occupation on Earth, but without them, we would definitely not be here. Many millions of men and women died doing what they were ordered to do, and they held their ground despite knowing it would be the last thing they did. They never failed in serving whatever agenda they were required to. Whether the mission was moral or corrupt, they died doing what they were asked, and that is the truth of it. Whether you agree with war or not (I expect not), everyone can relate to soldiers. We are all just people, and soldiers deserve better than what they get. They give the most, and when they come home, they are treated like unwanted luggage. Recognize. Today is just one day, but do give a second to think about your reality being built on the decomposing corpses of millions of men and women you will never know.
I’m on the helpline today. I have also applied to be a counselor at a school in Roseville. As more jobs become available, I’ll be dropping my name in whatever hat I can. Maybe not the elephant shit scooper. Under qualified. Need a BA to even get in the cage.
I’m headed in a good direction right now. I’m going to go get my steps later, and continue this healthy activity program at full speed! Woo!
Really, I’m moderating. I’m just excited to be feeling good at the start of the week… a promising indicator, methinks.
…
…
…
Scccrrreeeeeee
…
…
…
-{===|]
…
NOOOOOOO!!!!!
Score: +1.5
I don’t feel like sharing all that much. I’m tired from exercise, lonely and largely uncared about. I didn’t loaf today, I did shit.
I don’t like this. The solution is nowhere in sight. Walking into the unknown, by myself.
Hey there. I’m having an introspective evening listening to my head-council. My thoughts go between the feeling of loneliness and the solidarity of my forward resolve for my future. I can be of these two minds, while not being shredded in the process (barely). It is contentious: “wait, no THIS is what you need.” “What are you a fucking idiot? Clearly you need THIS not THAT.” Ugh. If you had to put up with this debate going on and on you’d write about it too.
I don’t even know why we’re having this argument on the chamber floor in the first place. The facts have proven out (especially of late), and one choice of path is fundamentally untenable. Just like the people associated with that choice. The whole thing is marked for collapse.
I’m scared of being alone. I don’t really like it as much as I like being loved and understood. Being embraced by a workplace is pretty key to my forward progress, but not as fulfilling. Something about love that makes it special is that it’s the key to several doors that would otherwise be closed.
Yet, with my baggage, the chance of finding a tolerant participant is very close to zero. There’s a large stack of shit to be fully repulsed by, often times too grotesque and fathomless to be overcome by other, positive attributes. The lot, in and of itself.
The dichotomy continues as no one up there has a fucking clue about the right path but they keep on yammering like they do. Maybe tomorrow they’ll be quiet. They need time to just yell, then maybe around 1-3 AM they’ll start formatting some legislation for the rest of the chamber to vote on. I await that result when I’m back in front of the council tomorrow. Goodnight Blog.
Score: +2.5
Great day of exercise today, as I was motivated to post a decent score during the weekend step challenge (that I started). Among the three walks/fishing trips I took today, this one was the big one:
Walks, especially maintained throughout the day, really do help keep up my vital energy and help me feel good. This is great looking at the map. I hammered that out in 43 minutes.
Along the way, Moo and I went fishing, and I saw some wildlife.
There is so much life here, crawling around and making life noises. Ducks, Herons, Squirrels and Turkeys. I am feeling at home here, and recognizing the rarity of the place I find myself. Many positive aspects despite the afore mentioned negatives.
This place has a nourishing quality to it, even if it is a locale where I feel hunted at times. Predators are here, but I am prepared. No one will defile this place while I have a chance to prevent it. I’ve never lived in a place like this, and I doubt I will again when I move out.
I’ve been ruminating on my feelings about my exes. Ultimately, I think I just need to stop with them altogether. None of them, to this point, have done anything with prolonged positivity or true benefit. It’s not mutual, it never has been, and I’m done. My energy will now go someplace where it will be reciprocated, and stored for a future individual worthy of investment.
Tonight I feel pretty solid despite so many unknowns still in play. Resolutions should not be final, but absorbed, and moved past towards the next resolvable goal.
Things in the mood and confidence department will continue to improve as time goes forward. DUCKIES!!!
Sparkling–
Just beyond fingers,
Reach,
Up to a sky gone down,
Wide-eyed with the impending–
Choking moments,
Being the hopeless last.
Suffering in gulping–
Swallowing breaths,
Engorged in death,
Drifting further–
Diminishing reaches,
Savior unknown.
Impacting rest,
Squeezed of chance–
Settle,
To be slowly devoured,
As nothing remains.
I’m withdrawing into a hole. My hopes are crushed flat like so many unwanted flapjacks in the IHOP dumpster of my life. I must be a real piece of flaming stink-shit if it is just so fucking easy to cast me aside. Lovers, friends, businesses, the list of agents of my ongoing despair gets longer as new and old parties alike find ways to disassociate from me.
Spiraling. I don’t want to feel like I did nothing, but the very little I did won’t solve a fucking thing. I wake up tomorrow the same pitiful man I have been, unskilled, undesirable and just adding more mass to the scrap heap of useless people.
I know, maybe if I disintegrate into a lowly degenerate and start suckling at the teat of society’s indigent services I’ll be finally heading in a more appropriate direction. People like me pretend to be great, but really we’re just trying to hide the obvious fact that were fucking stupid. Not just that, but also not something worth investing any energy in whatsoever. We are black holes of society, taking in matter and returning nothing of substance. Our only growth is an increasing need for more handouts, more pity, more pedantic preachers telling us “oh well here’s what you should be doing…”
How maddening this all is. If only the surplus population of those who hate me could see me struggling now. They’d point and say “haha I knew you were a fucking loser, that’s why I cut you loose. Hahaha look at you now. How pathetic. What a fucking worm you are.”
Goodnight. Hopefully tomorrow is better.
This morning I was feeling pretty off center. After I wrote that post in the morning I sat here for a while thinking about my future, and what I wanted to do with myself. I needed a way to express my intentions, and aspirations for the time that I still have left. I resolved to channel that into something tangible, a project proposal I will shop around to the various nonprofits in town, starting with NAMI Sacramento. I spent an hour and a half pouring my intellect, talents and projected hopes into this, and brought a copy up to NAMI today. Both the lead project coordinator and executive director have it now. I honestly don’t know what will come of that, but it should be clear I am serious about grassroots activism and community awareness. My goal is to reduce taxpayer burden on public service and misuse of police resources handling issues that should be handled in the household, or surrounding community. We have to stop ignoring the issue of mental illness and start facing it down. Too many people are dying, lying homeless in the streets because we won’t look this issue straight in the eye. Now, in this time of ever increasing stakes, we need a voice of reason to help bring the focus back to where it belongs, on our home street. We either survive as a community, or we perish alone in our houses, isolated from each other with no one to save us.
I have included the full proposal I wrote below for your review. Just to provide you with some context, one of the larger challenges in this area has been activating minority communities in areas of need in terms of rendering mental illness services. Instead of burdening the system with providing care to indigent populations or others, emphasis should be returned to the individuals living in the community to be aware and mobilize to protect themselves and their environment. The motivation for this is common sense driven. The fact that we expect the police or county medical services to be the fail safe has resulted in many deaths, a huge swath of neglect, and a problem of deteriorating health and homeliness that is not improving but worsening. The status quo is failing, and now we need to really dig into why that is happening, and address a clear area of need. Bringing education to individuals will restore peace to households, change perspectives, eliminate stigma and reverse the trend of the mentally ill being scorned and relegated to the fringes of society. To restore peace to our streets, and safety in our homes, we must realize what we face, and learn about how we can better coexist with it. Opposition only leads to strife and death. The days of mental illness claiming the lives of those who have it are nearing an end, and my program aims to be the start of a new-wave of mental illness comprehension and treatment.
~~~~~~~~~~
PROPOSAL: NEW COMMUNITY-BASED OUTREACH/AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
PROJECT: Stronger Communities through Awareness, Leadership and Education (SCALE)
Westin Eric Bailey
Peer Support Specialist
May 2018
Synopsis: In light of the need for ongoing education and awareness of mental illness (and community impacts of) in many minority and disadvantaged communities, I propose to develop a program that will deliver a series of presentations designed to make common-sense arguments for improved mental health awareness at several (initially) communities of need in the Sacramento area. This process is divided into sections in order to properly create an effective outreach tool given the unique requirements of the various constituents of the areas in question. With my background in developing advanced educational materials and my vivacious, effusive and welcoming public speaking persona, I propose a fully-interactive experience that will help to make mental health awareness something a community can become proactive about. The objective would be to inspire individual communities to take charge of activism, assess need internally and begin to understand how the individuals in their community who suffer the symptoms of mental illness can achieve safety and stability through a new comprehension of the illness itself. The project, if implemented, will reduce the workload of police, county facilities and other government provided health care for the indigent.
Phase 1 – Assessment: The first stage of the project would be to gather information from new and existing minority community leaders by conducting detailed interviews and asking questions designed to assess the needs of a given local population. Once a sufficient amount of information is gathered, the project would then assess where the program would be most effective, likely given a limited number of opportunities for presentation. The program would then develop presentations designed for each audience in the selected communities across the area, so that each would be able to directly relate to the content being presented (drawing an emphasis to how close mental illness is within their own community, whether or not it is acknowledged openly).
Phase 2 – Trials: Program can be developed for 1 target community as a “first draft” implementation of the presentation to assess if the model functions as intended. If the focus of the program is successfully interpreted, information will be gathered from program participants to determine what areas need to be improved in the presentation in order for it to be more effective. Once this stage is completed, the objective would be to begin to promote, and go door-to-door providing information to communities in need. Additional implementations on a single-community basis may be needed to provide additional feedback. This stage must be collectively certified by the leadership in order to proceed with implementation.
Phase 3 – Outreach and Awareness: This stage would provide, in advance of scheduling presentations beyond the series of trials, a campaign on social media, TV, Radio and physically taking place in the communities where it is hoped a presentation would be held. The information provided to the populations across the city would specify that the objective is to provide real concrete resources for emergency situations, answer individual questions and provide a tailored product for their community and its unique needs. Outreach will proceed the opportunity to present, and should begin to alert the community well in advance to the presentation and associated resources that will be given out.
Phase 4 – Continuation: Program’s ongoing success will be dependent on constant adaptation, revision, and improvement through a long-term creative process over the period of time in which funding is available. A team of individuals can (permitting resources) eventually be developed to do the community assessments, interviews and design educational materials themselves, helping to spread the program farther out across the counties in the area, to any community in need. A leadership structure can then be developed to help maintain oversight and spread the effectiveness of the educational outreach to any community that requests it.
Conclusion: With a captivating personality and presentation style, I intend to forward my enthusiasm for mental health awareness and take a common sense approach to living beside people who are mentally ill, and how they all can thrive together. Making the poorest, most disadvantaged populations aware of this internal-crisis of neglect is essential. We intend to provide them with logical, easily comprehensible solutions and resources at all junctures, which will have a huge impact on all individuals in surrounding communities (if not by word-of-mouth but also by improved conditions). If communities can begin to take individual responsibility for their mentally ill, there will be fewer times a not properly trained police officer is called to deal with someone in a mental health crisis. There will be less need for people to be dependent on county resources if individuals are being assisted by their communities and families. The only thing this program can do, is help people understand what mental illness is, and how to handle it when it is a local issue. We are going to take fear and stigma out of the myriad cultural misconceptions and reduce the issue of community mental illness down to the simple practicalities: Taking care of it themselves means fewer people will accidentally be hurt, die, or be forgotten; otherwise diminishing the integrity/perception of the surrounding community. I do believe that once the program is developed, the effects will be wide-reaching. This program, if funded, can save the city and surrounding county governments lost time and resources that will no longer need to be dedicated to addressing mentally ill individuals who have no place else to go.
I’m not feeling particularly stable this morning. My optimism and hope are temporarily obscured by an overwhelming doubt about my worth and future. As logically unfounded as such emotional insurrections can be, they still occupy the capital at this hour.
I am going back to NAMI today for some more work, and you’d think that would have me excited. Sadly, all I can think about is the cosmic limbo I am in wondering what is about to happen to me and my projected future. I’m not able to focus on anything, only peering fruitlessly into the miasma of possibilities and outcomes.
So, in response, I decided to come out here and think about all this for a bit. It is okay to feel down right now, because, that’s what I’m really feeling. Historically, rejection of emotions is a non-starter in coping with them. I’ve found that letting them “be” is best, because it’s certainly not going to be fatal to have a feeling, but it may be very uncomfortable. Like right now, for example. I’m here in this moment with a great burden of self-doubt on my back, and I intend to leave it there until it is ready to climb off. Which it will, in a little while.
Talking to my exes has clearly been a regret, as all sorts of things have come up along a still hopeless avenue of investment. I’m unlikely to Lazarus my way to something wonderful, so, I’m moving on. It is going to take time to re-establish my confidence after being treated like scooped diarrhea. I’m really far more relevant than either of those women will ever be able to realize, given their scope of understanding.
I have no intention of opening the relationship door again, but will not fully close it to chance. I’d be a fool to think I could just say something and have it last forever. We are insane if we believe we can even plan a few months ahead, let alone forever. With how this world changes, I don’t know how you can be bound to eternity unless you have your head soundly buried in the sand. I do not, and I’m tired of dealing with denialists and people who aren’t personally responsible. I’ve drawn a line in the past but I have not held to it. It’s easy to just say “no more,” but then when that ache comes, and her words seem so familiar… I, undoubtedly will struggle with that into the future, but less and less as more of my old relations are evicted from the circle.
Okay, rant over. I’m vowed to better protect myself and mind the ever-changing fortune of these new unfolding days. May you all be guided towards stability, as I seek to for myself. I know I will feel better soon, these things fade with time.
I felt a bit disjointed earlier when I posted my score. I also didn’t explain the downgrade was physical energy and not mental health. I wasn’t ready to be introspective. I was all beered up and unwinding from a long day of detail oriented work. So now I’m going to dive right in:
I really wish NAMI Sacramento would hire me. I thought if all this cool shit I could bring to the table. New programs, multicultural outreach (locally relevant), language and cultural education. I will have a chance to make a difference like that someday, I believe. I, despite my impatience, must learn to grow a reputation as a contributor first and present consistency to advance beyond. That has always been the way of trust, even as the chihuahua of my enthusiasm nips at the heels.
I’ve been foolish lately. ***** got a lot of past memories pheasants flushed out of the thicket for my consciousness to see. I was hurt by how I was disregarded, again, and that pushed me further into longing. Then I pestered Amanda and, unsurprisingly, found her empty of interest. Frustrating myself intentionally trying to cross bridges that were burned up long ago is not the best use of my time, I think. It tells me a lot about how deeply I love. Even though nothing remains, I still would run to love them again if they wanted me to. None of them do, however.
Inside me, there are these missing areas. Several of them. It’s a part of me that grew and became vibrant, thick, vital… like an organ designated to secreting love juice (um, ew?). Then, they died. I feel them now, dead inside me. Like a houseplant that no matter how you prune it creatively or sprinkle magic dust on it, the carcass of a once living thing is all that remains for all your guests to see. The hurt is constant, because energy still goes into it, but it never becomes any less dead. I wish so badly to bring it to life again by going back to the person who made it grow, but even then “where there is death, there will always be death.” -The Last Arcanan
I’ve held on for 15 years Blog. I’ve never forgotten, never given up hope that one of these empty places in me would come to life again. I can’t bear the shame of so much love lying in ruinous rot within me. Because of me. Because they stopped loving me. It is a pain I don’t think I will ever be free of, because I am responsible for putting it there.
My journey is a series of lessons. This loneliness is something I must understand and address. My future is far from decided, which opens the door to hope. I know my weaknesses, and I am not going to fall back to my past trying to find something of worth amidst the ashes. If there is ever going to be love in my life again, it will need to be brand new.
I definitely don’t deserve a fucking thing at this point, despite misfortune. Meaning can only be derived from worth of merit. The one who sees me now as the man I am… she will love me in a way that may last. A type of love based on an upward curiosity seems to be a variety of motivation that carries a potentially positive trajectory. Rather than lust, compromise, desperation or lies… interest has a deep well of questions that demand answers. Curiosity is an engine that drives understanding forward. Discovery is a spark that lights up an empty room with a moment of clarity, and yearns for more. These things are far from impossible, I have just never known anyone to have them for me. I, however, believe that when someone really sees who I am, this may yet happen.
As I go forward, I don’t intend anything other than to pursue my career and find meaning in helping others. I won’t close doors that might be closed anyway (Pessimistic Peter), and I will maintain a keen eye for possibility.
I do believe things are moving in the intended direction quite as planned. Since ** lit a fire under me, I’ve really taken charge of my independent future. Now, more than ever, I have the next several steps ahead planned out. I rarely look forward very far, but in this instance, I think having a bit of a glance in the intended direction is helpful in pacing my energy. I might still have a ways to wait before I can begin earning an income. Whatever obstacles there are, I am determined to overcome.
I have a few stories to tell tomorrow, some of which are fucking hilarious. This post has been going on for long enough. Tonight, I rest easy and peacefully. I know what I must do, and I go proudly off to do it.
My name is Westin Eric, and I’m a Peer Support Specialist. I’m an honest man who will dedicate himself to hearing you when you need to be heard. I will effusively demonstrate my vibrant emotions, boisterous dialogue, flamboyant facial expressions and demonstrative arm movements in all aspects of communication. Most importantly though, I will understand and help, not judge or advise, while we deal with the crisis at hand. I will help show how to take those first few steps forward and I will rally behind anyone who strives against mental illness, so that one day, they may know a full life.
Blah blah preachy preachy. This guy is fake news. He probably was the leader of the spy ring in my campaign! Curses!
…
…
…
Zzzzzzeeeeerrrrrrrrrr
…
…
…
Zzzt
…
…
-{===|]
Score: +4
The interview was a smash hit, and I know definitively that I made a good impression (I asked). I’m seeing now that they are careful when hiring as the job deals with at-risk populations. They don’t want to rush it and have the wrong person in the position during a crisis, or, maybe this has been a problem before and they are avoiding a repeat.
The hiring manager said I interviewed very well, and that I should be hearing from them soon about a second in-person interview. I would expect to hear back by Thursday, and if not, I’ll follow up myself and bug the shit out of them until they yield.
I would have liked to offload the anxiety/excitement I’ve been carrying around that my current situation is generating, but alas, I trudge on. Not a big deal, as I gain newfound confidence with each successive interaction. See below.
I fucking ROCKED it today. Man did I feel proud walking out of the building. Just, beaming! I showed them something I’m sure they weren’t expecting, and something they won’t be able to easily forget. I do make an impression Blog.
Not that you would have a reason to know, but I have a fantastic voice (the one you would hear if I were standing next to you telling you to read my Blog). It’s very unique, and often described as a “radio” voice. I also have a standard volume that is permanently 4 notches higher than the rest of the world. That’s not to imply I yell, my voice resonates and projects, much like a stage performer, and naturally carries easily. I also have an expressive face, and my arms and hands often flail about madly as I speak (think Octopus, with rabies, on fire). Gestures are a big part of how I communicate. It’s a full-body activity.
So, the charisma was shining through today, and it felt wonderful. I got a compliment on the NAMI warmline too from a older man who was looking for peer group resources. He thanked me and told me I was doing a great job. The week before I guy wanted to send his brother to me for individual counseling, which I can’t do. I was flattered, however. Evidence! It’s not that I just want to do this work, it’s also that I’m fucking good at it.
Today was a pride bump day. Big time. I feel all puffed-up with confidence 100% ready to take on the next step in the process. Damn it feels fucking solid to be thriving! I’m getting after it!
Introspectively, my withdraw from Latuda is probably null since my body was rejecting it pretty severely well beforehand. I don’t feel particularly less stable, but circumstance is propping me up at the moment. I’m still monitoring the situation closely. Also, I have greatly improved stability now that outside perturbatory elements have been cut free as unwanted flotsam. Hahaha, great self-gratifying thought just happened: I was feeling down being so soundly rejected the other day by someone without any relevance, only to be validated shortly thereafter by a whole new group of people who are extraordinarily relevant. Take that depressed thinking! Fucking pow!
Have a great night Blog, and here’s hoping I get more than 3 hours of sleep tonight. Please?
It’s back!
-{===|}
Score: +2
The score is down for physical reasons as sleep has been the big enemy of late. However, tomorrow is the much anticipated big interview day. This is the sort of situation I shine in. Give me a chance to impress, and I will.
It’s so easy to live in denial, until it’s not. What ends up happening is a boom. A lot like my parents not addressing the real issues in their lives. Dirt gets put over the hole and we move on. Trouble is, the hole is still there. Go ahead and step on it and see. I just marvel at people who don’t really live here in the real world and choose to entertain a delusion about the actual shape of the world. I see this as a symptom of fear, as I have know it personally. This was my main way of living, for a time. Until I tried to kill myself.
I’m off Latuda. Got some side effects going on, but better than what I was going through when I took it. Tonight I will try to again normalize my sleep, or at least push the wake up time later.
I’m trying to clear my head of anxiety and stress. This is, potentially, one of those relevant life moments that leads to fundamental change. Is this the next launching point? It certainly feels like it could be. I have a deep sympathy for people who can’t or won’t move themselves forward, because I have been there too. I, however, have no pity for people deluded into believing everything is fine while the mound under the rug continues to grow. Especially when the deception is just so obvious from the outside. There is a problem with confronting these people with the truth. It’s less like information and more like a bomb that explodes, causes immense irritation, then gets swept under the rug with the rest of life’s unwanted truths.
I’m ranting a bit I know. It hits home for me since I USED TO DO THAT VERY THING. Yeah, I can talk because I was just as guilty, but I move on from that. I saw my life go down the shit shaft and I knew I wouldn’t do that again. Seeing it in others who refuse to see it in themselves only reminds me of a past I want no part of.
Fuck. Blog, tonight better be a good night. I’m all used up from indirectly chastising people I’m frustrated with (but also never want to talk to again anyway). My parents are at least trying to step forward, so, I’m not down on them with the whole slop bucket. I admire that they don’t like the way things are. That’s more than I can say for the rest of you over there in Delusionville.
This is me feeling grumpy, side-effected and all fucked up from bad sleep. I’m taking out my negativity on you Blog. Then again, this is not the first, or the last time that will happen. This place is my bed pan. If you honestly expect decent writing here, ha, try an actual professional writer in your WordPress reader. I see these inspirational MH blogs and I really don’t give a frosty fuck. I’m not here to entertain you or be entertained by you, as evidenced by my unpopularity. I am here to treat my symptoms and deal with my reality. YOU come here to find out what a fucking psycho I am and every 3 months, leave an innocuous comment. Meanwhile, the vomit stream continues.
Go to bed. Deep sleep. Wake up. Change world. Repeat.
I’m nudging my sleep schedule in the right direction, but it is clearly going to take time and persistence. Not feeling super great today… obviously being awake ridiculously early didn’t help. I am feeling a little bounce back loneliness since I made my decision on ***. The bloom of potential trampled by another pattern that didn’t evolve with the times. It’s a shame, but frankly, better to suffer now then significantly more at some point later on down the road then the forest has thickened.
Listening to singy singy music is a lot of fun. I have that “I wish blah blah blah was here or whatever, then we could be having fun.” I’m not sure what the objective of this line of thinking is, but I don’t think “objective” matters as much as causing an ache. Thoughts like that are little weapons. If you just glance at them, they hurt, but if you study them with any scrutiny, they become impossibly illogical. Trouble is, when the feels are already all up in the zone, it gets hard to slow things down and analyze. This is the real principle of Mindful thinking, and it is a pain in the ass for all time.
However, despite the difficulty of the technique, it works. I have avoided some mistakes by putting the brakes on the first evil thing that popped into my head. I still fuck this up, and get elevated. It’s hard, like I was saying. No one but robots get it right every time.
I feel the need to draw this line
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There we go.
Now, over on this side of the line is the new discipline zone. I need to regain control of my physical self and stop unintended hygiene related self-harm. My body is already abused, scarred and disproportionately goobed-out, but still my sad little temple and worth protecting. I need to re-establish an inner confidence despite the obvious optical obstacles.
A confidence that truly appreciates the worth of the whole bundle is what I’m looking to embrace. I have the strength of personality and charisma, but I need to feel proud in my skin, unafraid. I’m not there yet, and I must find a way to do it without the well of outside adoration to bolster me further. It must come entirely from within, and be just as vibrant as someone who is loved. Damn, that’s also going to be fucking hard.
Lots of things to continue working on, and hopefully, that will come easier as I work in a place where I will be practicing my good communication skills everyday. I don’t get much practice at home these days. I truly believe that the new environment I am entering into will promote a new and reaffirmed sense of self that I have been lacking. I need a good pattern to establish my routine, and a healthy job like this one is just the sort of thing I’m thinking will be right for me. At least, I have A great deal of hope that it will.
Taking negatives and flipping them over, and re framing the future so that the light of hope shines brightly on the path ahead.
Paths for fingers,
Delicate raindrops,
Sparking light–
Electric warmly,
Whispered, present.
~~
Branched to new leaves,
Fissure-divided,
Bridgeless gap–
Words windedly gone,
Rattling down dark.
~~
Silhouette–
Purposeful void,
Rowed cages,
Ensnared–
Enveloped.
~~
Bell of dawn,
A soulless east,
Roil the dust,
Ashed facelessly–
Empty,
For parched lips.
It’s not even 5 and I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m writing now to help give my brain something to do so that it isn’t incessantly demanding sleep. This Blog has always been a coping tool, so then, here we go.
I’m suspending the Latuda. My body is rejecting it and I throw up almost every time I take it. No more. The other meds will be fine until I can get on private healthcare and go see a doctor. Meds that are being rejected this way aren’t working anyway. They are expunged as toxic as quickly as possible.
Overall, I feel okay. I am anticipatory of Monday’s excitement, and where that road goes. I feel highly confident that I am going on the most expansive and involved journey of my life thus far, and I’m encouraged by my ongoing healthy choices in my life. Both social and physical.
Just after I started this blog back up again, in 2012, I was going through a terrible transition. The month after I re-opened for business I had 111 posts in November. That was back when my processes were nonexistent and I had almost no way of truly comprehending my lot, which amounted to dozens of insane rants and angry posts to exes. Now, this highly eventful month, I am already closing in on 90, just past the half way point. Clearly I’ve been thinking some thoughts, however, very few of them have been explicitly destructive. I’d say an overwhelming sum have been pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
In all my experiences, good or bad (mostly bad), I’ve tried to glean a lesson from whatever scenario has presented itself to me. The situation back in San Diego when Kendra gave me HSV2, I was actually inspired right down to my core to adopt a healthy lifestyle and embrace being a solo project for the rest of my life. She was really physically active, so I got a FitBit and proceeded to greatly improve my physical health. I lost 30 lbs and had a sense of total inner pride which lasted most of the year. Albeit, I had Herpes, and will for the rest of my life, but SO MUCH good came of that calamity that in my mind, it was hardly a disaster at all. Without it, I don’t think I would be the man I am now.
I’m feeling a very similar vibe today after my decision to stop talking to *********. She has lit a fire under me, and with the beautiful physical transformation she underwent, I got even more excited about getting healthy myself. She resolved to take on an immense burden in the name of love also made me think about my own life. She wanted something, so she went out and got it. I can do the same in my own relevant context. I motivated, launched myself into the job market, and it only took 26 hours for someone to sink the meat-hooks into me and drag me over for processing (hmm, this metaphorical reference is kinda gross, sorry. This is real honesty though. I could have changed it or redacted. I didn’t because I don’t misconstrue to save face… I have no more face left to save).
Even in separation, there can be reflection and action. I didn’t let ****’s negativity in, and took her positive contributions to my story forward. I will always have a place in my heart for her, even if I never see her again. She nudged me in a better direction than I was going, and I can honestly thank her for that, even if it was not intended. That’s the beauty about my reality: I get to affect certain aspects of it, and do, to promote better mental health.
Hope you all have a good night.
Now that I have been awake for a bit, and readied myself for my day, I am feeling quite positive. I’m all spiffed up in mah fancy clothes, I smell not terrible, and I do present as someone who aught be taken seriously. I am very confident in my prospects going forward, and even if for some fucking insane reason this Peer Counselor job never materializes, there are new jobs in Peer Support posted every day. It is a field in which there is vastly more demand than supply, so truly, someone of my distinguished, apparent skill set is a valuable commodity even looking at the outside of the onion. The rest of it is pretty fucking awesome too, but as long as the exterior Westin gets a bite, the rest is clinched.
In light of recent communication meltdowns going on around me, I have taken the opportunity to get introspective about my own method of communication and the skills involved. I thought about how I might have responded differently to this or that scenario over the last few days, still finding that even with some regret, the path I chose was a good one. Any conversation that turns to deriding through comparison should be backed away from slowly. With *** I really thought she had grown as a communicator, which he has, but not enough. I feel that she may have had some practice over the years, but probably never any training or classes on it like I have. You’d think a resource such as myself would be more easy to recognize, but I guess in this case I was wrong. It’s unfortunate, but I do feel a great sense of pride for myself, so being not appreciated or treated respectfully has a quickly souring effect on “equal” communications.
The same can be said of my parents, who still languish in their inability to talk, and poison each other with resentment and anger when they don’t know where to go in the argument. It’s plain enough to see from the outside, which helped me recognize the toxic discourse in my own domain. I have made the choice to suspend further contact with **** until some time has passed, and even then, it is doubtful there will be reconciliation. I don’t linger where I’m not appreciated, and I definitely do not feel that from her.
Time in this life is too short to spend it with people you can’t really talk to. Good thing I have you Blog! You never object, even when I’m going out of my mind and ranting pages of nonsensical bullshit. You have no choice really, since I own you. I’m framing this in a different way so you don’t have to think of yourself as property Blog, just as a constantly empty receptacle that I deposit all of my thought vomit into. Oh yeah, got the metaphors working today!
Snapped to strain,
Tendrils tearing,
Distant, dimming.
Unwinding thread,
Screaming apart,
No more than a glance.
Turned in–
Spiral miserably,
Consuming dark,
Alone.
For a time,
Young, alive,
But not again.
I’ve been nattering on about the benefits of healthy communication for a while now, but in light of today’s verbal SNAFU, I feel it necessary to reiterate the fundamentals as I know them.
There are a few key components to good communication.
1. Effective Verbalization: this implies the ability to articulate advanced emotions, states or trauma with a variety of descriptions. Competence in this area means needs and expressions are heard and processed appropriately. Inability to communicate this way can lead to misinterpretations or feeling ignored.
2. Abstention Of Subjectivity: communication is most cohesive when the field is level, and bias, prejudice, stigma and judgement are absent. Opinions being relevant, taking that a step further to recommendation or advice when unprompted is where it becomes subjective. Conversations between peers function best when parties are respected equals in a balanced exchange. No one has high ground over the other, as fairness pervades.
3. Genuine Concern: listening attentively is part of this, but also, a premise for positive, acknowledging feedback. Concern allows thoughtful, loving reflection and a deep sympathy that harmonizes in those it resides. Listening, showing eagerness to know, asking questions and expressing fascination all help the person talking feel cared for and respected in the conversation.
4. Consistency and Trust: one thing a communicator and listener must be is consistent. Always go to the communication card in a disconnect. You will fuck up and say the wrong thing sometimes. It’s totally okay, as long as you explain, listen and discuss. Expressing feelings to an attentive partner is a great way to be heard and for the stated emotion to be embraced. It takes strength to stand and hear someone say you have hurt them, but as long as one returns to communication to explain circumstance, absorb, and listen, the door to reconnection is still open.
My intention here is to be abundantly clear about what it takes to have a healthy friendship and an ongoing dialogue between two mature adults. This is also fundamental for partners, so that the couple’s bond stays healthy and does not stagnate. I have seen what bad communication does to relationships. It guts them slowly and they die in agony.
Today I really had a wakeup call. *** still has an opportunity to address the feelings I am having in response to her judgement. I need her to recognize that today’s exchange was unhealthy, and hurt me. ******** and I should easily be able to talk about this and understand, that is, if she responds to me. Nothing like being insulted and ignored for saying it was painful to hear. Sounds like the beginning of the end, if true.
Though, there is still hope of reconciliation. I always side with hope. I like her like my long lost soul sister, and I wish we could talk together. A boy can dream.
Be an effective team you partners. Love should not be covered in dust because it’s not tended to by actively Swiffering it and talking about how to care for it. Don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made in my past. Please. I wouldn’t wish that pain on an enemy.
Goodnight blog.
Score: +3
Hi there blog. It has not been long since I last checked in. As I was out walking around in the warm sunlight, I had a chance to reflect on some things that happened this afternoon.
I’m feeling judged by ***, in respect to my inner strength, vibrancy and determination. If you look back over the 6 years I’ve had this blog, you will see failure, disaster, suicide, absolution and eventually, recovery. Struggling is one thing. To face a challenge, grapple with it and overcome it defines the journey I have been on in the last half decade of my life.
I have triumphed over self inflicted, attempted death, twice. That takes strength blog. I have suffered the deepest prolonged heartache I have ever known, and came out the other side even more proud of who I am. Judge me if you want, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the education to presume.
**** went into unwanted judgement town earlier today, and it got me thinking. The measure of strength is in the ability to overcome a challenge, and advance beyond it. If one does not advance, the challenge remains. Victories over calamity are the building blocks of strength, and I have survived dozens of disasters and am stronger for it.
Sorry if I’m ranting, but no one puts me in a box and tells me I couldn’t get out of it ever even if I tried. I don’t care who you are, if you knew me, you’d never say such a thing. It’s very disrespectful of my life and death struggle and the constant stigma a bear. I can’t have sex with a woman again without infecting her with a lifelong disease. Do you think that burden weighs on me? Do you believe it takes strength to still be proud and alive despite that?
I have earned my place in this world and I have wasted no time comparing myself uselessly to others. My life has meaning for me, and that’s all that matters. People in my orbit now appreciate me for my strength and stability, and know what I am capable of doing and have done.
I never pass uneducated judgement on anyone anymore. Period. Judgement or comparison serve no purpose in advancing a complex discourse. I intend on having my conversations on a level more apt to someone of advanced education, incredible wit and astounding emotional sensitivity. All told, I’m a fantastic man capable of forging whatever life I want. At any time. This is the life I lead, and I will never be compared it belittled by anyone on the outside.
Tiny grains,
Falling from edges,
Hard, not flat,
Piling–
A groan of measure,
Precarious angle,
Tilted past salvation.
A dream–
Like sand in the wind,
Touching, scattering–
In the crucible of time.
Shores bare,
Receding,
Until nothing remains.
Yesterday’s Evening Score: +2.5
I was writing a post, but I got too tired and deleted it. Instead, it’s the following morning and I and I’m doing just fine. I did decide after fishing yesterday that I was done with weed for a while. I was smoking and my only thought was: yuck. It didn’t feel good. This happened to me with cigarettes, and occasionally with coffee… my body just starts saying no to it. So, I’m done.
Anyway, this helps my goal of increasing my cardiovascular health. as of this morning, I am down 11.2 pounds from the beginning of the month. I have done this 220 to healthy weight loss before, about around September-November area. I went from 220 to 189 then gained 35 lbs over the holidays. GOD DAMN COOKIES. The first 15 – 20 lbs come off pretty fast, but then it’s hard to burn the rest of my belly fat off. I will be escalating as I get stronger. Elliptical, fast-walks, muscle building, and Yoga if I can make the time with ** to go and do it.
This week is coming to a conclusion in a few days, and I expect within the next 2 my final interview will be set-up and I will be offered a job n Friday. Which I will take. I can figure on saving 800 every 2 weeks and shelling the rest out for rent and expenses. After a few months though, I’m going to be fucking loaded. Plus the settlement from the lawsuit coming in at some point in the future. It’s just security in case my truck explodes or some other expensive thing happens. Wealth, for me, is based entirely on worth of personality. Must rich people got to be rich by fucking someone else in the ass and leaving them in the street to die, which is not a particularly redeeming/trustworthy personality trait IMHO. If I’m going to have wealth, I don’t want it to be something that defines me in any way. Money corrupts, lots of money corrupts lots more. I’m not sure that’s how that quote goes…
Anyway, ***** is back, and I’m glad she’s safe. It was nice to snap a few texts off yesterday. More face-to-face time is an order though… there is something that misses… it’s a really abstract feeling. Allow me to try to put this into words: It’s like being something on the shelf that is out of place and someone going: oh, let me get that straightened out real quick. Now, take that anecdote from the perspective of the thing on the shelf, and you’re starting to understand the feeling I have, loosely. Way too incorporeal to define, but describing it with similar type things seems to be my only effective way to articulate. Its a filter thing. Anyway.
I have a new sing-along playlist which is good since the other one was getting repetitive. “for whom the bell tolls” is still on there though. Classic. People think I’m insane when I’m lip-syncing on my way to the Best Fishing Spot. Joy pays no mind to doubters.
Have a good morning blog, and here’s hoping I get some time to talk to my friend *************************************** today.
Dawn to feel,
Some distant–
Dusty shelf.
Remnants–
Just strings.
Temple in ruin,
Dashed columns–
Memories collapse.
Bound to distant orbits,
Inescapably calling,
Begging–
Feeling the strain,
From somewhere far.
Strings,
Dancing, alive–
Inviting fate to speak.
Touch–
Past, future, present.
What a fine morning it is blog! I’m reveling in my alacrity in producing a fantastic, near-lock job lead within my first 26 hours of being “available” to be hired. I also got a hit from NAMI Yolo who are also looking for a PSS, but possibly not paid. It was only a couple days ago I emailed them asking if they had volunteer opportunities, but clearly things have accelerated.
I have some peace in my environment, albeit undoubtedly temporary. They seem to have simply swept the broken glass under the rug and moved on, since the work to actually resolve the conflict is either beyond comprehension or laboriously undesirable for them. I have re-iterated my case late last afternoon, and I do not believe I was really, again, taken seriously. My parents will see me withdraw from dysfunctional people who don’t resolve their issues. I don’t admire people who stagnate, explode and whine about having exploded. They are fully capable of resolving this if they can get past their bad communication habits. No mind reading, use non-accusatory “I” statements, reflect don’t project. Fundamentals simply forgotten, or abandoned as irrelevant for whatever reason.
Here I am putting on my Debbie Downer pants! Sorry blog, this post is not about them, it’s about the shiny thing that I have become! That’s right blog, I am adding a new adjective to the list of embellishing superlatives after my email signature: shiny! See below:
Westin Eric Bailey
Peer Support Specialist
ITE 15 Years Lived experience
Outstanding, Unique, Thoughtful, Moral, Honest, Dedicated, Intelligent, Shiny
Okay, I don’t sign my emails like that… but the exercise of positive self-acknowledgment is well worth the ridiculousness of it. Why are mentally ill people always so quick to shred themselves? It’s fucking EASY. Doubt, fear, hate, it’s like sugar on the tongue. It comes quick and strong, but lasts as long as a fire with no wood to burn. Instead of wasting my energy investing in negativity, I am filling my basket with happy. This brings me to my point about “shiny.”
I use that adjective because it brings to mind imagery (for me) of a light shining in the dark, in a place where many wander; lost or not knowing where to go. I have a light to shine in a place like that, and I know there will be people in this world who will benefit from my having been around to shine it. Like little moths who are drawn in to the safe glow of warm, I am a beacon that those around me will seek for meaning, honesty and trust. My heart is wide fucking open, and the risk that entails is great, but the energy it sends out in all directions is unmistakable, and undeniable. I have that radioactive confidence, because I have taken charge of my illness, and now, my life. The path I have chosen is empowering in a way I had not known would be possible.
The process I have gone through lately, as I look back, could not have been more transparent. Over the last 5 or so weeks I have grabbed the wheel and started driving my own car for the first time in many months since my relapse. Now, I stand at a point of desiring to break away to seek my own independence, while still bonded to those I love in a sort of caring yet indentured servitude for the rest of my ridiculous days. I coped with momentary trauma without escalating the crisis or injuring anyone emotionally, I endured my own individual up-and-down days and all the while retaining an active discourse here on this blog as a part of my coping skill-set.
I’m running off towards the future blog, metaphorically speaking… would you like to tag along? Oh, and one last more nugget of happy: as I continue my restricted died + exercise routine, I am now 8.8 lbs lost since the start of the month. Yeah boss. Every time I get on that scale and I see a smaller number, I get THAT MUCH MORE fired up to go out there and bust my ass to get healthy. It’s a big shot in the arm of reassurance that all the work was not in vain, but rather, just the beginning of a much healthier way of living.
Ta ta for now, and good morning!
Snarly hues,
Grumbling recesses–
Fetid in the dark,
Deep grip–
Dug in roots,
Creeped in moss,
Stagnant, rotting.
A change of wind–
Dust of blooms,
Enticing ribbons flail,
Winding bright–
A chance of taste,
Distant, remaining.
Contrasting,
The old color young,
On yellow days.
By that I mean personally; there are no new lands being charted. However, I do tend to start naming things in my environment once I become established. Below you will find a map of my new home and the various places I have marked and named. Explanations provided. The area, in general will be known as the Muck Trench and the surrounding foliage Muck Trench Woods.
Welcome to: Muck Trench Proper
1. The Sky Bridge: goes over the 80 and is the only way to get to the best fishing spot. Puts the fear of impending death on you every time you cross
2. Best Fishing Spot: where I stand around waving my stick in the air and catching nothing while fish laugh in my face
3. Alternate Fishing Spot: there is good mojo here, but no fish… which leads you to wonder what the fuck said mojo is really doing?
4. Long Road: this is the area where a Grass Bear would be most likely to strike, beware (distant, more aggressive relative of Sand Bear)
5. Far Outpost: possibly radioactive, possibly lost alien hardware, possibly the doom of humankind… 100% mystery
6. Sleepy Spot: never looked very comfortable, and now it’s kinda dead, and scattered about like a lion kill
7. Near Outpost: not too far from the road and the spider union has its lodgings here (SUMT local 888 [we let the Black Widows decide the numbers])
8. Popular Fishing Spot: just as mucky as the rest of the Trench but here you can park a car and take in the smells up close
My starting point is always to cut through Barandas Park to get at the paved walking trail. You must “bushwack” a few feet to get from paved road by the sky bridge to Muck Trench service road where the rest of the trail goes. This is the one I need to take *** on and see what she if she thinks it’s as exciting as I do. Lots of fuzzy animals running around, pesticide loaded scuz pit to our left… noice. Some nature better than broken solo cup and homeless guy sleeping for scenery on my walks in El Cajon.
I’m geared up for another fantastic week in my newfound home, starting with my warmline and trip to the NAMI office today. I need to tell David that I am now very actively seeking employment due to my recent acceleration of life-timetables. I want him to have first crack. I know I need to make at least as much as I was at my last job If I want to afford a 1BR around here. I’m doing a budget spreadsheet this morning in preparation for my eventual transition. Without calculation, planning and care, well-intended steps towards progress can sometimes be misplaced. So for now, we are in the stages of the process where everything gets figured out before we execute (by “we” I am referring to myself, my PM and my Architect). A lot like building something with blueprints. Look at them for a good long time and make sure that with the way it’s drawn, that it will all fit together again when they have to go out and build the thing.
I’m tired of not being the Lord of my own castle, with an Iron Throne to perch myself on and hand out edicts to my vassals (which at this point would consist of any insect or rodent that would have wandered onto the premises). I need a pit full of slaves looking sad, and another pit with slaves fighting hundreds of very angry tortoises. Ah yes, my reign will be long and prosperous. “Bring your Lord some more Saltines!”
So blog, I’m going to the office today so I get to fancycate myself and smell less like moldy elephant splatters and more like “fresh” human. Hooray! I’m starting up at 8, then heading over to the office at 10. I have a great deal of optimism for myself about the direction I have decided to go. I am still sad to see my parents self-destructing just beyond my ability to do anything about. I feel less flabbergasted today, but still resolved to seek alternative living arrangements as soon as possible. I just don’t need roommates, not even my parents, though I love them both. I need to be in my own space, by myself, in charge of what happens in the environment and secure in a self-defined kingdom of my own control. I feel this is a healthy step towards better individuation, albeit, sounding a bit like a maniacal overlord planning a takeover rather than a mentally ill person making a healthy life transition. There are more possible future outcomes that lead to happiness for me now if I move out on my own than if I were to stay in this box.
It’s already off to a good start, this week, and I eagerly await the next few days as my foot presses harder onto the gas pedal; racing forward towards the promise of better days. I’ll be checking in here through the day… so bai for now!
I am now listening to music and feeling remarkably better, singing “Ventura Highway” here in the fading moments of the weekend. You know, music just lit my fire again!
I’m going to redirect my life in a totally healthy direction, and I’m already started! Now, let’s sing for a little and celebrate this calamity that has forced such a beautiful change! The restoration of my long lost independence is about to be realized, and the groundwork for success is being laid. I know that shit had to get kinda choppy for me to hurry the fuck up, but I have, and I am continuing to pursue a deep and full future.
If I could update my Score. it would be a +1.5 right now. BOOM BITCHES.
I’m going to sing myself exhausted and smile at all the great memories I looked back on today in the last few hours. Man, I have lived with some beautiful women in my life, and each one of them still makes me smile. Yeah, I know I’m a fucked up asshole. Whatever. Since then, I’ve made a fair bit of progress out of the slop of unforgivability. Forgive me ladies, I did you no justice. I was a fool who had yet to become. I’m sorry.
Tonight blog, despite great toxicity, I am channeling a constructive enthusiasm which lends me to forge a better future for myself. If dissatisfied with life, figure out what is within the scope of influence, and change! Inact change blog, if you are stagnant, if you are dysfunctional and always disagreeing, just talk!
Singing seems to be a worthy activity for conjuring some zest for life. What a jubilant expression, to sing, to have your voice go out into the world regardless of how shrill and glass-shattering it is. Man, I am fortunate to be where I am, and I will never stop trying to improve the lives of those I love, and also, promoting my own personal health above all else. This is one of those moments where I am choosing the life path that ONLY coincides with better mental health. Logically it is not sound, since I am not paying any rent where I am. To take on 1,400 a month is pretty yikes. However, blog, the point here is money is meaningless in comparison to sound mental health. I would pay through the flaming anus for stability.
It doesn’t matter what it costs blog, money is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is if we are living for happiness, honesty and love. I fucking despise money, but it’s cosmic relevance is not lost on me, however. To play the “Real Life” game you need money. There is no avoiding it if you want to establish any sort of identity in society. You need money coming in. You need to be USEFUL in some way, in a way that somebody else would throw money at you to keep you doing the useful thing you are doing. This is my life/dream/destiny = to be eternally useful in a morally relevant context and to make just enough money to keep people from bothering me for more money. I wish for nothing but shelter, food and someone who loves me the way I love them (and won’t let me perish).
I’ve had a rapid sort of calamity driven epiphany today, but I’m glad it happened. It was very useful in igniting a ferocious Bunsen Burner under my repulsive/bio-hazardous ass, in order to get me aptly motivated to erect my independent existence. I hadn’t planned on this, but I am adapting admirably given the semi-hostile circumstances. Also, I’m sure as time passes, I’m going to be more energized to forge my new identity in a city that knows nothing about me. I have a chance to start all over, and make that big fucking splash somewhere I’ve always known myself capable of.
Today needed a turn in the positive. Did you really think an erupting volcano was where the evening’s diatribe was going to stop? You should know by now that optimism is the engine that drives me forward, and the hope of a full and beautiful future compels each step towards the future I hope I earn. I don’t know what’s happening or what’s going to happen, but the one meager thing I can plan for is that I will do whatever I have to to achieve stability for my family and love those who come close to me. I will be loyal, and honest always. Once you are family, you never aren’t family. I will protect and serve those I love with the full-throated enthusiasm of the very first rooster to call out the arrival of dawn.
Know this, blog, I will be the man I have always known I am, and his arrival upon the landscape of independent society is nigh. Prepare for a slightly more introspective and insightful future. For my future love, for my career, and for all the people who I will help in my time serving the needs of the disadvantaged. The meaning and significance of this destiny is irrefutable, and is mine, for the rest of my life.
See below for my truly fantastic, original, cards for people on holidays. It is a tradition of absolutely superior quality, and to have a maker’s mark of some form. In this instance, the recipient was my sister, and the occasion is Mother’s Day. On a side note, the creatures spoken of on the card are REVILED by my sister, who insists they are among the few things on this Earth she truly despises.
I HIGHLY doubt anyone knows what the Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore is, but if you do, tell me!
As projected, I have tossed full energy into the pursuit of immediate independence. I am now active and fully resume-updated on 3 bigtime job sites and I also have 2 applications out today. One of them I’m sure is going to garner me some attention, that is, If they are still taking applications. I’ve had fun writing all my qualifications out, certs, education and prior job experience. I am a very marketable commodity with all this good shit going for me. I like applying for jobs because all my cover letters are just another opportunity to toot my little horn about how fantastic I am and all the stuff I’ve done.
So I will put my after fishing morning energy burst into job search, and just hack away at the fucker a little every day. Once I secure a job for sure, I can talk to my parents about my plan. I already know they would be in favor of such a thing as they have made it clear the plan was never keep me here so I was easy to access. I’m basically compromising in my desire to live in my own place, but still be close enough by to where running might be the fastest way to get from me to them. I, in no way, want to abandon my poor parents to their own little spiral. I want to be there for them every day, but still able to walk away from a space controlled by them to a space controlled by me. All of you renters out there know you are some serious shit in the house where you pay rent. “I pay the rent, I’m the boss, got it, bub?” I’m not sure who I was talking to there, my plan was to live alone. Maybe a plant had been disobedient and needed to be set straight.
It’s going to be a good week blog! I’m really excited to launch myself forward into my career and new life here in Sacramento. I have really been processing a lot this week and into the weekend. I’ve barfed out thoughts from both ends of the spectrum out here in Bloggytown. This open deliberation makes it easy to see when there is a problem, and begins the process of hoping for a solution. Albeit, not everything discussed can be “solved,” as logistical things are only a small part of the overall thing. Most of what is here is just brain-vomit. I’m having a symptom: bbbbllllaaaarrrrggghhh. There you go. I don’t think it’s good reading, I never have. But it is honest, and repulsive at times, and hilarious at others, but my stupid process is what it is nonetheless. I highly recommend you language based people with mental illness consider writing. Expression totally works. Honesty is beautiful. Trauma is real. All will pass in time.
I need to kick my own ass and get going here. I definitely don’t want to start slipping downhill because the environment is not a friend. I did title the post that way for a reason. I do feel like I’ve had to move the launch ahead and fire off this rocket sooner than expected. Either now or later, I’m confident the only direction we are going is up.
As I had discussed in a post last night, my parents are being disagreeable again, and poisoning the house with all their negative energy. Even back here in my little cave, I can feel them resenting each other, pissed, bitter, fuming. Boy oh boy do I hate that. The ENVIRONMENT is toxic? Jesus fuck that’s where my bed lives!
My point is instead of slamming my face into the wall trying to teach my parents something they don’t want to learn how to do, I’m going to resolve this the only other way I know how. I need to go get my own place to live. Period. My stability cannot, under any circumstances, be damaged by someone else’s neglectful MH behavior. My parents’ inability to communicate and discuss their feelings without fish-slapping each other with them is the reason they are to be left alone. They create negative energy, unresolvable anger, and that is something they can do all by themselves. It’s like, if someone told you the land right next to Chernobyl was cheap, would you still build your house there?
I’ve been looking and there are plenty of nice apartments right here in Adagio I can try. They have 1 BR that could easily be within range of a part time job, and surplussing with a full time gig. I don’t want to leave this complex, it’s seriously the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived in, and the nearby amenities are irresistable. So I do need my own place though, without any dysfunction that refuses to acknowledge or address itself. My presence is contingent upon things being safe, and under control, and as long as my parents think that “working out their problems” means yelling, slamming doors, leaving for hours and being hateful are the best ways to deal with a crisis, they’ll be doing it by themselves. I’m not 19 anymore guys. I grew some decent skills and started actually facing my issues rather than being ignorant of the real problem.
So yes, my financial mark is pretty low frankly. I think with a week or two really pounding away at it, I can get a job and start saving some money for a few months. Then I’ll put a few thousand down to make them feel safe and move in to my own place just down the walkway. I think that would be pretty cool.
So blog, I’m upping my timetables. I was REALLY hoping to get in a paid position with NAMI for the long term, since I am a roots-to-branches program success story. At this point though, I need to be in my own space completely removed from the swell of rage just outside my door, or any other future moment when the tide comes in. It’s not a good feeling blog, especially for me. They realize that last time I had a psychotic break was for reasons exactly like this. I was in a work environment full of anger, roiling hatred, but at least then, it was directed at me. Right now, it’s just like a cloud of poisonous gas outside my door waiting to choke me to death with resentment if I venture out. I don’t anticipate being at a breaking point with that anytime soon, but I’m also not interested in the ongoing risk of exposure.
Getting my own place blog, much much sooner than previously thought.
Oh blog, the years have taught me some useful survival skills when it comes to matters of the heart. For me, my heart has changed an number of times, and occasionally, not when it was at all convenient to do so. I followed my heart to love at certain points (or my cock, the jury is still out), only to find a change of circumstance a short time later led to a dramatic shift in desire. I have felt my direction change while I was mired in a marriage that was hurting me mentally, but was stubborn, so I stayed. After the suicide attempt, I started to learn to not shove those feeling away, but to listen to them.
The heart is tricky, because sometimes it leads us to such happiness, only then to have life or a change in disposition snatch it away. Life really is chasing a little chicken through the yard. Sometimes we catch the chicken, if not for a few fleeting moments, but its small and squirrely so it gets away. I guess in this metaphor finding real lasting happiness is cooking and eating the chicken, so yeah. My metaphors have been a tad dark lately.
Honestly, there may not be that moment where one is to say: I am now truly, content. Life changes every single second, and nothing that is constant can stay relevant. In order to succeed, the heart must lead WITH change not against it, and the conversation on stability should be deep, revealing, honest and full of the hope for a blending rather than a division. We all strive to find joy in our lives, and the inconsistent desires of the heart don’t make that easier.
In my mind, whenever my little fire gets going, I start to wonder what I am walking towards. Is there happiness down this road somewhere? Is there a future here that coincides with growth and progress? In the past, I have loved people who needed help to move forward in life, but this is not partnership. Partners are equal, and they share the burden of reality and do what they must to help each other. If one has to drag the other around, there is no sustainability there. I lost my love and had to walk away from that life, because it became apparent that I was going nowhere, and certainly not up while dragging someone behind me.
My moral lesson here is to be adaptable. Things change, feelings shift, and sometimes people can endure those changes without growing infinitely frustrated with each other. Sometimes we do grow apart and move away from each other. I’ve known this personally, and it is a tough thing to realize if you are still in love with the person who is moving away, as I was. I didn’t know how to cope with that then, but it does make a lot more sense to me now. I don’t think I would hurt the same way now that I have such an understanding of the volatility of love. Trial, failure, recovery. All these stages have led me to be a true appreciator rather than someone who pines. I have an open forum to love, and for people to freely change their way right out of my life without my empire crumbling. Why burden yourself with the pressure of eternity? How many times have I said I was going to do something “forever” and the longest that sort of “forever” lasted a few years and then it was not “forever” anymore. We are foolish to think things just can go on and on unchanging, when every clue around us tells a different story.
We must adapt our love to survive, and be the benevolent overlord of our hearts. May they know the freedom to love, and feel, and be, but not the heartache of having that feeling not go on forever, unchanging, safe, strong, impregnable, but inevitably, imobile. Forever doesn’t bend people. I had to get divorced twice and fall right on my face a few times to come to that realization. Granted, I was not the most stable individual during that time, but still, I think the logic is sound. We want to have lives that are planned, have road signs, and that we never feel lost in the forest. The thing is people, you don’t learn anything new by following the signs and never deviating from the path. Explore the bushes, find the secret, hidden road. There is so much more to life being allowed to be unexpected than trying to defend reality from the constant changes of living.
This has been a tough lesson for me. I’m eager to give away love and dedication to those I treasure, but I also am aware that people come and go as they will. I love those who I can reach, and call out to those too far away to come closer for a time. Love is a door one can walk through and then leave from. This is the final evolution of the heart, one with the omniscient confidence to spread joy to those who take shade under my limbs, if not only for a time. I know In my heart that I have learned, and value the hard lessons I did benefit from. So blog, the moral here is to be open. Talking, sharing, discussing… all are going to lead to a communication that is hopefully honest and can facilitate a peaceful reconnection.
Passed through strands,
Fringes–
Sparkling with delight,
Her smile–
Thick honey sweet.
Broken columns,
Deposed–
Razed in ruin,
Ash on her lips.
Promises fleeting,
Born of absolution,
Skying towards sunrise–
Breathe new air,
The dawn has come.
Since deciding I would strike a 10,000 step minimum everyday on Friday last week, I’ve dropped 7.8 lbs. I believe this is mostly just stored water, but still, it’s nice to see the scale go down by a pound or two every few days. The secret is much more exercise than calorie intake. I don’t eat very much at all, and work my ass off whenever possible. My goal is to hammer the shit out of all my stored fat when I’m anaerobic, which will become more efficient as my cardiovascular system revs up. I do love to press my foot to the metaphorical pedal when it comes to step related stuff. Back when I was competing with my cousin we were above 25,000 a day for 5 straight days. That was fucking awesome. I got down to 189lbs at that low (still had my lithium belly), and I’d like to go much lower than that. Seeing the pounds coming off is great motivation to keep pushing even if it is hard.
This morning I took the long way home, around the other side of the canal. I have a few places I’ve named out there: Distant Outpost, Sleepy Spot, Near Outpost. Sleepy spot was destroyed yesterday I imagine in the fierce winds that raged all afternoon. I found the bed like 400 miles away in the field. Bummer. Next time I walk that way I’ll take some pictures of these things, as totally unremarkable as they are. This is how I relate to my environment: as things become familiar, they are assigned a new identification that blends better with my reality filter. I mix things up. It’s not a homeless camp or a industrialized pipe opening. Those names suck balls ass.
I’m feeling pretty good about the days ahead. Hopefully I get some more time to loiter around the NAMI office and look useful and or cute. Ish. I also am going to poke about the IYOV program I mentioned earlier. I have such a remarkable story to tell, and one that could inspire a ot of people who may feel like they are being crushed under their illness. I hope I can bring that big jolt of hope, confidence or something useful to them. Looking good blog.
I got up to go pee and couldn’t go back to sleep. There were a barrage of inner-mental distractions as soon as I regained consciousness which I will need to clarify at some point down the road on the secret black curtain blog that none of you know about. Anyway, I’m starting my morning routine of waking up toad frog ass early in the morning and going fishing. I’m will be walking over there about a quarter after five and spend an hour or so on the water, then walk the .85 or .9 miles back. All before 7 am too.
I’ve really changed my Chapter 2 playlist to pretty much strictly contain songs I can sing, or lip sync with astonishing accuracy and pizazz. This is all part of the good. I’m feeling like I have my performing arts fire lit a little bit. This is fabulous timing since I’m interested in being a part of the In Your Own Voice program with NAMI (almost entirely public speaking).
I have also come up with a new and exciting way to torment my parents under the guise of being thoughtful. I came across a pad of sticky notes and my immediate thoughts were how I could abuse the medium to do much more than the meager Post-It was ever thought to be capable. This morning is a prime example of this newfound philosophical approach: I fed the cat early, while my parents were asleep, which yesterday, resulted in the cat being fed twice (it fooled my mom by being absurdly pathetic and cute). I needed a way to convey to the family that the cat food should be left alone, because the cat was already sated from a predawn feast (and is not a Hobbit, therefore, requires no Second Breakfast). I grabbed a sticky and transcribed the following message, and I’d like to see who’s pop-culture whiskers get a tingle with this one. A correct identification of the reference earns you my awe, and a little crown I made just now out of an unused tissue.
The note read:
“All these worlds are yours except:
CAT FOOD
Attempt no landing there.
Use them together.
Use them in peace.”
I eagerly await some form of response from them, or possibly, likely, a burst of insane laughter. This is only the beginning though blog. I have dozens of these Post-Its. They are soon to be appearing in “seemingly” random places, bearing a message of some relevance in a highly cryptic or possibly indecipherable fashion. I’m not sure yet if this is all going to be part of a larger, comprehensive propaganda campaign or possibly just something that torments with answers that cannot be unpacked from the insane cookie jar they came from. Frankly though, we need all the help we can get, legit or not. WEB’s numbers are sagging in the polls and the fucking midterms are nearly upon us! We have to do something drastic.
Pressed to a glimpse,
Breathless–
Starlit, shining.
Clutching the clouds–
Shattered ice,
Unveiled–
Lonely moonrise.
Dreaming–
Living within,
Enclosing night,
Rest–
In a place of forgetting.
Score: +3
Well Blog I did end up getting that warmline call I was hoping for, and got some great resources to the person I was helping. I really did feel spiffafied about that. I get it again Monday and hopeful for a trip to the office at the same time too.
I felt I did a pretty good job going through my feelings and reactions to recent social changes. Some form of reassurance and anticipation of prolonged discussion presents the possibility for progress. Friendships are built on the foundations of good communication, and at least once the proverbial dust settles, I think there will be a clearer discourse ahead.
As a result of the ongoing discussion today, I feel pretty well-disassembled at this point in the evening. I’m hoping not to barf, and that seems to be going well so far. I’m going over to my sister’s place for Mothers day which should be a fun. I’m still holding true to my persistent fishing goals, regardless of repeated failures. Moo and I are also going to locate the nearest Lapidary Club or shop and get back to making cabs and polishing some of our really nice stones from recent trips. There is also talk of getting the tumblers going again in the garage, now that we have a shelf. EXCITING.
I keep hoping to have ************ to talk to, but I’m still in the dark about what is happening. I don’t think I offended her, maybe triggered something. I’m low in the information department. As I have stated before, I’m a communicator by nature now, and a lot of good work gets done when people start talking/sharing. I have been given hope that there may be some of that later on down the road, so I’ll be patient waiting until that time. I’m not in a hurry, and I certainly don’t want **** to feel rushed or whatever if she’s hurting over something I did. Either way, I hope the two of us get a chance to talk and work things out. Friendships are rare with people so unique and magnetic. Hopes Blog, hopes.
I hope everybody has a good weekend. I’m looking forward to an early start tomorrow, and some peace and quiet at my little fishing spot.
Neurochemically Challenged 
You must be logged in to post a comment.