Days

Looking at a Changing Whorl

I am a fairly caring person. I have an ability to care for people and understand and accept people. This is an aspect of my personality that I value quite a lot, in part because it was lost for a time. I lost this gift when I was in the midst of my depressive period. As it turns out, it is hard to care for others when what little energy you have left is being used to wish you were dead.

However that period passed and I learned to love again. I remembered how to feel compassion. How to forgive. How to look past mistakes and see beautiful souls. And I reveled in this. I was ecstatic to have my personality back. I had worked really hard to get back to this place, and now that I was arrived I decided I was done. I had done my work, and now I was going to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labors. Then, ever so slowly, I started coming down with a case of the Fuck-its. I began to notice that I wanted to punch instead of hug. To swear instead of compliment. I was fast on my way to retracing my steps back to the self I didn't much want to be.

Now for a change of tense.

I do not want to slide back to that dark place of negativity. I am not that person. While inactivity does allow entropy to pull me back there, my natural state is much more full of love. And I have come to realize that positive energy is not something that is self-perpetuating. I am finding that I need to actively seek a persons positive qualities. Then I repeat them to myself in a what is almost a litany against hate.

I am someone trying to be happy. You are someone trying to be happy. I have much in the way of acceptance and support to offer you. You have much of life to teach me. But unless I repeat my litany against it, the entropic nature of humanity will draw me in towards the vicious and exophobic nexus of hateful oblivion. Therefore, I must actively fight against the inner decay. I will choose to list your good qualities, rather than browse instagram. I will listen to your story instead of listening to myself. I will consider your value without trying to turn it to my gain.

In short, I will love you.

That's What She Said

I haven't lived a lot of life, but I have lived more than I used to have lived. And that is more than some others have lived, while being less than many. Anyway, regardless of how much relative life I have, there are a few things I've learned. Well, not many things, really. Just a couple. Well, one thing.

Life is hard.

It's true. You know it, I know it, your mom knows it (ha...yer mom), and even Ghandi and Siddhartha knew it. That is one thing that is true for every human that has ever gasped a breath on this space orb we call Earth. Sometimes, thought, we forget this fact. We forget it because life isn't the same kind of hard for everyone. Some people struggle to simply get enough food to stay alive. Others fight depression. A lot of people have to endure racism or sexism. Some people fight poverty and some people have never worried about money. Life is hard for everyone, but it is also different for everyone. And this fact that I have learned has taught me the second thing I learned (I lied about only knowing one thing).

I don't know what your life has been.

It's true. I don't know what you have lived through. And because of that I will not judge you. I will try to understand you. I will try to help you be happy. But I will never fully comprehend the life that you have lived. And that is okay. I don't need to. I don't need to know what trials you have faced to know that life is hard. That is the crazy thing. Life will always be hard regardless of where we come from.

Wouldn't life be nicer if we could all remember that? Instead of yelling at that guy on the road, remember that he might also be in a hurry. The cashier who didn't smile back at you isn't trying to be a jerk. He just has a job he doesn't like.

I can never know what your life has been. But I can always accept who you are and treat you like a person. I can love you regardless of your behavior. I can laugh with you and help you smile. I can walk with you down this rocky road we call life.

The Almighty Should

First, let's get this out of the way. This is post number one hundred. Whoopty shit. Let the rejoicing commence.

Now, on to business.

I was recently asked by my therapist what I want. I answered the question with some bullshit about wanting to be happy or something. But before I left, he asked me to think about it. It seems he wasn't satisfied with my answer. And as it turns out, neither am I. Because saying I want to be happy is a cop out answer. It doesn't say anything. Of course I want to be happy. Who doesn't? But happiness is a result, not a goal. You don't just "get" happiness. Happiness happens when your needs and desires are fulfilled. So the answer to what I want is not just "to be happy," but to be fulfilled. All of you probably already knew this (why didn't you tell me, jerks), but I am just now realizing it. Or rather, it is just now being cognitively processed.

What do I want?

A lot of my life has been spent doing what I "should" do. ...After several tries at this sentence, it boils down to this; I have a hard time thinking of any decision I have ever made that wasn't based on some kind of "should." These "shoulds" superseded thought on my own part. I never thought about whether I agreed with what I was doing. I never thought about what I really wanted. I never thought about what goals I wanted to pursue. That isn't to say that that I would have made different decisions. Hell, I have no idea what I would have done. I may have done everything exactly the same. But the constant guidance by The Almighty Should has landed me in a place where I don't feel like I have ever been in control of my life. And at the end of the day, that is what I want.

I want to feel like I am deciding my life.

I want to think through things. I want to consider my options. I want to find out that I truly believe passionately in something, and then I want to act on it. I recoil at the idea of accepting something just because I was told. Or having an opinion that was handed to me by The Almighty Should of whatever social context I happen to be in. I want to decide for myself. I want to captain my own vessel.

But you know what?

I'm secretly terrified. What if I start choosing my own destiny and find out that I am totally shit at directions? What if I start chasing after the things I want to do, only to fail miserably?

And so I am stuck. On one hand, there is oppression by The Almighty Should. On the other, The Pit of Failure.

I guess in the end, I'd rather die flying.

_{P.S. Please click the hyperlink. Stellar work of art.}

Depression

One of the great goals of my life is to help people understand how life looks through eyes that aren't theirs. A lot of my life was (read: is) spent not realizing this and subsequently making stupid decisions. However, I do not wish to be this way. It almost always leads to someone experiencing some kind of negative emotion. Anger, sadness, sugar...and I don't like to be the cause of that. I don't like it when people look at my life through the lens of their life experiences. Well, I guess they have no other way to look at things.... I think what I meant is, I don't like when people judge me without seeing the universe that I'm looking at. And because I don't like that, I try to offer people the courtesy of acceptance. And, like a Hare Krishna, I am trying to share this thing I think is good.

In my quest to share the gospel of acceptance (or tolerance or love or whatever you want to call it) I have become rather honest. Really honest. Maybe too honest. I tend to overshare on occasion. Which likely is some sort of subconscious tactic to make my neuroses seem normal. I mean, if I casually talk about it, it isn't shameful right? Sure.

So for today's topic of conversation, we are going to talk about depression. Depression is a strange beast. It really is hard to understand without experiencing it. For most of my life, I thought depressed people were just being lazy and it was all some sort of mental bullshit and they should just zip up their man-suit and get it together. I was wrong, and I feel bad for judging people. In an effort to help someone understand how depression affects your life (spoiler: it affects everything), I am writing this post. You should also read this post. It is a very enjoyable read and nails a couple nails right on the round, flat part at the top.

I am trying to think of some good analogies to help you understand what depression is like. First thing I need to do is determine who my audience is. You probably aren't someone who used to be able to see, and is now blind. You probably aren't someone who lost the ability to fly. But are almost certainly someone who has eaten a frozen burrito, and I can work with that.

Remember that time you microwaved your burrito ninety seconds too long? Remember how you were watching some quality lunch-time programming and forgot to check if the burrito was hot? Remember how it burned the holy shit out of your tongue? Depression is like trying to taste things for the two days after that burrito. You know these cupcakes have flavor, you just can't figure out what it is, and only vaguely remember what they are supposed to taste like.

On the off chance you aren't a burrito person, I'll try another one. Find that giant scar you have. You know, the one from the war. Now poke it. Use something that isn't your finger. Use that shuriken you have lying around. Depression feels like that. You know something is poking you. You can tell that you should be feeling something, but you really don't. The only reason you didn't accidentally draw blood is the years of self-preservatory habits you have.

Now let's try to look at how this applies to a human life. Let's look at how this might change your view of someone you know, or someone you knew, or someone you might know someday. When you lose all the emotions, you lose all the reasons to do things. You lose the motivation to act. And often the motivation to live. With the will to act, the will to live and all those emotions gone, you are left with an enormous void inside of you. That void become your new resource pool. It becomes the Apathy Well. Unfortunately, this new resource pool only does two things: not care, and destroy. Not caring is a pretty obvious side effect. It is called the Apathy Well, after all. But the second side effect, the urge to destroy, is the weird one. This destructive tendency can take a lot of forms. Self-harm, other-harm, meta-harm....(I don't actually know what the last one means, but it seems bad). I have a theory about why this tendency develops.

In the mind of a depressed person, pretty much anything can become an enormous stressor. I mean, if you don't have the motivation to do anything, pretty much everything becomes an impending failure. The very act of putting on pants becomes an exercise in futility, because you weren't going to look good anyway, so fuck it...underpants all day. When everything is bound to become a failure you begin to want less everything in your life. So you destroy stuff. Jobs are just failure holes. So I'll quit going and get fired. No more job worries. College is just a formalized way to say "you aren't good enough," so if I fail out I don't have to hear that anymore. Families? Disappointment machines. Sabotage those relationships and I no longer have to hear how they wish I weren't such a waste of the family name.

Are you starting to see it?

Even if you aren't, I want to describe what I think is the weirdest thing. Now, I know everyone is different, but my depression has been very self-aware. I know exactly how stupid all of my decisions and actions are. I know that they are depressive. And I do it anyway. Because meh....it's too hard to fix it, and I'd probably fail anyway.

By every logical system I can think of, that is the worst decision making imaginable. But that doesn't make it any less real. Knowing it's stupid doesn't suddenly bring all the flavor back to life. Someone who knows they are depressed and making bad decisions is still feeling life through that scar tissue. Still tasting life with a burnt tongue. And that is a really hard way to live.

Not to say that a depressed person can't live. They can. We laugh, we dance, we sing, we live fairly normal lives.

Now, this thing that I've written isn't meant to make someone sad, or get people to bring me sympathy cookies (which you are totally welcome to do, btw). It is meant to allow a glimpse of life through someone else's eyes. Yeah, I may have gotten some things wrong. I may have written poorly. I may even have said some things that made you uncomfortable. But I hopefully made you think, too. And maybe that will give you the perspective you need to help someone someday. I know it has helped me.

Painfully Beautiful

Have you ever been talking to someone and used or heard the phrase "painfully beautiful?" Have you ever thought about it? Why would somebody say that? Isn't beauty a good thing? Isn't pain a bad thing? Why would you stick them together? Is it like when you are laughing so hard your stomach hurts? Too much of a good thing?

I don't think so.

I think I have an idea of what "painfully beautiful" means. It may not be true for you. You may not agree with me. That's okay. But hopefully by reading through my thoughts you will gain some perspective for another's life. Maybe that will help you somewhere. Or rather, maybe it will help someone else.

I really want you to understand my thoughts, so I am going to breakdown some things here so we have a platform to work from. What is something beautiful? Well, some people are beautiful. Some art works are beautiful. Sometimes Mother Gaia is beautiful. I might even say that time can be beautiful, if you only look at isolated chunks of it. Weddings? Beautiful (hopefully). First kiss? Beautiful. (Again, hopefully.) First children, graduations, jobs, promotions, new cars, new phones, great cakes....lots of moments can be beautiful. But this just leads me to ask, "What could all these disparate things possibly have in common?"

They are all good. They all bring joy to the lives they touch (Except sometimes weddings. I think I've seen a movie about that once...) And that is what makes them beautiful. The light they put into lives. The pure, undefinable goodness that we all know. All of the things I've listed are beautiful and good, but there are a few things that are exceptionally good, surpassingly beautiful, without which life feels incomplete. I hesitate to make a list here, because opinions and lives are so infinitely varied, but I'm sure you can think of a few things. Go ahead. Do it now. I'll wait.

Do you have your list? Good. Now think about everything on it. Think about each thing individually. Think about them together. Think about your life in relation to your list. Now imagine a life where you know all of these things, and you know that none of them will ever be a part of your life. Really tell yourself that you will never be loved. That you will never have children. Whatever it is you put on your list, imagine knowing that you can never have or experience it. Did you feel that? That was pain. Not because of any one thing causing you pain. A diploma can't hurt you. But you know how good it is. How beautiful the moment you when you receive it. And the pain comes from the sense of loss. Losing the beautiful, watching it disappear from your life and knowing you have to keep walking even though the light will be a little dimmer.

To me, that is "painfully beautiful."

Please, Really Look Into My Eyes.....

It is extraordinary how unintentionally selfish I can become. In my head I am a kind, caring, and selfless person. In reality, I am so focused on myself that I can't even see what people around me are experiencing and feeling. Sometimes I just need a reminder.

I didn't used to care about this. In fact, I used to make a hobby of annoying people. I was so good at it that you can unfortunately see little bits of that in my personality today. I still get a kick out of pushing people's buttons. Just ask Kara about that. Then, one day, for no reason I can explain, I decided that I didn't like it and I wanted to change. Perhaps that was the moment I started growing up. About that time, I was given this book to read. That was the book that began my journey.

Now, by saying I began a journey, I don't want you to think that I have finished it. I'm not writing to tell you about my transformation into a beautiful butterfly. No, my journey is more like a chaotic, fumbling walk through an unfamiliar house at night where the kids don't put away their Legos. Lots of stubbed toes, swearing, and tipped vases. But this journey has taught me something.

The truest thing in life is honestly connecting with people.

I wish that I had more of this connection. but I let everything distract me. I let the easy distractions that technology provides fill up my time so that I wonder what happened and why I haven't built a pottery wheel yet. I complain to myself about how nobody called me today and I'm going to die alone. I complain about this while I sit in a dark basement in front of a computer. And so I need reminders.

Tonight I watched this video again. Please watch it. It is beautiful. What she says feels so very true to me. The connections she talks about are so very real to me. And because she has reminded me, I am going to quit complaining. I am going to quit wondering why I feel lonely, and I am going to go out and see you. Really see you. I am going to do this, and I am going to be happy, and I am going to give you a little bit of my life, and you are going to give me a little bit of yours, and we are both going to be happier. Or we are going to split somebody's burden of sadness and be less sad. I am going to do this, and my life will be better.

At least until the next time I forget.