Changes

There are days when getting older really sucks. For me, it’s not so much the process as it is the realization that all of a sudden, I’m not as adaptable as I used to be.

One of the things I’ve recently realized is that while I love the portability of a laptop and the freedom of typing in my bed or recliner, or outside in a lawn chair, or in a coffee shop, I loathe the keyboard, and more specifically, the mousepad’s proximity to the keyboard. I rest my palms on the edge of the keyboard, so I accidentally hit the mouse pad with my thumbs.

A lot.

This would not be a big deal except for the fact that a well-placed [read: tragically, comically, horribly placed] accident can erase thousands of words [and has…more than once].

I’ve been nearly finished with a blog post or random rant, and accidentally hit a button that shut down my program and didn’t save anything.

Profanity ensued.

I’ve been feeling the need to write again, but every time I get the computer, I sit and stare at the keyboard, and I just stop. That’s partly because of the accidental mousepad tapping, but also because I’m beginning to feel my age in my wrists and thumbs, and sitting at a keyboard that’s a little too flat and a little too narrow makes discomfort and numbness inevitable.

So today, I finally went to the store and found myself a keyboard/mouse combo that was reasonably priced and so far, doesn’t suck.

I suspect I’m going to have to eventually get one of those demented split keyboards where you can sit with your palms vertical instead of horizontal, but that was a learning curve I’m not quite ready to tackle.

I’m still sitting here with it on my lap, which isn’t the best for ergonomics, but I’ve typed this whole blog post and haven’t accidentally hit the damn mouse pad once [we won’t mention the fact that this is probably because my new keyboard is literally sitting on top of the laptop’s keyboard, so it’s physically impossible for me to touch the mouse pad without moving the new one.  Nearly idiot proof!]

Which leads me back to why getting old kinda sucks.

See, I really don’t love my laptop. I prefer the bigger keyboard, the separate mouse, and the bigger screen of a desktop.

I blame this on the fact that I quite literally have over 20 years of experience with desktop computers [and now that I think of it, it’s actually closer to 30 and that makes me feel very disturbed].

My children have no problem maneuvering their mouse pads. They can scroll, double-click, and randomly move stuff around, all without ever accidentally whacking the mouse pad and causing a major meltdown.

Just the other day, I accidentally hit a random button and my entire keyboard stopped working…and what sucks is, even after fixing the problem, I still have absolutely NO idea how I even did it, let alone how to fix it.

I dunno what the function buttons, or shortcut /hot keys/ whatever they’re called/ do…so I had no idea which button I accidentally hit and I had no idea how to fix it.

I ended up Googling it on my phone [because the keyboard did nothing…and that may have been the time I blitzed out the mouse pad at the same time…because that happened, too] to figure out how I’d managed to blow up my laptop and whether it was going to take a computer doctor to fix it or if I could muddle through and do it myself.  [luckily for me, I still know how to read and follow directions!]

These kinds of things do not happen to my children. They can move back and forth between the two platforms with miraculous ease.

But today, today I have a real keyboard, and a real mouse, and life is good.

I also decided to write something because my beloved left junk all over the bed and I have to clean it off in order to go to sleep.  I’m sleepy now. Which is partly why this makes very little sense and seems to have no point.

That’s me when I’m sleepy.

You’re welcome.

Just Mulling Things Over

So I was sitting here on my couch thinking, and it occurred to me that the computer was sitting next to me and there were no children playing Minecraft on it, so maybe I should write!

Naturally, I have nothing pressing I want to talk about, but I did read several of my last posts.  I remembered the time I read Ishmael and got completely bummed out because of it.  I remembered the time I went off my meds, which wasn’t a bad thing until I got all stressed out again [back on the antidepressant for now.]

The thing that struck me, though [that always strikes me when I read something I’ve written] is that I don’t suck as a writer.  I mean, I’m sitting there re-reading something that I don’t really remember the words to, so it’s like reading someone else’s writing…and it doesn’t suck!

Yay me!

The kids and I caught up on Glee episodes tonight.  They talked a lot about Finn, so I cried several times.  I have doubts that I’ll ever be able to watch the first four seasons again.  It doesn’t make sense, but Glee started about the time we moved down to take care of J. So it’s been with me through some of the most difficult years of my life.

For whatever reason, the damn show struck a chord [har har] and we’ve been hooked since episode 2 or 3 where Curt taught the football players how to dance to Beyonce.

All that’s to say, the kids of Glee [and by extension, the actors] are part of my life, so when Cory Monteith died last year, it hit me almost as hard as if I’d lost someone I knew in real life.  And the show hasn’t been the same without him. Somehow, he was the glue that held the show together, and things just aren’t the same.  We tried to watch some of the first season a while back, and I just couldn’t do it.

Which is stupid, but there you go.

I read an article tonight about how Generation X is really the Henson Generation [or the Muppet Generation, or the Sesame Street Generation] basically, we grew up watching the original Sesame Street and it affected our entire generation.

I get it. As much as I’d like to think otherwise, TV is a huge part of life for me.  Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood were morning staples.  And I used to fight to watch The Muppet Show when it was on. And when I’d go visit my grandma, I’d watch Fraggle Rock at her house because she had cable.

And then there’s Labrynth. And The Dark Crystal.  And Kermit. Oh, how I love Kermit. He was such a sweet, gentle soul, and I always felt like he deserved someone better than Miss Piggy. She was such a bitch!  The irony is, I kinda married Kermit [but less green] and I suspect I might be a little bit Miss Piggy [minus the nose and tail].

But I love that my generation is making the transition into middle age, even though I still feel like I’m trying to grow into my body.  I mean damn. I’m 40 years old and the mother of three kids [two of whom are teenagers, for crying out loud!] but I’m still figuring out who I am and ‘what I wanna be when I grow up’.

I read something the other day about Gen Xers and it kinda hit home for me. It was something about how we mistrust authority, but we have families and kids and stuff, so we’re involved with them, and we’ve more or less rejected the ‘me’ generation’s preoccupation with stuff and McMansions.

I get that. We’re leaning toward a simpler life, both because we’re suspicious of anything our parents did, but also because we’re the first generation to do worse than our parents.  Damn Boomers fucked up the world [thanks, asshole Koch Brothers] and we’re the first generation to inherit the mess.

Here’s hoping we can get it headed in a better direction.

It’s weird to realize that my generation is starting to take over from the Boomers now. The last of the GIs are gone [or in their 90s] and the Boomers are entering old age. I find myself resenting them a little.  Turns out us Xers only make up about 50 million people in the US [or so] and the Boomers and Millennials are both about twice our size. But I think I’m pissed because they’re the generation that gave us Bush 2, Rumsfield, and the Kochs [among others], and dude.

They suck.

I worry about our future. About the world we’re going to leave our kids.  And I’m really frustrated that there isn’t much I can do to change things.  I’m a blue drop in a vast red ocean, but even more pathetic than that, I’m a housewife in the Midwest with no influence over anybody.  Well, except my kids. But they’re amazing in spite of me. 😉

So yeah. It’s 1:30 in the morning and I’m getting sleepy and I feel like I never had a point but that it doesn’t matter a lot.

I read something today that a 22 year old girl wrote for her graduation from college. She’d gone to Yale and won all these writing awards for fiction and nonfiction and play writing, and she was worried that she was never going to do anything.

And I looked at her life, how she learned to sail on the East Coast. How she went to Yale and graduated with honors, and I thought, if that 22 year old girl, who had already won a shit ton of awards for her talent, was worried about not leaving anything of value behind, then two things: 1. Even a privileged, award-winning writer worries about ‘doing something’ [leaving the world better than we came in, as Henson would say] with her life, but

2. I’m 40.  My life is half over [if I’m lucky]. And as shallow as it is to say so out loud, what are the chances that now, at the halfway mark, I’m going to make something of myself?  I’ve always had this weird secret dream of being famous for something [something not humiliating or evil, so that leaves out reality TV and serial murder, and not necessarily in that order] but so much of that depends on luck.  And I’m a housewife in the Midwest.  I’m not what you’d call lucky. [*that does NOT mean I don’t have a wonderful family].

so yeah.

The thing I read about Gen Xers is that we kinda had a hard time with deciding what we wanted to be  [except we appear to be good at the family thing] because we all believed we could be anything… decision overload, maybe? and now we’re learning to deal with the fact that some options are closed to us.  There are some things we can’t be.

Which sounds goofy as all hell, but I related to it. There are a lot of things I never wanted to be that I also couldn’t be, but what if there are things I’d like to be but can’t because now it’s too late?

How do I narrow that down?  And what if I’m only ever a housewife?  Am I going to be okay with that?

I mean rationally, I know that being a wife and mom is nothing to be ashamed of, and I’m actually pretty damn good at it [crazy, right?] but somehow it doesn’t feel like enough.

So is that because my cultural indoctrination says it isn’t enough, or is it because there’s something I was called to do but I missed it because I was too fucked up to figure it out?

That’s the question for the night, I guess.  Fun times, eh?

Process of Recovery…Part 1

So the number one thing I do in my life when I’m coping with or recovering from a difficult situation is ‘I use my words.’

I talk.

I vent.

I write.

I haven’t written regularly in a very long time, and much of the past five years, I haven’t written more than a brief blip about politics or religion here and there, whether on this blog or Facebook. I’ve written a little about the reality of what it was like to take care of my quadriplegic brother, but between not wanting to dwell on something I was still struggling daily with, and feeling like I was indulging in a damn pity party or fishing for compliments, I mostly decided to lay low.

I used to write compulsively when i was depressed, but something about the combination of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion prevented me from being able to string together a coherent paragraph about my life, and while putting thoughts into the ether used to help me process and get over whatever emotional turmoil I was going through, writing about taking care of Jeremi mostly made me feel trapped.

And alone.

And miserable.

Truth is, I love my brother, and that never stopped, even during the most difficult days, but an equally valid, yet far more difficult truth to write about and admit, is that I absolutely hated taking care of him.

And maybe that’s the crux of why I haven’t written much about it. It’s hard to admit that in spite of the fact that I chose to take care of him, I hated and resented it almost every single day. And eventually, I resented Jeremi as well.

The truth is, I’m not some spectacular example of self-sacrificial love.  I never wanted to move back to this town to take care of him. I never wanted him to live with me. I never wanted to have to be the main person responsible for his care.

Steve had always dreamed of having J live with us later, but I never did. I grew up feeling like a horrible person because I used to hide out in the kitchen or bathroom eating snacks, because I knew if I went into the living room where J was, he’d want some of whatever I was eating, too, and he was likely to drool on me or bite me or choke and spit or vomit all over me, and I hated all of that.

I hated being stuck at home, of never going on a family vacation, never going anywhere as a family because it was so much work to take J with us that it was just easier for one able-bodied person to stay in the house with him, and everyone else to go on outings alone.

It sucks to love someone and resent them at the same time. I grew up feeling like a selfish, hateful, resentful human being. I grew up feeling guilty every day of my life because there was always something I resented that happened.

I felt like I never got quite what I needed because J took so much of the energy my parents had that there just wasn’t much left over for me. As a young child, too young to understand what was really going on, I just felt like he was the ‘favorite’ because he got most of what they had to give.

And all of that was before I was 12.

So fast forward 25 years and there he was. Sick and dying.  My parents were also not in the best health and would have killed themselves trying to take care of him, and in my eyes, the only option was for me to uproot my family and take care of him.

But I didn’t want to.

Because I knew.

I knew there would never be enough help. I knew we were on our own, and that I wasn’t going to be able to do it all. I knew I was going to be miserable.  But I couldn’t see a way out.  I knew that if I said no, I really would be that awful girl who’d hidden out in the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to feed her brother a damn snack, except this time, he would die because of my selfishness.

Even knowing what I know now, having lived five years taking care of him and wishing most days I wasn’t, even having nearly destroyed my mental and physical health, and because of it, endangering the well-being of my family, even knowing that the best choice for Jeremi’s health was not the best for mine or that of my family…I’m still not sure I could say no if I had to choose again.

Because the guilt of that little girl is still there, and stronger than ever, thanks to the constant reminder of the past five years that I still can’t take care of  him without feeling resentment, anger, and self loathing for feeling resentment and anger.

He’s moved out now. He’s happy, healthy and safe, and I am SO glad that is true.

But I’m not.

I’m exhausted and broken, and I’d love nothing more than to  run away to Costa Rica and pretend, even if it’s just for a short time, that I have no obligations or responsibilities to anyone but myself.

I don’t know how to process 30 year old self-inflicted wounds, and I don’t know how not to hate the fact that I absolutely do not ever want to be the primary caregiver of another adult again as long as I live.

 

And here’s where the processing begins.

The truths is, if I had to do it all over again, if I had to make the same choice today that I made five years ago…

I would say no.

That little girl who hid out in the bathroom was a child.

It wasn’t her responsibility to take care of a brother who couldn’t take care of himself.  We shouldn’t have had to be alone in the house in the first place.

Now understand me here. I’m not placing blame.

My parents did the only thing they could given the resources that were available at the time, and there are no good options in a situation like that.

But as the child who lived through it, I had a lot on my shoulders that I wasn’t equipped to handle, and that I never should have had to deal with in the first place.

I wasn’t a villain. And I was exactly as selfish as every other human in the history of mankind was at that age. I was certainly no more selfish, and probably a little less so.

Five years ago, it wasn’t my responsibility to nurse J back to health. I didn’t have to do it.

And had I been thinking clearly, I would have taken a more objective look at what my kids were going to have to go through.

They’ve lived the same life for the past five years that I had for my entire childhood and adolescence.

On some deep psychological level, I think I was trying to make up for what I believed were wrongs I had committed against Jeremi.

And I was trying to do what I’d been taught from a very early age: when it comes to family, you do what you gotta do. You make the sacrifices necessary to support family, even if it means destroying yourself in the process.

But when you have kids who depend on you, who rely on you to be the safe landing spot when they have a problem or crisis, who depend on you to help them know how much they mean to you, sacrificing your own health and happiness means that you also sacrifice their safe landing spot.

My parents did the best they could to support both of their kids, but the truth is, two people just don’t have enough energy and personal resources to support two kids’ physical and emotional needs when one requires most of their energy just to keep him alive.

It wasn’t that they were inadequate, it was that the load was too big for anyone.

And that’s the thing I didn’t realize until I lived it.  My parents pushed past physical and mental exhaustion and burnout for decades because it was their child and there wasn’t anyone else to do it.

Steve and I did the same thing, but J wasn’t my child. I already had three kids, and they were taking up everything I had just on their own.  I never had enough to give to J without sacrificing what my family needed from me, but I didn’t realize it until I was falling apart.

I’ve broken myself, physically and emotionally, and I’m working on picking up the pieces and starting again.   I’ve learned some valuable lessons, but man, sometimes I wish I could learn things without having to go through hell in the process.

So the process has begun.

Wish me luck.

Preachit.

So it turns out people think I’m passionate and I preach at people and try to force them into my view. I’ve also been accused recently of refusing to listen to views other than my own, of being childish, tactless, hateful, and closed minded.

I can see how others might see me that way, especially if they’ve disagreed with me about something. Truth is, I AM passionate.  I’m opinionated. I’m also a damn good writer and an even better researcher, so I know exactly what I believe and more importantly, I know exactly WHY I believe it.

I don’t typically write an opinion without having researched the facts thoroughly before hand.  So naturally I state opinions from the mindset that based on the information I have, my opinion is fact based, well-rounded, informed, and of course, correct. 

Here’s what people don’t seem to believe, though.

If, on further reflection and research, I find new facts that contradict my previously held opinions, I change my mind.

There are people in my life who can verify that I have indeed changed my mind more than once.  You don’t just have to take my word for it.

The thing is, I do a damn lot of research. About everything. And usually, if it’s on the Internet, I can find it in less than ten minutes [the only exceptions being law statutes and medicaid rules].  And when I do research, I use what’s called the Trivium [you can Google if you’re curious]

Then I usually write it down because writing solidifies my thoughts and often reveals flaws in my logic.

I’m not saying this is how others have to do things, but I am saying that they should be aware that when it comes to subjects I care about, I generally know enough about it to write a damn long research paper on it [and in some cases, an entire book]. 

So platitudes, talking points, bumper stickers, and rhetoric from commentators in the media are all going to fail to change my way of thinking. 

Every. Single. Time.

Now maybe that makes me a snob, but it doesn’t make me closed minded.  I expect others to defend their beliefs and opinions with some actual facts, experiences, and knowledge that has come from doing their own research. If they don’t have time to do all that, then I respectfully submit they go argue with someone else.

I do not have mercy when it comes to debunking logical fallacies and inaccurate statements. Lies offend me to my core. They piss me off. And logical fallacies are a fascination of mine, so I like finding them and pointing them out. But they also annoy me during a debate because they don’t prove anything.  They don’t make me see a different side to a story, they just irritate the shit out of me because they waste time.

I don’t mind when people disagree with me, but they’d better be able to back up their opinions with verifiable facts, or I’m going to get obnoxious. And when I back up my own opinions with facts, I don’t consider that preaching or trying to force someone into my way of thinking.  I consider it being able to give a reason for my beliefs, which is another passion of mine that stems from trusting the wrong people and allowing them to decide what my opinions were for me.

Okay.

So in other news, self-righteous hypocrites annoy the shit out of me, and the more ridiculous they get, the more I’m going to respond in kind.

I think maybe people don’t realize exactly how much I hold myself back in online debates. I never give full rein to my desire and ability to flay people alive with words, because I really don’t like hurting people’s feelings.  There are days when I’m sorely tempted, though.

Coming Back to Me

I slowly weaned myself off my antidepressant.  It took me 32 days.  The reason it took me 32 days is because of a little thing called, “SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome.”

That’s a lovely euphemism put forth by drug companies that means “this shit will kick your ass with withdrawal symptoms.”

Drug companies like to try to take the stigma of what amounts to an addiction [albeit only when you try to go off them] from their little droplets of gold.

The irony here is that antidepressants are only slightly more effective than a placebo, and in many studies, not at all.  So they’re no more effective than a sugar pill, but cost an arm and a leg, and if you try to go off them, you have withdrawal symptoms.

A perfect money maker, don’t you think?  I mean think about it.  The withdrawal symptoms alone are often enough to keep people taking their meds.

So although it was a little scary, since some of the withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, twitchiness, and irritability, I decided that a $40 a month [that’s the copay. Actual drug cost is about $200] placebo was bullshit.

I can meditate, pray, and ride motorcycles for cheaper than that, and it’s more effective!

The fourth week was the most difficult for some reason, but I’m off of it, and I feel pretty damn good.

Next is the mood stabilizer.  I know what you’re thinking, “Oh hell, here goes the crazy person going off her meds.” Except that I’m not actually crazy.  I definitely qualify as Bipolar 2, but I think maybe I’m not actually mentally ill.

Here’s what I mean. When I can keep my stress levels manageable and have a strong support system, I function just fine. So what my meds actually accomplish is they enable me to endure a situation that is incompatible with my temperament.

Sometimes that’s necessary. If you’re stuck in a situation you can’t get out of or improve, I’m all for medicating in order to survive it. But I think it should only be a stopgap measure until you figure out a way to change things.

I ended up in a situation that I didn’t want, but couldn’t see a way to avoid. I knew taking care of Jeremi would be a nightmare, but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving my parents to do it alone, or of allowing J to go to a nursing home or die.

I knew it would be bad, but I didn’t expect that I would be completely unable to function.  Enter medication.  It numbed the pain and allowed me a little extra time to figure out that this is not something I am able or willing to do for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, even with meds, I’ve reached a point of burnout so complete that there’s no way I’m going to be able to keep this up.

Now, the reason I decided to go ahead and stop my meds even though J still lives here is that although the meds definitely numb the emotional pain of living in a situation that is diametrically opposed to what I need to thrive, it has also taken away my most treasured gift: my creativity.

The need to write disappeared, and with it, one of the things I like best about me. With the dulling of my senses and emotions, the well of my creative soul dried up.

I won’t live half a life.  I won’t sacrifice my connection to the universe in order to survive diminished.

I have no way of knowing how long I’ll be on this planet. I refuse to put off living the life I was created to live until tomorrow, next year, twenty years from now.

So I’m going off my meds, and already I feel the urge to create, to write, to return to me.

It’s good to be back.

The Journey Continues

So after my recent bout of depression, I’ve been reading a lot about possible causes besides the standard, ‘chemical imbalance’ schtick.

Turns out, there’s no actual evidence that people who are depressed make less serotonin [or any other neurotransmitters that antidepressants tweak] than so-called ‘normal’ people.  I read an interesting book by Bruce Levine about the depression epidemic in the US, and I tend to agree with his analysis that people who are depressed aren’t crazy or chemically imbalanced. We might not even be abnormal.

It’s interesting how things coalesce to bring about new understanding at just the right moment, but as I’ve learned about our consumer culture and just how completely dysfunctional and unhealthy it is [both for us and our entire planet] I’m starting to wonder if my inability to function in my world has less to do with my malfunction and more to do with the insanity of the culture in which I live.

Levine likened sensitive people who are prone to depression to the ‘canaries in the coalmine’.  We might just be an advance warning that the way we’re living is unsustainable.

Which is all fine and good, except for fact that so many of us are now taking medications to function in bedlam instead of figuring out how to change things so that we can thrive without needing to numb our minds and spirits in order to exist without extreme suffering.

We’re still suffering, we just don’t care anymore.

I’ve noticed that since I started taking a seizure med [Lamictal] and antidepressant in combination, I’ve been a lot less moody and reactive to the things that happen in my life.  But I’ve also lost my creativity.  I no longer have the intense need to write down what I’m feeling or going through, and I’ve lost the desire to create art, whether with paints, clay, or words.

I’m not sure that’s  a good thing. I mean, I’m not saying I’m some great talent or anything, but art is something I enjoy immensely, and something I’m proud of.  Art is something that not everyone is able to do, and my art is something that no one else on the planet can do.

Whether it’s brilliant to anyone but me, it’s still uniquely something only I can offer the world.

I find myself wondering if, knowing that the sadness I sometimes feel isn’t abnormal, and that it will always pass eventually, I might be better equipped to explore the pain and express it through my art and writing.

Pain and suffering are universal. No one gets through life without it. But not everyone can put that pain into words, music, or pictures and share it with others.

Maybe there’s a reason for my sensitivity that I hadn’t thought of before. Maybe my gift to the world is to express my pain so that others know they’re not alone.

 

Still Here :)

Never fear.  I meant I wanted to sleep in a very literal sense of the word.  So I spent a few days doing nothing but sleeping and trying to come to terms with my new depth of depression.

Scared the shit out of my friend and worried my husband, which sucked, but I’m okay and I think they forgave me.

I think at least part of my bipolar disorder is less mental illness and more how I process life.  I’d just read three books in rapid succession that confirmed for me things I’ve known instinctively since I was a kid, but also made me realize that what I know is the exact opposite of what most people acknowledge.

From an egotist’s perspective, I’m awake, but most of you are asleep.

From a realist’s perspective, I’m half asleep, half blind, and a little over half crazed, but a whole lotta people are more than half way there, so maybe I’m not the worst possible person to have insights I want to share that might be useful.

I dunno.

Maybe.

So here’s my thought for today.

There’s a lot more to life than I will ever know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn it all.

There’s more to learning than just memorizing facts.  Knowledge doesn’t do you much good if you keep it locked up in the musty attic of your thinker.

The coolest part is figuring out how to integrate the knowledge into your every day life.  The bad news is, it often includes learning how to reprogram your unconscious mind, which can be slow, difficult, and painful, but is totally worth it.

It means realizing that you don’t actually live in reality, you live  in a story that is a little bit what you tell yourself, but is mostly colored by conditioning you got before you could think.

Which is why it’s so hard to change.  Most of your reactions have nothing to do with the situation you’re in, or what your conscious mind thinks is happening. It has to do with what you accidentally picked up from parents, siblings, in preschool, or where ever you spent your first six years of life.

So you do what you don’t want to do, and you say what you don’t want to say, and you don’t do things you know you should do, and are generally fucked up most of the time.

Yeah.

And from what I can tell, all the major religions began with people who figured out how to reprogram themselves.  Buddha advocated letting go of attachments and practicing compassion. Jesus talked about loving god, others, and ourselves, and being merciful [compassionate]to all. [exact same concept from a different perspective…letting go of everything vs connecting with everything, but both with the same results: compassion].

And they both taught that it wasn’t easy to reach a point where you can love everyone, or love nothing, but be compassionate either way.

You have to systematically deconstruct all the false impressions, ideas, perceptions you picked up along the way.

I’m most familiar with Jesus, and he’s my favorite anyway, so he’s the one I’ll be expounding on in the future.

For now, though, I think it’s important to know that there are a LOT of programs in your brain. Some of ’em are good and make you do kind, compassionate things, and some of ’em are destructive and false, and make you act like a complete asshole.

So do you have more good programs than bad?  I dunno.  Are you an asshole most of the time, or just once in a while?  And if you’re an asshole more often than not, does that make you a bad person?

I don’t think so. Even serial killers have people in their lives who matter to them, people they value as human beings.  It’s just that instead of cutting people off in traffic or being rude to a waitress, they kill the people who don’t matter.  The serial killer is what lack of compassion looks like when taken to its most violent extreme.

This is reality.

But it’s no excuse not to try.

p

when i was eighteen, i went through a time when i didn’t really care if i lived anymore. i was supposed to figure out what i wanted to be when I grew up and then to go do it.

well, i never figured it out, but i went on living in spite of the fact that i wasn’t really interested.

i ended up dropping out of college and somehow found a husband instead.  he saved me.

almost twenty years have passed, and i now know that at least part of my ambivalence toward survival was a down cycle in my bipolar disorder, but today, i find that knowing what’s happening and why doesn’t reallychange the fact thatmy ambivalencs has returned.

it’s been a long time since i’ve felt this way, and the fact that i’ve been on medication for over a year to prevent these feelings is mroe than a little disturbing.

like so many other things, medication is nothing more than a chemical bandaid and can only stop the bleeding for so long.

this soul deep sadness is nothing more than my spirit’s way of telling me that I don’t have what I need to survive and thrive.

the irony is, i now know exactly what i need, infact, i know what we all need. what we’ve been craving for over ten thousand years now. i know that the system we’re using isn’t broken, but hopelessly flawed, and i despair because i know that i can’t save the world. no one can.

the change that would have to happen is so fundamental, so basic, and naturally so simple as to be something a child could understand and potentiallyimplement if he’s allowed to do what needs to be done.

but my adult self is simply paralyzed.  i’ve asked for what i need for decades now, and never really been heard.  the lie runs too deep and there’s no way to penetrate it.

my bandaid is failing right now, and all the pain i’ve been ignoring and trying to fix is right there, staring me in the face, and i just want it to end. i’m tired of fighting, tired of asking, tired of clinging to false hope.

we’re devouring ourselves and the entire planet, all knowing that something is missing, but not knowing what that is, or where to find it.

I know, but i’m helpless to get it, to change anything. to make anyone understand, or even care.

at this point, my ambivalence is complete. if it wasn’t for my family, i wouldn’t even bother writing this or continuing this nightmare a minute longer. it’s only for them that i hang on.  if it wouldn’t damage them beyond repair, i’d be gone now.

as it is, i’ll probably call the doctor on monday and ask for a bigger bandaid.  i can’t fix it. can’t change it. can’t progress. i’m trapped, just like we all are, and unfortunately for me, my anger isn’t there to keep me going anymore. the fight for change is gone, buried in the futility that was there all along

i just want to sleep.

put me back in the matrix. knowing means nothing in the end. it just means a loss of hope.

The truth staring me, and indeed all of us, in the face is the fact that the system isn’t broken. it’s doing exactly what it’s done for the last ten thousand years because that’s the only thing it CAN do.  no more than a mouse can grow wings and fly, the system can’t do what we wanted it to do.

there is a fatal flaw, and i can findally see it.  unfortunately, it brings home the fact that just being aware of a problem doesn’t necessary give you the ability or even the will to try to change it.

it is what it is, and now I sleep.

Shoot Me Now

So my husband, the kids and I got away for a weekend and it was excellent.  The only bad part was, I didn’t get nearly enough sleep, which means that today, I’ve fallen full-on into a hardcore mixed state of bipolar disorder, meaning that I’m having all the symptoms of mania in addition to all the symptoms of depression.

I hate my life.  I hate being a caregiver. I hate everything and everyone on the planet, including myself, and there simply are not words to express the white hot rage I am feeling right now.  I took my meds and I’ve warned my kids, but I have a feeling that if anyone talks to me at all tonight, I will scream and yell and maybe hit them with my fists.

Fuck.

Well, Crap.

So it occurs to me that debate is futile.  There are people who would rather die than admit they’re wrong about something.  It doesn’t matter one bit if I tackle an argument from my own perspective [which entails loving others as I love myself…and that’s it] or if I tackle it with verifiable facts proving whatever the disagreeing party is saying is completely wrong, the result is exactly the same.

They escalate.  They get angry. Sometimes, they walk off in a huff. Other times, they continue to argue until they’re all argued out and then they get even more emotional and lose it completely.  Sometimes, they try to condescend and ‘reason’ with me.  Sometimes, they tell me I’m stirring up trouble and should shut up to keep the peace.

But not once has anyone managed to come up with anything even remotely resembling a fact that can be verified that proves me wrong.

Nothing.

Not once.

You’d think that would stroke my ego, but really, it just pisses me off.  I’d love to go back to believing what I once believed. I really would.  It was so much easier because I didn’t have to fight with everyone around me, I didn’t have to disagree, and I didn’t have to try so hard to find the truth, because it was spoon fed to me.  Except it wasn’t the truth.  Dammit.  And now I can’t un-know it.  Dammit again.

It’s like I took that damn red pill.

So I’m frustrated and I’m fed up.  People are not my favorite creatures.  In fact, they’re right near the bottom at this point.

On the one hand, I see and feel so much pain and suffering it rips my soul in half, and on the other, I see hatred and judgement and no compassion whatsoever, and it rips my soul again.

How the hell did we get here?  How is it that we’ve devolved and actually gotten meaner?  And I’m not talking about ‘the world’ here.  I’m talking about Christians.

I walked away from Christianity a few years ago because I took a good look in the mirror and realized that I had turned into something ugly and judgmental and I couldn’t stand myself that way.  I decided I’d rather love people with a genuine, heartfelt love and acceptance, with no agenda, no ulterior motive to convert them, no nothing, than to continue to be such a jerk.

Well, shit happened, and I started praying again recently.  Lo and behold, there was God.  So I started thinking, He’s still there.  Wow.  I wonder if I might be able to think about moving back toward Christianity.  Maybe find a family again.  Maybe find a church home so I don’t feel so alone anymore.

I think I may have stumbled upon my answer, though, and it’s not the answer I’d hoped for.  I just can’t make myself go back to being insensitive, judgmental, and mean and calling it love.  And I don’t think I can see it in people I care about and not say anything.

My heart is broken because I want so much to find a place to belong, but I know deep down I’m not welcome.  Not anywhere.  Unless I conform and shut up.

 

How is it that I’m faced with a choice between staying out of the church and being unspeakably lonely, or going back into it and losing my soul? And how do I keep from being shattered either way.