Working on it.. (Kind of)

“You must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.”

Now that I’ve had this draft opened up for the past 4 hours and have run out of things to do while putting it off. This is a post that has been needing to be written for several months now, and due to the nature of it I have not been overly inclined to write it.  However, I recently had a bringing down to Earth moment that has forced me to really get in my head the past week or so and think about it and so, here I am.

Idk if any of you have watched Will Arnett’s new show on Netflix, “Flaked”, but it’s a pretty solid story dealing with recovering alcoholism in a small community. (Un)fortunately for me, there was a bit in the finale that has caused this introspection to commence. Well here’s an excerpt from the show description: “…Chip’s the go-to guy for personal insights. But he isn’t quite as enlightened when it comes to his own baggage.” Right. Now, here’s the conversation from the finale between Chip, and the man who was originally his sponsor when he joined AA. This comes at the end of what was a pretty heated and personal exchange and is his sponsor talking to Chip:

“You’re a good man. I mean, whether or not you want to admit it, but.. I know you are. I’ve seen you stick your hand out to help other people, complete strangers, drunks, I mean countless times I just wish you would listen to half the stuff you tell them. I just hope that someday you can just step up, and just, finally  help yourself man.”

Now, for those of you who either know me or have read most of this blog, substitute the drinking for depression and that pretty much sums up where I’ve been at for the past several years. Not too long ago I was able to be helping several individuals, some that I know personally and some that I do not, in dealing with their own struggles with depression. I didn’t do this for myself, although it does help me deal with my own shit by talking about related issues with others, but I did it for them because I know firsthand how much easier it makes it to have someone who will legitimately just listen and can honestly relate to what you’re going through. However, the past few months I’ve been slowly distancing myself from these situations. I had rationalized it out to myself because these individuals for the most part had been making a lot of progress, and thusly didn’t need to look elsewhere for guidance or advice anymore, which for the most part is true. I am very proud of them for how much progress that has been made, but that is not the reason. Namely because I know how damn easy it is to backslide, and how quickly that innocent backslide can turn into a freefall.

The real reason is what gets us back to the Flaked reference, it makes me feel like a fucking fraud. A hypocritical fraud. Looking around at my li(f)e, I don’t do half of the things anymore that they have looked to me as a source of knowledge and experience on. I wax poetic about the importance of finding something that makes you happy and making time for it at least once a day, or the importance of exercise no matter how basic, and the effects of healthy eating on the mind and cultivating a healthier body image as well. I talk about how monumentally powerful meditation can be at even just 10 minutes a day. I recommend the creation of a morning ritual of 5-6 things or habits to do every morning first thing to always get the day started off right as that’s usually the hardest part. I talk endlessly about how important it is to accept depression and instead of winning or losing, you’re simply making lifestyle changes because if you focus on winning and losing you’ll never make it past the first fucking day.

I no longer do any of these things. Not on any sort of regular basis at least. And it’s not because I’ve made so much progress or “gotten better” that I don’t need to anymore. I’ve been lying to myself about being too busy to worry about it, falling back into the “good enough” trap that got me into this mess to begin with. And quite honestly it makes me sick.

There’s bound to be a few people reading this that are going to try to tell me I’m just being too hard on myself, so for fun let me just give an example of how much this struggle still impacts my daily life in topic that everyone can relate too, relationships. Now, I don’t have too much of a problem meeting people, making good first impressions with people, or anything like that. However, the moment it begins to become more than casual flirting and we actually start to spend an extended period of time together, I immediately start to distance myself, almost without realizing it now it’s become so natural. I’m not afraid of commitment, in fact I rather prefer commitment to the casual hookup culture we have now. The problem is, I know that the more time you spend with someone you start to rub off on each other. And I know that more than likely it won’t happen, but just the thought of all this fucking dark depressing shit that rumbles around my head all day rubs off on them and infects them with it is too much. Yes, everyone has their own problems and that’s part of the bit with a relationship is you take on each others burdens blah blah I know. I also know that they are fully consenting adults and it should be their choice not mine. To which I say oh well, still not worth it to me.

So. I am sorry to those of you who I have been a fraud to. I am sorry to those of you who wanted to be a part of my life and thought I didn’t want you to be, I did, I just didn’t want you to suffer or resent me for it. And I am sorry to myself, for allowing this to continue to be such a large part of my day to day life.

Just know, that I’m working on it.

 

The Purpose of Travelling

It’s been almost two months since I last wrote, and trust me, i wish it hadn’t been so long. However, having been back in the country for one week tomorrow I think i’m finally ready to exit my mental vacation mode and move on. I purposefully refrained from trying to write about anything immediately after returning because it would have been nothing more than gushing about the beauty of the landscape and how I wish I could be back(I still do), yet there was enough underlying turmoil I knew there was something more substantial brewing I should wait for. Which unfortunately means this post will probably take a negative turn.

Now since i’ve been ready to write there have been many worthy topics i’ve been interested in writing about, but I hadn’t been able to find the motivation to write until this evening. Writing about a topic that isn’t fresh defeats the purpose in my mind, there’s no passion, no emotion, at least nothing that isn’t being recalled and projected onto the page. Writing to me is about the passion and emotion in the moment, when the thoughts and ideas are fresh, almost to the extant of stream of consciousness. Which brings us to the topic that has been bouncing around in my head for about 2 days that I finally have come to a conclusion on. The purpose of travelling.

Yesterday or the day before I shared an image on facebook from an old article listing out the reasons we travel, those reasons are as follows:health, education, to get away, realize the limitation of our own views, to be able to improve conditions at home, appreciate other kinds of beauty in the world,find our level internationally, have something to talk about, to have something to look back on, and to appreciate home.   Now i can agree with a few of these concepts, and a couple I would have to have a very long discussion with the author on the explanation before I could get on board. But in general I disagree with it entirely. On multiple levels.I don’t know about anybody else, but every time i’ve traveled it has made me appreciate home less. Every single time. I’ve never gotten back from anywhere and thought man I’m glad to be back. That just doesn’t fucking happen. I hardly want to talk about a trip past the week after i return because it just makes me more depressed that I am no longer there. On top of all of this, the most important aspect, improving life at home, is probably the least taken advantage of. Which brings me to the meat of my thoughts.

Ignore the immense beauty of the country, the beauty of the people, and the serenity the mountains instill, and the one thing that is the hardest for me to comprehend is the sheer amount of joy felt throughout the entire trip. It didn’t matter if there was beauty, ugliness, rain, or shine, there was always an inner core of joy to pull from the entire trip. I’ve been trying to figure out why, at first I assumed it was because I was just so excited to to be there, but then the newness wore off. I thought it was because the landscape was so beautiful, but then we visited two churches in one day and witnessed the quintessence of the Incan genocide, gold and God, and surrounded by so much hate and ugliness I still managed to be able to go out with the group and get some dinner and be social, had I been confronted with half that much at home I would have simply went home and sat in the dark listening to music for hours on end trying to reset. I then thought maybe it’s because I’m surrounded by good friends, but then I remembered I didn’t even know anyone’s names until we landed in Peru. And while they were all beautiful and wonderful human beings, not yet the best friends that instill happiness simply by being in their presence. The more I have pondered it the closer i’ve come to the conclusion that there simply was no reason. It just was.

That’s when it hit me. It hit me like a goddamn dark, depressing, disgusting sack of bricks. There was no external reason as to why there was so much joy there, that was just enjoying life. The fact that it was such a contrast to life here I felt the need to find a reason why makes me very sad. I’m not trying to shortchange the trip’s beauty as a nonfactor, i was almost reduced to tears 3 separate occasions just by being in sheer awe of the beauty that surrounded me. I thoroughly realize that here I have to go to class and work and there I had to do neither, and please don’t insult me by thinking I haven’t taken that into consideration. Looking back the whole trip feels like one big good dream, it doesn’t even feel real life because what I consider real life is so much bleaker. There’s no way so much joy could exist in my real life.

I then asked myself why? Why does joy seemingly not exist here in this existence when it was so abundant within the other. Am i holding out on myself? Is it out of my control? Was there some sort of external trigger there that allowed it? Was i just high off the airplane cookies I found and ate on the way to lima the whole time? Is it something that I can add to my life here?  Long story short, I don’t know. I try to think about my life externally and figure out what’s keeping the joy from existing here as well and I can find nothing. My job is easy and I enjoy the company of most of my coworkers, I actually enjoy what I’m studying in the University and have a passion to learn the material, I’ve got a pretty good group of friends to spend free time with, my dog is adorable albeit kind of a bitch sometimes, I make enough money to buy groceries and pay my bills on time, the only real negative right now is the location i’m living in, but that’s not a huge deal, certainly not overpowering enough to suffocate joy on such a widespread level. While it is easy for my to brush this aside as simply a personal problem, yet I noticed everybody else from the trip seemed to be feeling the same way. Maybe not as severely as me and maybe moreso. i don’t know and I don’t need to know, the truth is still there.

The underlying sadness that something we all shared was left behind in Peru, perhaps never to be reclaimed by all of us, and maybe not by any of us. But that is my new destination. I feel that i’ve come far enough I no longer need to dedicate my entire psyche to holding back the darkness, and I can afford to pursue other issues. Such as where the joy has gone and how to bring it back, if it is able to be brought back at all.

Silence, the Fear

Many people I come across are very uncomfortable with silence, especially when there is no direct objective for it. It is one thing when taking a test, or completing a project to do so in silence, however just embracing silence for the sake of silence is not nearly as common. Many argue that they simply prefer to be in the company of others under the guise of being social or an extrovert. However it is not hard to be in the company of others as well as silence. While a good number of people suffer from severe phobias of silence, the vast majority of people fall into the category of preferring to avoid it because it makes them uncomfortable. For those, I do not blame you at all, for it is quite a daunting task. Not the silence itself, but for what may happen during the silence. For the thoughts that may surface, the realizations that may occur no matter how uncomfortable or upsetting. For when all the distractions are taken away, and all that is left is silence, it becomes much more difficult to suppress such things.

I know, because it was this very silence that caused me to face the reality of my depression, and subsequently the one way ticket to rock bottom that followed. I was unprepared to deal with it. I accidentally faced my demons with zero weapons or knowledge on how to deal with them, naturally it did not end well. I remained at the bottom wallowing in my sorrow and pity for quite some time, until suddenly, a realization was made. The very silence that I viewed as my nemesis, as the cause for all of this (as if without the silence the depression would never have been there, because yes I was that ignorant at the time), need not be solely an enemy, but also perhaps a weapon.

Often it is said that one’s greatest strength is simultaneously their greatest weakness, for you are naturally going to favor your strengths, and thus become predictable in your actions, opening up a weakness. Little did I know, but this silence would in time become my most powerful weapon, once i learned how to use it of course. So i began attempting to meditate, and i say attempting because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I immediately failed and gave up. It seemed pointless, sitting silently with my mind racing to a bunch of useless things, I saw no benefit coming from that. So i stopped.

A month or so later I had been able to identify some key actions and habits to try to gain a step or two forward, which they did, however I lacked the mental fortitude to stick to them when the negativity began to push back. I tried meditation again. Luckily this time I knew that while unguided meditation ultimately produced the most noticeable results, it was not something I was skilled enough to complete. I began short guided meditations. I found a website(www.calm.com) that allowed me to choose between a 2, 5, 10, 15, or 20 minute guided meditation. So I once again overestimated my abilities, threw on my headphones and hit the 10 minute choice. 5 minutes in i had given up and was watching netflix. Luckily I at least had the awareness to realize that I should try the 2 minute one and work my way up. It worked, I could successfully perform a 2 minute guided meditation.

Fast-Forward a few months, I have worked my up to performing 20 minute guided sessions and am on a trip to Puerto Rico with some friends in the spring of 2013. We are hiking up a mountain in a virgin rainforest (El Yunque) and have reached an old stone watchtower at the top. Upon climbing the watchtower to the top, and standing on the observation deck looking out, above the cloud level, and seeing the entire rainforest shrouded in a gray mist with nothing but green and cloud as far as the eye could see. Being overwhelmed by the sights, smells, and overall beauty of what was before me, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Breathing in unfamiliar smells, trying to find a place to catalog all of them in my mind so as to not forget. My entire being lost in that moment, and it is one I shall not soon forget. I then exhaled, now prepared to take in the beauty of my surroundings, opened my eyes and realized that nearly everyone who was on the observation platform with had disappeared. They had all seen from the top, and then climbed back down and were exploring around the base. I turned around, slightly confused since I had only taken one deep breath and everything had changed. Our “guide” Thad was still atop the tower with me, and gave me a look of complete understanding and simply said “it’s beautiful isn’t it” meaning so much more than simply the view of the forest. It was in that moment that I noticed the inconceivable clarity of mind, peace, and lack of intangible weight I had. I realized that I had not just simply inhaled and exhaled, that I had completely lost myself within that moment. I had finally realized what meditation was, and had completed my first successful unguided meditation.

It was through that single moment of clarity that I was able to cast aside all that was unimportant in order to focus on what was. It was through that single moment that I decided not only to go back to school, but what and where I would be studying. It was through that single moment that I felt i had finally made a connection from my tangible self to my intangible self. It was through that single moment that I started moving in the right direction. And It was in that single moment that I was exposed to the positive power of silence.

Silence is very powerful, but it is solely up to you whether you fear your silence and let it control you, or whether you embrace it and use it to control yourself.

Do not fear your silence.

Misinterpretations and Clarification (also religion and anti-depressants)

Very rarely will you hear me apologize for my words or actions. Not because I have never said or done anything that I shouldn’t have, but simply because in that moment in time I believed it to be the right thing to do. I will apologize for not taking into consideration how something may impact you, or for being insensitive, or for being too inarticulate to get my point across without adding insult. In my opinion this is how everyone should view this idea, too many people mindlessly apologize for their actions, without ever really A. actually feeling sorry for what they did and B. stopping at the apology and not taking steps to prevent said actions from happening again. In my experience most things can be avoided a second time by being mindful of the situation in which they occurred. Example. You and you’re significant other get into an argument and you call the other one a foul and insulting name. This can be quite hurtful. However, a normal response would be to immediately respond with an apology and hope they can move past it. Whereas an improved response would be to realize they are negative emotions you are harboring that lead to such an outburst that need to be addressed, as well noting that your volatile emotional state induced by the argument caused a poor decision in how to vocalize these feelings. Imagine how much better the aftermath would go if instead of just saying “I’m sorry for calling you a bitch” you responded with an apology for allowing yourself to get caught up in the moment, and mention that there are some behaviors that she is engaging in that have been bothering you, and you’d like to work on communicating said emotions more so they don’t get hyperbolized  during a heated emotional argument. Yes, she’ll still be upset you called her a bitch. However showing you understand why it happened and expressing a desire to prevent it goes a lot further than a simple I shouldn’t have said that.

That was quite the lengthy introduction, however the concepts are relevant. I have gotten a decent amount and backlash over some ideas that I’ve presented thus far, most noticeably my words on religion in my last post, and my words regarding antidepressants in my first few posts. I’d like to start off by saying i’m sorry if anyone has been offended. That was not my intention, however it appears that the majority who people who have expressed offense seem to have either misinterpreted my words, or has inferred conclusions about my meaning beyond what I have said. I guess I’ll start with the Anti-depressant position.

It appears that those who have either seen my decision to not take any anti-depressants, or read the paper I had written and linked on a previous post, have come to the conclusion that I do not believe in, or look down upon the usage of anti-depressants. This is simply not true. I can see how you came to this conclusion though, as my words in the paper written were with quite a negative connotation, and even laced with anger. However, this anger and negativity was not directed towards the medication. It was/is directed towards societies belief that such pills are a cure-all for depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. It simply is not. Imagine going to the doctor for flu-like symptoms, and having him hand you a prescription and inform you have to take it every day, for the rest of your life, and if you feel like you don’t need it anymore and stop taking it, there’s a 67% chance you will not only get sick again, but quite possibly it will be more intense than before, and the side effects can often be far worse than your initial conditions. Then send you on your way. That would be unacceptable. Ludicrous. You would never see that sham of a physician again, probably tell all your friends about how awful he was, and start a negative social media campaign against him until he was disbarred. Yet that’s exactly what is being done for those with mental issues. Anti-depressants can be very powerful TOOLS in the fight against depression, but not a complete battle plan. Sorry but it has helped my mentality and efficacy to view my overall happiness as a war with depression, and each day a battle. It helps break down my progress by each day, leading to greater overall results without being crushingly overwhelmed by the weight of my end goal. In recap- not only do i have no problem with the use of medications, more often than not I encourage them as a tool to be utilized. As long as other steps are being taken to ensure long term quality of life and they aren’t being solely relied upon for happiness.

Next up is religion. Apparently I gave the impression that I believe that all religious peoples are selfish fools. To come to this conclusion one must have severely misunderstood what I was saying, or only read what they wanted to read because they enjoy picking fights on the internet instead of living a real, tangible life. Regardless, I will clarify. I do not necessarily have a problem with religion or spirituality. I often disagree with organized religion because I believe it puts too many restraints on the divine concept, and thus distracts from the truth. However, many good things come of organized religion, such as an ideal system teaching individuals to treat others with dignity and respect, and a certain amount of morality one should have by striving to live like [insert preferred religious icon here]. Obviously there are extremist sects in all major religions, from Islam to Christianity to Judaism and many others I’m sure that i’m not personally educated on. What I do disagree with, is “religious” individuals or groups who do bad things and hide behind their respective books of God for protection and explanation, as well as the mass hypocrisy practiced by the masses, often starting at the top.(child molestation in the catholic church, anyone?) But even beyond this, the concept of a God, or Gods in general was created/discovered for explanation of the unknown, to pay homage to the fact that there are things going on out there that we humans do not understand. I believe this is a wonderful thing. However our egotistical nature in humans has developed to create religions that do little more than divide us as people by telling us one group is right and the other is wrong, that these God like figures are humanoid and we are so blessed to have been made in his image. This humbling of the unknown has faded, and has been replaced with egocentric stories about how great humans are. That, to me, is sickening. All in all, it comes down to how you believe, and how you use it.

If you ask me if I believe in God, I will probably respond with no. Because I don’t believe in the all powerful humanoid projection that you refer to God as. But, I do believe. I believe in the unknown. I believe in the perspective provided by the vastness of the unknown. I believe that there are far more powerful things at work in the universe than we have discovered, not because we haven’t found it yet, but because we haven’t even invented the proper tools TO discover it yet. I believe that the more we discover and think we know, the greater the unknown actually becomes. I believe in the mathematics of probability. I believe that every individual action we take regardless of how small, directly impacts the rest of our lives and potential, alternate lives, in an infinite number of incomprehensible way. Just because I do not believe in an all powerful man in the sky does NOT mean that I do not believe. That I do not have faith. That I am a lost soul. Quite honestly I think I have stronger faith and belief than those of traditional religion. It is easy to believe in something that is similar, that is easy to relate to, that is of the same belief system as we are taught as children. Much more difficult is it to be brought up with such beliefs, engage in personal meditation and soul searching, to come to your beliefs on your own, not because someone told you to, but because it is what comes to you. This experience is more divine than anything I had every experienced in Church. More powerful than any gospel message. The speck of dust we are in the infinity of the universe is much more motivation to appreciate what you have and treat others with respect than any scripture ever was. But most importantly, it is hard to believe in something that is utterly incomprehensible. I know that I have zero understanding of the nature of the universe, and probably never will. And that’s what makes it so divine. Finding comfort in discomfort.  Finding reason where there is none.