A Fetid Calling...the stranger, stronger, older laws of the universe

The mind protects us, it is so dedicated to keeping us moving and carrying on. As i walked today I was wondering who do i think about the most and the truth was of course, myself, sort of, all else is a fog, but it is very easy then to recall the names and stories of the others, the clarity and sadness which swiftly ensues.

I feel sickened by the ubiquitous presence of violence; willed violence, condoned, paid for, sought out celebrated, violence. Millions watch "Sports", modern bear baiting, want the fights to break out, cheer them on, deify the "tough" guys. Use words like heroic to describe a golf shot. Once again, I reiterate, we need new words, the good ones have had their meanings mined and depleted, all is surface, glitter, deflection, soulless. The onslaught of violent culture wearing down our defences, we create new, more complex ones.

My mind doesn't want me to think about the unthinkables. So it white washes, evens out, erases. All is illusory clean slate.

I stay in the fog, moving ever so slightly, testing the grounds, the waters, all directions become hazardous, all become one. It's safe in this haze, stay still I think. I am like a cat who sees nothing, therefore delude myself as safe. I cannot be seen, I want to be invisible, I dread not being seen, I want to be worthy, I fear being worthy. I feel a coward.

Others I have met, they keep going, why? I want to scream at them, why? I whisper, confounded. How can they? So hurt, so violated, so abused, how? why? But they do, they move. Does movement etch away the memories, does new skin form as the scars are worn away, washed away, by tears, by writing, by thinking, by fighting, by moving?

Am I just so enamoured of my heroic martyr-state? That I do not want to give it up? Have I found my fetid calling? Playing the mentally ill, celebrating it? Proud of it? Clinging to it? Is this the real truth of me? Clamouring for attention whilst hiding in my bed. All these apparently counter-intuitive cannot co-exist states are negated, trumped, by the stranger, stronger, older laws of the universe.

There is movement.

Sentry Duty

Thinking about dissociation (is that redundant??). How much more common it is, how much more beneficial it is, contrary to mainstream thought. I consider daydreaming a mild form of dissociation. A rest, a break; from reality and that the harsher the reality the longer the break, the more "intense" the dissociation, a proportional relationship. So I was discussing the two most "severe" dissociative states in which I have been witnessed and that since I at least could recall the therapeutic interventions under which the dissociation occurred, it followed, to me at least, that perhaps these were the sort of therapies I would be better to undertake more frequently. Not so, apparently, as in either case, there was no new information gleaned, I have no recollection of the trigger(s) or of anything else which occurred during the dissociation (indeed each constituted a complete memory blank), therefore, what is the benefit? Damnit. It was put to me that unless, and apparently until, I am able to process the "least" (all things being relative) traumatic, the more traumatic will remain safely blocked. Here is the issue for me, in order to put the "least" to rest - so to speak - I must render, emotionally and otherwise, more sharply the details of each. These "leasts" are not my stories, these are what I have heard, have witnessed on another's behalf. So I must needs process in such a way as to strike a balance between the therapeutic benefit (to me) and the maintain confidentiality/micro-minimise any identifying information necessity (protecting the client). I do not believe these are my stories to tell, that I have no right to feel traumatised by them, yet, the undoubted intense impact is there. I have a right to my feelings and in the many hundreds of witnessing I have felt horror, despair, helplessness, anger, anguish, shock, disbelief, shaken, afraid, sadness. I have been left questioning anything I previously ever thought true, that is whatever foundation lay beneath me has been forcibly removed. I know now, to my inner core, that anything and everything awful and evil is possible. That the potential and reality of a person's worst imaginings can come true.

I can see the people hanging from telephone poles, from the trees, I can see the ravages of a gunshot to a face, I can see the rescue gone fatally wrong, I can see the wild dogs mining the mass graves for a meal, I can see the trucks driving through - and over - the crowds.

What I also - to my marrow - know now is the resilience, the honour, of the human spirit, that the capacity for kindness, love, compassion can remain, can outweigh the thought of revenge. That people can still find a way to remain human and humane despite the horror around them, threatening to pave them over. But this is not me, I am instead mired in the horror. In the sadness. I am standing sentry over these stories, they are not mine, yet I will guard them.

George Takei...a pretty funny guy

my mood is plummeting, I don't know why, I've been for 2 walks today, lots of those much lauded negative ions about crashing against the shore, found some beach treasure, alas, no avail. I am considering whether yesterday morning's uber high has demanded payback and the sub-axis dip is merely restoring balance.

blah.

just plodding along, not accomplishing much, lots of ideas with none of that all important transition to action. Or perhaps it's more of a mutation at this point, so irregular, unseemly even, not my most recent usual.

I have to say it was a very big high. Large. Writ large, even, with possibility. So much so that  mistakenly ascribed said situation all manner of redemptive attributes.

Meh.

So it is said.

On another note, George Takei is a pretty funny guy.

Write and Let Write...it's all moot anyway

Just rx'd my first nasty comment on a blog I wrote.

Wow. Quite vile.

I do not understand what is the purpose of such virulent hate.

I do not claim to be a universally gifted writer (or anything for that matter) but I guess I was writing under the credo: write and let write (to kinda coin a phrase). I did not presume every one person who managed to find (let alone read) this blog would be happy with it. I guess I did assume that there would be no nasty backlash.

Oh naive moi.

So many things I'm thinking I could say, should say, I want to say but I am most taken aback by the anger of the comment. I know I have so much anger too and I remember learning from those wiser than me who perceived anger as an umbrella feeling.

Umbrellas are simple things that provide a deceptively simple service: cover, protection, shield, barrier, isolation.

Our anger can mislead others into making snap and erroneous judgments about the nature of our essential selves.

Anger can spark our own fears, set us on defence and trick us into missing an opportunity for connection on a more meaningful level. Anger deceives us all.

Under this anger lurks fear, hurt, agony, sadness, grief, loss, confusion, feelings of being trapped, lost stuck. Hopeless. Like a wounded animal that has known only pain in its entire existence, such is the nature of the anger-infused umbrella. A dis-guise of hatred, trained on me. What is more likely, trained at whatever target it could find. Such is the desperation and, I think, purpose of driving anger. Anger wants to be dispersed, it wants out, it wants to be leeched out, when it is released only then can it dissipate. It's why I think anger is almost always on top, it really knows how dangerous it is, so it seeks it's own destruction. Our brains are like that description that someone applied to cold-war era (ok, contemporary) Russia - riddles wrapped in mysteries wrapped in (bacon!) conundrums in enigmas... ad thesaureum!

Levels upon levels of cross-signals and feedback loops and "tells"  - our brain simultaneously guides and misleads - and we are too ill-advanced to fathom how it is that paradox can and does exist. We are barely on the cusp of comprehending that these seemingly implausible (and annoyingly ubiquitous) binary states merely exemplify the bewildering intricacy of now.

Oh boy, my purple prose detector has buried the needle. Ha!

Anger is a feeling not an action - but I seldom hear anyone say "I feel angry", instead I hear "I got angry". I am trying to embrace my anger in order to tap the self-knowledge it likely masks.
So anger and agony co-jostle craving a purge. It's what my writing provides for me alone, anyone else I cannot say.

I may indeed merely be the 4-letter word ascribed by said comment leave-r. All could be moot.

But I think not.

Flood Warning

woke up with another bad headache, it's ridiculous how I always spend time pondering whether to just try and sleep it off, that NEVER works, so anyways I did take some meds. Maybe the higher effexor dose is too high.

I just completed a pre-blog survey and unsurprisingly, it was triggering for me. I think the most accurate emotional descriptor I could use is blocked (haha first I wrote blogged, thank you Mr. Freud [sorry, Prof/Dr.]) and with blocked there is no movement, no sensation, have to dig to get at things, I think this writing becomes akin to digging out what I am feeling. Because the longer, even the faster I write (with concomitant typos of course) I get to feeling faster, and the tears come the blissful (sort of) flooding, the
ebbing, I have constructed a sandbag facade and have worked years to have it take hold and hold fast but I can still,eventually get the feelings to crest above and beyond. Despite this concrete(wet concrete to be sure) evidence of sadness, I STILL question, why, how come? Why so much, have I not reached the end of tears? What the hell indeed. I'm still and maybe forever, on flood watch and when I write it's inevitably flood warning. I should not read the news for starters.

I have been googling funny things, things, images, quotes that make me laugh and I feel like it such a pathetic waste of time, but it makes me laugh, where I often wonder at my ability to appreciate humour anymore. It's one of the first things I lost, or rather mislaid, because it returns in bits, I see it first in my response to others'  humor, but once in a while now I say funny things, I used to be known as being funny, Now I feel like I am just a perpetual drag, the dearth of incoming phone calls that are for me (and not computer  generated).

No one calls me. I feel so lonely, I feel a failure at just being human (ahh here they come, the tears) The trigger of acknowledging how lonely,I feel, and I do it to myself I know...

There was a pause, there, I had a pretty "good" (funny, yet commonly used adjective, weird I think) cry, then sudden cessation. And I feel ashamed, I was completely alone, no dog, no husband and I felt like  I needed to hide, I pulled my shirt up over my face, who was I hiding from, yeesh.

Now my husband and dog are back from their morning walk and I was hosing off the dog, he is a gift and a challenge, a good challenge, I forces me to focus to stand up for myself. I'll walk him this afternoon, it will be low tide, perhaps I will beach comb.

Meta

Self-referential.
Yup.
It's another catch-22 methinks: how then do we know ourselves unless it is in relation to others. We can only see what we reflect off of others, what others mirror back to us. I think. I was tired to day, awake in the night. Off to the GP (not guinea pig) and a recommendation for an increase in effexor. Then to the pharmacist who said"Oh, it's good that you're checking your BP..." cause I do that, and I guess it's one of the side-effects, so voila instant discouragement set in and I cried and the pharmacist was very kind, which somehow made it worse. She asked if she could do anything, I shook my head, wanted her -someone, anyone - to just take it all away. I just want to feel like my daily aspiration is not just: baseline. Argh.

The Aftermath

Gains and setbacks. eating my feelings, got into the traditional holiday devouring-everything-in-sight tradition and am just starting to decompress and sense some balance returning (I am a libra after all, strange how balance is also indecision). It's just change isn't it, no matter the context good or bad there is a change, a shift in my unsteady state. Some thoughts worthy of epiphany status, some just old, ancient even, companions. Connecting with a new friend, sharing collegial and human experiences finding common grounds, this is helpful, helps challenge the dominance of isolation, evidence of me fighting back, taking a stand against myself as it were. Finding that somethings that I thought were paradox are not, some seemingly  co-existing impossibilities simply attest to our complex natures. The taxonomy of good and evil, can't do it, cannot have just two labels of black and white, can't.
We are levels upon/beneath levels of behaviours, capacities, resolutions, results.
When I eat my feelings  there is no satiation there is only compacted numbness, so dense it is ironically unfelt, hence the zombie/coma status. Only when I am called upon to raise my thoughts, my eyes, dare I say my hope, I must first break through this density, this blackhole of self where time shifts - where the present the here and now is subdivided incalculably - as soon as I name it now it is become past - the present maybe can never be registered on time, we are too slow to notice, is everything then too late, are we all doomed to act in the aftermath?