Tag: #mondayblogs

Clarity

Hello, everyone. It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. I thought I’d share some updates regarding recent events. Before I begin, however, it should be noted this blog is for mature audiences. This also acts as a content warning for discussion of mental health, self harm, and s*icide. I am going to be open, and honest, as I always am when discussing my mental health, but I understand it is not an easy discussion for all to have. You have been warned.

For those who know me personally, you know October is a very difficult month. As a (not so) former goth kid, October used to be my favorite month. I loved immersing myself in the culture of spooky, finding new house decorations (because we all know Halloween decorations are year round). And then I lost someone very near and dear. I didn’t get to tell her goodbye, there was so much left unspoken between us that it left a giant hole that took years to recover. Then I lost my grandfather, the only grandparent I really knew or gave a shit about. October is also my birthday month, and as the years tick by and my circle of friends shrinks, the day is more depressing than celebratory. Finally, there is the loss of Dave. Readers of my blog might recall the post I made about him shortly after he passed in February 2020.

I first noticed my mental health taking a downward spiral towards the end of September. Whether it was in anticipation of the following month, or another trigger, I am unsure. What I do know is I was thrown into an unfamiliar social gathering and completely froze. Now, to understand why this is such a big deal, you need to know me as a person. I have extreme social anxiety, and I’m actually quite shy. But I’ve learned if I can entertain the crowds, hide the fact that I’m terrified beyond all comprehension, I get less attention than I would if I hung to the wall in a corner. To me, it is all a performance, which has brought on feelings of being a fraud from time to time. Needless to say, no one ever believes me when I state how truly introverted and shy I am. But at this particular gathering, I completely froze. Everything I’d taught myself about navigating social situations went out the window. I had two mild panic attacks and had to excuse myself while I reminded myself how to breathe.

The next indication was having a full blown anxiety attack after my shift at work. I hid in a corner and fought my brain to stay grounded in reality all the while clawing at my skin and stimming uncontrollably. It lasted about twenty minutes before releasing me from its grasp. I was exhausted afterward.

Back in the old days when I started to slip down the dastardly hole of severe depression, I would self harm. Nothing serious, but enough to require my attention. When my emotions got too overwhelming, it helped me turn an abstract concept into a physical pain that I could care for and fix. The price for that is self harm is an addiction. I started self harming again, small cuts across a tattoo that I hate, and wore several long sleeve shirts. I also banked on the hope that if my sleeve were to slip and my cuts were to show, no one would question it because mental health in such an obvious fashion makes people uncomfortable. People will typically avoid that which makes them uncomfortable.

The final straw, however, was my brain sending me from a gentle spiral all the way into a full nose dive to rock bottom. It happened so quickly even I didn’t have time to prepare. My nerves were shot, my anxiety at an all time high. I was uncomfortable in my own skin and my mind was so loud it took every ounce of focus just to function from day to day. And then the realization that no matter what I do, no matter how good I am, this is never going to stop. A never-ending cycle of ups and downs, of reality forming and breaking before my eyes that leaves me scrambling to rebuild. A perfectly logical decision one day turns into a terrible decision the next, and all have the potential to absolutely destroy my life. And it is never going to stop.

I’ve always known this, but when you’re drowning in a blackened pit searching for a way out, realizations such as these are truly devastating. I hurt myself again. It didn’t take it away. And I decided it was the end. It was time.

I won’t say I didn’t cry. I did. I cried a lot. Sadness, relief, anguish, joy…all combined into one. Soon it would all stop. Soon the pain, the rushing thoughts, would stop. Soon I would know peace and escape this hell.

I executed the plan perfectly, said my goodbyes, my I love you’s. Took off for the cemetery where Dave rests. I let myself cry, mourn, but ultimately everything felt very final. No one knew where I was. No one knew I wasn’t home. It was late, it was dark. It was perfect. I walked into the cemetery where dew had already begun to gather in the grass. It was so dark, I could see every star in the sky above my head. It was quiet. I sat beside Dave and I talked. I said out loud all the things I’d bottled up, all the feelings I’d kept hidden with nowhere to go. I was honest with myself. I laid back and enjoyed the stars. And my mind was quiet. My soul at peace. Soon.

On my way back to the car, I paused and asked for a sign that I should continue on. Right in my line of sight, a shooting star streaked across the sky. Not much of a sign, I’d seen three just like it only moments before. I sat in my car, turned on my music, dumped the pills in my hand….. And nothing happened.

It didn’t make any sense. My set up was perfect. No one could interfere. No one was rescuing me….. I could feel the pills in my hand so heavy. Waiting. I knew what they’d feel like in my mouth, I knew what they’d taste like. I wasn’t afraid. But I couldn’t do it. I sat there for an hour just holding the pills. My mind was still quiet. My soul still at peace. But my hand wouldn’t move. I grabbed my phone and texted a friend, asking her to call me. The first thing I said to her was “I am an actual fucking coward.” “Why?” “Because I can’t do it.”

The next day I was left feeling very confused. What stopped me? What force lives deep down, hidden from even me, and stilled my hand? I don’t know. But something stopped me, and chose to continue living. Even if it meant pain. The ultimate question I was then left with… Was why? I contemplated on this all day. I’m no closer to an answer now than I was in the graveyard. And maybe I’m not supposed to make sense of it.

There is a song I’ve been listening to by a song artist named Citizen Soldier. Fantastic artist, highly recommend him. The song is called “Thank You for Hating Me”. The title is self explanatory, but essentially he thanks the people who hated him, tried to break him, because their hate made him stronger than he ever thought he could be. It made me realize something about myself.

I hate myself, or so I claim. But I do my best to avoid situations where I’ll be embarrassed, humiliated, or harmed. If I actually hated myself as I claim, why should I care? Why am I afraid of failure if I’m already a failure? So either I hate myself, or I don’t hate myself as much as I think. Maybe I don’t hate myself, but I don’t know how to love myself.

Today, however, has been one of the best days. I have laughed, genuinely laughed. Mostly at myself. The interactions with people today have been more real, not just a stage performance. I have enjoyed it. And the best part is….. It’s mine. It isn’t a chemical forcing my brain to be happy. It’s my happiness. And that is so rare. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m going to enjoy it while it is here.

Maybe it’s okay that I don’t have life figured out. Maybe not having all the answers isn’t a bad thing. Maybe one day I’ll learn to love myself. Or accept myself at the least. It’s even possible that maybe something did die that night, and something else took its place. I don’t know. I might never know. But what I will say is I’m so thankful to so many of my friends who listened to me and refused to pass judgement. I am grateful.

Religion, and other ramblings

I had a long, and lengthy, discussion with a friend of mine on the topic of religion and beliefs. For the longest time, I thought of myself as a pagan. Then, when belief failed me, I turned to atheism. Now, I am not so sure what to call myself. I cannot say there is nothing out there, but I cannot definitively say something is out there either. I simply do not know.

What I can say with certainty is there is much to this world that we still do not understand.

I believe gods were created out of necessity. People needed something to put their faith in to believe that everything would be okay. This could be anything from the weather patterns, food, fertility, even death. Every culture, every people that has walked this earth, has held some form of  belief. By the time Christianity was conceived, tens of thousands of cultures had been long dead, and with them their gods died as well.

We must then choose to belief that there is something, or there is nothing. Furthermore, we must then decide who is right, and who is wrong. But what if the truth was no one was completely right, and no one is completely wrong?

I am of the belief that true faith comes from acknowledging the fact that we simply do not know. We can strive to find answers, but ultimately, we just do not know. We want to be right so badly that we sometimes miss the fact that answers can lie in unsuspecting places. Religion does not explain everything, and science does not explain everything. If you were to put the two together, however, you get more answers, and the divide between people is thinned. If you acknowledge that answers can lie within multiple religions rather than just one, more answers are presented.

I do not believe in absolutes. Nothing is absolutely bad, and nothing is absolutely good. Nothing is absolutely correct, or absolutely wrong. Bad can have good intentions, and with bad comes lessons. Good can have bad intentions, and good can also have its own set of lessons. While we argue incessantly over who is right and who is wrong, we are missing the biggest picture of them all; we are all human beings sharing an earth together, and our bickering is leading to our own demise.

Religion, and even a lack thereof, has led to countless centuries of bloodshed. Our earth is covered in gallons of blood from fallen warriors willing to die for what they believed to be correct, and its the age old chess match. There is no winner when there is death. The biggest armies does not mean one is more correct than another. A religion with a massive following is no better than a smaller following. The number of followers does not dictate the level of faith a group of people may possess. The only thing numbers provide is a larger army from which wars can begin, and how history will remember the fallen.

Going back to a point I made earlier within this post, I believe gods were created from faith, and that faith came from necessity. As people moved from land to land, they took their gods with them. The people changed, evolved, and the gods were forced to do the same. That is why we see so many who call themselves by the same name, yet believe so differently. This is why we see so many beliefs that are similar to other religious beliefs from countries we’ve never visited.  What I see now, however, is stagnation. The world, like it or not, is constantly evolving. New gods are being created out of necessity, new beliefs are forming from necessity, yet people cling so dearly to the old ways they have always known. This is not the way the universe is supposed to work. This is not to say, of course, that we should completely abandon the “old ways”, but we should not stay stuck in them. If we remained stuck, you would not be sitting at your computer, or holding your phone, reading these words while constructing your responses. We must learn from the old ways, and bring the old into the new. We must take the lessons we’ve been given, but continue to move forward. We will be ancient history one day. Our future generations will look back on this generation in disgust, as we look back on certain aspects of our ancestors, and wonder “How could people sit by and allow this to happen?” Stagnation.

There must be a balance, a harmony. The longer we continue to allow ourselves to be divided, the more we see the world being destroyed. Soon, there will be no one to argue with of right and wrong, because there will be no one left to have an opinion.

I do not believe faith comes from a book written by men. In fact, I believe religious texts are one of the poisons of our society. A book that teaches people how to live can easily be rewritten, or mistranslated, to sway the public opinion. We have seen the evidence of this, in fact, with the changes made to the bible over time. Faith comes from within, belief comes from within, and we create our gods out of necessity. Each person serves a purpose, and therefore we must also accept that “bad” people also serve a purpose. With the recent popularity in Ted Bundy, I’ll use him as an example. Ted Bundy did terrible things, but from those terrible things, we got a unique insight into the way the mind of a serial killer functions. We have a better understanding of just how terrible the human mind can be, and we saw warning signs. We bettered our understanding of the evolution of a serial killer, While we focus on the acts done by the man, we also looked at the victims. Each death gives us more answers about the human body, the human vessel. Each day we continue to move forward and learn, and that is the way we are supposed to be. We are supposed to move forward and learn more so that we may have stronger beliefs in the capability of mankind.

From all the negative things that have happened, good has come out of them. Every experience shapes who we are as people. While some events have a bigger impact than others, we cannot point fingers and continue to hate one group or the other. Instead, we take the information, good and bad, and we learn from it. The situations thrown upon us are up to us to decide how we are going to react to them. Bad can be changed to good.

Perhaps I’m getting a bit rambling, and perhaps I’m even not making sense now. I honestly cannot tell. I can only hope these words make sense to someone out there. I wish these words could help the progression by helping people realize the importance of accepting change, of accepting progression, of accepting we do not know everything, and accepting that absolutes simply don’t exist. No one is right, no one is wrong, no one is bad, no one is good all the time. It is simply impossible. Change, evolution of ourselves, however, is very possible, if we’d simply allow it to happen.

You live once, but you grow up thrice.

Hello, my dedicated readers. It has been a while, and for that, I must apologize. I felt I had much to say, but no great way to say it. I don’t ever want to feel I’m wasting my reader’s time, but most importantly, I want to feel proud of everything I deliver. Until now, I did not feel I could do such a task. I am, however, going to attempt to post more regularly. With that out of the way, one of the reasons I’ve been so quiet is actually the topic of today’s blog. It is my personal opinion that each person grows up three times.

The first time is legally. In the United States, an individual is classified as an adult upon reaching the age eighteen. At eighteen, most teenagers are finishing, or just recently finished, high school. They’re preparing to go out into the world and take in all it has to offer. Many are filled with hopes of what the future holds. Some begin working, others go off to school, while others wait patiently to see what comes their way.

The second time a person grows up is independently. This is the first time an individual pays a bill on their own, acquires debt of any sort, makes a big purchase, so forth. This is growth in the sense of realizing you’re on your own. I should mention now that each stage of growth can happen at any point. A person could reach this stage at sixteen, or be considered legally an adult at sixteen depending on circumstances. Like much of life, these are not considered absolutes.

The third time an individual grows up is, arguably, the most difficult growth of them all. Mentally. In many ways, this growth is depressing. It is the realization that life is not what you thought it would be, and the people you’ve surrounded yourself with are not who you thought they were. This is the moment where long held relationships are brought into question, closely examined to judge compatibility. It is the moment when you question everything you’ve done with your life, and compare it to what you want to do in your future. Have you made the right choices? Are your actions moving you forward? Dreams are replaced with reality. It is a hard pill to swallow, and can break you. It is painful, much like the growing pains of our youth, because not everyone reaches this stage at the same time. You’ll find friendships that you’d always counted on distancing, interests you’ve always held slipping away into obscurity, and you’re left wondering…what’s the point? You feel, suddenly, very alone.

What is the point?

Here’s the beauty of the third stage. It is not a guarantee deal breaker. Those around you may grow to match your new found adulthood. Others will not. Your priorities will change. Just like when you made your first big purchase by yourself, you can control how this growth controls your life. Those that refuse to grow may cease to matter, but you find those who grew with you grow closer to you. Dreams may be replaced with reality, but we all shape our reality. You now have the clearest mind to make those dreams come true. Perhaps with some adjustments. This is different for everyone and it is painful. But you have the strength to push forward.

The reason for my silence can be blamed on growth number three. I’ve had to make quite a number of changes in my life, not all of them easy. I did feel broken. I fought hard for friendships I knew, deep down, were over. I’d become so focused on the lack of direction towards the things I wanted that I became stagnant. Upon realizing what I was experiencing, I finally surrendered to it and accepted the change. I was the one holding myself back rather than making myself go in the direction I wanted to go.

I started having dreams again.

I’m not holding onto as much stress as I was by trying to conquer the world’s problems, while it spit on me in return. I learned to pick my own battles, I learned to appreciate what was important. It hurts. It absolutely hurts. You begin to accept the things you cannot control, you cannot handle, and you find a new path. Even if you have to carve that path from stone with a spoon.

Do not be afraid of this growth, my friends. It is okay to be afraid. It is okay to make mistakes. It is okay to try new things. It is okay to fail. It is okay to say no. You will come out the other side stronger than ever before. I am not preaching from the perspective of a success story, I’m telling you from the point of view of someone who has finally realized…life is mine… Truly mine… And I’m okay with that.

I hope this, in some small way, helps someone out there.

Ugh

Do you want to know what I am really getting tired of? Of course you do, why else would you be reading this? I’m growing tired of the endless amounts of writing advice I’m reading online.

See, everyone seems to think they are a writing expert, and so they pour countless hours of advice into blogs, pins, newspapers, etc. And they’re all titled pretty much the same way.

“What not to do in your writing.” “How to peg yourself as an amateur writer.” “How to write a story.” “Things you’re doing wrong in your manuscript.” And that’s just what I’ve seen on Pinterest in the past hour.

Every article contradicts the other. “Use ‘said’ to avoid sounding pretentious.” “Only use ‘said’ during dialogue.” “Avoid using ‘said’ entirely, as well as the weird very, as it makes you sound lazy.”

And then people wonder why do many beautifully talented people become crippled by their own fears and never publish a word, even though they clearly deserve it. From one article to the next, we are bounced around and told what we should and shouldn’t do, and it plants the seeds of doubt. Instead of thriving in our creativity, it suddenly chokes us. We question every word we type or write until our talent has been beaten within an inch of its life.

I grow tired of this. I’m tired of these articles and their doubt provoking material. There are SO MANY great writers, painters, artists, etc out there, and they each have their own style. One is not better or worse than the others, it’s all a matter of giving it all you’ve got until YOU are happy with your masterpiece.

Many people, including myself, need only one piece of advice:

WRITE. FOR. YOU.

Ignore the naysayers, ignore the “Well you aren’t writing in my style so clearly you’re doing it wrong” people. Make YOURSELF HAPPY. I can’t emphasize that enough. LIVE FOR YOU AND IGNORE THOSE WHO TRY TO TAKE YOUR HAPPINESS FROM YOU.

So there ya go. A bit of writing advice that I hope actually helps. And you know what? If you don’t want to take it, then you don’t have to, because that’s what you want to do.

Just write. Write for you. Don’t listen to stupid articles that do nothing but take away your dream and cripple your progress.

Happy writing.