equanimity

composure. sangfroid. even-headedness. i am filled with it this morning, and i am not at all impressed.

equanimity is the goal of the buddhist practice. it strikes me as the thing that john the baptist must have cultivated in himself while awaiting his death, what the apostle paul must have settled into while languishing in prison after prison, what mandela must have required to endure and then to forgive. it is what i see in the dalai lama every time he is interviewed, and i have always desired to be in that state.

acceptance. resignation without giving up. a decided lack of passion about one's own circumstance. i don't mean to imply that i am stuck in any sort of prison or anything of the sort. if anything, quite the opposite today. in yesterday morning, upon waking, i found myself making a connection to the world i have not felt in quite some time, if ever. it was not that i looked around and felt that all was love, that i clicked into place and everything around me suddenly made sense, or that every choice i have ever made came rushing back to me in a pregnant moment and i gained great clarity as to how i came to be where i am. nothing so grandiose, i'm afraid, but i did wake on sunday morning with a feeling that i was part of the picture, the really big one.

for a long, long time now i have felt outside of it all, like i had somehow been lifted out of the stream of consciousness the rest of the world swims in and had been left to sit on the shore and watch the fun with muddy feet. it was a feeling of separateness, of aloneness almost - a feeling that i wasn't quite fitting the way i am supposed to, like a puzzle piece that someone has jammed into the wrong space, bent tabs squeezed into a place in which they don't belong, kinked up and image flaking off. it had become not so serious as that perhaps, but rather than feeling jammed in it had come to the point where i had pulled myself out of the space altogether and rested on the picture wondering where my place even was. i don't know that i have truly wedged myself back in yet, but i at least recognized yesterday that i have tabs and divots, that there is indeed a spot for me to fit in this grand design. i felt like i did have someplace i belonged and was part of the picture. i felt other people like they were peers, not threats.

i ran yesterday, too, for the first time in 2 months or so. i had taken a trot last weekend - just a lazy something to test the legs and see how the felt - but yesterday i ran for real. just a quick 5k, but that was just the thing: it was reasonably quick, under 25 minutes. not bad, and the legs feel pretty good this morning. but i ran. got back to being me for a bit. nice.

and this has all left me with a feeling of equanimity. i have peace, i have some small sense of contentment. i am neither overjoyed nor irritated this morning. i find myself of simple and sound mind with neither thrill nor venom. i just am. i have achieved, to some degree, what i have sought. and it is uncomfortable.

i am not calm. i am not smooth. i have always been in turmoil. i have, for as long as i can remember, been a busy sea, and to have my waves suddenly gone is leaving me a little confused, i think. i am passionate, enthralled, annoyed, roiling and boiling and bubbling and tossed about, rain-spattered and water over the gunwales or racing swiftly under blue skies and over sun-baked simple waves, with the light hot on my back and my attention on the sea in front, waiting for the wave that would bounce me from my joys and thrash me back into stormy waters. to sit still in the doldrums, waves gone and sea of glass beneath me, breezes cool and temperate and soft enough not to disturb my lack of motion, is unfamiliar and not a little disconcerting.

i have come to where i want to be, or at least have found my way into the same country, sharing surroundings with it, and i am finding that this country is so new and so different that it is hard to decide that it is a nice place to stay. i know that i must remain here in the glass-smooth seas of this country, if only to survive the journey, for i know to have lived as long as i have in the surging waters of my own oceans has been sheer luck. my outlook has been severe, my waves sharp and dangerous, and to have made it through them has been as astounding a bit of fortune as this world has seen. and so it is not without great introspection that i say that i feel like a foreigner here in this smooth water. for all of the connection i felt yesterday, for all the part-of-it-allness, the very feeling of composure it begat has created a dis-ease within me through my lack of familiarity with it.

sad, i suppose, that i should get to the point that so many wish to achieve - the connection and acceptance rolled together into a balance that gives peace and calm outlook that can take so long to cultivate - only to be confused that it has stolen my passion. i feel things in great, wide swings, depths and peaks of equal height and depth if not frequency, and this spot in between which we all seek has me wondering what the big deal is. i am fighting for acceptance of my own acceptance, equanimity in the face of my own equanimity. with my passions quelled, this middle ground feels to me to be middling. this could take more work than i thought.

perfectionism

so, the dreams have slowed down but haven't really stopped. i started seeing a new therapiste (she's female, so it's therapiste, not therapist, you know), and she suggested that it's very likely that i am finally ready to start dealing with some of the stuff i've been burying, and as a result my unconscious mind is starting to root it up and spit it out because it's finally ok to do so. sounds alright to me, and i'm sure it's better than the alternative (which i gather means swallowing it all continually throughout the remainder of my life until it eventually either explodes and takes me with it or rots me from the inside out) - but it's still exhausting.

frankly, i'm bored with my own brain's inability to be obtuse. we're always reading and hearing about dream interpretation, and how certain things have symbolic meanings that it frequently takes specialists or at least books to muddle our way through, and then even freud admitted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. but really, my dreams are so glaringly obvious when they even bother to be symbolic at all that it is, honestly, embarrassing. but i suppose that all just reinforces what the therapiste says - must be time to deal with it if i can't even be bothered to codify it.

in any case, in churning through this with the therapiste, it became patently obvious that my underlying, root-cause issue for many of my difficulties (challenges? problems?) is perfectionism. now, those who know me are all sitting and reading this with giant question marks overt heir heads, because i come across as far less than a perfectionist, but there's so much truth to this it was a little painful to hear.

i want things to have discrete results, provable truths, to be right or wrong, black or white, and in the end i prefer it if everything is perfectly lined up and executed to the utmost. when you realize just how impossible perfectionism is, you can see just how paralyzing it can be. roll a massively lacking self image and more than a few pounds of self-loathing on top of that realization, and you have yourself a recipe for never having the confidence to stat anything at all, and for becoming disenchanted with the things one does start before they're ever finished because they're not going right. crap. sounds so terribly familiar i wanted to curl up and quit right there.

and social anxiety? don't even get me started. in sales, there is a thing known as the 'hit rate', essentially the percentage of successful sales made for a volume of calls made. if you're over 10% in most industries, you're superstar. and in real life all our interactions have a hit rate, but we think of them as friends, acquaintances, enemies, or just those who can barely tolerate us. try loading perfectionism into your social requirements and you will desire nothing less than a completely unachievable hit rate of 100%. you want every interaction to go perfectly and to come out the other side with a new best friend. that is never going to happen, so you obsess over what might go wrong. you obsess over what did go wrong. you obsess over what didn't go wrong so you can try to repeat it next time you run up against this person.

what i think makes the most sad about it all is what it may have cost me. i realize this may make little sense, but i do what i do now because of my perceived inability to do what i want to do. i have never wanted to be anything less than creative for a living, to have a consistent outlet for everything inside me that wants to be expressed and to share the beauty or ugliness of that with the rest of the world, be it through visual arts or music. but while i may have some natural ability, i haven't the patience to develop it because it should be perfect already. i have a subconscious impression that everything i attempt should be coming out right and that learning shouldn't be necessary because it means taking imperfect steps. and so i leave myself with a partial ability to do anything creative that is even worthless in and of itself because i won't use it due to its imperfection. now i live in a world of numbers that are provable and discrete. there are right and wrong answers. i exercise some creativity in what i do because there is definitely an art to massaging margins and managing bids, and the handling of salespeople versus product management is an art form all to itself. but in the end, it's not me, and i'm just now beginning to mourn the loss of what i might have been able to do if i didn't just see art and music as having unprovable success rates. in my mind, artistic success translates as sales of work or as being completely satisfied with end products, and i may never have sold a thing and with my current expectations i will never be free to enjoy the satisfaction of looking at my own work and being satisfied with it. that has destroyed my ability to do anything with my desires and left me in a world of numbers.

even now i want nothing more than to spend the rest of the day going over this post to correct everything that is wrong in it. poor word choice here, typo there, that section should be scrapped altogether. that i ever post anything is a bit of a miracle. i do have to go and get in the shower to prepare for work, so instead of revising and editing for rest of the day i will just bury myself in numbers and in the back of my mind wonder about who might be reading this and what they're thinking of it and apologizing to them in my head for all the mistakes in it and for the fact that it really could be so much better written.

kitty!

first off, it seems that maybe the dreaming thing is settling down a little. i had a particularly poignant one the other night, no interpretation of symbolism necessary, and i wonder if maybe it was little more than that working its way to the surface. the problem is that my energy level isn't much better, so i don't know what that says. and then, of course, in a final installment of wishy-washiness for the day, my energy level may simply suck due to the fact that we have had three sick kids around here since that dream happened and my system's been fighting off kid germs in the meantime. kid germs are very strong. they're like the hulk of germs: indiscriminate and powerful, and they have a nasty habit of harming those they love.

so, the kitty thing. in a lot of conversations lately it seems that people don't quite understand how one can become depressed and not know it, and there's a lot of validity in not getting it. sometimes, i look back over the last year and wonder how i missed the signs. but the fact of the matter is that depression hides and protects itself, and it makes you feel good about it in ways a healthy mind wouldn't really consider.

and so, cat. it's like a cat. a beautiful, smooth, warm and fuzzy kitty. certainly it has claws, but you don't see them; they're hidden away safely inside the paws, allowing it to pad safely and softly into your lap, such that in spite of the fact that you know those pointy razors are sheathed in there, waiting to knife into your thighs, you don't really consider them a threat, and certainly not relative to the comfort of having this delightful little beastie cuddling against you. it comes to you, all body rubs and begging for your attention, turning itself over to expose its belly to you in the hopes that you'll become absorbed in how cute it is and pay attention to nothing else.

because, like a cat, depression is jealous. jealousy is how it works. it gains your trust to the exclusion of everything else. like a cat that crawls into your lap while you read, only to insert itself between you and your book, and then, not content merely to have your lap now, but requiring to be the sole focus in your existence for that time, the cat will place its paws against the book and push it down against your knees so that reading it becomes impossible and you must pay attention to it. if you continue to try to read, the cat will find its way around to stand on your legs, stretch itself up and stare into your face so that its own eyes fill your vision and you have no choice in the matter. jealous beastie has won again.

there are times when it is less obvious, too. like a cat who wakes in the night to find itself lonely, it will sneak into bed and lie next to you and you'll never even notice it has come until morning when it's too late. perhaps it has inserted itself between your knees as you lie on your back, keeping you from turning yourself over as needed. perhaps it has wrapped itself around your head, purring and creating enough heat and noise to keep your sleep from being peaceful. but you don't really realize it's there until you're fully awake and the night's sleep has already been compromised. and even if you did, it's so soft and warm, and makes you feel so loved, that you'd let it stay anyway.

and therein lies the final piece. the ugly piece. like a cat, who's affections are entirely on the its own terms, depression loves you. you are its host, the thing that feeds it, the thing that protects it. you are its reason to exist, and so it makes you feel loved, too. it can fill your world, staring into your eyes to the exclusion of all else, telling you it loves you and begging you please to rub its back. and, despite the fact that you know this, in spite of the fact that you understand it's a cat and that the love is never truly unconditional with it, you still feel privileged and special. this is your cat (HA!), and it loves you. it wants you, and only you. and so you love it back. you pet it, you nuzzle it, you stroke it and feed it and give it what it wants, because it has made you feel special.

then it tires of the love and swipes you with those fucking claws. again.

running

still tired, and B had a great point. i'm not running. this might have as much to do with the fact that i'm not sleeping well as my dreams do, and there's no question that i gain a lot of energy when i'm exercising. add to that the fact that a good run is one of the few times where my brain really shuts down, and not running might be contributing to my dream festival.

i may have written on this before, i don't remember. when i run, as i said above, my mind can turn off. there's a notion amongst novices that meditation is about one's mind being clear of thought, but that's not really the case. meditation is about one recognizing the thoughts one's mind generates as nothing more than thoughts and dismissing them before they have a chance to distract from the task at hand. at least that's how i've come to understand it, anyway. for me, that's the magic of a good run. i get one step beyond that.

after about 2 miles, my mind stops generating anything beyond what is needed to keep running and stay alive. there is not much more in my consciousness than left-right-left-right, breathe in, breathe out, turn right, car, turn left, another car, on your left, excuse me, whoa bicycle!, stoplight. and, occasionally, i hate this hill right now. but all the worry, postulation, all the things that keep my brain churning and burning disappear. i no longer wonder about whether it might work better on this account to use this pricing model, whether i could better aggregate data using this arrangement, what might be the best way to present and analyze this table, wonder what's for dinner, are the kids doing alright with me now that i'm more mellow, will B and i ever get back to normal again...

just breath and pounding. restful. peaceful. quiet in the midst of sound, calm in the midst of the fury of the active world. i am working hard, but my mind is still. my body is tiring, but my mind is resting. my mind's time to sleep, the conscious and cognitive self removed from the equation and curled up under the covers of exhaustion and given respite from their neverending workings, the cycling and recycling and lifting up and turning over of issues and problems and confusion stopped for a short while and my brain retreating to its animal sense of presence where its only responsibilities are to keep me functioning and keep me safe. and it is always thankful for it, ever grateful for the chance to stop.

i have been missing this. my mind has been working constantly for 2 months now, the only running having been the relay i ran at the beginning of december. i have given my mind no rest, never given it the chance to be off. like a worker with no vacation or holiday for a lengthy stretch, i fear its work is beginning to suffer, and perhaps it's spilling over into the time when i should be resting my body. my mind is craving some attention, some rest, and it is telling me so by poking me like a neglected 5-year-old pokes at his mother's shoulder, saying 'mom. mom. mom. mom. mom.' until she finally looks up and asks him to stop and he can tell her what he's been dying to pass along. well, i might just have looked up, and my mind may have passed along what it has needed to tell me. time to start running again.

tired

i am really hoping this isn't any sort of bad sign. i didn't really think about it until this morning, but i have been unnaturally tired for the past couple of weeks. night before last i went to bed at 9:45pm and pretty much went straight to sleep. granted, i had just spent half an hours in a bath with chamomile and lavender, so a little sleepiness isn't totally unjustified, but when one goes to sleep before 10pm, one should be able to rocket straight out with the alarm at 5:30am. this did not happen. last night, in bed and asleep before 11pm, and had a little trouble dragging it out today until 5:45am or so. it's just not like me, but i suppose i have a right to be a little worn down these days. i just hope it's not diagnostic.

truly, i think there's a whole mess of reasons i'm tapped out. work's been crazy busy, and with big projects that are very important from a strategic standpoint. many of my days have been filled with pondering the great imponderables, and that's both mentally and emotionally draining. and last, and very likely the furthest from least, my dream life seems to have gone off the charts.

my whole life i've never had much of a dream life at night; it seems like i've always done most of my dreaming while wide awake. it's always been one of B's biggest frustrations with me (the daydreaming, not the lack of nighttime storytelling). i simply have just never really been one to remember my dreams, certain creepy blue-skinned ones notwithstanding. but of late it seems i'm waking every couple of hours with some new thing jammed into my recumbent melon that has so jarred me by its presence that it brings me to full consciousness. it's not like there's a raft of nightmares waiting for me on eyes closing - in fact, these dreams are for the most part nonsense or at the least non-threatening. but man, oh man, they just don't seem to let up. and i think i'm just not used to it.

i have a theory. i understand that every living soul dreams at night. it's a part of our mind's mental reboot, a required part of the resting process, without which we would never feel rested and - by some hypotheses - would actually go insane. so i know full well that i have dreamed my entire life. i just have never had them wake me, and i've never remembered them. i believe this to be because of the walls i have built inside my own self, walls that divide off my fears and hopes and dreams from my thinking and feeling mind. i have effectively walled off my unconscious from my conscious, and as a result my conscious self is never allowed access to the things that might stir my emotions, the things that leak out of the mind at night. until now, it is only the most powerful things that have made it through.

that dreaming self is the animal part of us, the most basic bit of our nature where all of our native instincts rule and play freely with our hearts and thoughts. this is the world of little more than fight-or-flight and pure creativity, where any story may be told and our logic has no dominion whatever. it is a place of pure fantasy and where we can show ourselves literally anything. for someone who fears his own emotions and whose sense of self-worth is so tiny as to be self-flagellative, it can be the most terrifying place of all.

i now am spending a lot of energy and effort to break those walls down. i am intentionally punching holes in them, tentative ones right now to be sure, but holes nonetheless. the barrier between my conscious, careful self and whatever lies beneath is coming down one miserable but safe brick at a time, and that other world, dammed up and held at bay for so long, is now spilling over and through and around that wall like so much water that has been set free. and now my poor mind is awash in imagery and fantasy and fear and hope and beauty and ugliness the likes of which it has not had to see for a long, long time and it is, frankly, overwhelmed.

i should start a dream journal, because i already don't remember most of these dreams (except a rather peculiar recurring one where i am imprisoned in a desert, with nothing but a structure like that of a playground and a series of black rubber paths through the sand which hides a collection of particularly nasty, rusted but highly-effective mechanical dog-beasts that are the guardians and methodically chew alive those who wander into the sand - ok, that one is a little creepy, i have to admit) and i think they may be telling. but they are very intense in a way i haven't really experienced outside of the blue lady dreams, and some are truly beautiful. it is not all threat and fear. but it is all foreign and alarming for that.

however this is working, whatever the purpose or cause, they are short-circuiting my sleep to a point where some mornings i feel as if i have had little or none. i remember B saying something about this once when she was making a breakthrough. in time, i expect it will fade into a part of my normal nighttime landscape. but for now, it's exhausting.

of course, i could also be wrong. maybe there are no walls coming down at all and my brain's just on some IT-quality trash dump. there's a lot of garbage files in there, buddy.

ouroboros

i had a very cool experience on friday night. a pair of our friends came over and spent the evening with us, we ate indian food cooked right here in our very own kitchen (except for the naan - that's done out back on the grill, friend), and sat at the table for the next 5-6 hours and drank wine and talked. and talked. and talked more. and across the course of the night one of them opened up just a hair.

this person is reserved and wears as much emotion as possible on the inside. i get the impression that to have such a conversation for this person is rare, and to be let in on it either implies a special level of either trust or drunkenness or both. in any case, there is some measure of darkness that marches in lockstep with my own, but it was the admission that struck me. when talking about it all, and the ability to recognize it and snap oneself out of it with relative ease, there came this: 'sometime i like it'.

and that's just the thing. sometimes we all like it. B has always made fun of me for wanting to be a 'tortured artist'. she's always contended that i am, in reality, far to happy-go-lucky to be such a thing, and my life hasn't really ever been terrible enough to qualify as tortured. point taken. agreed, my life has been relatively kind to me, and i try my damnedest to be happy-go-lucky. but i do love to be tortured. many of us do, and some of us more than others.

what our friend said struck me for the truthfulness of it, and it was a strange repeat of a conversation i had had earlier in the week with someone else. to hear other people admit that they like to be in that place sometimes was oddly freeing. i don't know that i had ever really admitted to myself before that i like to be there to some degree. B and i talked about it a little, and she nailed it right on the head: for me, it's because it feels natural. it is, at my base, who i have been for a long, long time, and it's easy and comfortable for me to be miserable. it takes work to be happy, it takes little effort to swim around in one's own head.

and this seems to be where the problem lies. like the mythical ouroboros, i eat my own tail because i like the taste of it, never realizing that all along i am consuming myself. i refer to my depressive cycle as a downward spiral, but that is only half right - it is truly an inward spiral, one that turns in on itself more and more and more until the outside world ceases to feel familiar and my own tail is the only flavor that becomes acceptable. social anxiety makes it that much easier for me. if one fears others, there is a convenient excuse not to eat with them, and simply to withdraw into my own dinner party with and of myself.

that cycle is a tough one to break. i taste good to me. my own sadness and anger are the meat and potatoes on which i have raised myself, and that i consume myself in feasting on them is immaterial, or just goes unnoticed. this is how i got to where i got to. i enjoyed it. i loved it. i ate myself, gorged on my own darkness until i nearly ate myself whole, and if i consider myself as that mythical lizard i ate my own tail and had to get a look at the back of my own head entering my jaw before i could stop.

that is how close it was. writing that made me see it for real, and i can admit it to myself. i was likely within weeks, if not days, of finishing the meal. thank god for that fight, thank god for that one single clear moment, and thank god for that god-forsaken place i went that made me stop eating.

ramble. rumble. grumble.

scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to...crap, i don't know anyone obscure enough to pull one of those off. that's just fine with me, and it should be with you, too. thppt.

so, i mentioned the other day that B pointed out that i get testy when confronted with large crowd situations. fair enough. who, when confronted with one of his deepest fears, wouldn't get a little bent out of shape? especially when that deepest fear doesn't involve something truly optional, like heights or dogs or spoons (?) or something like that. crowds are part and parcel of society, and involvement with them in many situations is compulsory in order to get anything done, like truly visit a church and get to know its members. its not like going to the mall scares me - i'm not an agoraphobe. it's not merely the volume of people that gets to me. it's the necessity of interacting with them that spooks me. terrifies me, actually.

small aside: 3 months ago i'd have gone into the fellowship room at the church we visited, afraid or not. the idea of admitting that it frightened me was more scary than the fear itself. now that i've admitted it to myself, i find i'm not quite so able to sack up, which is a little disappointing. i'm hoping it's just part of the healing process.

anyhoo, B asked me what it is that frightens me about people, and when i hedged she postulated that it may be that i fear what they might want from me and that i can't control that. i don't think that's the whole thing, but a substantial chunk of that rings true. it might explain the terror i feel when i have to make a phone call for work while mall crowds don't bother me. it might explain why i can play drums or speak in front of a congregation, but the idea of standing in a receiving line makes me want to curl up in a ball. is there some paranoia about what demands every human interaction might place on me? could i truly be afraid of what everyone might want from me?

i hope not. that might be more depressing than an unexplainable fear. i know i'm not the most trusting person in the world, but i'd like to think i have slightly more faith in everyone else than to flat-out judge every intention like that, but who knows? it could be the case. if my whole life has been one giant jacked-up response to stress, then every single demand placed on me could be an additional stressor. and thusly, every single interaction could potentially produce a demand and, consequently, an additional stressor. and that would be bad, see?

eh, i don't know. something about it doesn't quite fit. i know B is right to some degree. there's no question that i fear what people might want from me. the idea of being asked for something bugs the crap out of me. but in a situation like a party full of people i don't know, what could possibly be demanded of me? there's no reason to expect that anyone would produce any stress for me beyond the interaction itself. so is it possibly the control variable? is it that the conversations themselves are beyond my knowledge, a collection of 100% unknowns? could be.

i love to present myself as a free-wheeling, go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and there's a lot of truth in that presentation. i loathe having everything mapped out and scheduled to death. it seems to me to literally kill the moments if you know precisely everything about them. (i split an infinitive there, which is a pet peeve of mine, but i'm going to let it go this morning. se how that works? spontaneity!) that said, there's something to having a very general plan, just an outline of what needs to get done or a map of the topography so you can be sure you're not getting lost. and every conversation with a stranger has none of that. it is all unknown. shoot, even many business conversations are mostly unknowns. many conversations with people i know fit the bill. but a friendly conversation, you can be reasonably sure, only takes place on ground that presents no threat. strangers and business, it could go either way.

i'm out of time, which is too bad because i don't think subject is finished. while all of the above might be components of my anxiety, they just don't feel like they have the gravity required to produce the abject terror i feel when confronted with a conversation. i still just fear being wrong, a fool, stupid, unfunny, an asshole, whatever, more than i fear what someone may ask of me. but i do wonder if the unknowns are what produce those fears. if i know what's coming i can avoid looking like an ass. if i don't, i can't. one of the reasons i'm prepared in business whenever i can be. hard to look like a moron when you're prepared.

but it doesn't explain why i care. the unknowns make me unsure, being unsure makes me fear looking dumb and being disliked (a reduction, but accurate enough). ok, great. but why do i care what anyone thinks? why does it even matter? especially for someone who doesn't really care for people all that much.

carrying the dead

i can't remember if this is posted here somewhere already, and frankly i'm too tired and/or lazy to look it up. so here goes nothing.

november 21, 1990. i was supposed to go out with my girlfriend at the time, but was asked to work until close at my store. i readily agreed. i like my job well enough, i liked my boss, the extra cash wouldn't hurt and she would understand. i called, she did, and that was that. until 11pm. her parents called me then, to tell me. she had decided to surprise me, to come and see me at work, something she had never done, a place she had never been. she lived on the north side of denver, i on the south, and we usually met somewhere in the middle. one patch of ice on an overpass, one inattentive moment or tiniest lack of ability to overcome that ice patch, and her car went through a rail and fell. she more than likely was killed instantly. and so was i.

this writing will not finished today, not by a long shot. there's so much more under all of this than even i understand that it will be pouring out in pieces and bits for weeks, months, years. but it is time to let it out. it's time to figure it out. because it is partially responsible for the mess that is my mental landscape.

i don't mean to absolve myself or to blame my entire depressive history on one car accident almost 20 years ago. heaven knows that i was enough of a mess prior to that. looking back, i had been wrestling with depression for years. carolyn showed me joy. she was not a cure, not a miracle that kept my illness from plaguing me. but she offset it to some degree, or gave me highs to match my lows. she forced me to see the big beautiful picture, let me have some faith in that beauty that is everything. she took me to beautiful places where she had spent her life and showed me how they made her feel, and together we felt our own smallness and significance in the face of mountains and lakes and rivers and forests that were so immense yet made of the tiniest plants and creatures. she gave my heart something into which it could pour itself.

when she died, that part of me died with her, or so i imagined. i dammed up the font of my soul, turned off my feelings and began to live my life in black and white. without her in it, the world simply had no color, and i foolishly accepted that it would always be so. without joy, there is no color. without that other piece to my puzzle, i did not fit the grand design. i shut off my heart and went about life as though there was never to be anything like that ever again. my place in this world had been taken from me, and now was my time to be but an extra in the movie, some cog in the machine that made the story go along for others.

now i have been trying in my own screwed up way to capture all of that for 18 long years and i didn't even realize it. my heart has been off, but it has not wanted to be, and it has been trying to make its way out of the prison i built for it all along. through whatever means necessary - be it drugs, religion, self-flagellative relationships, rebellion, music - my soul has been trying to free itself and regain that magic i once lost. for years i reeled with it, allowing myself to flail uncontrollably in the world and make a mess of things. for years now i have been trying to control it, trying to point that impulse in some direction that i can perceive as 'responsible' or 'productive'.

i am not, down deep inside of my soul, someone who feels nothing. i am not a man who is rigid, who needs control, who want things to be orderly and regimented. i have tried to be, and i have been fighting myself. i am kali. i am wild, i am freedom that is not run amok but travels creation with abandon and self-assurance. somewhere within me lies that bohemian youth that does not care for the way that thing seem but rather sees things for what they are. somewhere within me lies that free soul that she unleashed that could find joy in the bark of a tree or the tickle of a crawling ladybug on his skin.

i have told myself for years, secretly, that i died on that night, but the truth is that i tried to kill myself. not literally, but figuratively. i have been punishing myself for the decision to stay at work by killing everything she gave me. her name was carolyn, and i loved her fiercely, for she taught me to live fiercely. and she is the dead i carry with me. and man - that would really piss her off.

poke, poke

time for a quick update on just how weird probing one's inner landscape can be. i have been complaining about not being able to access my emotions. crap, just look at that sentence. ' not being able to access my emotions' sounds like i'm troubleshooting the dhcp service on the new router. jeez. anyway, i've realized something (and brandie's about to have a moment that goes along with when her mother told her water was good for your health): whoa, nelly, i have loads of emotions, and would have trouble accessing them but for one vital thing - i have them turned off for a reason.

since i've been mulling about the hallways of my soul the last week or so, i've been walking a line i've found that lies between my keeping it all held together and completely breaking down. not completely breaking down in the sense that i'll need to go back in the pen or anything, but it's a feeling that if i open that door it'll be an hour or so before i stop crying or want to see anyone. no idea what for or why, no idea what i might find out, if anything. it just feels big and hairy and not like something i want to disturb.

imagine exploring as a child, down by the creek in your neighborhood you've spent conglomerate days wandering past, and finding a cave. same cave you've seen a hundred times in your travels, but you've never gone in. it's been the storefront for your western town, the entrance to the shield control center on endor, the palace drawbridge, but never someplace you'd enter. but today, you've been dared. today you have no choice. you have to go in. it's your job, the ultimate last mystery of your creek and the triple-dog dare all rolled together. if you don't do this, you'll never live it down. so in you go.

it's dark, your heart is racing, but you're finding it's not so bad. it's just a cave, after all. a twist, a turn, your breath catches with each and starts again when the corner is turned and nothing has jumped out yet to eat you. your eyes become more and more accustomed to the dimness, the sound of dripping water becomes less threatening and more just a part of the background sounds of your experience. you turn that next corner, and there, snoring in the back of this cave is a great big brown bear.

and your fucking best friend danny just dared you to poke it with the pointed stick you brought.

a bit of a purging

i am surrounded by wonderful and understanding people who love me deeply. i have some of the most fantastic people in all of history as my friends. my support network is both deep and wide. i know this. i can see it clearly. i even believe in it. i really, truly do. and yet, i am on one level terribly, horribly alone. ultimately, i am the only one in my head. though there are hundreds who can understand what i am going through, no one else can truly know.

this is my struggle, my battle, and no one else has ever fought this one. many have fought one like it, but no one has fought this one. many know similar feelings to mine, but no one has ever felt mine. many have seen the things i see and known the circumstances i know, but no one has ever seen them through my eyes.

i find myself angry and bitter at times, particularly with those who would presuppose that they can understand where i am. it's unfair to judge those people, i know, but i am anyway. i am not a diagnosis. i suffer from depression. there is a diagnosis, certainly. but this one is mine. the diagnosis does not tell you anything about me. the diagnosis tells you about a set of symptoms, but tells you nothing of the storm inside, tells you nothing of the despair, the turmoil, the doubt, the sadness. the diagnosis comes with a nicely prescribed set of descriptors to define the resulting exhibitions of the disorder, but it does not explain the things which have formed those symptoms.

please. love me, feel compassion for me, ask to help me, ask to hug me. but don't tell me you understand. you don't.

i just spell-checked this and there were no misspellings found. it's a christmas miracle.

doubt

i think maybe the worst part of the flattening out of my emotional landscape is the doubt. as always, dear reader, i will bring it all back around, so just grab the metaphorical 'oh shit' handle and hold on for the ride. all hands inside the car at all times.

i have known little but anger, self-doubt and sadness for most of life. certainly those have been punctuated by moments of bright light, holes punched in the darkness, but those holes are like the stars viewed from the city - not so great in number, not so white in color, not so vibrant in their light as maybe they would be when viewed from another vantage point. the drugs help the sky from being so black, i suppose, but they cannot move me into the country where the stars are greater and brighter and myriad. i am still obscured by the city lights in which i live, and so while the darkness may not be as dark, the stars shine no brighter either. the drugs can't do that for me.

my sky has been so very dark, too. i had one of my great friends encourage me the other day my reminding me that many men, most men perhaps, have trouble with 'feeling'. it's all part of the mars/venus issue for men and women, yes? and i wish that had been as encouraging as it should have been, but i couldn't take the solace from it that anyone might have hoped, because i don't live in the mars/venus split world. my closest relationships have always been with girls and/or women. i have always found them easier to relate to (with a couple of highly notable exceptions, i suppose), and i believe that to be because we speak a similar language. it may not be that i speak the feminine language fluently or natively, but i certainly natively speak italian while women speak spanish - the words aren't identical, the pronunciations of the common ones may be off slightly, but the languages come from a common root and are so similar we can communicate. certainly i am not a native speaker of the male language. let's call it german, shall we? thus endeth that cumbersome metaphor. all i am trying to get at is that i am, by my nature, an emotional being. i am not some hyper-rational thinker who analytically selects his responses to the external stimulus. i react with my heart and my soul, the fundamental stuff of a human being is the part of me that rises up in anger or in sadness. i feel, and i feel deeply and fully. but i haven't figured out the positive side to that yet.

and now the circle closes. if i am that emotional being, if i have this bottomless well of feeling but cannot draw up a bucket of love for my family, what have i but doubt? this is the hardest part of it all. without that feeling, to me it feels less than real. if it does not feel real, i am left to wonder why i am here, what i am doing in this place with these people. i am prone to concern about my place in this world i have chosen, doubting that i am the best man to raise my children or care for my wife, doubting whether i was meant to take that left turn at albequerque that would have given them someone who could love them as they should be loved and not teach them the lessons i learned in smothering oneself. i doubt, and that doubt is what i have to work from right now. and that is the worst part.

ouch.

i'm up early, which is only difficult in that i also slept poorly, and even that only after being awake longer than i should have been. yesterday was my first major insight and admission into something that i had feared was the case but was even more afraid to face.

it started in my therapy appointment yesterday, popped up in an email conversation with a friend, and then brandie asked me point-blank about it last night and it sent me on a long and difficult soul-searching mental road that has culminated in a very real and very painful realization. in the end, it was brandie's question that put me to the task of making myself look at it dead-square. we were up before bed, talking about my appointment today and what realizations may have come from it, and during the course of that conversation i mentioned that one of my major symptoms is that if you put me to it and made me write down a logical list of my blessings versus my curses, my list of blessings would be improbably long and my list of curses somewhere between minimal and nonexistent. i can see on paper that i am lucky and that my whole world is something for which i should be grateful. i have more than i deserve. but i don't feel lucky, i don't feel grateful. i can see that i am, my mind knows that i should be, but i simply do not feel it. and then she asked it.

'so, when you say that you love me, or when you tell the kids you love them, is an intellectual thing?'

the question went on from there to clarify that there was no judgment in it, to clarify that she would not be hurt by the response, to clarify that by it she was just trying to see if when i say 'i love you' i mean a warm and fuzzy in my heart feeling or something else. but what it meant to me is the difference between 'i love you' and 'i feel responsible to you and recognize that you bring advantages to my life'. ball-peen hammer to the forehead time. because i knew she had caught me. i had been found out for sure. my greatest secret was revealed, and i had been the one who accidentally pulled back the curtain. i was awake trying my damnedest to drag something up to defend myself to myself, to find a shred of something i could honestly say made me human and not a failed husband and father, but i never did find it. and then i faced my own demon: i do not seem to have much in the way of emotions that don't qualify as negative.

i had worried on this for a long time, deep-down knowing that i would eventually come to this conclusion. and i don't mean to suggest that i am truly some sort of sociopath who feels nothing at all. i think that i feel a lot, but that those feelings are all the ones that people fear with good reason. each of us has a well of feelings to which we go, where we can dip in the bucket and drag up a fill of love, gratitude, compassion, sadness, fear, loneliness, or whatever we should feel at the time. mine is a dark well, and i don't like to go to it. the emotions with which i have experience in my own soul are not my favorite ones, to say the least, and it seems that over time i have found a way to stop going to the well altogether. sounds like a fine defense mechanism until one recognizes that rather sizable hole in the theory - it not only keeps me from responding emotionally in bad ways, but in good ones, too.

for as long as i can be sure of my memories i have felt guilty about this one thing that i have carried with me. it has been forever since i have felt like i love anyone. i know that i should, i know that i do, but i don't feel it. i can say that i love brandie, i can say that i love my children, but i have never really had a moment where when i said it i was bathed in some soft and pale yellow light, where when those words cam from my mouth my heart was full to overflowing with beauty and wonder. i have never felt like a father should feel. i have never felt like a husband should feel. i put a cap on my well some time in the past because the only things in there were things of which to be afraid, and so my loves are all intellectual ones. i am a father. i am a husband. i am a friend. and i know this about myself, and so i behave accordingly. i show love, i show friendship. i act like someone in those relationships should. but i don't feel those things. they don't feel genuine, they don't feel like mine, they don't feel like me.

and so comes back the curtain as far as i can pull it. i don't yet know why this is, but for whatever reason, be it that i don't feel i deserve it or that i'm waiting to be found out as something i am not or whatever, i feel like an impostor, like i am living someone else's life, a life that was designed for someone who is not me but into which i fell almost by accident, and now i play the role i chose. husband. father. friend. roles, all of them. and none feels like it's genuine, or at least not i believe it is supposed to feel.

do i love my family? of course i do. who could not love them? but i don't love them like you do. i don't love them with my heart, i love them with my head. my heart is just not involved. is it something i can learn? i hope so. but even as intimate as i am with my sadness and misery i have a devil of a time with crying; i don't cry much, and when i do it is short-lived, and this is from someone who suffers with a major depressive disorder. if i'm so detached from my dominant emotion that i can't even cry, what capacity do i have for the emotions with which i am completely unfamiliar? and doesn't my family deserve more than i am giving them? don't my children deserve a father who genuinely loves them with all his heart? doesn't my wife deserve more than what i give her, a seemingly empty bag of words and occasional actions that look like love but are a hollow actor's portrayal of what he rationalizes as the correct behavior?

i feel like a failure in this regard. i feel like i am in a place i don't belong, living a life for which i was not designed. i am not comfortable with my role. i don't do happy, i don't do love. a father needs to be capable of both of those, and right now i am not. and so...ouch.

please forgive the mess that is today's entry. it's not to my usual standards of imagery or smoothness of language. but i hadn't the willingness to revise, rewrite or otherwise. i just barfed it up because it makes me feel a little sick.

who am i?

so, while falling asleep last night brandie told me that i really do seem to feel better, like i'm happier. nice to hear. then she said something that completely spun me off of my axis, not for its sadness or cruelty or any such thing but simply because it's me we're talking about here and i can't let something be simple. she said it's like the real me is being let out, being allowed to emerge, something along those lines. you'll have to forgive me for not remembering her exact turn of phrase - i've slept since then.

all i could think of was how disturbing a thought that is, that the real me has somehow been subsumed by this disease of the brain and mind. but has it been? was the real me that which has been buried under mountains of sadness? or is it more accurate to say that is the real me, and we are now in the process of creating a new me, chris v2.0? after all, it's my brain that is miswired, my patterns of thought which are twisted into self-defeating and self-loathing spirals of doubt and fear. it's my emotions that have driven me into slow, dark doldrums of sadness and sparked off into fits of irritable anger. it's my own analytical ability and emotional sensitivities that have allowed me to fight with others by finding the thing which will hurt most to hear in the course of an argument and using it against them. i am, to some degree anyway, the very thing which i have set out to defeat.

i don't mean to suggest that depression and anxiety completely define who i am, but to a point they are part of who i am. the real me is indeed sad, is indeed a miserable sack of excuses and mental boobytraps designed to preserve my own self image of someone undeserving of what he has or might have. we are, in part, not only the 'good person down inside there'. we are, to some degree, defined by our behavior, or no one would ever be accountable for his actions because someone will always believe 'there's a good person in there, he's just hurting'. there very well be a good person in here, and i'll be working very hard in the years to come to make that person who i am, but for now i'm not certain at all that who i really am is being uncovered so much as reborn.

i do believe in a soul. i believe unquestionably that there is some fundamental particle of our consciousness that is a piece of the eternal everything, and so in that regard i believe that each and every person is capable of good because at our core each is grown from the same seed. but i also cannot see how that seed is all that defines us in each life (in case there is more than one - a topic for another day, but suffice it to say that i have had experience and recent revelations that suggest that there is more to our existence than this one spin through the solid world).

let's look at it using the seed as an analogy. a seed grow into a tree, yes? now, each tree is grown from the same thing, built of the same stuff. we see an elm, we see it is grown from an elm seed. we see it is built of xylem and phloem, woody fiber and bark, leaves and chlorophyll, cellulose, cell walls and membrane layered on one another, nuclei, mitochondria and all the other building blocks common between them. now then, when we see the elm, we also take into account its location and its form, its general health and its effect on its surroundings. if our elm stands on a riverbank, healthy and strong, evenly formed and branches spread out to the sun, leaves wide and green, gathering sunlight and providing a home for a squirrel and countless insects, giving shade to lesser plants and acting as it should to filter carbon dioxide into oxygen for the mammals in the neighborhood, we see its magnificent beauty, accept the miracle that is the tree and praise its wonderful design and say to ourselves 'that is a good tree'. but if our elm grows too close to our house, growing unevenly and with its roots upsetting our foundation, causing thousands of dollars in damage and costing hours of cost or effort to remove the offending part, or even the entire tree, in order to preserve that which it is destroying, we no longer see the beauty and wonder of the tree and say to ourselves 'damn tree buggered up my house and cost me a fortune'. the elm is still an elm. it is still made of the same stuff. but the effect it has on its surroundings has changed what it is. its role is not 'beautiful tree', but 'destroyer of sanctuary'. not 'good tree' but 'bad tree'.

is it not likely that we as humans are like this? whether speaking literally or metaphysically, we are all built of the same stuff. we are, each of us, a conglomeration of not only that fundamental bit of the divine that we call the soul, but also of our neuroses and behaviors and beliefs and loves and hates and fears and joys. those things are as much a part of who we are as the spark of life itself, and if those things are negative then our true self is, for that time, a negative self. my chemistry has made me sad. my thoughts have made me sad and fearful. these things are part and parcel of who i am, and i accept that. my true self for most of my life has been unhappy and afraid. but i can move the tree, uproot my elm gently and with care and move it to the riverbank where it can flourish and do what a tree is capable of doing. i can turn 'bad tree' into 'good tree' by changing the things that define 'bad tree'. there is nothing other than that sad person to uncover or resurrect, but the building blocks are the same as those of a happy person. it is simply their assembly which is off, and design flaws can be worked around and compensated for. so while i may not believe that my true self is coming to the fore, i do believe that i am redefining who i am, and while daunting that is also one hell of an exciting prospect.

thoughts

today is a good day to ponder the thought process and how it changes in a situation like mine, mostly because i was mulling over topics and this is what brandie requested. the amazing thing is that my thoughts haven't actually changed much at all - it's only the severity of those thoughts that have changed.

as near as i can tell, there is no drug out there that will make one happy. all modern medicine can do for someone like me is take the edge off the issues. as krisha, the on-staff therapist at the booby-hatch, said, these drugs simply make the lows less low. essentially, they blunt the effects of my own brain chemistry. and so, 2 weeks after a major breakdown, i still think the same way. i still look at things and wonder why anyone wants me to be part of them, i still haven't figured out how to be a happy person. the negative spiral still goes downward, but not as quickly as not as far. i still am filled with self-doubt. i still freeze up momentarily at the thought of having to speak to someone i don't know, and i still have a skipped heartbeat when i have to speak to someone i do know but who is not on 'the list'. there's nothing that can be done medicinally for that. hence, therapy. and that has only just begun.

i have to admit to continued curiosity about alternative treatment, though i think it terrifically unlikely that i will ever go that route again. my former natural remedy had lost its effectiveness without my realizing it, and i'm not certain i'm willing to take that risk again, not to mention my concerns with making such a switch again in the first place. but there is an analogy for brain chemistry that was shared with me once that makes a terrible lot of sense, and it is that analogy which bothers me.

picture your brain as a bathtub, and the water as your stability- and happiness-inducing brain chemicals. the water comes into the tub via the faucet, and exits the tub via the drain, and in a normal brain these two rates of flow are essentially equal, keeping the water level basically consistent. this is mental health. in a brain like mine, the drain is larger than it should be and the water level drops rapidly, creating depression. this is not mental health. now, faced with this problem in the physical world (i.e. were this an actual tub and not an analogy), one would solve the problem either by reducing the size of the drain or by cranking open the faucet; however, we haven't yet figured out how to reduce the drain flow and things are a bit unscientific when it comes to increasing the faucet's output, which was the intention of my former nutritional-based therapy. the issue seems to be that the drain eventually opens wider to accommodate the increased flow. so modern medicine has taken option c: add a few bricks to the tub to raise the water level artificially. seems to be a goofy way to go about it if you ask me, but it is effective and we've got it figured out to some degree. think of it like a man who knows nothing about home repair: he doesn't know enough to change out the drain pipe; he can turn off other water usage in the house to increase the water flow, but only until someone flushes the toilet or starts the washer; so dumping a brick or two in the tub will work just fine. simple, and he can easily see the results.

but in the end, the bricks don't belong in the tub, do they? and what happens when the tub is full of bricks, anyway? no, it seems to me that the only way to do this over a full life span is to figure out the water flow issue, not to mask it or compensate for it by using something outside of the system. over time, maybe this leap gets made and i can stop worrying about it. maybe in the long run i can go back to eating right and taking a few neurotransmitter precursors to increase the flow in, or we find the grail and manage to shrink the drain. for now, i am not happy with this solution but will gladly accept that it is working since i no longer wonder if it would hurt to run my car into the bridge support under eldorado parkway.

the rest of the thought process has to be fixed one malfunction at a time, like debugging programming code. you don't know what the next problem is until you solve the first one. so you work on the big bug you find first until it's resolved, then the next one pops up and you go to town on it. for now the program is still busted. it's just not taking the operating system with it anymore.

alright!

i'm sorry! i have been well and roundly castigated for being delinquent on an update. well, if i'm not writing, i haven't anything to say, so deal with it. truth be told, it really has been a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of week. after my vanishing act last week, there was an understandably large pile of work out from under which i had to dig, and that has taken much of my focus and energy. mercifully, all this happened right before a major holiday for which the nation slows to a crawl, and seemingly my business is as affected as most others which has allowed me to catch up. on the truly weird side of things, i actually produced a quote yesterday that totaled out at more than $109 million. does this sound like a sum for which i should be responsible to anyone?

which brings me to a bit of a revelation i had yesterday. i was talking to one of my great friends, and she and i were musing on our respective astounding abilities to hold onto a low self-opinion even in the face of mountains of reinforcement. she had her thing that she had just plain rocked and for which she had been rightly praised, and i was struck be the similarity of her reaction to my own. in the last couple of months i have gotten a new job and then been trusted with major, global level accounts due to some of my skills and tendencies that line up well with that, and yet i still feel like i'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, looking around at everyone around me and feeling that i really have the wool pulled over their eyes. and in the middle of expressing this thought i occurred to me - this is a rather sizable indictment of everyone around me, is it not? if i'm as simple and as incompetent as i think i am, what does that opinion say about the people who have evaluated my performance and ability and judged me to be not only worth of employment but of trust with our largest and most complex accounts? and this is to say nothing of the people who truly support me every day and feel i'm worthy of their love and compassion and friendship. so either i am surrounded by morons (a possibility one should never discount, mind you), or i am way better at what i do and at being who i am than i believe myself to be, which all sounds very self-help but i even have trouble escaping the logic in it.

but don't you worry, faithful reader - even should i manage to climb via this logical fire escape to the solid ground in the alley of reasonable self-opinion, the fires of other emotional issues will still burn brightly within my walls, waiting only to take down a handful of bricks to expose themselves to the oxygen-rich atmosphere that is this blog. i am a veritable burgeoning towering inferno of self-loathing and emotional turmoil, and i simply need time and a little more digging before another sore festers to the point where you can read about it.

and now we have come to the less-entertaining portion of today's post. i had massive reservations about posting all of this so publicly, and there were others who bore equal and even stronger concerns than my own, but i have never been so happy to have done something for myself. this blog has been a boon to my own creative impulse, as i find that truly enjoy writing it. but more importantly, the others in my life who have either themselves fought these same demons or have watched loved ones fight them are coming out of the woodwork, and the love and support and pats on the back and hugs (where i've been comfortable with them, and thank you to everyone who asks first!) have been flowing in a river the depth and breadth of which i would never have guessed. i have obviously touched more lives than i'd have thought, and that is a good thing to know and to feel. and it is both comforting and alarming to know that not only am i not alone in this struggle, not only am i not a rarity, but this is dangerously close to being a common ailment (though admittedly, most manage not to end up incarcerated!), which is a pretty harsh indictment of our modern world and the society we have built for ourselves, in my opinion. but that is a rant that will have to wait for another day.

social anxiety disorder

so, i had a friend ask me exactly what my intent was in creating this blog, especially with such a first post as the one below. honestly, i hadn't thought out why. i have a need to write things. i do it a lot. but this new...mess, has me needing not just to write, but to write to.

this is a side of me that a few people know. the messy side. i've never hidden the fact that i'm a little odd, a little weird, that i look at things differently and i'm not afraid to admit that i'm more than a little awkward. but i've always acted like i own that and that it's by choice, and i feel suddenly like maybe getting out of this mess might involve my admitting freely that i haven't chosen those traits at all. they're part of what's in my head, and what's in my head operates out of fear.

i was officially diagnosed in 2003 (?) with social anxiety disorder. most people have some idea of what that looks like, but i had someone ask me once what it means inside me to have it.

so, what's it like to have social anxiety disorder? have you ever said something truly stupid out loud, something you were sad to have said the moment it left your lips? and then you were left wondering if everyone in earshot thought you were maybe a little slow? ok, take that feeling and apply it to everything you say. now to everything you do. now expand things so that it applies to literally every person you see around you, not just the ones with whom you interact, and you're getting the idea.

we could try this one, too: remember back to when you were going through puberty, the really awkard part. there was someone you had a major crush on. and when you saw her (him) all you could think of was how sad you were that you were in this really awkward phase, and that this person wouldn't want much of anything to do with you. now, take that feeling and make it apply today to each person you meet, and you're starting to get some part of the vibe.

the difference? those things stopped over time. you grew out of puberty, that idiotic comment faded from memory. for me, each thing i say, every move i make is followed by near-paralyzing concern over what impressions are left. many of us feel that same kind of fear with each moment of our lives. most are blessed with short-term memory that allows us to forget that concern immediately. those like me cannot forget. we obsess about those moments, spiraling over them again and again, wondering what others are thinking of us. and 'those moments'? they are every moment spent speaking to someone that hasn't become part of the trusted few.

and that's the secret. there are only two ways i have found to beat it and unparalyze myself. in business situations, i have learned to tell myself silently and constantly that performance is the issue, not personality, that not only can my likability be offset by the fact that i am very good at what i do, it is perfectly likely that it doesn't even enter into the equation. thus, it is easy for me to dismiss my concerns as irrelevant. but personal interactions can't be treated this way, and the only way to beat that demon is repetition or blind luck. many people can never make it into the trusted file. i have few close friends for that very reason; i always feel uncomfortable. family is easy because they're stuck with me regardless (and frankly, they're as weird as i am). some few slowly become trusted because i have seen enough evidence to suggest that they do not judge me persistently. and then there is a subset so small it has only ever held a handful of very special people with whom i was immediately ok. people so tied to me in some impossible-to-explain way that i never for a moment worried about what they thought. i have some of those people in my life now, some have moves on to bless other lives, and there is one who is lost to this world forever. and they are my true loves, the ones who make this place bearable, the anchors who kep me from drifting into isolation and give me the faith in myself and the strength to go out into that big ol' scary world every day. without them, i would withdraw completely.

so there. that's what it's like. i fear everyone and everything i do, but for a small percentage. some are good people with whom i have formed comfortable rapport. some are my soul mates, i feel, angels of a sort to help me cope. and would gladly give my life for any of them, for they are what gives me any sort of life at all.

wake-up call

so, i came to a conclusion this morning after my world got a little ugly and i realized that i was the reason for the ugliness. or, i suppose it wasn't so much a conclusion as it was a moment of clarity that i managed to distill into a nice, neat trio of sentences.

when you're unhappy with yourself, it's pretty easy to be unhappy with your life. when you're unhappy with your life, it's pretty easy to convince yourself you don't want your life. when you don't want your life, it's pretty easy to convince yourself it didn't want you first. that makes you unhappier, and the cycle continues. this is what we call depression.

now, there are usually a lot of variables in play, too. i'm not discounting that fact. lord knows that i, in my own life and fight with depression, have more than my share of variables, many of which i have - knowingly or unwittingly - created of my own idiot accord. anything that has kicked off this latest round has unquestionably been my own doing. i can see some of them, and i know they are mine. but that fact doesn't actually matter.

the time has come once again to see someone. i have held my own psyche together for my entire adult life with nothing more than the psychological equivalents of duct tape and bailing wire. i have a southern-engineered mental state. and i have finally come up against the big bump in the road that knocks the coat hanger off the muffler. i wasn't ready for it, i didn't see it coming, and in fact i never thought it would. but it did, and now, this morning, i know it's time to take this thing into the shop. i can't fix it anymore.