ah, the little miracle that is facebook. what once was lost now is found and all that. the problem is that many are being found that may have been better off lost, yes?
not that i believe i am one of those. but there's a side effect to my past coming out of the digital woodwork on which i had not counted, and while it may have been a side effect regardless of timing, it's suspicious at best that some of those magically delicious long losties are popping up on the heels of my stint behind doors which required a badge to get out. not in some 'they've been watching and waiting for me to fall apart' way, but in a cosmic, destiny-is-creepy kind of way. some of those who are now in the list of one-hundred-some-odd folks who count as my 'facebook friends' were once among my best friends on this earth, and it no less than convicting that someone to whom i was once a trusted confidant was recently married and i was not even aware, let alone invited. (i say this not to blame her, mind you - this is entirely of my own making).
and so it now strikes me that i have spent my life cycling through people the way many cycle through clothing. you have a particular wardrobe that you bought for a particular year, and much of it goes by the wayside quickly as it has gone terribly out of style. in this way, a lot of friends are like acid-washed baggy jeans with pleats, and i don't think that is abnormal. everyone has people that come and go swiftly from his life. but then there are the staples: a good brown sweater, a handful of t-shirts and that one pair of levi's 501s that are just right. but in the end they're clothes, and clothes wear out. eventually, the t-shirts get holes in them, some chick steals the sweater one night and you wear the jeans while hanging christmas lights and tear the ass clean out of them and have to climb down hoping none of the neighbors is outside that day because you decided it would be a short project and you'd go commando....but i digress. the point is this: even your staple clothing one day will be gone, and generally in 5-6 years or so if it's something you wear frequently. but most of you are probably not like that with friends. i am, or was. or am. hard to say these days.
starting in 6th grade when i moved to texas i cycled through a lot of friends quickly. i had one set of best friends for 6th, another for 7th and 8th, another for 9th and 10th, and yet another for 11th and 12th. now, there were some holdovers into college, even while i was in denver my freshman year, but starting with my return to dfw a whole new group came on and i left those who had been my friends and lovers behind yet again. now these people to whom i have shown no respect, but to whom i was simply willing to disappear (and in a couple of cases, actively tried to avoid), are back. now i am finding that while in most cases i'm alright with that as it would likely have happened anyway, there are a few over whom i am finding i feel genuine regret.
now, some who read this may be thinking 'i've known this sap for more than 15 years! what the hell is he talking about?'. those are the people who have known me since brandie. the fact of the matter is that without her to keep me in touch with the people i call my friends today i'd have let them go as well. i can't explain why, really; i just know this to be true. i am simply not built in such a way as to be inclined to keep in touch. i don't call, i don't write, i don't send flowers, i don't sing love sings anymore. i just don't. i'm sure there's a pathology there that i'll uncover before too long, but for now i only know that i'm talking to people with whom i haven't spoken in more than a decade and some of them i wish i had known all along. too damn bad, you don't get a do-over.
life is funny that way. the ol' river only flows the one direction and if you try to swim upstream you'll find the best you can do is negate the current and go nowhere. forward, huckleberry. and in some way you might find that you wish you had been next to the other bank because you missed some really spectacular scenery, in another you may realize you napped right through the wide-open and beautiful bit only to wake up in a stagnant segment, dry-mouthed and covered in mosquito bites. and in the worst kind of way you'll find that the calm and serene fork was that left turn at albuquerque, while you're immediate problem has become the level 5 whitewater in front of you that you suddenly see leads for a fairly nasty waterfall. whoops. too bad. suck it. hold on tight, because i don't care how hard you swim, the best for which you can hope is that the pretty fork joins back up somewhere up ahead and that you don't break anything really important on the way there.
and i guess the final issue is this: sometimes that fork does join back up, and you can see what you missed. the trick is to find the beauty in that it has joined back up and not cry over the spilt-milk fact that you took the wrong fork in the first place. be lucky, feel lucky.
i kind of wish i had a do-over on today's entry. it's a little scattered, a little drunk-on-a-motorcycle. hope i didn't get any on your shoes...
30.11.08
29.11.08
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.
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.
26.11.08
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.
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.
24.11.08
running behind already...
so i don't have much to say, especially having just posted last night. but a friend shot me a note that spurred a thought i wanted to share.
i made note of the fact that my kids had checked out on me, already moved on as though i wasn't really part of things. they've already surprised me with their resiliency in the opposite direction. in just a small handful of days, my simply being more involved or engaged or whatever has got them giving me more smiles, more hugs, more everything. and isaiah in particular has bounced back in a huge way - he keeps coming to me to pick him up or to sit and watch tv with him or to play with him - just walks up and gives me the 'dada'. he's not really been that interested in me before now, so this is like a breath of fresh air. i have along way to go just to get to the level of crappy as far as being an involved father, but the motivation is there.
big day at work today. at least one major conference call, supposedly two, and a meeting with the vp of global sales. weird how one looks around one day and suddenly one is in meetings with people with titles like that. in any case, i'm already second-guessing myself, already telling myself i don't know what i'm doing. the problem is that in this case i really don't! so i'll simpy screw my BS generator up to eleven and impress the hell out of them, along with freely admitting when i don't know what to say and suggesting that i get back when i have all the information i need, and everything will be good. it's what i do.
if i'm lucky, somewhere in the next couple of days i'll met a friend or two for lunch. it'll be good to see someone who isn't part of my everyday life, i think. kind of a shot in the arm for the willingness to go back to normal life in a whole new way. then comes the turkey trot on thursday, something i look forward to every year now. he bibs have an integrated timing system in them this year, which makes it that much more of a bummer that i've been sick off-and-on for the past month - i'd have loved to go down and crack off a series of 7-minute miles and have it verified. unfortunately, if i can run 9s i'll be satisfied for this year.
i made note of the fact that my kids had checked out on me, already moved on as though i wasn't really part of things. they've already surprised me with their resiliency in the opposite direction. in just a small handful of days, my simply being more involved or engaged or whatever has got them giving me more smiles, more hugs, more everything. and isaiah in particular has bounced back in a huge way - he keeps coming to me to pick him up or to sit and watch tv with him or to play with him - just walks up and gives me the 'dada'. he's not really been that interested in me before now, so this is like a breath of fresh air. i have along way to go just to get to the level of crappy as far as being an involved father, but the motivation is there.
big day at work today. at least one major conference call, supposedly two, and a meeting with the vp of global sales. weird how one looks around one day and suddenly one is in meetings with people with titles like that. in any case, i'm already second-guessing myself, already telling myself i don't know what i'm doing. the problem is that in this case i really don't! so i'll simpy screw my BS generator up to eleven and impress the hell out of them, along with freely admitting when i don't know what to say and suggesting that i get back when i have all the information i need, and everything will be good. it's what i do.
if i'm lucky, somewhere in the next couple of days i'll met a friend or two for lunch. it'll be good to see someone who isn't part of my everyday life, i think. kind of a shot in the arm for the willingness to go back to normal life in a whole new way. then comes the turkey trot on thursday, something i look forward to every year now. he bibs have an integrated timing system in them this year, which makes it that much more of a bummer that i've been sick off-and-on for the past month - i'd have loved to go down and crack off a series of 7-minute miles and have it verified. unfortunately, if i can run 9s i'll be satisfied for this year.
23.11.08
sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!!!!!
well, this was a cool one. i suppose it makes sense just to go in order of events, right?
i got to play this morning. i've been playing so long now that it seems like it shouldn't be that big a deal, but for me it is darn near every time. with all apologies to my atheist friends, music is my language i share with the eternal. whatever label you want to put on it is up to you. i attend a methodist church. i play drums. and as soon as i hit that downbeat, the moment i feel a stick hit a drum and things start crashing and banging i am in a dialogue with God. i am perhaps not by nature predisposed to feeling the presence of the universal consciousness, but when the wall of sound goes up it is for me like the ultimate meditation. but loud. and physical. and good. through music, it is well with my soul. and so i thank everyone in the band and i thank God for what we laid down today, and i thank the congregation for letting me make that joyful noise in front of them. i really, really needed it this week.
part the second is a bit less uplifting. since i got back home i've had an issue. i've had plenty, i guess, but i've had one that i can control and this afternoon i did something about it. my hair was long. and it was getting crazy curly. while i was 'inside', i didn't have anything to keep it under control, so it was crazier even than normal. but i also took plenty of showers, so i spent a lot of time with it wet. the problem i had was that each time i climbed out of the shower here at home, each time i brushed my teeth, shaved, anything...i was back there. i would catch sight of myself in the mirror and it was just like i was looking at myself in the polished sheet of stainless steel that passed for a mirror in the ward. the wet curls that i had come to see as part of the way i am supposed to look became something that kicked off highly unnerving shift in the universe. i tried hard to fight through it, to let time pass in the hope that i would get past it - after all i have any number of follicularly-challenged friends who would kill me or shearing it off - but in the end i couldn't do it anymore. this morning it just became too much. so when i got home from church i ate lunch, then went to the bathroom and busted out the clippers.
i started with a good long guard in an effort to exercise some restraint, but when exorcising demons exercising restraint isn't exactly the name of the game. ultimately i ended up with hair no longer than my beard, and a major side effect i had forgotten: my beard doesn't connect to my hair line. there's a gap on each side of about 1/2 inch that only has about 10% of the hair it should. so suddenly my cure had become another disease, and the razor had to make it's appearance. i don't feel like having a clean-shaven face is an option these days - i tried that a couple of weeks ago and just felt exposed and a little freaked out. so the option? goatee, or technically, van dyke. so now i look a lot like edward norton in 'american history x', except scrawny and terrifically non-threatening.
but in the end i'm ok with it. i may not be able to do a decent barry gibb impression for a while, but that's alright. at least i can see myself in the mirror this afternoon without my head swimming and my heart racing. i'm leaving that experience behind one bit at a time, and today it was one hair at a time. hopefully that will be the last pruning i will have to do in order o move on.
i got to play this morning. i've been playing so long now that it seems like it shouldn't be that big a deal, but for me it is darn near every time. with all apologies to my atheist friends, music is my language i share with the eternal. whatever label you want to put on it is up to you. i attend a methodist church. i play drums. and as soon as i hit that downbeat, the moment i feel a stick hit a drum and things start crashing and banging i am in a dialogue with God. i am perhaps not by nature predisposed to feeling the presence of the universal consciousness, but when the wall of sound goes up it is for me like the ultimate meditation. but loud. and physical. and good. through music, it is well with my soul. and so i thank everyone in the band and i thank God for what we laid down today, and i thank the congregation for letting me make that joyful noise in front of them. i really, really needed it this week.
part the second is a bit less uplifting. since i got back home i've had an issue. i've had plenty, i guess, but i've had one that i can control and this afternoon i did something about it. my hair was long. and it was getting crazy curly. while i was 'inside', i didn't have anything to keep it under control, so it was crazier even than normal. but i also took plenty of showers, so i spent a lot of time with it wet. the problem i had was that each time i climbed out of the shower here at home, each time i brushed my teeth, shaved, anything...i was back there. i would catch sight of myself in the mirror and it was just like i was looking at myself in the polished sheet of stainless steel that passed for a mirror in the ward. the wet curls that i had come to see as part of the way i am supposed to look became something that kicked off highly unnerving shift in the universe. i tried hard to fight through it, to let time pass in the hope that i would get past it - after all i have any number of follicularly-challenged friends who would kill me or shearing it off - but in the end i couldn't do it anymore. this morning it just became too much. so when i got home from church i ate lunch, then went to the bathroom and busted out the clippers.
i started with a good long guard in an effort to exercise some restraint, but when exorcising demons exercising restraint isn't exactly the name of the game. ultimately i ended up with hair no longer than my beard, and a major side effect i had forgotten: my beard doesn't connect to my hair line. there's a gap on each side of about 1/2 inch that only has about 10% of the hair it should. so suddenly my cure had become another disease, and the razor had to make it's appearance. i don't feel like having a clean-shaven face is an option these days - i tried that a couple of weeks ago and just felt exposed and a little freaked out. so the option? goatee, or technically, van dyke. so now i look a lot like edward norton in 'american history x', except scrawny and terrifically non-threatening.
but in the end i'm ok with it. i may not be able to do a decent barry gibb impression for a while, but that's alright. at least i can see myself in the mirror this afternoon without my head swimming and my heart racing. i'm leaving that experience behind one bit at a time, and today it was one hair at a time. hopefully that will be the last pruning i will have to do in order o move on.
22.11.08
11.21.08, 5:00am
so, here i am. 5am. alone in the front room after 5 hours of sleep, and i feel pretty good. weird. i had gotten to the point where 9 hours wouldn’t have felt like enough. seems like maybe i’m getting back to my old self, but it could just be that i’m still not quite sorted out all the way, which is what i wanted to write about this morning.
i talked to a couple of different people about this last night, but i was still kind of processing it myself. when i was ‘on the inside’ (hee!) i built up this notion of coming home as all i needed. if i could just get back to my sanctum sanctorum, my home, the familiar things and people there would give me the security to be myself again the moment i walked through the door. i was fully prepared to come home, grab a quick shower and be myself again.
problem. i am not myself anymore. or more accurately, i am myself again but haven’t been in a while. so everything i see, everything i had been counting on to grant me security, is unfamiliar on some level. obviously nothing has changed here - i was only gone for 3 days - but everything seems different. i was ready for them to seem different (less threatening or burdensome than they had seemed when i left), but not for them to seem foreign. but i realized last night that for a long time now i have been looking at them through a very different set of eyes than my own, and now i’m seeing them for the first time as myself, not as some guy with a chip on his shoulder. i’m seeing them not as something to resent and as something that resents me being here, but as something of which i am supposed to be a part.
problem. i don’t feel like part of it, because i haven’t been. when i got home from my therapist appointment yesterday, grace and caleb were home from school already. i walked in, and it was like i wasn’t even here, or more like they had never noticed i was ever gone. and i think in a lot of ways they hadn’t. i’ve been gone a long, long time, i guess, and my kids had stopped missing me quite some time ago. brandie has missed me all along and is glad to have me back to some degree, but kids are different; kids are adaptable, and these guys just moved on. i’m trying to figure out how not to let that kill my enthusiasm and momentum for this new direction i’m on.
i talked to a couple of different people about this last night, but i was still kind of processing it myself. when i was ‘on the inside’ (hee!) i built up this notion of coming home as all i needed. if i could just get back to my sanctum sanctorum, my home, the familiar things and people there would give me the security to be myself again the moment i walked through the door. i was fully prepared to come home, grab a quick shower and be myself again.
problem. i am not myself anymore. or more accurately, i am myself again but haven’t been in a while. so everything i see, everything i had been counting on to grant me security, is unfamiliar on some level. obviously nothing has changed here - i was only gone for 3 days - but everything seems different. i was ready for them to seem different (less threatening or burdensome than they had seemed when i left), but not for them to seem foreign. but i realized last night that for a long time now i have been looking at them through a very different set of eyes than my own, and now i’m seeing them for the first time as myself, not as some guy with a chip on his shoulder. i’m seeing them not as something to resent and as something that resents me being here, but as something of which i am supposed to be a part.
problem. i don’t feel like part of it, because i haven’t been. when i got home from my therapist appointment yesterday, grace and caleb were home from school already. i walked in, and it was like i wasn’t even here, or more like they had never noticed i was ever gone. and i think in a lot of ways they hadn’t. i’ve been gone a long, long time, i guess, and my kids had stopped missing me quite some time ago. brandie has missed me all along and is glad to have me back to some degree, but kids are different; kids are adaptable, and these guys just moved on. i’m trying to figure out how not to let that kill my enthusiasm and momentum for this new direction i’m on.
le fin
thus endeth the journal. you'll likely have noticed that there's not much from days two and three. there are a couple of reasons for that. first, when my meds started to kick in i had a bit of a time keeping my thoughts straight. i had also developed a gnarly sinus infection that didn't help. mostly, as i got better the differences between myself and the others became less and less comfortable. i retreated to my room and read, which didn't give me much to write about. finally, conversely, as i got less chemically depressed i became more and more depressed emotionally from being in that place and i just lost interest.
i have one journal entry i wrote yesterday morning that i'll paste up here in a minute, and then we're on into real time. and then we'll see whether i keep up with this thing at all. i'm almost sad the journal is finished. now i have to come up with fresh stuff!
i have one journal entry i wrote yesterday morning that i'll paste up here in a minute, and then we're on into real time. and then we'll see whether i keep up with this thing at all. i'm almost sad the journal is finished. now i have to come up with fresh stuff!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)