living in fear = not save

thanks to discussions with my friend lizzie, I have had some new realizations.

i had known of my dad’s anger and displeasure toward me and my siblings actions. i wanted to avoid those at any cost. i came to know that as flying under the radar. if i could fly under the radar, i could avoid the wrath of dad. this was a continuous and exhausting struggle. those times i would do something wrong, no matter how small, I’d pop up on the radar and be in fear of what ever retribution would come my way. It was never a lesson except through retribution.

how is this fear any different than the fear the wild rabbit feels, afraid of the next time they are to be chased by a wolf or coyote, with in inches of their life? in both instances, there is this living in fear of something that may or may not happen. with this constant fear, the adrenal gland constantly works over time. that’s hard on the body.

all of this came into focus from a simple and obvious statement; living in fear = not safe. it is so obvious, i had never realized it before.

the above and more comes cascading out of that statement. i had this vision of a somewhat idyllic childhood. Sure, i had my struggles, among them my dysfunctional family and the gifts that came from that, but leaving childhood i felt somewhat well adjusted. Also, so does the rabbit but still, when they hear a branch break at 50 feet, their hair trigger response tells them to run.

on this statement alone, living in fear = not safe, causes the crystalline structure of my supposed idyllic childhood to come crashing down. i now sit in the broken shards, in full recognition of my early childhood along with some of the outcomes because of it. i, like the rabbit developed to hair trigger response to run. why run? because i like the bunny, don’t feel save.

sitting in the shards, an answer to a long standing question comes into focus, “how with this supposed idyllic childhood, do i face such emotional and depressive struggles?” the answer comes clear; there was no idyllic childhood. i now have a better understanding of the reasons for the lack of foundation that i hoped would serve as a basis of handling life’s struggles.

will i ever feel safe again? likely not. the early childhood’s experience are pretty difficult to overcome. even if i could, there still exists this safety robbing fear is part of just about any higher life form. even with that, thanks to you and my friends around me, i can learn ways to handle it and hopefully make for a better life. is failure inevitable? sometimes. i will close with a self authored meme, “failure doesn’t make me less of a human…it only makes me human.”

my wife’s mri results

hello,

i wanted you to know that my wife got back some results back from an mri last night and there is at least some cause for concern. not much is known right now, but this is what I know.

my wife has a mass about 1x1x2 near her knee. it was found by an astute pt. the mass is “suspicious” in nature. it could be what is called a liposarcoma or cancer contained with a fatty mass.

we are, no doubt, scared but hopeful. my wife’s sister had something very similar and it ended up to be a mass of baby fat. thankfully my wife sleeps peacefully next to me as i tap this out about 5:30 am, tuesday morning.

a needle biopsy is next and currently not scheduled since we got the results about 8:00 pm monday night. i will update you when there is more news.

keep us in your thoughts and prayers,

thanks.

yoda-wise beyond his years

do…or do not

yoda utters these words to luke skywalker when he was attempting to raise his x-wing fighter out of the swamp. (there is the final part of the line i cut out, “there is no try.” for the purpose of this post, it is not necessary.) yoda spoke to luke about taking action or staying on the sidelines. the in between leads too much struggle and loss of energy. maybe yoda was wise beyond his 900 years.

dermatological terms

can you say neoplasm of uncertain behavior? good. i could since last saturday. let me back up a little.

somewhere between heaven and hell

so, so you think you can tell
heaven from hell…

roger/gilmour waters

i’ve seen my heaven and i’ve seen my hell. heaven occupied much of my early life, before my long and deep depression. sure, the golden streets didn’t exist and i didn’t really need them. things seldom seemed to go as planed, but as the story goes, that’s life. i could find at least some satisfaction in what i did and what i had become. sure, i had my depressive struggles, but I for the most part could manage.

face off

i’ve had a bad habit in my life of letting my bring-me-down emotions, my dirty dozen, control my life. fear would breed fear which would breed more fearand and so on. anxiety would breed to more anxiety which would lead to even more anxiety and so on. anger would breed mor anger which would breed to even more anger on so on. this pattern, would entrap me and i would seemingly get caught in an inescapable vortex, spiraling out of control heading for a nearly inevitable visit with depression.

a couple of months ago, i found myself swimming in anxiety, an 8 out of 10. I simply noted how anxious I felt. I stopped and spent 15-30 seconds with my anxiety, not giving it any more power. i went forward with my day. a few minutes later, i noticed the anxiety had left. cool! another time since, i left my anxiety behind by acknowledging the anxiety, spending a few seconds with it, not giving it any more power, and moving on.

You might remember my brush with my “friend” from a few weeks ago. i did the unthinkable act of expressing anger to a friend. that would have been unthinkable, just a short while ago. they ended walking out on me. i convinced myself i had done nothing wrong, which is true since all i did was express an emotion, a perfectly legal and legitimate act to take. i’m not giving the situation many spare cycles; they walked out on me. they haven’t tried to contact me btw. unfortunately, i don’t think i’ll hear from them ever again. their loss.

a couple weeks ago, i was dealing with one of those emotional dropouts, you know, when every seems to be going well them boom! the bottom drops out. Where the hell did that come from? while doing a brainstorm with a friend on how i could handle something like that, I doubted any good would come of it. One of my suggestions was to just be with the drop, not giving any more power. I moved on from what seemed be a lame exercise.

later that day, it finally dawned on me the parallels between how I handle anxiety and how i proposed to handle the emotional drop outs. because of the discovery, maybe the brainstorm exercise wasn’t so lame after all. a few minutes later, another revelation happened. Why can’t this method be used with my dirty dozen; anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, frustration, feeling judged, feeling less, abandoned, lonely, criticized, rejected, and stressed? would that be a dream? yes it would. if it would get an upper hand on my dirty dozen, it’s worth the old college try.

last night, i had another one of those most enjoyable emotion dropouts. i tried my new method. i acknowledged i dropped out, had a few moments with it and tried to move on. Is mostly worked, not as well as my try with anxiety, but i still felt i recovered more quickly. and after going through the process, i felt less controlled by the dropout. i went to bed hoping to held by Mary to finish my recovery. she laid there in sound asleep. i didn’t get my hold, my recovery completed before falling to sleep, though.

today, i went cross country skiing for the first time this year. even though I had skied for over 25 years, today i just couldn’t stay over my skis. after brutal wipeouts, and, god forbid, taking my skis off do go down a couple of hills, i had myself convinced that i had skied the last time for the year. i noticed how frustrated i was. i acknowledged i was frustrated, spent a moment or two with it and moved on. the energy quickly dissipated and i went on with my day. The topper? by the end of the day, i actually had a fun and good time. the frustration which would have sunk my day many times before, became barely a blip on the screen.

maybe there is something to, for lack of a better term, not fighting my dirty dozen. when they show, i treat them like the obnoxious guest at a cocktail party. i’ll give ’em a nod from afar, and move on to people i’d rather talk to. in the analogy, that will make for a much more pleasant cocktail party and for life, a little less tumultuous journey. the would be a good thing.

changing the definition of late

i hate dentistry, brought on by 3 out of 4 bad dentist. isn’t the dentyne ad? 3 or 4 dentist recommend dentyne for their patients who chew gum. if not, it’s some where close but reversed. for that reason, it has been about 20 years since i stepped in a dentist office. tomorrow is root canal time. i’ve had one root canal done by the 1 out of 4 dentists who actually knew how to practice dentistry. supposedly i have a good dentist tomorrow. we’ll see. i’m still not looking forward to it.

Mary, knowing of my dental anxiety, announced she is taking the day off tomorrow in support of me. do you think i could put her in the chair instead of me? just asking. that would be great support. wouldn’t improve my mouth, though.

last week, with her statement of support, also made the gleeful declaration, “since i don’t have to go in early i can stay up late! which brings us to tonight.

Mary said she was a little bit tired. that might of been a bit of an under statement. her eyes closed for good at quarter to eight. even though sherlock has been up and down a few times moving between the couch and the floor, there still is no movement.

so, by the power in vested in me by no one in particular, since Mary gleefully wanted to stay up late, and since she was asleep by quarter to eight, i officially change the definition of late to quarter to eight. please adjust your clocks accordingly.

thank you.

note: 3 out of 4 people who appreciate off kilter humor will appreciate this post for the humor that it is. 

coming to terms with the thing that imprison me

have you ever noticed the spinning cycles of depression which seem to be there whether in cycle or not? I surely have.

sadness leads to sadness which leads to even more sadness. sadness seems to become an all encompassing self-fulfilling struggle.

fear leads to fear which leads to even more fear. fear seems to become an all encompassing self-fulfilling struggle.

compartmentalization

compartmentalization: divide into sections or categories.

i’m excellent at compartmentalizing-well as long as there is only one compartment. that’s a kind way of saying an amoeba probably does a better job at compartmentalizing than i do.

losing control- why it happens, what happens and and regaining it

what do auto accidents, breaking up with a girlfriend/boyfriend, feelings of frustration, loss of a job, loss of a bet, dealing with a fire, depression, medical conditions, breaking and arm, spraining an ankle and the list goes on and on all have in common? at some level, they all to some degree represent a loss of control.