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.”

refinding holes in my heart

i wrote this in response to silent pen’s postdance with a limp.

i say that losing anything from a goldfish to a loved one, puts a new hole in your heart proportional to the size of the loss. too often, people try to fill the hole with whatever they find. additionally, it’s not until the hole gets filled with good stuff can the real healing begin.

no matter what attempts are made that hole cannot be perfectly closed. that’s why we might experience a twinge of loss long after the hole has seemingly been filled.

the world would be a better place if we would only fill your hole with good stuff.

dermatological terms

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

tonight i realize i’m certain that i’m horrible as a depressed person

today Mary, my wife, wanted to make a special dinner in thanksgiving for a wonderful christmas we had. things didn’t go as planned.

the pears at the store weren’t ripe enough to make the dessert she wanted make. she texted me saying saying the house will smell great when i got home. it didn’t. it smelt like something had seriously burnt in the oven. insert foot in mouth, i vocalized that. the rib roast she got, from the butcher no less, turned out to be far less than stellar. at least the brussel sprouts turn out scrumptious. okay, call us weird; we both like brussel sprouts.

tonight, she turned into a true, died in the wool, inconsolable mop monster. she seem incredibly disappointed and sad. though i realize i’m suppose to be there, her mood is an incredible turn off. this will probably last all the way until morning.

compare and contrast to the deep part of my last cycle that lasted about 4 years. instead of day of mopiness, there were 1460 days of mopiness equivalence! that’s a long time of being down and out. it’s also a long time to be around someone who is down and out. no wonder she’d got short with me at times. it’s understandable. she really needs to be put up for sainthood for seeing things through to the other side.

no wonder wonder she took every opportunity to escape the hell hole that is my depression. mopey days that stretch on for far too long.

my mom’s contributions

parents always make contributions to their children whether good or bad. These are formative instances with my mom.

the brother i never knew

the brother i never knew – i’m sure i’ve talked about my siblings. and more specifically, brothers, but this brother is different. micheal was born and died almost exactly 7 years to the day of my entry into this world, for obvious reasons, i never got a chance to meet him. on his passing, he got buried with the most basic of children’s headstone. since that day, he was and seldom is ever discussed by my family.

i don’t know if that is weird, but Mary’s family honors the siblings they never had. family celebrations always had a vase of rose with eight roses. six red roses signified the living children and 2 white roses signified the children that had gone before them.

fast-forward some nearly 60 nears. and i found myself smack dab in the middle of my hellacious depressive cycle. i went to a funeral and the internment happened to be at micheal’s cemetery. after the solemn proceedings, my uncle Ed approached me and we went over to micheal’s site. micheal’s cement headstone with his name stamped into it stood in stark contrast to some of the surrounding, nicer marble headstones.

Ed made a kind and generous offer. he offered to contribute to an updated michael’s headstone if my family contributed to it. i kindly thanked him for the offer and took some pictures so i could explain the options to my siblings.

depression ruled, so days turned to months and i still hadn’t sent and the email to my siblings. you could rightfully say, “how much energy does it take to write and send an email?” there were literally hundreds of times i had composed the email in my head. unfortunately, the pathway from the brain to the keyboard and screen never cleared enough to make it happen. to answer the question from the beginning of the paragraph, “more than i had.” believe me, the many times i thought about the uncompleted request, i felt some combination of bad, sad, and a feeling of letting Ed down. even today, i still struggle with these feelings.

though i still hang around the periphery of depression this story has a happy ending. my uncle Ed took it on his own to purchase the upgraded headstone of his own resources. Ed sounds like a cool dude, huh? well, let me tell you, he is that and then some. oh, the stories i could tell, in a good way mind you.

(btw, the cemetery didn’t blur out my last name, i did. :^) )

here fido—come here—come on boy

at a recent support meeting, the question came up on why so many dogs have the name fido. A quick internet search found plenty.

the notre dame Latin dictionary lists fido as to trust, believe and confide in. many books defines fido as i am faithful. so fido is is considered faithful, trusty and worthy confidante.

before we go any further, q: what is the name the the first presidential dog that got photographed? (okay , you can probably guess the name.) why was the photo taken?

as spelled out pretty well in abraham lincoln’s diary and other historical works, he faced melancholia or as it is known in the modern day, depression. he had a dog, a companion and often ab would be seen walking with his dog behind him carrying a package. you could probably guess that the name of the dog was fido.

 

Fido served as a trusty companion in lincoln’s pre-presidential years. when the plans got made for moving to the white house, mary todd made the decision that fido would not make the trip. mary todd felt that some of fido’s allowed behaviors, such as coming in the house with muddy feed would not go over well at the white house. ab found a neighbor who took fido in with many stipulations such as being allowed to come in the house with muddy feet, being fed scraps from the table and not being left tied up alone in the backyard. in other words, the dog had it good.ab feared his two boys would be like him and greatly miss fido. in that time, people felt that the spirit of the things being photographed would go with the photograph. for that reason, ab had photos taken with fido and each of the boys so they could take the spirit of fido with them. hence, the first photographs of the presidents dog.

we know how abraham lincoln’s story ends, but what about fido? how’d his story end?

the lincolns moved back to springfield after ab’s passing. about a year after abraham lincoln’s assassination, fido went out on his morning rounds. he approached a drunk man asleep on the street. fido supposedly went down to lick the man’s face. the man awoke to see a wide open dog mouth hanging over his face. he freaked out, pulled out his knife and unfortunately stabbed him to death. )-:

i wish i could rewrite history and let fido die while burying his favorite bone, but i haven’t found a way to travel back to the future. and if i f did that, i rip a whole in the space/time continuum. let’s not forget that fido lived up to his name being a faithful, trusty and worthy confidante to the lincoln family. i can only guess the number of times fido let ab scratch his head and lift his gloominess, if only by a little.

and now for a truth in advertising statement: this writing highly relies on an article in physiology today, why are dogs so frequently called “fido”?.

andy warhol?

the archivist working with andy warhol works found this amoung his works.

I just want to know how he could of known want my unshaven look would be in 2015 since he died in 1987!

in memory…

a tribute to my brother

a turning point

a turning point for me happened in my early teens. i don’t quite remember the particulars but i had some righteous reason to be anger at my dad. he yelled back at me with these simple words, “you can’t be angry at me, i’m your father!”