Category Archives: pain

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.”

clouds and sunlight

down the rabbit hole

down the rabbit hole

i don’t really want to write. why’s that? it a story about how getting a few ducks in row, and how just few incidences can send me scurrying down the rabbit hole. it’s a story i have to tell because i need to get it out of me. kept inside of me, it’ll just fester and get even more ugly. even though i will feel shame telling the story, at least it will be out. i also hope that someone else will read it and benefit from it.

those of you who read my last post, know that my wife has 1x1x2 mass near her knee. think of about 1/3 of a length a regular size plump hot dog. she got the results of the mri less than three days ago. it had scary words like suspicious and liposarcoma, sarcoma meaning cancer.

mri can only look for typical patterns. just because a pattern matches doesn’t mean it “matches”. For instance, i could give you one of 100 cards with shades of green. just because i gave you one of the cards, doesn’t make it a certainty that I gave you the true green. they all look green, but there’s only one true green.

just because Mary’s mass looks like a liposarcoma doesn’t mean it is. if may be green, but not the true green. it still is very possible that even though it looks like a liposarcoma doesn’t make it liposarcoma. mri are still too imprecise.

the next day, we took as a day of distraction. we went for a sunrise hike on a local trail, went to a movies in the afternoon and took advantage of coupon our real estate friend gave us and went to dinner. We had a pretty good day, having a good and fun time at each undertaking.

then, came the next day. i came face to face with my nemesises fear, doubt, uncertainty, sadness, disappointment, just to name a few. yesterday, they kicked my ass. that started a tailspin.

the tail spin continued in a weird way.

i was passing on some math riddles to a friend with a degree in mathematics. I passed the on for fun and entertainment. my friend felt lest than because they couldn’t figure out the riddles. I didn’t like that what I did troubled my friend. i quicker felt less that myself, feeling responsible for my friends struggle. all too quicker, i called myself a “loser”. it seemed like a huge leap but pointed to inherent instability.

and who would of thought things would get worse…

taking my nightly med, i stared down the openings of a vial to one of my meds. knowing the fatal dose, i made note that there wasn’t enough there.

nothing like that for a wake up call. not, but a week ago, things weren’t perfect but nowhere near unbearable. last night i contemplated my life.

that’s a precipitous fall in a very short time, in just a day, really. It also served as a wakeup called. It was face these feelings, no matter how scary or face the alternative of them controlling me.

I spent a lot of time conversing with friends, and getting real with myself. i gave name too the scary feelings. i talked about them. i talk about my precipitous fall. i talked about where I didn’t want to be. that day sucked but far less that the previous day’s suck.

sure, i still feel fear, doubt, uncertainty, sadness, disappointment, and the anguish of waiting. now, i choose to look them in the eye and not run from them. thankfully and for reasons not completely understandable to me, that process robs them of their power.

please remember my relearned lesson that i’ve had to relearn over and over again: running for emotions makes no sense. escaping from them is an i possibility. stop, and look those scary emotions in their eyes. they are likely to flinch before you do.

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.

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bird in the reeds

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.

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tatoosh range

discussing the thing that shouldn’t be discussed

I had a friend text me this morning, she said she didn’t like to hear about other people’s suicides. she had enough time dealing with her own humanity.

I have spent way too much thinking and stewing about suicide. Also, havau22 recently stirred some of of my thoughts. Here they are.
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