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.”

when non-suicide pacts go bad

here i go again talking about what shouldn’t be talked about. it’s looking like an obsession, i’m sure. often times obsessed talk about the ese word comes from someone contemplating their own life. don’t worry, i’m far, far away from the edge. this post is about the time i got way too close to the ragged edge.

want to fill more isolated? try facebook or twitter

what does facebook and twitter do tot your mind?

the blog name change

please don’t mind the dust as we finish our reconstruction.

you may have noticed i changed the name of the blog for bipolarsojourner to facing off with the big d. i have a few reasons.

• i don’t have bipolar. my psychiatrist fed me a rushed diagnosis at the end of our first meeting. when i questioned him on our next meeting he said i don’t have bipolar but multiple cycles of depression like i have had experienced are best treated like bipolar.
• i didn’t change the name of the blog at that time; i didn’t want to lose my many  followers (said with a bit of sarcasm considering current numbers and that was about 4 years ago with numbers much lower, about 25).
• maybe i don’t play the game right, but i see other of my blogger friends that have been blogging far less time than me and they have followers numbers nearing or in the thousands. myself, i’m nearing 200 and might make it by june. (wahoo!)
• hoping the facing off with the big d will be a little less scary than having bipolar in the title.
• hoping for more click throughs of people teetering on a visit and snag them at that time.

It will still be the same writing style and hopefully stuff that people find interesting, intriguing, ingrossing(sp)(i wanted the tic tac toe, three i’s in a row),  helpful information. There will the occasional poems and posts about the crazy things the boyz do and why not they are an important part of my life.

 

stick around; there will be much, much more to come!

isolation

isolation is a problem seen on the individual to the global levels. see if you follow me…

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.

we have nothing to fear…

don’t be afraid of dying
be afraid of the life unlived…

angus tuck (tuck everlasting)

does depression feed fear or does fear fuel depression?
does it really matter?
are they so tightly inter twined that they are nearly inseparable?
perhaps since birth?

no matter
fear makes it hard to get out of bed
get out of the house
interact with unknown people
try something new
say something that needs to be said
doubts your strengths
give power to your weaknesses
makes its hard to tell the truth
makes it hard to venture outside your comfort zone
go some where you have never been before
rue yesterday
doubt today
dread tomorrow
to boldly go where no one has gone before

fear is like a prison
it is a cold, dark and dank place
why is in so easy to lose the keys
or know how to find the way out

fear is the heavy chains that binds us
the simple task of lifting an arm or moving a leg reminds us
-remind us on how repressive fear can be and
is the chain that binds us and holds us back

fear unchecked
fear unchallenged
fear not taken head on
fear not faced
are the real crimes
acts seemingly so easy
but with out them life seems so hard

If only those things would be easy
life would me easy
and fear could evaporate
and depression would loose its housemate, its bed buddy, its best friend

then
depression would lose so much of its power
it would go shrivel up in the corner where it belongs
and we could be free again
oh to be free again

dreams

on an editorial note, this marks my 200 quote. make sure to congradulated me on persiverence.

…she never had dreams
so they never came true…

j. geils band

i’ve heard these words hundreds of time before, since the release of freeze frame in 1981. frees frame, by j giels band was one of the few albums (albums, remember those? you know: vinyl) i had in high school. today, the words took on new meaning.

when depression gets deep and the suckitude increases to level too often seen, depression becomes like a thief in the night, clearing out a room in my mind or stealing other even more precious items, like the ability to dream. dreams become a memory of the way things use to be. as hard as i try, the ability to imagine a dream becomes an impossible task.

with dreams gone, how can they come true? they can’t. life becomes like a prison whose has no idea of release. no wonder so many like me in the depth depression struggle with despair.

for the most part, thankfully the story does not end there. somehow a crack appears in the seemingly impermeable wall. somehow a thought of how life might look like after depression somehow implants itself in the mind. that implanted seed makes things that like a seemed impossiblity just a month ago now seems like them might be doable. with that, hope returns.

the leap from hope to dream seems less undaunting. i allow my mind to wander to how things might be outside this room of darkness. the room becomes just a little less dark and those very hopes slowly get converted into dreams. with that, as life becomes a little less dark, the lights of hopes and dreams, the absence of despair, begin to make life feel kind of normal again, and that is a good thing. here’s to good things.

there otta be a law

there otta be a law… that antidepressants can not to be able to cause depressive symptoms. ineffective, okay; depressive, not so much.

let’s see, now we need to come up with a fair and equatable penalty. I got it! make the ceo of the company take a depression inducing drug for a matter of five years. then, they’d know what it feels like, as they can’t get out of bed for yet another day. that would teach them a lesson.

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”?.