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.

roaring one little roar at a time

last week, i developed the idea of roaring or standing up for one selves. people who didn’t learn to roar, like me, sometimes run into troubles standing up for themselves in adulthood. after these discoveries, i decided i was going to locate my roar, to stand up for myself. here’s a couple of my roars.

the brother i never had

I got a phone call this morning. i think i feel a little like anxious mom when recently she found out about the passing of her biological mother that she never knew. I felt and feel sadness when I heard my brother has lost his battle with cancer yet the feelings are definitely tempered considering the years of disconnect between him and I.

sad but true

as Mary and i drove home from her sister’s house for easter, i noted that I felt more comfortable with her family than my own. it’s not like i’m sleeping with any member of her family, well except for the person with whom i exchanged vows. 🙂

[Guest Post] Depression, Stigma and Society

Hi, I’m Depressionless and I am fortunate enough to be able to write a guest post on this blog. For more of my writing, check out my blog at depressionless.wordpress.com.

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Some people have depression because of family issues, some have depression because they have lost someone they love, but when I was asked why I have depression I just couldn’t reply. It is not because I didn’t want to tell them, I actually had no idea. I still cannot figure it out. It doesn’t make sense. Depressionless, you can’t be depressed, look how good your life is… Yeah, that probably makes the whole feeling worse.

There is a lack of understanding about depression. The first friend I told (except for my really good friend who lives 3000 miles away) could not understand how I had depression. “But you look so happy all the time” was one of the first things they said as we sat on the park bench discussing my mental illness. I just replied with “Yeah, I look happy, but I have depression”. Maybe it is because teenagers have no understanding of the world yet, or maybe people judge a book by it’s cover. This is why I do not tell people about my depression. Those who don’t understand (the majority of people) will think I am making it up or think I am attention seeking, just because they don’t really know how depression affects me.

I’m not the only one. There is a stigma around depression which forces those suffering from it to stay silent. For me, the internet is the only way I can talk about it because people cannot judge me, only what I write. Without the internet I would never have seen a doctor, or my counsellor, or realised I had depression, or receive help from my friend who lives 3000 miles away. People don’t understand depression until someone they know suffers from it, which is very sad. It takes anonymity for many people to get help, and anonymity is not the best way. It is hard to help your depression by sitting behind a screen in your bedroom, in fact that could make everything worse.

If the stigma behind depression were to disappear I am certain you would suddenly hear about a lot of people you know suffering from depression. At the moment, I don’t know anyone who has depression yet statistics suggest 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience some kind of mental health problem each year. I know quite a few people, so I can’t see how that statistic would make sense if I was the only one in 20, or 50, or 100. The truth is that people you know will be hiding their depression from you. I am hiding my depression from most of my friends. That may not be your fault, society as a whole is to blame. But society must change, and then the care of those suffering will also improve.

Hiding your depression hurts. You need to be cared for in a special way. But you can’t get help because of society. That is the problem. How do we solve it? Simple, we must educate. When everyone knows the truth about depression, they will understand what sufferers go through better, and they may be able to help instead of forcing the sufferers to stay silent. Bloggers such as myself try to show the world the truth. The internet has various sites that teach you about depression, teach you about the illness that is more than just feeling sad. Many of you will have thought depression is just feeling sad, and if that is your belief you should read up on it. I hope you never have to suffer from depression, but I do hope you can understand and empathise with those who do. The more you know the better you can help.

a sad disconnect

Mary, my wife, is a loving, caring supportive person; that’s a given. she more than anyone, probably more than me, wants me to get through the crap i am going through. she sees the pain i go through everyday and that causes her great pain.

today, i had an aha moment.

Mary  is always willing to offer suggestions, things that might make a difference in my life. she does this because she cares about me, because she loves me, she wants me to get better.

something happens on the way from her caring and loving on the way to my brain. through my twisted hearing, my twisted mind, that loving and caring gets lost. i fear that if i don’t follow through on her suggestions, i will be a little less lovable.

the sad thing is the disconnect does not end there. when i choose not to follow through on her suggestions, she feels unheard, she fells rejected. she must think i don’t care enough to follow through on this suggestion.

the thing is, either both of us or broken or neither of us are broken. we just are where we are.

yet through our own twisted hearing, our own twisted minds we are each able to compound the situation and make things far worse than they have to be.

my wish, my hope: that i can better recognize the acts of love and care, the support that Mary gives me. secondly, i hope that Mary can see that i am as frustrated as she is. that i want to get better. that i’m trying and i can’t do everything. that i hate being in this place.