good friends

which way to go

but when ...?

for the first time in my life, i have been able to make a room in my home an office/study. true to form it is filled with all kinds of objects that reflect the things that interest me, many of which i've collected over many, many years. recently, i found a group of "fortunes" collected in a mug that i'd saved from fortune cookies that i'd consumed in years past.

clearly, i kept them as they provided encouragement that i must have needed at various times in my life. as i read them, i realized they had a particular resonance to what i'm experiencing in life now, so i put them all on a small piece of paper and have them on my desk blotter. here's what they say:

"there is no doubt you will lead a good life"

"you will overcome difficult times"

"you will discover new strength in an ongoing battle"

"your ability for accomplishment will follow with success"

so there they are, sitting where they can be a daily inspiration during this time of struggle. and yet that's the thing. how do i stay encouraged when all of these statements continue to be about things that will happen for me? when will i ever get to the point that i look at my life and see that they have happened for me? when?

the path and the river revisited

i believe i've shared previously that one of the reasons that i write this blog is to give people some insight into what it is like for a person to deal with a mental illness. my experience with it comes from having dealt with chronic depression most of my life.

i've likened living with depression to walking across a path that is over a river. sometimes the path is well above the river. sometimes it skims the surface. sometimes it is beneath the river and brings the water to varying degrees of height. some levels you can manage and some you can't, such as when the path is well below the surface of the water and you have to tread the water to stay afloat.

the path is life's journey. the river is the depression. and so it's important to recognize that, at least in my experience, when someone deals with chronic depression, wherever the path may take them, the river is always present. sometimes, they're above it, sometimes, they're drowning in it and everything in between.

through my work with my last therapist, i've come to realize that there's a little more to this imagery than i first recognized. it's the fact that some of us are better able to manage being in the river than others. some had good life instructors, who, early in life, gave us the skills to be able to tread water and then swim forward to find our way back to sure footing on the path. others of us were not as fortunate. we didn't get those foundational abilities, and so, when we find ourselves in the river, we are overwhelmed by the experience. we may flail about to stay above the water. we may find ourselves drowning. we may even feel that we are being pulled by the force of the current away from any semblance of a path. whatever the condition, our coping skills are not as strong, so we struggle to believe we will get back to the path and continue moving forward.

and when we do make it back to the path, some of us are made stronger by the experience. others of us are beaten up so badly by our time in the river that it makes the journey on the path a little more difficult and can make the time when we find ourselves back in the river (because we will find ourselves back in the river) even more arduous. some of us don't make it back to the path and allow the river to sweep us away to whatever is beyond the path of life.

i share this additional piece to highlight that the outcomes of a person's experience with chronic depression, their time in the river, is impacted by their ability to navigate through it and that ability comes from how we have been prepared to view life and ourselves. some have been given love and encouragement and a positive sense of their identities and a belief that life is good. people who have that experience can navigate the river better than those of us whose earliest experiences were of love that was limited or conditional, criticism for who we are and made to believe that life is only good for those who follow a prescribed way of living it - a way that is closed to us because of who we are and who we choose to love.

i  encourage you to take what i've shared here to heart when you deal with people who struggle with depression. life is a challenge of varying degrees for all of us. for some of us though, because we were inadequately equipped by nature and/or nurture, it is even more so.

revealed

i am a broken person. each time i experience these difficult periods in life, i see how deep that brokenness goes, and because i've had quite a few of such periods, particularly in the last several years, i can also see that the rate of further damage to my psyche is outpacing the attempts made to repair it.

every day i wonder how long i will be able to continue in a life that is filled with this level of emotional pain, and beyond that, i question that even if i'm able to emerge from this particular life challenge, will the change just be another brief reprieve until an even more hurtful period begins, breaking me down even further.

i do not feel capable enough to live through what feels like a life that does not make sense and certainly is not what i hoped it would be. at this point, it does not feel as if i ever will.

a tear-filled silence

every day i carry this sadness. some days it hovers around me like a mist barely perceptible but very much there, such that emotions like happiness or joy are always muted, partially obscured by a thin veil. on other days, it is heavy and impedes my every thought and emotion, crushing any sense of hope or peace or optimism. sometimes, like now, it is so oppressive that it feels as if it's suffocating me - my lungs seem to take in only a quarter of the oxygen i require and my heart feels as if it's about to burst from the strain of merely existing from one moment to the next.

i have been like this for so many years they seem too numerous to account for, and the question that  continues to come to mind over and over - is this all life has for me, and if so, why?  no answers ever come. just more pain and a silence that i fill with tears.

when disappointments take residence

love Is the answer

for me, for you, for all of us

a voice i want to live in

a bit of randomness (and i really miss nyc)

A

the capacity to hope

i walked up to my favorite breakfast place this morning - the one where everyone on staff knows me and have the usual things i order committed to memory. they ask if i even need a menu when i'm being seated. it's a nice place and i enjoy each and every visit.

on the walk home, i started thinking about my current situation and then about the course of my life since childhood. i thought about how many times i've tried to build the life i have wanted for as long as i can remember - a home filled with love, a job with meaning and purpose, friends who would always welcome me into their lives as i would them, and, perhaps, a special companion who would love me because of who i am. i've thought of all of the attempts made to establish this kind of life and how each time it has all come crashing to the ground, and how, with each devastating loss, i've had to figure out a way to move on and try again.

i thought about how with each new start, it's become increasingly difficult to believe that my life will be anything but a long trail of disappointment after disappointment. i thought about how the sad thing about getting older is it seems the capacity to hope diminishes.

there are people in my life who wonder why i can get so sad, so depressed when disappointments happen. i wonder, given my experiences, how i've managed to make it through life as far as i have.

what if there's no one to run to?

"the definition of lonely" - award winning gay drama by leon lopez

when it gets dark

the path of my life's journey seems to go into and out of spaces of darkness. as i've gotten older the dark patches have seemed to have gotten more opaque and the length of time in the darkness has gotten longer. conversely, the light spaces have gotten less and less bright and my times along these stretches have seemed briefer and briefer.

i walk in a dark space on the path now. as i move what i hope to be forward, i'm reminded of other times in my journey that have been like this, and how i've wondered then, as i do now, if this is the dark point that will finally break me. i wonder if i won't make it out of the darkness to the light. i wonder if, after so much struggle and pain, i will become convinced that the only way to make it to a light is to step off of the path of life.

i keep moving forward because i think maybe, just maybe coming out of the dark is only a few steps ahead. still, i find myself starting to wonder if the light spaces keep getting dimmer and the dark spaces keep getting more so, then how long will it be before i can't distinguish one from the other?

i walk in the dark. i do not believe my life has been good. i question whether it can ever be otherwise given what i have experienced thus far. i keep walking .... but for how long?

irreconcilable

there are moments, particularly when i go through dark times, that i think i was not made for this world.

today, i was confronted with a situation at work the end result of which made me think that the world does not a just place. in this particular instance, an individual, who had committed some pretty unscrupulous acts, had gotten a promotion. at the same time, i know of many good people who have had their positions eliminated and are leaving the company. i am one of those people, and the news has pushed me off my axis of emotional well-being once again.

i thought about sharing how much the situation pains me deeply to a friend. i heard in my mind his likely response of, "well, that's just business," and it is that perspective that so many around me have that causes me to pause and question whether i really belong in this life.

so many seem so reconciled to "the way things are," and it leaves me wondering how, after half a decade, i can still be so hurt, so disappointed, so disturbed when events like the one at work today happen. it's as if, when i was formed in the womb, what ever part of my dna that's supposed to allow one's perspectives on life to adapt to accept "the way things are" either didn't fully form or just got left out all together.

i've always felt very odd and out of place in this life. i'm sure i've shared before in this blog that i sometimes (or is it often) question why was i even brought into existence, believing as i do that every life has a purpose. i keep wondering of what good am i if i get so deeply shaken and lost when encountering what i see as the darker realities of the world?

another bit of evidence i feel highlights why i don't think i was made for this world - i never get an answer to that question, and yet, i carry a belief that i should.

indifferent

i'm at one of those points that i look around and it feels that the world, that life seems so indifferent to whatever struggles i have and the resulting inner pain i'm experiencing; and i wonder, why does that bother me? i mean, why do i believe that life should develop in a way that supports and nurtures me?

perhaps it's because to believe otherwise, to accept that my life will always be about suffering mentally and emotionally in a world that is coldly unconcerned, would push me over an edge from which there would be no return.

i've been in this place before (more times than i often feel is fair for one human being to have to have experienced) and each time i seem to get closer to that edge of oblivion.

i've never looked over the edge. it frightens me. i worry that in doing so i will see an illusion of welcoming relief that will lure me over and away from existence.

i have read and heard about so many people with seemingly more fulfilling lives than mine who have done so. i do not want to follow them, but i believe i understand why they made that fatal step.

one day they looked up with all the hurt they'd endured for so long, looked around and saw a world that seemed indifferent to their experience, and then looked over the edge and thought, "could that really be any worse than what i'm experiencing now?"

i do not know the answer to that question; and, as i think it should be, i would rather the answer find me than seek it out myself.

frequency

what do you do when the only channel that seems to be coming through to your mind is the one attuned to all of the pain you've experienced in life? how do you have the belief that you can make it through the next day when all you've done in the current one is relive so many of the hurtful episodes that have occurred over the span of your life? who do you trust when the only signal you're picking up on is the one that reminds you of the loss of relationships that you believed in and trusted and the deepening of the sense of rejection that has resulted? where do you go when at every turn you see in your mind's eye every attempt at starting again to make a better life ending in yet another disappointment? and all i seem to ever be able to do at times like these is wonder, why does this keep happening to me?

the hug

there's a moment that happened during that trip last week that i want to capture because it tells all one needs to know about what i have longed for in life and why i am so deeply saddened (dare i say devastated) by the outcome of said trip.

i had the opportunity to visit with the person who would be my oldest friend my first evening there. we were best friends from first through fifth grade (then my family moved away), and after many, many years apart, we were able to reconnect about five years ago.

the "moment" i referred to at the beginning of this entry occurred when we first greeted one another. we hugged, and it was an embrace that was so full of love, knowing, and acceptance on both our parts that it was very much the experience of what has thus far escaped me in my adult life - a sense of belonging, the feeling of home. we gave each other a similar embrace as we departed and his final words were to the effect that if i were able to move there, i would become a part of his family.

you see, even though apart for many years, my friend knows me. he has seen the earliest parts of my life and the struggles that were inherent in my family dynamics and how they affected me. he knows of the challenges i have had in the interim between our loss of contact and our reconnecting. he knows of my current struggles with deep depression, difficult life events and the ability to hold on to some sense of hopefulness. he knows and he cares deeply about me.

from my time with him, i caught a glimpse of what it would be like to have that kind of loving support so immediately accessible to me (we would literally have been within minutes of one another). given that my next oldest and dearest friend would have been just a few hours to the north, it made me start to believe that maybe, just maybe, i could have a foundation from which to build on, finding my way to a greater sense of wholeness and a belief that i have a place in this world.

and so when i got news of the decision, i realized that i would have to let go of that vision; and, as so often happens with me, the feelings that perhaps i am not meant to be happy in this life have overwhelmed me.

it seems such a small thing to ask - to know love, to belong, to be at home within yourself and the world. a small thing? perhaps. but in my case, it seems as if, to have even the small things is too much to ask.

a single hair

in the story of damocles, the protagonist shares with king dionysus how fortunate that dionysus is to be a king of power and riches. when offered the opportunity to switch places with dionysus, damocles jumps at the chance. as the day arrives and damocles is placed upon the throne, he realizes that dionysus has had a sword placed above the throne held aloft only by a single hair from a horse’s tail. after a time under the precarious position of the sword, damocles pleaded with dionysus to return again to his former state in life. the intention of this illustration was to send a message to damocles and to us that positions of power are precarious ones with potential dangers ever present.

the purpose of my sharing this story is to provide an analogy to how i feel about my own overall sense of hopefulness and well-being. they too feel as if they are constantly in a place of ever present peril. one disappointment or hurtful experience too many and it feels that the horse’s hair will snap and whatever remnants of a positive world outlook that i have in me will be irrevocably sundered from my soul just as surely as the plummeting sword would have cleaved damocles’s skull in two.

i received news today about the outcome of the trip that i went on last week. it was not what i had hoped it would be. i look up and i see that the single hair has started to fray.

pivotal or trivial

i took a trip this past week. it is a trip that has the potential for being a pivotal moment in my life - one that could set a significant new trajectory on the course of my life’s journey. i believe it has the potential for making my life better in every dimension of who i am and aspire to be and to set me on a path of greater wholeness and fulfillment in my life.

i took a trip this past week. it is a trip the result of which could make it as unremarkable as so many that i have taken in the past and will likely embark upon in the future. a trip so trivial that i may only vaguely remember what happened over the course of it if it should even ever come to mind at all. even so, it also has the potential to do so much further damage to my sense of self and well-being that it will take me a very long time to recover.

i took a trip this past week. how it is characterized hinges on a single decision. i wait, i hope, i pray. i fear, i tremble, i hold back my tears. i try to convince myself that all will be well no matter what. i doubt that attempt at self-reassurance even before the thought has completely run itself through my consciousness.

the decision will be rendered and shared soon. watch this space.

soul impact

i mentioned in my last entry that my current job will soon be coming to a close. naturally, this means that i currently am looking for a new means of employment. also, as can be expected, such a search comes with both encouraging and discouraging moments. my current experience is certainly in alignment with said expectation, with my having affirming discussions of interest in my background and body of work and also receiving rejection notifications that have resulted in doubt and disillusionment.

upon receiving one of these rejection communications recently and subsequently falling into a (fortunately brief) depressive episode, i found myself thinking that i wished the affirming moments had as strong an impact on my soul as the ones that are non-affirming. i mean, i can receive a dozen comments that are encouraging, and i’ll feel “ok” maybe even “good.” one reaction that even comes close to being a rejection and i’m figuratively heading for the window to find a good ledge to stand on.

i’ve been through enough years of therapy to know the root of this disproportionate degree of impact. “knowing”  is a good thing i suppose. even so, knowing seems small consolation when i am going through what feels like a soul gutting that tears apart my self-esteem and any optimism for a positive future. sure, i’ve been able to gather back up the shredded pieces and regain some semblance of balance, yet part of me wonders if i’ve been able to collect all of the pieces. have some bits been lost in some corner or crevice never to be seen again? it certainly feels that way as each episode emerges. as i’ve gotten older, it seems like the distance from a sunny landscape to a dark pit of despair has gotten shorter and shorter, and the light in climbing out of the pit has been dimmer and dimmer.

as every chapter of my life’s journey closes and a new one begins, i keep hoping to have what i call the “redemptive experience” (i may have even mentioned this concept previously somewhere in the virtual pages of this blog). the term describes a kind of happening in my life that is so positive, so affirming that it pulls those lost pieces of self-esteem back into my soul, creating a new kind of wholeness that i’ve never experienced, while pushing the pains of my past into those corners and crevices where they perhaps will be remembered but no longer will be affecting.

i keep hoping for that kind of experience. the question is will it find me before there is nothing of me left of me to restore.

it started out so well ....

in the past, when it came to the practice of keeping up this blog, it used to be no news was good news. how i long for those days because the last two years or so, since i last made a post here, my life has not exactly been filled with good news. it's not all been entirely bad, but "good" is definitely not how i would characterize much of it (and it wasn't so peachy before that either).

i guess i should do kind of an "q&a" type of thing to catch up those long time readers (if any of you are still around) on what's transpired over the gap in time. (by the way, after reading the last entry i made, i'm glad i'm posting this new one, just so y'all know i'm still alive and suffering). now, on to the questions. who wants to be first? don't be shy; we're all friends and co-dependents here. ok, miss, thank you for getting us started:

what happened to that job that started out so well but then became a not good thing?
well, i actually ended up leaving that job and returning to the organization that i was at previously for a job that started out so well and then became a not good thing (sensing a pattern here?). in fact, so not a good thing that i will soon be unemployed through no fault of my own; my position was eliminated due to a merger, for which, ironically, i returned to help make happen. the good news is i'm fine with leaving as things are shaping up to be a cluster of major proportion (also not my fault) for the new organization (i use the term "new" loosely as the two organizations seem to be determined to just perpetuate the failings of each, just at a larger scale). the bad news is i won't have a job in a couple of months.

next question? yes, you in the back by the fire extinguisher:

what happened to that guy sean you used to write so much about?
well, as what would likely come as a surprise to no one but me, that friendship appears to have run its course (again, not my fault). i tried my best to keep it going and despite moments of resuscitation, the patient seems to have succumbed to its mortal wounds. i say "not my fault" and yet i've still had to deal with my tendency to internalize and say "what's wrong with me?" fun times have been had by none on that score. i was thinking the other day that i wish i hadn't been so concerned about hurting his feelings during the time when we were actively engaged with one another. it's not that i would have intentionally said or done anything overtly callous or cruel. there's just one thing i wish i had made clearer. it's that, while i valued his friendship, i truly didn't want anything more than that. he always seemed concerned that i did and would make statements about how, because of the various dynamics in his life, he couldn't even consider such a thing. truth be told, i had decided pretty early on that i wasn't interested in in a dating/romantic relationship because i'd determined that i didn't think it would be healthy for me to be in one with him. i still think he's a good guy but that definitely would have been a "no bueno" kind of situation (i mean the friendship was challenging enough). maybe being more up front about that and not worrying about hurting his feelings (because i don't care how many times someone says they're not interested in you, the minute you say back that you feel the same way about them, then all of sudden it becomes, "what do you mean you wouldn't be interested in a relationship with me?"), maybe, things would have turned out differently; maybe not.  anyway, i left it at i still considered him a friend and that i would be there for him if he should ever need me. i've run into him online a few times; it's always pleasant and cordial. i think this particular friendship experience will always bring some sadness to my heart and mind whenever it comes to mind. it's a shame really, because it started out so well (hmm ....).

another question? yes, the gentleman in the middle row, who is politely laughing at my vain attempts at humor:

so did you ever start dating again?
as a matter of fact, yes, i did. i saw one guy for about six weeks before i moved and then was in a relationship with a really nice guy for a year after i moved back here. in fact, we just broke up a couple of months ago and, yet again, so not my fault (unless you want to call being true to yourself creating a problem. by the way, i'm really not one to shirk accountability. i'm really not). as he sat down with me and delivered the "this is not working" address, he pointed out that our differences were greater than the areas in which we were compatible and that it didn't make sense to continue as boyfriends. i didn't disagree. the timing could have been a little better as it was one week after i found out my job was being eliminated. still, is there ever really a good time to break up with someone (actually, yes, yes there is and that wasn't it)? we're still friends and roommates. he's planning on moving out of state soon as i hope to do as well since there's nothing  really to keep me here. you know, it all started out so well .... (double hmmm, well at least now i know what title to give to this entry; i just hope they're not saying the same thing when they're thinking about what to put as my epitaph).

i think we have time for one more question. ok, you sir, the one with the great hair and dazzling smile that's been distracting me this whole time

so with all of this, how have you been doing and where do you go from here?
ok, that's an easy one. not great and hell if i know. i guess we'll have to keep reading this thing to find out.