Real Life

11/18/2015

Well, now I consider the lessons learned.

I am reminded how it is that we are creatures bound to our self image, and that sometimes little things can hurt both ways.

And I am reminded that there is a distinction between physical pain and emotional pain, and a distinction between labeling our behaviors, and judging.
Even ourselves as well as others. As simple as saying "this is what you did," rather than "you did this to me."

And even as I tell myself "to hell with propriety, I am going to say what what I feel like saying," our cultural sensibilities would cause us to recoil when approbation is turned on its head. Men are supposed to be strong, but then accused of not being sensitive.

But no. This is where I am.

Blame, guilt, excuses, complaining, and judgment are irrelevant.

Be angry at the sun for rising.

Anger is part of who we are, part of grieving,
and essential for healing.

Life is life, and beautiful in all of its chaos and pain.

11/11/2015

I just wrote this, for someone who is hoping that I get better:

Better is a matter of degrees, you know.

The externals are manageable, the wound slowly healing, brief periods as I do my best to care fore myself between sleep and sleeplessness, doctors and hospitals and medication.

But the underlying myalgia still slowly tears at me daily, every waking moment is the effort to keep taking one step at a time, yet even as I hold on to the magnificent beauty of life I wonder if I can keep going, often wondering if I even want to keep going.

I can only try to hold on to whatever is good, and hope that love makes a difference.

11/01/2015

Thank you, Claire.

"Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried."

10/22/2015

From the Red Book, Page 55 (translation of text above image:) One word that was never spoken. One light that was never lit up. An

06/20/2015

And now it is time

04/02/2015

“Grief is not one thing. It is a shorthand word for a complex, time-varying experience that is unique for each person and each loss.”

What is complicated grief, and how does it differ from depression?

03/31/2015

the amazing fire within the flesh
that leaves only agony when it is gone,
much more beautiful
than all the temporal trappings
that are mistaken for love.

03/21/2015

not your morning aches and pains.
not something you can tell yourself to get over.
and no, it is not something you did to deserve this.
why sometimes I want to take the positive affirmations
and shove them somewhere

01/26/2015

Having old friends is cool.

01/26/2015

Expectations -

11/14/2014

FB: What have you been up to?
RBC: Thinking.
Like anyone with trauma in their life, I constantly deal with memories of little things I regret or feel ashamed of. Stupid little things that really have no bearing on my life right now. I have adopted a new strategy for coping with these thoughts.
Tell them all to go to hell.

09/10/2014

By themselves, anger, and even hate are still part of who we are, you know. What you do with the feelings is a different matter. Step one is to accept the feelings and not feel guilty. Once you can separate yourself from self-judgement you can look at the ego attachments that drive compulsive or destructive reactions.
There is a place for righteous anger, which will lead to compassion for those whom you see trapped in illusions. But compassion does not require accepting or even tolerating someone else, including their beliefs, behavior, or their actions.
Fighting anger leaves us fighting ourselves, and what might be a totally rational response to unfairness and misunderstanding. Remember, when you are also fighting physical and emotional challenges, and physical pain.
Feeling guilty about anger does you no good, either.

09/05/2014

The most frustrating thing about depression [is that] it isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something — it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing. You can’t fill it up. You can’t cover it. It’s just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.
You don’t battle depression, you endure it. Or perhaps even that word isn’t quite right — you simply experience it, day after day. You take the pills and try to continue living and tell yourself that it won’t last forever, that eventually the fog will lift, because it always does, sooner or later. But when you’re in that fog, you can’t see anything but emptiness. Plenty of our great artists have done a better job of portraying this than me. Leonard Cohen compared depression to stepping into an avalanche, while Nas once wrote, “I need a new n***a for this black cloud to follow/ ‘Cos while it’s over me it’s too dark to see tomorrow.”
That’s exactly how it is.

This might come across as a simple matter of semantics, except for the fact that the whole battle narrative carries some rather unpleasant connotations. The idea that you can fight implies that you should fight, and it also implies that if you “lose your battle,” well, s**t, perhaps you didn’t quite fight hard enough. Again, it’s a narrative that mirrors the way we approach other terrifying illnesses. It’s why we read so much into the stories of people like, say, Lance Armstrong (before his fall from grace) — we love the idea that you can refuse to be defeated, that you can prove indomitable. But depression isn’t something you can conquer if you’re plucky enough. Merit is irrelevant here.

Because the worst thing is this: you never beat depression. At best, you come to some sort of fragile, queasy understanding with it, where you go about your life and try to ignore the fact that it’s staring at you from the other side of the river like some awful insect, never really going away, always threatening to come back. It’s a chronic illness, if you want to put it in medical terms. It’s something you hope that you can manage. If you’re in a bad place, the best you can do is hope tomorrow is better. And if you’re in a good place, all you can do is hope like hell that you stay there.

I don't really have a great deal to say about Robin Williams' death, beyond the obvious: it's tragic, and awful, and I feel terrible for his family and friends and everyone else who knew him. Two p...

09/03/2014

If happiness is what you really want, teach yourself to be happy.

In my life, I have to look a long way back in my life to remember when I could believe in happiness. To find a memory of myself as someone who could believe in happiness.

Today, I try to imagine a day when I will look back and realize that this was when I committed to that transformation.

Choose.

08/21/2014

::
There is so much hatred and anger out there right now, and I feel it. At the bottom of the journey into darkness I discovered the hate within myself. So deep the denial, so dark the feeling, so rationalized and sanctimonious, so brutal. So hideous. And then I understand that I have become the disease.

08/18/2014

The auditory hallucinations are not so bad
but sometimes the tinnitus makes me crazy.

08/12/2014

Rachel Cieslewicz offers me this bit of wisdom: "Robert, I feel as though that is one of my great lessons in this life is to calm down the stories in my head and allow my body and soul to speak."

08/04/2014

"And so for want of sufficient glucocorticoid receptors, the rats grew up to be nervous wrecks." - food for thought on genetic influence in depression.

Your ancestors' lousy childhoods or excellent adventures might change your personality, bequeathing anxiety or resilience by altering the epigenetic expressions of genes in the brain.