Sometimes a cat'll eat a bird, sometimes a bird'll eat a cat

 

I also write stuff here.

tolls on the road to damascus

 What is love? Baby, don't hurt me, though there's much more to it than that.

Popular culture needs to make love entertaining. It needs to be quick and snappy with a three part story easily followed by the masses. Usually, not always, but under almost all circumstances popular media is only popular because it is easily digestible. 

Nerd man meets manic pixie dream girl and they undergo hardships and a single change and then it's neatly wrapped up in about an hour and a half. Happily ever after? Life continues far longer than ninety minutes. 

Love languages are a method of love expression. My love language is service. I put my head down and just do stuff. That's a great thing and a kind of mature understanding. I was able to acknowledge my language and express it and in doing so I felt as if I were headed for that happily ever after. All you need is love, right?

Love is about giving, but it's also about receiving. Being receptive to your love is just as important as being giving. I am slowly becoming convinced I have a litany of mental illnesses and all I'm doing writing here is giving my own perspective on madness for some AI to read in a tenth of a second.

Love is a verb, yes, but it's a super verb. It's not just something that you do, it's something that you have to embody. I need to become love for a true experience. Does that mean I should don wings and steal cupid's bow and arrows? That's absurd. That guy isn't even returning my calls right now.

Love is a way of life. It is a walk. It is the darkness of the pupil and the light reflected off tears. Happiness, hopefully, but sometimes sadness too. I have personally experienced far too much sadness in my life to half love. I'm guilty of giving wrongly and only being partially receptive. By the grace of whatever cosmic entity that abides these things, I was receptive enough to learn.

Mental illness and abuse go together like a scalpel and stitches. The abuse cuts you up in places you don't even remember and the mental illness takes it upon itself to stitch you back up. Except this is no surgical stitching. You're not even in a hospital, you're a child crying quietly to yourself in a closet. Before you can even finish the field dressing without anesthetic you get cut some more.

"That's just the way it was back then" I was told recently. My simple response was "Would you do that to a child?"

Ultimately, that's the only barometer we need to face the truth in matters of abuse. If you wouldn't do something yourself because it's too cruel, then it's abusive. Diminishing my own abuse allowed me to diminish the abuse of others. By comparing my own suffering to the suffering of others I make their suffering less. Except, I don't have the power to change reality. My mental illness tricked me into accepting the bullshit in my own life which gave me the ability to sit on my high horse and look down upon the rest of the world's suffering.

Laughter and tears at the same time

 

Laughter.

It's medicine to both the creator and recipient of the laugh.

Chuckling. Chortling. Guffawing. Giggling. Tittering.

The words we use to describe the action are even snigger inducing. Personally, I love to laugh. I love to laugh with someone. I'm even learning to love being laughed at. If you've got an insult to give me, you'd better bring your best because I've heard them all. I've laughed at all of them, eventually. 

I was a chubby kid and fat adolescent. Then I slimmed down and blew up and slimmed down and blew up and on and on. I used to think "Nothing succeeds like excess," I've written about this before if I recall. Then that was exactly what I'd do: binge and blow up to the size of a house and then go over the top and get lost in the sauce and finally get called "Skeletor" and have one of those road to Damascus moments.

"Road to Damascus refers to a sudden turning point in one's life. It is in reference to the conversion to Christianity of the apostle Paul while literally on the road to Damascus from Jerusalem. Prior to that moment, he had been called Saul, and was a Pharisee who persecuted followers of Jesus."

Howling. Convulsions. Fits. Hysterics. Hooting.

What causes a laugh? Humor, usually. Though I've discovered much laughter hidden amidst great sadness. If you think of the silver lining of clouds off in the distance while a great dark storm cloud sits angrily above you that's the imagery I associate when I laugh and cry at the same time. It's a bitter coffee wake up call from somewhere deep in my emotional brain finding the absurd in an unexpected place.

What makes humor? If you try and find a definition online you only stumble around in circles where people show off their ability to copy and paste words from the "humor" entry in the thesaurus. It is supposed to be intuitively understood but then that doesn't explain those of us who laugh about the supposedly darker things in life. Humor is personal. Everyone finds different things to laugh about. We have to laugh or go insane, I've heard. That only explains that we seek out humor when we're at our most vulnerable. It is a safety net some of us use to catch us before we fall fully into the depths of our own madness.

Humor, to me, is how I already described. It is something absurd and unexpected. When I find humor in a dark place, for example any number of the dead baby jokes littering this blog for the last twenty years. I have a different perspective now but I would never dream of removing any of that stuff. Unexpectedly encountering the absurd is what makes me laugh, after all, and I can't think of anything more absurd than a kid who makes blog posts about dead baby jokes growing up to be a man with a tattoo on his wrist to remember a dead baby.

Yet, somewhere in the above exposition is miraculously another dead baby joke. I'm still doing it, even with perspective. The difference now is that I'm also crying. Laughter and tears at the same time.

aerating and weeping

 I've listened to this song about 40 times since yesterday. Maybe more because I'm time-blind or simply because it just resonates. I feel it. 

"Time blindness is a general term for the difficulty in perceiving and managing time. It's not a formal medical diagnosis, but it can significantly impact daily life.

Some signs of time blindness include: Being chronically late, Missing deadlines, Procrastinating often, Misjudging how long a task will take, and Feeling like time is passing quickly.

Time blindness is often associated with conditions like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It can affect a person's ability to: show up to work or appointments on time, hand in assignments or projects on deadline, pay bills on time, remember to eat, and stick to routines and schedules."

 This week has been a banner week. I been able to successfully write a few entries here and enjoy the therapy of expression online to an audience of who knows. Not only that, I got a tattoo this week that takes up the majority of my right forearm. I'm greeted by the image of a red baby's breath on the back of my hand as I type this. It's an overall more pleasant experience for me, I hope the same is true for you.

I can almost guarantee there's a reference in a previous post where I proudly cry out that I DO NOT CRY!!! Well, I do now. I have been openly weeping periodically all this week and last. I can't tell if you can tell from my recent writing but I have tapped into a well of sensitivity and understanding that I had previously walled myself off from.  

As I came of age, crying was not really permitted. Anytime a young me would be moved to tears I would be terrorized by a nearby adult threatening to give me a reason to cry. I remember when I was in grade school taking music lessons on the trumpet. Blowing my own horn is an old habit of mine, it's one I still have but it's also old. On one occasion, wanting to show off my newly honed ability to play taps or some beginner trumpet score, my mother stopped me mid-performance to provide some constructive criticism. "Please just stop, that sounds terrible." She calmly told me and I promptly ran upstairs to cry in my closet. I was about 7 or 8 and when she heard me sobbing she came upstairs and dragged me from the closet to scream "I'll give you something to cry about." As if screaming in the face of a child isn't already enough to cry about.

Pretty much every time my adult eyes have begun to water I can still hear her screeches somewhere in my mind. I can still feel my hair being pulled out or taste the soap or feel the dread as whoever doling out the punishment for unwarranted tears went in search of a larger or sturdier implement of violence.

It was a peculiar site yesterday as I rode around a client's yard aerating and weeping. Weeping and aerating, the homeowner saw me in this state and I think wisely decided to continue walking her dogs. When she arrived back from their walk I had composed myself better and managed to get into what will probably be a $2500 job. Read that and weep.

I hope that this woman thought I was just really passionate about lawn health and not finally healing from well worn mental illness. It doesn't matter to her that my heart is in pieces and my mind is dysfunctional and I can't even begin to imagine how long the job should take even though I've done thousands like it before. That's time blindness. It's related to the fact that prior to a few weeks ago the only reason I'd cried in the last 25 years was because we had a miscarriage last year.

That was the first time I let "my muse" really see me cry. Her name is Denver. Using these phrases like "my love" or "my muse" or whatever nonsense language is diminishing to the woman. Using Denver to describe her is accurate, she is a mile high stack of lovable quirks and mental illness and hope and love, but that is also her real name. I told her I might use it today because I feel this way. I told her I need to name her here in order to continue with honesty here. Using those possessives is not only diminishing to her but also to myself. I didn't fall in love with an idea, I fell in love with a woman. 

Our problems arose when I stopped just loving the woman and began to love the idea. We were planning a life together but she was the only one ready to live. Both of us have ADD but I only discovered mine at the end of our life together. This is the underlying problem responsible for all of our problems but the final straw for Denver was when I drunkenly emailed another woman for the tenth or eleventh time. I was taking on more stress than either of us were equipped to handle because I was afraid that if I couldn't provide enough for her and our future family that she'd want to leave me. I would then throw money or aquariums at the problem when she would maturely set aside her own issues to confront mine. Instead of simply listening and understanding, I chose to love her on my terms and not our terms. It's a subtle, yet exceedingly important distinction.

A series of MY bad decisions pushed her away and finally burnt her to ashes. I love this woman more than I can understand but that lack of understanding was ultimately part of the problem. I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand why I couldn't just live our life. She chose to live her life with me. We had even picked out a name for our future. Then I killed it. The insanity that I brought into our home took a skeletal, black hand and plucked our future from Denver's womb. 

I may be time blind but that's different from never knowing time. Imagine being in your mother's womb and the only experiences you know are the soothing muffled sounds, the total nourishment needs being met, and then a series of huge tsunamis of stress and negative emotions. These waves of course being the emotional distress I forced onto Denver because of my issues and insecurities. There was a storm outside the womb and that's not a bunker, it's susceptible to the onslaught of my bullshit.

Imagine heaven even if you don't believe in it, the notion is basically the same as a mother's womb. The proximity to an all loving god, every need being met, and basking in the warmth of a mother and father's love. The feelings of security and safety in the mother are some of the necessary elements for proper development. With these feelings absent from our home, I had truly killed our child. I had murdered our future with unnecessary stress. Stress I should have shouldered instead of unburdening it onto Denver. 

Time and finality provide meaning and value. They make life worthwhile. They make you treasure today because tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Giving time is the same as giving love. Attention is love and ADD is an attention deficit. The reason Denver and I fell in love was because we both saw in each other someone who needed to receive more love than anyone else could be reasonably expected to handle and someone who had more love to give than could be reasonably expected. I forgot that. I got lost and though I may now be found, it's too late.

a deeper problem than simple incontinence

 

In the last episode we discussed some scenes from the past. I believe I'm ready for now. 

I'm parenting myself these days. I'm probably not the best parent in the world but I'm trying to be the best parent I've ever had. I'm definitely not the best child in the world but I'm learning to love myself. That's what parents are supposed to do, love their children. We've evolved to basically love them unconditionally, the Greeks had a word for this: Agape. 

"Agape is a type of love that is not based on feelings, but rather on a conscious decision to love others without expecting anything in return. It's a love that is intended for everyone and is often described as the highest form of Christian love."

 "Jesus wept." John 11:35

I've been weeping lately as my child self because my parent self has been able to practice acceptance. I also pay attention to the child, when I feel emotions that don't make any sense I practice a breathing exercise before I kindly ask myself what's making me feel this way. Paying attention, without distractions, is a form of love. It's very difficult but the process is exceedingly rewarding. If I believe in any notion of "normal", I'd say that I'm on the path to normalcy. 

That John chapter of the bible is the story of Lazarus. The dead man brought back to life. In a tangible way, that story resonates. I've felt like a zombie shuffling around. Going through the motions of life in mocking mimicry of those around me that seemingly "had their shit together" so much better than myself.

I'm simply seeking out that which we are all entitled: happiness. The only way I'm able to pursue happiness is first by healing. I spent the first half of my life so far embroiled in an emergency state. I was constantly on edge and constantly under attack. I spent the second half of my life so far embroiled in an aimless and dysfunctional wandering. 

"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king." J. R. R. Tolkien

 For years I had that quote on my cubicle wall at the job where every day felt like my personal hell. While I'd like that quote to apply to me, I know that I was lost. Deep in the woods with the sun going down and a fog so thick I struggled to see my hands in front of my face. There were guttural, predatory noises on all sides and the fog, for some reason, was laced with some kind of depressant. No wonder I had such a rough time. 

Tragedy brought me out of that hell. It was a messy escape but I'd made it out, or so I thought. I only know how to love myself now because I had such a great example to follow. I spent the last three years living and loving and fighting and arguing with the best friend I've ever had. Not only was she my best friend but she was my lover and the light of my life. She still means the world to me, but the unruly child that I have now adopted decided to shit all over our walls and ceilings and some of it got in both of our mouths multiple times. Once or twice might be an accident but if the child continues to shit on your face and in weird, hard to clean places then clearly there is a deeper problem than simple incontinence. 

So now I find myself being a parent to this terrible little monster. Except I know that I'm not one of the things that go bump in the night, I'm one of those that stand in the light and face adversity. I've been fighting my entire life. I feel as if I've been in a trench style war where all I've been doing for the last thirty years has been fucking murders. I was the berserker and the samurai and the assassin and the soldier. By ones, twos, threes, or more I silenced voices. I ended anything that stood in my way until I came across a fawn in the middle of the battlefield.

In that moment I was finally born. I looked around and saw the battle and I tried to dig us a hole for safety and security. The only safety and security I'd ever known was at the on the edge of blood soaked cold steel. I scared the poor creature and it ran off as soon as it was strong enough. I'd like to think she's made it off the battlefield, that she'll live a long and happy life but I have no idea. 

I do know now the name of the enemy at the end of the war. I can also now finally see their command tent atop a mountain nearby. I need to take the child and myself through hill and under dale and scale a snowy cliff side before I can finally win my war. I have the climbing equipment, supplies, and a map. Once the war is won I think I can seek out the fawn, see that she's safe. See that she's secure and able to develop fully through the natural deer chrysalis stage and fly off to the moon as a beautiful butterfly with gossamer wings.