Thursday, July 31, 2014

A Foothold


Thursday, July 31, 2014


With the calendar turning over to August tomorrow I think it only natural that a person living in Minnesota begin to think of the coming autumn…and the next inevitable winter. 

Life here in the North has such a distinctly different quality as compared to where I grew up.  The months have different meanings…partly due to the fact that the climates are so different.  Growing up I tended to dread August because the heat of summer, which normally had gone on for two solid months by that point, usually showed no signs of abating.  Yet living here in Minnesota I find myself actually wanting the month of August to pass very slowly.  Here we don’t have dozens and dozens of days over 95F.

Today I again felt what seems to be a growing quality of inner calm.  I see and feel myself moving in the direction of overcoming the immense pain of my earliest years of life.  It certainly has often been an arduous process thus far but I feel I may finally be finding something crucial…namely a foothold in my better future life.  Patience and diligence have their rewards and I believe I will soon be reading the rewards of my own due diligence.

I had the pleasure of having a good interview today.  The position I interviewed for would be with the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.  I spoke with an HR generalist about the position today.  Despite the fact that I am a somewhat unusual candidate for the position (due partly to the fact that I am overqualified in some respects) I have a good feeling I have a real chance at getting the Research Associate position I applied for.  And even if I am not ultimately selected I still have another option that I can likely take instead.

In the journey of life it is very wise to have a Plan B…and Plan C.  And I am glad I am taking Vitamin D!

What To Believe

Thursday, July 31, 2014


Sometimes we will never discover the answers to some of our deepest questions.  Do you know that feeling?  Have you lost someone or something precious to you and never been able to find peace after a devastating loss?

Yesterday I wrote about the high death toll in Africa as a result of the spread of Ebola.  Today I share some of my thoughts about another story currently in the news.  I have been reminded of the way that loss can devastate our lives by reading about the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.  A particular  article caught my attention.  Reading bits and pieces about all the people's lives who have been impacted by the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 is a sobering experience.  For some individuals merely being able to claim the remains of a family member suddenly becomes a luxury beyond their reach.  Can you conceive of losing a family member in a transportation disaster in a different nation riven by conflict that eludes easy resolution?  Who can even imagine such a thing happening in their worst waking nightmares?  Describing such a scenario as sad doesn't begin to do much justice to the scope of such a tragedy.

I empathize with the experience of those who lost loved ones in the recent airline crash.  They may never have answers to all of their most pressing questions.  And somehow they will have to go on with their lives anyhow.  I know that feeling.  If you have read through a lot of my blog this past year you will already know I have many questions about my own life history (mostly about the lives of my biological parents) whose answers I may never discover.  And somehow I will nonetheless have to go on with my own life.  But how do we go on with life when we feel genuinely haunted by something in our past history?

Though I believe I was correctly diagnosed with PTSD last summer I have lately been reading a bit about Stockholm Syndrome.  For those not in the know Stockholm Syndrome was named for a hostage scenario that played out in a bank in Stockholm, Sweden in late August, 1973.  You can read more about that event here.  Another web resource on this phenomenon can be found here.

I have been thinking about Stockholm Syndrome because I recognize in my feelings about my father something similar to that which was witnessed in the individuals who were held hostage in that bank in 1973.  After their rescue it was noted that the hostages had 'emotionally bonded' with their captors.  It might seem counterintuitive that people would develop such a 'bond' with those who would intentionally harm them in any way.  Indeed, how can you love or care about people who abuse, neglect, intimidate or harass you?  I have been wondering lately if it was even healthy that I loved my father in the past...or now.  Just how blind was I to who my father truly is?  Who was and is my father? Did I ever know the man he really was...or is now?

The sadness I feel when I question just how much of what I once believed about my father, my father's family and my whole view of the world is quite immense.  It's quite clear I had a very distorted perspective regarding my own self...and the world at large.  I am gradually correcting this.  It's exciting work.  But it's also quite arduous at times.









Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Life In the "First World"

Wednesday, July 30, 2014


"Well at least I don't have Ebola."

This was one of my thoughts earlier today.  Sometimes, when I feel my day is really boring or unremarkable, negative thoughts will start to crowd my mind.  When nothing else succeeds in distracting me from such thinking I will try to remind myself of all the good that I do have in my life.  And occasionally I do this by thinking of the morbid aspects of human experience which thankfully are fairly tolerable in countries like the United States.

I have been reading different media to learn more about the current outbreak of Ebola in Africa.  Not until recently did I learn the origin of the word Ebola.  Ebola is named for a river in Zaire where it was first identified in 1976.  A Stanford University thesis website has some interesting resources to assist the curious reader in learning more.

The current outbreak of Ebola is noted to be very severe.  Hundreds have died.  And due to the porous nature of the borders between

Successfully quarantining something as virulent as Ebola is obviously a major priority.  But how easily can it be done?  Apparently not very easily.  A recent article in the Washington Post noted a disturbing story of a man named Patrick Sawyer who traveled from Liberia to Nigeria.  He later died of Ebola in Nigeria.  He traveled in aircraft.  Who knows how many people he may have come into close contact with during his travel?  Because the incubation period for Ebola can be as long as twenty one days it might not be clear until late August just how much the virus may have spread due to Mr. Sawyer's travel.  Even more frightening is the fact that Mr. Sawyer was planning to visit his family in Minnesota in August.  I live here in Minnesota.  This is one of the benefits and horrors of the age we live in.  International air travel has made it possible to travel around the whole planet in a matter of a few days at most.

Here is one of the most sobering sections of the article I referenced above:

"Health officials rely on 'contact tracing' - locating anyone who may have been exposed, and then anyone who may have come into contact with that person.  That may prove impossible, given that other passengers journeyed on to dozens of other cities."

Dozens of other cities.  Yikes...

The spread of Ebola, cholera and polio across thousands of miles has been made possible by the phenomenon of international air travel.  If an infected, highly contagious person carrying something like Ebola were to enter a city of millions of people the chance of an effective quarantine essentially goes to zero.  Because the current outbreak of Ebola began several months ago it seems highly unlikely that successfully containing the current outbreak will occur without extensive, coordinated, skilled effort.

Here I sit in a cafeteria in the 'First World' nation of the United States in the state of Minnesota.    And I contemplate how one man who died thousands of miles away could have brought Ebola to Minnesota if he had lived a little longer.

The world has become a very, very small place.

......


Sometimes when I leave work I feel what seems to be an immense yet fleeting despair well up inside me.  I wonder if all my efforts to improve my life and finally move beyond the significant harmful impact caused by the chaos, abuse and deceit I experienced as a child will produce the results I desire. 

Back in March of this year I experienced what seemed to be a period of stagnation.  My improvement seemed to come to a grinding halt.  Looking back I suspect I was simply weary of enduring the worst winter to consume Minnesota in decades and nonetheless remaining steadfast in my commitment to healing.  My weariness eventually eroded away, spring finally came and my improvement resumed.

Until recently I felt I was continuing to improve.  But in the last two weeks I have felt overcome by apathy unlike anything I have experienced in a while.  I still feel motivated enough to go to therapy, exercise and write.  But my means of making a living is grating on my nerves.  Doing clerical work as a highly educated man is something I find very stultifying.  I have been exactly where I am now at other points in my life and I never seemed to jump to the next evolutionary leap in my professional life. 

Despite the very real progress I have made in the past year I find myself feeling very weary.  There are some days when I feel like I need a personal assistant to help me manage the multifaceted demands of my recovery process.

……

My therapist led me through a technique called ‘impasse work’.  He asked me to envision having a dialogue between my mature, adult self and my eight year old boy self.  As I have noted throughout my blog this summer I have attempted to recall more about the summer of 1982 when I was eight years old.  The months immediately after my father nearly died are still essentially still a virtual visual blank in my memory.  But I recently have been able to recall much of what I felt during that time.  I felt very bitter.  And I felt sad.  And I also felt inhibited, scared, angry and trapped.  That’s a lot of darkness for an eight year old to carry around.

When I acknowledged my awareness of feeling bitter that summer I felt a bit perplexed by how compatible being enmeshed in a state of bitterness could truly be with being eight years old.  Isn’t that age a bit young to feel something as nuanced as bitterness?  Isn’t bitterness something that develops only after a lot of suffering has hardened someone’s heart?  I asked my therapist about this.  He acknowledged he once had a six year old boy client who was so bitter he tried to kill himself.  Can you imagine a six year old trying to commit suicide?  It seems very counter-intuitive…almost preposterous.  But despair can strike very early on if trauma has impacted a life early in a person’s development.

In ending the session my therapist encouraged me to maintain an active dialogue with my eight year old boy self.  This will make for interesting writing!

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

A Good Hypochondriac Virgo: My Eyes Are Fine

Tuesday, July 29, 2014


I met with my eye doctor for the first time since last October.  He declared my eyes are fine.  I am pleased to hear this.  Virgo people like myself can be (rightfully) known for being hypochondriacs.  I had this thought go through my own mind in the last few weeks.  When I would have a moment of blurred vision or especially acute vision I would find myself wondering just how long this phenomenon might go on.  When it first appeared last year I felt anxious about it; I had so many health concerns at the time that I felt overwhelmed quite a bit of the time.

I am still inclined to believe I am emerging from some sort of prolonged disposition to dissociation and/or derealization.  It feels something like waking up from a bad dream that went on for a few decades.  Waking up from a dreamy state was certainly not on my bucket list of things I wanted to experience in my life.  But at least the worst of my journey is apparently over.  Or at least I believe it is.

I feel immense gratitude for my eyesight.  I am reminded of this gift of vision whenever I encounter visually impaired people in the course of my day.  I find that I want to enjoy the beauty of the world more than I have in the past.  I want to incorporate it into my professional life in some meaningful way. How I will ultimately do that remains to be seen.

My grief remains with me.  I feel it changing as the days pass though.  Maybe the strong sunlight of summer is somehow transmuting my grief into a lighter substance.  I don't know.  Some days I feel very heavy.  Other days I feel quite light.  The journey of recovery from trauma is never a firm, unbroken line.


Monday, July 28, 2014

Childhood Wonder, Trust and the Value of Good Will


Monday, July 28, 2014



This morning, while waiting for a bus, I picked up a pinecone.  I have unexpected moments of great joy when doing the simplest of things.  I notice that small delights give me an immense amount of pleasure.  One small delight I find I repeatedly experience is looking (and marveling) at the intricate yet simple beauty of the world.  I don’t recall doing this very much when I was a child.  I was too worried about the state of affairs in my own home to spare much time for finding wonder in the world.  I would be dishonest if I were to claim I had no such moments as a kid.  I did.  But they were not consistent.  Wonder was punctuated by stress and the unknown.  It became easy to become fearful and mistrusting.  Now here I am, again, working to repair the harm decades later.

It’s quite clear to me that a primary issue I have (which derives in large measure from my childhood) is that of trust.  I find it challenging to trust people very easily.  And in the past I had a pattern of developing relationships with people who in hindsight proved not to be worthy of my trust.  Breaking such a longstanding pattern is no small task but day after day I am gradually doing it.  I didn’t have a full appreciation of how much my capacity to trust had been harmed until this last year.

More than once I have seen signs plastered on the sides of buses about how play grows imagination.  I suppose the opposite of this must also be true.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  But I think it also must make him an unimaginative boy.  And that is most unfortunate.

I have felt quite apathetic in the last few weeks.  I suppose this is a reflection of the fact that I am now working full time.  I made a commitment to myself when I returned to the working world that I would allocate some time and energy towards finding my way towards the work I truly want to do in my future life.  And I am doing that.  I expect to meet with staff of the vocational rehabilitation services provider I selected last week at some point this week.  I hope that my hopes will be well founded.  As one can well imagine I had grown quite weary of placing my trust in people and organizations who did not merit my trust.

……

This afternoon, while waiting to take the bus once more, I found myself again marveling at the immense variety of colors and textures I could perceive with my eyesight.  While downtown at the intersection of 7th Street and South Marquette I found myself looking at how the light reflects off the glass skyscrapers on a late summer afternoon.  I noticed the interplay of clouds and blue sky.  Once again I found myself noticing the trees and flowers fluttering in the breeze.  And again there was the question omnipresent in my mind: where have I been all this time?  How is it that I was perceiving the world for decades and yet not really present to what I was perceiving?  How was that even possible?  How did I not notice what I was doing?  I suppose the answer is somehow tied up in the findings of the shamanic practitioner I met with last November.  When you experience soul loss at an extremely young age it seems to me that it can profoundly affect your future development…and that you might not even be aware of it.

Tomorrow I will be paying a visit to my eye doctor.  I need to find some greater understanding of what is happening to me.  Stated differently, I suppose I need to contextualize what I am experiencing.  I have personally concluded that I was experiencing a many years long case of derealization…and I wasn’t even aware of it.  Now I am on the other side of that long period of time.  And I am trying to learn how to live again in a world that is both intimately familiar and strangely foreign at the same time. 

Adapting to a change that profoundly alters your perception of your place and significance in the world is no small matter.  I sometimes feel as if I will be adapting to my ‘new’ self for many years to come.  And yet healing is not a linear process so I can’t easily predict what future course the unfolding of my journey will take.  I can certainly say this: I never expected my life to look quite like this at this time in my life.


So what do I mean by the value of good will?  In essence I am alluding to a person’s willingness to participate in a larger society.  Participation in a society composed of many, many individuals depends in part on a society being palatable to those who would be active members of it.  If you find little appeal in being a part of a society it might be time to consider the very real possibility that the time for an immense change has come.  I have felt this way for a while now. 

Resentment strikes me as the opposite of good will.  Unacknowledged resentment can fester and poison good will.  I realize I have felt a lot of resentment due to the weariness I developed the last few years as I continued to look for a job that would make full (or nearly full) use of my wide range of skills.  As I continued to look around without experiencing the results I believe were very reasonable to expect I would enjoy the resentment began to build inside my heart. 

In time resentment can breed alienation.  And once alienation grows within your very being you are something like the amateur swimmer who suddenly discovers he has ventured too far from the safety of shore.

As I continue on my journey of recovery I notice that the same themes present themselves time and time again.  And one of my themes is that during my childhood I didn’t really feel there was any safe shore to look for.  I felt bereft and alone in a world populated by people who simply could neither comprehend nor fully appreciate me.

I want to explore a new shore now.  I want to find new vistas to explore.  The old way of life simply will no longer do.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Space Between The Words

Saturday, July 26, 2014


This morning I found myself feeling quite lethargic.  I feel very unmotivated to do much of anything.  But I believe that makes perfect sense considering how hard I have been working for the last year.

The phrase 'space between the words' was in my mind this morning.  I suppose it came to me after I posted a picture from Hawaii on my Facebook page in honor of a young man who recently died in an apparent suicide.  There is such spaciousness in that photo of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.  When I gaze at that image it practically invites me into a meditation on the spaciousness I would like to have in my life.  I need space in my own life.  I need space to heal and create a new vision for myself.  In short, I need space between the actions and words of my life.  I need to pace myself.

I have made this statement before and I will make it again: Healing is a process.  Healing requires time and space.  To rush the process is to increase the risk of many things.  In trying to rush through to the endpoint a person might suddenly discover he has run out of energy prematurely.  I have heard it repeatedly that the body has greater wisdom than the mind.  I believe this is true.  When focusing intently on a goal it is critical to inquire of the body's resources.  This requires an ability to be with your body in a quiet, curious, open way.  Rushing around, in my opinion, tends to undermine your ability to do the (often) quiet work of self-inquiry that is (again my opinion) a necessary ingredient to true healing.

So where is the space between the words in my own life?  Is there enough space between my words, actions, phone calls, activities, social calendar and so on?  Is there enough space for the grief, the anxiety, the wonderment, the confusion, the excitement and all the other affects I have experienced throughout this last year?  And if there isn't enough space how can I make more space?

I began this blog over a year ago as a bit of an experiment.  I wanted to see if I could decisively commit to undertaking a daily practice and make it work.  Thus far I have made it work.  I have been very pleased with my dedication.  And yet there must be space between my words.  There must be space in my life for the good as well as time dedicated to expunging the less than good.

Yesterday morning, upon waking up, I nearly felt myself enter a tantrum state characteristic of a little child who is not getting what he wants.  I felt really annoyed that I had to get up early, yet again, to go to a job that does little for me beyond make my very sustenance possible.  But then I feel compelled to ponder what I just wrote.  How is my work done to provide for my very sustenance a little thing?  It isn't.  The needs and joys of the body (do you actually enjoy yourself when you eat?) are no small thing.  Indeed, as time passes and I mature in my own way I am more and more convinced the simple pleasures in life are the most important.

As for me and my life in this moment I am glad it is Saturday.  I will be taking the day off from writing tomorrow.  I heartily enjoy offering my thoughts and feelings in a forum such that others might benefit. But I also must attend to my own deepest needs.  In doing so I am cultivating a more balanced life.


Friday, July 25, 2014

The Sun Setting Over the Pacific Ocean

Friday, July 25, 2014


I made the wise choice of going out to socialize with friends this evening.  I am glad I did so.  Even though I had a good time I still feel sad.  I always find it sad when people die long before they normally would.  I have experienced a lot of pain in my own life so I empathize with people who experience immense feelings of pain, hopelessness, anxiety and despair.  Sometimes it seems like the challenges we face are insurmountable.  And it can be really difficult to see our circumstances objectively enough to not get pulled down by the undertow of depression.  When life feels like a futile struggle suicide can seem an appealing way out.

After departing from the Saloon Bar tonight I found myself finding solace in memories of the beauty of the Pacific Ocean visible from Hawaii.  I thought about photos I have taken of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.  I have enjoyed some amazing experiences in my life.  I have seen some amazingly beautiful places.  I have been blessed with opportunities that do not necessarily come around to too many people.  I have a newfound appreciation for the gift of my eyesight.

If we do live on beyond the death of our bodies I wish the spirit of the man who departed his life recently a serene and beautiful afterlife as amazing as the views I have enjoyed of the Pacific Ocean.


A Friend of a Friend of a Friend

Friday, July 25, 2014


It has been a little too easy to think about death today.  Today is the day my grandmother (my father's mother) passed away twenty one years ago.  It's been over two decades since she passed on but I can still remember certain aspects of her life so well.  I can remember how she kept her dentures in a glass jar on the counter in the kitchen of her home.  I can remember when she would make oatmeal early in the morning as part of breakfast.  I can recall picking strawberries out in my grandmother's "backyard" and finding so many berries that my grandfather had left behind.  I have many pleasant memories of my grandmother.

This morning I learned about the untimely passing of a gentleman I did not personally know.  His name was Jon Nizzi.  He competed in the International Mister Leather competition this past May.  I didn't have the opportunity to meet him when I was in Chicago for the event.  It can be a bit overwhelming to attend such events...but in a good way.  I can almost imagine the smell of leather wafted out for blocks from the hotel that served as the primary venue!

Regardless of whether a person dies due to natural causes, accident, homicide or suicide their deaths are  a loss to those they leave behind.  A gap suddenly appears in the world that can never be filled by another person.  We are all unique and we all have unique gifts to offer.  It is most tragic when people die due completely preventable deaths...and I am inclined to place death by suicide within this category.  I find it perfectly understandable when people commit suicide as a means of ending their own enormous pain after having attempted to do everything available to alleviate their pain.  When pain seems inescapable and we have suffered immensely for a long period of time it can be very easy to believe suicide is a way out...and then choose such a course of action.

And yet one difficult aspect of making choices while under the influence of immense pain is that we can't know with complete certainty whether the pain will subside or completely heal if we 'simply' give ourselves more time.  Patience is such a virtue in the particular realm of personal healing.  I've been appreciating this on a daily basis for the last year.  I think it safe to say that many of us are works in progress...at least to a degree.

Pain is such a unique 'beast'.  I suppose it could accurately be described as a shapeshifting creature that can present a thousand different faces.  There is so much pain in the world.  Why do we have to create more of it?  The 'answer' to that question is, I suppose, we don't have to.  It's within our power to create a better world.  I'm not saying it's an easy project.  Indeed, I personally feel quite dismayed by much of what I see going on in the world around me these days.

I tend to believe we live in a highly dissociated and dissociat-ing culture.  I'm an intelligent, well educated person and I was surprised to discover how much pain I had been dissociating myself from...and how good at this practice I had become.  But such capacity for dissociation is not uncommon...especially if you grow up in dysfunctional circumstances as I did (at least part of the time).


As I contemplate the death of a person I never really knew as well as the deaths of people I have known (like my grandmother) I cannot help but think of that movie 'Six Degrees of Separation'.  The plot of the movie brings home the truth of our interconnectedness.  We are all not that far removed from any other person walking the planet.  Knowing the truth of our interconnectedness in our very bones could prompt us to create a better world.  Wouldn't that be nice?

We are all friends of friends of friends of friends...of ourselves.





Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Afterburn of Therapy: What Insights May Come...

Thursday, July 24, 2014


When performed rigorously physical activity can leave your muscles enveloped with something like a burning sensation.  When your own psyche gets a good work-over in a psychotherapy session it seems a similar phenomenon can unfold.

One of the lessons I have learned from a full year of psychotherapy is that insights can and often do come at most any time...and sometimes those insights come at the most inopportune of times.  The present moment is a good example.  I am taking a break from work in order to put my thoughts down now while they are fresh and in the forefront of my consciousness.

This morning I had a different moment in my life history drift through my mind.  It was the Spring of 1994.  I found myself recalling the particular night in which I divulged the circumstances of my recently ended relationship with my first boyfriend to my father.  This morning I recalled the anger, disappointment and disgust I felt when my father, rather than really offer me any consolation or compassion, instead advised me to not divulge what I had just shared with him with my stepmother.  I can so vividly recall standing there in an extremely vulnerable condition and feeling so extraordinarily let down by his inability to really be emotionally available to me.  I was additionally traumatized by the fact that my first boyfriend later tried to commit suicide.  Still later he attempted to blame me for his own actions.  Despite being in deep pain due to the circumstances of my relationship ending my father couldn't extend himself out of his narrow little world.  All that seemed to matter to him was keeping the whole matter quiet...apparently to suit his purposes.

The incident I am briefly sketching now happened twenty years ago.  After what unfolded last year, in which my father again could not be present to my own pain, I finally realized I had to let go of the dream I had once had that my father would ever be much more than an emotionally immature man.  Letting go is often difficult.  Letting go of deeply held desires about the way we wish our parents had parented us or would be available to us now in the present can be even more challenging.  It can be agonizing.  To be completely honest that is what these last twelve months have often felt like...agony.  It's been something akin to the way I have heard Purgatory described (a realm, by the way, I do not personally believe exists).

That moment when a person finally lets go and emerges from a protracted period of resisting what (unfortunately) is to accept what can never be (but also as a consequence opens to other beautiful possibilities) is the moment I find myself in now.  I am in that moment of letting go.  And yet this 'moment' often resembles not a moment but a protracted period of time.  But this is the truth of the matter because what I am undergoing is a process.  Processes, by definition, unfold in the stream of time.

I have felt quite raw lately.  I attribute this to the fact that more anniversary moments have come and gone this week.  Monday was my mother's birthday.  And tomorrow will be the anniversary of my paternal grandmother's death.

There are still many days when the best I can do is awaken, go to work, put myself out there, breathe, eat, enjoy the sunlight and then lay my head down to sleep once more.


Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Will There Be An 'Ah-Ha' Moment?

Wednesday, July 23, 2014


I am here at work early waiting to start my day.  It's another beautiful summer day outside and yet I am in my office cave.

I've been reflecting on the process of recovery this morning.  I've commented many times how recovery is not a straight, unbroken line.  There are peaks and valleys in the journey forward which seem to be an inevitable feature of the journey to a fuller, more rewarding life.

In a similar vein I suppose it would be true to state that there are no silver bullet answers that will quickly and permanently vanquish the disquieting aspects and challenges of life that affect many of our lives.  And yet still I wonder.  Maybe I am not correct in my belief.  Perhaps one day I will have a stunning insight while in a therapy session which will prove so radiant, enthralling and powerful that I will never be the same person again.  There are moments when I want to have such an experience...and then there are other times when I find myself hearing that quiet thought (of wisdom?) intoning the words 'Be careful what you wish for'.  Yes, be careful indeed.

Speaking of illustrious moments and strange inspirations I had a dream last night that featuring people swimming across a lake to see Jesus.  As I recall the lake was rather large (something that Minnesotans could respect).  It must have been summer because the lake was not frozen.  I don't recall having any personal connection to the person who swam across the lake as I watched.  Upon waking I couldn't help but think of the story in which Jesus is reputed to have walked on water.  But I didn't see him involved in any such shenanigans in the dream.  He seemed to be patiently waiting while people swam to him. 

I don't have too many dreams (that I can recall anyhow) of avatars.  I thus make something of a point to note them when I do have such dreams.  Perhaps the swimmer in the dream represents some aspect of me who is exerting effort to attain a higher form of life as symbolized by Jesus on the far shore.  And yet I have become a bit risk-averse as of late.  I am much more careful to make well discerned decisions now.  Such discernment can be interpreted to be the hallmark of maturity.  Or it can be interpreted as the behavior of a person overly consumed in fear.

What I can honestly say is that my apathy remains a bit strong these days.  Just doing all the healthy things I do is enough for each and every day.  Exercising, writing, dreaming, meeting new people and trying new things is enough for my life now.

I would like to spend more time with my flesh and blood friends than I have been doing lately.  But when I cannot see them in person seeing their zany, humorous and witty postings on Facebook brightens my day.  Thank you to all my friends for being there.


Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Of Bozos, Apathy and the Courage to Dream!

Tuesday, July 22, 2014


I just learned that a major element of the Affordable Care Act has been deemed illegal.  This doesn't exactly leave me feeling happy.  Obama has made some mistakes during his time in office but I have nonetheless remained supportive of him as his policies have generally been much more progressive and equitable when compared with his predecessor George W. Bush.  I still marvel that enough Americans were ignorant and misguided enough to vote for Bush not once but twice.  What a mess!  And yet President Obama is only one man.  Even as President there is only so much he can do...especially with our lame Congress, our bifurcated Supreme Court and the many Americans who still harbor racist and regressive views of the world.

I am doing my best to maintain a positive attitude.  Lately I have been contemplating doing what I would call a 'sadness fast'.  I believe it would be a very healthy choice to limit my consumption of media that contains sad, overwhelming content.  I think it wise to pause and ask myself what ultimate good it can do me to 'keep myself informed' if doing so only leaves me more convinced than I was beforehand that I have little power to change much of anything outside of my own life.  But isn't that the truth anyhow?  I can change my own life but changing others is a futile waste of energy.  We can live by example and perhaps in the way we live those close to us will feel inspired to change.

This question of how large structures can be changed has been on my mind a lot lately as evidenced by some of my recent writings.  Using a dualistic frame of mind you could conceive of two primary ways to effect social change...from the top down and then grassroots organizing.  I believe both of them have their important roles to play.

......

Back in my own personal world I continue to feel a lot of grief and sadness.  It does seem to me that the hard edge of my grief is softening.  I'm settling into the core of my unresolved sadness and really allowing myself to feel it...as painful as that is.  I don't allow myself to dissociate like I once unconsciously did.  There are days when I feel myself on the verge of tears as I contemplate how long I was unconsciously distancing myself from my own deepest, darkest and heaviest feelings.  The veneer is gone now.  I'm wading through the dreck related to my earliest years of life.  I came out of the closet many years ago but my deepest sadness did not come with me.  That layer was tucked way in the back of the closet.  'Spring cleaning' your entire life can be quite a process!  And it's obvious I won't finish my spring cleaning this warm season.  I'll be doing it when autumn begins.

I am pleased that it is still the summer season though.  I am enjoying the warm days of July.  It's strange to me to think how last year at this time I was still going through the virtual odyssey of seeing one health care practitioner after another.  The process of stabilizing my life and gaining an informed sense of the status of my health took several months.  The leaves were falling from the trees before I felt myself really beginning to ease into and accept the deeper process of change that I committed to last summer.

Lately I have been feeling a bit apathetic.  I know some of my apathy is a predictable consequence of how much effort I am devoting to moving my entire life in a new direction.  It's something akin to building a new house.  First you must lay a strong foundation.  Any lack of mindfulness in creating a solid foundation may lead to grave consequences later.

I am creating a new foundation for my life.  The laying of a new foundation is best done with discernment, courage, good friends, patience and skill.  I have heard it said there is no recipe for success.  I would tend to agree.  But there is a recipe for failure and I think it includes the lack of any and all of the ingredients I just listed.


My eyes and soul are hungry for new vistas and new possibilities.  Here is a song I have long enjoyed which expresses how I am feeling lately.  I want to experience the kind of sensory stimulation described in this piece of music!  Cheers!




Monday, July 21, 2014

July 21, 1982

Monday, July 21, 2014


The oppressive humidity has yet to be rained out of the atmosphere.  It feels like a typical summer day...in Louisiana.  And so I have retreated into air-conditioned bliss.  I am still finding it quite an adjustment to work full time once more.  It was a great gift to transition back into the workforce by only working part-time at first.

As I alluded to in my blog post from earlier today July 21st is my mother's birthday.  She is sixty-six years old today.  So many years have passed since she and my father were divorced and yet I still feel the grief of losing her to illness.  I was thinking about her life on July 21, 1982.  She turned thirty-four years old on that day.  And by that time she had already long vanished from my life as a consistent presence in my life.  As I have alluded to in posts throughout this summer I cannot really recall the summer of 1982.  I have been able to reconstruct that summer a bit through my own diligence.  And yet I often wonder to myself 'When does the grief end?'  When indeed will it end?  I do not know.  Who can actually know?  My therapist cannot know the exact answer either.  It simply takes some unspecified amount of time.

I remember reading from one of my uncle Bernhard's letters many weeks ago.  In that letter my uncle referred to my mother's return to Germany in August, 1982.  She was very ill at the time.  I do not recall knowing that this was true at that time.  I was still too traumatized by the ending of my father's second marriage.  It is indeed no wonder I feel it a miracle I survived to the age of nine years of age.

It's late at night in Germany as I write this.  I wonder if my mother is dreaming at this very moment while she sleeps.  And if she is dreaming what is she dreaming about?  Does she have any dreams about her only son?  I can't help but wonder.

A person cannot endure interminable grief and sadness.  We must eventually grieve our losses and move on.  In letting go we can open ourselves to new life and new love.

I pray that new life and new love will appear in my own life.


The Individual...and the Macrocosm

Monday, July 21, 2014


Today is my biological mother's 66th birthday.  (You can easily suspect a person has had a storied life when they use the phrase 'biological mother'.)  I have thought about her a lot this last year since I traveled to Germany in May, 2013.  There are many days when I will briefly wonder if I will see her again...and if I do, what her health will be like at that time.  It seems perfectly natural to me that an adult child of a schizophrenic parent will feel this way.  It's such a shame to prematurely lose a parent to illness.  On an intellectual level I know I am very much not alone in that experience.  And yet when I ponder how I feel it is still a little too easy to feel very much isolated and alone in my experience.

Yesterday I took some time to watch a video in which Amy Goodman interviewed Dr. Gabor Mate.  The subject of the video was early childhood adversity, addiction and other health issues.  I learned of Dr. Mate after contemplating what potential impact the stress level and personal health history of my own mother had on my own pre-natal development.  I began alluding to the field of pre-natal development earlier this year in my blog when I wrote about the timing of my own father's birth.  As someone born of a mother of Germanic heritage in May, 1942 my father was 'in-utero' during a period of approximately nine months that coincided with one of the darkest periods of World War II.  Knowing how the state of Arkansas isn't exactly a bastion of enlightened, progressive thinking I would not be surprised if my grandmother felt a heightened level of stress during her pregnancy with my father.  And that stress could have played a significant role in my father's pre-natal development.  I have resigned myself to the very real possibility that many questions I still hold about my paternal family of origin may never be answered.  I rightly do not trust my paternal family of origin to volunteer information that would help me assemble a more comprehensive understanding of my father and his earliest years of life.  It's very sad...but this is what can all too easily happen when secrecy rules lives.

I am actually here at the Basilica of St. Mary as I write this.  I came for the Shoe Ministry program they operate on Mondays and Saturdays.  I basically currently have one pair of shoes that are functional and still in good condition.  I live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world and I have one, yes one, pair of shoes to wear.  And I work full time.  I suppose you could call me an involuntary member of the working poor.  There are a lot of working poor Americans.  Most of the wealth generated since the financial crisis of 2008 has not 'trickled down' but has instead surged up to a very small portion of Americans in the upper echelons of wealth.  An article from the Pew Research Center indicates that wealth inequality in the United States, which has essentially increased since the 1970s, is now as extreme as it was in 1928!  America has not been host to such extreme socioeconomic polarization in generations.  And yet we Americans are expected to be content with the scraps of opportunity that have  been challenging to find in the last six years.

I bring up the larger circumstances that characterize this nation to broach a topic that has been on my mind lately.  And that is the notion of the individual and the macrocosm and how they interrelate.  My basic feeling is that individual people's ability to recover and improve the quality of their lives will inevitably reach a plateau when attempting to move upwards through socioeconomic strata at the same time that the broader economic reality is not conducive to prosperity.  Put in more simple language there is only so much one person can do when a nation functions in such a way that its political and economic systems effectively alienate and impoverish large numbers of people.

Another article I found explores the system of capitalism.  I will write more later on this issue of the individual and the broader society.

As for now I am doing my best to smile and continue trying to believe my future can be, and will be,  better than my past.




Sunday, July 20, 2014

July 20, 1982

Sunday, July 20, 2014


It's Sunday evening now.  I am writing something a bit anecdotal.  Tomorrow marks the beginning of another full week of work.  I remember the Sunday evenings from my childhood when I would return home after visiting with my aunts and uncle over the course of a weekend.  I would feel sad because I didn't want to return home and be around my all too aloof father.

The sadness I experienced in those moments was not something that really received good attention.  It was just another example of my emotional health not receiving sufficient attention.

The depression I experienced last year now feels like a mere distant memory.  To use the language used by Judith Herman in describing certain indicators of 'complex PTSD' I experience less emotional dysregulation.  The sadness and grief persist though.  They are thankfully not becoming worse.  I sense I will nonetheless need another six months (at least) of weekly sessions with my therapist to reach a deeper degree of strength and resilience.  Healing takes time.

With the month of August looming in the near future it's only natural that my thoughts are occasionally drifting to the coming season of autumn.  And yet to the best of my ability I want to enjoy this summer while it is here.



Reflections for a Muggy Sunday

Sunday, July 20, 2014


Healing can become a full-time process.  It can become an immense journey...a virtual odyssey.  This is how I have felt on some days.  My feelings of being persistently overwhelmed are long gone.  These feelings passed away when winter died and the world came alive again with the beauty of spring.  The longer, deeper and (often equally) demanding process of regeneration replaced the overwhelm.  And so here I am...a year later.  The great archeological dig is becoming really interesting.

There are many moments when I feel as if I am on a bit of a roller coaster.  Some might find such language to be alternative wording for mood swings.  But I don't sense I am having mood swings.  Neither my friends nor my therapist have made such an observation.  My primary care doctor did not make such an observation when I saw him this past Monday.  No, I believe what I am experiencing are the typical highs and lows that are a natural part of the process of healing.  The trend of the quality of my life continues to be upward...but it's punctuated by peaks and valleys.

I'm going to share some spontaneous writing I did yesterday.

Vital Steps To Achieving Goals


  • Clarity
  • Determination
  • Skill
  • Humility
  • Enthusiasm
  • Patience
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Role models and helpers
  • Humor

......

On the topic of shamanic journeying and diving in:

So doing shamanic journeying absolutely fascinates me but I have a fear of diving right in.  Is this the fruit of reaching a certain level of maturity?  Have I become more measured as the years have passed?  Am I becoming wiser?  Or am I becoming more conservative?  Wait, are those two ideas mutually exclusive?  I associate wisdom with chronology but I also associate conservatism with chronology.  I've heart it said that conservative views are more common among the elderly.

Becoming a shamanic practitioner seems like such a radical thing to do.  It requires me to dive right in.  And thus I am back to my beginning.  Now I feel much more inclined to take measured steps, to walk the middle path, to wade into the shallow end of the pool.  What would be my biggest fear about diving into shamanic healing?  Getting lost in the Otherworld...sort of like the boy in the movie Insidious did.  What if I get lost in the Otherworld but cannot find my way back?  I was gone for one Saturn cycle and I'm happy to be back now, in the present, at least most of the time.

In a sense this question I have is all about boundaries.  How can I live my life in a measured way?  How can I take "well discerned" risks that are thoughtful?  And now I find myself at the threshold of one of my core issues...namely making healthy choices.  How do I make healthy decisions?  And how can I trust my passion when I grew up among some very dispassionate people?  How do I trust excitement and enthusiasm, the racing heart, the breathless wonder, the illumination, the inspiration, the artist within, when the artist had been locked away for so long? Actually it was the artist-boy who had been locked away.  Ah yes, being held hostage.  And how here I am at PTSD-land.

Is shamanic work just my way of being obsessively fixated on my own internal process?











Saturday, July 19, 2014

There Is Life After Trauma...

Saturday, July 19, 2014


At some point today I felt this feeling deep in the very fiber of my being that I cannot recall feeling so fully since I embarked on this journey of writing this blog a little over a year ago.  I felt this soft, tender, warm conviction that there is indeed life after trauma...and that there can and will be joy and happiness in my own life in the future.  Trauma can permanently change us and the courses of our future lives but that doesn't mean we won't live, laugh and love in the future.

The choices I made today were healthy choices and therein lies the rub.  Health and love are within my reach.  I need only believe in the possibility of healing and in the power of the choices I am making.  The rest can unfold naturally without any obsessive pushing of the flow of life on my part.

I first met with the chiropractor and shamanic practitioner I first met last November.  I met her at the Germanic American Institute in St. Paul for some coffee and cake.  It was nice to be amidst others who speak German.  Mary and I had an engaging conversation.  It was a pleasure to relax, enjoy good food and dream of creative possibilities of collaboration.

I next went to All God's Children Metropolitan Community Church for a writing workshop focused on the local community of LGBT people in recovery.  It was gratifying to see others focused on their own wellness turn out for the workshop.  It was a joy to see others commit to self-exploration with the power of writing.  Yes, there are indeed others out there who are committed to their own wellness.  These people exist.  I have met many of them all over the country and world.  They are everywhere.  Healthy, happy people are indeed everywhere to be found.  I have the power to choose to find them.

I finally went to visit with the psychologist I have been consulting with throughout this month.  It was nice to again spend time in the presence of someone committed to health and wellness.  Again, there are people committed to wellness to be found out in the world.  But you have to put yourself out there to find them.

I saw the sun low in the western sky this evening.  It was a deep pinkish red color.  It seemed to flirt with the clouds.  It peeked in and out more than once.  I appreciated the greenery of the world.


I survived all the difficult times of my childhood.  Despite the hardship, emotional turmoil, failings of my past caregivers and destructive violence I reached my adulthood.  Yes, I have some psychic scars but I did not die.  I am still here.  And I have immense strength that I can draw upon.  Each and every moment you and I are creating our individual futures.  And together we can create a better collective future.  I am here now in this present moment...seeing myself type on my computer and smiling as I contemplate my resilience and dedication.

Cheers!



Friday, July 18, 2014

"Only The Day Dawns To Which We Are Awake" - Thoreau

Friday, July 18, 2014


Events like the loss of two Malaysian Airlines planes full of people in the last four months have a way of sharpening your awareness about the preciousness of the time we have in our lives.  We take risks (sometimes without being aware that we are doing so) each and every day.  But what happens when we no longer take risks?  I think we begin to die a little bit inside.

One of the realities I am often reminded of when I hear stories such as airline disasters is the truth of our interconnectedness.  It has been reported that some high profile individuals within the field of AIDS research were on the Malaysian Airlines flight that went down in the Ukraine.  The former President of the International AIDS Society, Joep Lange, was killed in the plane crash.  More details can be found in this article in the Huffington Post.  Who would have imagined that a person of such skill would die on a plane on a journey from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur as the plane flew over the Ukraine?  And Lange was not alone.  No, another article notes that approximately one hundred people on the plane were bound for an AIDS conference in Melbourne.  This is an extraordinary loss of talent, dedication and passion...not unlike the losses that were incurred day in and day out as the AIDS epidemic began scorching the world in the 1980s.  Truth is often stranger than fiction.

It's the seeming fragility of life that I often ponder in the wake of disasters such as these.  And it's this fragility, this all-too-tenuous quality, that has an important bearing on why I am estranged from my own paternal family of origin.  When my father emerged from the hospital after recovering from the attempt made on his own life he didn't change...at least not that I could see.  He remained very much the man he was before he nearly died a violent death.  Nearly meeting an untimely death at the age of forty didn't shake him up enough (apparently) for him to take a step back, evaluate his life and make some changes.  Years after that time of chaos and pain he still showed the same capacity for avoidance, inappropriate anger and an inability to be very present.  If nearly dying doesn't inspire quiet reflection and assessment of your own life I do not know what will.  I came to resent him for his aversion to self-examination.  Like many men in this American culture I do not observe in him much ability to appreciate the harmful consequences of his actions.  It's no wonder he voted for George W. Bush as President.  I think Bush is another example of a man incapable of understanding the consequences of his behavior.

"Only the day dawns to which we are awake" - I heard this phrase yesterday.  It was attributed to Thoreau.  And it especially struck me because I feel as if I was asleep for much of my own life.  Now I am finally not.  And I wish to go out and really see the world in a way I have not before.

I must admit to feeling that it has been a difficult journey of healing these last many months.  The main difficulty I have is becoming familiar with who I am (and can be) now that I am no longer being affected by what my shamanic practitioner last November described as soul loss.  When soul loss occurs very early in a person's life history, as it apparently did with mine, it seems quite possible that adjusting to life after the soul loss has been attended to can itself prove to be quite a process.

In the last few months in particular I have found myself reflecting back on countless memories I have from earlier in my life history.  And as I have allowed these memories to float through my consciousness here in the present I have found myself asking myself the same question again and again: 'Was I fully present at that time?'

Was I fully present....

During those long drives between Louisiana and Arkansas the last summer that my grandmother was alive?  No.

The time I visited Mato Tipila in Wyoming in 1997?  No.

When I visited my mother's family in Germany in 2002?  No.

When I began studying under the direction of Pamela Colorado in 2003?  No.


And so it goes.  I have so many memories...and what so many of them have in common is the reality, which I am appreciating now, that I wasn't fully present to what I was perceiving with my conscious awareness.  My consciousness, which one can perceive behind the eyes (our windows on the world), wasn't fully available.  I suppose you could say my capacity for full, active present awareness had been splintered by the trauma I had experienced.

Doing true grieving has required me to acknowledge the truth of what I am (and have been) feeling.  I have felt the shock of realizing I wasn't very present for much of my earlier life history.  I thought I had been present.  I had even told myself I had been present...but this wasn't really true.  I was somewhat present.  And that is an important distinction.


Only the day dawns to which we are awake.  I awoke before sunrise this morning to meet with my personal trainer.  I remember the light filling the dawn sky.  Do you remember the sky from this morning?








Thursday, July 17, 2014

Here's Hoping

Thursday, July 17, 2014


I sure hope I will soon be able to breathe new life and direction into my career.  It's quite obviously the next step in my recovery process.  I try not to allow my mind to wander too much because when it does I am apt to start ruminating a bit too much on how I have looked for a 'real' job for three years to no avail.  I don't believe it is anything in particular that I am doing wrong that has contributed to my difficulty in finding work that sustains me both financially and otherwise.  But perhaps I will get more good feedback in the coming weeks.

This week I began browsing around in the hope of finding a local organization that can provide me some vocational rehabilitation services.  I was recently determined to be eligible for such services; I met with my vocational rehabilitation counselor last week and was provided a listing of organizations I can be referred to.  I simply have to learn more about them and choose which organization I wish to partner with.

I want to believe that a new, more exciting and more fulfilling chapter of my life is about to begin.  I certainly feel as if I have worked very hard to achieve something more with my career than I have thus far created since completing graduate school three years ago.  I never quite imagined my life would look like this...that I would find myself enmeshed in so many difficulties for so long.  I'd like to believe that the worst is finally over now.  I have often felt the amount of effort I have put into my job search has not been commensurate with the results I have thus far obtained.  Perhaps that will soon finally change.

I have enjoyed writing my blog quite a bit this last year.  I intend to continue writing it though I suspect it might begin to morph into something a bit more expansive in the next year.  I would like writing to be something I do more of in my future work.

I am committed to making my future better than my past.

Here is hoping...


Wednesday, July 16, 2014

July Nights of Thirty-Two Years Ago

Wednesday, July 16, 2014


I wisely decided to retire early this evening.  A dry and soothing breeze is coming in my window.  There is still a bit of light in the western sky.  It's high summer now.  And yet today the word 'November' was uttered whilst I was at work..and I could feel a bit of trepidation course through me.  I don't want to think about November.  I don't want to ponder the coming of autumn...for then the trees will start to go into hibernation...and winter will be coming once more.

As for now it's July.  And I keep thinking of that summer thirty-two years ago when I was eight years old.  I do not recall pleasure during those summer days of 1982.  I just remember the vague and queasy feeling of fear.  Too many of the days of my childhood were filled with fear and chaos.  And too much of that fear got inside me.  I coped as best as I could.  I forgot some of the pain.  I harbored resentment. I felt a lot of anger.  Later I thought I had rid myself of it.  But I hadn't done that fully.  Now I am working to do that...all this time later.

Not until earlier this year did I think of myself as a writer.  I still do not imagine making a living on my writing alone...but I do now imagine using my communication skills in some greater way in the future.  Becoming a 'real' writer is something that still surprises me.  It can be such a solitary pursuit...this realm of words.  And in that sense I sometimes feel taking up writing isn't the best choice considering one of my lifelong issues was being isolated too much of the time.  But it appears this undertaking is part of a larger journey...so I must stay faithful to it.

Trauma can inspire us to do things we might not ordinarily do...like become writers.

How exactly does one transcend the experience of soul loss as an infant?  This question is in my mind on many days.

Night grows outside my window.  Another day is ending.  Where is my future?  Is it to be assembled in the pieces of a confused and chaotic past?  Yes and no.  What can I take with me on the journey?  Another good question.  I'd like to believe my ancestors are looking after me.  What does my future hold?

Some days I just want to sleep.

Tomorrow can be a better day.  The night wind whispers to me.  Tomorrow my eyes will again see the world.  My eyes are such a gift.  Perhaps I shall discover a key in some out of the way place tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow lovely surprises will come to my life.

Life.  A gift.  Darkness.  The wind.





I Was A Poster Boy For Burnout

Wednesday, July 16, 2014


The following writing is inspired by an article I found on the Forbes website.

Here is my question for the day.  Do you know what the signs of burnout are?  According to the above referenced article they are the following.  I am including a little commentary about my present and past status in regards to each of them.

1) Exhaustion 

I wouldn't say that I am currently exhausted...but lately I have been feeling I am about one step above this scenario.  I've done an enormous amount of work on myself in the last twelve months...and the results have been obvious to many people.

2) Lack of motivation

I find it difficult to motivate myself to go to a job that effectively uses almost no skills I developed after high school graduation.

3) Frustration, Cynicism, etc

Even now I find it difficult to not be cynical on occasion.  I showed an obvious disposition to cynicism when I was a teenager.  By that point I had already felt quite wounded by the earliest years of my life history.  My father noticed this enough to tell me not to be so cynical...but then again he couldn't be healthy and confront the reasons why I had become cynical.  He was not capable of such emotional depth.

4) Cognitive Problems

My concentration is much better than it was a year or even six months ago.  But there are still days when I struggle to concentrate well.

5) Slipping Job Performance

Thankfully this is not currently an issue.  But I do struggle to feel motivated.  Thankfully my blog is but one good outlet for me.

6) Interpersonal Problems at Home and Work

Undesired drama in my home environment has been a theme too often in my past life.  I have made a vow to end it.

7) Not Taking Care of Yourself

I am enhancing my skills in this area.  But I probably have been eating a bit too much chocolate ice cream.

8) Being Preoccupied With Work

I am gradually learning more and more how to leave my work at the office at the end of the day.

9) Generally Decreased Satisfaction

This has been a major issue.  I haven't done anything professionally rewarding that also pays me the salary I can merit based on my skill set in years.  This needs to change.

10) Health Problems

Also known as 2013.  Thankfully this is also essentially a phenomenon of the past.  I made a vow to myself last year to never wind up in the situation I was in a year ago.  


Do something healthy for yourself and read the article I referenced.  Would you consider yourself burned out?  If so, it's time to pay more attention to yourself.







Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Failed States and Failed People

Tuesday, July 15, 2014


I have wondered more than once in my life how people like Dick Cheney, John Boehner, George W. Bush, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the like come to be who they are.  How do people come to be so mean, nasty, self-absorbed, greedy, petty and destructive?

Phrased on the larger level of nation states how does a nation reach the point where oral sex in the White House is considered an impeachable offense but leading a nation into war (which ultimately results in thousands of service-members dead and millions of the local population displaced, impoverished or worse) on false pretexts is not considered an impeachable offense?  The moral relativism of the United States sometimes boggles my mind.  Sexual misconduct appalls plenty of people but leading our soldiers off to die in unnecessary and unprovoked wars seems to be perfectly acceptable.  Talk about your strange priorities!

Eleven years after 'President' George W. Bush launched a war in Iraq we are still dealing with the consequences of his poorly thought out choice.  Throughout his second term in office Bush was noteworthy for comments regarding his chosen war which were incredibly poor in taste.  A good synopsis of the issue of those missing weapons of mass destruction can be found here.  Bush also made something of an unfortunate name for himself during his time as Governor of Texas.  In particular he is reputed to have shown quite an insensitive attitude to Death Row inmate Karla Faye Tucker.  You can learn more about this largely forgotten episode here.

In my mind failed states and failed people are inextricably linked.  By 'failed people' I mean to describe people who lack most if not all of the most basic qualities that we customarily attribute to a 'good' person.  Characteristics that define quality people include integrity, kindness, humility, sensitivity, compassion, generosity and a willingness to learn.  Many men who are born and raised in the culture of the United States seem to think manhood and masculinity are made manifest by attributes other than the ones I have just enumerated.  I find that very sad.  And I don't think such distorted conceptions of masculinity are going to work much longer for the whole world either.

The geopolitical reality of nation states, their origin and their current issues in this twenty-first century world was but one subject I surveyed while a graduate student in California a few years ago.  I found it interesting to note that nation states are, in some cases, shadows of their former selves.  By this I mean that an increasing number of the policy issues that bedevil nation states and their citizens can be attributed to what are called non-state actors.  The phenomenon of terrorism is but one example.  Corporations are another excellent example.  I think it accurate to say that corporate influence is undermining representative democracy in this nation.  Too much of what we believe, eat, wear and the like is influenced by a very small collection of corporations.


Failure has been on my mind lately...actually for the past year or so.  I suppose on some level I have been reflecting on failure because of how failure intimately affected my life so many years ago.  Yes, I am working through my pain and disappointment.  But it sure does take a lot of time.  I feel as if I am the poster boy for what happens when a whole bunch of people and institutions fail you throughout your life.  It's all too easy to become an angry, alienated person who despairs of ever feeling like he truly belongs...anywhere.

As much as failure is an unpleasant aspect of life I believe that being insulated from the consequences of our failures, small and big, individual and collective, can seriously harm us in the long run.  When corruption riddles our political system and we tolerate its presence it seems to me we are just asking for the poison to fester and worsen.  This doesn't mean a solution to the deepest, darkest issues in our lives is easily discerned or implemented.  No, addressing complex problems is often...complex.

I think my father is a good example of a person who could have become so much more than he ultimately became.  But he became something else.  And I simply could no longer tolerate his inappropriate behavior.  It's amazing how much harm one person can do...intentionally or involuntarily.

I would like to believe that I am going to ultimately transcend my own difficult past.  But some days I wonder.  Some days I wonder how much I can do...even with all the help I have.  Does that sound pessimistic?  Does it sound realistic?  I'm not exactly sure.


I believe a lot about American society is failing now.  Our political system is being corrupted by an incredible amount of money.  The Supreme Court's recent decision regarding Hobby Lobby convinces me there are many failed people in our society.  By that I mean they profess to be upstanding members of society but their actions contradict their words.  Many individuals, rather than participate fully in civil society, prefer to insulate themselves in the name of their religious beliefs by refusing to be open to even interacting with (let alone provide any number of services to) other Americans.  It's very sad.  The surest way to live a narrow life is to be a narrow person.

In the face of what seems to be a continual unraveling of the capacity of our nation's citizenry to actually agree on anything or get anything done I attempt to remain resolute and optimistic.  But it's very sobering to be an American these days.  Very.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Monday

Monday, July 14, 2014



I have my moments when I wonder when the unexpected intrusive and upsetting thoughts will stop suddenly appearing in my waking consciousness every so often.  Today was another day in which the past impinged upon the present.  While at work this morning I suddenly found memories from 1995 and 1996 drifting through my mind.  In particular I wondered if a certain relationship I had with an older man at that time was not what I thought it was at the time.  Though the relationship was consensual there was a large difference in age…and he was married.  Today, as the memories appeared in my conscious awareness, I wondered if that relationship caused me more harm than good.  I also found myself wondering if the man’s wife ever found out about the full nature of our relationship.  This entire relationship occurred before I came out as a gay man in 1997.

Moments like this morning’s sudden unintended trip down memory lane have a way of leaving me feeling very off center.  And yet it’s a testament to the immense work I have done in the last year that I did not overreact as the memories suddenly appeared.  I did not experience a suddenly racing pulse.  My breathing did not become shallow and rapid.  I experienced no telltale signs that you might associate with a panic attack.  But I did feel an immense amount of sadness.  But that is nothing new.  Deep sadness has been my companion for a while now.

Prior to the interlude of this Monday morning I had already scheduled an appointment with my primary care doctor.  My energy level has been low for about a week now.  Despite the uplifting sunbathing I was able to do yesterday I definitely felt as if I had a ‘case of the Mondays’ this morning.  The sadness is gradually morphing into something else but some days the pace of the transformation feels positively glacial. 

I know my deep sadness is due in part to the deepening realization that it isn’t realistic for me to hope to have any sort of relationship with my paternal family of origin.  By ‘paternal family of origin’ I mean my father and his siblings.  My four grandparents all died many years ago.  My paternal family’s capacity for denial is as dense as granite.  I have finally learned to stop beating my head against that which cannot be moved…or can only be moved with such extreme exertion that the energy required is not worth the results achieved.  As I have noted recently in my writing I believe the only way my paternal family of origin would ever take my sentiments regarding my father’s past (and much more recent) dysfunctional behavior seriously would be if I had committed suicide earlier in my life.  I can no longer afford to abdicate so much of my power to any one person.  It’s debilitating and self-defeating.  For my own sake I must move on.

And I am moving on.  But first must come the time of my dark grief.  First I must acknowledge the pain of the loss…the lost time, the lost energy, the lost possibilities.

I have to admit that I find myself wondering how my father’s family managed to survive all the challenges that have erupted throughout the centuries.  Given my family’s penchant for avoidance and denial how did our ancestors manage to survive the stormy periods of history that others were defeated by?  For example, if you are reading this passage your ancestors either survived the Black Death in Europe or were never exposed to the bubonic plague in the first place.  Those of us who live today do so in part due to the ingenuity of our ancestors.

I will begin working with a personal trainer this week.  I am looking forward to that.