Enjoying Summer

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

It’s another beautiful summer day here in Minneapolis.  And it’s not raining!  I suppose that’s the most current weather joke I can tell considering how much rain has fallen this month.  But at least it’s not snowing…and it’s not -10F either.  This is the season in the Minnesota cycle of seasons that most appealed to me when I moved here in October, 2012.  And yet the weather has been anything but very normal since I moved here.  I’m just pleased to see so much lush greenery now.  It’s a feast for my eyes.

So in speaking with my vocational rehabilitation counselor today I learned I apparently have qualified for some sort of assistance.  I will learn more on Thursday morning at my appointment.  I am excited that I am finally beginning to move beyond the extremely challenging circumstances that bedeviled me for so many months.  Between now and Thursday morning I need to spend a bit of time reviewing the notes I have made about what I would like to do as a profession the remainder of my life….or at least for the foreseeable future.  I am excited to feel so alive again and to also be contemplating new and different possibilities for what work I will do.

In preparing for my appointment with my therapist today I made some different notes.  I shared some of these in my writing here in my blog yesterday.  I plan to spend part of the session speaking about the concept of ‘Complex PTSD’ and its potential relevance to my own health history and future life.

I feel quite good despite the slight adjustment downwards I made in my antidepressant medication dosage.  This time of year it can be quite easy to get off antidepressants.  January is quite another matter.  But underneath the smile I am trying to consciously practice more often there is still that deep grief.  But my grief feels muted compared to other times of the year when the world is emerging from winter or preparing to slide into winter.  I just want to enjoy these beautiful summer days as much as possible.

This time last year I was taking medication to address the lung issue that had at that point been troubling me for weeks.  I can still recall having to hide from the sunlight during the brightest time of the year because the antibiotic I was on can result in photo-toxicity.  It’s nice to not be a vampire in the summer.

……

Now I am writing after my session.

Sometimes I feel as if I must be the biggest handful for my therapist.  I have no doubt that he has other clients who are living out very interesting lives…or at least have done so in the past.  I often have the feeling that my psyche is a bit like a big ball of yarn with these innumerable thematic threads that I am only gradually beginning to really pull apart from one another.  It has occasionally felt like a very laborious process but now I have finally established something called momentum.  It’s nice to have established such repertoire in any relationship in my life.

I sense something else is unfolding as well.  The deeply ingrained negative beliefs about myself that developed in my childhood and became thoroughly submerged below my conscious awareness now feel as if they are withering and evaporating away.  I have the feeling quite often of walking around out in the world and thinking to myself “What in the world have I been thinking?”  I suppose this isn’t unusual when you experience a profound awakening.

Tomorrow: The Anniversary of the Surprising Diagnosis

A Sweet Sigh of Relief

Monday, June 23, 2014

It's nearly here.  The anniversary of when I was bowled over by the shock of being diagnosed with PTSD last summer.  It happened last year on June 25th.  I'll be seeing my therapist tomorrow and I have no doubt that my awareness of my 'mental health anniversary' will come up in our conversation.

The buoyancy I feel by virtue of the fact that I have come to the end of the illustrious Year One is counterbalanced by the fact that my most recent visit to a psychologist I sought out for a second opinion has left me convinced I could easily meet the criteria for 'Complex PTSD' if it were in fact a current valid diagnosis in the DSM-V.  Why do I believe this?  Because of the following six phenomena I could honestly say I could recognize in myself at some point in my recent history that I had experiences that match all six.  Here are the six spelled out with my own short commentary about my own difficulties.

• Emotional Regulation. May include persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or inhibited anger.  -   I am experiencing a lot of persistent sadness now.  Whereas last year I felt predominantly angry when I first was back in therapy now the main affective state I recognize is sadness.  My former landlord essentially mocked the anger I was carrying around by using the word 'erupt'.  Though I found him to be a highly insensitive jerk (and believe anyone who gets to know him well would feel the same way when it comes to his response to deep human suffering) he was astute in his observation.  But he had the subtlety of a crowbar upon the forehead.
• Consciousness. Includes forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes in which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body (dissociation).   -   I didn't realize until last year just how well developed my capacity for dissociation was.  Now I am unlearning it.
• Self-Perception. May include helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.   -   I often felt completely different in high school.  I felt alienated really.
• Distorted Perceptions of the Perpetrator. Examples include attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, or preoccupied with revenge.   -   I had an intake worker tell me last fall that I seemed to give a lot of my power over to others.
• Relations with Others. Examples include isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer.   - My trust issues are quite obvious to anyone who reads through my blog.
• One's System of Meanings. May include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.   -   Despite all my efforts to improve my life I still struggle to have faith that I will one day experience deep healing and true, abiding release from the horrible memories of my earliest years of life.  I am indeed much better than a year ago.  But the journey is a long one.  And it isn't a journey for the faint of heart.   

More information about 'Complex PTSD' can be found here.

The most exciting news I had today is the fact that I have a follow up appointment with the North Minneapolis Workforce Center this Thursday, June 26th.  I am guessing that a decision has been made about my application for vocational rehabilitation services.  If I learn on Thursday that somehow I was deemed ineligible I might try to press my case by making reference to my recent search for a second opinion that resulted in me learning about this proposed diagnostic category of 'Complex PTSD'.  I have no intention to make my trauma history the defining aspect of my identity but at the same time I will not fail to seek out any and all opportunities that might be open to me by virtue of my current and past circumstances.  It would be so sad if I didn't find and accept whatever support and resources I may be eligible to receive.  I have come so far in the course of only twelve months.  I believe I may make much more progress in the next twelve.

I have scheduled yet another appointment with Dr. Valtinson this coming Saturday.  I hope to have a lot more clarity regarding what may be possible in my immediate future by this time next week.  It will be a good way to celebrate the fact that I have written this blog for an entire year.

The Feeling Of A Life Indefinitely Postponed

Sunday, June 22, 2014


My most recent piece, in which I wrote a work of creative fiction (I hope it will be fiction) about the world about twenty years into the future, inspired me to think a bit more on the state of my own life today.

I met with a local psychologist yesterday for a follow up to my original appointment which I had last Thursday.  My main goal in getting a second opinion is to develop a better sense of what the arc of my healing process may be like in the short, intermediate and long term future.  This arc is obviously contingent on the choices that I will make each and every day of my life.  But because I am a social creature and do not live on a deserted island my life is inevitably intertwined with the lives (and choices) of many other people.  And that's what concerns me.  I think many of my fellow Americans need some serious therapy.

I have written on previous occasions about feeling as if the dreams I had for my future life were postponed (perhaps indefinitely?) due in part to the ignorance, reactivity and sheer nastiness of too many Americans.  What is my Exhibit A?  Congress of course!  I think our current Congress set a record for achieving the lowest public approval rating ever!  I believe it is under 10%.  You almost have to try to fail to do so poorly.

Basically, as I think I effectively convey in my other piece written today, I have serious doubts about the sustainability of the future of this nation.  There are numerous issues that concern me.

I submitted my application for a position back in the Monterey Bay area of California.  Meanwhile I have to get on with my life.  It's been over three years since I graduated from school there.  My life hasn't evolved exactly as I had hoped or dreamed.  My McCloy Environmental Policy fellowship awarded to me by the American Council on Germany has been the highlight of my professional life these last three years.  There are many other opportunities I can explore outside of California...and outside of this nation.  And I am doing that.  Life is too short not to be happy.

October 27, 2032

Sunday, June 22, 2014


Earlier this year I read an article my friend Craig posted on Facebook.  The article is about the end of the world as we know it...you know, some light reading.  And so it inspired me to write something of a science fiction piece.  Consider the following my own visualization of the nightmare scenario that may descend upon us within my own lifetime.


The World of 2032

Looking back it's so obvious that the signs of immense change were all around us.  Unfortunately we as a species were careless.  Or at least those in power were predominantly careless.  Too often in human history the ones most able to effect meaningful change are least inclined to do so.  Is it human nature?  Perhaps it is. We have millennia of evidence to support that idea.  Anyhow, as has happened too many a time the voices of reason, science and discernment were drowned out by the larger number of shrill, paranoid voices advocating a medieval (meaning limited) way of thinking and responding to a very modern era problem.  In short, we replayed that iconic moment when Nero was said to have fiddled while Rome burned.  Only this time the whole of the planet was effectively burning.

We had been fouling our collective nest for decades.  And we lived in a fantasy world of delusion...we imagined that we could somehow successfully mitigate and even 'adapt' to the nightmare we were sowing in the atmosphere above us.  Again I am using the collective 'We' as a bit of a gross over-generalization.  There were many who thought very clearly back in the last decades of what we now see was relative stability compared to what we live with now.  Back then our forebears had what many now perceive to be overly cute and arrogant terms to describe our way of relating to that collective nest known as planet Earth.  A term especially maligned by the world of our present age is 'carbon management'.  We were unleashing a genie out of a bottle we could not put back in.  We could proclaim we were managing the problem all we wanted but we might as well have been tossing a glass of water in a raging bonfire.

The media of two decades ago in the United States played an important role in leading us to the point we are at now.  To be perfectly honest the priorities of those days were completely out of whack.  Whether it was programs with strange names like Honey Booboo or media called 'Fox News' Americans were sorely confused at best and paranoid at worst.  They had lost touch with the most fundamental realities that a sustainable society must attend to.  America became the New Rome of the modern era.

Societies prone to distraction aren't likely to be very sustainable.  This is another lesson that can be gleaned from what unfolded in the last few decades.  The 2010s were the decade in which it became clear the United States was not on a very sustainable course.  Prominent domestic issues and the way a citizenry deals with them reveal much about the moral compass of a nation.

One big issue in the 2010s in America was gun violence.  Shootings of innocent people (children and adults alike) became increasingly commonplace...or at least that was the perception.  As the incidents frequently featured young, deeply troubled men it was a commonly held conclusion (and rightly so...to a degree) that the issue of mental health care and child development needed some close examination.  But it was a complete farce to suggest that the problem of gun violence could be solved by addressing the health care system in general and mental health care for the young in particular alone.  Young, highly alienated men can only do so much damage with their hands alone.  Give them easy access to guns and it's an entirely different matter.  When the American Congress failed to pass any substantive gun violence legislation whatsoever many Americans of all political persuasions began to have a growing feeling that something indeed was very wrong in America.  But that had been made possible by many other bad policy choices.  An exposition of these issues would be too long for my brief  survey of the history of the first thirty years of the twenty-first century.  Suffice it to say that a misunderstanding of the second amendment led many to make an overemphasis on their individual rights to the detriment of their local community's right to enjoy safety and stability.

Joblessness and insecurity also became a huge issue in America in the 2010s.  The value of a college education became a matter of focus as no amount of skill and education seemed to be a guarantee of a stable job in many fields.  As more young people came to doubt the value of investing in their own education a self-fulfilling prophecy began to unfold.  As American workers became increasingly uncompetitive in the global marketplace it was only natural that more and more jobs would get off-shored to other nations.  The low paying service economy jobs stayed behind because those are positions ideally suited to a workforce with a low level of education.

The United States also extended itself much too far abroad.  In this way it also imitated the Roman Empire.  Its wars of choice initially launched by the man now derisively called King Idiot (George W. Bush) began its inevitable decline.  Later the nation's Congress became filled with adults who had the attention span and maturity of five year olds.  Infighting and defense of their own voter base became more important than compromise.  The center could only hold for so long.  Eventually it all would inevitably collapse.  But they kept putting bandaids on it for a long time...and smiling all along.

Other portions of the world fared better in the last two decades.  Russia's annexation of Crimea provoked civil unrest and mistrust in the former Eastern European Soviet bloc nations for many years.  Eventually, though at first it seemed so unlikely, a mass migration of people within the borders of Ukraine occurred.  This resettlement of the people within Ukraine's borders was something akin to what happened between India and Pakistan in the 20th century.  But eventually the region stabilized politically...at least for a while.

Russian hegemony and the growing impact of climate change gave the EU pause in regards to its energy policy.  Its heavy dependence on its neighbor to the East led many nations to a renewed debate regarding the merits and challenges of energy independence.  Though a new Cold War never developed, relations between Europe and Russia also never returned to the new normal that developed once the Soviet Union collapsed around the year 1990.

Southeast Asia was marked by massive chaos.  This was due in large part to the menace of a rising ocean.  Compared to the number of those displaced and lost within the state of Bangladesh alone the much reported disappearance of the Malaysian flight (and of course its passengers and crew) in early 2014 was a proverbial drop in the bucket.  Having become a huge economy and influential player on the global scale of geopolitics China began to exert its influence more firmly in the region.  Though China's military never invaded its neighbors the state nonetheless exerted significant clout with the power of its economy.  Surpassing the United States of America China created mitigation technologies that at least somewhat slowed down the disastrous financial and human costs that inevitably resulted as the oceans gradually rose and continued to acidify.  As America's influence continued to wane China's neighbors began to look to China as a source of stability, resources and international aid.  Southeast Asia effectively became a large satellite region of China.

Japan never fully recovered from the shock of the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima in 2011.  Despite the assistance of other developed nations the repair of the economic, social and environmental fabric of the Japanese nation proved to be an extremely financial and time intensive process.  Japan became the East Germany of the 21st century.  Those who know their history well will recall that a major industry of the former East Germany was its import of toxic waste from other states.  After the Iron Curtain fell in 1989  and Germany was reunified in 1990 it became apparent just how degraded East Germany had become as a result of this special 'industry'.  The Japanese government never made an intentional policy choice to make toxic waste import a major economic driver .  But it didn't need to.  The steady poisoning of the Japanese nation by the contamination unleashed by Fukushima was the effective equivalent.  Though the Japanese economy did eventually return to marginal growth in the late 2010s and early 2020s historians often nonetheless look back at Fukushima as marking the beginning of Japan's gradual decline in prominence on the world stage.  And by 2025 it didn't much matter anyhow.  By that point everyone throughout the world had become obsessed with the damage being done by a three atom molecule known as carbon dioxide.

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted that the concentration of this heat trapping gas breached 400 parts per million near the end of 2013.  This was a monumental occurrence.  Never in modern human history had so much of the gas filled our planet's atmosphere.  But the denial of its impact would continue for several more years.

The year 2019 is often seen as the year in which human impact upon the environment could no longer be denied.  The year 2019 was the first year in which all ice cover disappeared during the Northern Hemisphere Summer.  The exact date this occurred was August 26, 2019.  Scientists across the planet were amazed.  And finally, finally, many citizens of their respective nations were finding themselves amazed.  Human beings managed to do in a mere two centuries what the planet itself had previously needed many, many millennia to do.  We had fundamentally terraformed the planet...without even trying...too much.

By 2020 the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide had reached four-hundred fifteen parts per million.  And then even more frightful things began to happen.  Any atmospheric scientist knows that carbon dioxide is not the only gas known as a greenhouse gas.  There are others.  And some of these others are far more effective at trapping heat on a molecular level basis.  Methane is a great example.  And for many years prior to the 2020s there was concern that continued warming in the Northern Hemisphere Arctic would eventually potentially cause such a significant thaw in regions once ruled by permafrost that the methane content locked therein would suddenly begin to rise into the atmosphere above.  And this indeed did happen.  And then we had the peril of a vicious feedback loop suddenly upon us.

It only was a few years into the 2020s when it became much more clear just how incredibly quickly the behavior of the atmosphere would change as a result of the sudden spike in the concentration of methane within the atmosphere.  And then, finally, the fundamental unsustainable foundational assumption of our fossil fuel powered global society became glaringly obvious.  It's not a pretty thing when an entire civilization is shown the pathology inherent to its foundational structure in the equivalent of a geological nanosecond.  We had to change.  And we had to change quickly.  If we didn't we risked making Earth a sister planet of Venus in more ways than it already was.

In 2023 a scandal erupted in the United States that rapidly accelerated the transformation of that nation. Irrefutable documentation was disclosed that provided new details about the terrorist attacks of 2001 that changed the focus of the United States' foreign policy.  Back in 2001 most Americans could not yet 'connect the dots' because there simply was not enough evidence to do so.  The next big dot came in 2014 when the United States House of Representatives passed an amendment that effectively prevented the Department of Defense from utilizing funds to address the national security impacts of climate change.  The amendment, sponsored by Republican Representative David McKinley, contained the following language:

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation’s Agenda 21 sustainable development plan or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order.

To be fair there was resistance to what in hindsight can now be called such colossal stupidity.  Other representatives (essentially the Democrats) noted the horrifying implication of the amendment.  Representative Henry Waxman of California noted that "The McKinley amendment would require the Defense Department to assume that the cost of carbon pollution is zero."  Meanwhile the Arctic was melting, California was enduring a historical drought and India was withering in a huge heat wave.  The cost of carbon was rapidly accruing.

In 2023 it became public knowledge that the United States intelligence community had had incontrovertible evidence that terrorist attacks would specifically occur on September 11, 2001 several months before they took place.  The attacks were allowed to take place for one primary reason.  They were seen as an excellent opportunity for the country to justify the expansion of its military and surveillance infrastructure.  But why would those within the United States government wish to do that?  It was quite simple.  The United States Department of Defense had been researching the security implications of climate change long before such research became public knowledge.  And it was determined that a stronger security and military infrastructure would be essential to attempt to maintain order if and when the nation began to collapse under the weight of the impacts of the world's fossil fuel powered economy.  In short, some of the conspiracy theorists were exonerated.  Some of their worst fears had indeed come true.

The public outrage regarding the deceit perpetrated on the American people by their own government was immense.  Some wanted to see something like medieval justice enacted; there were calls for the leaders of that time to be executed for their deceit.  Thousands of Americans died in the wars the United States launched in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Chaos in Iraq loomed large well into the 2010s.  The scandal regarding the deeper story of September 11th also helped to bring about the downfall of the American Republican Party.  But the damage had been done long ago.  It proved extremely difficult to clean up the political, social and economic mess that had been gradually building for over two decades.

The United States military ultimately and finally withdrew from Afghanistan...in 2017.  And unfortunately, despite the efforts of well meaning individuals as well as international aid organizations, the country shortly thereafter plunged back into the same conditions that had characterized it prior to the United States invasion in the 2000s.  Despite growing Chinese hegemony nearby the chaos in Afghanistan proved a daunting policy nightmare for the entire region.  And the United States' focus on Afghanistan caused it to ignore the more serious issues in neighboring Pakistan.  In short, the United States made serious policy blunders both in its domestic affairs as well as abroad.


Transformational leaps in a society are often marked by periods of chaos in which the discourse of those with enough power to express their voices may become shrill, distorted, disoriented and highly disturbing.  Europe went through a profound transformation as a result of the Black Death.  In the twenty-first century we are undergoing something somewhat equivalent.  Some derisively call what we inadvertently unleashed 'Carbon Death'.

It was only in the last ten years that the parasitic quality of the fossil fuel industry throughout the world became apparent.  A very few people were being enriched in exchange for undermining the sustainability of the human 'adventure' in the long term.  Earlier in this century (was it really only about two decades ago?) a noted economist by the name of Sir Nicolas Stern described climate change as 'a result of the greatest market failure that the world has seen.'  We're just now starting to appreciate what this market failure has brought us.  And it seems future generations may appreciate it even more.  And I suspect whatever people follow us in the next hundred years are probably going to wonder how their forebears could have been so incredibly blind and stupid.  Simply put...it was greed.  It was shortsightedness.  It was human self-absorption.

There is still some hope that levels of greenhouse gases within Earth's atmosphere may ultimately be stabilized.  But to do so we have discovered...hopefully not too late...that de-carbonizing the economy of an entire planet is no small task.  You don't put it on your 'To Do list' and expect to make much daily progress on it...at least not in the grand scheme of things.

Unfortunately the de-carbonization of the world economy is an immense task.  Some call it "the fundamental evolutionary challenge to our species".  A primary challenge has been simply dealing with people's collective thoughts about money, costs and the value of the future.  As it became clear that Nicolas Stern was correct about global climate change representing the greatest market failure ever known the central question became this one: "How do we address the current and future costs of what greenhouse gases have done to our atmosphere and the planet as a whole?"

In essence, every time it seemed the solution to this global nightmare was 'not affordable' it became increasingly clear that it was our fundamental underlying assumptions about the validity of a world underpinned by money that were a major part of the problem.  Put even more concisely, our species had been worshipping at the altar of money.  We could not afford the costs of changing how we powered an entire world.  And yet we obviously could also not bear the results of ignoring the costs of overloading our atmosphere for a few centuries.  To do nothing was not an option.  And yet to do what was necessary was overwhelming!

The amount of anger in the world these days is extreme.  As people throughout what was previously called the developed and developing worlds began to wake up to what they had been unconsciously participating in (namely the whole-scale degradation of the planet) there was much outrage.  This outrage was expressed in finger pointing, debate that would inevitably devolve into shouting matches and mass protest movements that advocated a complete opting out from participating in any and all aspects of the old society that had led us to the severe crisis that eventually came to define our everyday lives.

Today we cope with the errors of our past ways as best as we can.  The most basic needs of human life define most of our efforts.  We therefore had to redefine what luxury and a good quality life mean.  Today a good quality life is defined primarily by one criteria: stability.  If you have stability you have a good life.  If you have minimal security you do not.  Life today is inherently an adventure for anyone who is alive.  We are experiencing the consequences of the shortsightedness of our ancestors.  It may take us generations for us to adjust.  But we have no real choice in the matter.  Certain options were foreclosed by the actions of our ancestors.

Summer Solstice 2014

Saturday, June 21, 2014

As I walked through downtown on my way to the bus this evening I could hear what I assumed was a street musician playing ‘Amazing Grace’.  And immediately that one lyric from the song went though my mind: ‘…was blind but now I see…’

Oh how I see now.  I see so well it still amazes me.  When I embarked on therapy last summer I was not planning on having an ‘eye opening’ experience that would forever alter my future perception of the world.  But I think that medicine and healing is not only a science but also still an art…even in the twenty-first century. And art inevitably has an element of mystery to it.  Despite how much we may try art is not something that can be neatly defined.  It defies neat, simplistic categorization.   We cannot easily ‘put art into a box.’  And thus art is a bit like healing in that regard.

The most intense light of the calendar year graced the landscape today.  There were barely any clouds in the sky.  I almost had to squint on more than one occasion while outdoors.  That’s certainly not surprising.  But what is surprising is how I still marvel at the three dimensional nature of the planet.  Everything has depth.  The height and width of things was always easy for me to perceive….but the depth not so much.

Today I followed up with the psychologist I saw this past Thursday.  After doing an introductory appointment I want to be able to pose some questions when I see her today.  The main question that is on my mind is this one: "What is the potential arc of my future life?"  Stated another way: "What is the potential contained within me that I could still realize in what remains of my life?"

......

Welcome to Brazil, Minnesota!  The torrential rains of this past week combined with the excessive rains from earlier in the month have led the world to begin resembling the rainforests of other parts of the planet.  It is indeed a bit surreal!  And because I am still adjusting to the vividness of the world outside my own skull I must say I am fascinated by how many shades of green I see outdoors.  I cannot recall seeing such intensely deep shades of green recently...if ever.

At the height of the sun's power here in the Northern Hemisphere it feels a bit natural to be fairly un-attentive to my grief.  Grief is something akin to the darkness and cold we associate with winter.  Laying out under the power of the sun on the Summer Solstice is a good way to burn out some of the grief inside me.

......

I almost find it a bit amusing (as well as a bit sad) when I read what I wrote a year ago regarding my confusion as to why I felt some free floating rage.  Um, hello, it had to do with your most basic needs for safety and attention not being sufficiently met when you were a child!  It's no wonder I felt such volatile upset.



Written one year ago today...

Friday, June 21, 2013

I am feeling more and more optimistic about my future as I continue to take many steps to improve my health.  The new therapist I intend to work with wishes to administer a PTSD screening when I see him next.  I have certainly familiarized myself with this disorder from past reading.  I also had hoped that past therapy had successfully treated the issues that I had.  But it is apparent that it would benefit me to work with a counselor at this time. 

I do not understand why I seem to feel this free floating rage.  That mystifies me a bit.

I have felt myself to be in a persistent state of culture shock since my return to the United States some three weeks ago.  Having left the fishbowl of this country it is strange to be back inside of it.  I have a new appreciation for the shadow side of America, namely how paranoid, obsessive, traumatized, medicated and disillusioned is the collective American psyche.  And how could people not be when you see what is available for consumption in the media and in the grocery store?  It’s sad and overwhelming to contemplate.

Will You Still Love Me When I Am No Longer Young and Beautiful?

Friday, June 20, 2014

This was the question a Facebook friend posted today.  I have never met this friend in person.  I connected with him online because of our common interest in leather.  He is currently the Mr. Iowa Leather titleholder.  He has an adorable smile and a smoldering energy about him.  I’ve never actually been to Iowa.  It’s one of the few states I have never set foot in.  I’d be willing to travel there just to meet him.

So will I still be loved when I am no longer young and beautiful?  This is a thought that has been on my mind a lot lately.  Perhaps it has been on my mind a little too much.  And it pains me that it is on my mind so much as of late.  The fellow I referenced, Mr. Iowa Leather, is still in his twenties.  Upon turning forty last year I must admit that my twenties almost feel like a distant memory.  And it saddens me that throughout my twenties I was still seeing the world through eyes clouded by the impact of early life trauma I simply had no power to escape.  The scales finally fell from my eyes last year.  And what a resounding sound they made when they did so.  I am still adjusting to the transformation that has unfolded in my life in the last twelve months.  It has not been an easy process.  But it has been a rewarding one.  Sometimes the most rewarding experiences are also the most grueling.

As I think about this question that Drew posed I cannot help but again think about this picture of myself I have recently been looking at.  It was taken in Jaunary, 1999 in Chicago.  I was only twenty-five years old.  I am standing near the shore of Lake Michigan.  I was clad in a jacket.  The weak winter sunlight was glinting off the snow behind me.  You might never guess form looking at my smiling face that I had suffered so much in my life already.  It’s been difficult to simply learn how to live a life in which I am consistently happy.  But then again I didn’t have the best modeling of how to create such a life. 

Four months after the picture was taken I left Loyola University, Chicago and the Jesuit order and embarked on a new life in California.  I can still recall taking a week to drive across the United States to ultimately arrive in San Francisco, California.  I still recall the day I arrived.  It was May 25, 1999.  I saw parts of the United States I had never seen before.  I dreamed of having a life as exciting as some of the plot elements in the book Takes of the City written by Armistead Maupin.

My life in California did prove to be quite interesting.  At some points I could even describe it as eventful.  I met many interesting people.  I learned a lot.  I went to graduate school twice.  But the undertow of my earliest years of life was still dragging me down.  I just didn’t know it.  My lack of understanding of the impact of those earliest years of my life just compounded the original harm.  Sometimes we do harm to ourselves and do not even realize what we are doing.  Such can be the truth of our earlier years of life.

When I look at that picture of myself from January, 1999 I sometimes wish I could travel back to that time (just like I have found myself wishing I could have traveled back to the summer of 1982 and decisively change the future course of my life) and change the future of my life.  I feel grief that I still wasn’t really awake when I moved to California.  I wasn’t truly and fully aware of my own beauty…inside and out.  I saw the world dimly.  Now I look at the smile I showed to the world then and wonder how I could have perceived myself so incorrectly.

Will I still be loved when I am no longer young and beautiful?  Certain moments (like turning forty) have a way of prompting a person to think about these sorts of questions.  I now appreciate my beauty in a way I never did earlier in my life.  But I do wonder how long I will be considered handsome.  Will I ever find real and abiding love in my life?  Will I find the love I had hoped to find when I moved to San Francisco partly motivated by the dream of finding big, gay love?  I don’t know.  I hope I will.

As for now I am continuing my journey of healing.  And I am aware every day how precious my remaining time is.  These days I find myself so aware of the ponderous grief inside me.  There must be some way for me to exorcise my grief.  I find myself often unconsciously praying for guidance to lead me to a good future path for myself.  I want to believe I will find my way.  I have worked too hard throughout my life to not ultimately succeed and create a quality life for myself.

But when will my dreams finally come to fruition?  When will my patience be rewarded with more than a greater ability…to be patient?

Just How Bad Was It?

Thursday, June 19, 2014


I have to believe that somehow one day I am going to manifest the deepest, brightest and most beautiful dreams I have carried within my heart.  Until that supposedly magical threshold moment arrives I find myself slogging along in what I hope is the general direction of my best and highest future possible life.  Some days I feel quite disoriented and a bit confused as to whether I am doing everything I can possibly do.

Today was an interesting day.  By the stroke of the midnight hour we here in Minneapolis will have apparently reached about 500% of the normal amount of rainfall for the month of June...and it's only June 19th.  As I made my way to downtown Minneapolis for my physical therapy appointment this morning I noticed how incredibly dark and foreboding the sky was.  Later in the morning, after picking up new orthotics at my podiatrist's office, I hopped back on the bus to go to Abbott Northwestern Hospital for work.  And then the sky opened up.  It rained so heavily it would have been easy to believe I was somewhere in the United States South.  It was a veritable deluge.

After leaving work I went to get a second opinion on my mental health.  It's a fitting time for me to do so considering I started working with my current therapist exactly a year ago as of yesterday.  I met with Dr. Gale Valtinson over near Lake Calhoun.  I left my hour long appointment with a more refined perspective on my own health.  What I am hoping to obtain in a second meeting with her next week is some clarity.  I am trying to develop a better understanding by getting some answers to my biggest questions.  What will the arc of my recovery process look like in the short and longer term future?  What is realistic?  What do I need to concentrate on now?

I was introduced to an interesting possibility.  It might be true that I developed not just PTSD but 'complex PTSD'.  What is the difference you ask?  I would say it is one of degree.  According to information available on the National Center for PTSD Dr. Judith Herman believes that a new diagnosis, Complex PTSD, may be appropriate to describe the symptoms of long-term trauma.  More information on Complex PTSD can be found here.  The cluster of symptoms referred to under the term of PTSD may also be known under another term, namely Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified.

Though semantics are important (as I have acknowledged early on in the writing of my blog in which I referenced how my own level of responsiveness was a function of the terminology used to describe my mental health concerns) I do not wish to overly fixate on the distinctions between PTSD and complex PTSD.  I expect I will do more research on the distinctions in the near future.  Regardless of how you describe my health status the core issue that affected my health and development is trauma.  The severity of the trauma is another different (yet interrelated) question.

What I do know now is that I am still in the midst of my grief.  But at least I am deeply aware of my grief.  I am no longer living in a way in which I am still primarily unconscious of my grief.  I have dredged up my personal Titanic and now have before me the not insignificant task of sifting through its contents.  It's a tender moment of time in my development.  And I thus want to be very mindful.


While speaking with Dr. Valtinson I repeatedly emphasized my experience of awakening to the immense beauty of the world.  It is something I live with each and every day.  I am beginning to adjust to my new and much healthier way of perceiving the world.  But it takes time.  Healing takes time.

When the Summer Solstice arrives this weekend I intend to spend some time celebrating how far I have journeyed in the last twelve months.  I feel nothing like I did last year at this time.  The world is such an amazing and beautiful place.  When I feel low and sad I find it helps me immensely to simply look at all the beauty of the lush green world around me.  The immense greenery is one advantage of living through an incredibly wet June.

Auto Pilot

Wednesday, June 18, 2014


One year ago today I met my now current therapist for an intake appointment.  I was quite surprised by what was to follow seven days later when I met with him a second time.  Today I was trying to remind myself of how much progress I have made in the last twelve months.  I didn't exactly have a bad day today.  I just had a day in which I felt pretty much...invisible.  This was how I felt for so much of that time back in the summer of 1982.  And so in some respects I suppose it is only natural to wonder just how much I have managed to truly change about my life despite all my efforts.

I believe that spending a lot of time trying to consciously remember the minutae of my life during that summer in which I was eight years old isn't probably the best use of my time.  But it still haunts me a bit that I cannot more easily remember that time in my life.  I would like to recall joyful moments.  I cannot.  Were there any joyful moments during that summer?  Again, I cannot remember.  But I believe I would be able to easily recall them if there had been.  It's no wonder I still feel sad today.  There was so much sadness in my childhood.

Yesterday evening while in session with my therapist I spoke about how I have this fear that I could potentially relapse into a way of being in which I compartmentalize my feelings as a means of coping with stress.  I have made a commitment to myself not to do that.  But a commitment such as this is only as strong as the daily efforts I will make to cultivate a practice of mindfulness.

In essence I do not ever want to return to a life in which I am living in a condition that could be described as 'Auto Pilot'.  I want to be conscious.  I want to be alive.  I want to enjoy my work.  I want to be out in the living world rather than sitting at a computer 'processing' data and looking at files.

......


I believe taking a job in California (if it were to be offered) could prove to be a very large risk to my current and short-term health.  Even if the job I decided I would indeed apply for is a great job there is still the reality that I would need to purchase my own health insurance on the private market.  It hasn't even been six months since my therapist deemed me to be no longer clinically diagnosable for PTSD.  And thus I have this question in the back of my mind each and every day lately: 'Do you really feel such a job could be worth taking such an immense risk?'  I will be better able to answer that question once I apply for the job and await a reply and potential offer of an interview.

What I struggle with right now as well is my feeling that I have done little in the last three years that holds much value to me and me alone.  When I was attending school in California and volunteering my time with NOAA and other organizations in the Monterey Bay area I held this vision in my mind that all my generosity and commitment would pay off in the long term.  Three years have passed and it doesn't seem that there was much return on my investment.  I gave a lot of my time for free...and in the process I created an imbalance in which I made myself highly vulnerable to misfortune.  I am not willing to allow that to happen again.

And yet I cannot curl up inside an armored coat and hide away so as not to risk being hurt again.  I will die that way as well.

As we near the Summer Solstice I find myself marveling at how much my life has changed in the last year.  And I also marvel at how much more work appears to remain for me to do.

The Perils of Hubris and Avoidance

Tuesday, June 17, 2014


What could be a profound insight came to me this morning while working.  A society filled with people unable to do deep listening is a society that will be prone to violence.  Exhibit A: The United States of America.

Here in this wondrous nation children get to go to school and silently suffer needless anxiety about whether they will be gunned down on the grounds of a property that should theoretically be safe.  Yes, we have long since moved beyond the days when schools being forcibly integrated with the help of the federal government made for shocking news.  At least that degree of racism is apparently now extinct in our nation.  But having an African American president does not mean that we here in the USA became a "post-racial" society.  Not by any means is this true!  One only need explore how many threats have been made against this president in which the hatred expressed has contained an undertone of racism to know we are still far from being a nation in which everyone enjoys equal opportunity.

Despite my desire to the contrary it is difficult for me not to reference our ongoing issues of gun violence in this nation.  I have already written more than once about the personal impact gun violence had on my life.  I nearly lost my father at the age of eight years old when a teenager shot my father in our home in Texas.  Fortunately for my own safety I was hundreds of miles away that night.  But my father essentially survived that night only because of dumb luck.

It's no wonder I feel anger rise inside me when I see that Texas culture has apparently remained as backwards and regressive as it was thirty years ago.  Exhibit A for this topic: The people participating in Open Carry in Texas.  How anyone in their right mind can imagine that openly brandishing weapons in public places such as restaurants and shopping malls is going to go off well for all who become unwitting witnesses to such behavior boggles me mind.  Exhibit B for this topic: Rick Perry.  That anyone takes this man seriously as a governor amazes me.  His tacky ridicule and disparagement of gay people is pathetic.  But then again because plenty of people somehow believe Jesus taught that we should hate and exclude those unlike ourselves I suppose it makes sense in their warped little worlds.


Our national capacity for hubris has also been on display recently in regards to Iraq.  More than eleven years after the United States invaded Iraq in March, 2003 we here in the United States are still dealing with the consequences of that fateful choice that George Bush made even in the face of global protests against the very idea.  And Iraq is certainly dealing with the horrors as well.  Plenty of civilians have died in Iraq.  And although the United States did rid Iraq of a nasty dictatorship I can't say I am convinced what followed has been much better.  Did some people benefit?  Yes...especially if you count corporations as people as our nation has bizarrely allowed to stand as a valid legal construct.  A few 'corporation people' have done quite well for themselves.  Meanwhile the genuine people made of bone and flesh haven't made out like bandits.  Instead some of them have been killed by bandits.  Oh the glories of freedom on the march across the world!  Do I sound cynical?  I am.

Despite the clear ways in which other people's hubris and capacity for denial have adversely impacted my own life I nonetheless still struggle to grasp how some people can be so dense, irresponsible, self-absorbed and the like.  I find myself grow nearly dizzy when I contemplate the mindset that informs the behavior of people like those I referenced above participating in Open Carry.

I wish I had more well placed confidence that our nation is charting a truly good long term course.  But I don't.  The many issues of this nation seem to be persisting...or even growing worse.  And such concerns certainly make my journey of healing all the more arduous.  I feel as if I ought to move abroad.

......

On my return trip from my therapy appointment I found myself once again marveling at how beautiful this summer evening is.  We are in between our most recent barrage of stormy weather and our next bout which should arrive Wednesday night. 

I again noticed myself noticing the varied textures of the world.  I noticed the reflections of light in countless windows in downtown Minneapolis.  I noticed so many different shades of color.  I saw the interplay of light on the leaves of trees underneath streetlights.  I noticed the lighting along Nicolett Mall.

Even now I am still adjusting to the pleasure of clear vision and full presence in my body.

While visiting with my therapist I pulled out a photograph taken in January, 1999.  It’s a picture of me smiling with the icy edge of Lake Michigan behind me.  I lived in Chicago at the time.  I was a mere twenty-five years old.  I had no idea what was awaiting me when I would later move to California in May, 1999.  I was seeking adventure.  And I certainly did discover a whole new world for myself when I arrived in San Francisco that year.

Now it’s fifteen years later.  Somehow fifteen years have passed.  I found myself marveling at how quickly the time has passed.  How did I wake up and discover myself to be forty years old already?  What happened to that smiling, very young man in the picture?  Where did he disappear to?

I am grateful that it is summer now.  But the grief remains with me.  I feel the grief still thick inside me.  It has been with me throughout my life.  Now it’s time to purge it and truly live.

I told my therapist that lately my life feels a bit as if it resembles a tree that was in severe need of pruning.  I have excised so much of my old life to make way for a new life.  The tree of my life needed to be cleared of a lot of deadwood.  That is what I have been doing these last twelve months.  I have been clearing my life and making a new space such that something new and beautiful can grow.

I try each day to be patient.  I want to believe that one day the new growth will completely fill up the space that my old life occupied.  But perhaps that will not happen…at least not entirely.  Maybe instead of thinking of what will come to be as new growth filling an old space I should imagine an entirely new space…both inside myself and out there in the world.

I want to believe that I have a place in this world.  I want to feel that I belong.  I want to be appreciated for the gifts I have to offer.  And I am determined to find a way to offer them.  I just need a bit of help from the magical Cosmos.

Dancing On the Ragged Edge of a Safety Net

Monday, June 16, 2014


Today featured a tale of two extremes.  The day began sunny and relatively calm.  The day is ending cloudy, windy and sopping wet.  We have had about 300% of our normal June precipitation here in the Twin Cities.  And the month is only half over.  The weather today has been a good metaphor for my mood.  Some moments I feel calm, collected...even serene.  Other moments I feel moody, overwhelmed and incredibly sad.  I suppose such is to be expected on the roller coaster of healing.

I still feel a lot of sadness in response to hearing about the death of a friend who passed away this past weekend.  He died of cancer.  I did not know him for a long time; I only lived in Washington, DC for approximately six months in 2012.  Mark helped me with transportation to medical appointments for what I recall was perhaps about a month of time.  How much he did was less consequential than that he did...something.  I remember his warm smile.  I miss that smile...even though I knew him for such a brief time.

I am still adjusting to working full time again.  And I am doing my best to maintain a positive attitude.  I am finding it challenging.  I am not doing work that I find personally rewarding.  I am doing work that allows me to take care of my basic needs...barely.  This has been an unfortunate truth of my life for far too long.  I feel weary and want to give up some days.  I have tried for years to establish a new career for myself.  And I am still trying.  It seems I still need a lot of help.  And that brings me to a primary theme of my recent thoughts:  How vulnerable am I now?

......

I wrote recently about the value of my health insurance.  I would not be where I am now without my health insurance.  I wish I was much further along.  I am going to apply for a job in California which I referenced recently in my writing.  And yet one of my biggest concerns is the fact that my employer would not provide any health insurance whatsoever.  I would have to buy insurance from the private market in California.  This concerns me considering it could be quite cost-prohibitive.  Given that I am still experiencing the consequences of my father's failure to be more proactive about his health and my own (during my childhood) I feel it would be unwise to unduly risk losing my very helpful Medical Assistance health insurance.  I want to continue to heal and move forward.  I think it might be best to maximize the value of my current health insurance rather than risk moving for a job that would provide me no health insurance whatsoever.

Despite my misgivings I am going to proceed forward and prepare an application for this position in Monterey.  Given how much of my time and energy I offered for free while living in the Monterey Bay area I feel I owe it to myself to do so.

Honoring All The People I Have Loved...and Lost

Sunday, June 15, 2014


This past February my friend Erin Langley shared the following quote on her Facebook page:

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away. But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

— Jeff Foster 

I have to admit these words strung together in this way blindsided me almost as badly as that day last June when it became clear I would benefit from still more therapy.  The naked, unmitigated, un-sugar-coated, undeniable truth of our existence is encapsulated in these words.  A day will come when I will die and everything I have amassed will be extraneous; I will have no use for it because I will be gone from this life.  And the same thing will happen to you.  And the same will happen to your parents, siblings, children and every single other person you have known and will still meet in the future.

This is the type of truth I suspect that many people would prefer not to really ponder at any great length.  And I understand that.  What healthy person would want to brood and obsess over the inevitable?

......

This afternoon I learned about the death of a good man who crossed my path two years ago while I lived in Washington, DC.  Mark helped me with transportation to medical appointments I had in the summer of 2012.  He didn't ask me for anything in return.  I met Mark when I was a singing member of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC.  The following is in honor of Mark...and everyone else I have loved...and lost.


For you Mark Hennen

Everything Possible by Flirtations

From the album Out On The Road

We have cleared off the table
The leftovers saved
Washed the dishes, and put them away
I have told you a story
And tucked you in tight
At the end of your knockabout day
As the moon sets its sail
To carry you to sleep
Over the midnight sea
I will sing you a song no one sang to me
May it keep you good company

You can be anybody that you want to be
You can love whomever you will
You can travel any country where your heart leads
And know I will love you still
You can live by yourself
You can gather friends around
You can choose one special one
But the only measure of your words and your deeds
Will be the love you leave behind when you're gone.

Some girls grow up strong and bold
Some boys are quiet and kind
Some race on ahead, some follow behind
Some grow in their own space and time
Some women love women
And some men love men
Some raise children, and some never do
You can dream all the day, never reaching the end
Of everything possible for you.

Don't be rattled by names, by taunts or games,
But seek out spirits true
If you give your friends the best part of yourself
They will give the same back to you.

You can be anybody that you want to be
You can love whomever you will
You can travel any country where your heart leads
And know I will love you still
You can live by yourself
You can gather friends around
You can choose one special one
But the only measure of your words and your deeds
Will be the love you leave behind when you're gone.
Oh yes, the love you leave behind when you're gone.


And now something from one year ago...

June 15, 2013

A few days ago my friend Birgit led me through a journey experience.  It was quite vivid.  After asking me to think of a mountain on the planet I wished to imagine myself on I chose the Big Island of Hawaii.  Considering the depth of the Pacific Ocean it is indeed quite a mountain in the middle of the ocean.

As the journey progressed I found myself marveling at an expansive oak tree that was growing so quickly that it whirled through the cycle of the seasons many, many times.  With each cycle it would burst forth with acorns.  These acorns would later rain down upon the hill I was sitting on.  The tree was so prolific that the acorns eventually became a torrent that spilled down the hillside into the ocean in the distance.  It was amazing and surreal. 

During the journey a few different animals were present.  These included the fox, deer and raven.  The foxes danced about in a circle outside of a circle of deer.  One fox in particular climbed the oak tree and repeatedly grabbed handfuls of acorns and threw them up into the air in a spirit of celebration and exultation.  It was beautiful and exhilarating to watch.