WSR Dysthymia

Mental Rainy Days

2012-02-08T10:27:00.000-08:00

Today is a mental rainy day. And beside it's a typical winter day in western Washington, namely on and off rain showers and lots o' clouds. Did I mention clouds and rain, like all day? Well, maybe a sun break or two later, but that's a maybe and only a glance through the cloud cover.

But that said, some days are like that for me where I just lounge around and putter doing small things. It's like the mental and emotion well being inside my head is being pelted with rain and clouds dampening any sunshine that I might think or feel. I've learned to just skate through these days doing small things.

The sweeping the floor philosophy in Buddhism. Pay attention to those small things that need attention but don't demand much energy, throught or emotion. Just trudge onward through the day. Some days I feel just good enough to focus on thoughts to write on my blogs, like this one. The thoughts just happen in my mind and writing is just what happens to get them out.

And some days I don't, occasionally becoming a couch potato watching reruns of Law & Order and CSI shows which don't require a lot of thought but at least have some plot. Those days I usually end up doing chores around the place because to see it clean and organized makes one (aka me) feel a little better at the end of the day having accomplished something useful.

Otherwise, it's just a day, overcast, gray, and rain showers with the occasional sun break for a moment. Both outside (with a big southeast facing window) and inside my mind. Sometimes it's the best I can do and the best to do. Tomorrow will come and today will be just a forgotten day. Well, except for the smal things I got done.

With All Due Respects

2012-01-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

I read a recent article in the NY Times Science Section, "Depression Defies the Rush to Find an Evolutionary Upside", by Dr. Richard A. Friedman (his Website). Well, he attacks evolutionary biologists who suggest depression has some beneficial aspect, but fails in some respects.

First, he supports pharmacological (drug) solutions to depression, including conducting clinical trials for drug companies, which he doesn't seem to inform the reader his bias from the outset of the article. Second, he generalizes from studies conducted evolutionary biologists which is exactly what he criticize others for their criticism of clinical and drug therapies for depression.

But mostly he forgets the obvious, depression is part of the human expression and experience which has been a part of human evolution, and to push a position that we shouldn't have it because it not essential to modern times doesn't make sense. In short, we should all be happy and if you're not, then try drugs to make you happy? Ok, overstatement, but it's at the heart of his argument.

He discounts studies showing depression helps people be better judges in some situation, especially deception. Studies have shown slightly depressed or Dysthymic people are often better judges of reality where "happy" people tend to overemphasize the positive side of situations or circumstance, often leading to problems or failure.

He dismisses studies that depressed people have often had periods of creativity, sometimes great as noted by the list of writers who frequently or often had periods of moderate to severe depression, and recovery has hurt that creativity. Depression changes your view of life, and he ignores the many who have benefited from it.

He dismisses that studies which show Dysthymic people are often the most leveled headed, realistic people, seeing the greater complexity of issues and many possible directions to question, investigate and solve issues or problems. In short they're often self-contained brain-stormers doing more than many teams of people because they see the many sides.

He dismisses the many benefits of Dysthymia and depression, to suggest that the inherit benefits aren't necessary to society and culture. He's an advocate for anyone feeling depressed and especially clinically depressed to seek help and especially seek drugs to overcome their depression, and not seeking to see the benefits of it.

I won't argue his points that people suffering moderate and especially severe depression should seek help and especially if they're having thoughts of suicide. I won't agree that drugs are the solution to suicide, often one of the various types of conversational therapy is better and drugs should be the last resort, at least in my mind.

The reasons are that all drugs aren't effective for all people, usually about 50% , all drugs aren't always effective for those it does work, usually to some degree of effectiveness and taking time to work, where the individual is left wondering when and how much it will help, and all drugs eventually lose their effectiveness requiring an increasing dosage or a new drug.

Anyway, it's a complex issue. The writer tries to reduce it to simplicity and only succeeds in expressing an opinion than establishing any answers. So why does he make the point? Well, maybe just to complain. Like that's helpful? Not to me.

A Life Lead

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't be here but for the life I lead, but what if it didn't lead me where I wanted to be now? I wouldn't be here but for the choices I made, but what if I made different ones? Or ones I have lived to regret for the life I made? The life I made and have now. The life I lead from the choices I made.

It's obvious now it's, as they say, all said and done, and like everyone else looking back, all I have are the memories of the life and choices. And the question we all ask now and then, "What if...?", about the choices we made or didn't make. Right or wrong doesn't matter anymore, only the reality of what happened afterward, to here and now.

And it's the obvious there are no do overs or wishes to be something or someone else. We face who we are where we are here and now, from all those choices which lead to this moment of the life we lead. That's all there is. Everything else is irrelevant and nothing else matters.

It's the life we lead and sometime in the future it will be the life people remember about us. And all the choices which didn't happen, only those that did. And left the life we lead.

Sorrow

2011-12-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

"Sorrow found me when I was young. Sorrow waited and sorrow won."
- Bran Stark

It found me when I was five to be my companion in life, never leaving my mind, my heart, my soul and mostly my spirit. I never thought if it was there, I only knew it was there and was what it was, sorrow. And it's still, as it always has been, there, invisibly in my subconscious and sometimes in my conscious thoughts and feelings.

It has been my guide wherever I was and went, however I thought or felt. There, invisible to all but me. Felt by no one but me. Occasionally letting me be happy for a moment, but only just a moment. And it will be the last feeling I know, about my life and the world and life I leave.

Simple joy

2011-12-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

I didn't know where to put this post, in Taoism, Life, My Life Stories or what. I was just wondering about life while watching a football game when a commercial came on about a child's joy of small things. I love watching children for the easy way they simply enjoy being and seeing what's around them.

To me, it's often sad parents don't see that or see the opportunity they have to share and teach their children. To let them wander and wonder and be there to share their joy of the world. We know it's all about learning about the world. We know it's how they see themselves later, to see the greater world, the whole of their world, and who they are as a person. They become, and in becoming it is joy that teaches.

We lose that simply joy during our teen years as the issues and pressures of adulthood arise and everything suddenly become serious. Then we're adults, badly as we are at it in the world we know and face. And the feeling of simple joy has faded with the situations and circumstances of our life. Our reality of being has displaced joy and pushed it into just a memory.

Where did it go? Where is it still? Where is that child in us and the simple joy of being a child? Why do we keep it there and not in the present, in the moments of our life? What are we afraid of? Joy? Or what others may think or say about our simple joy of being and the world?

The Problem & the Answer

2011-12-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

"Be in love with your life.
Every detail of it."
- Jack Kerouac

If only I could which is hard when I haven't and don't. I was never taught to love my life to know what it is to be in love with my life, only to hate it.

Found in Passing

2011-11-25T19:16:00.001-08:00

I saw this in passing and thought it was worthwhile to remember, "Life may be sad, but it's always beautiful."

Living in the Pacific Northwest with it's many consecutive winter days of overcast and rain, I've always tell folks on those days, especially after several days, sometimes a week or more, in a row, "It's always sunny, the clouds only hide that fact."

It's all relative to where you are in time and place and your view of life and the world.

The above photo is a super moon LED lamp.

"This captivating lamp designed by Nosigner (Eisuke Tachikawa) represents the Super Moon, the biggest full moon in a cycle of 18 years. After the tragic earthquake in Japan, many of the Japanese prayed to the Super Moon for hope. According to Nosigner, this lamp is a symbol of the moon's "light of hope". This lunar lamp is composed of LED lights and is an accurate presentation of the moon. In fact, the lamp is based off of the lunar orbiter, Kaguya's 3D topographic data of the moon."

Citation from My Modern Met.

Feeling Good

2011-11-22T16:08:00.000-08:00

I know when I'm feeling good, meaning the body is between episodes of digestive problems. I know because I listen to a lot of music, nearly constantly during the day. And I dance, badly, but still the body feels good. I don't watch TV, sit on the couch and wonder and ponder why life is shit, I don't take naps or want to take naps, and I don't eat much if at all.

I get up and out the door, even in the cold and rain to do anything but sit, except here in front of the computer being productive, again. Life has its good days. Just too few and too far between. But I don't hate myself so much and the thoughts and feelings to quit fade behind the sound of music, the world outside and life.

My life. Not bad some days, better than the rest.

Falling Behind

2011-11-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

When I retired in December 2005, a year or two ahead of my original planned retirement date, I pushed it forward when I realized I could afford to live, as I thought then, comfortably on my annuity with the small annual increases as has always happened and after is was made clear to me my boss had targeted me for retirement soon to fulfill his mandate from his boss to reduce staff.

Faced with being a victim of office politics and circumstances which would have eliminated my job and face a demotion with the same salary for two years before it was also reduced, I decided to say, "Fuck 'em" and walk out to do what I wanted than get up every day to the pressure from an asshole boss. I had already been passed over for promotion a few years earlier, one wanted by the staff, for political reasons, because I don't do well being a "yes" person.

As it turned out I thought I was ok financially. Not great as one of the three plans had to be slowed to a crawl while I worked on the other two, my photography and my photography guide. The third is still progressing albeit slower as recent health issues have cost me a fair amount and still not have a diagnosis let alone a treatment plan and as the drugs for the goal has caused its own health issues and problems.

But then the recession and more so the politics in Washington DC over how to get out of it, between the indignant Tea Party, the acquiescence of the Republicans to them, and the compitulation of the Senate majority leader and the President to both of them at the expense of the American people, namely the middle class and especially the poor, elderly and others, happened. The 99%'ers got screwed.

The failures of the President and the Democrats has, with my own decisons to continue to push forward with my plans, has overwhelmed me finanically. I didn't expect my annuity to be frozen by this President for two years and likely will be for another two to three more years. I didn't expect my health insurance premiums to nearly double in that same period - no thanks to the above mentioned groups and individual. I didn't expect the cost of living to push me into this situation.

And so the combination of my finances, income and health has excerbated my feelings about getting old with my third goal to leave me immensely overwhelmed by everything around me and everything else. All the good things I planned and was working on were larger than my ability to keep pace let alone advance beyond a few things. And it's really not the money but the work and life.

For every one thing I work on there are several more major projects waiting for me around my home. The photo guide ground to a halt over the summer for the other projects and now I'm 3 months behind just keeping current with little interest to work on it let alone catch up and then focus on the other undone pieces of the guide and then work on the book.

My photography stopped due to health issues and chasing an diagnosis and hopefully a treatment plan to get my body back and then my life. Neither has happened as the medical professional either don't know, can't determine, don't seem to care, or dismiss the symptoms as age and other "normal" factors and as those issues has left me less healthy and fit and excerbated my Dysthymia into a depression.

The dominoes fell over and pushed me over a mental cliff with little energy and interest to stand up and walk out of the canyon I'm currently in with no obvious trail to get out and then on with life and all those projects sitting around my mind and in my home. I'm feeling so far behind I'm not sure where to start anymore.

And yet I know the answer, if only my body didn't hurt, would work, and not feel tired almost all the time. And time doesn't appear to be on my side right now, or so it feels as the days go slowly by and then appear to disappear behind me in the mirror of time. I have grown to like my life but hate my body. Not the aging so much, although being slower and less agile hasn't felt good, but the look I've always disliked about me is worse in my eyes, getting old(er).

And I'm falling behind in life and my life every day, spiraling away from where I planned, wanted to be and expected to be. And how to change my course in life and myself is the task at hand as that too is falling behind. It's like standing somewhere in the Sahari without a map or compass, and all I see is sand and desert and all I feel is the heat and the wind. And all I want to do is sit down and let the desert absorb into time, its time.

At least I won't fall behind anymore.

Found in Passing

2011-11-15T17:13:00.001-08:00

"I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just the person I was, but any person at all." - Susan Sontag

But I'm not

2011-11-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

I'm not someone else, and I can't be someone else. I'm still me. No matter how much I want to wish and hope. Change is possible but only within what I've been given, who I am, and only within what's possible, who I can be. Anything else or beyond is just hope and wishful thinking, unattainable except in my mind, and often my dreams.

Better or happier

2011-11-12T16:27:00.000-08:00

I was thinking out loud again, the advantages of living alone. Like someone is going to hear me let alone answer. And the old saying, if either happens, you're in trouble. Anyway, I was wonder if it's better to be or feel better or happier. Feeling better is relative to where we are mentally and how we think. Feeling happier is the state of the feeling, relative to where we are emotionally and how we feel.

Feeling Better or Good

2011-11-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

Feeling better or feeling good. Big difference. Feeling better and feeling good. Not so much but can be very much so. It's all, as they say, relative to where you were, where you are and where you want to be, or at least should be relative to be being "normal" again. Or at least that's the way I feel, or wish I feel.

Things

2011-11-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have things to do and sometimes I am doing things. That's normal, we all have both things, to do and doing, but it's when the doing slows and then stops and the to do becomes the only things that I know I'm in trouble, mentally. This is due to two reasons.

First, I like to focus on a few things at a time and really only one for short periods of days to a few weeks, like the photo guide updates and additions. I do the same for my photography projects where I can set the studio up and shoot for days or take several photo trips and then spend days processing images, or set up the photo card print and production work and produce hundreds of photo cards.

Second, I feel overwhelmed when there are too many things, more than a few, to do, like working on the photo of the Minolta equipment to sell, putting the (700) records into iTunes, the photo guides, cleaning out my storage area, and so on. It's what's happening now, all those and more.

And when that happens I don't do much if anything. So I often park those undone things out of sight, like boxes of records, shelves of photo equipment, etc., but it doesn't remove them from my mind. And there they sit piled around places at home and in my mind, where the weight just overwhelms me and I quit.

On top of that I have the upcoming holiday season, like Christmas cards, something I didn't do much last year and have a lot of photo cards to make for myself and gift boxes. I have a number of print to produce and get framed. I have stacks of slides on the light table to scan into the computer with the other scanned and unprocessed images already there.

I have dozens of photo galleries to develop for the Website and some to convert to the newer style viewer. In short, just too much photography work let alone the rest of everything else looking at me every day. It's where everywhere and everytime I turn around there is a thing waiting for my attention and work.

And the guilt only accumulates where all my doing things become things to do.

Why is it

2011-10-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

Why do I always feel everyone is better than me? Anyone. And anyone's life is better than mine. It's not true, except it's how I feel. That is true. Always true. And never lets me forget. Never.

I Don't Know

2011-10-22T19:20:00.001-07:00

My brother was a one to two pack a day smoker from when he was 17. He drank a pint or more of hard liquor a day, more on weekends and holidays. He was what you call a funcitoning alcoholic. He could drink and still maintain a senior level job. He drank and smoked because of his addiction for them and to get away from the pressue.

It was how he handled the family pressure, mostly Dad. I didn't become addicted to either, smoked once at 12 and quit. I never become addicted to alcohol or drugs, even though I like marijuana and a few other casual drugs. I never got hooked, even when I fell into deeper depression periods.

I don't know why. Even now I still don't drink. I can't really because of hemochromotosis my Dad had and doctors said I probably have it too. But I still like a drink of good sippin' whiskey or a Guiness now and then, but I hate the hangover and headaches for two-plus days.

My addiction is simply to do nothing. Is that an addiction? Being so mentally and physically tired I don't do anything and hate even trying? I don't know, but it's what I do, my addiction. Why will always be the unanswered question. Why I haven't sunk into alcohol, drugs or anything destructive. Or even food.

It's a GOK, God only knows. Maybe one day I'll know too.

Some Days

2011-10-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Some days the best I can do is exist. Doing anything is optional. And going anywhere is only a thought. Soon forgotten. The only thing I look forward to is the end of the day, to sleep and lose the memory of nothing done. And hope tomorrow will be different.

Can I?

2011-10-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Some days I'm so physically and mentally tired I ask myself, "Can I die now?" I have no intention to die by my own hand, been there, almost done that twice, something I'm not interested in a third time charm. But there are moments in some days I wouldn't fight it if death was standing before telling me it's my time.

The drugs I take for a condition are crashing my mind and body. Food is my enemy so much I fear eating anything but know I have to eat. My hands and feet are forever problems with the cold. The TMJ is slowly taking a toll on the left side of my face. I can't tolerate statin drugs for my cholesterol and the blockage in my pulmonary artery.

The Dysthymia is taken all my motivation for life and I fear the drugs and their side effects more than the condition. Some days I take 2 or 3 naps because I can't stay awake from all the problems. Some days I take naps because it's better than anything else to do. Most nights I don't sleep through the night and always hate waking up, knowing it's the same life.

I know there are people with far worse conditions and problems who fight to live and enjoy what life they have. But all said, some days I'm still tired and wouldn't fight death if it came. I would ask it, "Can I die now?"

Naps

2011-10-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

Naps are almost a daily occurrence with me know, much due to the medication I'm taking. And everytime I wake up there's always a moment I look around the apartment and realize that if I die nothing would change, only all my stuff would belong to someone else. Life, as with everyone who dies, goes on. There are no exceptions. And what changes fades into history, to be forgotten. So sometimes I wonder why I still keep waking up from my nap.

Life

2011-10-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

I was enjoying life. As late as a few years ago.
Then I was living life. Enjoyment was infrequent and fleeting.
Then I was surviving. Living was an occasional momentary thought.
Then I was existing. Just being and nothing more.
Then I asked myself what's next? What's lower?
I'm waiting for the answer.

Conversations with the night

2011-10-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

I've often said some of my best personal and private conversations are with my head in the pillow, the back of it when I lying there in the darkness wondering about life and things and my face when I'm sleeping and don't want to wake up to see the light let alone meet the day.

To that end one of my favorite songs is Youngblood's "Darkness Darkness" with the following lyrics.

Darkness, Darkness
Be my pillow
Take my head
And let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

Darkness, Darkness
Hide my yearning
For the things I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Toward the things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see

Darkness, darkness,
Long and lonesome,
Ease the day that brings me pain.
I have felt the edge of sadness,
I have known the depth of fear.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing,
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of ri-ight now.

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence, the silence of your deep.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now now now
Emptiness of right....
Oh yeah Oh yeah
Emptiness, emptiness
Oh yeah

That pretty much sums it up at times. And the best version of it is sung by Richie Havens.

A Different Well

2011-10-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

I've often spoken or written about my episodes of depression, actually double depression with Dysthymia, of first falling and then being in a deep well surrounded by total darkness where the light at the top of the well has long disappeared into infinite distance, and about the time and method it takes to climb out where I can get out of the well in the world again.

This time, however, it's a different well. This time the fall has been slow and long, probaby over the last year, and maybe longer, and the onset and fall has been incremental, falling ever so slowly I haven't noticed beyond a slow change of being less excited about what I'm doing and how well I'm feeling. Until I arrived near the bottom to discover I've fallen.

And this time it's not a deep, dark well but a glass one. One I watched myself fall in the world. Normally falling is done in isolation, a mental darkness where you lose sight of the world around you. This one I life and work in the world. I existed and exist in it, seeing it as I fall.

And then sitting on the bottom watching the world around me I can live and work it, but not much is getting done beyond existing. Beside me sits the tools to free myself, to break the glass and be free, but I don't have the motitvation to pick them up let alone use them. I sit just looking out and then looking at the tools.

The only words that seem to make sense are, "I am tired." I know part of this is physical, and I'm angry specialists seem to be indifferent to what seems to me are obvious signs something is wrong. I can read about the symptoms on legitimate Websites. I can show the evidence to them. And they say, "Everything is normal. It's just your imagination."

It's worn me down and some days out living with it and hating not finding a professonal to listen and help. It's treatable and probably curable to have a normal life again, one I had 2-3 years ago. As I've written food is my enemy and eating something feared. Every meal, every day.

I also know two drugs I'm taking for a condition (nearly 5 years now) have devasted part of me. They're essential for what I want to do and be, but it's come at a price my body has paid and is paying. The old damned if you do and damned if you don't, something which will be lifelong.

Add to that with the economy and trying to get my small, personal business off the ground I've almost exhausted the funds I had saved for the business and for some future surgeries. No thanks to President Obama, but much of it by myself. I knew better and thought I could manage the money better, but I didn't.

So now I sit on the bottom of the well seeing and knowing the world I have and live in is, for the most part, of my own making. One I don't like anymore and myself I don't like and some days hate. But in truth not all of it but much of it. And while the future looks reasonably good, it's not what I had planned or expected.

It is what it is as I know it now. And all the answer I have don't work. And now I need to find new answers. The tools will wait until I'm ready to leave the glass well. I can hope, and most days that's all I have left within myself.

Some days

2011-10-03T05:48:00.000-07:00

Some days when I wake up and sit on the edge of my bed in the predawn darkness looking out at the day I don't want to do anything except exist, and like the darkness outside fighting against the oncoming light of day, even existing is a struggle.

Stopping

2011-09-26T17:06:00.001-07:00

First I stopped going.
Then I stopped doing.
Then I stopped being.
Then I just stopped.

Some Days

2011-09-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

All things considered, some days, I feel I could die and not really care. Not going out of my way, but simply not trying to stop it if it should happen. Some days, life isn't greater than death, not that I know what death is or is like but it's different than life and would feel better to be free of life as it is for me now. That's all and that's it.

But for now, there's always tomorrow.

Something Changed

2011-09-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

Something changed and I haven't sorted out what, let alone why, and more so, what's next. It's a big I don't know what happened and what will happen. Lots of questions and wonder and a big empty for clues, let alone answers or even hopeful ideas to guide me forward. I know I don't like what I was and I'm not sure I like what I am and especially what may be if I don't change, but then something changed differently than I expected, wanted or planned.

So now I'm facing something new. Well, not really new, something old anew. Kinda' deja vu all over again. It's one of the slow changes when you realize it's been happening for months. I noticed bits and pieces and noticed what isn't getting done. I just assumed it was something I would figure out, except I haven't and now face the reality of it.

Part of it is physical, and not just the normal stuff of getting older (now 62) but recent conditions, one which specialist don't want to spend the time to help diagnose (bleeding small intestine), one of late the dentist said there is no real cure and surgery rarely works (TMJ), and one which drugs are worse than the condition (high cholesterol with a small blockage in the pulmonary artery).

All of this on top of Raynaud's Syndrome in both my hands and feet. Ok, normal stuff of age to some degree, but three of them happened in the last year (the blockage is a 20 year issue where my cholesterol has never been normal). Add them up and life with this body sucks, and when piled on Dysthymia, it just sucks worse.

And with everything, part of me still feels good about it some days, but not many. Parts hopeful and part far less hopeful. Parts positive and many more parts negative. And a lot of parts unknown, let alone unknown either way or just something.

Way Cool Video

2011-08-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

I saw a really good video recently by a young woman in Texas. It's more than worth your time to watch and care.

Also available here if it has a message it won't play in this entry.

Thank you Kenna, and I wish you well.

When not is easier

2011-04-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

There are moments, times and days when it's just not worth the mental and physical energy to do something, and even anything. When everything feels bad and doing nothing is feels only slightly better than even trying. When doing nothing is easier and doing anything. Anything else, no matter how simple or easy. Nothing is still better. And not invades you and then overwhelms you. And not is all you know and feel. And nothing is all you think to do.

Finding Bottom

2011-03-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

The hardest thing in the middle of a depressive episode is finding and knowing where the bottom of your depression is. You keep spiraling down, falling into the darkness of the well, maybe hoping to hit water where you can tread while you sort out the issues to see what, where and maybe why you feel so bad, but often knowing you will fall until you hit bottom, a dry well where you can sit surrounded by darkness not knowing anything beyond what you see and feel in the darkness, the light above long distant and out of sight.

So you fall, mentally in free fall, usually doing little if anything and mostly doing nothing you can remember later in the day and more so the next morning lying in bed asking yourself what you did the day before. In the darkness of the early morning you lie there wondering why you don't want to get up, let alone engage the day to be someone you know you are and want to be, and even the simpliest work is too much.

So you lie there where everything doesn't feel good but just feels enough where everything else doesn't matter. At least you can feel safe in the darkness and silence, the only sound you hear is your own mind thinking out loud and your heart pounding against the feelings of one simple fact. You don't like yourself anymore.

At least not for the moment and the moments surrounding it. But that only happens when you hit bottom. And you're not there yet. You're still falling in the darkness, not knowing anything else but falling, and hoping bottom will come soon. And as the morning light peeks over the eastern horizon and the darkness fades, you're still there, in bed, wondering and falling.

Something changes

2011-02-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

When we go through some physical problems we also go through mental challenges too. It's the nature of being human, our mind and body work together and only rarely is pure harmony occurs where nothing bad happens. But as noted, that's rare and almost always we think too much and often condemn ourself in the process when it doesn't happen and worse when things go wrong, even medically.

And that causes changes to us, our character, temperament and personality. Everything changes. The old becomes forgotten. The habits become stuff collecting mental dust in corners and things to do piled loosely around our mind. And the new becomes overwhelming. We find ourself asking not just the what if questions, but why does it matter questions. And we find the answers don't fit who we were let alone who we are.

We change, sometimes tremendously where we're not the same person in any way or manner. And when we see this, often we don't as only others see it, we are taken back by who we have become, and often ashamed, but almost always lost. Lost that we didn't realize it during the change and didn't realize afterward until we ran into ourself.

It's like we kept looking in the mirror seeing our ourself as we were and then one morning as someone else, almost unrecognizable. We know it is ourself, but we know now it's not ourself, the one we thought and thought we knew. We don't know ourself anymore and we have to find our way to who we want to be from a strange place.

I woke up this week to find myself there. Standing in my home wondering what happened. All the problems of late, especially since last October and the recent discovery of a blocked pulmonary artery changed me where I'm not me as I thought of me. Some of this change relates to the medication and the physical side effects which changed my life since then.

I've stopped the medication, far short of the time prescribed by my physician and cardiologist and am getting through the body's recovery to some new sense of normal, whatever that is. The medication drained me physically and then mentally, and now I find myself changed beyond where I even thought or even know.

I am not me while I am me. And I don't where the old me went and where the new me came from, except I know it's been me all along. I just don't know what me is me. This isn't new. I've been here before, just not so obvious a change. It reminds of the Peanuts cartoon I keep on my desk.

It shows Charlie Brown in bed with the blanket up to his chin and his eyes wide open. He's facing outward saying, "It's not wise to lie in bed at night and ask yourself questions you can't answer." It's what I've thought every morning this week waking up in the darkness of the early morning hours and lying there for some time before getting up.

And then nothing changed from my thoughts when I didn't get up. And I have no answers, just the questions I asked myself in the dark. The questions are old, as old the time of man, but it's new in that this is a new me I don't know. So I have to wander, searching for a me I recognize and know, enough to become me again.

Uncertainty Concept

2011-02-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Werner Heisenberg published the Uncertainty Principle in 1927 about quatum phyisics. And while that's what it applies to and has been updated over the years, the idea at the core of the principle has application in other areas. I'm not sure why they haven't been except in similarity or thought, but it does to me.

And that's because the underlying idea is that the observer of some phenomena can't know the speed and direction of something with absolute certainty. Note, the word "and" which means both. The principle means you can know one absolutely but only the other with some measure of uncertainty. That's because it has to do with the fact that in observing something your measurement tools influence that something, changing the other things.

That means you can know how fast something is going or which direction it's going with certainty but not both with certainty. So, how does that apply here? For one as the observer we can't observe ourselves without influencing ourselves in our observation. So ourself is biased by our observation of ourself.

Meaning we can know what we want to know with some measure of certainty and we can measure how we plan to decide or act with some certainty, but we can't know both. Really? It seems we could know what we know and know what we plan to decide or act. True, but then we're not observing ourselves doing this. It's when we observe ourself that things change.

In our observations of ourself we ask ourself questions about the quality of our thinking, our thoughts and our information. That means we're evaluating where we're failing or succeeding, or where we're simply missing information or lacking experience. We're adjusting our thinking by our own observations of ourself.

And the same applies to our decisions and actions. We're constantly evaluating those too and in that evaluation we're adjusting our decisions and actions by our observation. Many call these feedback loops within ourself to ourself and normal thinking. It's when we insert questions about the quality of our thoughts, decisions and actions that effects those very thoughts, decisions and actions.

Normal? Yeah, but when you're depressed, it's a self-fullfilling spiral where we ask ourself negative questions, make negatives comments and feed ourself negatives feelings. How can we measure how well we're doing and planning to decide or act if we keep interfering with ourself and keep feeding ourself negatives.

We become our own uncertainty. We keep trying to see how well or badly we're doing while we're thinking, deciding or acting, and then we try to evaluate how well we're succeeding or failing. We create the uncertainty and then try to keep it from our thoughts, decisions and actions forgetting we've lost the certainty of those thoughts, decisions and actions from our observations of ourself.

We forget that feelings are and should be felt in hindsight. We infuse feelings in the course of our thinking undermining ourself in the process. We are our own uncertainty keeping us from ourself, to find the thoughts, make the decisions, and take the actions we should for ourself than against ourself.

And the answer? Trust yourself. Forget observing yourself and just life and let the rest happen. Uncertainty only exists in our heart and mind, and all it does is hamper ourself with our own thoughts about ourself. You can always do it later, in hindsight when the uncertainty won't matter beyond what we could of, should of or would have done, but we didn't, so any uncertainty is long lost, swept away in time.

Uncertainty is good to a point. It's a matter of when it's not, someting we're often the least certain about it.

Running redux

2011-02-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

I wrote a post about running about year and a half ago. That what when my running came to a near complete halt during health problems, which we (physicians, specialists and me) are still sorting out. The "near" is simply that I resorted to walking instead of running and longer distances.

When I discovered the situation with my pulmonary artery in December, running is now something I may hope to return to doing sometime in the future but not the immediate future. For now it's still walking, which is 2.5-3 miles one way to town and back. I need rewards for my walking, so the commercial center has cafes to rest, get a coffee and a snack, buy supplies I can carry home, and walk back.

All of this has had its effect on my perspectives on life, where I can now understand the frustrations of people who have medical conditions which have changed their life and who have medical conditions which defy understanding let alone a diagnosis and a treatment if not a cure. It changes everything, and there are days it's overwhelming, and I've learning to adjust to that too.

So that's the update. For now it's once a week walking, and should be twice a week, and I'm working up to that. The health issues has had their effects on my body which is older now too, so I have to work up to more trips or longer distances which I want to look at resuming hiking in Mt. Rainier NP later this spring. That's all I can do now, keep working, walking and hoping.

In a span of two years I've learned to be amazed what can happen and what one has to do to overcome what can be overcome, to change what can be changed, and to hope for what can be realistically hoped for. And maybe some day to run again.

Selfness

2011-02-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

Self-esteem. Self-confidence. Self-empowerment. Everything selfness, but not self-centeredness or selfishness. Just self. It's also a matter of degrees. I strongly believe we're born with some measure of it, both positive and negative, and we learn from our experiences to affirm both sides. So it's a accumulation of the experiences with the innate sense of self that defines us.

It's the innate that's what we're given, and while we can change that through our experiences, we always seem to come back to it when we don't push ourselves. It's why and what's innate, where our mind likes to see and be. We can mentally and emotionally wander all around our selfness, but in the end, we'll always find our way home to what's innate and given, our sellfnes, our "unique individuality" (OED).

Which is what this essay is about. I wasn't handed a lot of self-esteem or self-confidence. And my experiences along with my genetic Dysthymia only reenforced the negative side of my innate view of myself. And during my childhood except for the few periods playing with my siblings, a year older sister who didn't want to play with me and a brother was six years old and long on gone in his own direction, I mostly played by myself.

I found I liked just being alone. I'm very comfortable there and more uncomfortable playing with others except in some circumstances, like baseball (Little League). Otherwise, I had my toys, or I created them from whatever I could find. I had a good imagination, something overlooked by parents who assume social play is the only positive learning, and I often made up long stories about people, places and events from what I had.

But when I got into junior and later my senior high school, it all became evident to me just how introspective and an alone type I was. It was who I was. I had long become someone who stuttered (started at age 5) and extremely shy, but really it was just that I liked being alone and was uncomfortable in social situations, which isn't good for high school as I was teased, for that and being short (like 5') and got into a few fights.

It was only after graduating and the failed year-plus time in college when I was in the Air Force that I slowly became comfortable with friends. It was the late 60's and we all had something in common about the times and being there to avoid the draft, the Army and Vietnam. And the drugs didn't hurt too.

Through all those years to where I am now, I'm still pretty much the same, just older and a lot more physically and mentally worn out or down. But the selfness is still there as much and as little as it was. I have more self-esteem and confidence, but only from experience which I gained over the years, but mostly though, it's hidden within myself and my aloneness.

While I don't stutter anymore (can control any moments) and I'm not shy, I still don't like social places or being in crowds except when I can focus on a small group of friends or what I'm doing, such as in cafes working on Web pages and other material. I like the atmosphere of the crowd, just not the initmacy of being with someone.

In the end I always go back to what's innate and given for me, my own selfness.

Taking Issue

2011-01-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

My sister, who is a year-plus older than me, finally found my blog and after reading some of the entries about my family took issue with my words. In some ways she is right, but mostly because of her perspective on the family and the events surrouinding each of our lives with our parents. We have both different experiences with them and now different views of that experience.

Hindsight is great for somethings, but mostly it's really unimportant to the world as it is right now. We are the results of our history, the experiences compounded on our character, personality and temperament. So while understanding those experience is a good thing and often quite useful and helpful, it's the act of hindisight that blurs the facts and reality.

That's because we don't remember anything completely and accurately. We remember snippets and snapshots of the experiences, people, places, events, etc. and we recreate them when we want to remember then or they want to find our consciousness. That's why they change with time. Only those from our youth are the most certain to be honest from what we knew and did then.

And that's what my sister pointed out, the facts I wrote weren't complete or accurate. In part she is right, I assumed from conversation with my parents of what they did, and from what I heard or saw around them. In that respect I'm wrong and apologize for my misunderstanding and memory.

That said, however, my words as written don't change the ideas and thoughts in them. My Dad had a failing health soon after he retired and was on numerous medications for conditions and medications to counter the side-effects or interactions of the medications. At one time he took 11 medicines daily, about half of them for the side-effects or interactions. They got them down to just over half.

But it didn't change the slow progressive decline I saw in him the few times we met or spoke over those years. By age 74 he was just tired, a shell of his former self. While he was mentally alert, I could sense he was aware of the end on the horizon, and why he just wanted to get to his 75th birthday. And then he succumbed to the accumulation of physicial problems.

And as much as my sister wants to exonerate him for being alive and fighting, to me and what I saw, he simply quit once he made his goals. He had no other reason to get up in the morning with all the pain and life as he was. I can't argue with that, some days I get glimpses into this place and will face my own decline and realization of the end.

As for my brother, I won't change anything I said. I loved him and miss him. We had some good conversations about life and living with our parents and their expectations. He drank from high school to his last days, he was a functional alcoholic. He also smoked 1-2 packs a day from high school to his last breath. He was looking at a heart-double lung transplant or death, and he choose the latter.

His reality and problem, as they say, was Dad. As the oldest son he was what our parents wanted, to succeed. He did, even being the CEO of AMC Theater Corporation for a short time after he negotiated the buyout by a California firm. And then he wasn't and life wasn't the same for him and to Dad. But by then the pressure had reached the point of no return, and all that was left in his mind was playing the hand he had.

He didn't have to do that, something we discussed many times over the years. But I also knew while arguing for him to change careers, I also knew he couldn't. Dad wouldn't let him or face what I did when I was 19, being effectively forgotten by Dad. But even then he already was. He was executer of the estate and knew the details in the will, and knew all he got from Dad was a thank you.

I didn't fair much better as he told me once. Our sister was the apple of his eye, not unusual for Dads and only one daughter. While my brother got a lot from our parents over the years (college, help moving, big wedding and honeymoon, help with the home and stuff for it), he knew it came with a price in return. Our sister got just over about half that from the folks. Dad told me he wanted to giver her and son-in-law more but didn't have the money, which my Mom partly discovered why in his desk after he died.

And I got shown the front door after a year of college partly paid by him, my brother and me (1/3 each), which was why I worked fulltime during college and they didn't have to. And over the years I got two loans, one of which I paid back to her for her medical expenses. That's it, except, the deal, more financial help if I moved back home and did what he wanted and expected of me.

I didn't and he made his view clear, and never let me forget he saw me as a failure despite some good accomplishments for the family. I served my country. I didn't ask for money for college once I back after the service. I got the first masters degree in the family. I even was promoted to one grade higher than him in the federal government.

But I also got the first real divorce in the family - the first one was the result of domestic abuse and obviously, to them, excuseable. I married a woman they didn't initially like, only barely warmed up to during our 13 year marriage (last 2 separated), and then blamed for the divorce. And I never moved home or went home unless my brother was there for reunions. Even after rejecting me, he still expected me to do what he wanted.

In the end all of it didn't matter to him, and I never really heard an explanation. He took that and something he never said to me, "I love you.", to his grave. I will never know why and will take that to my grave.

If only for a moment

2011-01-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

I have moments. Some days, but mostly very few and not often these days, especially the last two years. Sometimes all I want is to feel physically good and mentally ok, a few moments when the body and mind seem fine with the world. Funny almost all of these have occurred in spring or fall rain storms when I can stand on the deck and feel, hear and smell the constant rain against the earth and against my body and mind.

I like to put on my North Face expediton rainsuit (pants and coat) and stand outside in the hard, intense rain, surrounded by nothing but the sound, smell and sight of it. Lost in it. Lost within it. It doesn't care about me, only I'm the object it hits before shedding onto the ground around me. It doesn't feel me, but I feel it.

And there in those moments I feel ok. For a few moments all physical and mental problems are washed away with the rain. Shed like the raindrops off the raincoat onto the ground, into the ground and away back to the earth where it started.

Procrastination

2010-12-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

It's a good thing. Really. Procrastination gives you one thing over those advocating quick decisions, which is always based on seriously inadequate, incorrect or inaccurate information, and that is time. Time is a good gift with many issues, events, situations, decisions, etc. in life and sometimes work. Time gives you that edge to focus more on the issue or question, to gather more information, listen to more people, and so on.

But mostly it gvies you the space to understand. It gives you time for experience and knowledge to outweigh any rashness to decide based on emotios or feelings, which all to often leads to regret about the decision, the purchase and maybe even the object itself. Procrastination can overcome what quickness can't, time to realize how stupid you were when you made the quick decision.

You can't undo that decision, you can learn to make a better one next time, but if you always make those quick decisions, how will you learn to make better ones? That's where procrastination helps. I rarely buy or decide anything the first time. And more often, not even the second time. Usually the third time I realize if I'm still thinking about it, and done my homework, I'm usually comfortable with the idea or object, so there will be little if any regret.

A moment of my own Mortality

2010-12-27T16:05:00.000-08:00

We all have them, a brief moment when the thought invades our consciousness to say, "What if you suddenly died." Sometimes in our dreams we have imaginary events about it. Sometimes when seeing, reading or listening to a story about the death of someone. And sometimes for no reason than just happening.

I get these moments just before I doze off in a nap, wondering if death is just a nap you don't wake up from. This morning, however, it occurred in a dream just before I woke up. I was sitting in a cafe watching the world inside the cafe and outside the window and then wondered what would be different if I wasn't there. Not there just for the time being there, but not there in life.

Nothing really followed, I woke up and got on with the morning. But, as these moments do, I wondered for a moment of my, and really each of our own, mortality on this earth and in life. There one moment, gone the next. Someone else sitting in that chair at that table in that cafe. Not me. Never again.

It's no different a moment than we all experience, the question is what we think and do about them. Some people don't even ponder them beyond the rare times they occur, if they occur at all, while some people never seem to go very long without a moment. I'm one of those where it's never very far from the front of my mind, only needing a reason to invade my consciousness.

When life gets away

2010-12-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

When life gets away from you. You know when you wake and realize time, not just days, but weeks and even months, disappeared, and you can't think of what you did during that time. It simply happened and you simply went through life and time, to be where you sit there looking back and wondering what happened.

Or that you know and can't figure why you didn't do more. I get these periods, have all my life, and even for months when I just went through the motions of life and work, and not feeling good about much, if anything, and usually feeling like crap. All you know is that for brief periods one day you began to feel better, even good. And you see and think clearly, or so it seems compared to the recent past.

Some Days

2010-12-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

Some days aloneness and lonliness aren't far apart and aren't far away, from me. It's Christmas Day and from some medical tests earlier in the week and some food which left me tired and sick, or sick and tired, it varied between the two. And it left me mentally tired when and where my innate comfort for aloneness was invaded by lonliness, slowly overlapping into where they were one and I didn't know which I felt. I just felt overwhelmed with being.

It Doesn't Get Better

2010-10-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

After reading the news of the Rutger's student who committed suicide, I was insulted and outraged at all the blogs, videos, public service announcements, etc., essentially shit saying, "It Gets Better." Well, it doesn't and all the hype, and worse the words, are bullshit. It doesn't get better, it gets different. And now today I'm reading a number of video and on-line bloggers say as much too.

The truth is that if anyone had intervened to prevent or dissuade that student for his act at that moment, his reality doesn't change. Everything still happened, and everyone still knows. And he would still be here to see and hear it every moment of every day. That doesn't get better, or even different, it just stays there, like the unspoken truth.

When you decide not to commit suicide but decide to either put it off for awhile, remember the thought of it never goes away and the feelings of the moment to decide never leaves, and why so many try again and some keep trying, you still are faced with your own reality. That changes, not for the better, it just changes, and you get on with your life around the changes, carrying it with you every moment.

Those that argue it gets better don't get the point, let alone the idea about what better would be. They espouse a better person, mentally happier and wanting to live a better life. How insanely naive that is and they are to think it and then say it. They like to argue life, any life, is better than death, especially at your own hand. But how little and how naive they are to know let alone understand the person at that moment first to decide and then the moments before the act.

There is no better. There is only everything else which is different than death, but not really better. I won't argue in those moments the person experienced mental myopia as the darkness hides all the choices other than death and all the ways to be more than dead. But none of those will seem better, and being alive doesn't offer better choices let alone a better life.

Because the events which created the moment and space where suicide is front and center won't change. The past is done, and argue all you want you can change how you see, think and feel about those events, it doesn't change them. It doesn't make them better. They still just are.

What can change though is simply accepting the choices people made and the events that happen, and getting on with life, albeit as it is and will become. That's about all that is really possible, putting them in a mental shoebox and in the back of the memory closet. They won't go away and the box will spill out and open now and then to remind you of the words, the pictures and the events, and you will go back to the moments of your thoughts and feelings then.

And that doesn't get better. It just become what happened and what will happen. Don't paint a rosy picture when it's not there and show how ignorant and insensitive you are about people. Get and be real. And if you want to do anything, just be there for them and listen. Nothing else. It's their world, not yours or your view of things, that's matters. That's everything, and nothing else matters.

Love Inside, Still looking

2010-10-04T17:24:00.000-07:00

I don't really know what this means beyond just what I originally thought, somewhere deep inside me is someone I've been looking to love. Not the person I hate I am. I haven't found that person, and I keep looking. In the end that's all we can do, try. And everything else is what happens in life.

Mind and Body

2010-10-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

It's what people like to talk about, the mind-body connections. And while much is personal view, commercial hype or whatever cow pasture material the person is saying, some of it is true because it's the whole of ourself. We are thoroughly connected between our mind and body, and when one is the major controlling drive, the other just tags along trying to cope and get through life.

And obviously I'm no different. In my case, the body rules the mind. It's always been no matter how hard I try to think over, around or through some physical issue or condition. When the body isn't feeling good or feeling like crap, I don't think right or well, and if things get worse or last a long time, I begin to hate my body and myself. It's what's been happening for 8-plus months now.

And the rigors of the medical system isn't always about actually helping the patient but simply treating the symptoms, the conditions, and on occasion, the actual cause. This what some physicians write about with the stories about months of trying to heal a patients to often find it's a simple one with a simple cure. And all the while the patient feels like crap.

Well, mine isn't serious, just problematic enough to feel like crap most days with a few hours of some days feeling decent and maybe good. When basic functions go awry, the body has little else to do but react with pain and hurt and you react with anger and depression. You just want to get better and that won't happen.

And what worse is that you have to eat to stay alive, and especially healthy. Except when you find yourself wanting to eat but fearing food and eating. You know food is your enemy. Food everyone eats, and doesn't have one issue or problem except how good it tastes. But your body doesn't. Your mind loves the food, the tastes, the flavors, the textures, and everything else. And then the food attacks your body and your body attacks your mind.

And all the doctors can say after all the tests is, "Well, we can't find anything physically wrong." There is a myriad of other tests left open to try, but all they want to do is eliminate each one in succession, to be safe and cautious and slowly remove all the possible obvious causes. But nothing changes except the hate your body has for food. And the anger your mind has with your body.

And on it goes. Long after hope disappeared. Only the acceptance the mind-body is at war with itself.

Dysthymia and Taoism

2010-03-15T14:44:00.001-07:00

I posted an essay on my Taoism blog about Taoism and Dysthymia talking about the interconnection and intertwining of both throughout my life. I won't repeat it here, you can simply read it there. It deserves to be in both places as it covers both issues of my life. Not much more need be said from me about it, for now anyway. Give me time and I'll think of more to say, or what my mind tells me.

Chronic Depressive Disorder

2010-02-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

It seems I won't have Dysthymia in May 2013 when the new DSM-V is released. In their everlasting effort to pathologize almost everyone in this country, the APA is drafting a new DSM, and facing a lot of criticism from outside the APA and within the APA about the changes and the additions to the DSM, pretty much putting a blanket disorder classification over seemingly normal human thoughts, feeling, expressions or behavior.

But that aside, the APA is proposing to change Dysthymia to Chronic Depressive Disorder. They simplify some of the criteria, but mostly the basic diagnosis is unchanged. So why change the name? Beats me, but mostly it seems they're lumping moderate chronic depression with low chromic depression into one catagory.

In the past it's been the distinction which separates Dysthymia from other and more significant, moderate and even major, depression. I think this worked as many people suffer from longterm, some like me, lifelong, low chronic depression, with occasional period of moderate to severe depression, and only short periods of some level of low level satisfaction or comfort from depression.

I think this distinction is important because it identifies people who have longterm or lifelong low depression and can function reasonably well just outside the criteria for people with moderate to major depression. We don't find life so overwhelming most of the time the depression interfers with getting through life, just for enjoying, or not enjoying, life.

And that's not being addressed in the proposed standards. I don't want to be labelled depressed and with people who are seriously depressed. I won't argue my Dysthymia is persistent and consistent, but it's liveable without intervention (therapy) or without drugs.

Some do need one or both, but I've manged well enough without either except on rare occasions during my life. But the last thing I need or want is another label of some disorder which can easily be misunderstood or misinterpreted to be worse than it really is. I'm lucky my Dysthymia is relatively easily managed, and I've function well in my life and work.

But it's not something I want people to see me as sick because they don't know or understand because some label says I have a disorder. Dysthymia is explainable. Chronic Depressive Disorder isn't. That's not right or fair.

Selling optimism

2010-01-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article in the Washington Post, "Researchers ask why optimism is associated with health, pessimism with disease", and it was interesting for what the researchers are trying to prove. They've always tried to link optimism to good health, a good attitude and prosperity. And the opposite, link pessimism to disease, illness, depression, and everything bad physical and mental health.

And they tried to link better social attitude and prosperity to the whole mess of optimism, meaning pessimism is linked to being alone, social phobias, and everything else they can dump on the evidence. Except it's never been fully proven true, only interpretations of the data to what they set out to prove anyway.

Overstated, maybe a little. But when other researchers looked at the data and their interpretations, they discovered they didn't include other factors effecting a person's health, such as economic and financial standing, social networks, education, experience, and so on down the list, but more importantly the invdividual's genetics and characteristics.

They simply made connections which don't ring true when examined under the whole suite of data. They selective choose which factors they wanted and denied the rest had merit or value. And if nothing else, I am an example. I have excellent health, barring the genetic conditions provided by my ancestors. I exercise (walking, running, hiking, etc.) and am active (photographer).

Due to issues and problems with my digestive system I eat healthy, all natural and organic foods, minus the occasional prepared soups and meals I can't fix. I eat a variety of foods, that my body will allow. In short, I am the very model of the optimistic persons based on individual health and fitness in their interpretations.

Except I have genetic, meaning lifelong, Dysthymia and optimism isn't in my mindset. I am predisposed to pessimistic thinking, feeling and emotion from mild to moderate and on occasions in the my life, severe depression. It's who I am, and that flies in the face of their statements about pessimistic people.

And it's what Barbara Ehrenreich points out in her new book on Optimism. The data has been misinterpreted and misused and the widespread acceptance of optimism by people is at the foundation of many of this country's problems.

We have hyped optimism into a hole we can't see out of, let alone find answers. Just look at the news, especially the interviews of people, and especially politicians. They espouse confidence, hope, and so on with the words saying it will get better, forgetting that same "get better" is what got us where we are today. Our hype of optimism is part and parcel key in the whole suite of problems we're facing.

And still we hype optimism. Like the blind being lost with no companion or tools to know where they are, let alone how to get out. We're blind to our own hype. And we keep paying the price.

The glass of water

2010-01-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

Why do they always ask you about the glass of water half filled with water, "Is the glass half empty or half full?" What not just say, "It's a glass of water." Why is the water seen as optimism and the air as pessimism? Or better yet ask, "Gee, I'm thirsty, do you mind if I drink it?" Or ask, "What type of water?", meaning where did come from, to know it's origin more than the faucet.

Why can't an optimist say, "It needs to be filled up."? Or, a pessimist say, "Maybe someone is thirsty."? Why do they want to assign some qualitative value to a clear glass of water? Relative to its content of water and air? Why can't they give you the option to say it's both, half full and half empty, an equal amount of each?

Well, I don't know but psychologist love to make things an either-or judgement to see which side of the fence you mentally live. Like it matters? For what? It doesn't change you, and certainly not the glass of water. Only them making some judgement of you, not that it's important or critical, just personal to them.

Which means, to me, it's simply cow pasture material. A Taoist would look at the glass and say, "It's a glass of water." Nothing more than the simple observation. A realist would say, "Well, is anyone going to do anything with the glass of water?" Nothing more than thinking out loud.

But it's at the heart of many psychologist's, or therapist's, questions, the either-or idea to discover something good or bad about you or your thoughts, emotions, or feelings. And if you can't or don't want to make a choice, then they'll push until you make it, meaning your reaction is now part of their judgement.

Like, "So why are you afraid to say if the glass is half full or half empty?" Like it matters? And if you, "The glass is both half full and half empty.", they will ask you why you thinks it's both. Like it's the reality of the glass and the air and water inside it? Why are we driven to either-or choices?

Taoism teaches you it's both as both are necessary to the balance of the world. And Dysthymia teaches you to see it's both, like there isn't any other reality, let alone a choice between two, if not more, choices. It's always, "All of the above." when it comes to life and the world.

I would ask, "Why a clear glass?" Why not an opague one you can't quite see the line between the water and air? Why not a black one where you have to imagine the air and water? Would they ask to imagine and decide, make a choice? Why? What does it say about you? What does it tell the psychologist? They all don't interpret the answer the same, so then why answer?

The whole world of your mind, all in a glass of water. And now I'm thirsty.

Being pushed

2010-01-01T08:50:00.000-08:00

Update.--I wrote this six weeks into the dosage and six weeks ago. Nothing much has changed, the wind is still there against my back, pushing me forward, and I still expend a lot of mental energy to stay sitted on the edge and not fall off and over into the abyss. But for now it's on a plateau where the wind hasn't increased and the energy lessed, only I've become adjusted to it and have adapted to the times I don't have to think about it.

It's the old adage, nothing changes and everything changes. And I'm still sitting on the edge with the wind against my back.

Orginal Post.--I wrote about livng on the edge of life. Well, I'm still there and still here. It doesn't go away and never will beyond just a slight improvement. I've always reckoned it to sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The giant abyss, easy to fall into and never worry again.

But I haven't, or at least stopped myself just this side of life. But that is also changing, not just with age but with my medication. I describe as if a wind is pushing from behind and it takes most my energy to stay seated on the edge and not pushed over the edge. The pressure against the back is just too much some days I just sit. Wasted and gone.

But it's also a choice. The medication is absolutely necessary for what I'm doing. And the dosage is adjustable. I can take less and feel better, but it won't work as well and as fast, and often even barely works at all. I can take more and risk the potential mental hazards with the physical changes, some not so good. I've tested varying dosages and found the limit.

And that's the conumdrum. More works for what I want but the push becomes more and the risk greater to falling off the edge. Less takes far longer, keeps me sane and normal, but doesn't work more than a minimum. And with the physician we adjust it accordingly.

I increase it and note the changes. At about two weeks the pressure begins, so I've always lowered it and within a week I'm back to normal. I do that 2-3 times a year, always with the same results. This time, I'm on six weeks because I wanted to see what happened past the two weeks. Now I know. And that doesn't change, and even slowly gets worse.

And it's the constant pressure pushing and the constant energy to stay seated and upright. It's not that I want to fall over the edge. I don't. I've found the best place to stay sane and still function as well as do what I want, except the one thing the medication helps. And that's the price and costs. And always the question.

So, I sit. Against the wind at my back and the abyss in front of me.

Wanting to quit

2009-11-15T17:20:00.001-08:00

Wanting to quit. Interesting feeling. Not wanting to die. Not wanting to quit life. Not wanting to quit existing. Just quit. No quit what. No when. No why. Just quit. Nothing else. Just quit.

But what does that mean, to me, at least? I don't know. It's not quit living, that's not the thought, the feeling or the emotion. Not resignation, defeat, leaving, going, whatever else. Just the simple word. Quit.

It's the feeling. To sit down and just let life go by. It's the feeling. To sit there with a blank mind looking out with no thought, feeling or emotion. Just sitting.

To get up and walk, just walk, and keeping walking, nowhere, just going one foot at a time somewhere except here. To hope it never ends and I never tire.

To stand up and let life just drain from me, onto the floor. To feel empty, totally empty, nothing. To sit in the pre-dawn darkness and hope the sun never rises, to feel the darkness surround and enveloe me, and dissolve into it.

To stand surrounded by the light with the edge of the sun just below the horizon spreading all around. To feel the cold just before the first rays hits my face. To feel the light and warmth of the first rays of the sun. To feel the light just go through me forever. To feel the cold of the morning slowly slip away with the darkness.

To stand in the forest during a rainstorm. To feel the rain fall. Constant, never ceasing, never letting, just falling. To feel it on and around me. The sound against me. The smell. The feel. To disappear in it and into it. Into everything else. Nothing else, just rain.

To stand in a snowstorm surrounded by white. Everywhere. To feel the blizzard, the snow swirling all around finding me, to settle on me, and dissappear into the white. To be lost in the white. And the snow.

To stand in the middle of a stream like a boulder, the water flowing over and around me, not knowing anything else. To feel the cold, flowing water wearing me down, slowly. moving me during floods like all the rocks and boulders. To stop anew somewhere, nowhere but still in the stream, like nothing happened.

To stand in desert surrounded by sand. The heat, the wind, and the sand. Nothing else. Just another particle on the wind. To be one of the vastness of openness where all is sand, wind, heat and time. Nothing else.

To sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon, the depth of time below, the vastness of space around, and the sky above. To know time has been, time is and time will always be. And be there for a moment, lost with the rest of everything and lost in time with everything.

To quit being and just be. Nothing more. Just be. No thought, No feeling. No emotion. The spiriting wanting. The soul wondering. The mind empty. The body just there. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just nothing.

To quit. To feel alive.

Inside a cloud

2009-11-08T06:02:00.000-08:00

I was trying to think of a way to describe my experience with Dythymia, and I would drawn to the idea when people visit Paradise in Mt. Rainier NP. Paradise is as the name implies, wonderful and beautiful, and through the sunmer it's majestic. Many people go there during the summer and don't see the other seasons and many other different times there and in the NP.

I've been there when the clouds cover the region and lose the mountain from view. And being there you realize you standing inside a cloud, a massive storm front cloud, surrounded by everything cloud. And your visibility, if you're lucky, is a few hundred feet at best. And after a minute you feel the water droplets encasing you into the cloud itself. You become part of the cloud.

I's always an amazing feeling then and there. To just stand there and feel the cloud envelope you and the water forms on your clothes, your (exposed) skin, and for me, my glasses. It doesn't matter to wipe it off as it reforms almost as quickly. The cloud simply makes you one of the object inside it and a part of it. You're lost in and being part of the cloud.

That's what it's like. Except the cloud is the world and life, engulfiing you in a world surrouded on all sides by the world you can't see out. You can only feel the immediate world around, hanging on you, engulfing you, and becoming you. You and the world merge into the one where all you see and know is the world as a cloud. Everything else is gone, long outside the cloud, beyond your horizon, and even your imagination and memory.

The cloud is outside and iinside of you. You become a cloud within a cloud, lost when the inside and outside merge into one, including you, your mind, your heart, all of you. You know and feel what is and yet you know it's just the situation and circumstance. You know you're in a cloud, and yet there is nothing yhou can do or think to change it.

You can only stand there and wait. Let things pass and the weather will change to rrain, snow or sunshine. You don't know because the cloud doesn't know what will happen. That's determined by the situation and circumstances outside the cloud and you. You can change some things, even your emotions, feelings and thoughts, but always inside and surrounded by the cloud.

There is no out. Mentally walk as you want, it's doesn't change. The cloud doesn't follow you, it's always just there, More cloud. And then there will be a moment when you think and feel like a cloud. The cloud. The one you're in and the one you are. But then everything doesn't feel bad, not even just what is, but ok. Comfort.

Your whole world isn't a cloud but a whole universe. Your universe. And it's suddenly not a cloud but that whole universe. You realize it goes on forever, not restricted but something of itself and connected to everything else. It hasn't changed. You have. And it's not bad or sad. Just is and what it is. What you are.

And then it's no longer a cloud. Others, outside, may see or think it's a cloud. That's all they see, the cloud and you somewhere deep inside, lost to them and the world. But it's not. It's a world just different from theirs. It's yours, the cloud and you, and now you know it will be and get better, sunshine or not.

You don't need sunshine. You know the cloud isn't the limitation to you, it's just where you are for the moment, and you know it won't last when weather changes. You've seen and felt the cloud from the inside, You've been a part of it. And even when the sun comes, you'll remember the cloud and what it was like, how it felt, how it enveloped you, and how you found solace and understanding, of the cloud and of yourself.

And the next time, you'll know and learn again and anew about the inside of clouds.

Warm & fuzzy feelgoods

2009-10-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

I've written adneseum about support groups, and yes, I still read them occasionally. There interesting in some ways, and perhaps helps in many other ways where people know they're not alone and know others apparently care. I say apparently because I wonder if forums are just another warm and fuzzy feelgood, kinda' the Internet hug. Good for the time you're reading it but gone not long after you leave the forum.

I say this because when someone talks about their depression or other feelings, there's some to many responses about "caring" for them, but that's all they are. They don't know each other outside the forum, so if told some stranger about your depression and only got a sympathic or empathic look and a hug back, would it matter? Would it help?

I mean really help how you're feeling and how you can get through, resolve or answer some problem, issue or feeling? Wouldn't talking with someone who knows you or knows your situation or circumstances help more? Wouldn't they be better in the long run to help you change?

So why do so many use these forums instead of finding real people who really know and care?

Yes, I know many don't have friends or can't afford drugs or therapists, and many don't want to talk about their feelings and emotions with others who are so close, but they'll talk to total strangers they know very little if anything about in forums?

I'm not the one to critcize or complain, I'm just observing. And I know these forums helps many, just expressing their thoughts out loud to a group of strangers far away who don't have that real connection to them. Sometimes just shouting helps and the more it's anonymous the better.

It's why I love solo walking and hiking. To stand in places where no is at the moment and feel totally alone. Almost the opposite of those who love to stand in crowds and be anonymous. It's our own individual way of seeing where and who we are in the world, and it doesn't really matter how, just that it does.

In the end, it's not any of that which really matters, but what you think and feel in your heart and mind, and sometimes a warm and fuzzy feelgood hits the spot, an emotional scoop of ice cream when it's most needed and tastes great. And who cares five minutes later.

Suppot Groups II

2009-10-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote about the move of a depression support group to a social networking Website. And the owner explained the reasons for the move from the standalone forum to the networking Website, specifically to increase membership and reduce the work. She is a very busy person and running her own Website and forum was time-consuming for the time available. I can't argue with that.

What I can argue though is the idea that a person automatically assumes a decision and subsequent action is better because they feel or think it will make it better. Let's be clear there. Intention itself doesn't make any decision better and the decision and subsequent action good and right, only different.

As the old saying goes, a major change isn't always the optimium, let alone the best solution. It only makes it better for the person making the decision, or so they hope. In this case, it helped to reduce the work with the forum by moving all the operation and most of the management to the social networking company. She only needs to the address what options are in choices for the presentation, management, etc. of the Website and forum.

It could be argued that in the long run her time won't be that much less. First, she had to learn their system for the features she wanted and then set them up. This is and was no different than the other forum, only she doesn't operate and manage the application of the Website and forum. That's a savings of time, except it puts that work on the company's timetable to fit their work needs.

What it did reduce is that the membership process is now under the social networking company and their Website and not her. This provides her considerably more users and anyone on the Website can join the forum, she can't stop them, even though they may join for social networking than depression. There are questions that haven't been answered yet.

First, will those who felt that had some degree of privacy - which they didn't as the old forum was fully readable by the public and search engines - but more so a sense of shared experience. People only joined the group if they had some measure of depression or knew some with some measure of depression. That is now gone.

Second, will expanding the membership dilute the the content of the forum. It's reasonable to assume few people will join for just socializing, but as any forum has experienced, it invites the number of people you least need or want on them, people who have no understanding of depression and don't mind expressing less than supportive and positive views about depressed people. Or worse.

Third, it does open up the members of the old forum to the wider audience of services and people who use the user information on social networking Website for other purposes, like phishing or hacking (eg. Yahoo). Having to be a member of the larger social network would prompt some to provide less information than they did before, making it harder for others to really understand who they are.

Fourth, the organization of this one is entirely different than the old one. Many of the topics for specific aspects of depression are either lost of merged into one. While maybe a good thing for the casual user, not good for those with specific conditions or situations. Their measure of identity was lost, unless of course they want to express it to wider, less focused group.

In the end, the choice to move the forum has both advantages and disadvantages for the owner and the users. Everything has a price, but to me, socializing depression isn't usually a good thing. It can help some but it can also drive more away from support and help they truly need and want. And there are good examples, such as suicide.

Suppose the suicide telephone support and help folks decided to move their service to a general psychology help line, like when you call and get a prerecorded message with the list of options and hear, "Press 2 if you have thoughts of suicide." And then, "Please hold for the next available help person."

What would you do then? Like duh. Yeah, extreme example, but it not any different than someone standing up in a support group meeting to express their deepest personal problems or standing up in a theater full of people to express those same problems. Where would you think they will get more and better help?

Yes, I'm still a member of both the social networking Website and this forum, but outside of providing the minimum information, I only go there occasionally to find nothing has changed from what I expected. A little bit of everything, good, bad and indifferent. Just like any social networking Website and forums, but certainly not a dedicated depression forum.

Support Groups

2009-10-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

What do you do when an on-line support group you like and visit daily decides to move their forum from a stand-alone Website to a social network Website, and then integrate the forum into the larger number of forums where anyone can become a member, not just those who want or need the support?

Well, that's what happened to Wing of Madness. The Website used to operate a forum using one of the commerical software packages for forum, similar to many other Websites with forums. It allowed the Website owner to control every aspect of the forum as well as the membership. You had to meet their criteria to join.

Social network Websites are almost the exact opposite. Forums are just one of the applications available to members, you can join any of them as long as you're registered and a member of the network. After that, everything is there and free. And the design of the forum is far less controlled by the forum owner and moderators but the company running the network Website.

In short, any forum is at their mercy over the rules, design, features, etc. within the agreement between the owner and network Website. But most of all, the owner doesn't and can't control the membership of the forum, so a specialized forum which provides information, support and help to many people now becomes just another social network forum.

And to some measure, privacy is lost. Once you're a member of the social network, you have to "live" within their rules, and as much as you want to be anonymous or restrict access to your profile and personal information, you can't. You can to some degree if the settings work correctly, but social networks are designed to share, so there are always ways to see anyone. You simply can't hide. You can only minimize the information you provide.

I ended up joining the social network and forum, for now, but I'm not holding my breath I'll stay very long. Everything about the forum is different in the organization, structure and user settings, the privacy issue is important, I joined the forum for the forum, not the larger social network (because of friends already on 3 others), and I'm not enamored with the social network concept for the forum on depression.

Anyway, I posted my opinion of this decision and left, and don't go back very often now. Sometimes waving good bye is a good thing, where you look ahead at the horizon and surroudings instead of behind and you look at the future than the past. I hope the move helps, I just don't see that right now, because increase the quantity (membership and participation) won't necessarily improve the quality.

It's still me

2009-09-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

It's still me. As much as I hate who I am, as much as I hate what I am, and as much as I hate how I feel, it's still me. We can't leave ourselves to become someone else because we admire who or what they are or how better they appear to be and feel. We can't. We can change ourselves, but we always get back to the same place with new and different experiences and feelings about ourselves.

But it's always still me. I wrote how I've always hated my body since I can remember, and turning 60 it's all there, my past and my present, to be who and what I am and how I feel and think about it and myself. I am my body and mind, and like it or not, it's all I got.

Like that's new or news? Not really. It's the age old fight against ourselves and growing up and growing old. Everyone's been there - or to the youth today, you will be so don't be so complacent and condescending about us being old - and not everyone hates their body and themself. Most don't and most of the rest just live with it.

But some don't and won't. But try as we can, or feel we must, it's always still us. I'm always still me. And I have to face the reality, whatever I think or feel about myself, it's far from the worst and only something away from getting worse. You see, I've always looked at the negative side of things. And try as I have and do it's a struggle not to stay there or go back when I try to see the positive side.

The positive side just doesn't last. I enjoy the moment and see what I have and can accomplish, but then it's gone and I'm thinking of the next thing. Like baseball, you're only as good as your last game and you're only worth as much as your last season. So it is with life and ourselves.

This doesn't mean I hate myself all the time, just enough. And enough is when and where I find myself less than we I would like to accomplish. The old failure thing. It's not the fear of failing I hate, although that's a smaller issue but within normal feelings of most people. It's not the fear of trying, that's also the same.

It's the fear of knowing all my best will never be good enough and almost always be just ordinary. Just like everyone else. That's not a bad thing. We're all ordinary in most respects, and extraordinary in a few. But even then the extraordinary is like many others, so it's being ordinary on another level.

And it's the fear of knowing I won't really achieve what I want or accomplish what's best. Like everyone, it's the limitations we're born with, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And in my case the Dysthymia just wears down the positive and the hope into just thoughts of what could be or later what could have been.

Simply put, ordinary is relative. And in my case, it's my extraordinary, Dyshtymia, and ordinary for those like me. Relative to who we compare ourselves with to understand how good we are. But it doesn't change the feelings and it doesn't take away the hate. It's always still me. Inside and out. Physically and mentally.

Just me. Like it or not. From brith to death, and everything in between. Just life. Mine.

What we're given II

2009-09-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I wrote the first in a series of wandering essay on what we're given. That one and the rest are more just thinking out loud than anything, but it helps me sort out thoughts, ideas and feelings, so you can meander through them if you want or just skip back and out. Your choice. But I'll still mentally ponder and wander in words.

I was reading article in today's USA Today about Charlize Theron, article, and the feeling she's comfortable in her skin. Her exposure in some movies isn't about nudity as she's ok with her body. Besides appreciating her as a person and an actress, I admire her for knowing and trusting herself with her body.

You see, I hate mine. A long story starting in childhood. I was small for my age and had a very late puberty. My parents, since they basically ignored me throughout my life until my Dad showed me the front door after my first year of college, decided it wasn't an issue important to worry about and deal with. The proverbial, "He'll grow out of it."

Well, I didn't until my senior year when I grew 9+ inches in 9 months but didn't gain much weight. Through my senior year I went from 4'11" and 95 lbs to 5'9" and 115 lbs. I grew another two inches in my first year of college but didn't gain but 5 more lbs. I went into the Air Force underweight so they put on notice to gain or be discharged. Well I left basic training 155 lbs, gaining 30+ lbs in 8 weeks.

But all of that didn't change my feeling of hating my own body. It's never left. I discovered I can't build muscle. I have almost all slow twitch muscles, great for running and stamina but not much else. All the weight lifting for months gets me very little more muscle. And my body can't run beyond 4 miles without crashing.

So, I was given a body that has real limits. And add a little natural fat and the body images go south real fast. I've run for months on end hoping but never losing what fat I have. I can get it down to a minimum but some is always there. And I've always hated it. And now at about 170-175 lbs, I hate it more as the running doesn't help anymore. Fat is fat and it's there.

And now older and geting where the body doesn't get fitter and I'm fighting the slow decline of age, I hate it more. But there's no answer or solution beyond just living with it, like I haven't done that so far, but facing the reality all the exercise won't change anything very much, it's disheartening.

But it's what I was given. And there is an up side. Yeah, really. For one my family doesn't have an extensive history of heart disease. Except my Dad who needed a five-way heart bypass when he was in his early 70's. We don't have a history of cancers, or that I've heard or know of. Otherwise the men just die in the mid-to-late 70's and the women in the 80's or older.

So, we're a trade-off. What we're given. And hate it or not and be comfortable or not with it, it's still what we're given.

What we're given

2009-09-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

We were, we are and we will be. Not hard to understand. Life. Life as we see ourselves and the world. Life as we know ourselves and the world. And life as we understand ourselves in and with the world. It's just who we are. And like it or not, it's what is. Complex as we want to think it is, it's not. It's just simple, us and the world.

And it's everyone else, and everyone else doing the same thing. The reality of our being. And everyone's being. It's what we're given. From the moment we're born to the moment our heart stops and we see our last moment and feel our last breath of life. The last we know of our own existence. It all leads to that. And all the moments in between are just what happens. They are. Just are.

All then in the past and we become who and what was. And nothing stops. Except us. A moment and then another. One we're here, conscious, alive and knowing, and one we're the past. An instant. And another. And everything changes. And all the moments in between our first moment and our last moment is gone. If you're lucky, you have an obiturary a few days later.

And all we are then are memories in hearts and minds of others.

And while many argue it's the memories you left in their hearts and minds that's important, it's hard to argue it is those moments in between that at least equally matters. Who we are and what we do in the those moments. Even the simpliest task of just living, as some people struggle just to do that, is just as important to us. Without it, all else isn't.

And it's back to what we're given. Our life. Given by our family history. Given by the enviroment of our mother. Given by the world around us when and after we're born. Given our early years out of our control, simply existing and reacting. Given our childhood, trying to understand and cope not really knowing. Given our teen years thinking we do understand but don't.

And then given the freedom in adulthood to be. Except it's with the events and burden of the past. Our past. As we experienced it and survived. And maybe even flourished at little. We're suddenly there where it's all ours. Jettison the past as you want, and often try, it only becomes a shadow following you. You can't outrun it, dance past it, disguise it, whatever. It's there, always there.

It's when we learn to balance what we're given with what we want that we begin to see reality and our potential. And as much as we want to say we overcame adversities to achieve or accomplish something, in reality, it was always there, it just took the right moment to see the opportunity and they try, which few see and fewer do.

It's why success sells in marketing books, workshops, etc., but it's why you don't need them to succeed, just an open mind and a willingness to imagine and then the willingness to give yourself the freedom to try and the goal to strive toward. The rest you'll do with what you have, how you can, when you can and keep going.

But we're not given that, only the ability to be open and use our imagination. Something we're all too often taught not to use or punished when we do use. We can't change our freedom until adulthood, but by then it's harder to realize it and then use it. What we're given, our abilities, talent and skills, are suppressed and oppressed into ourselves, so deep, it takes years in adulthood to see it.

And when we finally do, what we're given has long be changed by our experiences, some so heavy and some so oppressing, we only fear what we're given, and not see it as freedom. What we're given has evolved to what we didn't know, by ourself, subconsciously. We've lost sight of what we're given. We're not what we're given anymore, but what we're handed by life and the world.

But it's always there, what we're given. Always there. Always. And in the end, it's all we have. We're back to where we were when we were born with what we're given. Everything else is who we were and what we did, and what happened with what we're given. Because in the end, it's what defined us by birth, by life and by our death. What we're given.

Running

2009-09-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

I read a story in the New York Times about a woman who runs to keep her depression in control, see article. I've also read the beneficial effects of running for depression. It does work for me for the periods I have run. My problem is that I'm not addicted enough to running to want to run, I have to motivate myself to run.

And when I don't or find my depression worse and can't motivate myself, I fall into a spiral common with depression. On top of that my body doesn't like running. I never got past 4 miles, and usually 3 miles tops, and never past 3 consecutive days. I know that's also about motivation, but it's also related to your body type, metabolism, and other body factors. It simply begins to quit between 3-4 miles.

It's the same with hiking. I can hike 6-8 miles a day relatively easily, and 10-12 miles some days, but never more than 2 days in a row. I know runners talk about the wall in marathons and often personal walls in their running, and for me, it's a lot closer to short than long (miles) and few than many (days). I've tried over the years to get through only to find I crash.

And as I've aged it's become harder to run and run consistently over days, then weeks and then months. Now I'm not running more often than I'm running and am almost always stuck in the mental running stage getting the mind and body back into the schedule and regime to run. And these periods are longer before I'm comfortable running and wake up thinking about running.

But that's away from the depression idea. The writer points out running acts like an anti-depressant, a natural one the body already has available. I agree from my experience. I didn't start running until I was 28 and have been running on and off ever since, except for long periods when it was realistic, like in Phoenix from spring to fall and lately here with the food issues and problems.

And once I got up to running consistently 3 miles (during and frequently) the benefits kicked in and my Dysthymia almost disappeared or at least reduced to a level it didn't matter. But that was always the fight and battle, between the persistent Dysthymia and running, and all too often running lost, with the resultant body and mind changes. And restarting was harder until it all kicked in again.

And there I am again, only at 60, it really sucks being very hard and slow, and very long. My running is a series of plateaus where for long periods, often months, whatever I do, nothing changes, and then over week, everything changes a little. Over and over, months of the same then a small improvement followed by months of the same. All the motivation, discipline and deetermination hasn't and doesn't change it.

And now it really is the choice I always say everything morning about every day, "You can get better or worse." There's no status quo, everything changes and you have the choice of which direction it goes. But past 50, all the research will tell you is that you don't really improve beyond a level, you're simply slowing the rate of decline. So better isn't really better, just relative to reality of aging.

And so now, and always in my life, it's about depression and keeping it at a minimum and in control, which isn't likely but running, and even walks or hikes, helps. And it beats all the drugs ever made for it.

Choosing an out

2009-07-19T14:03:00.000-07:00

I wrote about having an out. Some people plan and commit the act of suicide with an out. It's the last second that decides if they choose the act or the out. It's not that they don't want to die, but they subconsciously put life in the choice, just in case. No one doubts the finality of suicide, especially those thinking and planning the act, but some subconsciously leave the crack in the life door.

This isn't about those who attempt, and sometimes succeed, for attention or as a sudden reaction to a situation or circumstances. It's about those who are often invisible to others, who simply go about life while moving in the direction of suicide. It's all been described by the professionals in the signs all too often are overlooking by others, especially family and friends, or disguised by the person, and usually only seen in hindsight, and more often than not, with sad consequences.

It's with them that some put into their plan an out. It can be a last minute choice or a last second change, it's the same, they gave themselves an out. Not like they wanted to, or even know they did, but they did. And sometimes they take the out. Some to try another time and some to realize who they are and what's important.

So, why, if they're so focused on dying, they give themselves an out? I doubt anyone and even professionals, know. I'm sure there are a number of theories and ideas, often from ancedotal information and stories of patients who are still alive from choosing the out. I know I don't even know why I gave myself one, twice.

I'm sure there are people, especially religious folks, will try to relate it to or about God and God's will or about the person found salvation or even God in the last minute. In truth, that's bullshit. When you're there, you don't see or know God, so I doubt there's any realization, let alone a revelation, about God. It's simply about life and death, yours.

In some ways I don't think it's different when people in a situation or circumstance are near or facing death. Some fight to live, some accept death, and some gave up early on. With suicide, it's the same except it's your decision to act or not, to life or not, and why some give themselves an out and use it. It's not that they won't be there again, and may choose the same or a different answer.

As you can read, I'm only talking from my experience and understanding, which isn't much, just mine and what I've learned in the intervening years. All I know is the out was there and I chose it. The first at the last minute and the second knowing I had the choice. It's why I personally think some don't put the out in the (suicide) plan and some do subconsciously. For the latter, it's the last second choice.

The simple out. Today I won't, but tomorrow, i don't know. I only know when I get there and facing myself to decide and act. The rest is what happens.

The choices given

2009-07-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've always believe when we wake up each morning we have two choices, we can get better or we can get worse. There is nothing in between. Some days it's a combination of the two, but it's where the balance was at the end of the day that determines which won the day. I believe this applies to everything we do, you can always boil the choices to their essence to find it's about better or worse.

And the constant accumulation of the worse days in the free-fall of emotions and feelings that causes the worst periods of depression. Sometimes it a matter of letting myself free fall until I hit bottom to know where and what I'm mentally standing when I can decide to look at the choices. The worse was both an unconscious and a conscious decision and act, and where the two separate I don't know. Only they have one answer together.

This, however, doesn't cover another set of choices we have and face every day. Whether or not to like something, meaning ourselves. I don't know of too many people who don't have something they don't like about themselves, whether they express it or not, it's there, always there, in the back of their mind, sitting for the moment to find our consciousness in a momentary lapse and make us look at ourselves and discover what we hate.

For some it's never left the consciousness, either from unconscious choice to keep it there, from the constant reminders in our clothes, in the mirror or from other people, especially friends or family who remind us about it, sometimes disguised as love or help, which it never is, but it's hard for them to see that because they don't know how much it hurts. And hurt it does, keeping the mental scars open to our heart and mind, alive in our life every day. There and never going away.

But then we can choose to get or do better there too, at least until we run up against our genetics, that pesky wall of our physical being and physiology which limits, and usually stops, the better in its track. And breaking through that barrier is another choice we face, how much better is better, and where and when does not hate about ourselves become something else?

It's the old adage about the journey, meaning as long as we're striving, it's better. We're going in the right direction, or so we like or want to think, the choice of better over worse. But then why does it often not feel better, but simply more of the same, only harder?

I've never figured that out, why it doesn't feel better, except the occasional moment either when I physically feel better or I realize the distance in time from then to now to see it's different, and while maybe not better, just farther away from then and there. And that, sometimes, translates as better, but it's a relative better. But then better is a relative word which can mean simply not worse or less worse.

It depends on your view when you make the judgement. Others may see it differently than you. You know the then and there and the here and now, and what happened in between. You know the time when it got worse and you know the struggle to get away from the worse. And you know the fear of everything getting worse again. That's the reality, not the better, but the fear of the better not working and being another worse.

That's why sometimes the choice isn't. It's just one, live and hope for the better, or at least not the worse. As Father Mulcahy said, "When you're going through hell, sometimes the best thing is to just keep going." And it still seems the best choice of all.

Having an out

2009-06-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to commit suicide. Like that's new or news. What people often miss but those who know or understand, is that there are different types of suicide. Some attempts are people wanting, and asking in their own way, for help. Some are definitive, meaning the person chose a method that's almost always certain. And some, among the other types, are those where the person has an out.

Some may say all suicides have an out, meaning the person can simply choose not to commit the act. How naive of them to think that. When most suicides get to the point of the act itself, thinking of an out isn't there. That's because thinking isn't there, only their sense of being. An out has to be part of the act or part of the person.

An out as part of the act is simply the way out. It's not always a safe out, and sometimes just the act of insufficiency of means or sometimes just a last second change of heart. An out as part of the person is where the act was planned to have an out. It doesn't mean the person didn't or doesn't intend to complete the act, something in their sense of being and life put it there.

This isn't the same as someone who in one instant in a state of depression tries to commit suicide and some who succeed by accident. It's part of the mental events they went through in deciding and planning the act. Every act has a last moment when it's a yes or no, but not really. It's nice to say by those who want to think so, but it's not true. The choice was already made.

You might also say that having an out doesn't make the suicide real. If someone put an out in the act, then they really weren't certain. That's also not true. Some just think that way and their instincts put it there without really seeing or knowing why. With some it's the way of asking for help. With others it's the way to affirm their choice or affirm their will, however diminished, to life.

Both are made, not to choose life, but simply give the person an out. Deep within their psyche a kernal exists that fights for life and it's put into the plan and act to be there, just in case something changes and the person sees something, like a distant candle in the darkness. It's always been there. You don't see it until you look in that direction. But it also takes the darkness to see it.

What's this leading to? Someone asked about my attempts, and thinking back, and even forward, I gave myself an out.

A song

2009-05-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

The group Basement Band has a song "Charleston", which to me has some great opening lines.

I am old.
I am weary.
And I'm coming home to die.
Would you bury me me by the old Oak tree
'tween the river and the ashweed?
Charleston won't you bury me.

That song and Dave Matthew's song Gravedigger, with the lines

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

always hits a chord with me. It's not a fascination with death, but a feeling when we die, we want to be buried where we want to feel home. It's why most people commiting suicide pick the time and place carefully. It's important to them to be and feel safe when they die. Somewhere they're at and going home.

Home to be there and home to die.

It's why I know the next time I think about it enough to follow through, I know where I'll go. It's my favorite spot in Mt. Rainier NP, a remote, little-used trail where you can fit a place off the trail away from everyone and watch Mt. Rainier and see the glaciers in the endless dynamics of nature's forces, a volcano, constantly building, destroying and rebuilding a mountain and glaciers, the product of the volcano's location constantly craving their space and place against the mountain and weather.

Not a hard choice to make, the location that is. Dying is the harder part for me and why a third time won't be a success unless the forces are so overwhelming to lose all feeling and connection with life. It's either go there to die or someone share my ashes there.

Either way I'll be there. Leaving this world behind me.

No, I don't believe there is a heaven or some after-death place we go. We just die and our ashes returns to what it was before to start anew. Remember we're all stardust and we should all go back to being stardust. Anything else is cheating the universe of ourselves. Our efforts will carry on in the hearts of those who loved us and those we helped in our life. Let's not be stingy with our ashes and not share them with the future.

Or so that's my story, and until something better comes along, as Jimmy Buffett sang, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

Solutions and answers

2009-05-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the recent death of model and actress Lucy Gordon in Paris. She was twenty-eight years old with, as everyone likes to say, "a promising future." Well, we all do and it's just the normal perspective people take in these circumstances. People forget with depression, death is never the solution, but it's sometimes the answer.

It's hard to realize let alone really understand the smallness of someone's world when they're depressed to the point of suicide. And unless you've been there, you don't have a clue. It's one of the few experiences in life, you really have to have been there to understand. Empathy and sympathy are ok, but they're not understanding. And that's what's always missing in the discussion after their death.

People forget in depression, the person has already been through the litany of alternatives people expect us to consider and even choose. We've long left those along the road. They've been long exploded out of our thinking when we imploded into ourselves. We're down to the choice of life or death. And neither don't seem to solve the problems weighing on us, but death seems the better answer.

It's where everything disappears and we can find peace with the world and ourselves. And as much as we want to be with them and explain life is both the solution and the answer, we can't. It's not that they don't see us, or hear us. It's not about us, and not even about them, but simply our own individual existence. We've striped away all the facades and layers of feelings. We down to the basic choice we all face, death.

And the survivors are always suprised. "We didn't know.", is the common answers. Like all the clues weren't there? Or just that you were blind? And you didn't care enough about what they really felt and thought? Cruel? Yes, but truthful. I get tired of the, "We tried to help them.", response. It's bullshit. They didn't say because they saw you didn't really care about what really bothered them.

Both sides are blind. The person sitting in their own darkness wondering and wanting. And us, afraid to open the door with a candle. That's all you need to do, drop all the pretense and preaching. All they want is someone to sit with them and understand. They'll find their way out if they can, but they don't needs directions, just a companion.

A little light and one hand is everything, always there and always present in their mind.

No drugs

2009-05-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't taken, currently take or intend to take anti-depressants for my Dysthymia. I was diagnosed in 1991 with, using the psychiatrist's term probably, genetic, lifelong Dysthymia. It runs in our family through my father and passed to his children and grandchildren. Or I suspect because no one wants admit it let alone say it. The fortunate side is that it while it's persistent and almost always prevalent, it's not severe, only mild to moderate.

When I was diagnosed the psychiatrist admited there weren't any anti-depressants on the market specificially for Dysthymia and it had only been recognized within the previous decade as a form of depression separate from depressive personality and milder expressions of depression. It was often called chronic mild depression, but has been given its own name for the factors surrounding its presence in people, meaning, either genetic, lifelong or later onset.

Since then a number of drugs have become available for Dysthymia, some unique to it but most milder dosages of stronger anti-depression drugs. And like those, it has the same efficacy, about 50% of patients do well, the other half get nothing. And like those too, it's has a break-in period of weeks to months and a lifespan of months to a few years at most before your mind and body begins the decreasing its response.

And so you spend a lifetime chasing drugs, waiting for the start, wondering if it's working, and then hoping it lasts, knowing it doesn't and you're back to the doctor for more or something new. The consistent two to three year cycle, knowing you're dependent and hoping you don't crash. And living with the side effects which may exacerbate the some of the bad or worse feelings you're depressed about.

And so I use signs and other ways to live.

In the conversations with the psychiatrist she taught me to recognize the signs. The signs I'm normal, when I'm feeling my depression getting worse, and when I'm feeling better from a depressive period. She taught me to recognize the things I do when I'm feeling normal and to work on them to sustain being normal. She taught me to follow in instincts and intuition about when the feelings change.

But most of all I learned to find ways to "tread water" through the worse periods and to use my mind and explore the feelings during the worse times, to both see what and how I feel and how to find answers if something triggered or is perpetuating the depression. And then to find ways out of the worse periods, if only to exist in life while I wait to get better.

All without drugs. It's harder and often worse, but I know I am and I know how creative I can be when I'm depressed, which is something often lost in the effort to find or be "happy." You miss the freedom your mind has by itself to explore the breadth and depth of your depression and to see the world as it is when you're there. It's its own freedom.

And I've learned how to see the signs and avoid the implosion of the mind and spirit that leads to thoughts of suicide. You know it's a room you have to fall or enter, all too often forgetting we passed the threshold without realizing we're already there. We've imploded into darkness and we didn't know, but only the darkness we're in.

I've learned to know those moments and feelings on my own and to stand at the edge of it's darkness to see and make choices in and about my life. Without the aid of drugs, just life itself. And me. Nothing more and nothing less. About as real as it gets. I've learned to appreciate being and feeling alive. Not much more than I could expect some days and work on doing better.

And the only drugs are myself and life.

Time disappears

2009-05-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

When you're in a depression, time just disappears. Literally. While time seems to go slow when you're depressed, it's quick and gone when you look back. You just sit there wondering where it went, all the ideas of things to do, promises to fulfill, places to go, all just gone like the wind. Time just disappeared.

That's what's happened most of this year. Back in January I was working on making prints and photo cards. By February I had all the print done, about a half dozen stacks of 6 prints for each of 10 print in a card set. I made it through one pile of prints. Then I had a root canal and recovered from a bone infection with the root canal. Then I just felt like crap and never recovered.

And now it's mid-May, two-plus months gone. I have some things to show for it, but no new cards made, no photo trips beyond the occasional walk around, and only a handful of Web pages done for the photo guide and early history projects. My body got through the problems, but only to realize I still haven't done much on my running program.

It simply disappeared. Time. Not because being older the perception of time changes, which it does, but that it did go by without much to show. And add the promises I made but didn't do and the card sets I was supposed to send (which were really supposed to be Christmas gifts but I was sick Thanksgiving to past New Years). And the to do list still with little marked off as done.

Time is like that in a depression, simultaneously quick and forever. The hours seem to drag and the days seem to disappear behind you, and you wake up months later wondering what happened and where were you all that time. You disappeared too, into the darkness, lost in a endless tunnel complex with only the occasional glimpse of light. You lost yourself too.

It's like the misty rain in a spring storm, gently falling, relentlessly and seemingly forever. You can't hide from it and you can't get dry. Everything just weighs, feels heavy and your body tired and sleepy. You want to sleep but you hate sleep because you can't sleep and will have to wake up tomorrow. And go through this again, the fog and mist invading your world and your being.

Time and you just go by and just went. Both gone. Just existing. And then just history. And you wait for the storm to pass, the rain to quit, the sun to appear. And you wait. And wait some more, never realizing the wait disppears too, as time and you disappear. Sometimes you give up and go out into the rain, to know you're still alive.

And there you find nothing changed, you're only standing there alone, surrounding by the fog and rain where you can't tell where and when anything is anymore, only you standing there for a moment, and another. Before you go back inside to realize there nothing changed, everything is still waiting for you, to remind you what hasn't been done.

And the choices ahead all seem like work, too much work, even if you know you should do something. Sweep the floor. Anything, but waiting. Except waiting seems to always feel the best answer, even though you know it's the worst answer. Energy has disappeared too. And you wait for that, but it won't come without work, which you don't want to do.

And so you sit. Waiting for something you know not when or what. Waiting. And hoping it's soon. Really soon. But you don't know if that's true or real, or just a wish or a hope. You can't decide because that's work. You just want it to happen, and begin to feel better, if only for a moment. And maybe another moment. Hope the moments last. Last longer than the wait.

When the moments happen, you pray they don't disappear too. Like everything else, except everything you haven't done is there around you like clutter, there and in your mind. The clutter you can't see through or around to see your way through. You have to just go. Forward. And hope. And wait. If only for a moment. And then another moment.

Rainy days

2009-05-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

Here in the Pacific Northwest, rainy days are usual, sometimes the norm, and never more than just over the western horizon for storms to fly through on the jet stream. And some years, rainy days more common than sunny ones. It's the nature of the cyclical annual and seasonal weather patterns. And this years seems they're the norm. So far anyway.

And that's what's happening today. The clouds came overnight into the morning and by late morning the rain started and hasn't stopped, often intensifying into a downpour before lightening up to a gentle shower. It's the nature of spring storms and more so the major storm fronts travelling through.

Since I retired I tend to stay indoors and watch the rain from the deck. I still go out now and then, sometimes to wear the expedition rain suit I used for years doing field work and hiking, but mostly now I just hibernate and watch. I can wait it out now, at least spring storms. The winter ones, you can't, you just bundle up and go.

I remember in Oregon and here in Washington I used to do a week or more field trip into Cascade and Coast Ranger mountains in the rain. From the time I got in my truck to the time I got back to the warerhouse and go home. The only time I wasn't in the rain was in the gage house and in the truck. But my trusty rainsuit kept me warm and dry and only my hands got wet from writing in the field books.

And I've gone hiking and done photo trips in the rain. Hiking in the rain is interesting. It promotes hiking. All you want is to get somewhere under a shelter. I hate tents so I tried for shelters. But even then, your backpack is all wet. and everything is wet so sitting and eating is still being in the rain. Soggy sandwiches and chips and all. It's gets tiring after some years and I quit hiking in the rain but I still shoot photo events in the rain.

And I love the sound of the rain on against the roof, the harder the rain, the louder the sound, and the more I like it. It's why I liked hiking in the rain, the sound against the top of your head, or the roof in my place. Like in the song by Dave Matthews, "Grave Digger", about asking to dig a shallow grave to feel the rain.

But this essay isn't about the rain really, but the mind and the rain. Sometimes we're inexplicably drawn to something, as innate and intuitive as just being. For me, it's rain. I like standing watching, sensing, feeling, hearing, smelling, and everything else the rain is. Rain is indifferent. It just rains on everything. It's the lifecycle of the earth, out planet. Without it we wouldn't be here.

Besides being indifferent, rain is relentless. It just doesn't stop. It's always there, just waiting outside. Just waiting and raining. You can dress to stay dry, but that doesn't change the rain. It won't go away until the storm travels through to somewhere else. And then you get the smell of the rain, it leaves that smell that we always know it rained.

And surprisingly no matter how soon the rain was or how long ago it last rained, you like that smell. It only lingers awhile, like the steam from puddles evaporating in the sun. Here for awhile and gone, but leaving its mark in your memory. You always knows the smell and remember the steam. The rain is gone but it never leaves.

Kinda' like my Dysthymia and living with it.

Some days

2009-05-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

Some days just are, some need help to be, and some days, well, aren't much beyond being forgotten. Yeah, not original, but there are days I get to the end and wonder what the hell happened and what I did. My Dad used to call them puttering days where you seem waste the time on one small thing after another, and soon forget what all you did that day.

I was reading that you perceive time differently as you age. While time doesn't change, it's always the hope there's always tomorrow that extend and expands your perception of time, but as you get old(er) that perception changes to know there are fewer tomorrows left in your life. When you're young, time is irrelevant. When you're old, it's everything.

It's why I retired to pursue personal projects. While I still have some health and fitness left to get over, I retired to pursue nature and landscape photography and continue hiking in Mt. Rainier NP, or so I thought and keep thinking. And to work on a photography guide for Mt. Rainier NP and some projects with the early history of the NP before and after its designation.

So days that just exist beyond getting through them become more significant. You know it's just another day, and sure tomorrow is still tomorrow, but you wonder how many more are there when the past is that and the future is shorter. It's harder as you age to realize some days are the same as then because you wonder when you go, you'll be judged by the number of them you choose to get through.

Not really. God has more important issues than people goofing off, but sometimes it feels like it, like someone in God's shop is tracking us and counting. It's really all self-imposed, internal guilt for the days we just don't feel like engaging the world outside of our own.

I call them lounge days. Since my home also has my office now, working it just what I do around everything else at home. I can take breaks, do housework, take naps, read books, watch TV or whatever else I want around doing or working on my photography or working on the Mt. Rainier photography guide and history projects.

I can also just wander into the world through my computer. I read 3-5 newspapers daily, some days I go and get the print version along with on-line ones not available in print locally, and the rest of the days I read the free on-line ones. Sorry, I refuse to pay for the on-line WSJ. Rupert Murdoch already gets my money elsewhere.

And I can wander through the various forums, ready blogs, view other photographers' Website, or just work on my own blogs, which are probably too much verbage anyway, but it's the freedom we have these days. One thing I don't do is live on facebook or twitter. While I'm on those Websites, I'm not an overtly social person to live there.

I have two types of lounge days. Sunny ones and rainy ones. And yes, it's weather related. While being mildly-to-moderately Dysthymic I'm also have mild-to-moderate Seasonal Affective Condition. I refuse to call it a "disorder" because it's not a mental health problem, it's just who I am, like many others. I do react to the weather and living in the Puget Sound area sometimes doesn't help.

But I know having lived in Arizona, extended sunny and warm, and especially hot, days are overwhelming. I need seasons and I need weather, real Pacific Northwest weather, and as bad as it gets, it's the best overall for me. And it creates the sunny and rainy lounge days. Each with their own facets and attributes. Each admired and hated for the same. For what they are and what they aren't.

And that's where both are necessary, in my life, and for lounging around and puttering the day away. Each time the days are different, so really they are significant and not wasted. We do that other places, driving in traffic, standing in lines, waiting for appointments. So lounging at home? Just maybe it's not as bad as people describe or judge.

Because you're not waiting on or for someone else, only yourself. You're in your own world, on your own time, at your own speed. That's hard to beat anymore. And I don't see God minding that, being yourself.

Two years on

2009-05-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

It's been two years since the first Living with Dysthymia post. While everything has changed, nothing has changed in that it's still there, as always, and like me, a little worse for wear from time and experience. That's the nature of life, as each of us lives and experiences it.

The posts during this period, which can be found here, are more momentary ramblings. A thought like eating cereal where you eat a bite which triggers a thought which melds into an idea and grows into a essay written as thought. I'm a stream of consciousness writer, I write what I think at the moment, and just let the images of words pour out from the picture in my mind.

You see I don't write as writers write. I'm a visual person. I see writing. And idea grows into a full thought with paragraphs containing sentences. I see the paragraphs and I write. And if the thought comes from the sadness in my mind, then it's seen and expressed as such. Sometimes the picture, like this essay and the photo above, is foggy at best, and shades of gray everywhere.

This is where my Dysthymia is for the most part, as it has been most of my life. From the time I was a child and hated being around other people to today where I like living and working alone interacting with people when and where I want or have to as life dictates.

And retirement has actually helped because I can spend days thinking and writing about my Dysthymia and not pretending to be happy at work. I can be myself in the privacy of my life, free to explore the breadth and depth of my Dysthymia when it worsens. I don't take drugs for my Dysthymia.

I've only slightly followed the research into anti-depressants over the years, I've tried to use Taoism, running, and photography to search and express my Dysthymia as I think and feel. They're not anti-depressants, but expressions of it. I don't try to dampen or change it, but explore and examine it.

I've found when I do that, I find my mind expanding into new areas of thought and feelings and find creativity I would have under drug therapy. In the twilight and sometimes darkness of Dysthymia, the light becomes more visible and intense, and often into the shadows of my mind where the light doesn't penetrate unless you go there. Somewhere drugs won't take you.

And so two years on, and my life now nearly 60 years on, the road is still there, wandering wherever it goes with whatever light I carry, and the hope the end isn't obvious or slow, but there a moment before I didn't know it existed. It's about just living and knowing death will happen whenever it does.

Suicide

2009-04-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading today about a 11-year old boy who hung himself after frequent bullying by other kids at school who thought he was gay. He didn't have to be, just they thought he was, and they were relentless, until he quit. He left this life we value so much. And while people are looking at the issue of why he chose to commit suicide, let's not forget what happened up to that moment, and why everyone else didn't see, and talk with him to help him with his feelings.

I'm more afraid in the aftermath a lot of people will start speculating about this incident, teen suicide and bullying among other topics around the issue. And there are always the verbal rubberneckers, those who have an opinion without any real understanding, knowledge or experience with suicide. Even people who know people who have tried or expressed the notion to try to commit suicide don't understand.

And that's the point. All the people in the world just don't get it. Ok, an overstatement, and not true. I've written a little about suicide in NP's. If you have to commit suicide, I can't think of a better place if you love the outdoors. And there's always the likelihood you can go so deep into the NP not to be found for a long time, if you want to be lost.

My point here? Well, depression so deep you're not just considering suicide but are close to succeeding. I lost a nephew to suicide and watch other families members die a slow death that may have been called suicide, they chose the long road to emptiness and then death. My Dad went to bed after his 75th birthday and quit life. My brother knew he was dying and went home to die in the place he knew the most.

And I'm always just a thought away from falling into the abyss where the only answer is suicide. I've been there and am still alive. I've learned my symptoms and have to continuously monitor my thoughts and feelings, only because I survived and know better, at least until the day I find life harder than I want to continue. And that's what I find frustrating in the discussion about suicide.

Too many people with no real experience or undestanding about suicide talk and too few who do want to stand up to give the truth and reality. No one wants to hear about the waste of a life, about hope of the future, or learn to be something they're not. It's angering to hear how suicide-susceptible people are "supposed" to view life because we're told we don't see or understand.

We do understand and we are entitled to our view of life. I'm angry the child took his life because of others, those who bullied him, those who turned a blind eye and deaf ear, and those who didn't see it coming. All the signs were there. I saw it in my nephew but my sister and brother-in-law didn't. They swear he was better while he was only hiding and disguising his feelings.

I know my view isn't the only one, or even close to the right one. I only know experience has taught me others are far more wrong than me and they oblivious to their ignorance. And I wish they'd stop talking and begin listening, to those who have been through to stand on the other side and didn't succomb to death by their own hand.

That's because it's not just about us but the world around us, we're just standing and living it and reacting and responding to how we're treated. We're not weak or don't care about life. It's just the rest of the world becomes too much and getting up every day is too much. That's what family and friends should know. We don't need to talk about it. We just need to know you're there to listen.

We don't need lectures or pep talks. We need an ear, one with heart to be there and listen without anything else except love and understanding. It's not hard, but it's also the hardest thing you'll do in your life. Listen as someone talks about the darkness and depths of their feelings. You want to save them, but only they can save themselves. And that takes time and patience.

And what we fear the most is that we may not succeed and they may decide their own fate. Try as we can, sometimes it's never enough. That's our reality and the reality of life. I don't know if anyone could have helped the 11-year old kid. All the talk will focus on problems and solutions, but it won't address the basic issue of the human heart. Even an 11-year old child's heart.

I'm sorry he's gone. I'm sorry for his parents and family. I'm sorry the world creates circumstances and situations where a child thinks about suicide. I'm sorry the answers aren't all in the child, but the rest of us. And that's our burden we're life with, our failure to see and understand. And that's the question we must ask ourselves, do we see and do we want to understand?

All the actions in the world won't matter if we don't see and understand. And tomorrow we'll read about someone else who committed suicide for reasons we all know. So, when will it end?

Naps and death

2009-03-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

Since I retired to work on my small personal photography business and my photography and history projects, I can schedule my own time. I'm all things of my work these days, and while it's not always the best or wisest thing to do, it's what I'm doing, good, bad or indifferent. And this includes taking days off for other things, emergencies, and whatever else life throws in the way, such as putting the van in for service yesterday for a new clutch master cylinder and walking around the area on errands.

The one thing I have really liked is naps in the afternoon, especially after lunch on the days I've done my exercise in the morning and read the newspapers during lunch. Sometimes while lying on the couch the mind wanders into ideas, and it occurred to me, which isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, that death sometimes is a nap you never wake up from. And waking up from a nap reminds me that while I have to wake up and continue with my work and life, death wasn't on the schedule that day.

I read about these people who die in their sleep during the night. A nap is the same thing, except shorter and more conscious, but there always is a moment in the nap where you fall asleep and then wake up, usually for me 15-20 minutes later, but 30-60 minutes on days I'm really tired, often from a bad night's sleep. One moment you're thinking and the next you're thinking but time elapsed in between.

That's the interesting phenomena with naps. Two moments of life and consciousness in between moments of life and sleep. And one day, the second moment won't happen. You won't know or feel it. And that's the strange feeling when I lie down for the nap, I'm betting it's not my time and I'll wake up a little later. Or so I hope.

It often makes we wonder, what if I did die, What would everyone think when they walked into my place and saw where I was in life and work. My unique existence on this earth would cease and everything I was or had done is now history, which it is anyway, but now it's really history as there is no more and no more me to carry one. What would they think?

But then I wake up and roll on. Or so far anyway.

Being normal

2008-07-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking about psychologists and the effort that is underway to update the Diagnostics Standards Manual, called DSM IV-TR in its latest iteration. I have no doubt that some of the conditions some people have and described, er. diagnosed, in the DSM are real and individuals need help if not intervention.

But I've slowly come to the conclusion those bunch of mostly white old guys are expressing more of their morality than a professional view of peoplef, and I say this for several reasons.

First, they call anything they think isn't normal abnormal. Ok, that's a word, but it's also a word that stigmatizes the individual that what life gave them and who they are isn't right and they're not like the rest of people, they're just not normal. They don't have a condition, but they have either a disorder or a diseaase, a mental health problem society wants them to at least treat if not cure them.

I find that repulsive.

People who are perfectly fine getting along and getting through life now have a label they're not one society thinks is normal, all because this crazy bunch of old white guys says so. Ok, that's a bad description of them, for today anyway, and there are a lot of good to excellent therapists and psychologists, but when you look back at the history of psychology up through the 1960's, it was established and dominated by a bunch of old white guys.

And they made it clear that their "opinion" was true and real about people, but in reality was just their opinion based on a set of observations they made with "patients" who they deemed mentally sick. And yes again, some were sick as some conditions are serious and require therapy, but some conditions in the DSM are simply made up ideas about being normal, meaning their morality of society.

I make no bones about the fact I have genetic (lifelong) Dysthymia. I was diagnosed in 1991 on Depression day (October) when I visited a clinic to see why have always had a mild depression since childhood with several episodes of severe depression. It turned out I was the only person that afternoon and had a near two hour conversation with a psychologist. I had a few followups with other psychologists, but mostly decided it wasn't worth the time.

Why?

Because psychologist have to first label you, meaning diagnose you using their interpretation of the DSM, and then they cure you, or they try. But the trick is this form of Dysthymia isn't curable, not with drugs, not with therapy, and not with a combination of both. These can help you deal with it and get through life better, but it doesn't do the one thing that is most important to you.

They don't inform and educate you about it. I've had some say I'm self-diagnosed, and that is partly true. After the session that day I read the DSM for a variety of conditions. I found and have a small collection of books dedicated to Dysthymia (since it's only given a passing glance in 99% of psychology books). And I listened to interviews with psychologists about depression and its various forms.

In short, a psychologist pointed me in the right direction seeing who and what I was and I followed the information trail. And I've followed the trail to understand it, to learn to live with it and to get through life. I'm a normal human being, as normal as everyone else. And that's my beef with the DSM.

Its used to punish people. And it's used by the medical profession to control people, to exercise power that you're abnormal and they're not, and they have the knowledge and tools to cure you if you go along with them, meaning don't fight the diagnosis and treatment, and certainly don't disagree with their view of you.

And this is where I part company with them and the DSM. I'm not sick. I'm just me. We all have our own quirks, maladies and demons, and we all have our childhoods that we bring into and carry through our life. But does any of these make us "sick" simply because a buch of old white guys wants to think and say we are?

I learned the ways to improve myself, both physically and mentally, through exercise, photography and my focus on what I want to express in the world to help others. That doesn't mean despression is gone, it's always in the background of my mind and only a step away from my consciousness to take over, and perhaps fall into an abyss, to find the total darkness of my existence for awhile, until I light a candle and climb back into life.

And I know all the drugs in the world won't help, and could actually hurt. For me, in a way, my Dysthymia keeps me sane and focused, and in a way a little angry. I may see the world a little negatively and have difficulty comprehending others' inability to see the whole of life and the world (people forget that ignoring things doesn't change things), but it's the world I see and live, which is fine with me.

And I don't have a problem telling a bunch of old white guys to go fuck themselves.

And all this isn't just about Dysthymia. The DSM has other conditions they've long labelled abnormal, some removed, like cross-dressing (now a fetish, which I wonder if some of them are and didn't like the label) and homosexuality (only because some of their own came out of the closet), and some deserving of removal, like transgenderism which is just the normal range of sex-gender expression and behavior (some of them are now, so there's hope for others). And I'm sure you have their peeves with some of the conditions.

Anyway, I roll on through life knowing the DSM is a good door stop, paper weight for flattening print (no, I don't really have a copy of it, God forbid, it's a waste of money when it's on the Internet), and other neat things for something big, boxy and heavy. But most of all I'd like to see the word abnormal abolished from the lexicon of psychology. You'd think a bunch of old white guys could find a better way to make people feel good about themselves?

Shadows and ghosts

2008-06-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

I was listening to NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition with Scott Simon's interview of Patrick Hemingway. Scott asked Patrick about the "shadow of suicide." I forgot Patrick's answer but it wasn't about suicide, but it got me to thinking about the incidence of suicide in people and families.

And the thought?

Well, in short, the shadow of suicide runs in families, wired in the brain, and pased on to each generation, wired in descendent to awake when the circumstances arise or the situation occurs. We, in such families, all have the reality of suicide that runs in our mind, and most of the time quietly resides where shadows dwell, out of the light of the day, but it walks through the past, present and future of the family and engulfs some to act.

The ghost of suicide sits in our mind, often throughout their life and sometimes absorbing our soul and spirit to fall into the depths, and maybe the solution many think is wrong or worse. Yet, those who know not the mind of those afflicted never feel or begin to grasp our ghost, and know not the depths of our affliction to seek solace in the darkness for answers and solutions. It is our ghost.

The ghost always lives in the shadow, the shadow of the family, to appear when genetics and experience are right, and the individual experiences the ghost as their own, to fall into the deepest cavern of depression where some succomb and succeed, and the rest are never the same. It prevades our mind and our life, throughout it all.

As some people stand in the sun and find happiness, we stand in the sun for the warmth from the darkness and respites from the ghost. And we fear it won't last before the shadow blocks it and the ghost appears. And we struggle through the darkness for the next light and warmth from the sun, hoping, knowing the consequences if it doesn't. We sometimes fear our own mind, where and when it falls under the shadow under the spell of the ghost.

So, we live in the shadow and with our ghost, for we know in the end, death will win, by our own hand or by life itself. And we will find relief from our existence, an escape our history, and freedom from our ghost.

Suicide in NPs

2008-06-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article on suicides in National Parks. It's interesting. Not because someone wouldn't commit suicide in a National Park, but because people forget suicide is about time and place. Everyone who commits suicide has to determine, when, where and how to die. And everyone who commits suicide wants to die in a place they love and find comfort.

What's so hard to understand? A National Park is a beautiful place to be and people find a person connection to be there. Some for a visit and some, like me, for a lifetime to keep going back. And some would like to die there. I plan to have my ashes spread in my favorite spot, if I can arrange and the National Park Service is accommodating, which I understand they are, and if they're aren't, people do it anyway to the departed.

So why the inerest in the article?

Well, I once thought about what I would do if faced with emmient death, meaning know the short time I have left alive due to some calamity, illness or accident. I doubt anyone would be able to find me, at least well into the future and I've essentially disappeared from this life. Harsh and cruel? Not really. Facing certain immediate death, we all should have the right to choose when, where and maybe how. That's just being humane and human.

And as I've written, I've seriouslythought about suicide twice, and once planned and nearly executed it, stopping just a handfull of seconds before fulfilling it. I'm not always sure what changed my mind, but something did and It haunts me still why I did and why I didn't. It's the reality of living with Dysthymia, suicide isn't always far from the surface of your consciousness, sometimes to pester you with hints about life and death.

It's no longer a serious thought with me anymore, or at least it hasn't been since the early 1990's between my brother's death and my Dad's death. But I still have to be conscious of it to make sure it's not just hiding. So I can understand what the article is saying, but I don't understand why it's a concern. How many people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge every year? Too many but they know it's a reality of the bridge and its attraction.

I'm also curious what training the rangers get for suicide prevention. Enough to stop it and get them to help? I can't see where they would get more because talking with someone on the edge about to commit suicide is risky and touchy, and I doubt that many rangers have the perspective and experience to save but a few lives. And do they get a standard method of persuasion? While I know rangers have a lot to do, with only two dozen or so suicides every year at all the the most common spots, I can't see where it makes them sufficiently qualified to be a suicide counselor.

The article didn't say how many they prevented, so it's hard to say if their efforts works, except I expect it does in some places and at some times. But if a person were convinced to commit suicide, only luck would make a ranger save that person. National Parks are too big and public to stop everyone, and you don't know if some deaths are accidents or suicides, and we know there at least one or more orders of magnitude more accidents in National Parks, so the rangers have more important things to learn and do with visitors than worry about the rare person who wants to die.

Anyway, I don't have an answer, just an observation. I don't have a problem with rangers helping the obvious ones, but the rest? They shouldn't worry about them, the rangers didn't walk in their shoes to understand, and if they did, who knows what they would do then. The best you can do is know they died in a place they loved.

Being a glider

2008-02-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

I was trying to think how to decribe sliding into depression, whether you are experiencing from some events, situations or circumstances in life or you're, like me, suffer from Dysthymia and fall into a moderate to deeper depression. It's hard to describe to people who haven't experienced it, and it is different between the two types, being predisposed to it or just experiencing it from something else.

And as usual, I still have 4 am conversations with myself, sitting on the deck watching the night slowly slip into the daylight. Feeling the silence - actually all the noises from nature to the trains in the distance, of the hours after people are home and before people leave for work. There with my coffee and the darkness.

It usually makes for a good environment to let the imagination soar and be set free to explore wherever it goes. And to imagine conversations with oneself. We all do this, it's often some of the most productive time people have, somewhere between sleep with dreams and being alive and active doing what you love. Some people prefer real conversations over imaginary ones. And I like both, nothing better than one with friends at a tavern discussing the universe and everything in it.

And so, today I imagined being a glider, or sailplane as some call them. Once you're released by the tow plane, you soar on thermals and follow the wind. You're so high you never felt better or more alive. And you know one thing, you can't fall. You see, unlike conventional aircraft, a glider literally can not fall, it has to glide down in a spiral in a fight between its maximum descent rate and the air.

The key is that once you begin a descent because you've lost the thermal keeping you up, there isn't much you can do, except glide down in a spiral, looking for a thermal to level out or even ascend again, or find a place to land the glider on the ground, preferably safe, like an airport, but sometimes a field, a road or some place worse. The odds usually aren't in your favor until you can find a place to land and try as you might with the plane to get there.

And that's what it's like, a slow downward spiral in mental space. You can't stop falling, the best you can is find a mental thermal to stop descending. And if not, keep going until you land somewhere, somewhere you can sit in your darkness wondering where the warmth and light went. But you do know you've stopped falling. That's what's important. And you can begin to find some peace where you are and some way to think through what to do.

There are other ways of falling into depression, mostly it's a sudden freefall, like stepping over the edge of a cliff into an abyss so dark you can't see the bottom, and you fall into the darkness, surrounding by the silence of it until you stop. Either way, falling or gliding, you're there, at the bottom with no sign of light and no sense of up down or sideways, not unlike a diver so deep in the ocean your only guide are your own air bubbles.

All of my periods of depression have been gliding. I've found myself on the edge of my own grand canyon and stepped off to glide into the abyss, and then to find bottom in the warmth of the darkness and quiet. It is its own world and you are in your own world. Reality and the rest of the world is imaginary. This is your reality.

And the way out, back to normal sanity? The same way you fell, slowly gliding. You need to find and nuture a mental thermal, and ride it until it ends, level and find a new thermal. There's not easy or quick solution or exit back, and, in my opinion, drugs aren't the answer except in extreme cases. Nor is therapy to some extent. The answers are always there. Just there in front of you.

But in the darkness they're hard to see, let alone grasp. Once you do, though, it's still a fight to keep from falling back or down again. It's both a conscious and subconscious fight, or more a dialog with yourself. You have to believe in yourself, sometimes blindly and sometimes without a thought if it's right or wrong, just believe. Some don't and often don't survive in this world.

The darkness is pervasive when you're at the bottom, and sometmes, when it begins to feel warm and comfortable, you think you have an answer. It is one answer, the one many don't like, and often criticize. That's not fair or right, but having never been there, they don't know any better. It's their own ignornace and naivety, and their own arrogance for criticizing.

And before you argue I'm not accepting the professionals and their solutions, namely either drugs or therapy, I'm not. There are times and there are people best served by either or both. But, in my view and experience, they're often just short term answers to longterm issues individuals have with themselves. If professionals can help that, great, but it's not a given or the only answer.

And so, that's my thoughts from a 4 am conversation this morning. And the morning comes through the fog in the lowland and the clouds above. I'm still aloft and haven't crashed in some time, although I've lost my thermals at times. Nothing new, and I know what to do.

There is a moment

2007-09-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

... in a life. Well, we all know our life is made up of many moments, and some moments define our life, but in the end there is really only one moment. The moment we realize our life is done, and our next breath is our last. And we return, if we're lucky, to becoming what we are made of, the proverbial stardust (thanks Carl Sagan).

Ok, slightly melodramatic? Yes, in the face of reality, and no, in the reality of our being. We all die, so we all experience the one moment just before we don't. And why am I seemingly occasionally intrigued by the idea of this one moment?

I've written at some length about my Dysthymia. Mine is likely - since it can't be absolutely determined by any real test, only a psychiatric evaluation - genetic, meaning it runs in the family and likely expressed by other members of the family. And it has.

On August 21, 1991, my older brother Greg went to work as normal. He was the stereotypical type A personality, but he also had a dark side he rarely spoke of but had all the signs of an angry self-destructive life. When he was 43 he had an angioplasty, at 45 had his lungs pumped, and at 47 was informed he would need a heart-lung replacement before he was 50, or face the reality.

During lunch that day, he went home. His kids where home on summer vacation and his wife busy with life. He kissed her and said he loved his kids, and then sat down on the couch to smoke a cigarette. He only got halfway through before suffering a heart attack and die, and sadly, in front of his kids. But in fairness to him, he knew he was dying and didn't want to die at work, but at home.

When the medical examiner conducted the autopsy he discovered that his lungs were about two-thirds full of fluids. Time wasn't on his side and he knew it. Our Dad was devasted, his only - in his eyes since he kicked me out - son was gone. He didn't speak to me for months and did little else in his life after that. He had his goals in life, and later we discovered, which was simply to survive for awhile longer.

My Dad passed away November 11, 1994. he had three goals after Greg's death, to pay off the 30-year mortage to the only home he's bought, to celebrate the 50th anniversary with Mom, and celebrate his 75th birthday. The next day after his birthday he didn't get out of bed and shortly later didn't recognize anyone. He passed away in his sleep two days later. He simply gave up.

The family rarely talks about the deaths of Greg and Dad, especially with me because I call them mental suicides. They foresaw the moment and made a decision about their moment to die. Years later my nephew Spencer committed suicide at home. I disagree with the explanation on the Web page about him after talking with my sister. All the signs were there, including having therapy, but they felt he was getting better.

And that's what they didn't catch, the disguise of the signs, is relatively easy if someone wants to do so to hide their true feelings. I know this because I've lived on the edge all my life and have walked to the the very edge to see and maybe do. I didn't for reasons I don't know or can explain except I chose life at the last moment. But as I get older, as many people, I see the reality of the moment in my life.

While almost all people simply push it into the back of their mind and don't think about it or care to see it unless something happens to bring it into the forefront of their mind, some find it's always there, hiding in the subconscious to become real at the slightest trigger. The triggers are unique to the individual and often not known until they suddenly feel it. It can happen listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, seeing something or someone, or some small thing in the flow of their life.

The reality is that we all die from our own hand, the question is if we do it knowingly and intentionally, namely did we do it knowing we would die. But what's knowing? Is it a matter of degree? Is it a choice? Or do we simply decide it's not really suicide but living to the edge, except when the edge moves and we fall over into the abyss. We're not Wile E. Coyote and survive the fall, we die. Short and sweet, we have our moment.

As so some day the person behind the camera won't be there or here typing my essay. I can only go forward and live the life I know and want to do and be. That's all I can do, and someday my moment will arrive. But it won't be from suicide. That is something I know for sure. While I may not like the day ahead of me, I like the sunrise too much.

Death is

2007-07-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

We all know the saying about death and taxes, and we all expect that death is the worst thing that could happen to us. Well, sort of on the last. I won't get into suicide and all its manifestations and perspectives except to say it's relative to one's life and view of life. I just wanted to say death is. Just that simple, it is, and nothing more. We can wrap all the heroics and faith around it we want about being noble and good or being in the name of some God.

But in the end it just is. The absence of our existence. The absence of our bodies on this earth, the last time we'll be around to experience life. And it's about the mess we leave behind, our belongings and estate where the survivors and the courts have to wrangle with the leftovers of our life. We've departed the scene and whatever is there when it happens is there, and all our planning and hoping won't change the reality of it.

Ok, you're wondering, or not, why this topic. And why right now. Like you're expecting some great revelation or something? No one has one because no one comes back to tell us the news of what happens. Near death experiences don't count because it's the body's way of preparing to die, it just didn't happen that time, and we awake with a sense of having seen the open door and our departure from life. But it didn't happen.

Personally I think evolution has given us a way to die. I can't see that death, a normal phenomena in nature - and we're a part of it like all the rest of life - hasn't been programmed into our innate brain structure. It's seems reasonable and logical we are programmed to accept death when our brain senses it immenient. And how you ask?

I think there are three steps in death. First, there is a trigger. Something has to happen where all the sensory inputs into the mind meets a threshold and triggers the death sequence stored as part of our innate sense of being - those things evolution has given every animal. This doesn't mean it's a reality and will actually happen, but simply the threshold is met. And the threshold triggers the mind into the next sequence about pain.

Second, the mind determines that it can't accept all the pain associated with the sensory inputs from the body from dying. No one thinks death is painful, or maybe at least the last few moments. Evolution, in my view, wouldn't be so cruel to make it painful, and as near as I can tell from those I've known who have died, pain wasn't at the top of their list when they died. And it does this in two ways.

First it floods the immediate consciousness with white noise, the "white" that near death experiences produce. This isn't a sign or anything beyond the brain automatically covering all the sensory inputs about pain. In short, the consciousness becomes full so pain isn't recognized let alone acknowledged. We feel no pain but the perceived pleasure of white and our life.

Second it floods the short term memory with one's past, that seeing your life flash before your eyes experience, except it's reminding you of the life you had with experiences and loved ones. It reminds you why you were alive, to be and to have, and to have been born, lived and now dying. Both the white noise and your life completely occupys the consciousness and memory of your mind so nothing else exists.

Third, the mind has to determine it's time to simply stop, to tell the heart to cease and tell the body the mind isn't open for business anymore. This signals the rest of the body to go on autopilot and let whatever is natural happen. You're no longer alive and conscious, so the other side of nature takes over.

That's my take on it. Why today? I don't know except it sneaks into my consciousness now and then in my dreams and I wake up with the notion it's another day. Nothing more except death didn't happen overnight. For you see you don't know. People die in their sleep routinely, and not just the elderly. We can die anytime, and life is the luck of the draw every morning.

And sometimes I wake up with the last dream about death. Not necessarily mine but the idea of death. I'm one of those folks who dreams in ideas. I don't put much stock in dreams - they're the brain's way of reprocessing experiences, storing memories and recharging the active parts for the next day - and so they're only interesting if I wake up with a memory of one, such as my 50th birthday.

So that's the thought here. Nothing more than death is and a matter of course. We don't have to worry about it, it will find us sometime in our future. We won't know exactly when, but we will know the moment, or rather have a new experience where there is not return.

It's just a life

2007-07-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

It's just a life, one in 6-plus billion with thousands coming and going every day. I don't know what else anyone has the right to say. While each of us can claim some right or power over other people, it's still the same, we're one in the many, much like any grain of sand on a beach. Just one. But it's our one, and that's the question and answer. Or is it really?

We're given life with a set of innate characteristics, much of which we can't change, or at least not without a lot of money and/or help, but likely not, and we are somewhat limited in what we think we can accomplish and really can accomplish. We can use our talent to achieve, go through life with it, or simply forget about it's existence. It's not fixed how and how much we use our talent, but it's our choice within the framework we're given from life.

And that's the second part. While we have all this talent, we can only do what life provides in terms of opportunity. You can argue all you want about chances and opportunity, it really boils down to the old adage with everything, timing and location. We have to be at the right place at the right time for many opportunites whether we believe we created them or not. A small change in the world and life, and it's all for naught.

I don't really have a point to this post except thinking out loud, as I do sometimes, and now in retirement on a new career, I wonder the typical philosophical stuff about what I'm doing. After 28 years working for an agency, and the normal bosses, most too stupid to be good but a few really great, and working for the public, where I really believed in the work I was doing, the proverbial "for the greater good." And being in my mid-to-late 50's it's the time you begin to face the reality of your own body, what's left that it can do without breaking.

Two years ago I had a complete physical with several heart tests, including a sonogram which is really cool to see your heart working, and the normal test they give to those over 50, meaning a colonoscopy, complete with DVD too. I now know the limitations of my aging body. I can't do what it did when I was 50, let alone before that. It's the reality of my being. And I have to learn to find ways to keep it working near its best, or best I can do.

And I've had to accept what I can learn. The mind is interesting as it ages. Our minds are still as sharp, and maybe a little slower, and hopefully smarter and wiser. Studies have shown that many endeavors requires the youthful mind where they professionally peak in their 20's, and while they can still do more and new work, their best is usually history past 30. But many endeavors are doable until one's death. One of those is photography. Age only slows you down but never impedes the creative mind.

Well, except for one thing, happenstance. We never know when something will happen to leave you less than whole, and we have to learn again who we are. We can hope for a life without such events but life is a random chance. We can simply go about what we're doing and let the rest of it take care of itself. It's about life as we know and can.

In the pile of leaves, we just another one that existed for the season in the many piles in the corners of the world. And life goes on.

Respites

2007-06-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

This almost sounds a contradictory idea, a respite from life with Dysthymia. Dysthymia is often the struggle to cope with life and all the things you deal with just getting through life. People take respites from life, work, careers, jobs, family, friendships, relationships, love, war, and many other things, but from Dysthymia? Don't you take respites from everything else but Dysthymia, or is a respite from Dysthymia happiness in and about life?

Well, yes and no. I wrote a brief description about Dysthymia, or at least my view of it. Mine is more the mild to moderate version where I can function in life without too many people seeing, let alone knowing, I suffer from it. It's easy to put on a face on those days I don't feel like it. And many times, simple informal, casual interactions with people help. And sometimes it creates so much anguish it's hard just to stand there.

So, sometimes I have to take a respite from it. And how can someone do that? First, it's hard since it a part of your psyche, part of your feeling and thinking, and part of the fiber of your being and doing. It's always there and never really goes away, so the best I can do is find ways to push it into the background where it's lost in the noise of life and the world. That's the hard part because my body is what drives my thinking and feeling.

Huh? We're conscious human being, and according to many, if not most, people, our mind is in control of our bodies, instinctively, innately, subconsciously and consciously. But, I would argue, for many people it's the reverse, our body drives our mental balance and state of being. It's what keeps us alive and controls our mind. And I know some will find this difficult, as it's common for those who can't see something or some idea to see something different, and then understand and accept it as equal to their view of things.

If you don't see this view, then how do you explain addiction? How do you explain depression? How do you explain when you're doing something physical and in the flow of the moment, not thinking but simply being whole with your body. It's the body controlling the mind. Not hard to accept. In people with Dysthymia, it's similar, instead of an addiction or something else, the physical being of Dysthymia in our mind and body is controlling the circumstances.

And there comes times it's simply becomes tiring to continue without a respite. This takes conscious effort to recognize it and to think to take a respite. For me, at times, that respite is photography, simply taking my camera some place(s) and taking photos. It's a slow change to thinking as a photographer, all the artistic, tecnicial and mechnical issues of photography, but for the periods it consumes my mind and body, and the Dysthymia fades into the recesses of my mind.

Other respites are with running, walking, hiking, reading, and many of the little things in life, the "sweeping the floor" as the Buddhist adage goes, like working with my many plants, cleaning the home, washing the van, or whatever. Anything to engage the body and mind. Away from Dysthymia, a respite from it's continually existence.

Writing

2007-05-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

I wrote two short essays on living with Dysthymia. I decided to start this series of essays so others can know about this world and people who inhabit it daily. People who live with it constantly. It's my form of therapy to let go of what's inside, to sit in the exterior world and be seen as what it is, my reality. And surprisingly of all, it's very, very creative.

And while you're shrugging a "Huh?", it's probably one of the most creative spaces a person can have. To shed all the pretense of life and the world, to be at the very core of one's existence, knowing only darkness. It's leaves the mind to wander amidst the darkness anew, to find places few of the rest of you realize. You fear this world because you've never been there. And you fear what you would find if you did, or what you would do.

That's the beauty of being there. Life and death just are. Two answers to the same question. Neither better or worse than the other, but simply a choice of two. There is no gray. No colors of the rainbow to see the whole of the world. You're faced with the simple choice, and you have to decide. Not deciding only prolongs the decision, it doesn't change the choices.

And from there I can find new thoughts and feelings, discover more of me I never knew existed. And learn to appreciate the creativeness of others who have. While I wouldn't wish this world on my worst enemy, I have to say everyone should be there once in their life. I know few do, some because they never realize it's existence and some who simply fear it. At times I am sorry for you.

Because coming from it, you feel alive. Not more alive as some like to describe about death defying events in their life, but simply alive. To know what simply being alive is all about. And that's what writing is about.

Crashing

2007-05-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

After writing about the level people with Dysthymia live with on a daily basis, sometimes we, like everyone, crash. I can't speak for all people with Dysthymia or with depression, I can only speak from and for my experience. From what I read, my crashes are different the people with depression, but it also has some commonality too. And when I change course to begin to feel better, and find my level again is also different and similar.

My crashes are a slow spiral. They start weeks, sometimes months and even occasionally years before, with a small event. I describe it as going down a long, windy, slow downhill grade. You don't notice it at first but after awhile you see something doesn't feel the same, doesn't feel normal. It's usually followed by a loss of the small things I like to do and small changes in how I express myself in the world.

I've learned after living with my Dysthymia all these years to follow the symptoms. Not the symptoms themselves, they're just hints and clues to the real feelings. Something set it off long before, something I didn't originally notice but made me feel angry at myself. It can be something I did, like a dumb mistake we all make, or something someone else did, like an extreme unnecessary criticism or lost opportunity.

Sometimes I know what happens and can interrupt the spiral and find a solution I can live with and return to normal. This is often rare for me. Most of my episodes spiral down into the valley. Like going down hill, sometimes there isn't much to do until I have the bottom level I'm resting at. I have to know where bottom is and that I'm there. Most of the time I can then see what to do to improve and start back up the hill.

But occasionally, bottom isn't bottom. The long slow spiral takes a different turn, very similar, I think, to anyone's severe depression or double depression with Dysthymia. It's like suddenly finding yourself after a long slow decent at the edge of a canyon, so deep and dark you can't see the bottom. And there are those times without realizing it, you find yourself falling. You can't seem to stop.

This is double depression for people with Dysthymia, a sudden change into the abyss to the very foundation of your existence. The problem is that it's hard to get help when you're falling, you're not focusing on help but on trying to understand what's going on, and why your world is shrinking. As the saying goes with Kafka's mouse between the trap and the cat, "Alas,... the world is growing narrower every day."

Instead of fighting the fall, I've learned to keep falling. It changes your perspective. Falling causes you so see differently, so I watch what's happening and what I'm thinking. Strange? Not really, because sometimes in moments there are insights into one's very being and existence and into the why. The why behind my falling. And when I find bottom, I sit there and ponder the world around me.

With me, while it's dark, sometimes so dark I can't see the light looking up, only more darkness, not unlike a deepsea diver who goes so deep and dark they lose all sense of direction. They can find up until they pay attention, follow the clues. There often is a calmness and quietness when I sit on the bottom. The difference with mine is that I know I'm sitting there, or most of the time. Twice I didn't.

It's what I think happens with people and suicide. In the darkness, with it's own calm and quiet, you find peace. And you want it to go on forever than face the world you fell through. That's hard for others to understand that sense of reality. It truly is a been there done that experience. It's the mental version of standing on Mt. Everest, you can't describe your world at that moment and no one can understand it.

And so twice I've felt the warmth of the darkness, but twice I decided it wasn't a forever thing, for me. I sat there feeling that world. You are down to the very last crux of your being, and the final decision to stay in this world or not. And actually, what few know, it's harder to stay. You see the up isn't fun or easy, and the alternative often is the lessor of evils.

Because the up always takes a lot of effort and a long time. And even when you feel you're back to normal, you aren't. For normal doesn't exist except as a temporary and tentative state you can only hope for. It's why is easier to fall back into the abyss, to the warmth and quiet of the darkness, and contemplate the same question again.

But I haven't, and I'm still in this world.

Staying level

2007-05-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

To begin, I start by saying our emotions are like the tide, an ebb and flow of feelings, thoughts and emotions, our whole spiritual state. We rise and fall during the day, week, month, season, year and over the years. It's being human, with age and experience. And somewhere in all the flow we find a level where are, say, "normal", something between a 0 and 5 on a scale of -10 to +10 for the deepest depression to the highest happiness.

People with Dysthymia, despite all their effort, find their normal level somewhere between 0 and -5. People with non-genetic Dysthymia find themselves falling into the negative zone for the period of their depression, but slowly they get better and back to the normal level. People with genetic Dysthymia don't, they constantly live at the negative level, and only trying with drugs, therapy and personal effort, do they rise above their normal level to feel consistently better for periods of time.

I don't use the word "well", because we're all well. It's a mistake to use the word well. To say we're not well isn't right, fair or true. We're well physically and mentally. Nothing is wrong. Our normal level of life is just lower than most people. It's our normal. Nothing more or less. It's who we are. But it's not about the level, it's the work to stay there that matters, and where the hard work is every day to stay level.

To many it starts with waking up. We've all had the feelings of the warm bed, and the cold world, not wanting to face the day because of something we know will happen, something we have to do, some place we have to be, or someone we have to be with. We've all been there, lying in bed hoping it would change. And we know it won't. And we know we have to get up and get on with the day.

With Dysthymia, it's harder to do even that, start the day. And every day it's the same, lying there wishing and hoping we weren't so down on the day. And knowing it's just who we are, and not really the day, places we have to be, people we have to met, work we have to do. We have to say it's ok to be and get up and get on with the day. Personally I like warm showers to start the day, to feel the warmth.

With Dysthymia, routine often helps. It helps fit the world into something we can be ok and face the rest of the day. It keeps us level. After that the coping mechanics and methods vary with the individual. Some, like me, like to run and exercise - it generates the same endorphins as drugs. Some use anti-depressants. Some, like me, use therapy. I have a wonderful life coach to explore the issues and ideas about life and the world.

Where most people exist on a level we would love to be at. For us, it's work to stay level and harder to improve. It's about choosing to do that or the alternatives.

The edge of life

2007-05-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

This is a hard thing to understand if you haven't been there or don't live there. I live on the edge of depression and life. I've lived with Dysthymia all my life and have suffered two severe double depressions, both almost leading to suicide. I say almost because in all the expressions of suicide there comes a moment you decide to step over the edge of life and then act on that decision. Some decide and act, and some decide, then in beginning to act, stop.

In stopping for that one moment in time, you face your very existence, deep in your soul and spirit, you discover the reality of your life if you want to live or die. It's the last vestige. It's not a decison. It's innate. It's your intuition about yourself. Many find it, and stop. If you don't find it, you don't stop. And your loved ones know the result as you've left us and your despair.

I don't judge people about suicide, and I condemn those that do. If you haven't found yourself there, you have no right to criticize, and if you have been there, you have the obligation to accept and the responsbility to help. But in then end, we all decide our fate by ourselves. No one can make the decision. It's the right of being human, to decide our last heartbeat.

And as I grow older the edge gets closer as I look at my health and life. It's why depression and even suicide increases past 50 and especially past 70, even among those who identify having lead a satisfactory life. It's the reality of our being as we age, seeing the past, present and future. Some are lucky to ignore the signs, some are lucky not even to know the signs, and some are lucky to never understand the signs exist. The rest of us aren't so lucky.

Some people find it hard to understand. Dysthymia is where the level of your view of life is below some level of happiness, and try as you will, it's hard to maintain some measure of satisfaction. It's not that we like living at this level, and why many use anti-depressants or therapy to cope or feel happier. It's not that we don't want to be better, it's the nature given us by our genes. We're just trying to survive and find something better.

It's the lifetime struggle to keep our spirit up while it wants to be down. It's the line about Townes Van Zandt, "The terror and sorrow of a sensitive man who looked into the abyss, and saw, the abyss." While most people only see darkness, some see the abyss, some know the depth of the abyss, and some have been in the abyss - some of whom don't come back. But all of the "some" of us stand near the edge of life.

Living with Dysthymia

2007-05-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

I decided to add another series, like I don't have enough, but I think it's pertinent to my life and life in general. Dysthymia is a different form of depression, as it has two origins, one initiated by some event or situation in someone's life and one genetic. The former is described as a mild form of depression lasting 2 or more years. The latter is described as a lifetime situation with someone who inherited it. I have the latter, and can trace mine to my childhood when it surfaced.

Almost all people with genetic Dysthymia can trace their condition to their childhood, usually starting in their teenage years, and often gets misdiagnosed as other forms of depression or mental health conditions, or as often a personality disorder. It's none of those. And it's not something you need to think of as entirely bad, it's not and has many good effects. Almost all people with Dysthymia go quietly about their life, you would never guess they have it, where many people who experience it (non-genetic) often are a little obvious as they're different.

And why the difference? People falling into Dysthymia experience changes in the life and mood. People with genetic Dysthymia have had it all their life so it's not so obivous in the changes in their life. It's only when they have double depression do you notice something different with them. And, in my view, the two experience double depression differently, where non-genetic have more typical severe depression, and genetic have added depression, a slow slide into a deeper self.

I can't and won't speak about the non-genetic form of Dysthymia in this series except occasionally in comparison. My Dysthymia is genetic. I was diagnosed in 1991 after the death of my brother and 3 years before my father's passing. In hindsight, I can trace mine to when I was six but really didn't exhibit it until high school. I've suffered two periods of double depression, both leading to thoughts of suicide, one in 1978 when I almost succeded - and would have if not for a last moment thought, which I'll talk about later.

The second was in 1991 when my brother died of a heart attack - when my Dad and I had another and major falling out, and when I got a promotion to be a senior technical manager and lead hydrologist for a 24/7 realtiime data operations team. It was a stressful year, and thought of suicide often but knew in the end it wasn't an answer. And that's the key to genetic form. It's a reality check that often actually helps.

You see I describe the feeling of being near suicide as sitting on the bottom of a deep well. All you see and know is darkness, it surrounds every fiber of your being. And ever so slowly it sinks into your heart, your soul, and eventually your spirit, where it feels as the only thing you are. Surprisingly, however, genetic Dysthymics function in life. That's the secret to their existence. It's not obvious what's going on with them. We won't tell, and will get on with life, except we're not there.

So what changes things? It's not drugs or therapy. It's the willingness to live.