mental health – Page 2 – Trezvennost II

of all the demons

Over a month ago I’ve learned that my brother died.

It was taking time to think about what happened and what my brother’s life and death meant to me in all the ways that surrounded them. For weeks I wrote poems and blurbs, but the text below sat on its digital shelf for the whole month until today. Today is the forty days since the day. I guess it is time.

Days prior I was listening to the latest Ghost record Prequelle and while it is a great album as a whole, one song stood out for me. Listening to “See the Light” and thinking of its lines

“But of all the demons I’ve known/None could compare to you

Every day that you feed me with hate/I grow stronger!”

I thought how it related for me, in regards to seeing the world and some people in it.

I was ten years older than my brother Nikki, and yet we still had a great connection and talked about anything in the world every time we had a chance to. He was a special person to me and to our parents. He had light and kindness in him that illuminated us all. Besides all the grief and mental pain that came through me that day and others to come, music that I knew came through too. Some of them were songs I haven’t listened to for years. “See the Light” came too, but this time it related to something different.

When he was thirteen years old, Nikki started having issues unexplainable at that time, but later called anxiety. That soon has been coupled with what the doctors called manic depression. Couple years later the “manic” part has fell aside, and my brother has got his life going through severe anxiety and chronic depression on one side, and normality on the other. When it was in the stage of normality, he travelled to Europe, half the time hitch-hiking with a friend (the very thought of it terrified me, when he told me of it, laughing), studied in math analysis in college, listened to lots of music, and helped our parents with whatever they needed. When it was a storm of crippling depression and anxiety, he stayed in, refused to go out of the house, looked sad and withering, slept into the lunch hour, and although illusory, his worries were many, while his words were little. Eighteen years of that. I cannot even imagine what he really felt that he never gave voice to in conversations with me, as I lived on the other side of the world, or with our parents who he lived with.

Luckily our parents were great people who paid close attention and cared for us the kids, and they took heed regarding Nikki’s new behaviors. He’s seen doctors who put him on some meds, and soon after the list of meds he took started growing, because it turned out his body was largely resistant to most of the meds. Nikki was always a very smart kid so he took responsibility for his well being. He was very punctual and attentive to the effects and dosages, keeping diary of what medications he took and how it worked, or if it didn’t. It took me some time to realize at least a bit what he was dealing with. I did some research on clinical depression and found that Nikki would have to change meds with time and do near-scientific research to make sure things worked well and what to do if it didn’t.

He was the kindest man I knew, and he always made our parents and grandparents hearts melt. He was attentive, and compassionate. His life, however, went like waves hitting the beach. When his mind state was favorable, there were weeks of tranquillity and family fun, him travelling with parents and watching movies, laughing, and visiting relatives. But in the times of chemical imbalance, there were also weeks and sometimes months of shutting down, during which Nikki tirelessly researched what he could do to help himself, unless the anxiety came knocking hard and he would let it all go and walked the apartment like a ghost.

Several months back I started reading book Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson in which she, who suffered from many a mental disorder, described them all and how her life was taking unexpected turns. She said that depression was one of the worst illnesses out there because it basically pushed person to self destruction. It was probably the most honest and crazy book I’ve read about mental health so far. I was thinking of sending it to my brother, but I was late. Nikki went through so much in the last year and a half, including a break-up with a woman he dated and the death of our mother who fought cancer for two years. As his letters showed, he saw no end of his misery and even having all of the loving support of our father who spared nothing to be of assistance to Nikki, dealing with life in his state was becoming too much for my brother. Of all the demons he knew in his 30 years, not one could compare to the one that kept eating him alive on a daily basis. The last straw for him was learning that obtaining medications he required was becoming a serious issue in the country he lived in, his home, his native land.

My demon was alcohol, and it sure was a demon, because it kept changing shapes, growing from little friendly smile of “have one, you’ll feel better” to “you gonna need a sea to drink to deal with all this crap, so learn how to swim!” kind of an attitude. When I found the courage to sober up, I also found perseverance to move steady through the world that seemed to change with menace to my sanity. I struggled with depression, but it was more of what I called “alcohol-induced” variety, and once I stopped poisoning myself with drinking, depression has weakened its grip on me. It still comes back, but it’s hundred times less crippling. Every day that life seems to fill me with hate, or maybe, concern and confusion, I get stronger with the meaning and works of recovery I am living. It’s not only by my own efforts and determination – I know that the community I am part of has my back. We speak the same language, and we are there to help one another, literally.

The way I see it, my brother was not that lucky. Nikki had the most involved assistance and love of our parents, as well as psychiatric and psychological help, and yet he didn’t partake in any community involvement like I did, even though I strongly advised it to him in our conversations. I suppose his illness filled him with doubt, and fear, and confusion to reach out to others. It was probably similar when I proposed for him to create a routine of physical exercises that I was reading about. I told him there was scientific findings supported by tons of research and success stories of those were diagnosed with depression and working out, just a little, but steadily, and it helped them immensely to gain positivity and mental and emotional well-being. Nikki told me he knew of it, and he considered doing it, but he hasn’t, or maybe his level of dedication was not high. I remember feeling angry about that, but the understanding came later. The way depression communicates with your healthy mind is it pushes away all logic and common sense, bringing instead destructive thoughts and breaking up your values and beliefs. Another thing that I recently found out was that his mental condition also had an effect on his body: Nikki lived with muscle spasms that limited his movement, so getting dedicated to making a routine of physical exercises was out of the question for him.

Nikki who was very loyal to his friends started breaking up the connections and staying away from that social life to the point that even the closest ones were shocked to find out what he dealt with, and how his life ended, and why. He was afraid he will be judged. He thought people wouldn’t understand all the pain and difficulties he had to deal with regarding his mental health. He knew this subject had a lot of misunderstanding among people. The kindest person in him didn’t want to drop all of that knowledge on people he cared about.

It ate him alive, but he fought. My father told me several days ago that Nikki was the strongest and courageous man. I can see that now. What I originally saw as his inaction to connect with others who could help him and other ways to improve his mental health was more of inability due to serious complications of his illness. While in hate to the blackness I grew stronger, Nikki’s mind and spirit and body were being corrupted in the way all supports he has received couldn’t alleviate the pain of constant invasion that had no face, no logic, and no mercy.

I believe my brother died as a warrior who’s grown exhausted of fighting. He wanted peace for himself and love for others. It seems he has grown to think his ill existence was a burden to us. There was no way he saw he could heal in any ways this world could provide. All who knew him will miss this amazing man who gave a lot of light, and I will miss him as a kid who made me feel better and hopeful in his presence. I wish he could have more hope for himself in spite of any demons possible.

I miss him terribly, all of our years together and apart, the conversations, serious and silly, trips and games, all the complete and shattered. This pain is only the beginning, and I fear how it will be from here on, but I believe Nikki is not in pain anymore, and it makes me relieved. Rest in Joy, brother.

(the image was copied from https://www.liveabout.com/visions-at-the-hour-of-death-2594543 and messed around with by me. thank you.)

Bouncing Courage

When you don’t know

What you’re missing

Because you think this what you’ve got is the best thing,

But you know deep down there it won’t last,

And yet you know no peace without it.

Ah, the paradox! How you hate that!

The world smells like a burning gutter

When you lack the best-thing-ever-that-poisons-you-with-mercy.

Painful knowledge of all that you did wrong or all that was done to you

Cuts you like a knife every minute,

Reminding you of imperfections of everything

Including yourself, but there is no peace in it.

One day you listen to what your dreams tell you,

To the quiet whisper of your repressed mind,

And you decide to take a stand

You take a step forward,

Away from the best-thing-ever-that-poisons-you-with-mercy

And it feels good in the process, your believing you can do it

But an hour later you need it, the poison.

Everyone has left you, so you tell yourself, but the poison never did.

Well, it did, but only in the times you couldn’t afford it.

So how can you say goodbye to this your only friend

Who will make it all ease up?

You take the step back to the self ingested paradise

And you are happy in your reunion,

Your courage is diminished, but oh well,

In fact you curse it,

You wish you’ve never crossed the boundaries to freedom,

You swear eternal love to the best-thing-ever-that-poisons-you-with-mercy,

While committing crimes against yourself.

Until another day,

When the boundaries become too close to breathe freely.

Freely? You don’t know what that is.

Courage is a word from some old book.

You feel so, and yet again you take a step forward, away from your favorite poison,

Yet this time you need to make more effort

Because each of your step that results in the bouncing courage

Brings you three steps back.

Each time you need to leap stronger

For your mind dies a little more each time

You listen to the lies you believe.

(the image was copied from https://research.adobe.com/news/how-a-ball-bounces-teaching-a-computer-real-world-physics/. thank you.)

Trains and Geese

Looking at the world one cannot help but wonder, said somebody famous. Sometimes that wonder is positively amazing. Some other times it is less great, for it is more of a realization of progressively lacking understanding of life as one gets older. “I can’t understand this world,” as the war hero in Burnt by the Sun movie said, “it’s some kind of trains with geese.”

The world tends to scare me much lately, way more than before. Maybe because I learn more of it now, and because of what I know, I fail to understand why things have to be so complicated to make things easier.

What do we do to get through the fear of things we know are going to eat us alive? We put down the straw mattress to cushion the fall. Everyone has to do their part to save some disappointment from the chaos of imperfect world that is probably not going to change for the better. I go every day thinking I’m on a mission, whatever it is. That keeps some apathy at bay and brings in some vigor to the pace. That way the trains and geese don’t bother me. I just know that I have to do my part and clean my side of the street, no matter who the president is or what other virus is out.

Halloween is over, and it is a new year (if you, like me, believe in the ancient European tradition that after Samhain fires it was the new year). Lets hope it will be the year that makes more sense.

(the image was copied from https://pixels.com/featured/train-chasing-canada-goose-steve-boyko.html. amazing job and thank you!)

A Trick and a Half

Quitting drinking or using – easy. You stop taking the substances and that’s it. You can quit twenty times a day.

Staying sober, now that’s a trick and a half.

AA says how to do it is HOW does it. Honesty (with self), Open-mindedness, and Willingness. I always want to add to it Positivity. As the other three, positivity is to be learned, not simply acquired.

All of us, I assume, don’t want to let distress of the great world mess our own world and how we prefer to have things done. Not many people know how do deal with usual stress when they are healthy. Anxiety and ever lingering worries happen to all. Now, when you are on path of recovery from substances, you are hardly healthy. And anxiety grows as you learn to abstain and live without harmful stuff that you used to rely on to keep in better spirits and overcome obstacles, while to trying to behave in a socially acceptable way.

Quitting and recovering on ones own is not a good idea, as I’ve learned with my own skin. I tried. It didn’t work nicely at all. Besides not having anyone to talk to about what I was going through, I also allowed myself to do the role of calling myself on my own bullshit. Big mistake. Add to it that I didn’t really know what I was dealing with and had no working plan. Mission failed at start.

Those days, my mind was a haunted house.

(the image above is cute, not weird, but you get the idea) Old memories and ghosts of life that didn’t go too well, it seemed, those kept coming often, if not all the time. Resentments kept crawling in legions out of the shadowed corners when I least expected them. I was lucky my physical health wasn’t much compromised, yet still I was treading on a black ice. I didn’t see the danger of swimming alone, so to say, not seeing but only imagining the course.

After plenty of attempts of swimming alone, I had to ask for help. I’ve quit drinking, yes, but I stayed not drinking without resentments of not drinking. I managed to stay and keep positive, because I’ve allowed myself to be honest with myself, not reject ideas without looking at them first, and oh, was I ever willing to keep going forward. It worked and still works. There is still stress, still tricks, because I consider life itself as a one big riddle with a perpetual bag of tricks tucked in its armpit. Those won’t run out, as far as I can see. But now I’ve got a plan, and not imaginary. I know what works and I do that, and I don’t swim alone anymore.

(the image was copied from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/371617406723139066/?autologin=true thank you.)

The Weakening

I watched this in Mr. Mercedes series (Season 2, episode one) last night. Bill Hodges speaking at a funeral of his long-time friend and police partner who died from a heart attack: “He hasn’t talked of his weaknesses and his heart problems. He was all police. At this job we are trained to not show weakness. So, we don’t talk about it. If we did, maybe some of us were still alive.”

There is a strong connection in the idea of that segment to something I saw once on the mental health unit I worked on:

“What was the bravest thing you’ve asked for?”

“Help.”

There is even stronger connection in that idea to what I’ve recently been reading about grief and loss. One of the main ideas in the book (Grief Recovery Handbook by J.W. James and R. Friedman) is that people in the western society are constantly misinformed about grieving and letting go of loss they’ve experienced. Major myths that humans learn over and over through generations is that you grieve alone, and if it doesn’t help, you replace pain with something else and you don’t cry around others. Asking for help, therefore, is not welcomed. People progress through life carrying their pain, not knowing how to deal with it, collecting more pain and loss on their path, leading a life of a kettle that is constantly on fire while there is no way to let steam out.

I’ve met a lot of them kettle people when I worked in the recovery houses and overnight shelters. They wouldn’t talk of their issues that brought them that low, because they were taught not to bother others, not to show their weaknesses, not to cry in front of others, not to deal with emotions. Imagine their kettles going into overdrive and beyond!

In a society where you are taught not to ask for help, showing vulnerability seems to be considered a crime. In a reality full of subjective ideas, myths, and prejudices, asking for help is indeed the bravest thing a person can do. In the same glorious reality, to follow up with finding out more what’s behind those cold eyes and world of hurt can probably earn you your own crest and a Viking funeral.

Yet we are not there yet.

the image was copied from https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/kettle-head.html thank you.

how crazy am i?

“That’s the problem with crazy people:

they don’t know they are crazy!”

Jim Jeffreys

I think epigraph quote should be under the title, and in the blog post that’s how it would be (and is), but not in the Word document that I have started writing this post. It took me quite some thinking about it, and it would take me less than ten seconds to change it, but I haven’t. I went on thinking of it. Should I change it? Should I leave it the way it is? Will the time changing it be significantly smaller as compared to my continuing thinking about changing it?

I think a lot. I like it, until it kicks me in the butt which does happen from time to time. I pay no mind and keep on with it. I have no expectations that it would get better, for most of the time I have no care. If I did have the expectations that it would get better, I would be crazy, because it is insane to expect different results from practicing the same behavior.

I used to be that insane when it came to things compulsive, involving drinking alcohol and acting OCD. Thanks to drinking, I was prone to depression. I wanted to find a safe manner of drinking after many a time of finding a proof that my body wasn’t interested in adjusting to that idea or behavior. It has worked for others, I’ve witnessed, but not with me. I’ve tried different everything that involved drinking as I continued drinking, and that was insane.

After I finally have quit intoxicating myself for good, I’ve noticed plenty of positive factors showing up, including massive decrease in depressive attitude and in OCD behavior. I was less crazy, but to keep myself in check regarding sobriety, abstinence, and the behavior that would keep those in check I had to think of it. I wrote about it, I talked about it, I talked to myself about it, and thinking never ended.

Thinking excessively is not crazy. Talking to yourself is not crazy, because scientists came with “self talk” term for it and they recommend it to deal with solving tasks.

So how crazy am I? I think I better be this crazy that I am now than being insane as I was in my past life with substance abuse limiting my oxygen.

the image was copied from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe500eIK1oA and crazed up by me. thank you.

Unasked

The universe hears me. It keeps all the space and energy in itself, provides nourishment, change and death rites, and it finds time to hear me. I don’t know how it’s understanding of me works. I just believe that I’m a part of a massive, and close, and distant, and thoroughly deep system that works in and out, and far out. Within all that, myriads of connections exist between the organisms and things that some may consider soulless. In the midst of that, I connect to others, those so many that I’m not even aware of.

When I call for inspiration, or guidance, or healing, I don’t know what or where it comes from. I just feel its presence, its entrance, or its absence. It could come from people I know, or those I don’t, or never will know. If I feel the input, I give thanks, and carry on with what’s needed to be done, unless I allow myself to procrastinate, waiting for something else, a foot kicking my ass.

That ass-kicking foot is the universe’s will for something I haven’t asked for, yet clearly required. It’s just as important to receive that intervention as the one that I have consciously requested. Sometimes it is a mighty kick alright, and I’d get my crap together and get on with accomplishing what I originally intended to, or was not aware of originally, and now have realized I needed to.

And then sometimes it is a soft breeze coming out of nowhere, or so I’d originally think. It brings the news “Did you know?” through the words, spoken or written, of someone else. It also can take a form of a thought “What if?”, giving birth to itself within me.

Those things I ask for, the answers and gifts of them are important and I’m grateful for them. Yet those that come out-of-nowhere, those are more precious, because I can feel the care of the universe in their wind blow. I can feel that I’m being inspired, and it is quite possible that those weren’t intended just for me alone, but for someone or something else, for we are all interconnected, and one can influence another through whatever they do. That influence can be positive as well as negative, and we better keep that in mind, I think.

the image was copied from https://steemit.com/business/@cryptoandcoffee/motivational-kick-up-the-ass thank you.