Closing down this blog

I’m going to close down this blog. I haven’t written a post in several months, not counting the repost back in August following Robin Williams passing.

But my reason for closing the blog is that I no longer need it. For a few months now, and in particular the past 4-8 weeks, my various mental/emotional/psychological health struggles have been nary an issue. Well, I should really say nary. But things have been much, much better.

The biggest change is that I am, and feel, much more in control of my own thoughts and feelings. Of course I still have unpleasant thoughts and feelings come up; everyone does. And I still sometimes get caught to dwelling on the past or the future. But if that happens I am much quicker at catching it and stopping it; usually within a couple of minutes or less of ruminating.

I am, especially, more in touch with my heart and following it. I have been pursuing my language interest and passion for some time now, even taking it more seriously. I have stopped my psych meds, which has in turn given me my natural (read: born-with) brain chemistry back.

And when I struggle with negative emotions or thoughts, I am able to handle them. I have the ability and tools to help, including the support of friends and family.

All in all, I feel quite good! Because these are recent developments, I am working hard to protect and foster this growth. But I don’t feel the need for this blog, which was created and used during a time of great struggle.

If you like my writings, or writing style, and are interested in learning about language/linguistics related things, check out my other blog, Language is Life. I may also write the occasional personal post on there.

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, I thank you very much for reading the vagaries that I wrote. I hope in some way it helped you on your journey through life.

DH

Ave Atque Vale, Robin Williams

I know I haven’t posted for quite a while, but the passing of Robin Williams and especially this blog response definitely warrants a repost.

Pain and suffering

This post is a continuation of Love and the real me. The truth is that the real me, deep down, believes that pain and suffering are stronger than love. Pain and suffering are what life really is all about. And as much as I try to believe otherwise, to hold onto hope and believe in love, underneath it all there is just pain and suffering.

The logical part of me, combined with the intellectual part of me, knows this core belief stems from being sexually abused as a toddler. According to human psychological development models when one stage of development gets messed up, the cracks that form carry forward into higher stages of development. Since I was abused at such an early stage of development, the cracks that formed in my worldview have carried forth into every other stage of development.

But knowing that fact – understanding things logically and intellectually – does nothing to change my beliefs. The truth is that nothing has worked so far to reverse this view. Not religion, not spirituality, not a 12-step program, not therapy, not the love of family or friends – nothing. It is true that in some ways I’ve grown and perhaps received what can be called healing. At the least I can say that the past decade of my life has been a journey of having all that was hidden way down deep underneath the surface come to light.

And even though there are still potentially some more things hidden that are yet to be revealed – such as actual visual memories of the abuse sessions – again my intellectual/logical self says that the results of the decade-long journey I’ve been on is a good thing. It’s a sign of progress. And further, if I continue moving forward, the progress will go from that which was hidden being revealed, to that which was revealed being dealt with and healed.

But that’s the thing: I don’t know what it will take to continue moving forward. I don’t know what will cause that which has been revealed – my hopeless, fearful, gloom-and-doom worldview – to change and become healed and dealt with. I don’t know what steps I need to to take, what actions are within my realm of responsibility. Do I go back to therapy? Do I trust that the AA 12-steps can fix me? Do I trust that religion/spirituality has the answers? Can the AA 12-steps fix me? Can therapy fix me? Can a spiritual/religious fellowship such as a Christian church community fix me? Because so far nothing has fully worked. Nothing has chipped away this fucked up worldview. I pretend things have changed, but at the end of the day, if you were to strip me open and lay me bare, nothing has changed.

DH

Love and the real me

I’m going to give you a glimpse into the real me. Well, the deep down parts of my soul. How I feel and what I think about myself and my life, when I’m by myself. What I really believe.

You see if you know me in real life, or if you’ve read my other posts, you’ll know that there are times where I appear to be positive, to be happy, to exhibit love. Regarding my other posts, I’ve written about having a healthy perspective, about pursuing things I enjoy, and other generally positive posts. And for any of my Facebook friends who read this, and who have interacted with me in person or talked to me on voice (phone, Skype, etc.), you know that generally I try to be positive. Once I’m engaged in the situation I can be fun-loving, witty, kind, encouraging, and a slew of other good things.

But that’s just it – I’m different when I’m interacting with another person/living thing versus when I’m by myself. When I’m interacting, in some way no matter how small, with another living thing (ie, animals included here), my whole focus is (usually) on loving the living thing. I believe so strongly in love, that real love can conquer anything. I believe in being a force for good, in touching in an encouraging and building-up way the being I’m interacting with.

Here’s my secret though: I don’t feel the same way at all towards myself. I try to feel the same way. So it’s actually not that I don’t feel the same way at all. Because some of the time my attempts succeed. Some of the time that same love I have for other living things I have for myself. But my default feelings toward myself are anything but love.

To properly express how the real me sees love, I’m going to switch to writing verbatim what comes to my mind:

Love is a vile, disgusting, fucking messed up thing. It’s a part of the human experience I want nothing to do with. It shouldn’t even exist as part of the human experience. It’s a farce, it’s a joke, and people are all fucking idiots for believing that it can actually conquer anything. Evil is clearly the winner in this thing we call life. God, good, love, may all be alive but they have no power. In the end all they can do is pretend. Pretend to be strong. Pretend to be winning out over evil actions and evil people. But the glass actually is half empty. And the worst kind of love is romantic love. All we do is we really hurt each other, yet we pretend that we love each other, that we can forgive each other. Really we’re just focusing on the few good things and ignoring the bad, ignoring the truth that we’ll just continue to hurt each other, whether we want to or not, because evil is stronger than good.

I think that’s all I’m going to write for now. I will end with this: if I had to measure or give a ratio of, when I’m by myself, how often I hate myself versus love myself, I would say it’s maybe about 80/20 or 75/25.

DH

Cold

I think I’m going to close up my heart and go cold. I just can’t…

A million thoughts go through my head in the span of a second. AA can’t seem to help me and therapy can’t seem to help me.

How the hell am I supposed to work through being sexually abused when I don’t remember anything?

I can’t tear down the building that is my life to look at and fix the foundation that was my toddler years while still living my life. I’m a walking wounded that I’m not so sure will ever become truly fixed.

So maybe it’s best I just close up my heart and go cold.

The spigot and the faucet

Like waves crashing ‘pon the shore

The tide as it comes and goes

So my sorry and tears spill

The spigot turns and the faucet flows

Another turn and all is silenced

Can this go on?

This start and stop?

This ebb and flow?

I’m left vulnerable, forever vulnerable

So it seems after such an outpour

I wish for it to come all at once

Wrack me and wreck me

And leave me in peace

Then I can rebuild

I can make safe

My heart, left raw by this ceaseless tide

A goodbye letter

I must say goodbye to my grandmother.

Bye Appamma.

You will be missed. By so many. By me.

I only got to know you a little bit when I went back in 2005. But even then you were so amazing. So loving and caring, thoughtful and kind. And your faith was always so strong. You truly relied upon God.

I don’t know why God took you now? Perhaps He thought you needed an eternal rest. From this thing we call life. Which seems sometimes like it’s only heartache and tears.

I can’t imagine how my dad feels. How your other children, my aunts and uncles feel. For I’m hurting so much from your passing.

So I say goodbye to you, appamma.

Thank you for your life. For your affect on your family and friends, your loved ones and those around you. For your smile.

DH

Viewpoints

Am I unfixably broken?
I choose to believe NO

Is there anything I’ve done that cannot be made right?
I choose to believe NO

For maybe my perspective is what matters
Maybe my perspective counts first and foremost
Perhaps the first step to changing my situation is changing my view

How I view me
How I view you
How I view life
And the things that have happened
The things that are happening
And the things that will happen
Be they good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, beneficial or detrimental

So today, right now, I choose to have a good perspective
A view that I can change
I can face my demons and not be slain by them

DH

Always friends

Forever a friend,
Never a lover
How can I not help but feel rejected?
Feel unworthy
If I’m always a friend
And never desired for more?

Tell me I’m worthy
Tell me I’ll be ok
How?
How can you say I’ll be ok?

DH

Catch up

I forgot how open and honest I was in my earlier posts on this blog. I just finished reading through all my previous posts, and all I can say is WOW! I’m a bit embarrassed now for being so candid. But I guess that’s the benefit of sometimes doing things without fully analyzing them: your actions help you and if you had let yourself get cold feet, you wouldn’t be where you are now.

Reading my previous posts helped me gain perspective. I was able to see how I have changed, and that in turn gave me hope that what I’m facing now will continue to change.

Since starting Language is Life I’ve been focusing more on regularly posting there. Or at least, trying to. And because I stopped regularly posting here sometime last year, especially when I was in Brazil, I’ve not been using this blog as a recovery resource like I did last summer. But I want to change that; reading my previous posts reminded me of how much this was a good resource for me.

So a quick update on my addiction struggles and Brazil. Around the end of September of last year I started drinking again. I convinced myself I could handle some controlled drinking. I figured that since my main addictive struggles were sex-related I would be fine.

At first, I was fine. During the months of October I drank very seldomly, and only had one beer. However I stopped going to AA meetings.

Then November came and I decided to get my TEFL diploma and head off to Brazil, sans job, to look for employment. While I did really want to start teaching, and experience some adventure, I see now that I also had a thought that a change of environment would help me deal with my inner demons. In preparation for Brazil I went to a language exchange Meetup, where I met a Brazilian woman. We became friends and together, along with other new friends we made, started hanging out. During this time my drinking increased. But I was still controlling the amount I had each time I drank.

In December, while in Brazil I stayed with a friend and his family. So I was hyper-aware that I couldn’t start using porn. Yet since I had stopped going to any 12-Step fellowships, I had no tools to fight the urge to hide and escape my fears. So my drinking took off. It started affecting my ability to work – I eventually found a teaching job but skipped the first day of work. Upon realizing this, I tried to not drink. It worked but then I started using porn again. (Prior to this I had gone about a month without looking at any porn.) It seemed as if I had to use one or the other.

At this point, at the beginning of January, I decided to return to Canada and return to AA.

Since returning, I have made attempts to stop drinking. At first I went a week, then another week, then about a month. I also made attempts to stop using porn. (If you recall from previous posts, I also struggle with using sex trade workers, specifically escorts. Miraculously while I’m Brazil I never used a sex trade worker! And initially upon my return to Canada I never saw an escort. However, recently that failed to be the case.)

As it stands now, my dry dates are March 16, 2014 in A and April 6, 2014 in S.

I have to say that, apart from the dry dates and issue of using, being back in a 12-Step fellowship and focusing on recovery again is going good. I do see myself growing each week and getting better, getting healthier.

DH