Homework

Many good things have been happening the last couple months. I started a new job, I began a new medication with amazing results, and I finally begin therapy on Monday. I am feeling great and settling more and more into my grounding exercises and meditation. I am living aloha.

I not only say the words of aloha, but I am trying to become it. Offering, and accepting, love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy. I look on the world with softer eyes. I look on myself with softer eyes. I am feeling mentally strong and capable.

And that’s the problem.

That has always been my problem for the last 54 years. So, I thought I would do some homework to address this issue. With therapy beginning Monday, I thought this would be the perfect time to set goals and intentions for what I want out of it, out of life, and see if I can work through this block.

Feeling great, I have no idea what to do with it.

I have been here before. Many times. Safe, secure, grounded, powerful. Able to do anything. Able to finally move forward on my path towards self-actualization. Then, it’s almost as if I become too grounded, too secure, too safe. I just want to relax into this feeling.

That’s always been my issue. I simply have no idea how to live healthy, how to move with purpose, passion and authenticity towards self-actualization, without the battle that has been my life.

On the intake forms for therapy, I was asked a lot of questions about my past. They are looking for trauma, among other things. Specific incidents. I included a few. Yes, I have been diagnosed with PTSD. I know this. It presents as ADHD. I know this. I have no idea what to do with this knowledge. I have no idea how it alters me. I have no idea if I am living a healthy life, self-aware, or if I am just wandering in circles waiting for the next traumatic event to happen.

I started to make a list, for my future therapist and myself, of traumatic events in my life. I dove into my past and made myself recall them vividly–though that is not difficult, starting to piece together my timeline.

I began stumbling after about four or five. #5 on my list occurred on January 4th, 1987. I was 15. I was involved in what would be the largest train accident in Amtrak history where 18 people died and I stepped off the train, covered in other people’s blood.

Yes, that was definitely a traumatic event. I think? I was fine. I think? I had been standing in the food line when the accident occurred. I got off the train, helped other people off, and then wandered down the snaking, derailed cars until I found mine and went back on to retrieve my backpack.

The first thing I did, when I was able, was call my mother and make a joke about it. It’s a story in and of itself, but I told her I would not be home in time for dinner and had a really good excuse this time.

Was that normal?

The list continued through my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s with me wondering if they belonged on the list or not. Were some of them truly traumatic events? I wonder.

To others, they may be traumatic. To me, I had become kind of numb. A traumatic event would just become another life event that I had to deal with and get past. Is this normal? I don’t think so but I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.

I remember specific instances where the numbness was pierced and I felt overwhelmed, but some of them were just such small things, tiny things, things I should have just been able to brush off, but they left me paralyzed.

Condition or symptom?

One example that lives rent free in my mind is such a small, tiny thing. Words. Seven words. They were even somewhat expected. My marriage was coming to an end. I knew this in my soul. The depression was swamping me and I was exhausted. I saw a way out of a very unhealthy business relationship, so I asked my wife for help, that I would need help to make it happen.

I went to the woman who I had helped continuously over a decade, who I had helped change her life, supported her business venture that was now flourishing, and helped support her family.

She replied to my request with, “Why should I help a failing business?” And then she went on two vacations.

Seven words and a reaction that did not surprise me, but it left me mentally gasping for breath, paralyzed as she walked out of the room.

I made it happen anyway, on my own, as I had done everything throughout my life. I saw it as a wakeup call, a bad but good thing, and I finally asked for a divorce when she returned from her second trip, starting me down a better path. In retrospect.

Trauma? Condition or symptom? Other? I have no idea.

There were other specific instances, more recently, where I feel I should have been paralyzed. Things happened that should have opened the floodgates to waves of depression.

With my money running out, I broke my ankle. It left me stranded in a foreign country. Instead of falling into a deep pit of despair, I laughed. Completely dependent on the charity of strangers, with only enough money to last a month or two when I would be stuck for 5-6 months, I started a comedy podcast, “The SOMA Chronicles.” [Sitting On My Ass.]

Maybe that was the healthiest way I have ever dealt with a traumatic event? I have no idea.

Things get really confusing for me when I add in another diagnosis–with the qualifier. The diagnosis is Major Depression. Easy enough. Yes. The qualifier, though, is high functioning. Very high functioning.

It makes me wonder about all of the times I was “fine.” All the times I was feeling good and reacting to things well. Was I actually fine or was it just that “highly functioning” qualifier?

Why is water wet? What is normal? I do not know.

I’m feeling good. I’m feeling great. I’m mentally strong. I’m sleeping wonderfully. I feel good every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up.

So why do I also feel stuck? My “to do” list is growing as my brain wakes up from the fog of depression. This last depressive episode was a bad one. The “high functioning” qualifier almost disappeared. It was the closest I have ever come to being non-functioning.

I tell myself this is normal. This is me settling into my new job, my new roles and routines, and settling into the safety and possibilities that that safety brings. I tell myself it is okay to relax for a little bit while certain things, things I have no control over, sort themselves out. I tell myself I just need to be patient. Next month, I tell myself, the last of my triggers will be gone. I’ll be three months into this new medication, two months into steady paychecks. I am taking small, positive steps each and every day.

In a month, I tell myself, I’ll be able to start taking those strong strides with purpose, passion and authenticity towards self-actualization.

But there is a growing fear, doubt, that I am just entering another rotation through the cycle.

I have also been diagnosed with anxiety disorder. I’ve never had any idea what to do with that.

I do a “mental” workout each day. I give myself an hour or two and think of it exactly as if I was going to the gym. It is a routine that begins by taking my medication and then settling into my meditation.

During the meditation, I set intentions.

The basic ones have worked well, extremely well. I am moving, though, from the simple to the complex. I am moving up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you follow this, I am swaying in the breeze, holding onto the fourth tier. Hanging, relaxed, pondering my future. It is such an easy swing and jump to that top tier.

But it is so relaxing, safe and comfortable here. It is as if I cannot find the grips and purchases to make that final leap. There is nothing for me to hold onto. Grasp. I see the goal, know the goal, understand completely how to work to achieve it, but?

That’s my homework now. Make sense of this. Hoping the therapist can help me make sense of it all. I know I have the ability to rewrite the neural pathways to travel the road I want to take, but I am at a loss of what those new neural pathways should be.

Those neural pathways are part of my self-guided meditation routine. I imagine them as deep ruts in the road, the deepest I’ve ever seen. On the road to Papakolea, Hawaii’s famed green sand beach, the ruts are now more than twice as tall as the pick-up trucks that cut them out of the red dirt, ferrying tourists to and from the particular beach.

Though I would never want it done there, as it is part of the charm getting to Papakolea, I imagine a team of bulldozers coming into my mind and flattening everything out so I am standing there on a smooth plain of red dirt.

I thank the old ruts that kept me safe, sane, but know they inhibit me from moving forward now with passion, purpose and authenticity towards self-actualization. I now need healthier, straighter paths, new neural pathways.

I stand ready, on that flat coastal plain. Red dirt beneath me, the sea to my right with the blue water crashing into the black lava rock coast, and the green sand beach far in the distance. The wind whipping me. The sun beating down on me.

I am not sure how to proceed.   

I am in the dark here, on a beautiful, sun-drenched day filled with joy, happiness and hope.

Aloha