Another Summer Almost Gone

The heatwave broke so we are back to our normal 110 to 115 days. Eight more days until September. I'm riding it out like this...in this chair, with a full misting bottle, my remote, and water. I am in the end of summer conservation mode. I am not the master of my own reality, I am merely a player. Sedentary as I am lately, maybe a prop. 

It is hot. It is the desert... hydrate or die.

This last week has been an endurance test. With temperatures staying above one hundred degrees for twenty hours, and the low temps in the upper eighties, I have had to change my sleep schedule. This can be problematic for me, more so than the heat. A key thing to remember with heat is simple...hydrate or die. When I start majorly messing with my sleep schedule I can, and most usually, get a little crazy.

I am actively psychotic most times. The degree of intensity is what varies for me. I'd call them episodes, but its been about three years since I can remember full silence in my head. So maybe I'll call them my symptoms. That's what my therapist calls them.

These symptoms range from crowd noise, two regular voices, to seeing my shadow buddy, or random figures run across my periphery. The visuals have slowed down a lot. It's been a few weeks, I believe, since I've seen anything. Mostly it's noise. I get random explosions and gunshots from time to time. It's a cacophony of noise.

This time is different, in a good way. This time I really exacerbated my symptoms by drastically changing my sleep pattern. At the time I didn't even think about it. I just did it. I don't recommend that though. The good that came from this was that I can control this to a point. Last year I accepted that this was going to be my new normal. (I can't believe I just strung those two words together.) By accepting the hallucinations for what they really are... hallucinations, it freed me in a sense. Don't get me wrong, they still scare the shit out of me sometimes. I just realize what they are quicker, I suppose.

Its funny that, due to some issues with VA, I haven't had my meds for the past couple months, but I feel that I am doing alright. I haven't yelled at God, Jesus, or the devil in a long time. Ironically I was on meds when that last one happened. I talk to my voices when I'm in the store, but its so muffled, like a little kid muttering that cool new swear word they learned on the playground. In a voice so faint, a butterfly flying by would muffle the sound...I just got a taste of Zest in my mouth. No wonder I was a chickenshit. But I talk softly with a mask over my face, a look that suits me fine, and nobody is the wiser. Thank you pandemic.

Oh, and this heat is a bitch on cellphone batteries. I am starting to do all my important things, like typing this thumb jumbled mess, in the evening when it is cooler...kinda.

Oooh, theres a breeze starting. Time to watch the stars.

My Depression Today

Depression is a snaggletooth hag intent on eating your soul.

All of this recent reflection has opened up the door for my depression to waltz on in, like a familiar antagonist, so familiar that I gave it a label...My Dark Soul. It reads like a book you've read twenty times. It becomes predictable, but you entertain it nonetheless. You have no choice. Depression is a bitch!

With the exception of me reliving the darker parts of my past, I've had a relatively stable life recently. My unconventional living arrangements have brought me stability. Right now my vision is for intentional community. --Ok, I've had that vision for years.-- I'm also writing more, eating well, and managing my symptoms.

And I still get depressed.

An easy way to keep depression away, I suppose, would be to stuff it back into those dank boxes in my mind's equally dank basement. I want resolution. I want closure. So that's out.

The only way to deal with it is to deal with it.

I've come to look at the pain of depression like a healing wound. The depression, for me, always goes away. The length of time varies. It is more an endurance test for me these days. But the pain is going away, there's healing and ugly scars, so thick that they protect that wound from ever experiencing pain again. I am not going to let it kill me. No, I will save that for whatever the healthy American lifestyle throws my way.

I'm still depressed. I'm dealing with it. I have a wonderful campmate who is aware of my brain's faults and keeps the day to day stuff caught up while I do my little sad boy shit of laying around because I literally feel a physical heaviness, like gravity got turned up to ten, or a hundred. At this point my voices are their worst. Sometimes I fight back. Other times, most times if I'm honest, I ignore them. During those times I am worthles. It takes a lot of energy to fight your brain.

It is getting better. I can feel it lifting. I actually did the dishes today. I'm taking showers. I am able to write this little hacky blog post. I'm not laying around as much. This time next week my mood will be better. At least I hope so.

It still sucks, but its getting better.

My Thoughts While Waiting for Armageddon

When I was growing up I moved a lot. I went to nine schools before I dropped out in 10th grade. Those last two years I don't consider actual learning. My high school experience consisted of attending only two classes. One was English comp, and the other was Teens and Law...it was the early 80s.

My delinquency isn't my point. (Focus dumbass)

I was always the new kid. I would find myself in the awkward position of making new friends and hoping I wouldn't get my ass kicked on the first day. The second day is ok, but on the first day is not a good introduction.

I've been on a journey of sorts lately. After my hospitalization I resolved to fix my shit no matter how painful, and embarrassing I thought it would inevitably be. Its not as bad as I thought, I always think the worst; in fact it has been healing.

This journey has me remembering a lot from my past. I was remembering those first days at all those new schools. The uneasy feeling of not knowing a soul. The apprehension of not knowing if I was going to get in a fight before the day ended. Having to stand up in class to introduce myself...all of it got jumbled up into my little body and made the first day of a new school hell.

Most of those fears were more fabrications in my head than truth. I got in one fight on the first day of second grade because I told a another kid, a pasty blonde headed tough guy that there is no such thing as a white Indian when he told me he was Native American. I have always had a problem speaking such stuff out loud.

Still working on it.

That was one instance. Most times I would get settled in to my desk after my introduction and would invariably make friends with some of the kids in class.

With the exception of a few places I've lived, everwhere I have lived has been pretty diverse. I feel fortunate to have lived in such diversity. Having done so has given me an appreciation for other cultures. More importantly, it opened my eyes to the broad spectrum of humanity.

The other day I was thinking about an old friend from Saudi Arabia. I knew Amir from 5th grade. We sat next to each other in class. His father was an engineer for some petroleum company. Amir was like me in that he went to as many schools as I did, except his were in other countries. We found a commonality quickly. For what little time we were together we were able to learn about each other's cultures, day to day life stuff, and that when we shared that we realized we really weren't that different. In fact, the only difference oftentimes being skin color. What I saw when I went to dinner at Amir's house was family, something I didn't have in that sense, but yearned for. His mother insisting I eat more, " You're so tiny." She would tell me as she scraped more kabasa on my plate. I couldn't refuse.

In hindsight what I received was basic human kindness. And I realized that we have the same desires for those we care about, and humanity at large.

We have more in common than we don't.

As always, I feel like I'm rambling. So I'm going to close with this quote from Mark Twain. Yeah, I know, he's probably going to be cancelled pretty soon, if not already. But do you know what? He is right.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

You don't have to travel far.