A Painful Reminder (I have a mental illness)

This past week I had a horrible reminder of my mental illness. It wasn’t so much mental strife this time, but the physical pains from the self-neglect during my battles of depression.

A huge battle (within-the-battle) during a depression episode is really finding the urge to take showers, brush your teeth and other things that deal with daily hygiene. It is awful to think that I found more enthusiasm to go to a local bar, as opposed to basic daily responsibilities.

With my battles, I had to learn to find my underlying issue. If I didn’t step back and take care of the underlying issue, my depression cycle would’ve continued longer than it did. I remember a friend, that I met in phone war game, recommend that I write two letters to my mom; one good letter and one bad letter. After I wrote the letters, it literally broke my heart that the bad letter was longer than the good one. I put a ton of thought into both and really wanted to write more encouraging memories and thanking her. (I won’t touch on the negative things in this forum, because private matters are meant to be private).

It does feel good that I’ve tackled many of my issues, and likely will have to tackle many more (life evolves and has it’s twists and turns). I look forward to tackling them, with the help of my current support and future support.

I would like to help those that are dealing with mental illnesses of their own. I may not be a trained professional, but peer support is definitely important. Which is why I get involved in things like suicide prevention walks to raise money for suicide prevention. I’m also open to people that I meet regarding my mental illness from the start. If that’s red flags for them, I understand. But I also don’t want a future episode to come as a surprise to them as well. They need to know the potential of a future one is real, regardless of how much I’m trying to prevent one from happening. Fair is fair, as well as it’s a matter of respect.

Onto to what provoked such thoughts; my teeth are practically decaying, one-by-one. All last week I had mouth pain, until on Friday the pain was so unbearable that I had to call off work. My jaw was swollen from the toothache. I don’t know if it’s infected or not, but I’ll have to find out soon enough and get to a dentist. Self-care is still important; depression episode or not.

I’m not perfect, nor to I intend to be. I try to be the best person that I can possibly be. I had to learn that I can’t dwell on things that I can’t control; and I have to fix the things that I can control. And in this case, it’s fixing the teeth that I’ve neglected these past six years.

Time to Talk About Underlying Issues

I’m going to present this as scientific and non politically biased as possible without presenting graphs. I tend to think deep down if one lived long enough, they’ve literally seen the social decay first hand or via any news source. And oddly enough, our music industry has also been displayed this trend. Music theory has proven that music in the 60’s and 70’s was more intricate, more layered and had more depth and meaning. I personally prefer 90’s music myself, but theory has proven me wrong on this topic. You can look at past empires like the Romans or the Bronze Age Collapse and see a correlation between art and social order collapse.

60 years ago things like mental illness, guns, bad parents, drug addiction, alcohol abuse and homelessness all existed. So what really changed between the 1960’s and today? How are these problems so much worse that a political wing things that getting rid of guns is the answer when in reality that’s akin to putting a band-aid on cancer. I’ll argue that each of these problems being projected as singular issues even though they’re all a interweb of fuckery that’s related to the underlying problem.

Ultimately the underlying issue is globalism, and it’s effects on our social order. 60 years ago the traditional family of four, five or six had a single breadwinner and stay at home parent. Globalism effected our ability to compete with global trade. Our jobs went to Mexico, Japan, China and to a lesser extent India, Vietnam, and Thailand.

As a result of the loss of jobs, a single income became no longer sufficient enough income to get by in daily life, let alone and safe enough money to send Johnny and Jenny to college. Throughout the decades even two incomes aren’t sufficient to get by forcing people to get two or even three jobs.

I don’t think it takes rocket science to corroborate the relationship between economics and social order. When the economy is well, people are happy; when it is terrible, people are depressed.

With both parents working multiple jobs, there’s very little family time. We don’t need science to prove that parents that participate in their children’s education relates to their children being more successful in the classroom than parents that aren’t involved. Same applies for mental nurturing. Who and what do children turn to when their parents are working multiple jobs; perhaps a coach, a teacher, friends, a pastor, then on the flip side, awful friends and drugs.

When times are rough, married couples tend to argue. Individuals, in-general, tend to find their way to alcohol, drugs, affairs, or anything else that makes them happy, which often-times, leads to divorce and the creation of the nuclear family or single parenting. The nuclear family or a single parent household isn’t great for a child’s mental health, because of the lack of moral support. I wouldn’t say that this in general makes these bad parents, whatsoever; it just means they have to work to make ends meet. If they don’t work, their kids starve, their house gets foreclosed, they get evicted from their apartment, and so on. That’s just a tough juggling act that leads to alcoholism, drug abuse or whatever.

Nobody does a drug when their lives are well off. People tend to drink or use hard drugs to get away from whatever pain they’re dealing with. Due to many of our childhoods, 40 & below; perhaps 50 & below, many of us lack the ability to be open and talk to our loved ones about our issues; which ultimately leads to self-destructive tendencies.

School/mass shootings, and teen suicide, is definitely a biproduct of this. Bullying existed 60+ years ago. Hell, bullying existed thousands of years ago; bullying exists in other animals, especially predator’s. So if bullying practically always existed, why is bullying such an issue in today’s world. The answer has to lie in the fact that parents aren’t able to provide the moral support that kids 60 year’s ago received. How can we expect boys to “toughen up” when there’s not a father there to “toughen them up!?!” Such bullying leads to a kids bullying others, bullying animals, going on mass shootings, going to drugs, suicide, or finding something positive like art to vent their frustrations like poetry or music (see Eminem).

I do think there’s some merit to the argument that mental asylums shouldn’t have closed so many decades ago, and does think that there more that needs to be done as opposed to sending patients home on medications. I also see the loss of religion having merit in this as well. If parents don’t care to send their kids to church what kind of structure or positive outlet do they really have?

If we don’t get to the bottom of this as a society, maybe even as a planet; this could certainly lead to revolution or even the fracturing of our country. I see this as a national security threat. This kind of social collapse could break the world’s economy and have an effect similar to that of the Bronze Age Collapse. My question is, when will society want to have a serious discussion on this, as opposed to using guns and mental health as scapegoats?

Never Giving Up

Life isn’t easy; for a lack of a better word, life is a bitch. Depression can simply eat you from the inside out.

My journey took me from in the middle of my first semester of my Sr. Year of college to homelessness. There’s nobody to blame for my downward spiral but myself. This journey to rock bottom has also been an incredibly humbling experience as well.

It has taken me across country, where I got to visit some amazing sites; such as, Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, the Rocky Mountains, and deserts. It has also taken me to the psych ward, twice.

Me blaming myself for the journey isn’t exactly beating myself up (which is a symptom of depression), I’m simply taking accountability for my actions. I’ve hurt many people that I hold dearly in my heart, especially my grandmother and uncle. Although they have forgiven me, I may never forgive myself.

The journey also took me into an intensive mental health program, where I acquired the tools to help prevent depression from ever taking a firm grip of my life again; however, if it does return, it’s up to me to use the tools given to me. There’s no guarantee that apply such tools when depression punches me in the face.

My course of action will be signing up for a Peer Support Specialist certification class, sometime this week. This class will take place in August. What it will do is allow me to help others that are battling depression. The number one thing I’ve learned, for me at least, is when I’m helping others, I’m ultimately helping myself, with this battle.

It’s not an easy battle to have. The thoughts of suicide are scary thoughts. I don’t wish suicidal ideations on anybody.

Once I get established in my peer support role, I’ll finish my political science degree. I’m two semesters away. I’m far too close to the finish line to not finish it. It’s just going to take me longer than I anticipated two years ago.

I just need to get my life on track first, AND I WILL!

The Road to Rebuilding Myself

Fighting this depression battle isn’t  a fun battle. I’ve been prone to isolate myself from the world around me and vicariously live my life on the internet. In a way the internet has kept me sane. There has been a great amount of people in my social network (that has become real life friends) that has helped me along in this process of rebuilding myself.

Being suicidal and wondering how you reached such a low isn’t a fun place to be. The the fight in me has certainly begun; I realized if I’m no longer here, who is going to be there for my grandmother on a daily basis? I can’t lie to the world surrounding me that knows about about my current state, since my last blog I have had those thoughts a few times between now and then.

With that said, the last blog lifted a lot of weight off of my shoulders and I ultimately feel like I’m on the right path. I’ve chatted with my Reverend from my childhood church and showed him this blog.

He definitely gave me words of encouragement and such.

The New Year couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It’s definitely a time to put a close to what’s been happening and looking ahead towards my future, and it’s a bright future at that. I’m a year away from earning my degree in Political Science, and I still have aspirations to go law school.

I feel as if I’m on the right path to being back to me again. I have to reach out to my friends when I’m feeling low. I know I have a great circle of friends and an even better family. I realize that the struggle isn’t over, just yet. And I still have a long road in front of me.

“We don’t develop courage by being happy every day. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.” Barbara de Angelis

I hope everyone enjoys their Christmas holiday and has an amazing New Year!

*note: I tried reaching out to the female I mentioned in the last blog. She ignored my texts and such. I believe that it’s a lost cause and I’ve done all that I could do to throw water under that bridge. It’s unfortunate that she’ll forever believe that I’m an asshole.*