Mental Illness

If we are worried about something, obsessing over it, fearing it, and dreading negative outcomes regarding it, we are using our imaginations to build this something into a much larger problem than it may in fact be.  We make it a barrier to be avoided rather than a challenge to be faced and overcome.  It is much more dangerous to ourselves to continually avoid and put off facing our fears.  Trying, failing or succeeding, and reflecting on the outcome afterward, then perhaps even trying again, are necessary steps in learning.  Remember that we don't have to solve a problem all at once or have an immediate definitive solution.  But we do need to make an effort.  This effort does not need to define us, as lots of motivational-types encourage us to believe.  We don't want to lose our ability to remain aloof!  Stay cool, little ones.  Emotion can hinder rational thought and feed the power of fear; however, emotion can also be used in tandem with rational thought and provide our spirit a shield or armour, or wings, or whatever it is we need to face our challenges.

On another related note, I recently wrote the following to an acquaintance during a pretty low ebb in mood.  Seems fitting to throw it into the mix here:

Sometimes when I feel sick (in the head) it's better to put it out there to an acquaintance rather than someone I'm super close to. 1) there is a fear that I'll drive those few close ones away from me and 2) if you as an acquaintance choose to ignore the reaching-out, I can chalk it up to "ah well, we're not that close and it's obvious I'm a bit off, I can't expect her to understand". Why am I sharing this with you? I don't know, I guess it's part of fighting "the stigma" of mental illness, and seeing my second point (2) above as a cop-out on my part. It's hard to live life in a regular sort of way when the thoughts come at one like this. Swirling self-doubt, and yet I hold down two jobs and struggle along (only from time to time is it a struggle: it's not all bad). Yesterday was tough. And the resources aren't there for the highly functioning. I make my own resources. Thank you for being there, stranger. Please share as you see fit. Maybe it will help others to understand.

stupid AND annoying!

Lengthily misplaced breathers and cisterns,
Sorrow at our much unseeing! Many happy returns!

We are under the weather. When will we not be so? Outside a planet's atmosphere there is cosmic weather too, and it is much more deadly than any typhoon. Almost uninhabitable out there unless you are a tardigrade. Moss-piglet. Water-bear. Or pack an awful lot of kitchen sinks. Nuts, bolts, wrenches, pipes, bits of vomit, ball-bearings, clogs: all manner of what-have-you now floats up there making subsequent journeys to get away from conventional weather even more dangerous, and transforming plumbing into rocket-surgery. It is hubris! It is ironical, bionicles. Attempts to remove ourselves from the uncontrollable external forces that govern our existence only result in causing ourselves more bad weather. Just weather the storm my fiends! See you in heck.

alone

singularity

It is time to become as stable as a giant piece of rock floating through space.  A sleeping, dreaming, igneous-being.  No one is an island, so they say, but maybe we can aspire to be heavenly bodies.  We will have terrifying molten hearts that construct and destroy, and an outward visage that may in time learn to sustain other life than our own.  Three-hundred and sixty degrees of face to perpetually greet the shining stars, our distant relatives speaking to us across eons.  Imperfect spheres, orbs, glittering in the emptiness, head and heart pulsing within as one fire.

The larger hurts.

For those who lose more than they gain, and give more than they get, thank you.  I pray indifference and disdain can have a powerful, radical force on economics.  Grubby fingers splitting hairs leave us with crazy bald-heads wed to greed.  Wealthiness and a healthy world are not proving to be successful bed-fellows. Someone's getting fucked in this scenario, and there do not appear to be any effective safe-words to stop the rape.  I live in a country that was once a haven for ideas, with a political landscape that was still in an innocent state of growth and self-consciousness.  Canada right now is no longer such a place.  We're mired in muck by a government of small-minded, power-hungry, white, Anglophone men who busily, behind closed doors, sell freedom and the wilderness that fosters us (and for which we are here to protect) wholesale to the highest corporate bidder.  Our country is sick.  People have been manipulated and polarized, and the centre has imploded.  There are not enough tears, but there are always enough opportunities to make a difference. First thing, we must vote. Second thing, we must write and think. A smart friend of mine said recently that "thinking is painless".  The fear, the emotion, the stress: those bring pain.  But thinking, with an open mind and a view to learning and changing one's perspective should it be necessary, painless. Priceless. Love and understanding before Hate and thoughtless fear, every single day.  That's all.

lolling in the rain

To be so happy as to spill
A trillion, trillion joyful tears
All in a moment
I am the sky.

yet more swimming Siamese cats

A lark for a pussy-cat, getting something for nothing
Siamese cats swimming Southward
Swallowing the small birds they seduce
Whose titterings seem
Like non-sense
'…zmzgbzn…? ' mangled consonants
Murmurred together 
Throat to throat.