stillfugue

This is further material for the Who I Want to Be effort:

My title has some of my typical sarcasm, and I suppose it is not funny in the least bit.  Everything I let out of my mind is far too dependent upon the stability of my mind.

Yesterday, I had the best day I have had since April 24th of last year (tee hee – love saying this on January 1).  On April 24th, I remember thinking that the depression had completely lifted and I was finally a free man, and I could not remember being a happier man, but I woke up to a 25th that was even worse than the 23rd, worse because I had been newly reminded of what it might be like to be sane and healthy in a crazy world.  Yesterday was not like the 24th because I could feel the heavy blanket throughout the day, but I started feeling moments when I actually had that joie de vivre.  I felt something inside of me that felt as though it was good to be alive, the contrast making me feel literally as if I started bubbling inside.  I felt that surely there were good things in the world.  I felt that surely there are good people in the world.  Those feelings give me so much hope.  I think finally the medicine has fused my broken brain together.  I have this odd reticence that tells me I do not deserve this good feeling – It honestly feels like such a contrast, I feel as though I am sick because I feel good, and I feel as though God would not want this to be happening (see this dark poem I wrote to describe this broken attitude just recently).

I was wrong if I felt that I might be on a winning streak with God on my side.  This morning, the medicine kept me level and in tune, under the blanket but with a sense of foreboding.   This afternoon, I crashed into that big deep despair of clinical depression that makes me wonder why I am around.  I don’t tell anyone but I was crying about nothing that I could put my mind on, the tears were rolling and my eyes were tired, deep tired.  I have not shouted at God for this yet, showing that it is not complete despair.

So I decided to get this stuff out of my mind and on to the paper.  Previously, I shredded my lack of compliance with the Mission Statement I have had for the past few years.  When I put myself on the spot the other day, I spit out my New Year’s Resolutions, and If I can do a little of these things, I am going to be in great shape:

1.                    I know, it sounds stupid as shit, but I need to exercise.  Exercise is the inane annual mollification of us idiots who think New Year’s Resolutions have any sort of remote value.  I love reading books and feeding my insane mind with all sorts of material, but if I do not lose enough of the mind’s obsessions long enough to gain an exercise obsession, my mind will not have a body to live in for nearly enough more years to feed all of its obsessions.   People who know a lot more than I do say that daily exercise helps with depression, but does my mind override the body’s desire to hide under the sheets?  Hell no.  Well, my mind better start getting smart about this or I am going to kick my own ass.  The book, Younger Next Year, talks about what happens to us when we don’t exercise and tells those of us who are getting older that daily exercise is the best way to care for the vessel that carries our soul, and if I cannot use that as my motivation, I might as well walk off the cliff now.

2.                    I will seriously find out who I am and then work hard to be who I am.  This is really idiotic.  Who thinks they have a right to be who they are?  This blog is part of that process and I cannot tell you how much I have loved this.   This little place allows me to feel slightly less meaningless.  I will continue to see B2 and I will learn and she will heal me.  If she cannot heal me, I am hopeless and I will give up.  I will take all of these tiny steps and hope they take me somewhere.   I know it is really late in my life, but I have just started reading “On Becoming a Person,” and I intend to follow directions carefully.  It continues to be my secret, but I also might find a new profession while reading this book, and don’t tell anyone, but I would make even less money than I do now, which seems impossible without working at Dairy Queen, but it may be true.

3.                    I will be compassionate even when I do not feel like it.   When I am compassionate, my insides feel so good, so comfortable, so right, but often I get a bad attitude.  It’s lame to blame it on the depression, but it is true that the world often looks as if the whole place hates who I am and that I do not belong.  I need to be compassionate for others especially when the every person in the world, most particularly myself, hates me.  I know my mind creates some of the hatred and that some of the hatred is built into our culture.  Perhaps I was not meant to survive this place, but if I am compassionate, I have a shot at survival.   Someday I will live completely in accordance with Chuck C.’s dictum, “I don’t care what you think about me, I love you,” and it will be that day when I will feel as though I have arrived.

4.                    I will meditate more often and spend more time in peace.   This is most idiotic of all, but I am going to try anyhow as if I am smashing my head against the wall over and over until I am unconscious and finally get some internal peace.   Meditation is similar to exercise – It is exactly what I need to get along in the world, but it is exactly what my mind will not allow me to do.  If I am meditating, just as when I am exercising, my mind tells me I am useless and I am accomplishing nothing.  My mind is the sickest part of me and it always tells me that it needs more, and when I exercise and meditate my mind has less shit and that is just what my mind needs – Less shit, less noise, fewer trains running into and out of the station without having any kind of schedule or map and while constantly running into each other.  The circus left town a few years ago and it is about time that the fucking monkeys leave.

My aim will be to not be too harsh with myself when I fail or when I am not perfect.  I expect difficulties and they should not make me stop, they should not allow me to crawl away in failure.

If I accomplish little things with these four areas, it will be a great year, but why do we measure things in years?  Tomorrow I need to wake up and have some way to put this damned Mission right in front of my face and then determine what I am going to do tomorrow to accomplish it, and then regardless of success or lack thereof, on the day after tomorrow, I will wake up with that brand new slate and try to work my mission once again.

I suppose this annual affair allows us to evaluate, to do inventory, to clean house, but the only way I can possibly live life is not in the hope that I will become healthy in 2011.  No, it is to work my hardest to do good things today.  Just for today, this one day only, to stay as sane as I can, to stay sober, to exercise, to be who I am, to be compassionate, and to meditate.  That is what I need to do today, for otherwise, tomorrow, I might not be here.  Tomorrow I might win the Powerball or I might get decapitated by a monkey swinging from a tree, but to-fucking-day, I am going to work my Mission.

If I did not like to spout off a bunch of bullshit, here would have been my post on my 2011 Mission:

1. Exercise,

2. Be who I am,

3. Be compassionate,

4. Meditate,

and my favorite little mantra:

5. Smile, Breathe, and Go Slowly.