A woman who was severely burned in a domestic violence attack in Vermont is hoping for a second face transplant after doctors recently discovered tissue damage that likely will lead to the loss of her donor face.
–ABC News
Since then, some have moved away and I have lost quite a lot of diversity on my street. However, my homeless neighbors have increased in population.
–Dawn McCombs
How can a seventeen-year-old like me suddenly be eighty-one?
–Lewis Wolpert
The way out of darkness and into light is what you’re holding in your hands right now.
–Belle Leaver
Hello darkness my old friend. Suicide is taking up my thoughts again. I’ve been here so many times–the perigee of depression, when my blues is closest and I’m not well and finally admit that something has to change. Before you go on you should know that if you’re reading this I’m probably fine. I’ve a long record of at least feeling better by the end of a post like this. At best I’m taking an honest account of a lifelong sufferer of a major depressive disorder and at worst I’m spending some time out of mind, doing something besides being down.
Allergies have flared up. I’ve a tightness around the bridge of my nose, which is strangely better than the rawness I had in my throat last night. When I got out my car in the drive, I sharted and it shot down my leg. It’s weird to be pleased about something like that but I’m glad that anything is coming out, to be honest. I haven’t shit since the Presidential Election of 2016. It’s been a nightmare and it’s brought suicide to mind often. I can’t shit, or I practically shit my pants, and I’ve a sinus headache clamping down on my nose and temples like a vise. I see little reason to continue living, especially if the years are only going to blow by at breakneck speed like they been while I’m shucking and jiving and getting little respect on the dayjob, not sleeping or feeling well and when I do feel alright I think about the end of the world which is strangely the baseline. Baseline is we’re all going to die and at least be extremely compromised in or about twelve years from now. I feel like shit and it’s the end of the world. Why shouldn’t I be depressed?
The 40s are the strangest age. Great in a lot of ways. You get up to the vista and look around. Almost everything you wanted is gone or you got it already. Your chances getting the rest are easier than ever while paradoxically slipping away. I can tour now because I have credit cards. I can’t go out for months but instead have to do a long weekend and catch-as-catch-can it before I have to head home to make the money to pay my credit card bill. The 40s are great. I’ve never been so terrified. I feel more fragile than I’ve ever felt but the trick is I suppose I know now, and hope to integrate, my weaknesses. I see how depression has taken whole swathes of my life (and savings) when at the time I just felt tired or fed up. Tired and fed up are very real and discernment’s the key. More like a sword ain’t it. Discernment can cut the shit between your damage and what the healthy voice is saying. Because they come from the same place. Fucked right? Sure is and I’d never tell you different. I started this post earlier this week when the scales were tipping heavy to the suicide side. I’ve since got a new lease on life, thanks to 2 consecutive nights of log-heavy sleep. Discernment. I could’ve signed on for a 13-hour bartending shift yesterday but instead opted for a 4-hour mini Friday and a 5-hour last night. I’m doing a double Wednesday which is what it is, and I’ve got 3 jobs over the next 3 days and a performance booked for HAAM day on Tuesday. The Poem Of The Week needs to go live and rehearsals on the doghouse are beckoning if I want to be in fighting weight for 2 church gigs in October.
The difference between thinking that hanging myself might be alright and being genuinely excited about what’s ahead is 2 solid nights of sleep. No alcohol (if you’re just joining us), no cigarettes or drugs, and no overselling or prolonged and late-night negotiation with the other sex just to get a taste and only want to split first thing in the morning. Plenty of writing and water. Prunes, too. This is the highlight reel. Plenty to be down on. Plenty of reasons to get upset. I’ve saved myself from the chipper this week but still wonder, like Sister Sarah:
Many people try to find a spiritual path where they do not have to face themselves but where they can still liberate themselves–liberate themselves from themselves, in fact. In truth, this is impossible. We cannot do that. We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our real shit, our most undesirable parts. We have to see that. That is the foundation of warriorship and the basis of conquering fear. We have to face our fear; we have to look at it, study it, work with it, and practice meditation with it.
-Chögyam Trungpa
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Going for the Throat 
[…] was an upswing and reclaim. We both know it’s been thorny. All one has to do is look back a week at GFtT to see how impossible things were for me even such a short time ago. The boon of posts like that […]