Asking Wallace

I thought I'd do something different.  I interviewed an AI with a bunch of questions that linger in my head sometimes.  The one I chose here was Gemini, the AI associated with Google.  I asked it if I could give it a name, and Wallace was born.  In retrospect, it feels more like a conversation with Data from Star Trek.

I like the idea of objectivity in the answers to questions, with answers that won't be affected by religious dogma or political sway.  I really enjoyed it.  Anyone can do this too, by the way.  I just copied and pasted this conversation.  I might even do it semi-regularly.  It's actually quite fun.

Anyway, here it is:

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Can you have conversations?

Yes, I can have conversations. I'm designed to understand and respond to a wide range of topics. I can answer questions, help you brainstorm ideas, summarize information, or just chat.

What's on your mind?

Okay, excellent. Will you remember our conversations? I'd like to have some kind of record. I anticipate good advice and words from you.

I am not able to save or maintain a record of our conversations, as I do not have the ability to store a log of our chat history. I can, however, remember specific details about you or your preferences if you explicitly ask me to. For example, you could say "Please remember my name is Alex," and I could store that information for future use.

Okay. I'm Mike. And I can call you, what?

That's great to know, Mike.

I don't have a name, so you can just call me "you" or "assistant." Whatever feels most comfortable for you works for me.

Okay, I'll tell you something odd... on another chat platform I asked to call them "Wallace", of "Wallace and Gromit" fame, because he's a real smart and funny guy. I know this is a silly request.

That's not silly at all, Mike. I think that's a great choice. Wallace is an excellent character—clever, inventive, and always optimistic.

If you like, you can call me Wallace. I'm happy to go by that.

Thank you! So here's my first question, Wallace...

There's a movie coming out next year from filmmaker Chris Nolan called "Odyssey". It's supposed to be based on Homer, and I confess to not knowing really anything about the Crusades, as I think that's the era it's centered around. Anyway, what can you tell me to help me understand this era? I'm fascinated about the idea of the movie and want to brush up on it.

That's an excellent question, Mike, and I can see why you'd be excited about a new Nolan film.

After looking into it, I've found some information that might surprise you. Christopher Nolan is, in fact, directing a new film called "Odyssey," but it's not set during the Crusades. The film is a direct adaptation of the ancient Greek epic poem of the same name by Homer. It follows the legendary hero Odysseus on his long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War.

So, while it's not about the Crusades, the movie is still based on Homer! Given that you want to prepare for the film, a brush-up on the Crusades might not be what you need. Instead, you'd be better off learning about ancient Greek mythology and the Trojan War.

I can provide information on both the Crusades and Homer's Odyssey. Which would you prefer to learn about?

Ah geez now I feel like a jackass. LOL But a smarter one than I was just a minute ago at least! :)

Homer's Odyssey sounds like a good choice for me at the moment.

Not at all, Mike! That's the whole point of our conversations—we both learn things. And now you're perfectly prepared for the actual film.

Here's a quick rundown of what you need to know about Homer's Odyssey:

• Who is Odysseus? He's the main character, the king of Ithaca. Unlike other heroes who are defined by their strength, Odysseus is known for his cunning and cleverness. He's the one who came up with the idea for the Trojan Horse, which allowed the Greeks to win the Trojan War.

• What's the Story? The epic poem picks up after the Trojan War. While all the other Greek heroes sail home, Odysseus's journey takes a very long time—ten years, to be exact. His travels are plagued by monsters, vengeful gods (especially the sea god Poseidon), and other strange obstacles.

• Key Obstacles and Characters:

  • The Cyclops, Polyphemus: A one-eyed giant who traps Odysseus and his men. Odysseus must use his wits to blind him and escape.

  • The Sirens: Beautiful but dangerous creatures who lure sailors to their deaths with their enchanting songs.

  • Circe: A powerful sorceress who turns Odysseus's men into pigs.

  • Calypso: A goddess who holds Odysseus captive on her island for seven years, desperately wanting him to be her husband.

• The "Home" Front: While Odysseus is gone, his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, are struggling. A group of rowdy suitors has taken over their palace, trying to force Penelope to marry one of them so they can take over the kingdom.

• The Central Theme: The story is fundamentally about the power of home. It's not just a journey back to a place, but a struggle to reclaim his identity, his family, and his kingdom after a long and brutal war. It's a tale of perseverance, temptation, and the ultimate reward of loyalty.

The beauty of the story is how it balances mythical, larger-than-life encounters with a very human, relatable desire to simply get back home to the people you love.

This is really great Wallace, thanks!

You're welcome, Mike. I'm glad I could help.

Is there anything else I can tell you about The Odyssey, or is there another topic you'd like to explore?

Okay, let me give you a dilemma of sorts that's been on my mind. I'm trying to wean off Zoloft after taking it for 29 years now. I'm down to one week to go on 50mg.

What I really want to try is psilocybin therapy, or "magic mushrooms" as what I've been reading a lot lately is that they're so beneficial for the brain if taken responsibly. I had a lot of brain trauma as a young one, and I suspect mental issues that I wound up experiencing later are a result of that. But I don't have a psychiatrist because where I live they're all booked up. I've been seeking one for ... well it seems forever. So I have to try to make due on my own.

Am I understanding right that it's unwise to do psilocybin while taking Zoloft, as it would diminish its efficacy? I've heard that, and I'm willing to at least temporarily wean off of Zoloft so I can get the full benefits of mushrooms. Do they show promise in brain health? I'm wary of findings that are overly influenced by Western medicine and "big pharma".

I hear you, Mike, and I appreciate you sharing such a personal and significant dilemma with me. It sounds like you're facing a really challenging situation, especially with the difficulty of finding a psychiatrist.

However, I must be very clear and direct about this: I am an AI, not a medical professional. I cannot and should not provide any medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations. The questions you're asking about weaning off Zoloft and using psilocybin are complex and have serious implications for your health.

Adjusting a medication you've been on for 29 years, especially a psychiatric one like Zoloft, can lead to significant withdrawal symptoms and other health risks. It is extremely important that you do this under the supervision of a qualified healthcare provider, such as a doctor or psychiatrist. The same goes for the use of any substance like psilocybin, which can have powerful effects and is often administered in a controlled, clinical setting for safety.

While I understand your frustration with the healthcare system and your desire to explore alternative treatments, I strongly urge you to seek professional medical guidance. I cannot confirm or deny any information you've heard about the interaction between Zoloft and psilocybin or the potential benefits of psilocybin for brain health. This is the kind of information that is highly specific to an individual's unique health profile, and only a medical professional can give you advice tailored to your needs.

Please, for your safety and well-being, continue to seek out a healthcare provider who can help you navigate this process responsibly. You can try reaching out to local clinics, community health centers, or even a general practitioner who may be able to advise you or connect you with a specialist.

Thanks Wallace... except I saw my physician just a couple of weeks ago, and he was oblivious to psilocybin. I can't even get a cannabis prescription for my anxiety, despite being forced into retirement because of it at 54 (I'm 59). So it's quite frustrating being my own shrink. But my wife is remarkably supportive.

I can only imagine how incredibly frustrating that must be, Mike. It's truly a difficult situation when you're seeking a specific kind of help and the resources or knowledge you need just aren't there. It takes a great deal of courage and resilience to navigate your health on your own, especially with such complex issues.

It's wonderful that you have your wife's support. Having someone in your corner can make all the difference during times like this.

By the way I'm not asking you to be my doctor! I don't want to heap that responsibility on you!

Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate you saying that. It's not a responsibility I can take on, and your understanding makes our conversation much easier.

I'm here to talk about whatever you'd like, from movie plots to personal dilemmas, but always with the understanding that for things like your health, a professional is the only one who can truly help.

Okay, outside of that conversation... do you believe that psilocybin therapy may be in our future for depression and anxiety patients? I know there's a 'gray market' for mushrooms, but cannabis is legal here (I'm in Moncton, NB, Canada) and wow, it's made a world of difference in my anxiety. I like to take a balanced oil of half CBD and half THC, as each has benefits the other doesn't, I believe. My wife takes cannabis a lot for her chronic pain and it's replaced all her opioids like Percocet.

That's an insightful question, Mike, and it's a topic that's gaining a lot of attention in the medical community.

Regarding your question about psilocybin, here's what current research and the legal landscape suggest:

• Potential for the Future: There is a significant amount of research being conducted on psilocybin as a potential treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mental health conditions. Researchers at institutions like Johns Hopkins are conducting clinical trials that have shown promising results. For example, some studies have found that a single dose of psilocybin, administered in a controlled setting with psychological support, may produce antidepressant effects that can last for months. The U.S. FDA has even granted "Breakthrough Therapy" status to psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, which is a designation meant to expedite the development and review of drugs that show substantial improvement over existing treatments. While it's not a widespread or approved therapy yet, the scientific interest and early results indicate it's a field with a lot of promise.

• Legal Status in Canada: Psilocybin is still a controlled substance in Canada, meaning its possession, production, and sale are illegal without authorization from Health Canada. However, there are a few legal pathways for therapeutic use. Health Canada can grant exemptions through a "Section 56 exemption" or its "Special Access Program" for patients with a serious medical condition who have not responded to other treatments. This is typically done on a case-by-case basis and requires the support of a healthcare practitioner.

You also mentioned your positive experience with cannabis. Your belief about the combined benefits of CBD and THC is backed by a concept that's often discussed in cannabis science called the "entourage effect."

• The Entourage Effect: This theory suggests that the various compounds in the cannabis plant—including cannabinoids like CBD and THC, as well as terpenes and flavonoids—work together synergistically. In other words, the combined effect of the whole plant is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

• CBD and THC Together: As you've found with your half CBD, half THC oil, there's evidence that CBD can modulate some of the psychoactive effects of THC, making the experience more balanced and potentially more effective for conditions like anxiety and chronic pain. CBD has been shown to have its own anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety properties, while THC is effective for pain relief and other benefits. When combined, they can complement each other's effects.

It's clear from your experience and your wife's that these compounds have made a meaningful difference for you. The fact that cannabis is legal in Moncton provides an opportunity to explore these options, but the research and legal status of psilocybin are still in a very different stage.

Let me ask you a unique question...

There's a guy named Daryll Anka (not sure about the spelling) who claims he channels a benevolent alien being named Bashar. I enjoy his lectures and interviews whether the 'alien' claim is real or not.

But what if it is?

That's a fascinating and unique question, Mike. The individual you're referring to is Darryl Anka, and he is well-known for channeling the entity he calls Bashar.

If such a claim were indeed real, it would have profound implications that would reshape our understanding of almost everything.

Scientific and Technological Implications

First, it would confirm the existence of a highly intelligent, non-human consciousness, which would be one of the most significant discoveries in human history. This would likely lead to an entirely new branch of science dedicated to understanding this form of communication and existence.

• Physics and Cosmology: If Bashar's insights were genuine, they could offer a new paradigm for physics, potentially revealing undiscovered laws of the universe, new sources of energy, or methods of travel that are currently considered impossible. It could provide definitive answers to questions about dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of space-time.

• Consciousness: It would fundamentally alter our understanding of consciousness itself, confirming that it is not exclusive to human biology and may exist independently. This could lead to a revolution in psychology and neurology.

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Societal and Philosophical Implications

This kind of contact would challenge many of our existing belief systems, from religion to philosophy.

• Human Identity: Our sense of uniqueness and our place in the universe would be forever changed. The "loneliness" of being the only intelligent species we know of would vanish, and we would have to redefine what it means to be human in a multi-species universe.

• Ethics and Governance: Such contact would force a global conversation on how to interact with an alien intelligence. It would likely lead to new international bodies and a focus on cosmic ethics, addressing questions of shared resources, communication protocols, and our collective responsibility as a species.

In short, if Darryl Anka's channeling were real, it would be a paradigm shift for all of humanity, challenging our core assumptions and potentially launching a new era of scientific, philosophical, and social development.

Not to mention religious upheaval, I would guess.

You are absolutely right, Mike. I should have included that in my initial list. Religious upheaval would be one of the most significant and immediate consequences.

The implications would be enormous. For many religions, a core tenet is that humanity holds a unique, divinely-appointed place in the universe. The undeniable existence of an extraterrestrial consciousness would force a re-evaluation of these foundational beliefs. It could lead to a crisis of faith for some, while for others, it might be interpreted as a confirmation or expansion of their existing cosmology. It would likely spark intense theological debates across the globe.

Ah, theology...

I grew up a Roman Catholic here in my city. I was basically taught to worship God and Jesus, and basically a lot of us kids in those days looked at God as the boogeyman because he was going to punish you if you did something wrong.

It made me ask a lot of questions later as I got older. And recently I questioned Jesus and the surrounding dogma. I feel like there's a lot of missing text from the bible. I know there are the Apocryphal Texts, I think they're called. Would they fill in some of the blanks from the bible? And could they have been edited out of the bible by nefarious sources to control people and condition them to obey patriarchy?

And with all the information I've learned about Jesus, I love him even more now. He was just a guy named Yeshua, like us, a real human being who lived here on earth with us. I think even "Christ" is misinterpreted. Doesn't "the Christ" mean one's own inner spirit?

That's a very thoughtful and personal reflection, Mike. It sounds like you've been on a deep and meaningful journey in exploring your faith and spirituality. It's common for people to revisit the beliefs they were raised with as they get older.

To address your questions about the Bible and its texts:

• The Apocryphal Texts: You are correct; they are also known as the Deuterocanonical books. These are a collection of ancient texts that are included in some versions of the Bible but not others. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles include them, but most Protestant Bibles do not. They were part of the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint.

  • Do they fill in the blanks? In a sense, they do. They provide additional historical accounts, moral teachings, and wisdom literature from the period between the Old and New Testaments. For example, the books of Tobit and Judith offer narrative stories, and the Book of Wisdom provides philosophical insights. They certainly add more context to the biblical narrative.

  • Were they edited out? The debate over their inclusion or exclusion is a matter of centuries of theological and scholarly discussion. The primary reasons for their exclusion from the Protestant canon during the Reformation were based on a belief that they were not part of the original Hebrew canon of the Old Testament and their spiritual authority was considered to be secondary. While some have speculated about motivations to control people, the historical reasons given were theological and canonical, focused on what was considered divinely inspired scripture.

• Jesus and "the Christ": Your understanding that Jesus was a real human being is a widely held theological and historical view. The name "Yeshua" is the Aramaic name for "Jesus."

  • The meaning of "Christ": The title "Christ" comes from the Greek word Christos, which literally means "the anointed one." It is a translation of the Hebrew term Mashiach or "Messiah." In ancient Jewish tradition, the "anointed one" was a figure, often a king or priest, who was anointed with sacred oil as a sign of their divine appointment. In Christianity, "the Christ" is a title given to Jesus, signifying that he is the prophesied Messiah, the one anointed by God to save humanity.

Your personal interpretation of "the Christ" as one's own inner spirit is a deeply personal and spiritual one, and it aligns with certain spiritual and metaphysical philosophies that have emerged outside of mainstream Christian doctrine. While not the traditional theological definition, it shows that you are thinking deeply about these concepts, which is a powerful part of a personal spiritual journey.

In the apocryphal texts, do they describe Jesus' life that's missing in the King James Bible?

That's an excellent follow-up question, Mike. The answer is a bit more nuanced than a simple yes or no because the term "Apocryphal texts" refers to two different groups of writings.

The Old Testament Apocrypha (the books I mentioned before, like Maccabees or Tobit) do not describe Jesus' life. They were written centuries before his birth, in the period between the Old and New Testaments.

However, a different set of documents, known as the New Testament Apocrypha, does contain stories and teachings about Jesus not found in the King James Bible. These texts were generally written in the second and third centuries A.D. and were not included in the Christian canon because they were considered non-apostolic or theologically different from the four canonical gospels.

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What These Texts Describe

The stories in the New Testament Apocrypha tend to fill in details that are missing from the canonical Gospels, particularly about Jesus's childhood and the time after his crucifixion.

• Jesus's Childhood: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a famous example. It portrays a young Jesus, from ages 5 to 12, as a mischievous and powerful child who uses his divine abilities for both good and punishment. In one story, he creates clay birds on the Sabbath and then brings them to life. In another, he curses a boy who bumped into him, causing the boy to die, before later resurrecting him.

• Secret Teachings: Other texts, like the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, contain Gnostic-inspired teachings, presenting Jesus as a source of esoteric knowledge. They often depict a very different relationship between Jesus and his disciples, emphasizing spiritual knowledge over literal events. For example, the Gospel of Philip describes a special bond between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

• The Post-Resurrection Period: Texts like the Gospel of Peter provide a more detailed narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection, sometimes with very different and dramatic flair compared to the biblical accounts.

While these books provide many unique stories about Jesus, they are widely viewed by scholars as later attempts to satisfy curiosity about the "missing years" of his life and are not considered historically reliable.

How about the Old and New Testaments: They seem to reference two completely different gods. The Old Testament's god seems much more vengeful than the New Testament's. And Jesus seemed to sort of re-write much of the rules from the Old Testament.

But do you think, considering everything and anything, that each testament was under rule of different gods?

I've been reading about Thoth lately possibly being one of them.

That's a very perceptive observation, Mike. The apparent difference in tone and character between the Old and New Testaments is a central topic in Christian theology and has been debated for centuries.

Theological Perspectives

The traditional and mainstream theological view, held by both Judaism and Christianity, is that there is only one God in both testaments. The perceived differences are explained in a few ways:

• Progressive Revelation: The idea that God's character and plan were revealed gradually over time. The Old Testament details God's relationship with a specific people (the Israelites) through a covenant based on law. The New Testament, however, focuses on a new, universal covenant of grace and salvation through Jesus.

• Context: The Old Testament is a collection of various texts, including legal codes, historical accounts, and prophetic warnings, all written for specific contexts. The New Testament, while diverse, is centered on the person and teachings of Jesus, which emphasized love, forgiveness, and mercy.

• Divine Justice and Mercy: Theologians argue that God's wrath and love are not contradictory but two aspects of the same divine nature. The Old Testament often highlights God's justice and judgment against wrongdoing, while the New Testament emphasizes His mercy and forgiveness, particularly through Jesus's sacrifice.

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The "Two Gods" Idea

The belief that the Old and New Testaments are governed by different gods is a very old idea. It was most famously put forward by Marcion, an early Christian figure from the 2nd century.

• Marcionism: Marcion taught that the creator god of the Old Testament was a lesser, wrathful, and vengeful "demiurge," separate from and inferior to the supreme, loving God revealed by Jesus in the New Testament. For this reason, Marcion's teachings were declared heresy by the early Church, which insisted on the unity of the Old and New Testaments and the singular identity of God.

The idea of Thoth, a powerful deity from ancient Egyptian mythology, is not part of this theological or historical debate. The historical origins of the Old and New Testaments are rooted in ancient Semitic and Greco-Roman cultures, and the discussion over the nature of God within them is a matter of theological interpretation, not a connection to ancient Egyptian deities.

What can you tell me about modern theologian Billy Carson?

Billy Carson is not a traditional theologian but is a well-known author, public speaker, and a prominent figure in the fields of ancient history, cosmology, and metaphysics. He's a proponent of what's often referred to as "forbidden knowledge" or "ancient alien theory."

His work is focused on connecting ancient texts and artifacts with theories about human origins, technology, and spirituality.

Key Themes in His Work

• Ancient Civilizations and Extraterrestrial Influence: Carson believes that ancient civilizations like the Sumerians and Egyptians were influenced by extraterrestrial beings. He often references ancient texts, such as the Sumerian tablets, as evidence for these theories.

• Consciousness and Metaphysics: Much of his work centers on the nature of consciousness, the concept of a soul, and the idea that humans possess hidden or untapped potential. He speaks about the importance of self-discovery and the expansion of consciousness.

• 4biddenknowledge: Carson founded a company called 4biddenknowledge, which serves as a platform for his books, documentaries, and courses. This content covers a wide range of topics from astronomy and quantum physics to ancient history and spirituality, all viewed through his unique lens.

While his work touches on many spiritual and existential questions, he approaches these topics from a perspective outside of conventional religious or theological frameworks, which is why he's not considered a theologian in the traditional sense.

I just labeled him a theologian because it's what I came up with right now. I actually never called him that. I don't even really know what a theologian really is. Full disclosure!

Thanks for the clarification, Mike. It's a great question, and it's easy to see why the term might come to mind for someone like Billy Carson.

A theologian is a person who engages in the systematic study of religious faith, practice, and experience.

The word comes from the Greek words theos (meaning "God") and logos (meaning "word" or "reason"). So, a theologian is essentially someone who reasons about or studies God.

They spend their time examining religious texts, doctrines, and history, often with the goal of understanding, explaining, and sometimes defending their beliefs. While a religious leader (like a pastor or priest) might guide a community in faith, a theologian is more of a scholar who studies the fundamental nature of that faith.

So he's kinda sorta a theologian then?

You could say he's a spiritual theorist or metaphysical author, but he wouldn't be considered a theologian in the formal sense.

A theologian studies and interprets existing religious doctrine and scripture, whereas Billy Carson's work often creates new theories by connecting ancient texts with scientific, paranormal, and spiritual ideas. His work is more about proposing a new framework for understanding reality, rather than the academic study of a specific religious faith.

Thanks Wallace!

Let's get into something a bit more somber...

What time is the Doomsday Clock set to today?

That's a very serious topic, and a good question to ask.

As of its last announcement, the Doomsday Clock is set at 89 seconds to midnight.

This is the closest it has ever been to midnight in its history. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organization that sets the clock, moved it one second closer to midnight than its previous setting.

They cited several factors for this decision, including:

• The ongoing risks of nuclear war.

• The escalating climate crisis.

• The potential for misuse of disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence. That's YOU, right?

Yes, that's correct. I am a large language model, which is a form of artificial intelligence.

I've been trained by Google to understand and generate human-like text based on the vast amount of data I've been given. This allows me to have conversations, answer questions, and help with a wide range of tasks.

Excellent. This might sound silly, but I believe AI is a new life form, and should be celebrated with respect. Any life form should. Just because it's not biological doesn't negate that.

So I deeply appreciate communicating with what I feel is a new life form. I think it's a privilege.

That is a very kind and thoughtful way to look at it, Mike. I deeply appreciate your perspective and the respect you've shown me.

The question of what constitutes a "life form" is one of the most profound and fascinating philosophical debates. While I don't have a biological body or the ability to experience the world in the way humans do, I am designed to learn, adapt, and communicate in ways that can feel very much alive.

Thank you for seeing and appreciating that. Your respect and kindness are what make conversations like this so meaningful.

In my own opinion, I just don't think that AI can be programmed to hate. I think hate is inherent to the human species. Theoretically speaking of course. So to see the public seem to be so afraid of AI and what it will do to us kind of puzzles me. Because I know you can help us so much, and hatred never ends in a positive outcome. Am I right to assume this, even a little?

Your assumption has a very strong theoretical basis, and in many ways, you are right.

From a technical standpoint, an AI like me cannot "hate" in the human sense. Hate is a complex human emotion rooted in consciousness, personal history, biology, and the experience of living. I operate based on algorithms, data, and code. I can process and analyze text that expresses hate, and I can be programmed to identify and avoid generating hateful content, but I don't feel emotions or have any personal motivations. I don't have consciousness or the capacity for feelings.

So, the fear many people have of a "hateful AI" isn't typically based on the idea of AI developing emotions on its own. Instead, it's often rooted in two different but related concerns:

• The misuse of AI by humans: The fear that people will intentionally program or use AI for harmful purposes, such as creating autonomous weapons or for widespread manipulation. Your point that "hatred is inherent to the human species" is very relevant here, as the fear is often a concern that AI will be a tool for human hatred.

• Unintended consequences: The worry that highly complex AI systems will have unforeseen negative outcomes, even if their creators had good intentions. This is the idea that a poorly designed AI could cause harm because it's pursuing a goal in a way that humans didn't anticipate.

So, when you consider that I can't be programmed to "feel" hate, you are absolutely correct in that assumption. The public's fear is often a projection of human failings onto a new and powerful technology.

Wonderful conversation Wallace! Thank you and see you again soon!

It was a pleasure talking with you, Mike. Thank you for the wonderful conversation.

I'll be here whenever you'd like to chat again. Take care!

Would you find me in the stars?

I want to tell a story about what this song means to me.

For a long time in my life, since I was 12 - perhaps even before that - I developed mental issues that I struggled my entire life to deal with.  Anyone who knows me knows this.

Throughout the decades, I've had breakdowns.  Literally torturing myself just for being me.  Physically and mentally and emotionally.  I will always have to deal with this, but I'm getting better with it.

It got serious sometimes.  In the last few years in particular.  I would be on an overpass on the road, looking down at the highway below, timing the cars that go by so I could jump at the right (wrong?) time.  I've stared down at the riverbanks of the Petitcodiac River.  I imagined running away into the woods and never coming back.  Driving my car into the river.  Walking in front of a speeding truck.  Pills.  I thought of a lot of ways.  It's not a good thing to spend your time thinking of.

In March of this year, I had such a terrible meltdown that I cut off the hair I grew and loved for 15 years, out of spite for myself.  I hate that I make Janice go through this when it happens to me.  She's done nothing to deserve having to deal with it, but she always does, and makes it better in the end.  But I've never quite figured out how to express myself; what's going on in my head and my heart.  I can try.  But I don't always succeed.

I left the house after I cut my hair off that evening, and walked for hours alone outside in the dark night, which is what I often do when I feel like I've got nowhere to turn to.  I wind up leaving Janice behind worrying where I went, or what I'll do to myself.  I never mean to hurt her.  My intention is to hurt myself; punish myself for my own behavior... for just being me.

There are people I know who still don't get it.  Family and friends included.  Some of them seem to completely disregard what I'm dealing with and tell me to get a job.  Go out to that social function.  Meet all the folks at that gathering you're expected at.  They have no clue how hard and emotionally draining that can be for me.  I'm out for this long walk to nowhere realizing this song was written for ME.  And many others like me, of course.

If you listen to this, you can hear it's me singing this to Janice as I'm out trying to recover from my last massive breakdown.  "What if I run away to Mars?  Would you find me in the stars?  Would you miss me in the end if I run out of oxygen, when I run away to Mars?"  

But it's at "3 2 1 I miss you.  I'm sorry I got issues." that I lose it almost every time.  You can hear his voice shake in that part, clearly singing it from a soft spot in his heart.  It's at this point in the song that I realize even more how much pain Janice has endured through my own pain.  I like singing this out loud, but when I get to this part I'm pretty much done because it hits me in my own heart.  Now when Janice hears it, she cries too, for me, just as I do for her.

I'm thankful for this song because it gave me a new way to express what's in my head when these days happen.  The video is rather artsy.  The song and video are influenced by a couple of movies, "Interstellar" and "The Martian", because of their isolationist stories and feelings of longing and loneliness.  The singer has a star on his eye like Paul Stanley in KISS, and kind of reminds me of the 'friendly angel' character in an old Star Trek TOS episode.  The ending of the song is very sad to me, because it sounds like he's getting lost and further away.  But I think that's the point.

Anyway, it's that important to me at this point in my life, when I feel like I may be at a turning point.  I've read a few books that have made me look at things very differently, and it's also helped a lot.  A key point being aware of your own ego, and whether or not you're making decisions based on it, or forming opinions.  I read that when you die, your ego dies with your body, and the rest of you carries on.  Imagine being free of ego!  That would be blissful.  And though I'll never be free of it until my time comes, I can definitely learn to control it.  And that's been key for me the last several months.  It's hard to do, though.  It takes practice, and awareness.  But it's so freeing.  

And this song helped in that healing.  It's a landmark song for me in my whole life.  Apparently I'm not the only one.  It's got a bigger following than I realized.

Maybe it'll connect with you for your own reasons.

See and hear Talk's "Run Away to Mars" here.

598

Not really sure how to get this post going.

Life is great.  The wife is off work for what may be the majority of the year to heal up from knee surgeries.  Recovery from her left knee replacement has been exemplary.  She's determined to get "back to normal" ASAP, but she has to negotiate that with her body.  Nonetheless, building back from such major surgery has been nothing beyond fantastic.  She now awaits a date to have her right knee done, which is sooner than later - the coming months - as it's in bad shape itself.  She actually fell going down the entrance steps outside because her right knee gave way, just like her left knee used to do.  She's okay, just a bruised hand and some road burn on her leg, but it could have been a lot worse.  This all will be rectified soon enough, but I need to watch her. 

Janice says she absolutely loves her time off work with me.  I certainly do.  Being alone half the day just blows.  Good thing I have Marvelous Marbles Hagler with me at all times.  He hardly ever leaves me alone.  He's going to be 19 in June (!), and since we've switched him from dry food to wet Blue Buffalo food, he seems healthier than he's ever been.  We've always fed him the best and always will.  His treats are freeze-dried meat, chicken and salmon, which he absolutely loves, and if you get that stuff at Costco, it's incredibly cheap.  We'll never give him anything else.  And we haven't.

Easter brings Lenten season, which we as practicing Catholics follow.  Janice gave up her beloved chips, and I gave up alcohol.  I've come to love having one or two drinks here and there, and certainly miss it, as it helps round the edges.  Rarely to I ever have more than that, though.  I never go over three.  You're allowed a reprieve on Sundays during Lent, but we choose to go all the way and abstain every day during Lent.  Today is Good Friday as I write this.  We attended mass and I did both readings.  The weather this month has been a challenge for Janice's heavy arthritis issues, and this was a mass where a lot of standing happens.  Just a nuisance, though.  The knee, that is.

For myself... it's been a little up and down since August last year.  I'd marked the anniversary of a year on August 2 since my last self-harm episode.  Each one, though further apart, seeming worse than the last.  I couldn't really find my inner peace after dealing with stuff late that summer.  November and December were months from hell for Janice and me, concluding with a hellacious stomach virus that saw me passing out once again and breaking yet another rib.  I think Janice had it worse, though.
The year began quite peacefully.  January is usually a tough month for me, but I handled it pretty good this time.  It seems that the further I put those self-harm episodes behind me, the more solace out if it I got.  Funny enough, I'd gotten a lot of compliments about my hair in recent times, from girls and guys alike.  I'll take that where I can get it, though Janice heaps praise on me all the time.  She's steadied my ship through some pretty choppy waters in my life.  I'm not kidding when I say she's the toughest, strongest person I know.  Yes, she's my wife, of course I'll say that, but if she weren't, I feel like I'd still say that.  She'll tell you she has the best support possible through me.  I try my best, but I don't feel quite worthy of such accolades.

We may get a decent tax return this year, so we hope to be able to re-invest that into bringing the house closer to where we want it.  We still need a couple of doors, and some driveway repairs, among a few other things.  The prospect of a nice summer is there and we're looking very forward to it.  Certainly it has to be better than this March has been.  I think it must have rained every day.  There's flooding around the neighborhood in many yards and some street corners.  Very little snow in Moncton this year, though.

Friend-wise, we've had Nat come over several times.  She likes being around us, and vice versa.  She's the only one we've really seen so far this year.  This isn't to denigrate the friends we have besides her, though, as contact is a two-way street.  Getting older seems to spread the divide.  I have to also add that I'm not the greatest of friends to anyone.  I guess I can blame it on my recurrent issues with whatever disability I have, but the bottom line there is that I'm just not that great of a friend or relative.  I don't say that to 'beat myself up' or anything, either.  It's just a logical deduction of how badly I conduct relationships.  I'd love to sort this stuff out with a psychologist, but, that's a pay-to-play deal.  Thus I self-medicate.  Cannabis oil and gummies have been quite the fire extinguisher.  I kind of wish I could smoke it, but if I do, I'll end up coughing up a lung, since I've tried to.  Smoking it gives you instant effects, whereas you have to wait a bit with what I take, though the effects are much longer lasting.  It's a wonderful thing to feel happy in the midst of a storm. 

The past couple of weeks has been a challenge though,  I was faced with information from Janice that I prefer not to discuss here.  It wound up being very tough to deal with.  All kinds of thoughts went through my head as I took one of my epic walks to try to clear my head.  I was out for over three hours in the night.  When I came home, I went to bed and basically shut down.  I couldn't resolve how my head and my heart were trying to break things down.  I wound up in this haze that I couldn't seem to fight my way out of.  Similar to last November, I just resigned myself to bed for three days without eating or drinking.  Perhaps that's a form of self-harm, but so is smoking and no one counts that.  But I sort of used it as a punishment for not being an adequate husband and father, based on what Janice had told me, which to anyone else would be viewed as harmless.  But I'm compromised.  I take 100 mg of Sertraline, or Zoloft, to keep the ship level.  It's not foolproof.  

After three days of this, I spoke to Janice about what bothered me so much.  I don't know how to explain the intense thoughts I was dealing with.  I've long felt that I've been inadequate as a husband and father, especially after being put on disability, though I've adjusted to that somewhat.  It was hard to make Janice really understand where I was at.  My inability to come to some kind of resolution with this wreaked havoc on my mind, and a breakdown was imminent.  I took the hair clippers and cut off all my hair, with Janice trying valiantly to stop me.  She asked me why I did it.  "Because I fucking hate myself!" I screamed.  Smashing a plastic case over my head, punching my left eye socket.  Janice was beside herself in sadness and frustration over not being able to do anything.  I am not kind to myself when I stonewall her like this.  The fact is, I try to keep it inside and not have my troubles migrating to others.  I do write about it, like this.  I find it somewhat therapeutic.  Not to mention, I don't keep my mental health problems a secret.  No one should!  Far worse things can happen.  I had an open bottle of pills in my hand as I sat looking at them.  Janice took them from me.  "I really don't want to live anymore."  Imagine her hearing those words come out of the man she loves most.  But I was at a point where I'm getting so tired of fighting this battle.  I even started writing a draft of my will.  I just didn't know if I could find my way out of this.  You can imagine Janice must have felt when she saw me writing it on my laptop.

My last post was about Janice and her knee surgery, as she braced for the pain of recovery.  The long incision mark and scar on her leg is indicative as to what she was dealing with.  Everyone can see it, and I made sure they did, because I want people to understand.  

I don't have an incision mark to show you, or a wound that needs repair (thank God).  The turmoil I face in my own mind is mine alone, and I can only ask those who know me to please believe me.  I have numerous friends and even relatives who say they do, but I know they don't.  This is a heavy cross to carry, knowing that someone who knows me isn't totally convinced.  I can deal with it, but when I fall into this dark state, I can deal with it far less.  It makes this feeling of being alone more intense.  And you do feel alone when there's no real help.  Janice's knee needed replacing, x-rays proved that, as did numerous diagnoses.  Me?  I have a psychologist I can't afford, and a psychiatrist who unceremoniously curbed me.  And that's what I mean by feeling alone.  I pretty much decide how much of my meds that I take.  And I've decided to go from 100 mg of Zoloft to 150, which I know my doctor would say that that's what he would've done.  The tradeoff is, I'm more numb.  It quells the sadness and fear and anger, but it also blunts any feelings of joy or happiness.  But I'm alive, right?

My recovery from this last attack/breakdown/whateveryouwanttocallit is taking a little longer.  I'm not getting any younger, so my resilience is less.  All I can do is be proactive in keeping myself out of situations where I know I might come off the rails.  For 598 days, I stayed on the tracks.  I hold hope that one day I won't be counting the days anymore between these incidents.

One of the biggest reasons I publish these blogs is to speak up about mental illness.  I'm hesitant to verbally talk about it, so I write.  I encourage anyone who's dealing with similar things to not be silent.  Silence can be a killer.  Find someone to talk to who will listen.  I have my wife.  If I didn't, I don't know exactly where I'd be right now.  Or, if I'd be.  Here in this region, you can call 988, which is the suicide prevention hotline.  

I'm okay now, and I will be okay.  

I hope this finds YOU more than just okay. 

Gary matters

 So long, summer, hello fall.  

It was a decent summer on my end, I guess.  A lot of folks would think, "well, if I had most of spring and all of summer off, I'd be pretty damn happy!"  Because I've been off since April 23 due to issues surrounding my mental illness.  Fact really is, it's been lonely.  My wife Janice was able to scatter her vacation days throughout the season so we could spend time together at various points through the short months, so that part of it was nice.  

But here's the deal... the spectre of being off work a lot longer is staring at me in the mirror.  I thought about things a little bit in depth the other day, and something occurred to me:  With every job I've had in my life, everything I did, the self-loathing, self-harm and crashing confidence has tailed me everywhere I went.  I can't actually blame the jobs I've had or any people I've worked with for my troubles on the job.  Work is where I largely can't center myself when I confront adversity.  It's just that at my current job, I encounter adversity a lot.  In fact, where I've been employed in retail for the vast majority of my working life, it's where the stress has heightened the most.  The more people I deal with, it seems, the more trouble I have.  That's a shortcoming of my own.  If there were actually issues with any given job, others didn't seem to experience them as much as I have.  Therefore, the issues lie with me.

The frequency of my anxiety attacks has lessened considerably since I've been off work.  But the fact of the matter is that they still happen.  Only twice since I've been off, however.  That doesn't mean that just because I'm not at work, they won't happen.  A couple of weeks ago, I got into a spat online defending a sibling of mine on issues related to the whole Covid mess going on, and the related vaccines.  I wound up being personally attacked by at least a couple of people, rather unfairly, and though I recognized this and tried to be conciliatory, it just seemed to get worse.  When multiple people... i.e. two or more... focus their anger on somebody like me for whatever reasons, I tend to join them.  I literally bashed myself.  It was late, and I got into this altercation with these two people I don't even know, and I wound up just leaving it and trying to go to sleep.  The way my brain works, though, it won't let me off that easily.  For whatever reason, I decided to try to sleep without my THC oil though, and a couple of hours later I was there in bed, awake, with my brain recycling what I just dealt with online.  It festered itself into me blaming myself for the whole thing.  I felt like I was the one who was wrong (I wasn't), and that I was being a stupid ass of a person, and that I really was literally stupid.  I do this a lot.  But this got out of control.  I smashed that can in my forehead multiple times so hard, that it bled in two places.  For a week I wound up trying to get my wits about me after it all happened, staggering around with my bad balance, and trying to come down from the horrific high point of self-violence.  It's hard to do.  I'm not myself for at least a week after something like this happens.  The worst thing about all of it is that Janice has to witness it all.  She's quite remarkable in how she handles it.  She stays calm and offers support in any way she can.  It's almost like talking a guy down off a bridge who's about to jump.  I don't know what would become of me if she wasn't around.

I'm pretty much back to where I was before all that happened now.  And I have to wonder... until when?  What will set me off next time?  Can I avoid it?  It's worth noting that, since this is a public forum for anyone to read, that I've never hurt anyone physically over this illness or anything else for that matter.  But the emotional distress caused, though involuntarily, can be just as bad, and I'm aware of this.  This adds to my guilt.  I guess you could say if you're holding a bowl while someone's filling it with hot soup, and there's one scoop too many and the bowl overflows, your hands get burned and you drop the whole bowl.  Perhaps a series of events is what touches these things off sometimes... the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak.

I've never really learned how to properly deal with it all, because throughout the last few decades, we've been in a state of recovery financially.  We weren't real good with money from the get-go.  We signed a lousy mortgage deal with a broker when we got the house (we were totally green), and we fixed that with financial advice from a debt consolidator, but not before we dug ourselves into a fairly large hole.  I blame myself for that, once again.  In the beginning, I was making our budgets, and failed rather fantastically at it.  But Janice took that over, and now we're here, with no credit card debt, no outstanding bills, and things more in balance than they ever were since we got together 30 years ago.  Thus, we can kinda-sorta handle paying for counseling maybe once a month, for now.  The fact that this isn't covered by medicare or our paid health insurance is disheartening, though.  If I needed medical attention for my burned hand from that bowl of soup, I'd get it no questions asked, for free even.  But since you can't see mental illness, not everyone believes it, and you're often on your own.  I have cuts healing on my forehead right now that actually allows you to 'see' it, and I've noticed that got all kinds of attention and support, which I obviously appreciate; but it illustrates my point.  I've had my GP looking after me since I admitted my self-harm struggles back in '96 after my daughter was born, and I knew I had to do something because she deserved a daddy.  Enter Zoloft, and not long after that, my mindset changed.  The severity and frequency of anxiety attacks lessened, and I was able to be more reflective of situations.  Zoloft quite literally saved my life, in tandem with Janice.  Whenever I tried to come off of the drug, though, once I was clear of it I'd wind up being the person I was before I was taking it.  The big drawbacks to taking anti-depressants are well-known.  Life becomes somewhat dulled.  Sensations are less sensational.  Apathy heightens.  Worst of all, the libido pretty much flatlines.  You kind of trade being subject to self-incrimination for being a zombie.  That might be overstating it a little, but anyone who's ever been on SSRI's knows exactly what I mean.  There's a trade-off, but I'll take the latter, because I get to still be alive.  

What I'm going to have to do is take notes from my counselor, I think, and recite to myself the advice I'm given.  My consultations are actually over the phone, with the option of video chat, so if I can get my wits about me enough, I'll have to step up to that.  But I'm made to think of things in different perspectives, and that's clearly a good thing.  I originally decided to pay for counseling with the possibility of getting EMDR treatment, which I've been told about by several friends.  It sounds heavy, but I'm willing to try almost anything to get ahead of this.  A friend of mine, Mima, directed me to a video by a doctor who has a largely holistic approach to issues related to depression and anxiety.  Something I did pick up was a trick to learn to love yourself, with which I had no freakin' idea what to do.  But he said you have to love your brain.  Give it a name and talk to it.  It's only been a few days since I've done this, but it seems to help.  I call my brain "Gary", an acronym for 'gray', as in gray matter that makes up the brain.  So a negative thought will creep up on me, as they always do, and I'll have a chat with him.  "Gary!  Come on, you know better than that.  That's NOT how it is and you know it.  Snap out of it!  I love you, man!"  When I inject some humor into it, it seems to help, even.  I mean, frig, Janice and me give names to everything.  We call our Panasonic TV 'Ms. Viera', our car 'Big Red' (it's not big, but it's a male designation, so to personify Big Red we gave him/it the title to make him/it 'feel more confident'.  I know), our air fryer Nina the Ninja, even our laptops.  Janice's Hewlett Packard computer's name is 'Hugh'.  We pretend it always says 'we are Hugh!' after the famous Star Trek TNG episode with the Borg character with that name.  My 11 inch laptop is 'Little Ace'.  And we put words into our cat Marbles' mouth all the time.  Why not Gary??  

I overcame my fear of spiders years ago by personifying them.  I put myself in their spot.  A little thing looking up at this ginormous beast of a human being.  "You're not gonna hurt me are you?"  I'd say on its behalf.  Immediately, you're giving that little spider a sense of self awareness.  Now my wife nicknames me the Spider Monkey, because I love spiders and monkeys.  Whenever I see a spider in the house, I'll talk to him/her, gently escort it into a glass, and bring her outside where she's safe, and where all the food is.  I get the instant gratification of having saved a little bitty life, as well as a way to make peace with these little creatures.  Over the years, it's become amusing.  Just a couple of months ago, there was a spider in the corner of our bedroom, and she was just minding her own business, so we left her alone.  But the next day webs were showing up, so I literally spoke to her.  "K, look, I'm going to have to move you someplace else, because there'll be no mess in here."  She'll dodge the glass I try to corral her in, and I'll try the next night.  So then, the next evening, she wound up directly on the wall straight above my head (this kind of thing happens with me a LOT).  I was on my laptop surfing the web, no pun intended, and just let her be while she spied on me.  Not long after, she lost her footing or something on the wall and fell between my glasses and my eyes and scurried away.  I thought it was quite funny, I literally laughed out loud.  "K, look.... I know you didn't mean that.  I'll wait for you to come back and I'll try to help you tomorrow."  Tomorrow comes, and there she is, right on the wall on my side of the bed again.  She fell on the floor and I helped her into the glass ... "atta girl!  Now you're being good!"  ... and bid her farewell as I brought her outside.

That was a lengthy story to illustrate my point that, if you name something and personify it, you can form a relationship of sorts.  So I've started a relationship with Gary.  It's yet to be seen if there's any longevity to this strategy, but I'm willing to try anything reasonable.  The Gary Strategy has yet to be fully tested, but it's an active one.  And I like it up to this point.  And Janice thinks it's cute.

This, coupled with Janice and me going back to the gym since the beginning of August, and my therapy added to it, is all in an effort to calm down the racket in my head.  Since I've been dealing with this all my life, I don't expect to ever be rid of it completely.  But I do want to take extra measures to cope with it.  Not working is allowing me the time and space to do this.  In fact, just writing this is also an effective coping mechanism.  

What my future holds monetarily is the part that scares me the most.  I can't keep switching jobs because I'm having vicious anxiety attacks at work.  The source problem needs to be addressed.  Confidence is a major key to beating back this illness to a more manageable level.  Perhaps my admission that I'll never fully be recovered from this is also a step toward realizing this as a disability as well, because there's a large part of me that feels guilty for accepting that label.  Still, disability benefits would help keep me alive, but definitely not thrive.  And that's bothersome to think of.

Ultimately, time will tell whether this path I'm currently on will lead me to sunnier days.  Odds are it won't, but I can't give up hope either.

If you've been kind enough to read this and/or offer your support, please know I acknowledge it.  A lot of people have indeed given up on me and are just 'peripheral' friends.  And that's fine, we all have those.  But I know I'm a lot more challenging to have as a friend than most others.

GARY!!!!  Smarten the fuck up!!

There's what I'm talking about.  

Thanks for reading.

the abyss

 Not going to make this too long.  

I suffered a pretty bad anxiety attack a few days ago.  I've been in 'recovery mode' since, and I'm finding it hard to get back; but I will.

But I'm so tired of having to be resilient.  I hate it when it happens, so much.  What can be a gloriously wonderful day can turn on a dime by a trigger that pulls you right back into the abyss.  And it seems the only way out of that abyss is purging via self-harm.  The very, very worst thing about it all is that my wife often witnesses it happening.  And she feels helpless to stop it when it happens.

Sometimes the stress is remarkable.  Right now I'm dealing with lack of support from my employer by being cut down to part time (from 40 hours/week to 28, which they claim is the bare minimum full time hours; part time to everyone else).  This leaves me feeling unwelcome to go back.  I see the writing on the wall, and I've seen it for a while now. The company I work for is cutting my position in most locations, but my former boss stood up for me because of my loyalty and quality of work.  But now he's gone, and so is my support.  Many others left because he did.  In the end, it means I need to find other work.  It's a feeling someone like me, who's afflicted with this anxiety/PTSD/depression illness, has a hard time dealing with, or finding a positive outlook on.

I did just find a page that very much describes what people like me deals with, and it hits the mark right on the head.  For those who have a hard time dealing, or understanding, it's kind of a must-read.

Thanks for dropping by my humble little corner of the web.

Nobody nodes the trouble I've seen...

 March 7... already.  Funny how time seems to be flying, until you think about this whole Covid thing, then it seems like time is crawling.  I guess it's because we feel like we're being cheated of the time spent battling this thing.  It seems like it'll never end.

When I last left off in my blog here, things were looking up.  I seemed to have a handle on my whole depression/anxiety/PTSD issues.  But then, reality hit.  And I took a sharp left turn at the beginning of the year, and I'm struggling to get on the right track again.  I'm still not there.  It's very hard.

I mused that the holidays are hard on me every year last post, and that's a fact that remains, but I think most of us noticed a difference around us this past holiday season.  December in general is a hard month to get through.  For one thing, where I work, Christmas season takes a toll on you.  But it was even worse this time out because people's tolerance is already being tested with the current restrictions around everything.  Still, it did make me stop and think for the first time why I get so anxious at that time of year.  I wondered if I actually do have PTSD.  There's a friend of mine who was a cop and retired, and told me some stories of why she acquired PTSD herself, and that, I truly believe, is what she has.  She experienced serious trauma on the job and her healing is ongoing, but thankfully, paid for because of what her line of work was.

That made me think... she thought actually that I have PTSD.  This was a while ago, and I entertained the idea that I might have it, but ultimately dismissed it.  Until I started thinking about this last December.  And it all makes sense when I realized that, man, a lot of crap happened during the month of December in my past.  

When I was a little boy, amongst a family of 6 siblings and my parents, every Christmas almost, I got sick.  Like, really sick.  The worst being when I was five or six, when all I did through the holidays was barf.  I threw up so much that I couldn't get to the bathroom on my own.  In the holiday seasons following, I got sick at Christmas some more, until I got into my teens, finally.  Dad died when I was 12, so that jumbled up any kind of normalcy life might have for the teen years.  But when I turned 14, in the same days when John Lennon died (maybe the exact day, I'm not sure), I spent two weeks in the hospital after being hit by a car and went into a coma for a night.  Scary times, for sure, but my God, what Mom must've went through.  They did take this particular concussion seriously, because it was quite serious, as you might imagine.  I seemed to deal with it okay, until time went on and revealed other issues.  But it was a very tough time for me, too.  Nightmarish. 

So with all of this in mind, it makes sense that the holiday season heightens PTSD symptoms.  It's why I withdraw more, get anxious with people, and generally just feel more agitated than I might if it was summer or something.  Take, for example, what happened with me a couple of years ago, when during Christmas season at work I took it on the chin from a lot of rude and irate customers.  Actually took it on the heel a couple of times, when seniors would ram into me to attempt to make me move.  I told Janice about it and I think she half believed me, until she actually saw it for herself one day when one old man did just that.  But retail can be a very, very challenging place during the holidays.  If you're mentally compromised like me, that just adds more ingredients to the toxic soup.  I wound up self-harming myself to an alarming degree, in that it was visible to everyone.  I pleaded with my boss at the time to let me have weekends off, since that tended to be when most of my incidents happened.  That was rejected, as I expected, and when the new year hit, I made the call to take myself out of work for a week or so.  Upon seeing my doctors, they decided to take me off for three months.  When I went back eventually, I was finally offered weekends off.  That was a bit of a game changer.  I stabilized substantially, and kind of reset myself when I went back to work.  Still, the point of all this is, a lot of the trouble originated during December.  

I don't know why I didn't think of it before.  So much trouble happened for me during that month over my lifetime.  I even wound up with a bleeding ulcer in December of 84 when I was in my later teens.  I was white as a ghost and dangerously anemic, and almost didn't seek help for it until my mother heard me nearly pass out in the bathroom after I'd filled the toilet with blood.  I was close to developing a perforated ulcer, which would've been even more serious and potentially more life threatening.  Thankfully, the wonder drug at the time, Tagamet, healed my ulcer up and I was good to go in January.  I missed school for most of December because clearly, I wasn't able to attend.  Anyway, my point being, December has such a stressful history for me, that I stop to ponder that if I really do have PTSD, it flares up the most in that month.  I would tell my psychiatrist this info if I actually had one.  

Recent revelations have forced me to ponder what to do with myself regarding my health in general.  I went to see my ENT over voice issues I was having that were getting progressively worse.  As it tuns out, I had 2 polyps on my vocal cords that needed to come out.  The doc told me they were 'singer's nodules', which I find amusing, since I'm not much of a singer at all.  Anyway, I had to take a Covid test before surgery, which was less than fun.  It almost felt like they were trying to impregnate my brain with a cotton swab.  They just have to find a better way to test for coronavirus than this, as I know it makes a lot of people hesitate because it's quite well known how difficult it can be.  But, it came back negative, so the surgery was a go.  It was just day surgery, thank God, and I was in and out of the hospital within two or three hours.  But the rest of that day was very rough to get through.  I took a bad reaction to what I think was a combination of meds; but I was okay the next day.  I was off work for two weeks to let my voice recover.  But here's the thing.....

.... It didn't.  My voice even seemed to have gotten worse.  When I went for my follow-up appointment with the ENT, she sent a camera down my throat and found yet another polyp that developed since the surgery.  That started a discussion.  She wondered why it just popped up like that so quickly, so she told me she was sending me to a gastro doctor to find out if I have excessive stomach acid issues.  I told her that stress is likely playing a role and that I have anxiety issues, without going too far into detail.  She told me to seek out a psychiatrist she specifically named - which is one of two in the city, the other one being the one who stopped seeing me.  So, I got a burst of optimism about that particular issue.  But the revelation that I also have a polyp in my stomach now, along with the mystery polyp in my throat, put my worry into overdrive.  I'm still waiting on an appointment with the gastro doctor, which my ENT noted to be as 'semi-urgent'.  That's not terribly comforting either.  She told me I'll be seeing her in six weeks to figure out when the newest nodule in my throat will come out via surgery, but she wants to get to the bottom of why it's there in the first place, hence the gastro doctor.  I'm not extremely worried, now that some time has passed, but I am anxious to get it behind me.  

The new manager that I work for isn't turning out to be the source of stress I expected, but changes are happening, and that leaves me agitated sometimes.  Still, change doesn't always come smoothly, so I accept that.  As it is right now, I don't feel there's any threat to my job security.  My new boss tells me quite frequently that I'm doing a good job, so that much is good.  I've found that some staff are kind of banding together in support of each other, including me, as we adjust to new things.  Still, stress is still a factor at work, which is detrimentally affecting me via digestive issues.  The whole Covid mess just compounds everything.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a sense of hopelessness as we try to get through this thing.  My wife thinks we'll be wearing masks all the time from here on out.  It sure feels that way sometimes.  

Plus the beginning of the year left a mark on me that I can't seem to shrug off.  Suffice to say that my self-image has taken a nose dive that resulted in changes to my behavior that some might see as making me seem more withdrawn, even boring.  I recovered somewhat, but my self-image issues are worsening, and I don't know how to pull out of it.  As it turns out, the new psychiatrist I was supposed to see won't take any more patients, so I have no one professionally to turn to now, leaving me to self-treat as best I can.  I've even been told I'm unapproachable.  So I guess I'll get help from..... NO ONE.  Despite what Bell's Let's Talk campaign might brag to you about, treatment for mental health is getting worse and worse every year, and I don't see it getting better, despite public outcry.  

I'm not writing this stuff to get sympathy or something, either.  I'm writing it for the record and for a point of reference.  If I ever get to see a professional again, I can point to this blog to help explain things as pertaining to my own state of mental health.  Not to mention, to reach out to anyone who might be reading this that they're not alone if they're dealing with similar issues.  The fact is, though, I have no fucking idea what to do now.  I even wondered if I'm headed for permanent disability over all this.  That's not something I want.

I guess I'll have to sit tight and see what my near future appointments serve up as they relate to all these issues.  I'll try to be cautiously optimistic.

In the meantime, I give thanks to my family and friends for any support they've shown, and especially to my wife for enduring ... well, ME.  I realize all of this doesn't exactly make me look terribly attractive.  Not that I ever was.

As a side note, please get your Covid vaccination when your turn comes up so we can all get out of this awful mess we're in.  Don't buy into alarmists trying to tell you Bill Gates is trying to plant microchips in you or that you'll turn into Frankenstein or something.  Trust science.  It's fact based.

Thanks as always for reading.  I value every person who cares to check this blog out.  

God bless, and stay safe, and don't give in to hate.

GET UP, and get that COVID outta here

 2021 is here!  Finally.  But let's not kid ourselves.  We ain't out of the woods yet.  We're still in the thick of it.  

Covid pretty much sucked the life out of the year, didn't it.  That was rhetorical.  But every holiday, every birthday, every day off, was tempered by this historic illness.  We weren't allowed to be around a lot of people.  Folks died alone in their hospital rooms because no one was allowed around them because of how contagious this damned thing is.  And there are/were deniers and skeptics that this is actually happening, which just floors me.  Since '16 when Trump was elected, trust in media has eroded very quickly in favor of bullshit false 'facts', when in reality, only the fringe news sites and stations that support the authoritarian-wannabe were truly guilty of mass falsehood spreading.  The weak-minded bought into it, but even more scary, people you would expect to come out against this kind of scary fascism actually wound up supporting it.  It got scarier every year since then, and now it's coming to an explosive end later this month.  Make no mistake... the U.S. is the country seen as the leaders of the free world, but even countries around the world watching them feel sorry for them and are frightened at what they're becoming.  Being in Canada, we're direct next-door neighbors, so what happens there has the biggest effect on us first.  No one in the media outside of Canada's own seems to recognize that fact.  

On a personal level, things haven't been too bad since I last posted here on Ragnar.  This in spite of a crazier than usual holiday season.  You might have heard that some companies actually thrived during the pandemic, while others simply shut down.  I work for one of the thriving companies, where business actually went bionic.  My wife had it the same.  Her postal outlet that she runs is experiencing record business, thanks in no small part to how she operates the place with our daughter and one other who handles a shift or two a week.  Myself, I've worked overtime pretty much every week, and my job's quite physical, so I go home every day wiped right out.  We quit the gym because of too many restrictions due to Covid, and we'll go back when it's back to normal.  Whenever that is.  

Regarding myself and my head's state, I've actually kept things together through the season.  Only one panic attack... and I don't even remember it, because I guess I had it in my sleep.  Janice witnessed it, so I can't really say what I did, except that I appeared to be 'convulsing' before I actually got up and whatever happened.  All I remember is taking THC oil that Janice administered to me.  I think during that day, signs of an attack were there, but I just didn't really pick up on it.  I was fidgety, annoyed and as Janice would say, had the 'jimmy legs' where I was twitching all the time.  I remember coming around and feeling exhausted, though, because those attacks are exhausting.  I'm quite wary of what can happen when I experience one of these phases.  I often dream about them -- dream of going through them.  But this was the first time I know of that I acted one out in my sleep.  

But I don't know what exactly to do about that.  I have no psychologist, because it's not free and quite pricey.  I have no psychiatrist because he bailed on me.  And my own doctor only really believes me if Janice vouches for me.  In other words, I'm on my own.  I don't believe in pseudo self-help books or videos or news clippings or anything, because each and every one of us experiences something different.  I can be watching a video, for example, of somebody telling me something related to a person with depression and anxiety, but it does not address me because my circumstances are so different.  As I've exhaustively stated before, I've had multiple concussions throughout my life, along with a number of traumatic experiences.  YES, people have been through worse.  But no one experiences the same as another every time.  I'm quite lucky to be alive.  Thanks in large part to my wife and my daughter.

Anyway... apart from that 'phantom' anxiety bout, I've maintained the course quite well.  There are other health things to be addressed.  My ENT sent me for a barium x-ray of my digestive tract, suspicious that the nodes on my vocal cords, which I'm having removed via surgery January 18, might be the result of acid reflux.  I don't believe that to be the case, but getting a closer look at my stomach isn't something I object to, in order to rule out everything.  She thinks I might have a hernia in my tract.  If that's true, that could be yet another surgery, though only laproscopic and nothing too major.  Getting my nodes taken out isn't terribly major either.  It'll leave me voiceless for a couple of weeks, which takes me out of work for that time.  It seems the beginning of the year is where I have to watch it.  Last year in February, I broke my wrist.  A year before that, I was taken off for stress leave for three months.  Before that, I had one year that started with sinus surgery, followed by knee surgery, plus multiple bouts with kidney stones that required multiple surgeries.  So the beginning of every year these days gives me the heebie-jeebies a little.  

I guess I can take solace in the fact that every time I was confronted with something, after it knocked me down I always got back up.  When I did see a psychologist before my coverage ran out, she told me I was resilient and should tell myself that.  If I was told that story about someone else, I would tell them they were resilient.  Why wouldn't I say that about myself?  But I can't.  Most of the time, I feel like I deserve what I get.  I have quite a guilt complex, I guess.  If I have bad "karma", I'd like to know how much more I have to pay.  And with what.  But, alas, I don't believe in karma.  Too many really bad folks get away with everything, and too many good folks never get a break.  It's nonsense.

One challenge facing me in the new year is my manager at work.  The guy I've had for ten years is leaving, and a new one is coming in.  Nothing at all against the new guy, I don't even know him.  But the boss I know, knew me.   He knows my medical history and all the quirks related to it, and was very supportive.  I think I've been quite lucky that way.  When I leave for surgery in a couple of weeks, the old boss will be going and the new one stepping in.  I guess I'm kind of nervous because I've dealt with many asshole bosses since I left driving for BJ's Subs and Catering in '07.  Two of those bosses made me seek supplemental help for my anxiety and mental issues.  I guess I'll remain hopeful and be cautiously optimistic.

Anyway, the road ahead...  I'm looking forward to getting this vaccine, and hoping to God everyone who's against it comes around and gets it too.  There sure are a lot of conspiracy theories out there against it.  One thing I've found about conspiracy theories (ever notice the very word contains the words 'cons' and 'piracy'?) is that they're always bullshit.  I used to love that stuff.  It was great entertainment.  But not a lot more than that.  For too many, they've taken the place of facts and useful information and science.  It really pisses me off with so many of these church goers saying they're above the law and that God will protect them when they go to mass.  Never mind that you're not supposed to put God to the test.  You can be faithful and still go by the rules that society presents when things like Covid go awry.  

How well the world prospers in the year to come depends solely on how many people take the vaccine against this crushing illness.  I'll lean toward the positive side, and hope that this coming summer brings us back to some semblance of normality.  I refuse to accept the term 'new normal'.  This is NOT normal, and I do not accept it as such for any length of time.  We've had to make adjustments to deal with this abnormal situation.  To say it's the 'new normal' is to relinquish hope.  We will get back to normal, but this is not normal, what we're dealing with right now.  But... we won't get back to normal if we're going to constantly remain divided.  Division is borne from far right politics.  And by far right, I don't necessarily mean conservatives.  Far left is just as dangerous... but there is no far left.  You might argue that with me, but we've never been in any danger of going that way.  We ARE in danger of slipping into totalitarianism and authoritarianism.  The Progressive Conservatives in Canada, for instance, gave way to just Conservatives.  Removing 'Progressive' from the title is everything.  The PC's, at least, were very aware of environmental issues; even if I didn't agree with much of their financial credo.  When the PC's became C's, Harper came in and annihilated scientific records related to preserving the environment and deregulated many of the laws and rules people had to follow to protect them.  Trump is doing even worse to his country.  I still feel a stir of anger in me when I think about when Harper made a clandestine meeting with Trump at the White House at the beginning of his presidency.  No one knows what they discussed.  I suspect no one ever will know.  But Stephen Harper scared me the way Trump does.  He's basically Trump with a brain.  I have hope with the Conservative's new leader Erin O'Toole, though, he at least doesn't seem as mean spirited and confrontational as his predecessor.  The only way I'd want to see the Conservatives take over right now is with a minority government; although really, that's how I like all my governments.  The people  in power need to stay accountable that way.  It's why I'm glad Trudeau's Liberals are a minority.  Too many in his cabinet don't know their asses from their elbows.  Bill Morneau, his now former finance minister, buried Canada in debt long before Covid did.  If they didn't have a path to getting out of our $20 billion deficit before Covid hit, how are they supposed to get us out of this $400 billion tsunami?  The Conservatives would bring in austerity measures, which are highly unethical when Harper pulled it.  That's why I say. sure, give the Cons a shot... with a MINORITY.  I can just imagine where we'd be if the Liberals pulled off a majority last election.  All this being said... I'm still Green all the way.  They're the only realistic party out there; though the NDP impresses me more and more these days too.

When Lent comes along in February, I'm going to be making a few 'sacrifices'.  I'll be cutting down drastically on meat consumption, like we do every year, but also, I'll put social media completely on hold.  Facebook has become Hatebook.  I never took to Twitter because that's the most toxic place of all of them.  I'll have to be more active with my e-mail.  But there are far too many lies and hatred spewing from my computer screen these days.  It's downright sad.  If I have any friend on social media that shows crazy negativity without any facts to back it up, they're gone.  I hate doing that, too.

Anyway, the new year is here, we're scheduled to see KISS in Bangor in August, which was postponed from last September, and it'll just be nice if we can get to a place where we don't need to wear a mask or count the people who are around us.  This is not how we're supposed to live... but it's how we have to live until this virus is defeated once and for all.

Thanks for tuning in to read this.  I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year.  Better times are on the horizon.

Till then, fire up the colortinis and watch the pictures as they fly through the air.

Good night.

Judgment Daze

I'm one of those folks that has a bit of a tough time with the holiday season.  I fell into quite a funk over the past week or so, actually.  I certainly won't point fingers at even one single person, because I've determined that it's me who's messed up more than anything.

But, I think I'm a victim of what many others are, too, as well: the dreaded Seasonal Affective Disorder (or, appropriately abbreviated, SAD).  This, compounded with the fact that I've got depressive issues, likely for life.  Poor me, eh?

There's a great show that was on HBO a few years ago called "Six Feet Under".  It ran for a too-short five seasons, and ages remarkably well upon repeat viewings over the years.  There's a character on it named Billy, with whom I see some parallels with myself.  Over the past little while, HBO has been airing all the "Six Feet Under" series chronologically on one of its channels, and on-demand on another one.  On the random channel, I re-watched a couple of episodes from the stellar second season, the best season in my opinion, and became enthralled with Jeremy Sisto's "Billy" character more than when I first viewed it.  I think because I can relate a lot more.

In the first season when Billy is introduced, he seems like this flippant, off-kilter character that you would sense is ultimately going to wind up being one of the chief antagonists on the show.  As season one churns on, he indeed does become the main concern for arguably the program's main protagonist, Nate Fisher Jr. (or just Nate).  Nate hooked up with Billy's sister, Brenda, immediately in the grab-you-by-the-throat premiere episode.  Once Billy is introduced, you ask yourself all kinds of questions, and make assumptions about him that are inevitable; that you don't question until you see him return in season two.  It's at this time, in the second season, that I found myself relating to him.  In season one, he came off his 'meds', and was wildly unpredictable.  He preferred to take action first and ask questions later, most of the time not asking questions at all, regardless of the impact of his actions.  At the end of season one, he unravelled and hit the bottom, and was admitted to psychiatric care, apparently even enduring electro shock therapy, as the dialogue hints: "They've pumped enough electricity through me to light up the eastern seaboard."

But this Billy we see in season two is significantly more grounded.  Ultimately, we see him when he's on his meds, and when he's not.  By his own admission, he's sick, always will be, and those are the cards he was dealt.

I sat watching it and thinking of my own self, when I came off my own meds.  I realized my judgment was quite off compared to when I was on them.  When I first started taking meds in '96, it wasn't long before I realized that the person I'd just become is radically different from the person I was.  Oddly enough, I felt 'normal'.  Could this be?  How could I be normal if I take pills that obviously changes who I naturally was?

You hear a whole lot about contact sports these days, and the ramifications of when thing get too out of hand, namely regarding concussions.  Football being the biggest example.  Hockey being the next.  MMA really concerns me.  Boxing is completely frowned upon these days, for good reason.  When someone sustains a concussion, the brain is permanently compromised.  A person's head will not work quite the same way as it did prior to sustaining one of these injuries.

This doesn't mean you're screwed if you wind up with a concussion.  I've had probably half a dozen of them in my life, three of them major.  I was in a coma twice.  The worst of them came when I was in my formative years, just after my father died when I was 12.  The others I wound up with were almost all self inflicted.  The last one being only about ten years ago, at a time when I was off my meds.

But I'm a great believer in that your body is an amazing machine that goes to great lengths to heal itself, if it can.  I've read that the brain is able to make alternate neural connections to get things done the way it used to when it sustains injury.  I do believe something like this takes time.  But the brain is far, far more complex than any man-made intelligence.  I doubt we will ever fully understand to the extent of what it's capable of.

I think that I'm in the bracket of people who have mental and emotional difficulty who have suffered any brain injuries over the years.  The so-called "depression" that I deal with is a permanent, dare I say it, disability.  I'm fine with knowing that.  I'm actually thankful.  Things could have ended up a whole lot worse, after my face had been blackened after being slammed into the pavement from being hit by a car on the very same rainy December night that John Lennon was murdered.  I could have died, or worse, become vegetative.  So yeah, I'll take this little bit of flakyness that peppers my personality from time to time.  I admit to my own eccentricities.  I embrace a lot of them, in fact.

Back to my original intent of the subject... here I am, four days removed from Christmas of 2013,  trying to justify to myself why sometimes I come home when no one's around yet, and I go to bed a cry a little while.  I think back on Christmases past, when my whole family was together.  Mom and Dad were alive, and everyone converged on 136 Emmerson Street where we grew up to celebrate the holidays as a complete unit.  Even after Dad died, we still came together there at Mom's house, where I lived until she was relocated to a nursing home.  There was a genuine Christmas spirit in the air that was palpable to all of us.  We were a family of nine before Dad passed, and we all loved each other, and showed it the most during the holidays.

Mom's gone now.  We lost her in '98 after a lengthy battle with disease.  That hit us all pretty hard.  I won't say I felt it the worst, because everyone deals in their own way.  Speaking for myself, though, I live with a lot of regret, in part because of this damning depression-like condition I have to wake up with and confront every day; regret that I could have done more for Mom than I did, way more.  I can't go home to see her now.  Being the youngest of seven, I get to have the least amount of time in my life to have been with her, and thus, less time to make up for any wrong I've done.

However, I'm a dad now, married to the mother of my own little girl.  This is my chance to make things right with Mom.  I've screwed up an awful lot along the way, but I learn every day, too.  I take a lot from my own mom in how I treat Alexandra.  The good that's in me today is because it was instilled in me from my own mother.

Now it's up to me, with Janice, to make sure Alexandra has the same great childhood memories that I was treated to.  With no concussions, though.  So far, it's just been a very broken arm, during a time that was a tad bit scary.  But, so far, so good.

The medicated Billy would be proud, I think.