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.

Outlook expressed

We're not quite four months later today that Janice got her left knee replaced.  She did a stellar job rehabbing, and was able to get in on a cancellation list to get her right one done.  That happened a day and a half ago from the time I write this.

Now having the other knee replaced, she's on the road to recovery once again.  It was a little bit rough, but nothing very serious.  We were kind of aghast at the nurses offering regular strength Tylenol to my wife AFTER JUST HAVING HER LEG SAWED IN FREAKIN' HALF.  They gave her Dilaudid but that doesn't work for Janice (or me when I had kidney stones once), so she got her Traumacet, which she's already prescribed for.  But no, this is not adequate for this type of pain.  We went to the drug store to get her prescriptions before going home, but this time she bit off a bit more than she could chew, and I regret letting it go.  Coming out of the store, the pain was so intense that she was sick about 20 minutes later at home.  She has Percs to get things back to manageable status, but that's going to take some time to get to now.  But overall, things are going quite well.  She's been in bed horizontal today, obviously, and we'll be taking it day by day.  But she's determined to get going and to be her best.  

You know what?  It's not having to stay in the hospital that scares me as much as the food they serve.  Lord, time after time they'd be giving Janice meals that honestly looked like something that was regurgitated.  I did what I did last time and got her a chicken salad sandwich and a donut, with Pepsi Zero.  Later at suppertime I brought her Greek salad that Lexy had made us.  She wasn't fussy about supper, salmon with dill sauce.  I nearly barfed just when she lifted the lid to show me.

Now that I've addressed that, because I felt it deserved immediate attention, I'll talk about other stuff...

I realize I haven't been very active on social media and even on the blog page here.  I spend minute amounts of time online, usually just a check-in at bedtime in fact.  I don't really engage with anyone, because that just leads to having to spend more time online, and not being on facebook or whatever has helped me make great strides in the mental health department.  

March 22, 2024 was my last breakdown event, but it was the only one in the last year and a half, so I've made serious strides.  In my downtime, which there's quite a bit of, I've actually chosen to take up reading books.  I'm a desperately slow reader, though, it'll take me a long time to get through a title.  But I've become perfectly okay with that.  Who do I have to impress with how fast I can read?  The true impressive thing is that you're reading at all.  It's not a race or something.  In the past couple of years, I've read a small amount of books and enjoyed all of them.  Perhaps my favorite author is Whitley Strieber, author of "Communion", about alien abduction.... although he prefers to refer to what we usually call "aliens" as "visitors", because they could be from space, another dimension, a different reality, etc.  Anyway, Whitley's now-deceased wife, Anne, was with him for decades before she passed in '15, and she was integral to keeping him grounded and focused.  He claims she communicates with him regularly, and imparts her words via a book he published called "The Afterlife Revolution".  The things that are written in that book really made me look at everything differently, and changed my outlook and attitude.  Or helped to, anyway.  Certain things stuck with me... that ego is something that needs to be abandoned, laughter is the music of the soul, and love and compassion are desperately needed if we are to survive as a species.  That just made me stop and think things through.... 'Ego'.  It makes sense, doesn't it?  Admitting you're wrong, when you are, is ego's worst enemy.  Bragging about one's self is all ego, as you're elevating yourself above others.  Even not being happy for someone else's fortune is ego, a 'they have something I don't' kind of thing, when you really should never, ever measure what is success to you against someone else's version of it.  Each of us lives our own unique reality.

So with all this circulating in my head now, I pause whenever I form an opinion about something, and try not to let hatred, jealousy or ego interfere in my impressions.  It brings about a lot of peace, because you're not competing with anything and there's no pressure.  Competition and pressure are fuels thrown on the fires of anxiety, and I'm just not interested anymore.  It's actually made me realize, also, that it's been a blessing to not be working, because I've come more face to face with what I'm dealing with.  Anxiety does still surface from time to time, but I've come to reason with it.  Seeing it for what it objectively is certainly helps.  I ask myself, in time - what will situation 'x' mean a year from now?  And why do I give it such importance today?  

I've also come to know that I can't change what other people think of me.  I can only be the best I can be, just like everyone else, and leave it up to the interpretation of others.  I also have to recognize where views and opinions come from.  What is the person's history like that shaped the way they form opinions and criteria?  Where hatred exists, in any way at all, don't let it spread.  It's never good for anybody.  If anything, laugh at it, and see the smallness of what it really is.

Anyway, that's my current outlook.  And I think it's pretty optimistic, given the current events.

Rock and rollllll!

The Struts.... this is a band that came to Moncton recently as an opener, but if these guys aren't massive in their own right, then there's more deaf ears around than I ever knew.  They've got Rock Stars written all over them, at a time that I thought rock was dead.  Bands like this give me real hope.  

So check this out.  You're going to look at one and say "of COURSE Mike would like that video."  Well, it caught my attention, but 'Too Good at Raising Hell' is a friggin' stomper.  They pump up the glam again for the first time effectively since the 80s.  The whole vibe is just fun, even makes you want to dance or something (Janice witnessed this firsthand with me).

There's a lot to point to with this band.  They're totally embracing the showmanship that needs to be mandatory for any band to get in the business to begin with.  I can hear the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, AC/DC, David Bowie, just for starters.  I love the crescendo tendencies of "Pretty Vicious".  The singer starts off calmly and accelerates as the song progresses.  It's moody and atmospheric and still rocks.

Watch/listen to Too Good at Raising Hell.

Watch/listen to the lyric video for the awesome Pretty Vicious.