I will be turning 38 years old on Tuesday May 24th 2011.
The past two months have been dreadful; a couple of the worst months of my life yet not even close to being as bad as it could’ve been. I hurt so much emotionally. I have suffered exponentially. I have felt hopeless and worthless and useless. I’ve had a hard time keeping myself together and in one piece yet somehow I have survived and I am pulling through, working to get back to that better life that I so desperately want and need to live.
This has not been an easy journey. No, this has been a battle to the death, or for my life. Sometimes or often, I don’t know what to do to get myself to the next day or the next hour or minute. Sometimes, I operate by the second, if that is what I must do to keep from completely and totally self-destructing. The will to live is so strong within me and I seem to be able to access that hopefulness in my worst moments while that action of accessing my hope as positive action is so far beyond my cognitive awareness.
I love life and I hate wanting to die. I feel that way all the time. I want to live and be happy and succeed and it feels so inaccessible to me. I constantly am trying to make things better. This is a constant battle for me, a battle that is never completely won and is a battle that is just part of a much greater war that I am fighting. I wage this war in an effort to conquer my pain and the destructive demons that eat away at my soul like acid. This may sound melodramatic however I wholeheartedly assure you the reader, my peers, that it is not.
My reality is that I have a serious mental health condition and that I have experienced trauma and abuse almost my entire life. I am going to be 38 this coming Tuesday and I don’t know how I am still alive. I’ve experienced such personal, inner torment throughout my years that it is overwhelming for most people to hear about or talk about. Yet, I continue to move forward with my life as if I welcome the challenge. With all the compounded hassle that I am forced to face and deal with on a daily basis one could deduce that it would be near impossible for me to effectively function yet somehow and someway I do.
When a person is faced with painful, impossible situations how can they be expected to make rational and reasonable decisions about their life? This is a very good question and something that I face every single day of my life. I often struggle when it comes to making good and healthy decisions when the stakes are so difficult and unreasonable. There is a saying in the mental health recovery movement that says ones reaction to an unreasonable situation may actually be a reasonable response (to an unreasonable situation). Think about it, when really bad things happen, humans react strongly and sometimes in over the top ways. These responses may be unusual for a person to have in general however when under extreme distress a person may respond and react in a very exaggerated manner. This reaction is something that I am quite familiar with. This happens to me and it has happened to me a lot recently as I have previously stated that the past two months have been extremely difficult.
This journey of mine has been treacherous and brutal to put it mildly. To be perfectly blunt, it has been a challenge at times to not harm myself and this catastrophe of mine has even led me to the most dreadful of ways of thinking that could impact my most basic mortality. Clearly, I don’t share this with pride or excitement as this absolutely sucks, feeling so morbid and awful. Having to manage these sorts of intense, dark and overwhelming feelings is not my idea of a good time.
Interestingly, while I have suffered to such an extreme degree I have also experienced a great deal of success, happiness and joy in my life. I know that it may sound very strange and contradictory yet is it one hundred percent true; there is a lot of good in my life. Sure, of course, we must admit and acknowledge that the negative can have and certainly has had an incredibly brutal impact on my quality of life, my level of happiness and contentment and success. This is just the way it is, my life is a complete and total juxtaposition and I am forced to deal with it and live in the best way possible, regardless of my challenges.
I have some good things in my life at the moment. I have a great apartment that I can afford that is nice and big and I feel comfortable living in. I just finished classes and while I did have a very difficult and rough past two months I still earned an A- in Algebra and a B+ in Spanish. I think that is pretty awesome considering the poor mental health and quality of life that I have experienced in recent times. I think it is a huge success and I am proud of myself, I did real well. I have a great job which I will share more about a little later on. My job allows me to do something that I am very good at and talented at which is absolutely a wonderful thing for me. I have a few really good friends which I am extremely lucky to have in my life. I have been working on losing weight for quite some time and achieving a great deal of success which is utterly huge for me. Fascinatingly, in the past two months of living a life in mental health crisis, I have lost over 10 lbs, which is just amazing. I don’t know exactly how I am doing it however eating better and eating more responsibly and doing aerobic exercise several times per week is certainly paying off. Essentially, going on regular 30+ minute aerobic walks have been benefitting my life and my mental health and stability not only due to my losing of weight yet also because aerobic exercise is so good for a person’s mental health. It is phenomenal how great I feel mentally after going on one of my “walks”. So clearly, there are some very good parts of my life and I feel very good about some parts of my life.
It is important to try and focus on what is good and positive and healthy in my life and also to be cognizant of what is reality in my life. To be realistic is enormously important in being well and healthy and living a good life. This is because there are some things that you cannot change in your life and in this world and I think my energy is better spent working toward the future. I have many goals that I am working toward and I will have more success in reaching my destination if I acknowledge the role of and by facing reality on my journey toward living a better life.
I want to be a happy person and live a good and happy life and this can be achieved through hard work even while I fully admit that I struggle with a mental health condition and having a history of trauma and abuse in my life. I am a survivor of so much and my battle continues and always continues. It is never ending. Every single day presents new and sometimes difficult challenges for me. Sometimes I succeed in handling and managing these challenges and sometimes I am adversely and terribly impacted by these challenges. That is life so if I want to find better ways to live and better ways to be happy I am forced to and I must also realistically address the issues and challenges that I face one day at a time. This is a truly doable prospect yet extremely difficult at the same time. This is a challenge that I accept and I move forward with, as carefully as possible and with my eyes on the prize of mental wellness, happiness and success.
An interesting thing that I mentioned earlier that I want to share is that not only do I have a mental health condition and I should add, a debilitating mental health condition, I also work as a mental health counselor. Yes, you read that correctly, I work as a mental health counselor. My current title is Peer Specialist and this means I work with individuals who have mental health conditions and also issues with addictions. In my role I use my training and education and also my personal lived experience to help people who are experiencing difficult and hard to manage mental health and addiction issues live better lives. In addition to that I teach these individuals how to better control their symptoms, how to communicate their needs more beneficially and effectively in order to have their needs met and to achieve an improved quality of life.
This is pretty incredible and I am sure some of you will agree. How can a guy who has these serious problems and who at times struggles with functioning at the same time have the role of mental health counselor? I can tell you that it is not easy however it is the best thing that could have ever happened to a man who only 6 years ago could hardly take care of himself. I am a beautiful success story and I have had a really brutal past two months and I am here to say that while I am still struggling, that I am succeeding at realistically making my life work for me while dealing with a very difficult and hard to manage reality.
I am succeeding and I will continue to fight to live a better life.
I know there are people who you the reader know, who struggle with some of the same sort of things that I struggle with and I am asking you to treat them with compassion and respect and dignity because they are people with feelings, just like you and me. They may deal with some serious issues that society may say makes them unimportant and unworthy however I am telling you here, that these people are just like me and I am a success and they too can be a success. They need and want your love and acceptance. I am turning 38 on Tuesday May 24th 2011 – I will struggle and I will survive and I will thrive. This is my promise to me and my guarantee to all of you.
Thank you to Shock & Awe for including my writing in their fanzine. I welcome all correspondence and I thank all of you for reading.
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