Everybody Hurts Some Times

Conscious ramblings of insomnia...The dominoes just keep falling while another imperfection is piled on my back even when it’s known something is going to breakdown if someway the load is not lessened.

All it takes is the first domino falling...

October 9, 2012

Sleep disturbances can be a big part of depressive disorder. Insomnia is a major symptom reported by the  majority of us who suffer from the mood disorder.  Being restricted to sleeping in an upright position again after some resent BPPV treatments has  rendered my body wide awake at 3:00 AM with an imbalance in critical serotonin levels.   Insomnia was a very real problem for the first 7 weeks after arthroscopic shoulder surgery,   I had to try to sleep upright in a chair, or try is the key word.   That's the thing about the "Falling Dominoes"...they get momentum and one thing leads to another and it becomes like trying to stop a runaway freight train....The next thing you know, you are looking up out of the rabbit hole, alone.

It’s always been a daunting mystery to me…The way we can make our own skin crawl with insecurities…The perplexity of putting more pressure on ourselves than it could ever be possible for anyone else to do.  We can think, “I am too much” and “not enough”, all at the same time.   There are times in our lives when others can make use feel this way, but more often than not it is based on a form of an egoic mind made illusion.  One of the most common phases of a depression cycle is one of the things I refer to as a depression hangover… anxiousness leftover from depression…self loathing    Some days an internalized inner conflict rages…When we glance at a strangers face while passing , you just never know what storms may be raging below the surface.  They eat away from the inside out.  There is no truer cliché than “you can’t tell a book by its cover.”  A little kindness goes a long ways…misunderstanding goes much farther in the opposite direction,

It cuts to the bone…

Some days it is hard to tell which is more misunderstood…The stillness of self imposed silence misunderstood or the emotional toll of being unable to communicate in a way that is understood by others.   Another internalized paradox.  There seems to be more times, as I have matured, that “I try to say it a different way.”  And then another different try, hoping thoughts said another way will be understood.  When I get frustrated, particularly when anxiety levels are high, I try again and again getting more frustrated with misunderstanding…I honestly exhaust myself by not just embracing the stillness of accepting that I will not be understood this time and that is okay….It is okay to not be understood.    Instead I pile another imperfection on my back even when it’s known something is going to breakdown if someway the load is not lessened.

There is an event in my past that I just cannot get past, no matter how hard I have tried.   I have stopped trying to explain how it has changed my life because no one gets it.   It’s like “just get over it!”…I think I am finally at the point that I would do nearly anything to “just get over it.”   Sadly it has had an obsessive debilitating affect on my state of being one too many times.   It is a definite trigger to anxiety and then in the right circumstances remembering can flip it into mood disorders without even knowing what’s happening.   Things put away alive never die… Whenever I have gone through the dark cycles of mood disorders, during the past several years since this happened, the littlest reminders send me spiraling downward.   This is not a good time to go there but at some point I may share what happened on that traumatic day…I have written about it numerous times and I have never found peace with what happened. When and if I do share the whole story, I will give plenty of warning about the content.  

The short version without detail is that a troubled soul decided his last day on earth was to be “that day at the river”.   It was a suicide and I thought this person fell from the bridge I was fishing below in my boat.  He jumped from a life he could not longer tolerate directly into mine.   Consequently, I tried to save a life and nearly lost my own in the process.

His family tried for 2 years to contact me trying to find closure but I could not face them and just wanted to be left alone.  I withdrew from practically everyone I knew because it was all anyone wanted to talk about… Finally I ended up speaking with the family members numerous times after others intervened because we all had suffered enough, long enough... 

Something irreparable happened that day.   I launched my boat at dawn and left the shoreline one definite man.  By mid morning a tragic traumatic life changing event had taken place in front of hundreds of onlookers on a turbulent river’s waters.  It was as if I had entered a time machine and was dropped off back at 17 years old when I was first diagnosed with mood disorders and it all came flooding back.

That day at the river, after some struggle, I took expired human form to waiting EMT’s and never got out of my boat onto the shoreline. Many local people observed the entire scene that day so there was no need to stay for explanation to authorities.    I then went miles down river and sobbed emotionally for hours over the earlier distressing moments. Long after dark, later returning to the boat launch as someone I did not recognize.  I have never said it in this way, but it was like  setting out on a journey that day, never reaching my destination, but never able to make it back either…Too far to go. Too far  back to return…Drifting and drifting.  There are many days things seem just like that.

Some valuable life lessons were learned about how selfish and devastating such a tragedy is to those left behind.  I will not say that I do not understand how the casualty must have felt.   However I must say, it is somewhere I personally could never go.   For years I have thought “why me?”   Why was I there in that exact spot at that exact moment?   For years it has seemed like a curse.  Caught in the crossfire when my life intersected with his…Sometimes experiencing the memories of that day,  has made it difficult to hold on at dark times like these.  Difficult to carry on...

I know thinking about it and acting on it are two separate issues…Be that as it may, it is just daunting to me to even have those kinds of thoughts ruminating through my head, like some kind of a permanent spell was cast on me through the events of that day… All I was doing was trying to save someone who could no longer be saved.   Somehow writing it down again is cathartic, serving as a reminder than no matter how hopeless things sometimes seem, a survivor is something to be..."Everybody hurts sometimes"… but some days are harder than others to keep trying.