a short after thought

I was thinking about what I just wrote and I realize it sounds like I hate where I am or who I am. That is simply untrue. I think where I currently am is one of the most liberated states I have ever experienced. Sometimes when I reach rock bottom it's great, because there is no pain that can be greater. This leads to a kind of euphoria. Imagine laying at the bottom of a deep hole which you can never imagine a way of climbing out. You look up and see the most beautiful blue sky you could ever see. There are two ways to view that blue sky. You could resent it. How horrible that I cannot run and play on this beautiful day.

I for one prefer a different approach. I look at the beautiful world without as I am dying inside. I look around as I realize it may be the last time I get to. Further at last I can revel in the joyous notion that I could not be doing a thing better. What a terrible fate you healthy folk have. You have to make the best of what you have. You will always wonder if you are doing the best you can with what you have.

Yet I am singularly blessed. I cannot waste what little I have. The horrors I have been through have stripped away all guilt. All I can do is either address the pain that defines me, or observe the pleasures of a world that left me behind. You who experience them will never know how sweet they are by comparison. Your mouths are blinded by excessive sweets and your eyes are dulled by the wonders you take for granted.

One day death will come for you and you will not see it coming. You will suddenly realize that you did not cherish what you had while you had it. I speak to my metaphorical opposite, for I know no one so crass as to be completely ignorant of death. Yet few can count non being and death as familiar companions. Not many have withstood encounter after encounter with the abyss. This is my blessing. I choose to focus on that which I have and that which I am. I can't be anything or anyone else.

Progression of Evil

Disclaimer: This is likely to be a pretty dark post. It's not very pleasant to read these things at this time of year, but my crisis doesn't respect schedules. Skip it and read it later if you are likely to be disturbed by morbid and depressing musing over the contents of my soul.

I love a good metaphor, and I finally have one for my life. Hence the title.

A few years ago I was in a board game group and we played a game called Shadows over Camelot. The basic idea of the game was that you and your friends were a group of nights trying to complete various quests. In the easy version of the game the mechanics of the game itself were all that stood against you. In the normal and hard versions someone in your group was a traitor.

The interesting mechanic though was the Progression of Evil. What this meant that for every good thing you did, the game did something unpleasant back to you. It might be laying down cards you had to beat, or siege engines around the castle. The point was that you had to work together to fight the progression of evil.

I think it appeals to something in all of us to believe that there is some balance in the universe. I also think that it's a big pile of shit. There are times when fewer people are suffering than at others. There is also no direct causal link between doing good and allowing evil to bloom.

The thing that makes me think of this is being very sick. I haven't been this depressed before. The simple reason is that I see no up or out. I have gone to more interviews than I can count, and still no job. Worse still I cannot see myself returning to school due to my medical limitations. My only hope is God, and that's where things get complicated.

I believe 100% that God can do something, and even in fact anything. I also understand that he doesn't have to. Many good people get illnesses and die and it is not a sign of faith being lacking. I have to admit that this darkness that is slowly eating away at my will to fight to live is actually an illness. Not everyone recovers.

I suppose what I am saying is that with every day deeper into the abyss I come closer and closer to accepting the concept that this could kill me. I'm not sure if I want it to or not... I suppose it depends heavily on what kind of life I might live if I survive for a few more decades. I personally don't think what I want plays very heavily into it. As long as there are people I love and want to keep from hurting I will fight to stay alive.

Which brings me back to the progression of evil. The illness is clever and finds new ways to hurt and isolate me, not all of which I am equipped to reverse. Eventually if my pain exceeds my capacity to cope it will be the end of me. I'm thinking about it rather unemotionally at the moment. Simply as unavoidable as weather. You can bring a jacket and umbrella but if you get stuck for long enough in a blizzard you will freeze. If I exceed my capacity to cope, and remain there for long enough, I will die.

God for me has become a part of my much larger net of coping mechanisms. On that score I can say without a doubt he is quite amazing. Yet he has yet to completely negate the struggle. I'm trying to avoid talking about it, but  I worry that one day soon he won't be enough.

Here's the crazy part:
It's not lack of love or desire that are failing me. My love for God is as great or greater than my love for my family. His love for me is greater still. Yet I have been on this journey for 6 years. He's been right beside me. I've survived more than I thought I would. Yet being in this hopeless place again for the second time in a decade is almost more than I can bare.

Is there a future? I can't see it. I'm well aware my views are limited by how I think the world works, and I do not understand a great many things in that category. I'm only talking about my view of myself. I'm incredibly self aware. That awareness tells me that my resources are down, and we have no way to resupply. I'm about to be forced to go on the least fun encounter with hard drugs, which is the kind the doctors think can fix things.

To tell the truth there is only one glimmer I can see in my life. That glimmer is that if my view is correct I won't suffer for very much longer. If I don't pull up and out, then it's not much further down until I reach the end. I have to believe that if there is no comfort left for me in this world there is hope. That hope might just sound like the bleakest future to healthy people. Trust me when I say that this illness reaching it's natural conclusion is the only think it gives me to look forward to.

Reality, dreams, and sleepless nights

I haven't written in awhile, mostly because there isn't much to report. I vary from day to day from depression, anxiety, to hope and pushing back against it hard.

Lately my old dream keeps coming back. I can hardly get to sleep without visualizing living my dream. Yet it frightens me that chasing that emotionally sometimes begins to feel like I'm peeling away from reality. I have real reasons to be afraid from totally seperating from reality. It was that sort of thinking that got me in the hospital.

Yet that is the crux of the problem. Faith is about believing without seeing. Which is also what being paranoid, delusional and psychotic starts out as. I don't see any way forward for me on chasing that dream in my day to day life. Further there isn't much I want to chase in my day to day life. The things I long for cost more than I can pay. The things I can reach don't satisfy.

Tonight I tried to step out further on faith and give the dream back to God. Which is why I'm sitting up at 3:15 AM writing instead of sleeping so I can do stuff later. He's so frustratingly silent. Further a part of me worries that my experience of God is part of my illness. I've been sick for a long time. Worse is that since the hospital and my mental break I don't even trust my senses anymore.

It should be strictly hyperbole that seeking and waiting on God can drive a man crazy. Yet here I am, living proof that things like that happen. The part of me with faith (which won't die) says that it isn't seeking God that has driven me to this broken reality. It's the enemy and dark forces who oppose me trying to keep me from achieving joy in him.

As for my logical side I remain unsure. I have to grapple with the concept that until others see something I can't be sure something exists. Even then there are some mass delusions that bother me. I'm afraid of losing myself again.

I want to talk about how large this dream is. First it requires me being able to walk away from the house I live in, which is harder than it looks. Second it requires some way to move to the land I dream of. That likely involves quite a bit of money, a minimum of 1.5 million dollars. I don't have that kind of career money available to me. My family doesn't either. It has to be entirely God. Which is a strange place, feelings wise. I cry out to him pretty much nightly. I haven't heard him in some time..... What am I supposed to do?

It's like that They Might Be Giants song, Dead,
"Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want,
or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do."

One thing I am sure of and that is that I'm doing enough as far as God is  concerned. I feel like my job in terms of his business is to survive this time period with some amount of faith intact. That's pretty easy as long as I don't blame him for my life as it is. Which for me means knowing that if he led me hear he has a purpose in this suffering. I guess that's all I have to say. One day all this will make sense. One day I'll know what God really plans for me.