POSSIBLY YOUR FINAL LOOK AT THIS TRAIN WRECK. (Are those crickets? Hello is anyone out there?)

I admit it--currently I am a bit of a train wreck. My latest episode of depression is raging. The leg pain that stems from my back problem is making my nights miserable. And, I truly wonder what I am all about when I spill my guts publicly for all to see. Am I really trying to help, or just crying out for it?
I started this blog maybe 18 months ago because I wanted fellow troubled souls to know they are not alone. So far, I have only six followers and .over 2000 page views. Several people read this blog consistently--if two is several. I hoped to reach more with personal stories about my battle with the beast of depression. The interest is absent and it costs me a lot of second-guessing? And have I really helped anyone?
Keep your eye on this spot because next time this blog comes out--if there is a next time--these personal confessions of mine may cease.
I wear my heart on my sleeve, in these blogs and on Facebook. Strangers, long-lost friends, family, and my local friends and acquaintances are privy to my innermost battles. This used to be the stuff I would discuss with my counselors or very close friends. For some--for me, this blog and FB has become a spot to tell all, or nearly all.
Again, pay attention to this part, because it might be your last glimpse at the destruction I have caused. Last year, in the month of August, I sat with a friend I worked with, but someone I really did not know that well, and cried like a baby. In the midst of recovering from a severe episode of depression, I spilled my guts. Some friends of mine know my issues, revealed to them via emails and messages. Some family members don't know about it though, yet I revealed these secrets to mere strangers. Why?
It is important to me to stay on top of my moods, but am I just sharing them because I am looking for help or for sympathy? If I share for sympathy, I may well never recover (or develop) my sense of well-being.
Often I feel like one of the nerds on The Big Bang. Whenever they meet up with one of Penny's old boyfriends, their inadequacies in the "Manly-men" department are apparent, not only to the audience but to the nerd characters. Am I manly-male? No, sorry, I am woefully inadequate. It's not that I can't pound a nail,  or run a chainsaw, but I am pretty self-obsessed. If any poor feminine soul were prepared to take me home to mother at this late date in my life, they would find a guy who likes to write romantic poetry, is editing a vampire novel that strangely mirrors more about his depression than his desire to possess the women in the book, and who needs a nap more often than his two-and-a-half year granddaughter. Any takers?
What comes from all this honesty then. It is that I embarrass my family and come out looking neither attractive, well-rounded, or even sane. I am some anachronism--an effete being better suited to a bed in Victorian England, dashing out poems, consumptively coughing, and awaiting death and a headstone in some London graveyard. Ah, sounds at least somewhat romantic, except I haven't written that famous book of poems or even a passable novel. Actually, such romantic artists were pretty rare even in Victorian England. The Pre-Raphaelite artists I admire so much, tended to be fairly long-lived womanizers who rarely allowed a setback to stop them. That ain't me babe.
Look, I hate getting old. I hate my friends are getting old, but I also hate that people just sort of go away and disappear. But one can't simply stop living because life is unkind. Where this leaves me is unknown, but I think it is time for me to pull back and share a little less than I generally do.

I GET SCARED SOMETIMES.

I am a sufferer of chronic pain who also suffers from depression. Consequently, I take medications for both problems. Recently, I began to get migraines, and, when they didn't disappear, my doctor gave me another drug.
My pain meds are pretty heavy duty, but I limit them. I take depression pills in the morning, and pain pills at night. One of my pain meds, I'm slowly trying to eliminate since I retired. After, I will try to get rid of the sleeping pills (it's a small dose.)
I take some pills because I take other pills. It's like chasing your tail. Nonetheless, everything I take, I try to take the least amount possible. It's hard to be ready to go in the mornings, when the pain often keeps me up at night. And if the pain doesn't keep me up, it's because I have nuked it with pain medication. There is no way I am up and at 'em to greet the day.
The worse thing is, pain drugs often exacerbate the depression. And now, we have added yet another pill to the mix. (Since the migraines are gone, I am skipping the headache pill tonight. I hope it helps. I think it is the cause of this new relapse.)

When I started taking the pills for migraines, they gave me an old-school anti-depressant in a small dose. It is a standard treatment. The docs aren't treating the pain, but trying to break the cycle.
This is how the beast re-entered my live! Since I started those migraine capsules, I noticed, I am getting those old crazy thoughts again, especially at night. Those "you should disappear off of the face of the earth" thoughts.
Depression, is a strange sort of disease. I can give you a very good argument for the futility of life when I am descending into hell. I will spare you this. I'm not looking for anyone to feel sorry for me, or to offer advice. I am a little scared though. I've been through this before, but just because I am familiar with it, hell is still terrifying.
That voice inside (this is an expression, I don't hear voices) tells me what a bum I am. It tells me that I'm a poor excuse for a human. The worse thing about it is this--I don't want to be fixed when I am in this mood. It's insidious. I don't want to be saved. I don't care to hear the arguments about the beauty of life. This is depression at its most evil.
I am one of the lucky people though. My novel needs finishing, and, I want to write another book after that. So, this ego that needs to be fed keeps me getting up in the morning. I love to write, and I want to be heard, so, before I can check out, I've got things to do.

I don't suppose I have much of a point in this piece. My ego keeps me alive, even though at some moments, I think the world doesn't really care if I live or not. Here's the advice to people who suffer from the beast of depression. Find something to do. Write or draw or pet your dog or go be nice to someone you don't know. Volunteer if you can. Kiss your children. Do something. Your life depends on it.

God bless you all. I really am okay.

Even the Rocks Change

I used to surf at Sunset Cliffs in San Diego. Days at the beach at the Cliffs or Ocean Beach turned into early evenings, walking to the car in the parking lot, or parked along the street, the sun setting over the Pacific.
I remember a day spent there, one spot, all guys I knew, John Belik from Hoover (he lives in Maui now,) Rick G. who lived in OB, Paul, and some other guys. All along the Cliffs, one place was breaking that day, but oddly, it was breaking at five-to-ten minute intervals. We sat on the beach, waiting for the next set, and when we saw it, we paddled out, caught waves for maybe ten minutes, and then the waves quit, and we sat and waited for more. I swear this is true. We were there probably three hours, just our crew. I surfed naked that day. Ugh, better not to think of it. It is not something I will never do again, surfing naked, but that day, thanks to our surf scientist, John Belik, we had this idyllic day along the Cliffs, all to ourselves for awhile.
Two of the guys I surfed with that day are blind. One of them, got beat up one day at the top of the Cliffs after arguing with another surfer. At the time, he had been a regular at the Cliffs for over 20 years. Someone younger and stronger came along, and well, there you go. We are not all that removed from the law of the jungle.
There is only one problem with this scenario. It is that the law of the jungle was written when people didn't live very long. Women died in their 30's, often from complications of childbirth. Men, well, if the wars didn't kill them, something else would--disease, violence, their jobs. During the day at the Cliffs I describe above, we had our own war, Vietnam. I had worked with guys who had been injured in the war. I'd gone to school with them, drove them in my taxi when I drove a taxi. Surely, I went to school with guys who went to Nam and never came back.
Now we have a war, but no draft. And short of finding that 40 or 50 year-old guy who beat up my friend, and doing a dozen-guys-in-their-60's beat down on him, I haven't any plans. Wait, I am meeting some old high school chums in San Diego in August. I do have plans!
Today, while thinking of seeing those folks in San Diego, I thought about running naked about the Cliffs. Not once did I consider doing it again, so Hoover High chums, no worries. But I thought, even the rocks have had some 25 or 30 years to wear away since I last surfed the Cliffs. I bet that little footpad at Abs Beach is worn away. I fell off that once, long ago. I hated it then, and though I got over my fear of heights long ago, I probably would feel no more comfortable there today. But imagine, the freaking rocks have changed. How old does that make a person?

As you all know, I write what I please here. So, I thought about falling off that perch at Abs, actually I slipped down the face of the rocks with my big green surfboard. Recently, I read a book--a very basic book I might add, about quantum theory, and I have decided, because I spent so much time on top of that damn slippery rock, waiting to inch my way down to the beach, I had like a billion more chances to fall down that thing than most of the guys.
Let's make "R" the rock at Abs. "F" stands for me, at the top of the rock, not wanting to go down the slippery thing. We take "JD" for the regular John Doe. So, R x JD x milliseconds spent at the top of the rock, squared... Then take R x F x MS squared. Holy crap! You see what I mean! I couldn't help but fall down the rock! Where was the tunneling effect when I needed it?

Bless you all. Watch out for slippery rocks.

How Old Is Old?

So, I just turned 62 recently. In my past, I've been ill and broken at times. Fortunately, the body and mind is an amazing thing. The worst I have been hurt, or sick was with Hepatitis 40 some years ago. I've suffered a broken leg, and my back has been drilled, cut, jacked up, and treated to an artificial disk. My nerves have been cut... oh, there are too many procedures back-wise that I have been through. I've been fried, frozen, and been in an operating room, on the table, when there was a hammer present. Yes, Virginia, I have been hammered.

OH MY! You are old!

Depression has always been the worst of my ailments. And so what? It is a disease, and I am being treated for it. You know, it feels often like a problem with me rather than anything that has happened to me. But yet, it is a problem I can't kick by myself. Too bad. I'll make it.

Buddha said suffering is a part of life. Man and woman will suffer. But imagine...62 years. Humans did not used to live so long. A woman giving birth in her 30th year used to be an anomaly. Women died in childbirth. Men, women, and children used to die from countless diseases, and from the effects of war, hunger, even environmental effects. (The pipes that brought water into Rome were made of lead, for instance.)

My friends have their own problems. They have their own aches and pains, their own mental issues, even their children might have illnesses or problems. Certainly no family goes unscathed in this world. My wife lost her brother when she was in her 20's. Her father too was gone in her 20's. Her mother lived to be 92, but my wife was only about 50 at the time. She has seen death. And her cousin lost two children to death, one at 16 or 17, and the other before the age of 25.

I admit to you, despite a rough go my first 25 years perhaps, I have been pretty lucky. A lot of my luck stems from the woman who raised me for the second part of my "childhood," and for the 42 years since I met her--my wife. (Yes, I am still a child in some many ways.) I have been ungrateful at times for such gifts. Shame on me, but she has truly made me realize that life is so much better if one accepts the responsibility for being polite and ethical. I don't claim saintliness yet. Certainly, I am a work in progress. 

But we still suffer. Man and woman suffer. I realize each and everyone who reads this will be afflicted somehow. But imagine--62 years is six decades of wear and tear and sun and pain and cracks to my head and fat lips and thinning hair and graying. 

We suffer, and yet we are still beautiful. I know men and women from Facebook who graduated either the same year, or about the same year as I did, and they look handsome and beautiful. I never noticed this when I was a teen--that older women were gorgeous, but maybe I was blind to that. (The first beautiful woman over 70 who came to my attention--no, not saying my graduating class is that old yet--was a writer, ex-spy, and Countess I met in Santa Barbara. I was in my late 30s and found her elegant, beautiful and charming.) 

So now, I am in love with a woman in her 60s--my wife. I find women in their 50s and 60s and into their 70s often head-turners. Younger people are certainly handsome or beautiful, but if, after 60 years of broken stuff, illnesses, childbirth if applicable, head bumping, Tabasco Sauce overdoses, and hammered fingernails; if you pull off attractive and charming, it is not likely to disappear so quickly.

It is man's lot to suffer. It is part of us. So we do. Hey, we have some claim to it--to the aches and pains and bad feelings. But, in spite of it all, I get messages from people I would expect to be in a crisis of self-pity for all their problems. More likely they are LOL, Ha Ha, or cracking a joke. Well done people! You are my heroes.

Please my friends. Live as comfortably and as happily as you can, Expect a bit of trouble to enter your lives, but you made it! Fill in an age and think about it. YOU MADE IT! And you will make it through most of these turmoils, without ending up squished in the middle of the road. But, let's face it...there will come a time when you won't make it. Oh, well, that's part of how it works. 

God bless you all. Wishing you great happiness, health, and wealth.

Keep your suffering to the minimum.

Relapses, Ophelia, and Elizabeth Siddal--The First Super Model

The painting is by Millais, a pre-Raphaelite painter. The model, who may be the subject of my next book, is Elizabeth Siddal. Siddal was a poet, artist, and very popular model for a lot of Pre-Raphaelite art.
Elizabeth spent weeks in a bathtub posing as Ophelia from Hamlet. Ophelia legend has it that she walked out into a stream and floated on her back, singing and awaiting death as she moved with the current down the river. She succeeded at the suicide.

Lord May I Come?
By Elizabeth Siddal

Life and night are falling from me,
Death and day are opening on me,
Wherever my footsteps come and go,
Life is a stony way of woe.
Lord, have I long to go?

Hallow hearts are ever near me,
Soulless eyes have ceased to cheer me:
Lord may I come to thee?

Life and youth and summer weather
To my heart no joy can gather.
Lord, lift me from life’s stony way!
Loved eyes long closed in death watch for me:
Holy death is waiting for me

Lord, may I come to-day?

My outward life feels sad and stillLike lilies in a frozen rill;

I am gazing upwards to the sun,
Lord, Lord, remembering my lost one.
O Lord, remember me!

How is it in the unknown land?
Do the dead wander hand in hand?
God, give me trust in thee.

Do we clasp dead hands and quiver
With an endless joy for ever?
Do tall white angels gaze and wend
Along the banks where lilies bend?
Lord, we know not how this may be:
Good Lord we put our faith in thee

O God, remember me.

Elizabeth Siddal died of an overdose of laudanum, a solution of opiates mixed with alcohol that was a popular, over-the-counter drug during the 1800s. 

Anyone who has gotten better after depression fears a relapse of the bad times. A any moment a sufferer may fall prey to the disease, at least this is the perception of the victims of depression. It is a scary concept, I admit. Thank God for anti-depressive medications. They help a lot. But sometimes, they stop working as well.

The lovely young lady who posed for the picture above, Elizabeth Siddal, took her own life in 1862.  I suppose she just decided to "fall asleep." This beautiful and talented woman died at 32 years of age. The pre-Raphaelite writers and artists were drawn to melancholy. They were a lot like the Goths are today I suppose. The 1850 and 1860s, were still tough times throughout the world. The population battled incurable diseases, hunger, and wars still fought by staging huge battles and sending the soldiers, row upon row, into the fray. Many battled mental depression before Freudian psychotherapy. Laudanum may have been prescribed for the condition I expect.

Even today, depression is no walk in the park. It still can lead to self-harm or death. Sufferers can still relapse. But we, the people with the disease must count our blessings even in the midst of a severe episode. There is help out there, unlike the time when poor Lizzie took her life. So, if you suffer depression, call a mental health care professional. Americans can get appointments they can afford, or there are free services online for depression, even suicide hotlines.

Don't just give up.

Think you have nothing to offer to anyone? That is why I started this blog. Who knows more about depression than someone who has suffered its consequences. Please folks, even if you are suffering your own tough times, you can talk with other folks who suffer. Be proactive and help.

Atheists/God/Undecided/gob spelled backwards is bog!

So I have a friend who says she is an atheist. Now I was nominally raised as a Catholic, and have described myself as being that, or agnostic, or once or twice as a comic book Rosicrucian. I admit to fit none of these categories presently. But, I do believe there is something bigger out there--something beyond our ken which orders our existence.

I have no actual argument against one being any religion or non-religion. If you say you are an atheist, I might argue that the beautiful things in this world must have some orderly way of coming together that is unexplained. If you argue for atheism, I ask you to stand up for the "godliness" of humans. Think out your point. Explain it. To dismiss God/god without explaining how the world comes to such beauty is a cop out. If you give me as your deity mother nature, Zoroaster, pagan gods, or witchcraft, please give it some thought.

This is my beef with atheists who say God/god does not exist. It is entirely too easy. I can no more prove to you that God does exist than you can prove that he does not. So, I believe in some force. Call me a superstitious idiot if you choose. It doesn't bother me, especially if you have a poor response to why I am so dumb.

I have heard good reasons people don't believe. That is all I ask. Then we are friends. Ah, heck, we will be friends anyway, but I want to be persuaded that you aren't just angry because the God that so many people seem to worship has let you down. 

Look, I am actually starting to believe that there are something like ghostly spirits. My proof? I admit, it is largely anecdotal. Also, ghosts are talked about throughout the world and throughout the religions.

You don't have to believe in ghosts. I really dislike the shows when people go into some creepy place and turn on a bunch of infrared lights and claim they "feel" a presence. I'm not buying it. You tell me I that you have seen a ghost, let's talk. But please, if you strike me as crazy as an UFO investigator claiming you have been abducted, I don't believe it. Sorry. I know, nearly infinite worlds and stars--then why did they take you and not Einstein. Sorry, perhaps that is mean.

Order and reason is perhaps why I believe in some higher power. Yes, I see many things I can attribute to a cruel deity. I see school children dying, mass suffering, and evil. I'm not blind. I can't give my god or supreme force a name or even a face, I can give you examples of art so beautiful it makes some people cry; of music that thrills, heals, or changes lives; I have read books that take the imagination to other worlds with words that touch the soul (if I have one.) And maybe, just maybe, our God or gods have a mean streak. Maybe it is too much to keep track of all this goodness and evil. People die--in horrible manners. How can one conclude that God could not exist in such a world of such suffering, if to die is to end the suffering? If there is nothing beyond, then expect no quarter in our duel with random events.

No, I haven't an answer to satisfy believers or non-believers. I can't quote Jesus, Allah, or anyone else to give comfort. I offer only belief in whatever seems persuasive at the time. Yes, call me wishy-washy on a matter of such importance. I agree. I may just be one monkey typing on one computer in an infinite universe full of computers and monkeys. If so, I wish I had come up with the Bible, the Koran, or Shakespeare's collected works.

Peace and happy new year.

My Life Came Without Instructions--Does Anyone Know How to Put It Together?

I know, I am still fighting it. This funk. This chemical imbalance. Fighting the war, against inner demons--a battle I have been waging, like many others, for years!

I wish I could spill it all to you guys about what I have done to fight depression. Let's just say I have been around the block with this thing.

Right now, it is music and writing and a group at Kaiser that keeps me going. The music? Peter Gabriel's Don't Give Up and Sam Cooke's It's Been a Long Time Coming. Writing? I wrote a prayer a few weeks ago. Then there is my book and writing at work.

There is art that I love and find on Google Images. Oh, I read. I am reading some Dicken's now, ghost stories for Christmas, an old English tradition; a history of the Middle Ages; and I just picked up Paradise Lost today.

I get it. I'm depressed. This is kind of funny too. Because I know how wonderful this world is. I get it that people are amazing. I know they create wonderful things, like art, music, books, and even a tool to suck the air out of wine bottles. And I don't generally add to my problems by overdrinking (I seldom drink anymore,) overspending, drugs or betting on sports.

I just hurt. Okay? I don't want to blame it on relatives, relationships, or wearing my underwear too tight. I'm so tired of walking along the edge of a canyon with the possibility that I can slip and spend months in bed listless with no rhyme of reason.

I tell you, I am fighting a battle, a lot of the time. I fight it by surrendering that I feel down. I fight it by talking about it with people who get it. Sometimes FB people are my allies, or my wife, or my kids, or Chris or Leah, or just the sight of my grandkids. I know. There is a lot to live for, so I live. Happy about it? Not always.

As Christmas rolls up on us, a lot of people will be fighting same as I am.

I beg you folks. "Don't give up, you still have friends." Also, it maybe a "long time coming, but a change is gonna come."

The holidays getting you down? Talk to someone. Listen to some music. Read. Or talk to me if you want.You can reach me here, on FB, and once you contact me, I will give you another way to reach me if you want. I promise, I will not try to convince you to do a tandem jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Really.

So, it is not the end of the road that you see, but the beginning from the other side. I know it ain't easy folks. Get some help, call some friends, find a song or a mantra. Believe it will get better... or just believe in yourself to weather the storm.

God bless you all. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year if I do not update this before then. And finally thanks for helping out those in need--me included.