Depression

Depression is not sadness. Sadness is an emotion. Depression is the absence of emotion. It is emptiness. When you're depressed, you care about nothing, feel nothing, and do nothing. Even getting out of bed in the morning is an ordeal. Since it can come as a way of coping with sadness, depression is like suicide of the soul. Rather than feel the sadness brought on by life events, just kill all emotion and be a zombie.

One deals with sadness by getting out of the sad situations. Anti-depressants do nothing to help this. Depression is a physical ailment that requires medication to alleviate. The drugs don't help you feel better. They just help you feel.

Dante

Dante's Inferno is considered a medieval view of the afterlife. But one aspect of this version of life in hell that few people realize is that there are no chains. The demons do not have pitchforks pushing people back into their respective eternal tortures and Lucifer is not at the gate of hell deciding which torture you deserve to suffer. Newly arrived damned souls just sort of wander around until they come to where they feel they belong.

For Dante, the after-life is a continuation of the fore-life. If you were buffeted by metaphorical winds and storms of sexual passion while you were alive, you would find yourself buffeted by actual winds and storms after you died. If you were immersed in the ice of an absence of love or compassion, you would find nothing changed in the great beyond.

Dante was saying that people make their own heaven or hell on earth. One does not acquire heaven or hell based on what they believed but where they feel most at home. Someone who was devout when they were alive but nevertheless managed to screw themselves into a tiny bubble of anger and hatred would feel uncomfortable and out of place in heaven. Eventually, they would leave for more infernal climes.

Eternity then is just a reflection of the temporal life. If hell is eternal, it is because for some people there is no hope of ever pulling out of their suffering. They dwell on their hate and nurture it, angrily throwing off any attempt by others to get them to stop. It's not that the damned SHOULD abandon all hope; it is that they have ALREADY abandoned hope and will never know anything but anger and suffering in their lives.

Purgatorio is for those who recognize negativity of their lives and seek to free themselves from it. Those whose lives are filled with love or are victorious over suffering and achieved a happy and loving life know that they are already in Paradiso.

Mass is over. Go home now.

Sprained Wrists

If someone has a sprained wrist such that handshaking is painful, shaking their hand anyway because they should “toughen up” is being a jerk.  One should not feel ashamed by having an overly sensitive hand shaker.  Sprains happen.  One does not choose to be hurt by shaking hands.

Many people have the emotional equivalent of a sprained wrist.  Things said that would give others a chuckle insults and hurts them.  They lash out   They seek to humiliate in retribution.  Because they have been so shamed for their over-sensitivity, because they’ve told they are weak because of their thin skins, just pointing out their sensitivity often hurts as much as the original insult.  But, as with the sprained muscle, there is no shame in having triggers.  One cannot heal by simply “toughening up” or “chilling out.”  Healing, especially emotional healing, takes time.

It is the responsibility of others to be aware of these tender points and to be as careful with their words as one would take care not to vigorously shake the hand of sprain victim.  It’s not about walking on eggshells.  It’s about not adding to the hurt.  It’s about not being a jerk.  If they post weepy pictures on Facebook or call you “horribly vile,” one should not be angered, complain about “political correctness,” or call them a “pussy.”  Take that yelp of pain for what it is, an invitation to shut the fuck up. 

Just as those with sprained wrists should not attend hand-shaking parties, those with triggers should not attend events where those triggers are likely to be…um…triggered.   To go to event where jerks are likely to be jerks in order to righteously lash out at them is itself a jerky thing to do.  

Those with emotional sensitive spots should also recognize that, outside of comedians, most people aren’t assholes and don’t want to hurt you.  They’re just people…people who make mistakes.   And unlike computers, people can’t be simply programmed to change their speech, especially if insensitivity to your trigger is (pun warning) a “gag reflex.”  They have to be trained not to worsen your injury…sort of like puppies.

Guy Fawkes Day 2017

It important to remember on this Guy Fawkes Day that our current troubles are not a recent development.  The support for and tendency towards Oligarchy has been in place from the very beginning of this country…put there in no small part by the very Alexander “fuck the poor” Hamilton that is revered so much of late.  Consider these excerpts from the Workingmen’s Party Declaration of Independence of 1876:

The present system has enabled capitalists to make laws in their own interests to the injury and oppression of the workers.

It has made the name Democracy, for which our forefathers fought and died, a mockery and a shadow, by giving to property an unproportionate amount of representation and control over Legislation.

It has enabled capitalists ... to secure government aid, inland grants and money loans, to selfish railroad corporations, who, by monopolizing the means of transportation are enabled to swindle both the producer and the consumer ....

It has allowed the capitalists, as a class, to appropriate annually 5/6 of the entire production of the country ....

It has therefore prevented mankind from fulfilling their natural destinies on earth -- crushed out ambition, prevented marriages or cause false and unnatural ones --has shortened human life, destroyed morals and fostered crime, corrupted judges, ministers, and statesmen, shattered confidence, love and honor among men, and made life a selfish, merciless struggle for existence instead of a noble and generous struggle for perfection, in which . equal advantages should be given to all, and human lives relieved from an unnatural and degrading competition for bread ....

FTS

A recent blow to my ego from a family member triggered a shit storm of self-hatred. Some days are worse than others, but it never goes away. 

It's not depression. I know depression well. Depression is an emptiness, flatness. Depression is the absence of emotion. It's like soul death. This is different. It's raw unadulterated fury. This is fiery hatred and disgust with my existence.

This is a fire and brimstone preacher unrelenting in their condemnation of me to hell.  I'm fat and can't move without difficulty. I'm isolated and alone because no one can stand to be around me. I'm a trans freak. I can't write for shit. Thinking that my work (writing, comedy, or art) has any value to anyone is complete self delusion. I am utterly inconsequential and could disappear for months before anyone even noticed I was gone.   No one will even read this blog entry. 

I'm trapped and can't get away from this tormentor.  I can't seek "professional help" because I'm one of the "fell through the cracks" people without insurance.  Retiring early did get me away from all the bigots that made my life hell, but it also cut me off of having funds to deal with any of this. 

I'll just have to slog through it on my own.   I know that well too.  

Happily Ever After

People sometimes ask me why I am not interested in living forever. I tell them that my life has been like a great movie, with a definite beginning, middle, and end. Living forever would be like seeing a movie that just doesn't quit and goes on and on. The tedium of that eventually overshadows what thrills and laughter might have happened in the main part of the film until all you can remember is the tedium.

Life pacts

When my son Dylan was born, I stayed right next to him for his first hour as he passed around from one neo-natal room to another. He was confused and frightened, and he held my finger as though it were a life preserver. As I tried my best to assure him that everything would be all right, I was struck with an almost mythic feeling that we were now tied to a great circle of life. As I comforted him as he came into the world at one end of the cycle, I couldn't stop thinking about the two of us at the other end of that cycle, when he would be there to comfort me at the end of my life. Contemplating the profundity of this moment gave me great joy.

It occurs to me as I go to Iowa to see my father before he dies, that he and I are in a similar pact. As he was next to me when I came into the world, it is necessary that I be there next to him as he is leaving the world. There are no tears, except those of joy that this life cycle will have been fulfilled.