A follow up to yesterday's post.....far more rational in nature.

Well, here it is, New Year's Eve. I'm sitting in the window of my favorite, local, downtown coffee shop writing this and watching all of the Missoula residents that are out enjoying the First Night activities. My perspective on things this evening are a little different tonight that they were last night. Last night I wrote everything from a very emotional point of view, I just ran with how I was feeling at the time. I spend a great deal of time writing each week in my journal and decided it was time to start putting some of it in my blog as well. One thing I learned about myself when I was at The Center was that writing is very therapeutic for me and I actually enjoy doing it. I usually manage to make it down here to my coffee show three to four times a week and usually spend around two to three hours writing and watching people each time. I try to be as honest as possible in my writings but generally try to keep things positive in nature, unlike yesterday's post.

 There are constantly two different Jon's competing for control of my personality. On the one side you have the very emotional and reactive side of my personality that is very sensitive in nature and is greatly skewed toward focusing on the negative aspects of my life. The other side is what I like to call the clinical side of my personality. This side of my personality is very analytical in nature and does it's best to be as unemotional as possible. As you can imagine, these two sides of me are constantly at war with each other. I try my best to favor the clinical side of my personality and bury all of my emotions as much as possible. Trying to ignore your hurt and emotions is not a healthy practice, even if the emotional side of my personality is completely irrational. Being completely clinical all of the time also has unintended side effects, it makes it very difficult to form bonds with other people and it makes me appear cold in nature about things. As a result, people can mistake me as someone who doesn't care about others. This is far from the truth though, I am a very sensitive person and care a great deal about people that I interact with. I just don't want them to know it for fear of being exploited by them. My clinical side helps me exceed in my job at the hospital lab and I take a great deal of pride in being good at my job. I just work in an environment where effort and excellence aren't recognized or rewarded.

I wish so much that I could just erase the emotional side of my personality and live completely in the realm of reason and logic. That's impossible and very unhealthy though. Emotions are what they are. They are raw. They are powerful and they are rarely logical in nature. Everyone has them, it's what you do with them that often determines how healthy of an individual you are. This is where I run into trouble when it comes to therapy sessions. Getting me to switch out of clinical mode and start feeling raw emotions is very difficult because I hate feeling like I'm not in control and I'm scared to death that I will be punished for expressing them. I feel very guilt about what I wrote last night. Everything I wrote was the truth as I saw it at that moment. My emotional side was in charge at that point in time and I ran with it. As a result, I feel very vulnerable about it today. Obviously my clinical side is back in the driver's seat tonight as everything I'm writing is very analytical in nature.

Why do I feel so guilty about having feelings? I wasn't really allowed to express myself emotionally growing up and was punished for having feelings or showing any kind of vulnerability. This went well beyond just feelings though. I had severe asthma growing up and had little to no control over it. Unfortunately for me, my mother didn't believe in getting me the proper medications to help with my symptoms (keep in mind that we trying not to judge here, it is what it is). What was worse, I had severe allergies to go with the asthma which included things like dogs and cats. We would travel to visit mom's friends in other cities who had pets and I would always get really sick with asthma. Mom always became extremely angry with me whenever this would happen and I would have to do my best to hide just how sick I really was. One time it was so bad that I needed to immediately go to the hospital. It was bad, really bad. I could have died but all I could think about was how mad she would be with me if she found out. Unfortunately I couldn't hide it from her for long and she reacted just as I expected she would. She physically struck me and told me that I always ruin our trips. I still have nightmares about that experience to this day and also refuse to let anyone know when I'm not feeling well.

I learned I couldn't show any weakness growing up so I coped by becoming as unemotional as possible. This was nearly impossible since this was time time that the inner child was silently seething away in unexpressed rage. I lived in a world where I had to be in control of my emotions at all times. Unfortunately I feel I still need to live that way. No one ever cared about my feeling growing up so why should I care about them? This quite possibly saved me sharing a similar fate as my sister as far as alcoholism goes. I absolutely hate being drunk, I abhor it. Why? Because alcohol lowers your inhibitions which means I lose control of my emotions. I never know what is going to come out when I get drunk and it scares the shit out of me. Fortunately for me, I am a happy drunk and tend to be extremely honest with my feelings about people when I am drinking. My ex-wife used to tell me that she loved it when I got drunk because I would actually express real feelings while intoxicated. I shudder just thinking about it right now. I cannot stand being vulnerable in any way, shape or form. Any time I drink more than two beers (it's extremely infrequent for me to drink at all anymore) I wake the next day in a near panic over what I might have said or revealed to people about me. My heart rate has gone up noticeably just writing about it right now.

I have to learn to be vulnerable with people if I'm every going to make long lasting relationships. Like I said previously, I have a lot of anxiety over what I wrote last night. It was very negative in nature and that isn't the person that I want to be. I want so much to be a positive person who has nothing but nice things to say about life in general. Unfortunately I am far too cynical and jaded in nature. Being cynical was a coping mechanism for me growing up, it helped me survive my childhood. If the world was going to reject me, I might as well learn how to make fun of how stupid it all is. Being cynical is just an excuse to not interact or be part of the world. Why put yourself out there on a branch, exposed to the possibility of falling or worse yet, being pushed off by someone else? What's the incentive to try something new when it's far safer to just make fun of it? I have to learn to stop using my cynicism as a defense mechanism and learn to embrace the world and new experiences. I was doing a very good job of this 18 months ago but things have eroded since then.

Being mindful and allowing myself to be vulnerable is at the core of my path toward recovery. I have to be mindful of every word I speak and every thought that I think. I have to ask myself constantly, is this really the truth or is it my programming and negative skewing nature expressing itself? At the same time, I have to learn that it's okay to have feelings and be vulnerable around the right kind of people. I have to find a way out of the isolationist tendencies of my life. There are things that I can change, like attending support groups, and there are things that I can't change, like my work schedule (I work until 10:30 at night most of the time). I have to learn to not hate myself and the feelings that I have been suppressing for so long. This is not going to be a short or easy journey for me though.  It is important to remember that it is a journey that never ends. The most important thing is that I have to try, not just some of the time or part of the time. I have to try all of the time. This means getting out of bed after only eight hours of sleep, no matter how tired I am or how much I don't want to. This means finding a new therapist that will keep me focused, on task and will help pick me up when I stumble along the way. This means learning how to feel and express my feelings without feeling weak or guilty afterwards. This means going to the gym as frequently as possible. This means attending as many support groups a week that my schedule will allow. This means I have to continually look for new ways to meat people, no matter how much it scares the hell out of me. It means that I have to focus and be thankful for what I have and not what I don't have. It means allowing people to care about me and allowing myself to show that I genuinely care about them. This is by now means a complete list of the things that I need to work on. Tonight is the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, it's as good a time as any to get back on the road to proper recovery.

I'm back after a long break....

DISCLAIMER:
This post is very raw in nature. It is extremely negative and bleak. It is also the truth. I am not trolling for attention or sympathy with this post. This is me and what it is to be and think like me. It is not for the faint of heart. This is what mental illness is. It makes zero sense and it is not supposed to make sense. This is where I am right now.



Hello again blog, it's been over six months since I wrote anything here. I'd like to be able to say that the time has been well spent, but it really hasn't. Sigh, it's been so long that I don't even know where to begin. I can say that I feel like a completely different person than I did at this time last year.....and that's not a good thing. I think about how I felt at this time last year and wonder what the hell happened between then and now. Well, I know exactly what happened, I fell down, again. When I came home from my experience from The Center (yes, that's exactly what it is called) in July of 2011 I was armed with something that I had never experienced before, hope. I knew that if I was going to be able to make the changes that I had made from my stay at The Center last, I was going to have to find a support system that would help keep me focused on what's important and mindful of bad thought patterns and behaviors. In my defense, I did really well for about the first eight months. The problem is that I wasn't able to form a support system for myself. At the time, I didn't have any access to any support groups (I do now but lack the courage to start going to them) and I was unable to branch out and meet new people like I needed to. All it took was one Winter and I started falling back into old, unhealthy patterns. It wasn't an overnight occurrence though, it was a very long and gradual process that was somewhat insidious in nature at times.

Like most everything in life, the nature of my disease and it's effects on me are very complex in nature. If I were to sum up my primary obstacle, it would be that I'm far too isolated from the world and it's people. Interpersonal relationships are very difficult for me  many reasons. I don't know how to meet new people and form relationships with them. When you have close to zero self esteem and believe that you are a bad and flawed person, you tend to question why anyone would want to have anything to do with you at all in the first place. This statement is not designed to garner any kind of sympathy or outpouring of comments of how the above isn't true. Barrack Obama could call me up tomorrow and tell me how great of a person I am. He could tell me how likable and lovable I am and I still wouldn't believe it. This is the core of my problems. During my childhood years instead of being loved and nurtured (I'm not placing the blame on anyone here and I'm not angry about the who and what that was involved), I was emotionally abused extensively and physically abused to some extent. There is much that I don't remember about my childhood but I do know that things really started when I was about six years old.

Without getting into any of the specifics, I "learned" that there was something wrong with me and that was why elements of my family didn't like me and why I was constantly picked on at school. There was no positive reinforcement to tell me that I was a good person or that the things that were happening to me were wrong. When you are young, you don't have the reasoning skills necessary to question things that happen to you or the way people treat you. You are a child and your world revolves around things the way that people treat you. I grew up believing that I am a bad person and my mind still believes that to this day. "Can't you just change the way you think about yourself?", is what I get asked frequently. The answer to that question is yes, but it is not an easy endeavor.

When I was first diagnosed with Complex PTSD, the psychiatrist that was doing the diagnosing told me that I have to learn to speak a new language in my mind. As you can imagine, this is a very difficult thing to try to accomplish. Everything in my life seems to support my current paradigm of thinking, that being that I am an awful person. I have very few friends with whom I am in contact on a regular basis and those few who I do talk to, really don't know anything about my story. This illustrates another fundamental challenge that I face on a daily basis, I don't trust anyone. At. All.

I remember a time when trusting people was a lot easier for me, that was about ten years ago though. Between my divorce (and my ex-wife's subsequent marriage to someone who was in our wedding, I wish them nothing but happiness though) and my last relationship, I have learned that I can't share who I really am with people because they will either misunderstand me completely and leave me or worse, turn my secrets against me in an attempt to destroy me (not exaggerating or kidding on this one, it was that bad).  I seriously don't trust anyone and as a result, most people I encounter in my life don't have a clue as to how I truly am. I don't open up to people because I am desperately afraid of being judged, betrayed or abandoned. People who I work with would argue that they know me pretty well, sadly this isn't the case. The persona I present at work is designed to keep people from seeing who I really am and just how vulnerable and dysfunctional that my life is. Once again, I. Don't. Trust. Anyone. Period..... and that includes myself. Don't take it personally if you are offended by the above statement, it is not meant to be offensive in nature. It is what it is, that being that I don't trust anyone.

I hate my life, I really do. I'm scared, lonely and frequently wonder what the point of continuing on is. Another wonderful trait of my disease is that I suffer from random, intrusive thoughts frequently. It's not uncommon for my mind to tell me that I should kill myself 4-5 times a day. It's very hard to explain this in terms people can understand. I can be having a conversation with someone at work and my mind will suddenly flash to a vivid image of the barrel of a pistol pressed against my temple by my own hand. I realize this is a very disturbing thought for most people but it's a fact of life with me. These thoughts are completely involuntary in nature, that's not to say that I don't actively and willingly think about suicide at least once a week. I am not overly suicidal right now, at least not any more than usual. I have my dogs to think of, they are the one thing that keeps me on this planet at times and I won't abandon them. I am almost completely convinced that I will take my own life some day down the road though. There will come a day when Jack and Carter pass on and then I will be completely alone in this life. So, here's where some people are going to say that I need to be hospitalized or something like similar to it. To this I say NO. I'm not going to kill myself tonight or tomorrow, I'm just saying that I think about it often and wish I had the courage to follow through with it.

I realize this is a terrible, terrible attitude and is very unproductive but I can see the writing on the wall. I am going to struggle with mental illness for the rest of my life, there is no escaping that. Once again, I hate my life. I hate just about every aspect of it. I hate the fact that I don't have a normal family. I hate the fact that I don't have many friends. I hate my job. I hate that I'm fat. I hate my personality. The only time that I feel somewhat happy and free is when I'm asleep and am fortunate enough to be dreaming about a Jon that is surrounded by people, doesn't have problems, and is loved by everyone. I have those dreams and wake up, only to find that I'm back in my tiny apartment, I've slept the last 12 hours and it's time to get ready for work. It's those moments that I hate my life the most, to have been given a taste of happiness only to have it snatched away when my alarm goes off. That's only when I have good dreams though. I have nightmares frequently, these aren't your average nightmares. These dreams are frequently phantoms from the past where I am forced to relive moments of abuse, rejection or abandonment. It's not uncommon for me to wake up shaking violently with my heart pounding in my chest. There are times when I want to scream my head off after these dreams. I feel trapped and helpless, like I'm back in my childhood again. This dreams are visceral and they are very ugly. Sometimes I wake up from one nighmare and lay back down and have another one upon going back to sleep.

I hate my life, I hate myself. Oh how I hate myself. I am jealous of my sister, she's at peace (or at least I choose to believe that). Carly saw the writing on the wall, she knew that there was nothing that she could do that was going make her well or happy. I actually think that Carly was the smarter and braver of the two of us. She was brave enough to end her suffering. I have never once been angry with her for making the decision that she did, if anything, I feel I understand it. She was so miserable at the end, all she wanted was peace. I miss her so much though. She was the only other person in this world who knew what took place while we were growing up. Carly was fabulously intelligent, she just didn't have any common sense. Carly suggested as early as eight years ago that I was a good candidate for having PTSD. She knew. When Carly left us I lost the only other person in the world who had answers to a lot of questions about things I can barely remember. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always thought that we would be close some day when we got older and that we would be able to help each other through our problems. I hate the way I treated Carly those last ten years, I was an idiot. I was angry because she got all of the attention while I suffered in silence. How stupid was that? We were in the same boat together and I couldn't even see it. The only difference between Carly and I is the fact that I'm not an alcoholic. I wanted to be Carly when we were growing up. Everyone loved Carly, she was smart, she was popular, people loved her! I wanted so badly to be her, her life seemed so much easier than mine growing up. The truth is, her life was just as bad as mine was. I guess another difference between her and I was our reaction to the abuse we suffered. Carly did her best to blend in and be liked, so much so that she had no idea who she really was. I think Carly had no idea who she was when she took her own life three and a half years ago. Sigh, it's so sad.

I was different though, I am naturally defiant in nature. I took the abuse but was defiant about it. I silently seethed through my childhood and teenage years. I vowed that I would run away some day. I would run away and become successful. I would find my way and my life away from everyone who had ever wronged me. Then one day, I would return and take revenge on everyone who ever hurt me growing up. It's very important to note that I have never wanted any sort of physical or violent revenge on anyone. Physical violence has never been and never will be an option for me. I would never, ever physically harm another person. I should probably let everyone know that I own no firearms and have no plans on purchasing one....ever. If I had had access to firearms over the last five years, I probably would have killed myself several times over. People want to ban the sale of firearms to mentally ill people (an idea I wholeheartedly support, I would ban all firearms if it were up to me though). I make this statement, I am no danger to anyone other than myself and like I said above, I'm not going to go out and kill myself anytime soon, I have my dogs to think of.

Back to the original line of thought...... To me, the ultimate revenge would be to make my tormentors feel the way that I did. To hate yourself, to question what it was about yourself that makes everyone hate you so much. I was a very angry child growing up, living for revenge makes you that way. It helped me to  survive though, I guess that's all that counts (or does it really?). There is a monster that lives in me that is anything but nice, as a result. We will call him the inner child for this discussion. I've put a great deal of that anger behind me over the last few years but the inner child still raises his head on occasion..... and I hate myself for it. I hate my inner child for what he is and what he represents. I hate this innerlchild who still lives in my head that screams for revenge on those who have harmed me. I hate that child so much. That child has no compassion, he thinks only of revenge. I keep him buried very deep within my psyche under lock and key, blindfolded and gagged so he is blind and deaf to the comings and goings of my life. He is probably the most closely guarded part of my personality, no one has seen him in his fully revealed form and no one will if I have anything to say about it. I try to forget that he's there and for the most part, I keep him under wraps. Every once in a while,  a situation will present itself that smacks of the abuse I suffered as a child. Someone will come along who resembles my abusers too closely, these people are very, very dangerous for me. Having suffered abuse as a child, I am that much more prone to fall victim to the same patterns of abuse as an adult. I avoid contact with these people like the plague,  I have a sixth sense for them almost, I see them from a distance and for the most part, avoid them altogether. Unfortunately one of those kind people has a limited  and unavoidable presence in my life. I'm not going to say who this person is or whether this person is a he or she. There are awful people out there in the world and you can't avoid all of them all the time. I recognize this person for what he/she is and I stay as far away as possible because the child in me can sense these people too. Unfortunately a situation arose last month where this person came into my circle and took a very well placed shot at me. That shot struck through all of my barriers and very nearly freed the inner child from his bonds. The next thing I knew, he was screaming in my mind. "Here's your chance! You can have revenge right here and now! Strike now with the full fury of your hatred! Crush your enemies! This person deserves everything that you give to he/she! You can burn a permanent hole into this person's soul, just like the one that resides in your soul! Think of how good it will feel! This person will never mess with us again after we get through with him/her! You can make him/her feel the way that we do about ourselves! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?"

So there I was, poised to unleash the full fury of years of abuse and hatred on this unsuspecting person who had offended me. Once again, this energy is not physical in nature, brutality is the last resort of the weak and unimaginative. I will physically harm NO ONE. EVER. I do not thirst for that kind of revenge. Emotional scars are far more difficult to heal than physical ones anyway. I wanted so badly to burn a hole in this person's soul, I could taste it's deliciousness on my tongue. The power built and built within me, I knew exactly what I was going to say and how to say it to maximum effect. This person would never, ever forget the verbal assault they were about to witness. This inner child crouched, ready to pounce, ready to finally get his due....... and I walked away.

I turned and walked away with the inner child screaming and howling in righteous anger in my head. He raged and raged while I wrestled him back into his prison, slamming the door on him with an earthshaking thunder. As the dust settled I came to grips with what almost happened in that instance. I almost became like the very same people who made me who I am today..... and I hate myself so much for it. I absolutely cannot let the inner child out, if I do I have failed as a human being and have become a monster. I hate myself so much for what lives in me. I hate myself for what I can become if I ever let my guard down.

I sit here today, writing this extraordinarily long and visceral blog. The inner child is locked away again, counting the days until he can run free and lay waste to other people's psyches to his heart's content. That's what he believes anyway.....and he couldn't be more wrong if he tried. You see, people can only hurt you if you give them power over you. This is why I get hurt so easily, my whole self worth is based upon how other people see me. Thus, many, many people have power over me, it's why I hate myself so much. The person in question who took a very well placed shot at me has figurative and literal power over me, that's why it hurt so badly and was able to nearly unleash the inner child. Here's the thing though, I could have unleashed a verbal assault the likes of which God has never seen on that person and it wouldn't have done a lick of damage. That's because the offending person couldn't care less about what I think about him/her. I would have just ended up looking like a raving lunatic despite all of the energy that I would have unleashed. Carrying anger is just a waste of time and ultimately does more harm to yourself than it does to those you resent. My ultimate weapon is of absolutely zero value to me and actually just weighs me down even further. I have a hard enough time dealing with myself when I almost use it, let alone if I let things fly. I would never forgive myself for such behavior and worse yet, I would more than likely fail to do any damage to the offending party at all. Did I mention that I hate myself? I really do. For being such a smart person, I really am stupid.

I'm a big fucking mess. I'm probably always going to be a big fucking mess. I hate myself, I really hate myself. I don't even want to try to love myself anymore. What's the point? Everything in my life just points to the case that I am an awful person who deserves to be alone his entire life. I wish I had that courage to take my own life but I don't have it....at least right now. I am sick, very sick. There is no cure. I take pills, I have a therapist but he doesn't even know what to say to me. All I get is, "Come back and see me next week.", from him. I'm so full of shit. Even if I were to embrace myself as a person, it would take an incredibly patient and understanding woman to enter into a relationship with me. I'm broken, there is no therapy or medication that is going to make me a whole person. I am always going to struggle.....and I hate that almost as much as I hate myself. I have no hope. There are people in the world with far larger problems than what I have and they still manage to carry on and find happiness somehow....and that just makes me hate myself even more. I'm not writing this for sympathy and I feel badly for those who actually read all of this crap that I wrote. It's long, it's extremely bleak and negative......and it's the truth. This is what it's like to be mentally ill, this is how I feel every single day. I'm throwing this out there for people to see what it's like. I'm not going to end this post on some positive note by saying that I'm going to do my best to change. I don't give a shit anymore. People can judge me all they want, I don't think it's possible for me to hate myself anymore than I do already. I haven't even begun to address just how cynical and jaded I am in this post. I'm not trying to blame anyone in this post for anything, placing blame solves nothing.  I want answers to questions that are unanswerable. I am who I am, there is no denying that, there is no sense in crying over it, what would it solve? I most certainly play a key role in the way I interact with the world and my isolation, I hate that too. My fate is yet to be written, I still stand by my claim that I will take my own life at some point in time. It's funny, I guess I've alway known that in some way. I'm not glamorizing suicide in any way, shape or form. I do feel that it is an acceptable way of ending unendurable suffering. I love my sister very much and miss her every day but I understand why she did what she did and ultimately, I respect her decision despite the fact that we lost a wonderful, intelligent and beautiful human being as result. The world we live in is not fair, to say the least. I realize this, sometimes people are born or made that aren't designed to make it in the world, I feel I am one of those people. For the time being, my dogs keep me here....because I love them too much to leave them.

I probably shouldn't post this but I'm going to do it anyway, I put a lot of effort into it. Mental illness isn't pretty, it doesn't make sense but it most certainly exists. Maybe some day we will be able to better understand it, maybe we won't.

My four legged best friend is a jerk!

It's no secret that I love my dogs very much, they are my best friends and partners in this journey of discovery. JackJack has been with since he was a puppy and Carter joined our family just over two years ago. Living with terriers is a little bit different than living with your average, run of the mill Lab though. My dogs have personality and quirks in spades and sometimes they get into more trouble than their dad can handle. Carter is a very good dog if not a little dim for a terrier but he really doesn't hold a candle to Jack in the personality department.

Jack thinks the world is his and everyone is just living in it because he lets them. Jack is also a premier fighter of evil.....the problem is that his definition of evil is very broad. When we lived on the island we had neighbors ( perennially know as the "chaos neighbors") who had a 5 years old devil child named Damian (I'm seriously not making this up). This Damian child's favorite thing in the entire world was to torment Jack when he was hanging out outside and the lead I had for him.  Jack would energetically attempt to rip his face off but the lead always kept him from becoming front page newspaper material. Damian thought his threats were funny (I'm not kidding, this kid really is the antichrist). On top of that, there was also an unruly, skateboarding teenager in the Chaos Neighbors household who loved to tease Jack with his skateboard whenever he had the chance. Thus in Jack's mind, all little boys and teenagers are evil and must be persecuted with extreme prejudice. If said little boys or teenagers happen to be riding or in the presence of a skateboard, they are a direct threat to world peace and must be torn limb from limb, pissed upon, boiled in acid, chewed up, and then ejected into space. I'm not kidding, Jack has a serious "Mad On" for little boys and teenagers. This of course, causes me no end of embarrassment when he decides someone is evil and is trying to let the whole world know of it. Other things that are considered evil are: the garbage truck, the pizza guy, the UPS guy, Harley Davidsons, any large truck, any dog caught in his "territory" out in front of our apartment and the vacuum cleaner. As you can guess, Jack spends a lot of time barking, barking at nothing.

Jack also thinks he runs the show in my household. He is so athletic that counter tops are as easy for him as they would be for your average cat. He's also ungodly smart with a mischievous streak a mile wide. I have to crate him and Carter whenever I leave the house, otherwise anything that's on the counters or my garbage cans are considered fair game. One day I left half of pizza in it's box on the counter top and stepped out to run a few quick errands. I came home to find a huge gaping hole in the center of the pizza box with the entire contents of the leftover pizza missing. He had stood on top of the pizza box and eaten his way through it to get at the pizza.

He's a really asshole when he wants to be too. He considers it to be his sacred duty to roll in any laundry that is fresh out of the dryer waiting to be hung up. He loves him some horse shit and will never pass up the chance to roll in a particularly fresh specimen when we are on the trail. He used to eat the crotch out of every pair of thongs my ex-wife had. He gets mad when I play too much X-box and pisses on it in the middle of the night. He's an alpha with a terrier attitude problem when it comes to other dogs too. He doesn't care at all for actually saying hi to another dog, he's just interested in smelling there ass and if said dog so much as breathes on his junk, it's on like Donkey Kong. Jack also has absolutely no patience for puppies either, as soon as one jumps on him it's ass whooping time times two. One wonderful day their was this couple up at blue mountain that said they were babysitting an Australian Shepard puppy that made the mistake of jumping on Jack. He knocked the thing on it's ass so fast and scared it so badly that it ran under the nearest car and wouldn't come out until Jack was out of sight. The couple coaxed the puppy out while we headed up the trail and I thought that would be the end of it. However, when we were getting back to the trailhead after our hike, the couple and said puppy just happened to be getting back from another trail at the same time. They were so scared of my 22 lb. dog that they picked up the puppy and ran for their vehicle in a frantic panic. I just looked at him and commented on the ruckus that he created, I was embarrassed to say the least, Jack was pleased with his handiwork.

Jack absolutely insists on sleeping under the covers and if I have a female guest over, he insists on sleeping in between us (not like that's happened in over a year and a half now). I can't eat dinner on the couch because I can't keep his nose out of my plate. I flick him on the nose every time but he just gets angry and wrinkles his nose at me. He absolutely refuses to let me sleep through the night and gets me up at least once to let him out, he says it's so he can relieve himself but I think he secretly does it just for an excuse to go outside and make sure nothing evil isn't going on.

For all the character and trouble that Jack causes, I wouldn't change him in any way if I could. In a lot of ways, he reflects a lot of my personality and I can't fault him for that. I didn't want just a dog, I wanted something with some personality and I got that and then some. Jack has been there in the happiest times of my life and he's been there for the worst too. He may be a huge jerk but he's my jerk and I can't imagine life without him.

Stopping a downward spiral....

Despite my efforts and with a great deal of embarrassment and shame, I find myself peering up from inside a hole at this point in time. I always told myself that I wouldn't let this happen again but somehow here I am. Falling into a depressive state can be a very subtle thing for me and like this instance, I often am not aware it's happening until I'm a lot farther down than I should be.

How the hell did I get here? I knew that something like this was bound to happen again but I figured that it would be much farther in the future and that I would have recognized what was happening and would have been able to stop it. Things are nowhere near as bad as they were last year at this time (something I am very grateful for) but I definitely am very depressed. It was late last week that I realized that I have been regularly sleeping 12 hours a day, I'm only walking/hiking with the dogs twice a week, my journaling sessions have fallen to once a week and my visits to gym are becoming fewer and farther in between. These are not good patterns for me and when I lose these anchoring devices, bad things are on the horizon.

I hate this so much. Why can't I be normal like the majority of the population? Having PTSD and refractory depression is never easy and if it means that I have to be mindful of what is going on with Jon as much as possible but even that isn't enough at times. It doesn't help that work is in absolute turmoil right now and no one I work with can be trusted with the knowledge of what I struggle with everyday. Sometimes I wonder if living in Missoula is really worth all of the suffering at work. This begs the question, am I depressed because I can't deal with work or can I not deal with things at work because I'm depressed? It's the chicken or the egg question and unfortunately there is no easy answer. I feel very lucky to have a job at this point in time (though that may change in the near future, it's hard to tell right now) and I need to take some comfort in that at least.

Luckily for me I am trying to take active steps to get some kind of grip and crawl my way out the hole again. Today is the vernal equinox and that means that nicer days and mountain biking is just around the corner. I've vowed to limit myself to sleeping only 8 hours a night, walking the dogs daily again, journaling at least 3-4 times a week and spending as much time in the gym as possible in preparation for the upcoming mountain biking season.

As usual, I'm not looking for any sympathy and really hate sharing my sob story as it looks right now. The point that I am trying to make is that people with mental illness, like myself, often struggle with inner demons that a they may or may not have any control over everyday. The stigma of mental illness is far better than it was 20 years ago but many people just don't understand that it really is a disease and it's something that you can't just decide you are going to be over one morning after you wake up. It takes a great deal of courage to face things like depression and PTSD everyday, I don't want any special treatment or anything like that, I just want people to have a glimpse of what life can be like when with mental illness.

In the meantime, I will continue my battle and will strive to walk the correct path as opposed to the easy one. I know what I need to do, I know what I need to change and I know that I still need to grow. The important part is that no matter how hard it is, I have to stay as positive as possible and keep trying.

Learning to use the "F" word.

Sometimes you have to try things that may seem counterintuitive to the way you have consistently approached life. My time away at intensive outpatient treatment center taught me many things but the most difficult lesson that I had to learn was to let go of things and use what I consider to be the real "F" word..... I had to learn how to forgive.

Up until that point I had always lived my life by the motto, "Never forgive, never forget!". Growing up I always told myself that I would go away when I was older, make something of myself and then come back to heap the same level of hurt upon those who had hurt originally hurt. This was a very hard and sad way to live but it gave me the strength I needed to survive. Defiance became something that I took strength in knowing that someday I would have my revenge. I think this is probably one of the biggest differences between Carly and I that kept me from following the same road that eventually led to her taking her own life.

I survived my childhood, my teenage years and my college years.....carrying a great deal of hate and resentment with me. As time wore on the sheer weight of all the resentment I was carrying became too much to bear. People over time had suggested that I needed to learn to forgive those who had hurt me in the past. This only angered me though, if I were to forgive people it was too much like admitting that what was done to me was okay and that the perpetrators were getting off with no repercussions for their actions. I felt that to forgive was show weakness and that most certainly wasn't what I was about. Never forgive, never forget, never show weakness, bide your time and wait for the chance to get even.

That's really not what forgiveness is really about though. In order to move beyond one's problems, one has to learn to forgive and release all of the resentment that is being carried like excess baggage. It wasn't until about week four of the program I was in that I finally accepted this concept.  Oddly enough, it was a Christian priest that finally convinced me it was time to try another path away from anger and resentment. He made me see that holding on to all those hurts was doing nothing but poisoning my soul and preventing me from healing. He helped me see that forgiving is not about saying that what happened to me was okay, he helped me to see that forgiving would release me from my pain and lead me to a much happier existence.

I finally came to the conclusion that the way I had been living my life wasn't working very well and that it was time to try a new approach. So I decided to give this forgiveness thing a whirl. It's not like things changed for me overnight though. It took a great deal of writing on my part to come to grips with things, I had to process how I really felt about things. I had to look really hard at myself and the events of my life that led to where I was sitting at that point in time. It wasn't easy but I finally let go of some really big issues. I forgave people that I swore I would never, ever forgive. I doubt I will ever tell most people that I have forgiven them but the important thing is that I did it. I didn't do it for them, I did it for me.

I let go of a lot of pain over the next few weeks and found a new strength that I didn't know I had. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that everything has been peachy keen since. I still struggle with forgiving certain individuals (most of these instances seem to center around people who walked out on me at the weakest moment of my life). I write in a journal several times a week and I publish this blog to remind me of the lessons I have learned, to give me strength and hopefully help others who may be like myself. Carrying resentment around only hurts you, not the people you are holding the resentment against. I am so grateful that I understand this concept now though I struggle with it at times. I guess forgiveness really isn't an "F" word to me anymore. Now I just need to focus on the "L" word (L for Love).

Observation versus Interaction

I am an extremely analytical person and these attitudes are very pervasive in my daily life. The problem is that this makes me a little bit of a loner because I spend far more time observing people as opposed to interacting them with them. This is fundamental problem that I spend a great deal of time trying to overcome. The problem stems from the fact that I am so observant and analytical that it leads to a certain amount of detachment from everything. Life is supposed to be experienced, not just watched.

I sit here in my coffee shop writing in my journal and posting on this blog.... all the while watching people walk by, coming to and fro and generally going about all their business. I love watching people but I find that I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to actually interacting with them. I live a pretty quiet life, that's not to say that I don't have things that I do, I just don't spend a lot of time with people outside of work. I have come to the conclusion that through my experiences over the last 5 years that I have forgotten how to make friends. I've been through quite a bit in these years and I carry a lot of shame over many things (there is a large difference between shame and guilt). I am generally so ashamed of myself that I automatically feel that most people that I meet on a daily basis wouldn't be interested in forming any kind of friendship with me. This is a very self defeating attitude that requires a lot of effort and self awarenss to overcome. I spend a lot of time trying to get past the shame that I carry and it's definitely an ongoing process. How do you make friends when you are so embarrassed of yourself and the state of your life at this point in time? Anxiety is a very powerful adversary and often means that I take the path of least resistance as opposed to facing things that cause my anxiety.

Shame is only half of the equation though. I've been hurt by people who were supposed to be friends and loved ones through the entirety of my life, so much so that I have learned that observation carries far less risk in rejection than interaction. So I watch people. I watch people and wonder how they met each other and what things they have in common to form the basis of a friendship. I used to have quite a few friends when I was married but the move to Hawaii and the less than amicable divorce (my ex-wife remarriend one of my groomsmen) combined to decimate quite a few friendships that I had with people. The fact that I fell into a spiral of depression really helped intensify feelings of isolation and lonelines. On a positive note, the friends that were left standing have proven to be some of the best friendships I've encountered in my lifetime.

Forming new friendships is absolutely essential to my well being but I have absolutely no idea where I'm supposed to start. I'm 39 now and most people my age are married and have families that keep them busy, I'm not going to find very many people my age that are going to have a lot time to devote to hanging out with me. Another problem is that I work evenings all the time so I'm not off when the vast majority of the population who work 9-5 have free time. Work itself poses it's on set of difficulties that don't reinforce a sense of worth or belonging within me. I work in a very dysfunctional environment where there is no loyalty or a sense of common ground with the exception of our shared misery (don't get me wrong, I feel very fortunate to have a job that lets me live in Missoula). So I sit here and journal 4-5 days a week and the same question/problem keeps repeating itself, how the hell do I meet people and form some friendships? I understand that this is absolutely necessary but I'm scared absolutely shitless of it. Beneath all my defenses and insecurities lies a very sensitive soul that really doesn't want to get hurt anymore.

I live in a liberal college town and I should be able to meet people just about anywhere but my nature is to do nothing but observe and draw as little attention to myself as possible. I hate being lonely yet it's exactly what I am comfortable with. It takes effort to produce growth and anything worth doing is rarely easy. I have to find positive ways to come out of my shell with people and believe that I have things to offer in friendship. I know that this is a process and that it takes time so I must be patient while putting myself out there. Hopefully things will develop over time with some self confidence and a little bit of luck.

I've come a long way in the last 9 months but that doesn't mean that I'm not faced with challenges and oppurtunities for growth. Maintaining a positive attitude and a certain level of patience is absolutely essential. I'm very grateful for the people who are in my life and hope they know this. I just need to find more ways to connect with people so I feel a greater sense of belonging.

Internet dating 'effing blows!

Okay, I'm 39 and single. I've almost come to grips with that.....almost. One of the greatest challenges in my life at this point is finding people to hang out with and (gasp) pursuing romantic interests. My lifestyle really doesn't lend well to either of these pursuits and it is a source of constant anguish for me. The term "Normal" is rarely used to describe me (unless you mean normally insane) and this can create some barriers in meeting and forming relationships with people. I work until 10:30 at night in a windowless room populated with people that make the term "Anal Retentive" seem as loose as a breeze puffing through the Grand Canyon. This means that when most normal people are off of work going about the usual activties of life, I'm at work trying to find ways to deal with the multitudes of leaky urine specimens that find their way onto my counter (I plan on dedicating a whole post to that endeavor someday).

I have no social life, there is no way of sugar coating it. No social life usually means spending your Saturday evenings in a coffee shop writing a blog on how much internet dating sucks as opposed to going out with people you know to have fun. No social life means that I have to resort to extreme measures in finding members of the opposite sex who may or may not be interested in a long term partnership with a crazy guy. Extreme measures means Match.com in my case.

Internet dating is supposed to be far less taboo than it was just 5 years ago but I don't think that means that it's any more dignifying. Here's how it works: You start off by creating a propaganda filled synopsis of who you are and what you are looking for. This is a very important step, you want to list all of your top qualities (I'm still trying to figure out what mine are to this day) and find ways to embelish them enough to make yourself seem desirable without going too far overboard. Next you have to come up with some sort of tag line that sits at the top of for profile next to your picture (more on this later). This is usually some creative, witty statement that sums you up in just one sentence. That's great and everything but anyone who knows me knows that I can't sum anything up ten paragraphs as opposed to just one sentence. It took me forever but I decided to run with "Life is journey and not a destination". Pretty good, huh? At least I think so, if life were a destination, I would have discovered the destination to be the local Wal Mart parking lot and that I'm about 24th in line to park my Winnabago there.

Okay, so I have my somewhat edited and inflated profile (hey look at me, I'm normal I lived in Hawaii for two years, I'm cool and hip, I have an iPad....etc), my cheery/cheesy yet deep tag line, tons of pictures of me and the dogs doing our thing and I haven't had much more than a nibble in over 6 months now. You can send people "Winks" or emails but every time I send one off I can just hear the recipient saying "Who the fuck is this guy?" to themselves. My possibilities are so bleak that I've started wondering if life as a gay man would be more productive (kidding of course). I was conversing with a woman from Hamilton over the last 2 weeks and then all of a sudden I can't access her profile any longer, I guess I must either have leprosy or my profile screams Chester the molester. The other problem is that Missoula definitely has a very finite number of single women in their mid to late thirties. Couple that with my preference for one without children (something that I am currently reconsidering) and the odds of finding one without baggage (I certainly don't need that, especially after the last girlfriend) becomes very slim indeed.

Match.com? Whatever, more like Awkwardanddesperate.com. I think I'll cut my losses and try my luck (or lack thereof) out in the the real world. Hopefully my crazy woman magnet personality has toned itself down and my crazy woman detector is working better than it has in the past.

I'm going to be 40 in just over six months and as I'm sure is apparent, I'm in a bit of a panic. The older I get, the more bleak the sex life becomes and the more my midsection seems to expand. Oh well, I'm pretty sure that the dogs still love me, as long as their is food in their bowl and they get their daily puppy treats.

Since when are secularism and science considered un-American?

Just as a warning, if you are very socially conservative or deeply religious, this post is probably going to offend you.

As time goes on it continues to frighten me how certain elements of the United States populace insist that religion has to be part of our governing politics and how science is often treated with scorn. It should be noted that I am very much an agnostic/freethinking individual who highly values the choice to form my own opinions over having my morals dictated to me by a 2000 year old text conflicting idealism. I also have 2 degrees in science and believe very heavily in the scientific method. This attitude seems to be the antithesis of a great deal of the Republican party and Christian conservatives these days and a negative connotaion toward secularism appears to be gaining in strength. Since when does agnosticism and/or atheism mean the you are un-American and worthy of scorn? What kind of dogma is this and why are we allowing this sort of attitude into our government? This nation was originally was founded upon the ideal of a separation of Church and State but religious conservatives seem to completely ignore this fact. Religion has absolutely no place or business in American government and politics whatsoever. Making Christian dogma a part of our governing politics is a step toward a theocratic dictatorship similar to the likes found in the Taliban in Afghanistan I realize that the majority of the United States public consider themselves to be Christians but that does not mean that we should have prayer in schools, intelligent design should be taught as opposed to evoltion and other ludicrous proposals that the Christian Right is pushing these days.

Now I will admit that I have a general negative attitude towards any form of organized religion. I don't need religious scripture or teachings to tell me what is right or wrong. I am a scientist at heart and believe that decisions should be made upon facts that can be illuminated using the scientific method. I am a "Freethinker" who refuses to let societal pressures cause me to make decisions or form opinions based upon what other people feel or think. I know how to think for myself and that is something that I hold most sacred. I don't believe in a God but that does not mean that I don't think there is a higher power out there in the universe. I believe without a doubt that there are extraterrestrial intelligences out there in the vast, unfathomable, unknowable regions of space and that there most certainly are species that a far more advanced than we are. The ideas that we are created in God's own image, that the eart and it's flora and fauna are our's to do as we see fit, and those who do not believe in the Christian God and accept Jesus as their savior are going to Hell frankly offend me and make me sad to think that people can be so narrowminded.

That's me though, these ideals aren't something that I arrived at overnight, the important thing is that I don't push my ideals on other people like certain individuals do. I've been told point blank that I have no soul, will never know peace and that I'm going to hell because I haven't accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. I had a wife who thought she could "fix" me just like some Christian institutions believe that they can "cure" people who are gay. I'm not saying that all people who subscribe to Christianity or other religions are like this but I am saying there are far too many that are and they are the people who are pushing for more religion in government. Fox News pundits cater to this crowd and are often quick to discount scientific fact and imply that "Godless Heathens" are un-American and are trying to undermine everything this nation stands for. Who listens to this drivel anyway? There are too many people do, they have a political agenda and the Republican party is in bed with them. These are the kinds of people who I see standing on the corner in front of our local clinic that performs abortions with signs that say "Abortion causes breast cancer" (I am not making this up, I've seen it with my own eyes and could barely contain the outcry this created within me). There is no arguing or reasoning with this type of person since they are clearly capable or distorint any fact to further agenda. These people are those who would have us adhere to a Puritanical code of idealism and want nothing more to stamp out free thought across the nation.

I'm willing to admit that I don't have the answers to life's mysteries and am perfectly fine with that. I will never push my beliefs on another human being because everyone deserves to make up their own mind about things. I realize that not all Christians are like the extreme examples I listed above. There is a growing philosophy that spiritualism and being religious are two different things entirely. I openly welcome this attitude and hope that it continues to gain momentum in the American public. I'm not asking people to abandon their faith or discount the many positive things the Christain faith teaches. What I am asking for is secularism, keep religion and government seperate. Don't curse secularists as un-American when in truth, secularists are defending one of the key principles this nation was founded upon. You are entitled to your beliefs and I am entitled to mine, just keep religion out of our government.

How much dude is too much?

I use the word dude a lot. Dude is one of those words that can mean absolutely anything in my vocabulary. I use dude in so many ways that it often frightens me. I use the term to express gratitude, disappointment, frustration, anger, happiness, exasperation. It is both a noun, an adjective and an adverb but I have yet been able to find a way to use it as a verb. How the hell did the word dude become such a staple in my life? Recent history would point to my time spent on Kauai as a surf bum eternally looking for the ultimate wave but I suspect my infatuation with the term goes far beyond that. I find myself using it a work at most where I try to use it as a replacement for more colorful language though I find limited success in that endeavor. Do you suppose that my coworkers and friends notice how often I say dude? Do you suppose that they think I'm weird (I most certainly am)? I like to think of myself as an articulate human being yet I spend so much time employing the term dude that it would seem that I am the exact opposite of dude. DUUUDDDE! Or is it DOOOOOOD?

I may spend an inordinant amount of time saying dude but it falls well short of two other words that I speak far more frequenlty. Those words would be the names of my two terrierists. Terriers make excellent vanquishers of all things evil and nefarious. This is especially true of Jack. Jack thinks that anything that makes noise or walks by the apartment that doesn't have to do with me or himself is evil and must therefore must be fought and vanquished. Jack is a premier evil fighter and also has a Phd in making mischief. As a result, I spend a great deal of time uttering his name in the futile struggle to get him to shutup or quit poking his nose into things that he shouldn't. I have so many inflections for uttering his name and each one literally conveys entire conversations worth of information. Jack hears his name so much that I'm not even sure he knows how it even pertains to him. Carter is a different story thoug. Carter lives for about three things, his ball, his dog food and licking his Dad. When I let Jack and Carter out of their crate after a long day of work Jack jumps all over me while Carter goes straight for his ball followed by making sure that the dog dish has plenty of food in it. It's almost like I don't exist other than to facilitate a neverending game of fetch the ball. It's ball time when I'm eating, sleeping, taking a shower, taking a crap, getting ready for work, enjoying quiet time.....etc. The only times when it isn't ball time is when it's food time or lick Dad time. Carter isn't happy unless he gets a solid hour of licking Dad's face and ears each day. He is absoluletly relentless in this endeavor and it drives me absolutely crazy. Whereas I call Jack's name in all sorts of manners and inflections, Carter's name is always used in exasperation. Am I neurotic dog owner or am I just the father of two very eccentric terrierist? Both I suspect.

So there you have it, my vocabulary is dominated by the words dude, Jack and Carter. Just another entry into the whole eccentric versus crazy arguement that I'm sure scholars around the world debate about me everyday........dude.

I'm in love......with a down winter coat.

I was blessed with the opportunity to live on Kauai for two years and I can earnestly say that Jack and I thoroughly enjoyed the tropical climate and weather associated with it. The problem is that it made us both absolutely intolerant of Winter upon returning to the mainland. Jack hates Winter so much that he secretly has never forgiven me for moving home. He went from the tropical paradise where he got to chase crabs on the beaches, numerous frogs on the trail that we hiked daily, geckos inside and outside the house and the random wild chicken that was unfortunate to cross his path. Jack has very short hair and a pink, speckled, nearly bare tummy to go with it. To say he hates snow is a severe understatement. I think he would much rather experience the thermometer in the but treatment every time he goes to the vet than stick one paw outside the door during the Winter months. There are days during the Winter time that the only time that he bothers to poke his head out from the covers of the bed is when he absolutely cannot ignore the urge to urinate any further. Winter is not Jack's thing.

The interesting things is, I have almost the same feelings about Winter as he does. I'm a Montana native and in my life before Kauai, I was used to the 5-6 month time period known as a Montana Winter. Wearing board shorts, t-shirts and flip flops everyday for a 2 year period seems to completely robbed of any sort of enthusiasm for the short days and long, cold nights associated with this time of year. I used to be an avid skier who would brave any day of extreme cold in the pursuit of powder. Now i can think of when it comes to skiing is how cold I am going to get when riding up the chairlift. I hate Winter so much that I find myself counting down the days until the official first day of Spring (which really doesn't signal the end of Winter here). Like Jack, Winter is not my thing anymore either.

I hate being cold, I loathe being cold. Once I get chilled, it takes forever for me to warm up and frequently requires a long hot shower. The last few years I wore a North Face softshell jacket that did nothing but promote a profound sense of misery anytime I had to venture outside. This year I decided to change all of that. This year I went to our local REI and explained somewhat too animatedly to a staff member that I was tired of being cold outside and that I needed a Winter coat that would keep me toasty warm in the worst of Winter conditions. "What you need is a good down coat", is the answer that I got. A down coat? Who still wears down coats anymore? Apparently people who like to stay warm do. So I bought a nice 800 fill blue Marmot jacket and wandered my way outside expecting to be miserable for the next 6 months.....and was hugely surprised. I absolutley cannot believe the world of difference this super light coat has made in my life during these Winter months. I actually enjoy being outdoors during freezing weather and my daily walks with the dogs are actually enjoyable since I'm not freezing my ass off. So I can proudly say that I'm in love with a Winter down coat. It's too bad that I can't get one for poor JackJack, I'm sure he would hate Winter far less and would stop punishing me for moving home from the island by puking in the apartment every week.

January is national laugh like a smug Frenchman month.

There is a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail that makes me wish so hard this was how life is in the lab that it isn't funny it isn't funny.
Here's a link to the scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

As you can see, Arthur and his English K-nig-its, are trying to garner some help from some Frenchman in a castle and all they get is a fierce bout of taunting. To understand what I'm talking about, you have to understand what it's like working in the laboratory in the basement of a hospital. We are literally cooped up in a room with noisy machines fielding angry phone calls all day from Doctors and Nurses that have absolutely no idea what or how it is that we produce the results that they need on a daily basis. The general lack of understanding and sheer sheer stupidity of requests and demands naturally generates a sense of shit rolling downhill with us being at the very bottom. Of course this generates a distinct amount of disdain for the rest of the hospital since no one ever calls us to tell us how much of a good job we are doing. Some requests or demands are frequently because of the offending caller forgetting to even send us a specimen on a patiient in question that it's so not hard to be smug. In my case, the temptation is so great that I just can't control my self at times. My colleagues are normal Clinical Laboratory Scientists and have far more patience than I do because I am a certified "Evil" Clinical Laboratory Scientist who happens to be a bit above average on the intelligence scale (at least I think so and that's all that counts in this game) who really does not enjoy being pestered by Doctors and Nurses with inane demands and requests. My biggest flaws are that I absolutely cannot stand being treated like I'm stupid, don't know what I am doing, or that I don't care about how long it takes for me to get the results that said Doctors and Nurses need. Anytime one of the aforementioned circumstances take place, I immediately turn into a smug Frenchman and have to exert every force of my formidable will to keep from taunting the hell out of the offending party. Most of the time I can hold my tongue and the laboratory staff is used to me spouting off numerous, colorful taunts and slanders immediately upon getting off the phone with said offending party. Two other parts of being a certified "Evil" Clinical Laboratory Scientist are that you have to be an extreme "Knowitall" and very, very bold when provoked. Bold enough to tell Doctors where to stick it when they are being more obnoxious and abusive than normal. This occurred not once, but twice in the last 2 weeks and of course it lands me in our Laboratory Director's office explaining why she has gotten two angry emails from physicians who don't enjoy being told they are being unreasonalbe from some "Knowitall" puke who works in a cave at the bottom of the hospital and has nothing better to do than refuse to bow down to whatever inanae and unreasonalbe request he or she has made.

Naturally all of these are character flaws that I have and I do my best to keep them in check but sometimes things just get the better of me. It's hard working in a place where people who have no idea how processes work in a lab call down to berate you because they don't know you are doing your best to provide them with the quickest and most accurate results you possibly can. I work very hard to be very good at what I do, I hate it when people question my abilities or expediency when I take so much pride in my job. The work that we do in laboratory as professionals is both exceptional and very important. We have to bring our "A" game everyday because physicians make medical decisions on the information that we provide on what's going on with every patient. I think that we should be allowed to be as smug as humaly possible and that we should also be able to taunt whining, and complaining offenders as harshly as our imaginations will allow. We are frequently at odds from the nursese from our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This is where all of the very premature, less than one pound, tiny infants go after a premature delivery. These are very fragile little human beings and naturally they require a fair amount of bloodwork to be done to ensure their survival. Problems arise when nurses send down suboptimal specimens that we are unable to give results on because they are not accurate due to the quality of the specimen they provided. Everytime I have to call the NICU to tell them they have to recollect a specimen, I have to brace myself for the inevitable ass chewing and insinuations that I hate babies and secretly love it when nurses have to torture, delicate and sick infants. Starting next week, things are going to change greatly next week when the NICU gets a new point of care instrument that will allow them to perform certain testing in the NICU itself instead of sending it to the lab proper. At this point the nurses our going to enter our world of hurt, they are going to experience for themselves what happens when you run a suboptimal specimen and the analyzer won't report out results. I am literally going to be doing back flips when they call down to ask for help because their specimens suck. The ammount of smug is going to be so thick, you will be able to cut it with a knife and enjoy it's sweet, sweet nectar of divine righteousness. There will be absolutely no doubt that I am a certified "Evil" Clinical Laboratory Scientist and I'm sure I will be in our Laboratory Director explaining away my numerous, colorful escapades next week. This is why I have made January national "Laugh Like A Smug Frenchman" month in honor of the hard working men and women who slave in laboratories everyday to help sick people and save lives. We will have our revenge next week and it's going to be so grand that I bet I'm going to pronounce it as one of the best weeks of my entire life.

"I fart in your general direction you silly, so called physician!"

When the wave breaks..... A tale of survival.

People who have heard bits and pieces of the various stories of my life tell me I should write a book someday. It is very true that I have indeed lived a very strange life through my years with the last five years of my life being perhaps the strangest and most chaotic. Life experience is not something that is determined in the number of years you have lived. Every year I wonder if this is finally the year that I am grow up and act my age when in truth, I have seen and endured many experiences that has given me a view of life that far exceeds my 39 years of life. You just never know where life is going to take you next or how it is going to test your character and resolve.

Five years ago I was living what I thought was a normal life for someone who was 34. I had a career, a wife, a new car and fancy toys. I had no debt, plenty of friends and yet I was very unhappy and had no idea where I was going. Then we moved to Kauai and things really got turned upside down. Upside down really isn't and adequate term for what I experienced over the last four years of my life. I like to compare the experience to getting hit by a large wave, literally. I spent a lot of time in the surf on Kauai and I can tell you that have to keep your wits about at all times. Occasionally I would try to ride a wave that was either too big or I was late on my approach and I would end up what is termed as "going over the falls". This is when the wave reaches it's most vertical position and you end up falling down the face. This is quickly followed by the full weight of the wave crashing down on top of your head. When the wave is fifteen to twenty feet high, you just hang on for the ride and hope you don't die.You are slammed downward, often straight into the bottom (I did this head first once, into the coral reef no less), the shear force of the wave throws you about to the point that you have no idea which way is up. Eventually the wave passes and you are able to make it gasping to the surface.....and then the next wave in the set crashes on you and you go through the same experience again. This can happen in sequence as many as three to four times and there is nothing you can do but ride it out and pray it ends on your next trip to the surface. It's a very harrowing experience to say the least and you are in very real danger of being knocked out and drowning.

This is what was happenened to my life over the period of fours years. I would come up for air only long enough to take as deep a breathe as possible with the next wave towering over me. I really never knew which way was up and never knew when it was going to end. I had neighbors of which the stuff of nightmares are made of. I found myself with a hippy roommate in her late twenties who worked at a vegan juice where all they did was smoke weed all day. It wasn't her sexual preference that caused the problem for I embrace and respect diversity in it's many forms, it was the fact that she always brought home high school girls that caused the problems. I had serious financial problems, a very ugly divorce, too much strife at work, problems with intolerant locals in the the surf, and to top it all off, a very unstable girlfriend. Finally, I had to retreat back to the mainland during a mental breakdown in the hopes of some sort of return to normalcy.....which didn't happen. Naturally my financial problems followed me home, my ex-wife got married to a very close friend who was a groom's man in our wedding, my only sibling took her own life, I crashed my mountain bike so badly that I broke my right arm and three ribs and my relationship with my girlfriend continued to become more and more absurd. Take into account all the emotional baggage I am carrying from childhood and it's a miracle that I survived.

That's the point of this entry though, I am a survivor. Somehow I've found the strength to endure my troubles whether those be by unfortunate circumstances or through my own doing (of which there are plenty of examples). For the first time in many years, I have little drama in my life and am enjoying an extended period of rest of sorts and for this I am very thankful. People who I met at the treatment center (all of whom have the courage to face problems similar to mine everyday) were simply aghast at my story. One young woman in particular stated that I had "Seen it all". The thing is, I haven't seen it all, you never when the next wave is going to appear on the horizon to turn things upside down again. I am a survivor and that's something I need to take pride in, I won't give up no matter how bad things will get. That which does not kill us only makes us stronger and I firmly believe that statement. You only get ind shot at life and you need to make the most of what you have. We all have strengths and weeknesses, the key is to know your stregths and play to them. I've seen what happens when someone gives up against what seems to be insurmountable odds. Life became too much for my sister to the point where she felt the only release could have was to take her own life. I was there myself nine months ago, it sure as hell wasn't pretty. I had to make a choice, I could give in or I could find my inner strength and keep going. Having a good support group was instrumental in this decision. Where do I go from here? I honestly can't say that I know. What I do know is that I will survive, I will endure and I will triumph. Maybe I will write that book someday, my struggles have been both sad and humorous at the same time, perhaps I can use my tale to inspire someone else to keep fighting the good fight.