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.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
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).
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).
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