Beatings Will Continue Until Morals Concur

To write, for me, more often than not, is to attempt to give form to what wants to come pouring out in an unintelligible torrent of emotional, psychological and/or intellectual magma. It needs to be channeled into a mold before it cools and have its rough edges sanded off when it does, so that it's shape is recognizable or evocative enough to convey the feeling or idea. It's burning to be released, to give it form is the only way to hope it will be useful, purposeful or meaningful. Otherwise, it's a nebulous, rage induced, sorrow and fear evading scream into the nothing of the anonymity grown, secured or imposed by social, economic, and educational status in the internet age. It's a fight to contribute to the record of dissent from the inhumane and immoral which will be left behind and the ways the mass majority of us are herded and conditioned not to directly address these realities, because it is often dangerous to our well being to do so with any amount of commitment, dedication or honesty. 

Living with the insecurity nagging in the back of my mind, asserting there's no reason for it, it's no good, it doesn't matter, it has no value, it means nothing, no one cares and on and on and on and on. A simple acceptance of the combination of those things to be true, and it doesn't matter whether they are true has become a necessary understanding. Writing is never going to make me a millionaire. The chance any of us who have somehow ended up keeping faith with the written word can make a living from our devotion to this increasingly obsolete practice is incredibly slim. This acceptance leads to making it possible to pull some income from the labor put into writing, but it's not the reason to do it. It's a labor of love and necessity, I'm not quite sure which is more the driving factor, and generally I don't much care anymore. Accepting all of this made writing something no longer an exercise in constant, needling self torture and doubt. 

It's come clear now, these last few weeks, other driving motivations, ideals, values and beliefs operate in nearly an identical fashion. The difference being that unlike writing, they've not been given freedom to be expressed, and not been accepted either. They've found what expression they can through writing. A kind of attempt to be a reminder of their existence, coming to the surface through writing, as the way to get just enough oxygen to keep the fire burning so I might have a light to lead me home should I have both the desire and the opportunity to look for it. 

I have been, and probably still am to a degree, lost in what for me is a hostile wilderness, following a faulty map given to me by others at least as lost as I have been, and probably without any idea they were lost. For my part, I think what I've been struggling with has been an instinct that I've been lost, and the map I've been following doesn't take me to my home, but being someone else's, to some other place entirely. By dropping the map, I will believe I should be able to recognize the fire signaling the way home. 

This is one of the more difficult attempts to put something into the written word that I can remember. I don't know exactly what to say about the post previous to this one. To say I was very lost is as good a description or explanation as any, even as it is as inadequate as the most inadequate description could be. I feel some responsibility for an explanation. The full explanation is too complicated for a single post, and I have a strong suspicion I don't have the full explanation yet. I have the beginnings of an explanation though, and the responsibility I feel for that explanation isn't only due to the gratitude I feel for the many people who have expressed and reached out in support, but also because I feel some responsibility to other people who are living and struggling with mental illness. As I've said previously, I don't think I'm special or different. I know now there are at least six million others experiencing a struggle almost identical to mine on a daily basis, and tens of millions of others who are experiencing their own struggles with mental illness that are different from my own. I have some responsibility to them, and to try to use the practice I have put into expression through the written word toward making some attempt to give a first hand account of what is so often described as a second hand observation of what is an almost entirely subjective experience. 

There is som new understanding of what I've been struggling with, and part of this new understanding has to do with the operative function of shame, and that too is part of why I'm going trying to force my way through writing something which isn't born from the burning necessity I'm so used to. I have a desire to be ashamed of having written and posted a suicide note. I also have the clear understanding that shame has been the chief puppet master which got me to writing that note, and so much else before it. It's an irrational, nonsensical, and still potently real sense of shame that goes deeper than being about what I do or have done. It's not even about who I am. Who I am can certainly contribute to it, but it doesn't quite convey it's depth. It's a shame about existing, in that it will never matter who I am. If and until the time and effort is put in to root it out where possible and at least unmask it where rooting it out might not be possible, it will always be the driving factor in what becomes a series of actions, decisions, beliefs and feelings which will undermine anything I've put any effort into which would signify a life. 

Understanding this, I have to keep writing, specifically because I feel shame about having posted here and caused concern. Having done so is not fair to the people who were subjected to it, and the best I can say is that I sincerely apologize, it won't happen again, and I'm doing everything I can to rectify what caused it to happen. I can't undo it. I'm not going to delete it, because I do feel ashamed about it, and because other people need to see that those feelings and what kind of thought processes they produce don't have to be the end and that there is recovery. If I'm going to keep trying to write about the reality of being mentally ill, in the United States, in the year 2020, it's part of what my experience with that is. At some point, I hope to not be ashamed of that experience. I'm not going to say I'm there yet, but I'm much further along toward it than I have been in a good long while. 

I've realized, aside from attempting to root out the sense of shame, recovery is also going to be intricately connected to my sense of integrity, which I is why I can't hide the fact that I did posted a suicide note on the internet. Hiding it would be a lie, and hiding it out of shame is just feeding something which has devoured enough of my life and the most important things in it already. 

In the long process of trying to find a way to live with and not have mental illness dictate the terms of my life, I've tried many different treatments. Along that path, I found and made myself part of a group of people also struggling to be able to find some peace, comfort and stability in their lives. Among them, one of the most oft repeated ideas which was supposed to help them be able to identify their demons was "You're not special." Holding the belief that many of their problems were born out of sheer selfishness, it was an idea meant to help keep them from consistently putting their wants ahead of other people's needs. In theory, there's nothing wrong with this idea. In practice, it certainly has it's problems. For me, having had it drilled into my beliefs over a number of years has turned out to not be beneficial. I may not be special, but there are some specific differences between myself and people who don't struggle with the particular mental illness I do. 

This unmoored and overarching sense of shame is apparently common for people with PTSD, regardless of the experiences that caused it individually. Having accepted a basic belief that selfishness has been the root of my problems in the whole of my life has fed this overarching sense of shame. It's almost as if the two are tailor made to go together. What it's become for me has been a distrust of myself, my own sense of values and beliefs, and a sense that any conflict in my life is centered in my behavior and beliefs. If you are utterly and completely ashamed of yourself, and you don't trust your own beliefs and values, it becomes exceedingly easy to take on the values and beliefs of people around you who appear to have some level of peace and self acceptance, whether real or superficial. 

I've believed for most of my life that having the kind of values which are at the core of my beliefs about right and wrong has been a guaranteed way to be a failure and to end up broke, homeless and alone. I've been trying to play by the rules of "normal society." I have struggled with the contradictions with my own values, and in many ways, the fact that I've been compromising so much of my own belief system in order to be able to go along to get along, has been giving fuel to this sense of shame. In many ways, I've been fighting to be two people. I can't continue and hope to ever find something like stability and contentedness. 

For one side, nothing is ever enough to quiet it. No matter what successes I've achieved, what real efforts at good I've tried to do, nothing has been enough. A big part of that is because you can't ever actually be someone you're not, and if that's what you're trying to do, I'm always going to have some inkling of that, even if other people don't. It's not imposter syndrome, if you are actually being an imposter in many ways. 

Think of it this way... We're all very familiar with the idea that someone with issues related to body image is generally not helped by being constantly surrounded by a society which is constantly upholding an unhealthy set of standards about what is attractive and what is desirable and what is worthy of acceptance and love. The foundation of the issues with body image may begin for any number of different reasons (and despite popular conception, it is not just women and girls who have body image issues, it's increasingly common among men and boys), but the environment which puts such a premium on unhealthy, unrealistic body image just compounds it to a degree that can make it deadly. 

I've unfortunately spent too much time in environments with values that are unhealthy for me. After a long enough period of time, the contradiction between my values, the environments I've been in and the people in them, the sense of overarching shame just makes it inevitable that I'm going to supplant my own values, which then means not only do I still have the sense of shame still running like a river through my psyche, but it then has evidence to use because I'm acting contradictory to my actual values. 

Maybe, to some degree, this is a process that everyone goes through as they age and mature, I don't know because I'm not everyone. What I do know is that it's now obviously a matter of my well being, to the point of being about my survival to stop going along to get along where a number of different things are concerned. There are ways the traditional ideas about masculinity have continued to be points I struggle with, because so many of those are contradictory to my values and beliefs, and in no way do I think less of anyone else if they don't live up to those traditional ideas, but I absolutely think less of myself if I don't live up to them. Th

I'm coming to the conclusion that through everything, all these years, all the other struggles, I've tried everything except to truly be the kind of person I've wanted to be. I haven't even been able to truly admit to myself that I want to be that person, because I have always had this sense of it being impossible. That person could never survive. That person would be eaten alive in the world we live in. They would be broke, homeless and alone. I think there have been times when there were sign posts pointing in this direction, but I haven't even been able to believe that. At this point, I don't have much of a choice but to try. 

It's not even to say I've been a bad person, because I don't necessarily think I have. It is just to say I haven't really been the person I have always wanted to be, and that I can be, and I do think that person is a better person than the one I have been or at least someone whose skin I would be a good deal more comfortable living in. I'm also realizing this has all been with me since such a young age, I never even had a real opportunity to become the person I kind of always believed I really should be. I've spent my adult life in a snails crawl toward that end, but only by constantly trying on personas which fit one circumstance or another as a way to try and outrun the fear, shame and sense of worthlessness. 

I started this by talking about writing, the urgency I've had about it for a long time now. The values and moral center of the person I've been afraid to even admit I want to be have been there in my writing, all along. The urgency has been the lack of expression in so much of the rest of my life, and the anger has been about an unconscious recognition that in a way, I've been lying to myself, and dismissing my better angels in so much of my own life, which is at the heart of a whole lot of the most persistent problems we face as a nation, and humanity faces in general. Some of the anger has also been a reaction to the fear of being the person I want to be, and where that fear comes from. I also think it took me so long to overcome the insecurity of my writing not being good enough or being stupid or lacking in whatever way because it was something I saw people be able to gain some sense of having value from and some sense of having contributed, of having done something good. As long as I needed that, not getting it was painful. At whatever point it came to be sufficient for it to be something that gave something to me, it stopped being painful. It's a complicated, unconscious co-mingling of shame, fear and a sense of worthlessness, which I now understand to be textbook symptoms of PTSD, but that because of my specific experiences and psychology have been presenting in the particular way they have. 

Therapy is necessary, and the goal is going to be to identify concrete ways I can start making a beginning at acting on my values on a day to day basis, and stop acting on values and beliefs that aren't mine. It's not going to happen overnight, and there is going to have to be therapy to get to the bottom of where the shame and sense of worthlessness are springing from, but there is at least a direction. With some sense of direction, and some new information, has come some optimism, which has been missing for a long time. To be honest, I've been afraid of feeling any optimism, because there's been so much disappointment. Now, I know there's not just treatment, but recovery. I think recovery for me is to be able to go through daily life without the fear and shame that has prevented me from being who I've always wanted to be. I have to work on uprooting the feeling and belief that the proverbial beatings will continue until my morals and values concur with the world around me, because that's dangerous to my health. 

One of the other pieces of shame and worthlessness is the conviction which says asking for help is being a burden. It's progressive as well. When it's not an emergency, you are just taking time from people who have their own problems and their own lives to deal with, combined with the "_________ has it far worse than you, suck it up. You have nothing to complain about." It progresses from there until it does become what would be considered emergency status, but by then, there may be some desire to reach out for help, but the certainty of being unworthy of it is cemented or worse, the certainty of being unworthy of it means asking for help no longer even registers. All of this is also combined with a sense of shame for needing or thinking you might need help. This all drives the isolation too. If you don't believe you should need help or you believe you don't deserve help, it becomes necessary to avoid people who might offer it if they realized you need it. It never comes up as the blatant thought or feeling that you don't deserve help or shouldn't need it, but it always comes back to the reasons you shouldn't ask for or accept it. 

I'm presented with a conundrum. For my health and well being, I need to make my way to interacting with the world around me with more kindness, compassion and tenderness. I've been afraid of even attempting to do so. At the same time, it's no less important to be able to acknowledge when I'm in a situation being implicitly or explicitly asked to follow along or contribute to things contradictory to my sense of who I am, and my own moral compass. 

There is an idea, often in the self help/support group world which is finds its expression this way in one particular circle, "It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also." This has been something I've taken to heart where my daily life is concerned, if not as much where the larger world is concerned. What I find is that it is a kind of excuse, in itself. There is no small portion of the world we live in which is disturbing, and should be disturbing. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed it this way:

 “There are certain technical words within every academic discipline that soon become stereotypes and cliches. Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any … It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well‐adjusted life …

But I say to you, my friends … there are certain things in our nation and in the world (about) which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, leave millions of G-d’s children smothering in an air tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence."

Not long ago, I was asked by a mental health professional whether or not I had any religious convictions, to which I answered honestly that I haven't. I was puzzled by the response I got, which was, "You've been trying to go through all of this on your own," which is to some degree very true, but only has relation to my particular religious beliefs in that I don't have a deity or some other supernatural entity to believe has any interest in my well being or my struggles. It doesn't necessarily mean I have no home spiritually. 

During my recent hospitalization, a man came up to the "behavioral health unit," which is what the psych ward is called these days, to lead a "spirituality and religion" group. He was very much a Christian, and Catholic on top of it, but this detail only matters in it's driving my realization of what "spirituality" is for me, and in large part why I tend to be so impatient with even well meaning people of God. Do the most good you can, keeping in mind that you are one individual, and can only do but so much, but that everything you do is making a contribution to something which has a place in a larger collective. Martin Luther King was a great man, but none of us would know his name without a movement of thousands of people. It was a movement because each individual took some part in making it so. 

It's no less true each individual took their place in making the Third Reich a reality. From Hitler all the way down to the street sweepers and garbage collectors. The same is true of a whole society based on slavery, and then segregation following it, and which the civil rights movement confronted. I do not expect to ever be a person of the stature of Dr. King or the infamy of Hitler, Jefferson Davis or Bull Connor. However, the banality of evil doesn't escape me either. If anything, this is what differentiates human beings from the animal kingdom, our capacity to make decisions about how we interact with our society and hierarchies, and to be able to change both of those when they don't serve human dignity and well being. We don't live terribly long, so what time we do have is important to use to not advance the worst of social and hierarchical decisions and try to use it to advance the best of those decisions and ideas. 

That's the whole of it. The entirety of what could be qualified as a spirituality, for me. I realized my frustration with most religious doctrine is the level of over complication involved. The number of contradictory statements and claims in just about every religious text and the dogma of every religion is just too much, and I honestly can not understand how it is going beyond "we should do our best to help each other out" is necessary. It's the on thing they all seem to agree on. Each of us may have different rationale and have to struggle with our own paths about how best to do the most good, and what technically is the most good may get complicated, but this is why we exist in community. We can work these things out together, when we agree human dignity and well being is the thing of most value. Instead we spend all of our time acting on the logically realistic fears, competing to protect our well being, and if we are privileged enough, our dignity as human beings. If we aren't privileged enough, we have neither the resources or the time to consider protecting our dignity. 

All of this is to say my spiritual home has been among the people who are at least trying to do or figure out what the most good they can do is. In the world we live in, this is a luxury. At this point, it's not a luxury for me. It's a matter of my well being, and may just be a matter of my survival. It's certainly a matter of my ability to "contribute." I have little to nothing to "contribute" when I'm spending months at war with what amounts to an all consuming suicidal drive, which is supplied its artillery and ammunition by the daily contribution to making things other than human dignity and well being the primary value. Even as I write this, I can hear the voices of the people from my life (mostly, but not all, men) who've placed more of a premium on financial and career success than they have on basically any other variety of health or success. In part because of their influences, I've lost that luxury.  

What then does it mean to interact with the rest of the world in a way that doesn't jeopardize my mental health, well being and ultimately my dignity, but to also be able to try to be a part of it to a degree which can do some good while being able to meet the most basic of needs? I haven't the first clue, to be honest. I know there are people who've figured it out. 

NOTE: For anyone out there who is struggling with PTSD, I heavily suggest "The Unspeakable Mind: Stories of Trauma and Healing from the Frontlines of PTSD Science". It was extremely helpful in understanding the range of PTSD symptoms, and goes into detail about how PTSD effects the brain and it's functions in an overall sense as well.