Because I have too much to say, I got a tumblr

Oh, hey. I have a tumblr

Right, of course. I said I would post more than just once in a green moon…

Here’s the advice for today: 

Move forward, and lose the chip-on-the-old-shoulder number. 

BE FREE.

My Daily Random message sent this to me. Perfect.

“”Let It Out”Every painful experience in your life can be transformed into its exact opposite.All of your suffering, your fears, your hurt can be transformed into blessings and fulfillment. But you need to let go of the guilt and negative emotions you carry with you. This is not an easy thing to do. But every thing that happens in your life is there to teach you something about growing as a person. Everything.Today, choose a close friend or teacher with whom you can open up. Really open up. Once all your fears and emotions are out in the open then, and only then, can you transform them into positive feelings.”

You’ll always see me as a charity case, if you always tell me how much you’ve done. You’ll always look at me as a failure, if you pick out each flaw. You’ll forever resent me, if you forget the pain that follows me until I’m blue. You can never see me for what I am, if you can’t see past your own Pinocchio…

This fear pushes me closer and closer to my sweet end.

The past feeds from my soul, snatches my present, and vaporizes my future…

I am a prisoner in my own skin.

You drag a stick past my bars; taunting and feeding… What is there to do?

Nothing.

I wait.

I watch.

I watch as I waste away.

I waste away in my bubble, away from everyone…

Effecting everyone…

Effected by everyone…

I wish it would all go silent. Heart, brain, and breath…

Shhh, baby…

Take the plunge

We share the sadness

Thanks for listening. You’ve proven that my voice can be heard. Keep on keepin’ on today. 

In my immediate circle, I don’t have anyone who can relate to the “sadness.” It can be lonely when everyone around you doesn’t get the crazy shit running through your head 24/7. It’s rough. 

Don’t give in. Remember isolating yourself is what makes you feel the worst. Everyone is going to fuck up at some point, don’t cut them out over spilled milk. Move forward, and don’t make rash decisions. Be cautious, coy, and wise, but let yourself go. Let yourself get close to someone. Connect with those who are available. You need it. 

I know I feel better just connecting with the few reading this. Thank you, seriously.

Remember, “keep on…”

Let me explain.

It’s like you’re going a million miles a minute.

Like you’re in the backseat of your life, and everything is happening and all you can do is watch.

Days turn into months and years, and you have no control over your life, your emotions, or even your own mind.

You take a step forward, and twelve back. 

What the fuck.

How do you piece it all together? 

How do you make meaning of your life and all of that pieces that made you this way?

How do you forgive?

How do you protect yourself?

How do you trust?

How do you let go?

The answer, my friends is you take it a day at a time. That’s all I can say. One day you’re up, and the next you’re down. You can’t predict what can happen. All you can do is be patient with yourself. Only you are inside your head, and so only you can help yourself. Take it a day at a time. Look forward and stop looking back.

Yeah, stop looking back…

Peace be in your heart today. 

Fumble!

It’s Sunday, and football is on my mind.

So, pardon all the football analogies; I’m trying to impress myself. 

If you’re a football fan, you’ll realize one of the most enjoyable/scary aspects of football is the unpredictability of the game. You can never be too sure of that field goal, or the team holding 6 Lombardi trophies to beat the Ravens in Baltimore. (Cough, steelers, cough) You can’t count on who will stay healthy or who will get hurt. You can’t count on much, except the passion of the game. 

Welcome to the life of a PTSD patient.

Whether you are dealing with PTSD yourself, or you are in contact with someone with this disorder, you’re picking up the sticks I’m putting down. 

Life as a PTSDer can be so unstable. You never know what will trigger a meltdown. You don’t know who’s going to fumble the ball.  Sometimes you’re the quarterback throwing with such precision and accuracy in the pocket. Sometimes you’re overthrowing it and it’s an interception.  Sometimes you’re on the receiving end running all over the field chasing after this seemingly blind quarterback’s throw.

Like football, with PTSD, you’re dealing with a lot of (sh!^)different elements:

• flashbacks
• misplaced anger
• nightmares
• periods of depression
• pure fear
• self-loathing
• blame games
• lack of focus
• real life responsibilities with people that aren’t as well-versed in the PTSD game as you are
• confusion

God, I have such respect for a quarterback can keep it together, even when every play is a blitz to bring his tooshie DOWN. It’s really inspiring. 

I won’t go all gospel preacher on y’all, but Hallelujah, there’s hope! SOMEBODY LIFT YOUR HANDS AND PRAISE THE LAWD!

In the midst of your fumble and the twenty-man pile up, you can be the Aaron Rodgers of PTSD. You CAN remain stable! You don’t have to be subject to your nightmares all day long!

How? 

It’s simple. Let it go. 

SCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEACHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Come again?

You’re *#%@^& telling me to let the years of sexual abuse GO? And the bombs dropping on my best friend right in front of me? What about the hurricane that took away my baby? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?

No, settle down Bessie. I’m not. I’m not at all. Actually, if you forget those memories, you’ll lose a part of who you are. Those things are what we call notal points. They are a part of your history. I’m telling you, let go of the pain you’re holding onto. It’s as easy or as hard as you make it.

1. Stop facebooking your problems, and FACE your problems. Avoiding the heart issue will only make the pain linger, and cause you to make bad play calls on the field. Recognize where you are in your life, and look the things you like to shove to the back of your dome piece STRAIGHT IN THE FACE.
2. Now think of THE EVENT in a more positive way. “Oh, sure, yeah, let’s think of my father committing suicide in front of my eyes in a positive way!” No, really. Let’s. It’s all a matter of perspective and how ready you are to look at the event in a different way. You don’t have to love what happened to you. You just have to love what happened to you when it happened. We become more mature and more aware of our surroundings. It changes us. Embrace that change, and stop being a Debbie Doomsday.
3. Practice stress relief. Whatever it is, do it, and take DEEP, LONG, FULL BREATHS while you’re doing it. Drive around, do yoga, self-hypnosis, go fishing, watch football, hang with someone who gets it…Do something.
4. Write. Write to your mother, father, boyfriend, or closest relationship you have. Write to the people who hurt you the most. Write to yourself. Write lists. Keep writing. More. MORE. THAT’S IT! MORE WRITING!! Now, stop it. You’re scribble-scrabbling all over the place. Seriously, though, write your little heart out, and then burn all the paper. (In a safe place for fires, of course.) It’ll make you feel SO much better.
5. Come to grips with what happened. It seems pretty basic, but this step is the hardest. Our human brains don’t fully fathom life and death situations as well as we’d like them to. We have this little thing called the amygdala, and it is like the referee to this PTSD game. There is NO messin’ around when it comes to survival, emotions, and memories with this mass of nuclei. If there is a threat to life, your amygdala remembers it, tells you to run, fight, or freeze your roll completely, and makes you have an emotional stir because of it. So your job is to retrain your amygdala. Tell her that life and certain situations CAN be safe, and to calm the hell down when it may seem like it’s not. That is done by reprocessing the memory. 
6. Reprocess the memory. That’s where a professional psychologist comes in with the amazing (drum roll, por favor) EMDR! Google it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. 
7. Be patient with yourself. Realize you are going to blow your fuse sometimes, and that’s ok. Just don’t use it as a crutch to be a miserable muffin. Love who you are, and remember there isn’t ONE person who doesn’t make mistakes. You’re a work in process, and healing takes time.
8. Connect with others, even if it hurts. Having human connection is necessary, and even more vital for those with PTSD, or dealing with someone with PTSD. What you’re going through isn’t all petshops and popsicles. You need support, and you need people to give that to you. Yes, it’s hard because no one will fully feel and understand what you’re going through, but you need them, so use them. There are also group support sites and even tumblr to find some good ol’ fashioned connection. ;)

I hope you find that inner drive to keep you rushing on that astroturf, even after you fumble a million and one times. You’ve got this. 

AAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND BREAK

Because I have so much to say…

…I decided to actually use this tumblr.

In today’s society—wait…what? Today’s society? 

Did you mean what we wish today’s society is? What the fifteen million interpretations of what society is? What your opinion of society is? What the latest conspiracy theory states today’s society is? What the politicians and professors are saying society is?

Besides the whole sociology lesson that is just nuzzled into these rhetorical questions, there is a lot to be said about what actually today’s society is all about.

Let’s go ahead and call it like it is: we are all over the freaking place. As a generation, as a country, and not to be all elementary school on you, but as planet, we are in a comfortable war with ourselves.

It’s hard to think of our world as a unit. Of course that is natural with the different social norms, culture, history, and climates that cover our globe. That’s not what I am talking about. 

Working and studying in the Washington DC Metro area, I get the privilege of people-watching from time to time. I have decided that there are two distinct and opposing views people of the world have. I know you’re probably thinking that that’s very pretentious of me. I think so, too, but hang with me here. 

View 1) It’s me against the world.

View 2) I am a part of the world.

Ok, so maybe I am not the first person to have made this call, but at least I blogged about it. 

A Kabbalistic belief backs me up on this one. If you believe that you are alone and constantly having to fight the world, you will find yourself doing just that: fighting.

The truth is you are a part of the world, whether you want to accept it, or not. We all hang our hats on this Planet Earth, and become a physical part of the actual earth when we die. We don’t get to transport ourselves to the nearest alternate universe when the “getting” gets bad. We don’t get to take our 14 grandchildren and stock portfolio when we kick the bucket. In fact, we don’t even get to take our favorite snack for the road. 

What each of us do on this earth, it really doesn’t matter the way we want it to. We die. Our social status dies, too. We’re just a tombstone…UNLESS, your reputation lives for you. Even then, you, as a breathing person, are forgotten. No one is an exception to this rule, unfortunately. 

Now that I’ve completely depressed you, let’s look around. 

Every person that you’ve come in contact with has the same mission as you: Live, and then die. That’s it. We’re all in it together, whether we like it, or not. So, why not make it a better experience for all of us? Think collectively.

WHY?

-I just told you, silly. We’re all in this together; death and all.

-Connection is necessary for us as humans. No, really, it is. Otherwise, we can’t develop. Ask John Bowlby.

-The “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality is key. Yes, it is selfish, but it is also the truth. If you help someone else, they owe you, bro’. 

-When people are helping each other, you’re making the planet easier to live on. It makes people happy. happy people= less nasty people in traffic=less misplaced anger=less depression= less suicides= healthier planet.

-What you do, really only matters to a point. How you made them feel, will be what others will remember you by.

-Because it will make YOU feel better about YOURSELF. Half of the time we are fighting the world with everyone in it, we are just fighting ourselves. Can I get a witness? Seriously, when you focus on others, you’re all of a sudden not focusing on your own issues while simultaneously fixing them. WHOA, MINDBLOWN.

On a scale of any size, this principle applies. If you think collectively and creatively, you can benefit yourself AND other people, and THAT’s attractive! 

Leave the selfish and lonely life, and start googling ways to help yourself help others.