Hi @NatureLover @Mazarita @eth @Sans911 @Meowmy and all the vast wealth of other worthy adrift souls who come to anchor at this thread for a time and share words of our journeys, our experiences, our art, our hurt and pain, our maps, our treasures, our swashbuckling tales, and how we have each come to survive it all to this point...
I love how reality comes to teach us that we know nothing about reality at all in our everyday "normal" autopilot lives... for autopilot only works when it's smooth sailing or clear flying... a firmer steadier wiser hand is required when the autopilot can no longer cope with the sudden changes and chaotic maelstroms that storms and doldrums embody...
Here we are, in our current doldrums, sails limp against their masts, without a breath of fresh air to give them even a hint of life...
And yet... those of us who have known bone-deep depression are familiar with these becalmed waters... and we know that, eventually, after timeless eternities spent adrift, once more we will feel the long-forgotten lick of a breeze upon our cheeks, and lift our eyes towards the heavens and delight, for here once again is emotion, life, sensation...
In a way, having mental health issues as a natural part of our everyday lives has prepared us to be mental health troopers in this current crisis and its associated mental health issues for vast parts of the "normal" population that rarely if ever previously considered or were affected by ill mental health. We have lived in these chaotic mental states of anxiety, depression, dissociation, deep sorrow, darkness and isolation for much of our lives. Over years, we have developed coping mechanisms... I hope that with our kind words, we can share these coping mechanisms and experiences with the greater community currently facing a pandemic of mental health issues that mirror the physical pandemic...
Every day, I live with ill mental health... I try to be better than I was before; stronger and more agile and more resilient and more adaptive, and perhaps most importantly of all, more aware...
Self awareness is everything. Ignorance is the greatest enemy that we face, as individuals and as a society at large. The simplest way to meet ignorance is with a questing intellect that desires a journey...
And there's no time like the present, during these dark and dreary times, to increase our awareness, to spread out tendrils of curiosity throughout the world wide web or the dark quiet corners of our gardens, all to explore, to observe, to reason, to become ever more awakened in our awareness... in short, to LIVE...
The chaos of these current times has existed in my own mind since the age of about 8 years old, though probably much longer... I suffered terribly from night terrors, sleep-walking and other oddities from the age of 3 to the age of 8... I have never known peace...
The acceptance of chaos is perhaps the closest I have ever come to the reality of peace... I accept that my mind and mood go further up and down than the accepted "normal"... I accept the very real and practical damage that this brings into my life and the lives of my loved ones... I accept that even with the very best of intentions and all of the hard work in the world, still I will eff things up terribly and still hurt people and myself... I accept the image of myself in the mirror, finally, after years of wanting to punch every mirror in sight...
I don't accept all that is wrong in this world... I still fight against much of reality... but you have to pick your fights...
It reminds me of an old Deep Purple song... "See the blind man, shooting at the world; bullets flying..."
I am not wise enough to know which stone to pick up and contemplate to cast, living in the glass house that I do...
Just some odd thoughts from my odd noodle... thank you to everyone who shares their words here on this thread, this forum, this Internet... as we express ourselves, we explore ourselves... our words teach us much about ourselves... they are a window to our very soul...
From my own personal experience of pain in my life, if we are brave enough to look beyond, the rewards far exceed the risk...
Much love and respect to the community...
