In sifting through some of the accumulation that’s just never been addressed, I happened across a strap of leather tied in a loop with a little knot at one end that secured a rather large nail.

This was an idea that somebody at Calvin College came up with, ostensibly around Good Friday, to remind us college students that we ought to be a tad bit more pious.

I’m not sure if that nail is meant to be a historically accurate replica of a crucifixion nail or if it’s just ugly-looking enough that it serves its purpose for tender modern minds–I’m not familiar with building supplies or Iron Age execution devices to know the difference… and neither does it particularly matter.

I don’t have any particular reason to keep it anymore, but it’s interesting that I kept it at all. It tells me quite a lot about how desperate I was to continue belief that I would hold on to a worthless trinket.

I think I must have seen it at some point over the past 10 years as it was located in a box with items that I know were repackaged at some point. As with so many of the items in those boxes I’ve been carting around, I would pick it up, sigh (externally or internally), and place it back in the box with the thought, “I will deal with this, later.”

To be clear, I am done with anything resembling personal religion. It’s not possible to believe in something that doesn’t exist, and my standards for truth involve empiricism and logic, not tradition or hysteria or other such things…

But the nail is a symbol of more than a bygone religiosity. There is a stack of paper 2 inches high of journal entries I have written over the years–and this stack is only what I’ve consolidated so far. The majority of that writing took place while I was in college, especially at Calvin, and throughout that writing is interwoven a relationship with “the Lord” most of the time, less frequently “Jesus” or “the Spirit”. I haven’t looked over them in detail in quite some time, and there are some pages that I’m sure I haven’t seen since the pen left the paper.

There is a sense of guilt and shame around those pages. I could destroy them, just as I’ve destroyed lots of other things… and if I were to discard them, I would destroy them, as they are nobody’s business but my own. I suppose it’s that the memories of those writings, with phrases catching my eye, evoke within me the feelings I had at the time, which were despair, shame, guilt, isolation, and depression… and, for the most part, those are the feelings that I am dealing with now in therapy.

These feelings and experiences certainly did not originate at Calvin; I had been experiencing them for years prior. It just so happened that being separated from my overbearing father allowed me to connect with my real experience of life, such as it was.

It is no surprise that he was so opposed to me living outside of his house. As with many other things, I doubt it was a conscious decision on his part. It was, in its most simplest form, the fear of being outed as an abuser. It certainly wasn’t care or concern about my well-being.

So, I look at this nail, and I look at those journal entries, and I reexperience those old feelings… and while I did experience them, I do not believe that they belong to me. I do not believe that the despair, guilt, shame, and depression I experienced were my actual feelings any more than the relationship I wrote about with god was real.

What would I as a young adult have to feel guilty about or ashamed of? My worst crimes in my life to that point were shouting at people and being late to class–the latter being almost a thing of identity, the former being rare as I spent little time interacting with others.

The things I felt the most guilt and shame around were things that I should have been able to appreciate, enjoy, and celebrate: sexuality; creative skills; lack of faith; skepticism; relaxation.

These are simply not organically shameful things. Organically shameful things include things like murder, rape, assault, lies, and corruption. Those are things you should feel shame for, and they are also things which people strive to avoid feeling shame for.

Given the degree to which I felt guilt and shame, despair and depression were inevitable, and I am lucky that I did not succumb to depression’s ultimate goal. I don’t actually know what kept me going all those years except for possibly a fear of immediate physical pain, or a lifetime of paralysis if I was unsuccessful.

I will offer a slight correction regarding despair here that just occurred to me. Given the evidence I had at the time, despair was entirely appropriate. It was not until I was introduced to a new experience of life that I was able to question my despair, for though it had not taken root in an immediate demise, it had ground me to a stop such that movement was unnecessary and undesired.

I have since begun to move again… and I no longer need this nail.

Sad little miss little Sally Conformity
So afraid to offend; to stop and take a stand
Spineless, gutless, cannot draw the moral bead
Will side with the snipers, hiding in their nest

Sad little sick little Sally Conformity
In your quest to not offend, you offend, and greatly
You lacquer your subservience with a veneer of civility
And place yourself in the middle until it’s time to choose sides

Sad little lickspittle Sally Conformity
Shining the jackboots ’til your mouth’s almost dry
Wagging your tongue, counseling the reasonable to “have reason”
Shove that tongue back in your asp.

Sad little poor little Sally Conformity
You betray honor and nobility and that to survive
You shall not be punished but your rewards will wear thin
You may find collaboration to be comfortable… so go and have comfort!

But do not pretend that what you do is noble… civil… right… good… honorable… just.

I really notice–feel, even–the quickening darkness of the end of summer.

I have even noticed it this year, and noticed as well the conjunction of depressive-type feelings arising here.

I made the decision to separate in early August, and carried it out by the beginning of September.

I have definitely noticed this pattern before, with depression starting a little before the fall, and dangerously deepening in the thick of winter, with reprieve being granted by the painstaking stretching of daylight, like a old tendon that’s not been moved for ages.

In the past, of course, I had several otherwise well-meaning people attempt to solve this problem for me. (“It sounds like you have Seasonal Affective Disorder. You should buy a sunlamp.”)

I never actually tried the sunlamp, though I did try other suggestions–the vast majority of which, by the way, did nothing to even alleviate symptoms, much less act as a cure.

What I really needed was a listener. I needed to be heard, to express my feelings–happy, sad, angry, afraid. I may still need to address a seasonal affliction, but it was never the highest priority to address.

It’s as if I had internal bleeding and some sort of rare lymph disorder… sure, the lymph disorder may be causing some problems but if the doctors don’t sort out the internal bleeding, I am going to die.

And, of course, this is what happens when you rely on the urban dictionary equivalent of WebMD.

With all that said, I find it really interesting that I’m noticing this minor depression of my mood now. After all, I’ve been in therapy for 8 months now, and while I’m not saying I’m cured, I’ve definitely made tremendous progress in self-knowledge. I’ve also spent nearly three years in non-contact with my family, which has proven to be a very healthy decision.

It could be something historical, something about how school would start in September, or something equally (or more) traumatic that I just don’t remember but is stored in my unconscious memories… or it could be a sensitivity to light! Without knowing more about myself, it’s really not possible for me to draw a conclusion.

Even if I don’t know why this is occurring for me, I can at least take note that it is occurring and be aware of how it affects me–most notably, I can probably expect to have less tolerance for negative stimuli and so can expect to feel frustration and irritation more quickly… and so I can then adjust my environment to help prevent these outcomes. In the past, without that knowledge (and in the more distant past, without any effective power), I would end up grinding down into depression, deeper and deeper, because without the knowledge (and power) I simply could not effect any change, or the change would be random and temporary.

I have been making progress with noticing in the moment when I’m feeling frustrated or irritated; I still end up acting out but I am able to catch it before it goes on for too long.

In therapy, we’ve repeatedly encountered one of my defenses–a part that engages in intellectual analysis. He usually steps in when there’s a question to another part about what their experience is or something else, and just yesterday I got the barest sense of what it was he was defending against–that is, why he has the job he has.

It’s yet to be fully explored but there is a great deal of fear beyond his analysis, almost to the point of terror. It was only when I was in the moment of experiencing the terror that I began to get a real sense of what this part feels like… because before, it didn’t feel any different. I didn’t notice when he came up, and I didn’t really feel any different when my therapist asked him to step aside for the time being (except that he did withdraw).

This makes a tremendous amount of sense, of course… if the body reaches a certain level of intense, constant pain, it will go into shock and shut down, even to the point of going into a coma. This intellectual defense is basically emotional shock.

I’ve finally done it!

I finally got my apartment cleaned!

One of the things I have struggled with lately (at least, somewhat consciously) is the utter lack of “basic” self-management skills. Things like keeping my living area somewhat in order; maintaining cleanliness of my dwelling; certain aspects of hygiene like shaving regularly; getting enough sleep; getting enough exercise; etc.

The reason I put “basic” in quotes, however, is that these skills would be acquired in a safe, nurturing, loving environment, which was simply not what I had. What I do have are fantastic management skills for an environment where the only two options are frustrated, unpredictable rage or massive, guilty depression.

What aptitudes I lack in normal behaviors I make up for in emotional management and projective capacities… all of which were essential for survival where I came from.

To put it another way, it is absolutely not the case that one day I sat down and decided that I preferred the behaviors that led to the lack of “basic” skills I now struggle to attain.

And you may ask, why do I want to gain these skills, or at least recognize and compensate appropriately for them?

It’s all for love and romance!

It’s for the future wifey… the friends I have and will make… the children I will hopefully father one day… for me to get out of my own way so that whoever it is that I am will shine through, because that’s the only real way to live, anyway.

Do you know the saddest thing about my family?

If they would have just slowed down and listened… I never would have left.

That’s all they would have had to do back then.

Just slow down… take a few minutes… and listen to what I had to say.

Can you imagine it? Instead of whipping past with all the conclusions and violence, just slowing down could have saved so much pain, so much anger, so much sadness and numbness–and not just on my part, but on theirs.

All they had to do was just slow down… stop… and listen.

It is just about the saddest thing I know in my life.

Yesterday, on ye olde Twittere, I posted:

The process of therapy is akin to refitting a war factory for peacetime production.

Not to toot my own horn, but the more I think about this metaphor, the more I like it.

A war factory would contain all kinds of machinery for perpetuating conflict, violence, and destruction… and there always seem to be buyers.

Refitting any factory is difficult, but a war factory is particularly so–especially if you want to make sure that the factory is never again turned toward evil purposes… that you, the owner of the factory, are not responsible for perpetuating the war for yet another generation.

This metaphor was provoked by something we approached in therapy yesterday. There is a box, the contents hidden from my cognition… and those that know the contents are too afraid to speak right now.

We will uncover this, in time… after all, it’s been over 30 years of life being lived without power or knowledge, with only the past 6 months spent trying to unravel what goes on in my head.

The laundry detergent commercial that’s been running lately has this tag, “Remember the meal, not the stain.”

They show a family eating hot dogs.

“Remember the meal”?

Hot dogs?

Really?

Regarding the stain, I can see why people wouldn’t want to remember stains! After all, if my experience with stains, marks, and accidents is any indication of what most people experience, the experience of creating a stain is itself a stain. It’s always negative, full of reproach and hostility, sometimes even violence.

However, there is another way to look upon stains. In one of his recent podcasts (I think it was a parenting podcast), Stef talks about a coffee stain on the carpet. But when he sees it, he doesn’t see a stain because that was made the night he and his wife brought their daughter home from the hospital for the first time. He sees that night, with all of the joys and challenges it evokes, and the memory of his daughter at that time.

Having that sort of perspective does take a lot of self-work in order to understand your experience of stains and–if necessary or possible–surpass that experience.

But of course, it’s not required–nothing is.

I think that you can probably find people in just about any topic that will get their knickers all up in a knot if you hold a particular opinion… and when it comes to food, there is no lack of strongly-held opinions.

In addition to that, there are many studies out there which are seemingly contradictory, saying this about this kind of diet, saying that about that kind of diet…

It can be hard to know what to believe. My approach has been to experiment on myself to see if the claims are true or false.

Over the past few months, I’ve discovered a few things about my body:

I have a sensitivity to wheat to the extent that I am better off avoiding wheat products altogether. Since I don’t normally eat wheat products, I know pretty much right away when I’ve accidentally (or lazily) eaten something with wheat in it.

If I consume any significant amount of carbohydrates, I am pretty much guaranteed to gain weight. Not only that, but I rarely feel sated, and I experience wide swings in blood sugar. By avoiding wheat and any kind of refined carbohydrates (only taking in carbohydrates in raw or cooked fresh vegetables), various physiological characteristics and rhythms have improved, including my skin, my excess fat, my sleep cycles, etc…

If I happen to overeat or eat something that doesn’t otherwise agree with me, I know pretty much right away and am able to narrow down what happened pretty easily.

It doesn’t mean I still don’t have problems, and food is only one piece of the puzzle. But I have been doing pretty well despite having some sinus issues at the moment; but this could be caused by either seasonal allergies or the dust clouds I see whipping around in the wind outside.

The other thing I’ve been doing–which is entirely optional, but I do not believe is incidental–is that I have been purchasing as much food as I can from local distributors. This isn’t because I believe that national distributors are evil or anything like that, but certain aspects of national or large regional distributors have certain side effects in the food that we eat (compare and contrast grain-fed vs. grass-fed livestock), and at the moment, local distributors are much less likely to engage in such practices.

Also… milk from a local farm tastes way better to me. I’m not sure what the objective differences are, and I’ve not tried any kind of double-blind study to see if it’s all in my head… but I just can’t have lattes from my local Starbucks anymore. They taste gross to me! Bleah!

Another way to save money…

All in all, I have to be pretty careful what I eat. I will sometimes feel the urge to overeat but if I examine my diet, I will usually find that I’ve inadvertently consumed something on my “no” list, or I managed to listen to the self-talk that said, “c’mon, you’ve been SO good, you can have just a little bit.”

The problem is, even if I do have just a little bit (and having “just a little bit” is REALLY tough to do), I always pay for it in the end.

I don’t recall ever hearing this song in its entirety before, just the first couple lines of the chorus… I never, ever knew what it was about.

I found it deeply moving; if it’s not too obvious to point it out, it’s about why children run away. Nearly every single line tears at my heart–not just for my own experience, but for the vast numbers of children that experience this, whether they’ve run away or not:

Lyrics:

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a blowtorch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep there's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile?
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just a-drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

And everything seems cut and dried
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughing at the rain
A little out of touch, a little insane
It's just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Runaway train, never coming back
Runaway train, tearing up the track
Runaway train, burning in my veins
I run away but it always seems the same

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