Slipping

I feel myself slipping down again.  It's not a good feeling, but something I've grown used to.  It feels like a dark cloud forming.  I'm more on edge, quicker to burst out angry, more likely to take offence at things, less likely to be as busy as I usually am. 

Normally I keep the demons at bay through constant occupation.  Even rest is occupation.  Sometimes I welcome getting sick, even though I fight like mad to NOT get sick.  Once I am, I can just let go and rest.  But in these times, the lack of doing is more just because it all seems futile and worthless.

People always say, "Let me know if you feel that way."  But that's just the problem isn't it?  I'm never going to...If I could I wouldn't need the help.  And when I feel good enough to let someone know, they don't believe it, don't remember it, don't notice it, or aren't around to be able to.  We'll see if this post ever makes it onto the blog.  I'm going to try hard to let it stand.

I don't even know what help would be.  No amount of talking it through will do anything about it.  I've read enough on CBT and tried it to know it won't stick.  That stuff all requires a willing participant.  Sure there's probably a good deal I don't know about that stuff, but the effort to sift through the crap with someone to get to the good stuff just makes it seem like more of a burden.

But I know it will pass.  It always does.  I surround myself with precautions when I feel it coming enough to avoid serious consequences.  I'll still go to work, look the same as always, joke, etc.  I know from seeing it in others that if you know what to look for, you can tell the difference.  But most people can't or don't bother.  It's truly a closed world.  If you haven't been there, you don't understand.  You can't.

So what helps?  I don't know.  Time.  Prayer. I always delve deeper into those regions during these times.  Someone seeing it for what it is and piercing the cloud.  It happens on rare occasions and those people are instantly locked in my heart forever.

But like I said, I know it will pass and the only way past is through.  We'll see how it goes this time.

Seen

It's late and this blog is raw, so I hope it explains, if not excuses, my waxing poetic. Sometimes I just see something or in this case someone. See deeper than what is visible on the surface, deeper than what they may even hope to project. Who knows, it may all just be my own mental projections and fancy. But this late and in this blog space I'm going to take my perception as granted. Truthfully,  whether this is factually true or not, my perception and therefore my reaction in the moment, are valid.

It's like the veil parts just enough to see the reality. Like seeing with Elvish eyes. Or better still with Glass Eyes, as in the story of Glass Dogs I wrote.

And the one this is about may actually read this. If so, you'll know who you are. You are a dark princess. You can find the beauty in darkness and ugliness. You sometimes cast yourself as a devil, but I see you and I know this is far from the truth because like Harry and Luna we both see the Thestrals. Not of death, but of true demons. And no one who knows this reality can do anything but react away from it.

I see you and you are beautiful. One of the Haibane, grey feathered angels.  You feel so deeply the slight wind of an offhand remark can send you searching and doubting how you might have caused pain.

You fear and doubt and struggle and you know how to put on a brave face. Sometimes we have to powder those grey wings. But your heart is so large it bursts out in spite of you and I for one, love the elegant mess you try to hide.

Don't worry. I can be trusted with this. I won't even let on more than a moment's slightly deeper look or slightly warmer hug. We are kindred. I see you and I think you see me too. And I want you to know that I see even deeper. Perhaps deeper than you see yourself. Inside that beautifully churning complexity you are, there is a radiantly gorgeous daughter of Truth and Goodness that makes you shimmer in glorious living light. Entrained with all the life you have given, all the good you have done, even in spite of yourself. Elven princess. The King's lost daughter. The terrifying Pan will bring you home at last.

You are lovely and loving. Perfect imperfection. And for all you are and are not, all that is you, just as you are. I see you in there. And even though I know there is far more I don't see in the infinite spaces inside your heart, I see enough to love you.

Proximity, Novelty, and Frequency

When something happens like the Las Vegas shooting, it is natural for people to talk about it for awhile.  But a glaring cultural and personal fallacy is revealed here.

At risk of sounding cold, this event is not unique.  Random violence and bloody death of regular people occurs all over the world all the time.  These are all tragic acts committed by tragically damaged people.  They are all available to us in near real time.  Most of us can't even say we don't KNOW it happens in a purely logical sense. (We may not THINK about it, but we KNOW it if we take a second.)  Yet most of us never acknowledge that it occurs.

So why is it such a big deal this time?

The answer is simply the perception of proximity.  Because it occurs in a place we might go, or relatively close to a place we currently are.  But this is a fallacy, because if you live in Florida, for example, you are physically closer or equally close to places where this occurs all the time.  Namely, the Caribbean and Central America.

You might say, "but this is our country."  Sure.  But there is no physical barrier between those places and this one.  I can be in Mexico from Tampa in a day's drive.  And truthfully, that statement reveals a flaw and a fallacy.  The flaw: cultural bigotry, and the fallacy: novelty.

Because this event is different from what we usually experience, we take note.  This is a fallacy because for the vast majority of Americans our lives have not been disrupted by the event.  If we hadn't heard about it yet, as would have been the case 200 years ago, we would still be going on as if nothing happened.  So why do we feel different because we know of it?  Again, I'm not saying this isn't tragic nor terribly affecting for those directly involved or with family and friends who were.  Hang with me, I'm going somewhere with this.  The reason is simply because of how we associate the event.  It FEELS closer, newer.

Lastly, we are affected because of the sheer frequency of reports.  What was in reality one event with a finite number of tragedies is reported and discussed endlessly, even when there is nothing new or only marginally new.  The truth is we can't do anything with all that info anyway, so it just serves to rile us up, which is exactly the goal of the commercially driven news.  Please do us all a favor and stop using those sources.  You do realize that Houston is still a wreck, but you never hear about it any more because it doesn't generate the traffic after a while. 

This feeling of inescapability is a fallacy.  Statistically, it is now only slightly more likely that it will happen to you.  In REALITY, it is NO more likely, not one bit, now than it was prior.  It's just in your head.

What troubles me most is the inconsistency.  We can be so unaffected by the same or worse suffering for such silly reasons as it isn't in a place or context we connect with and it isn't thrown up in our face constantly.  But then very affected by something that is in reality no different, simply because our mind associates it differently!  This should bother us.