What Crosses My Mind

  • Then there’s that chemical imbalance theory

    I’ve struggled with psychiatric medication most of my adult life. My first battles with depression were pretty uneventful, simply lack of motivation in a lot of avenues. I really didn’t know what it meant to be depressed except to hear the explanations – lack of interest, motivation, self harm, hopelessness. Those were all degrees of…

  • The Scrutiny of Self Loathing

    People generally believe we bring our pain upon ourselves, the decisions, choices we make. As true as that might be we want also to be responsible for shaking off the doom and gloom that keeps us down. There the difficult task arises in how we acknowledge our own fear in moving forward when caught in…

  • A Reminder

    Over ten years ago, I dropped my son and daughter off to school, in tears, as I was saying good bye for a month of treatment. It was probably the hardest day of my life. My son was twelve, my daughter almost 16, and I was nearly 50 years old, and wondering if in that…

  • Addiction and Finding Beauty

    Oh to discover a resolve, to know just how easy it might have been, now with years of solitude, time enough to let one’s heart bend.   The sallow nature of my contempt for a life beyond any circumstance, that bellows the societal ill I might wish to dissuade perchance.   When once sheer beauty…

  • Ugliness in Addiction and Recovery

    If I could reach inside and rip out the pain that stops me in my tracks I would do so and I let the ugliness drip off my fingertips, because then I could choose to hold onto it, or let it go, and watch it fall, pull out the garden hose, spray it into the…

  • Faces On Demons

    Oh the (dark) places we go, if only Dr. Seuss could remedy all, perhaps the quiet abyss might no longer, contain the strength, the grasp sometimes inherent in my every step, the outlook of my day.   I sometimes wonder the strength of my addictions, are the reason I move slowly, perhaps in reason the…

  • Purpose With Addiction

    Oh there are these walls, you can’t see them. frankly I can’t either, we can always feel them, walking through a crowded market, and the eyes, the many faces that seem to know you are there, and we wonder, are we as obviously noticing them as they are, realizing our world isn’t alone, but rather,…

  • Isolated Storm Clouds

    See them and imagine the future, an ominous purple haze of opportunity, for it is the chaos of our lives, allows change to overcome the static.   Seek a society of forgiveness, the travels of pain sometime hidden, yet the exposure to the elements often a truly ominous test resilient.   When washed ashore in…

  • Conservative Happiness

    I wonder sometimes if they all think, process, imagine, find futile, an effort to push a boulder aside. I feel the clammy stone of a permanence, both hands taking grip on a monstrous image, finding the will, and yet realizing it is not about strength at all.   When forgiveness occurs, we do find a…

  • When Yesterday

    When we start to think about our yesterdays, we get scared, well some, me, suppose the words need only be self-directed, if validity is the goal of my game.   I contemplate my day before notions, those of consequence and reward, I try to recall the best, when especially drawn into the abyss of the…