Tag Archives: depression

Tracking The Storm on Facebook

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I had a pretty bad depression storm move in this last week, and I’ve been tracking it by making daily posts on Facebook. Tonight I thought I’d try to elaborate a little on those postings…

Day 1 – Wednesday

This storm started on Wednesday morning, the 22nd – I could feel the storm coming and I tried to hang on to the positive mindset I woke up with, only to have it slip away as the morning wore on… that night on Facebook I wrote:

Facebook Posting: Wednesday, July 22nd 10:56pm

Heavy and dark depression today – tired of the mantras of stupidity and failure endlessly repeating themselves in my head, for hours, all day long…

Mantras or looping tapes – don’t know what to really call them – just the endless repeating of crap – STUPID STUPID STUPID SHITHEAD FAILURE… (that and worse) over and over all day long… it really does gets a little tiring and if you had to live through it (and many people do) you’d quickly understand why people turn to alcohol and drugs to numb their poor, tortured soul.

Day 2 – Thursday

I was hoping this storm would just be a quick, little, one day event, but no, it continued on into Thursday – and I woke up to those same crappy tapes playing in my head  – the same as when I went to bed – damn. Just relentless from the word go…

Later on, I ended up watching an interesting documentary on the Catholic Channel on TV (who knew we had a Catholic Channel?!?) about a priest named Father Solanus Casey. I’ll write more on Father Solanus in a future post.

Facebook Posting: Thursday, July 23rd 10:47 am

Another heavy and dark day – Slowly posting a retrospective of my paintings – So far – Line Abstracts from the mid 1990′s – http://onehumanbeing.com/blog/resources/art-works-a-retropective/line-abstracts/

I’ll let people know when more work is posted…

I thought I’d do my best to work through the storm, but I didn’t get very far and spent most of the rest of the Thursday sleeping.

Day 3 – Friday

Facebook Posting: Friday, July 24th 4:41 pm

Depression – Day Three – Yet one more time down this road… Today the depression moved on to the physical part – like having the flu – sort of. Hopefully that means this storm will move out in a day or so. I’ve been here many times before…

In my opinion, depression is a physical illness that affects your thinking and thought processes. As a bout of depression runs it course, I have days where it’s mostly a physical experience – tired, nauseous, achy, irritable and uncomfortable in my own skin – very much like how the flu feels.

This phase can mean this bout is nearly over, or it’s just warming up for round two… I just have to wait and see.

There’s a line in a song by The Verve that runs through my head on these days “Just tie yourself to the mast my friend and the storm will end…” It helps keep me alive.

On Friday evening I went with Tania to Friday Night Happy Hour, a weekly tradition with our friends, which I’ve been skipping out on lately because of depression-related issues, and did my best to be present. Our friends and the co-founders of our little Happy Hour group are leaving this next week on amazing new adventures – and I couldn’t miss their last Happy Hour with us.

Day 4 – Saturday

Facebook Posting: Saturday, July 25th 1:14 pm

Depression Day Four – 15% better – Took photos at AAC this morning of Pure Kush, The Purps and Razzle Berry – beautiful herbs! Will be posted on the AAC menu later today (this is my volunteer work that keeps me going) http://aacollective.com/inside/menu/

On Saturday morning I was determined to start turning this around – wake up – go take photos – come home and spend the afternoon processing photos – go, go, go and out-run the tape loops… on sugar and fake energy, anxiety and frustration – doesn’t work for long and I end up just drained before the day is nearly half over.

Day 5 – Sunday

Sunday – is it Sunday? No, just Fogday in my head and I can’t shake it… sometimes the clouds seem like they’re going to clear, but no, just a false hope and more gray fog thickly and slowly oozing through my day and into the evening…

Facebook Posting: Sunday, July 26th 11:04 pm

Depression Day 5 – gray fog and heavy clouds – now it’s just settled in, thick with slow motion… an endless day with tiny, quickly evaporating breaks in the mental weather.

Tough storm so far, but you never know… tomorrow could be the day I wake and the sun will be shining on my eyelids and whispering appreciations and hopes that blow away the looping tapes and make this just a memory and a story.

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The Monster Pill, Part 2 – Jelly Paws and Black Hole Suitcases…

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Continued from The Monster Pill – July 19, 2009…

jellypaws_drawing_websized

Last summer, and during August in particular, I went through a really bad depression – I mean – really bad. As you can see from the drawing to the left that I made of my brain in my sketchbook during that time it was not good.

On the same page I made this drawing I wrote the following – I call it…

Jelly Paws

We’re just soft tissue
with sharp claws
hidden in our jelly paws
with anxiety triggers
and stress-blinded attack plans…

Lazy, selfish,
lulled by isolation
into fearful creatures
launching preemptive strikes
shock and awe with sharp claws
and we roll on and on…

A few pages after this entry I made my drawings of The Monster Pill, which I posted yesterday, inspired by the ongoing and eternal prescription medication hassles…

Seriously people, in my opinion, nothing helps Bi-Polar II more than good medical marijuana (and good diet, exercise, sunlight… which I should do more of…) – but I faithfully go through the never-ending (over ten years now) search for a really effective prescription medication.

While I’m covering drawings and writings from last August, here’s my Black Hole Suitcases…

fly_paper_mind_1_websized

Black Hole Suitcases

Everything I’ve left undone
has stuck to my flypaper mind.
They struggle and die in the place where I hide them away
and come back as suitcases filled with black holes.

Take my suitcases and give them wings
give them life, and flight, and a place to go.
I’m just going to lie down here because it’s all become too heavy for me…

This was just a few pages after The Monster Pill drawings and was one of a several attempts I made to document the depression while it was happening… I continued to struggled with this particular bout of depression through late October, 2008, when I finally got a month or so of good energy while we switched my medications, again.


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Long Depressions and a Life of Cycles

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It may seem like I’ve disappeared, but I’m still here… weathering a long storm of depression.

This storm started back in late April, and has come and gone in waves, in cycles within cycles.

I should be use to this by now, but I never get used to it, always hoping that the blue sky days will last, but knowing there’s always another storm coming.

The spring storms are very unpredictable.

Some years it’s like a rushing, fresh breeze of creativity and new activities. Other years it comes like a cruel north wind, and I find myself tied to the mast just to make it to the early summer break when my next big shift comes.

I’ll be 45 in two weeks, on the 18th.

I’ve had depressions and manias since I was a child (something I’ve come to understand over the last few years), and actively dealing with my mood-swings for the last eleven years.

After all this time I’ve become somewhat familiar with the cycles and seasons of my inner landscape, and the strange weather patterns of storms that ravage and shape that landscape.

But that doesn’t make it any more pleasant at Depression Ground Zero, or help my daily attempt at making something out of the dreams and visions in my head.

So for days I hide out on the sofa, watching shows on the History Channel about UFOs and Ancient Civilizations, reading news stories on my laptop from the Huffington Post, and sleeping, lots of sleeping…

When I have energy I volunteer at a Medical Marijuana collective here in Long Beach called AAC – Apothecary’s Assistants Collective and take photos for a project of mine called The MMJ Project (MMJ is short for Medical Marijuana).

I’m glad for my project and volunteer work because it gets me out of the apartment, and around people.

Of course, there’s more to it than that… but left to my own devices to avoid the pain of depression I will disappear into a world of deep thoughts, MMJ, meditations and TV and ignore the rest of the world.

So, getting me outside of myself is a good thing – especially during these storms.

There’s my update from this last month or so…

Hopefully I’ll reach more peaceful weather soon and be able to write about some interesting visions I’ve had during these storms (the visions are the only rewards sometimes for traveling through these storms) and the stories that have been weaving their way through my daily existence.

Until later, best of health,
Jon, onehumanbeing

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Double Rainbow

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Double Rainbow Detail - Click to see full Image of the Moment

Please note: I am publishing this post about a week [2-25-2009] after I first wrote it. See the note at the end of the post for more details…

Ripples After The Splash

The last 36 hours have been very difficult. (the story gets better, really…)

I’ve experienced this before, the relapse after a big depression, just as you’re heading out of the whirlpool. It’s like ripples from a big splash in a pond.

Peeved

That’s the word I settled on to describe how I feel today. I’m angry, bothered and vexed – but mostly it’s wrestling with God, trying to get through my confusion of the moment…

So today, I’m not the best to be around – I have a short temper, and I feel like I have an agenda in every conversation… most of which have been with Tania who had the day off today and got to enjoy my dark windstorms and blowing clouds…

I don’t get this way very often, and haven’t in a long time, so it’s really throwing me around this time, and tripping up my footing.

I believe in a God of big promises, and today I need to see some of those show up… like I said – I have been peeved today. Maybe it’s something I ate, my various medications – I don’t know…

A note to those who don’t understand the work of faith: faith is not blind, it’s a force that strips away all your illusions and makes you face the real problems, like food on the table and clothes to wear. To learn about faith that works you have to ask questions, it’s fear and doubt that keeps you one quiet.

I found out from Tania as I was muttering about in my peeved ramblings this morning, that she was dealing with the same kind of thoughts, and she had been praying about the same things that were bothering me.

Praying – a much better response. That’s how we’ve moved from questions to answers in the past – we prayed – and it has worked every time so far…

We both agreed that we needed to see some of those promises, and now was a really good time, really… and we prayed.

Rainbows

Later this afternoon I drove over to A Soothing Remedy Collective, and saw my new friend Dr. Shillstein (that’s his weedtracker username), the guy who runs the place.

2009-mmj-week

I usually enjoy visiting the Dr. but today I was just a dark cloud coming to visit. I had gone there just to drop off some MMJ (Medical Marijuana) Week buttons for them to give away,  but I also picked up a gram of Mango OG Kush (the Dr. recommended it for my situation – a very good choice) and left…

After I got home and had some of my new herb (still feeling peeved, but in a nice, kush-induced, fuzzy kind-of-way) I glanced out the front window and saw the most beautiful rainbow I’ve ever seen (and no, the rainbow wasn’t because of the herb).

I called Tania over to see, and we both ran downstairs to try and get a photo of this amazing sight.

I’m very serious when I say I’ve never seen such a brilliant, complete, colorful double rainbow. The composite photo above does not do it justice.

Now I realize that there are “rainbows” and there are “Rainbows: The Amazing Version” – This was the latter…

I have never seen one such as this, but I imagine that the one Noah saw must have been like this, because you look up it and go, “Wow…” – you just have to.

You might or might not know that the rainbow Noah saw was a sign to him from God that represented God’s promises to him, God’s covenant with Noah, and all mankind after him. I feel like today, God answered my storms with a rainbow…

An after note: 11:30 pm – I’m still feeling a bit peeved – I hope this feeling goes away when this current depression ripple passes because I do not like feeling this way…

Note from about a week later – Feb 25, 2009

I didn’t publish this post on the day I wrote it because in it’s draft form it was such an incomplete picture of what was going on in our life, the much bigger picture where this is just one footstep of faith leading to the next – but for those that don’t walk this way it could cause confusion.

My life is about fanning the spark of faith in the people I meet, and I don’t want to do anything to blow out that spark…

This double rainbow was followed up by a show the next day on the Science Channel about Uncertainty and Quantum Physics. When I need spiritual clarity, I turn to Quantum Physics – it gives me great perspective.

All the peeved feelings melted away after that night, and my questions have started to return to me as answers that help me see the world with more love, hope and purpose…

And I have a new material for my work now – Uncertainty. More about that coming up soon…

So now, over a week later, I’m starting to understand in an even-more-amazed-way the beauty of that rainbow, on that particular day, and that moment. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. My faith is now stronger and has a larger vision…

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Psalm 37:5 – Illuminations and Meditations

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2008-12-9-psalms-37-5.jpg

This is a drawing I did this last weekend, one of several I’ve did based on Psalm 37, verse 3-6.

These verses are ones I’ve been meditating on for 5 years, cycling through different verses as seasons of life change.

Currently I’m on verse 5 and have been for quite awhile… It’s a very slow paced digestion of the word, but these 4 verses written thousands of years ago have helped reshape my life from who I was when I first read them during a crashing depression.

Enjoy the drawing… lot’s of little things in there from my current reading material about Mayan culture, serpents shedding their skin (note: there is a deep Advent season focus of John the Baptist’s call to repentance and renewal going on through all these drawings)

More stuff later.

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