Oh shit. It's been too long

I've been very angry. Anger coming up from 30 years of living. I haven't felt like thinking, or talking or writing. I am alive, and trying to find compassion for the family members I would love to punch in the face if I were a face puncher. It is really hard being a human. It is really hard to feel, as a human. FOr me, it is really hard not to let the bad feeling spin around and make me hurt myself.

quick update

I'm back in Texas, North Carolina is beautiful. I have so much shit to process I am breaking a little longer from the blog but feel free to email me at etexman903@gmail.com

Be human this holiday!

Oh man, its time for a new level of growth

It's that time , that time to be uncomfortable a while while I grow. I feel so defeated by the compulsion for more that I have. If I get the urge to stay up late I stay up all night, if I feel the urge to sleep I want to take enough sleep aids to wake up next week sometime. One diet Coke won't be enough, nor a case of beer or large pizza. I can't enjoy a smoke if I know I only have one in the package. If I had enjoyed the feeling of uppers, i can totally see why people take tons of meth for a LOT of sex.

There is a great line in "Beaches" when Bette Midler's character is told by her mother that she just couldn't love her enough. Bette's character needed so much in order to feel love from people she wore people out.

It dawns on me right this instant that I have an automatic bypass that tells me someone can't love me as much as I want so don't bother. I could leave one or two beers in the fridge forever, I wouldn't feel the least temptation to drink them unless I was assured there would be enough to drink to pass out.

I guess I have never ran across a person that led me to believe that they were even close to having enough love possibility for me to actually feel it.

How do you get to the point when you aren't demanding more love than one human can give. How do you get to the point where you know how to love in balance, eat in balance, drink in balance without dying in the process.

I've got leavin' on my mind

I haven't spent any time out of Texas in almost five years. I leave in the morning and am excited to be striking out on my own. I have know idea what I will do with that ridiculously long lay over in Atlanta.

Leaving Wednesday for a while

It is such an odd feeling to be going somewhere with no plans or expections. I keep telling people I just have to get there and start from there. I don't have any set notions of how this trip is suppose to turn out I am just going with the flow and trusting.

My favorite Time of the night

The house has settle to the just the hum of the air purifier, my sleep meds are dissolving in my stomach and I am looking forward to sleep. Sleep has been so hard for me all my life when I get in a loop of sleeping well for a few hours I feel like i won the lottery.

Tomorrow is my 42nd birthday. I can't believe I've had that many of them. Unlike a lot of years, I've made real progress in being a human being this last year. I haven't spent 365 days afraid.

I leave next weds. at 10am for North Carolina. It's so odd to have the freedom to try another town or state if that one doesn't suit me. I'm loving the sense of understanding my freedom. All that freedom hinges on me understanding that I will be OK no matter what. When you know you are a survivor it really does cut out a lot of self created fear.

I still have so much stuff to get together before my trip. I am going to have to take my list and systematically start getting it cut down. Haircut, is near top of the list.

Once I was in the "Hospital" or "exhaustion" clinic if I were a celebrity, the bed was so uncomfortable all I could think for two weeks a cushiony bed and a real pillow. The pillow they gave me was a card board box sealed in plastic, thick tarp material. It crinkled so loudly when you moved it would wake you up.

Almost every night since then, I really do have a wave of gratitude was over me when I lay down at night and I arrange my three pillows for my big head. lol

singing clip, first time I sang in over 6 years

I wasn't as good as when I left off, but i was pleasantly surprised at myself. The biggest thing was that I felt like singing again.

It's great to change your mind at 42

Sometimes it seems that i came from the most inflexible family in the whole world. I never had a person around me that made thoughtful reflective decisions. I really really never had family or many friends around that would change their decision after it was made.

Over the last year especially I have changed my mind about a lot of things. Some very trivial things like deciding I do like Leanne Rymes after all, to changing my mind and re accessing what is possible in my life, I, can change my mind.

There is a lot of freedom in changing your mind about something. Life flows, it has movement and direction, therefore keeping an open mind to even things I have put a judgment on is vital to keep the flow going forward.

Three of the people I changed my mind about this year I found useless and denied their right to exist. Then, I got enough back story and some them in a human light and suddenly tapped into my compassion for them. They went from a flat image to a fully formed humans all because I saw them in a different light, a light filtered through my experiences, successes and failures while being human. To deny their value was suddenly denying my own. I have a level of respect for them now that is on par with the level of compassion and respect that all humans deserve.

By giving them a break, I gave myself a break too. When I forgive you for screwing up it is easy to forgive myself for screwing up, and vice versa.

Thinking in Moderation

One of the things that started my turn around was a read a paragraph in a book called "Undoing Depression" that stated people with depression have a real problem with thinking too much. An excessive amount of thoughts in depressed people make everything seem more impossible.

I was so relieved when I read this. It was like a giant missing puzzle piece had been given to me. My brain is busier than a main street in Tokyo when works leave to go home multiplied by a billion. I have had my thinking exhaust me.

You feel like lead, your body heave and yet your brain is constantly turning things around and around as if you can think your way out of the darkness. The past, hurts and pain are in thoughts as fresh as if they happened yesterday.

Depression in chemical. It is organic and of the body. I'm not talking about grief or extended grief from an occurrence in someones life like a death or end of job/marriage. I have seen people that couldn't move past the those things that eventually lead to a real prolonged battle with depression.

Isn't that something though, the fact that our brain churning out too much thought can actually keep us stuck in depression? I grew up "thinking" I could think my way to a solution or out of a problem. When I was young and played old school 45rpm records on a player, if there was a scratch or spot on the record the needle would get stuck and it would repeat a line of the sentence being sung, over and over until you moved the needle. Getting past the "over thinking" thing is a lot like that needle sticking.

We get an interruption in the flow of our life, chemicals get wonky, we don't have enough of them for the brain to function properly, depression results and we start thinking, and thinking and thinking.

I found, for me, I knew I was above average smarts and the fact that I couldn't figure out how to pull a rabbit out of my hat and make a success of my life, actually drove me crazy. I had to find a place somewhere inside me that could hold and retain some peace. I just wanted to be peaceful- to not always be forecasting my future or running a diagnostic on my past. I was being pulled into and the very thoughts my brain created were serving as the opposing forces of pull.

It really does feel good when it stops hurting.

99.9% of Ideas out there don't fit me.

Only .1 percent of the the new ideas we are exposed to are going to work. "Work" meaning they can be applied to our lives and they will prove beneficial to our progress of as humans, friends, lovers, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.

The real trouble for a lot of us comes when a big idea working in others lives doesn't work for us. The times I have tried to align myself with a cause or religion or way of thought because it seemed to work so well for others can't be calculated it is so large.

When you are like the way I have spent most of my life, and you have no real sense of self, it took longer than it could have to ultimately reject those failing ideas. I thought I was the failure. It didn't dawn on me that the idea failed in my life. If there was failure, I took it on as mine. Always.

As humans we are such individuals that it is impossible for one idea or movement, political group or religion to work for all of us. One size doesn't fit all and it either takes a world of pain to propel us further along or really great inspiration.

I thought I was getting hit on hard once. I grooved to everything they were saying. Then instead of going out a date I was asked to an Amway meeting. I knew enough about the organization to know it was for me and most importantly I was right for them. I didn't know very much about myself then but I did know basic rudimentary things like I didn't like most vegetable, excessive heat or getting up early.

We have to get to know ourselves in order to recognize the breadcrumbs to follow to the new ideas.

The way I began to get to know myself better was I had to learn to distinguish the voice prompts , "old tapes" that played in my head and then I had to question them, or stop them.

Once I found that inner directive I started using it and telling it yes. When I would leave town to drive home and realized I had had an urge to take the other way home than usual, I did it. The more I honored my inner guide voice, the strong it was and it became way more organic.

Being myself is very hard for me. First it leaves me fearful and vulnerable when I don't have defenses up and I'm just being me. BUT, preparing for a punch can be much worse than the punch most of the times.

I felt bad when i went to a drinking support group for many reasons. First I didn't have a token amount of sober time early on to feel like I had any cache' and I didn't have anything to offer that would be valued.

Then when I had several years time there in the support group I felt set apart because frankly I didn't really care if I lived or died. I was doing all that was ask and I just didn't feel like a human.

I spent way to much time trying to make that whole program/group work for me when it was never going to work for me like others. Funny enough one of their favorite sayings "keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results" applied to me with that sober movement.

When you are born different and you realized that you don't fit in to the world around you, protective mechanisms are formed quickly, quickly.

I thought it was best to ignore who I was and assimilate to them. I lost myself before I even knew it. I would try to act like I was suppose to then be me in secret. I actually did spend time in the closet growing up. I was playing. Dress up.


If one of my good friends asked me, how to start to turn it around to have a life that is justified to themselves I was advise. Start getting rid of what isn't you.(books, clothes, friends, movies). Start listening to what your thought voice is saying. Learn to distinguish your directive voice and the dangerous ones that make you hurt and feel worthless. I don't mean audio hallucination voices!

The MOST important thing is start exposing yourself to all the new ideas about love, life, spirit, creativity that you can. 99.9% won't apply to you but it only takes .1 to be a happy spirit on the planet.

One reason kids are so happy is they live in a world of color and creativity. Do something creative everyday. Write a funny email, paint a picture, style a wig, plant some flowers. As long as you are bringing forth some measure of beauty into the world that wasn't there before. You create creative energy when you do that which empowers you and then goes into the universe. Lord knows it needs all the good energy we can create.