Life, Death and Suicide

Life, Death and Suicide

"Burying the Stigma of Mental Illness" by Heather Rorrer

I was so taken with this article by Ms. Rorrer, I wanted to preface my own blog addition with a link.  She is in no way connected to me or responsible for what I say in what follows.

Five years after I got out of the Army (Viet Nam War), oh some forty-five years ago, my first wife, of ten years, took her own life.  For at least forty of those years I have not told anyone, but my very closest, dearest and most trusted friends of how she actually died.  Of course, my second wife (of thirty-eight years at this writing) knew – but then she is my best, closest and dearest friend and has been since the first day I met her.  And all of our children were told when they were old enough to understand and not be traumatized by that knowledge.

Other than those family members and few friends, we have kept it to ourselves.  She did have diabetes AND post-partum epilepsy – so diabetes has been the quick answer and the subject has been closed.  After that quick lie, everybody who asks says, “Oh I’m sorry.”  That’s it  - we move on.  But it’s a lie.  It’s a lie I have told countless times over the years.  Always figuring it’s nobody’s business but mine.  I have also told that lie to the teachers, baseball coaches or other supervising adults of my oldest two children by my first wife.  To save my children from the stigma that almost all adults did, when those two oldest of my six children were young (they are now in their forties) attached to mental illness.

What I have discovered is that almost all adults still do – attach stigma to mental illness.  Once you admit to a suicide in your family, especially by a spouse, people never look at you the same again.  I know this from observing those treasured and trusted friends.  Some I have actually had to stop associating with because it always seemed to come up, that’s how I know.  Those were my best friends, at the time; so how would more casual friends react?  Forget it.  I don’t need that kind of pebble in my shoe every day.

It is true that mental illness is, or often is, genetic.  It does seem to travel in family lines, but it is definitely not always the case.  We tend to loose sight of something I believe is a fact, alcoholism, and most any form of substance abuse and addiction also tend to follow family lines.  For centuries though, millennia truly, at least alcoholism has been seen as a problem, but never as a possible result of self-medication for what is actually a mental illness. 

Self-medication with socially approved substances and behavior, however, does not seem to carry anywhere near the stigma, though, that mental illness does.  Why is that?  (Blog for another day?)

What happened is this; I spent so many decades pushing down the trauma of my participation in a really stupid war, followed by the death, by suicide, of the first love of my life – I wound up with a mental illness.  Diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar disorder in my late fifties.  From my behavior over the previous years, it was pretty obvious I was suffering (under the influence of a brain disorder) for a very long time.  Since I had decided in my early thirties to avoid alcohol and anything else that might affect my ability to react properly in emergencies for the safety of my children, I couldn’t blame what was happening in my own brain on substance abuse.

Something was really wrong.  It became apparent, by my own decision, that I needed help.

It was a very difficult decision to come to and only with the help and support of my second wife, that I just said, “Screw it!  I’m going to a head Doctor.  This is just more than I can handle anymore.”  Having been a professional artist for the first twenty years of my adult working life, I was used to being a social outsider.  I was used to having people think, and sometimes even say, “Oh you’re an Artist.  You don’t work? Or, do you have a real job?”  Two decades of that, and as a person I didn’t really have a personal stigma associated with mental illness.  I knew my brain was fucked up, or sup-di-dooper different and most of artist friends were all pretty weird too.

So, in that sense, it made it easier for me to decide that it had gotten too far out of hand to handle alone in the day to day.  And, I didn’t care what anybody else thought.  I just wouldn’t say anything or simply lie like I had about my first wife’s suicide.  In those times past when other people would ask why my hands we're so shaky or that my voice quivered (on occasion when I'm a bit nervous), I'd say,

“I have a brain disorder.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“Just a genetic thing.  Makes my hands shake and stuff; nothing serious.”

“Well, that’s good.”

I no longer do this.  Now I just say, "I'm bipolar.  It's a side effect of the meds.  Don't worry it's not a big deal."  Then I just let the other person stew on that information.  I don't get into long conversations on it.  Sometimes they thank me for sharing something they interpret as deeply personal.  I don't care if they think it's deeply personal or not.  I just don't care anymore.  If they think it's catching, or communicable, and want to avoid me.  That's their choice and personally if that's they way they feel, I'd rather not hang out with them either.  Take me as I am (these days) or walk away.  This is my life.  I really really don't care about your judgements.

The truth; it is impossible to bury the stigma of mental illness.  It will never happen.  Stupid people will always – as in forever – put a label on the forehead of the different, the strange, the mentally ill.  Until, we who live with these conditions just stop caring what others think.  It is up to us!  This is where all the Fun Runs, the Marches, Rallies, speeches and the rest of that shit where we are only preaching to the choir.  Where the audiences are always just full of people with mental illnesses.

Is of not that much value.

My bipolar disorder gives me a deep deep imagination when I soar up into a manic stage.  Everything is sort of magical.  Creativity flows so smoothly, the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.  My hands work from some kind of broadband wifi tied directly into my soul.  It is not ego, it is not a desperate grab for greatness; it is very very simply that intense satisfaction of making something beautiful, seemingly out of thin air.  A small piece of beauty and glory that wasn't there before.

The depression stages are tough, but, to me, that’s what Netflix and exercise are for.  Best is watching Netflix, wearing headphones and rowing for miles on my erg.  And when the depressions are over, it’s like somebody has stopped punching me in the stomach.  When that pain is gone, it’s almost like pleasure.

If I stop for just a second, I just have to remember that life is beautiful, wonderful; yes; deeply challenging sometimes, but still beautiful.  Hold a baby, pet a dog, sit on a dock on a lake and fish ... watch a sunset.  Life is a miracle.  Get help if you need it and stop hiding.

Sure the medications make me overweight and sometimes a bit shaky in the hands, but truly after all of the Art and other adventures, this roller coaster that is labeled a metal illness has allowed me to do; I think it’s actually a good trade-off.

As has been said, “You can’t be extraordinary if you’re ordinary.”

Please visit me at http://dalepeterson.us

For links to my books on Amazon KDP

My YouTube Channel

Dale Peterson's Channel

Thanks guys …. Please subscribe, it does help …

Still Lives Run Deep

Still Lives Run Deep

Here is my latest video.

https://youtu.be/gQDjjilG1Vk


What seems like a few seconds, can be actually hours, days, even months.  In order to make this video I had to learn to use Blender 3D software.  And, Blender is a very difficult program.  Not at all intuitive.  Hours of watching and cross referencing YouTube tutorials is a requirement, because the on-line manual is a disaster and several of the book I spent good money were just no good.  And those books were out of date.

Still There was a total of easily 100 hours in making the video - per a period of three months.

I am always fascinated, but mostly flummoxed when other people, especially my own students ask, "Wow.  How long did that take?"  Also I am irritated by that question.  A real artist, designer or craftsperson doesn't think in how long something takes.  They think more in terms of how to get what is in my head out into the real world?  Time doesn't enter into it.

The skills they need, if they don't have them, they learn.  They practice and practice and practice until they can get what they want.  And then they start in on a piece.  And as they go they practice up on anything they need until that is working.  They make any tools they need, if they can't find those tools to buy.

It tends to be a quiet life, buried deep deep into your work.  Not thinking about how long a piece will take.  You do whatever you need to do, until you get what you feel is finished.

My Father’s Thumb

My Father’s Thumb

So it has been nearly a year and a half since my father died.  No tears.  He was ninety-five, had a good life and really long life.  War hero, father hero, grandfather hero.

The funeral home that did his preparation and all those arrangements did an excellent job.  One of the things they did that was extremely cool, and something I have never seen or heard of before, was to take an impression of his right thumb print and cast it in sterling silver and hang that on a silver chain.  This is sort of a novel idea, I think, but as time has gone on I find this little piece of jewelry becomes more and more precious to me.

It’s pretty small, like about the size of a dime, or even a tad smaller.  I do wish it was bigger.  More like the size of his actual thumb print.  My father was a really big man and his thumb was   like   large also.  However, if it was more to scale, as big as HE was, I probably couldn’t have afforded all the silver it would have taken.  And, honestly I have to trust the funeral home that what they gave us, my sister and I, was the actual true impression of my Dad’s real and actual thumb.  But I do.  I just do.  I mean think about the bad karma if they tried to pull some shyster move like faking those things.

It made me think about my own lineage, however.  I was so fortunate in that I not only had a great Dad, but I had a great Grandfather.  My Grandfather was a dirt poor farmer who raised six children on a loosing proposition of leased farmland during the Great Depression.  He had, maybe, four or five years of formal education.  His own father died before he was sixteen and he raised his two sisters and a brother before he married and had his own family. 

I spent one summer with him, the one just before he died.  As an old man of eighty he couldn’t farm anymore and made his living hauling livestock from the local stock auction.  Rich farmers – ones who actually owned their farms – would come to the auction in fancy washed cars and bid on animals (pigs and beef cattle, sometimes sheep). Grandpa and I would load them into his truck and deliver the poor beasts to their last residences.  I was eighteen at the time.

Grandpa’s old Ford pick-up was –like – ancient.  Six cylinders, four on the floor.  Except the gear pattern plate had been worn into something like just a circle.  Because Grandpa was eighty, I did a lot of the driving.  However, even though I had learned to drive a stick shift (or manual as they are called today) – actually in those days manuals were all that there were, automatic hadn’t even been invented yet – driving that old truck took love.  That’s all I can say.  It took love, because that old piece of shit sucked all your patience and good feelings just trying to get it into the right gear.

The clutch plate was so old, it had to have been as slick as ice on a road, and the clutch cable was stretched beyond its sell by date by decades.  Just getting the clutch to disengage enough to start slapping the stick shifter around to find the next gear was an exercise in it self.  This wasn’t a double-clutch technique.  It was a pump down – pump down – swear – swear some more – grind, grind grind – clutch pump, clutch pump – grind, grind grind – swear!!! GRrrrr –runch!! And a lurch forward, or maybe a stall.  It was a total gearing crapshoot. 

Now, if the load was pigs or sheep, all this lunging, lurching and stalling wasn't such a bad thing.  Pigs ‘n sheep are short animals, built low to the ground, low centers of gravity.  Plus when things start lurching around, pigs ‘n sheep tend to lay down (I do not know why).  Beef cattle on the other hand are dumber than broccoli and have long legs and a high center of gravity.  It is really way too easy for them to break a leg being slung around in the back of an old pick-up.  And when they get frightened they shit buckets and buckets of green horrible shit – more than the gallons of brown slimy shit they shit just walking around.

Sheep aren’t bad, although they are also pretty dumb.  Pigs, on the other hand, tend to be smart, ornery (no, pigs are just mean when they’re pissed).  Pigs can actually control their shitters and choose just when and how much they want to unload.  Like on your boots when you have to zap with the prodder to get them up the shoot into the truck.  The little jolt from the prodder doesn’t seem to do much more than get their attention.  You know it is just meanness though, because after you jolt ‘em, they sort of turn their heads, look you in the eye and SHIT a wagonload of runny crap as high as they can force it to go.  Usually about knee high, running into your boots.  I just know they did it on purpose.

That summer with my Grandpa hauling animals, driving that old truck, cleaning up all that shit - well, it kind of made me appreciate the man.  More than just love him ,which I did, and more than respect him, which I did, but appreciate him.  He was a simple man, but he was a real man.  He was everything a real man should be.  That's an important lesson to learn when you're an eighteen year old boy.

So I have taken to attaching my father’s silver thumbprint to my motorcycle jackets.  I move it from my winter to my summer jacket as the seasons change.  Every time I notice it, many many cherished memories of both my father and grandfather pass across my mind and somehow I feel protected.

Please visit me at http://dalepeterson.us

And follow my links to my books on Amazon.

Thank you so much for your time.

The Depth of Hurt

The Depth of Hurt

Beneath and deep within is a black stone.  A seed, or a pit, no bigger than a pit maybe, but burning like a piece of coal.  Once ignited, like coal, it cannot be put out.  It continues to burn.  It is possible to grow some kind of hard shell to contain it.  It’s affect on the host organism can be insulated.  It cannot be cut out though – only insulated through much effort, discipline and total commitment.

The host can move forward, but retreat is never an option.  Reflection is to be avoided at nearly all cost.  I find that I don’t envy those who can have walls covered with photographs of their past years and those others they shared those years with.  Knowing that I cannot do that without more pain than I know I can tolerate, I don’t have anything to remind me of my past. 

It is possible to live without a limb – an arm, leg.  You can live without eyesight or hearing.  Even if these conditions happen later in life due to accidents, the spirit can revive and overcome.  There are things that can happen that can be more devastation than any of those other conditions.  How is it possible, you say, to have anything more horrible happen than – say – loosing your eyesight?  Loosing a child to cancer.  Loosing a child to suicide.  Loosing any loved one to suicide.

There are many things that can hurt worse than a physical injury – no matter how devastating at the time.  It is far more devastating to loose contact with the mortal and normal world from the standpoint of a mental illness.  Often because in the beginning, the symptoms for unnoticed and therefore uncontrolled until the person’s life is ruined.  Marriage lost.  Job lost.  Family lost.  Sanity lost.  And the person affected can’t figure it out, doesn’t understand, is left isolated and socially condemned.

Often, finding on this condemnation so complete the mentally ill cannot find the road back.  They become so lost even a path with blazes on every tree goes unnoticed.  And because it is their mind that is ruined, as opposed to a limb or a sense, and is therefore not obvious, empathy is nearly impossible by those surrounding them.  Only sympathy is possible and then it is often begrudgingly given.  Noting that sympathy, a more accurate synonym would be pity, is one of the most destructive emotions, or forces, that can be inflicted by one person on another – no matter how well meant.

Sympathy states simply, “I am superior to you and feel sorry for you.  I will help out of, or from, my superior position.”  Whether a person is disabled physically or even mentally, they recognize this as being not only duplicitous, but degrading.  They might be nice about it, even appreciate it on the surface, but honestly inside they are saying, “Fuck You! ”  And, “Either help me because I need it and you want to, or leave me the fuck alone.  I don’t need your pity.”

The hurt can be so deep, so encrusted with time pushing backwards that at times it seems even possible it is gone.

Then it isn’t, the host – the person surrounding the hurt – feels it again.  It’s there.  The deep knowledge that it is always there, returns.  So, what then …

The Aboriginals say, “Always face the sun, then you will never fear the shadows.”  Maybe that’s an answer.

Dalepeterson.us

The Guy Next To Me

The Guy Next To Me

When traveling a person must always contend with person who sits next to them on the airplane, or bus or subway, camel, elephant, etc..  Dog sled.  And in front of them, or behind.  Who this person is makes a huge difference in the comfort and dispatch of time during the journey.

You find your seat on the plane.  Whichever one it is, unless you’re a Shah or celebrity and in First Class, you’re cramped.  I’m always cramped and I’m not all that tall or big.  Still, it’s endurable.  Driving the trip would take days, flying cuts it down to hours.  A little bit of discomfort is okay to save days otherwise. 

The plane, taxies around and stuff and shortly you’re at altitude and you can pull out your laptop, get a little work done, watch a movie you downloaded -  whap!  The jerk in front of you has to recline his seat as far as it will go.  Now your laptop is crunched at … like… a thirty degree angle.  You can’t see the screen.  Looking up, you are looking at the bald spot on his head – not a pretty sight.  The thought runs through my head, when this happens, “What does he think, the people behind him disappear when he wants to unfold his belly fat?”

I have a back strategy when this happens.  I bump the back of the seat, doing this … or doing that … every time I bump it I say, “Oh I’m sorry.”  Bump, “Oh I’m sorry.” Bump, “Oh I’m sorry”.  If it’s sleep he wants, either all the periodic bumping is going to get to him, or all of my apologizing.  After a bit, they always grumble something and put their seats back in the upright position.  I can be so annoying in a super-nice way when somebody breaks the rules of travel.

The guy beside, on either side have different sets of issues.  Being in the middle seat – well, middle seat tickets should be twenty dollars less than all the other tickets.  I mean they charge you that much and more for a seat in the Emergency Row because you get more room.  They should charge less if you’re stuck between two other seats.  If you don’t make your reservation at least six months in advance, you will get stuck in the middle.  Don’t know about you, but I can’t predict my life that far ahead.  Two weeks is about my limit.  I ride the middle a lot.

The window seat; I love to look outside and down at the world below, at the clouds … unless it’s a red eye flight.  When the guy next to the window decides to pull the blind down, that upsets me.  I start to get claustrophobic.  “Put it up, put it up!  I gotta see the sky!  Whoah!”  Then the guy sitting on the aisle seat goes to sleep.  And he is always like huge.  As soon as I notice that he’s in a deep sleep, I find (for some reason) I have to take a piss.   And I mean it’s really uncomfortable and I have to go right now! 

If, perchance he wakes up, that feeling of immediacy goes away immediately.  And why, staying on this topic for a few words, why does the person by the window – who is generally a woman – always seem to want the whole can of soda.  Knowing that in ten minutes she is going to need the ladies room and both of us between her and aisle are going to have to get up and then wait standing in the aisle until she gets back.

And this is also just about when the stewards come squishing the cart back down that aisle forcing he and I all the way to the back of the airplane to turn around to go back to our seats, just about the time the plane hits turbulence and the seat belt lights go on.

On my last flight we hit some real heavy turbulence going over the Gulf of Mexico.  Why during the worst of it where so many people having to get up and head to the bathrooms?  Right after the pilot came on and said, “Stay in your seats.” ???  There was like a line of them. 

My rules for “The Guy Next To Me”:

1. If you have a weak bladder, buy an aisle seat.

2. If you have a weak bladder, DON’T drink a huge can of soda during the middle of the flight.

3. If you have a bag that won’t fit in the overhead, DON’T TRY TO STUFF IT INTO THE OVERHEAD.

4. If you’re too short to put your bag in the overhead, ask for help.

5. Don’t choose the window seat if you’re afraid to fly.  That seat is for people who LIKE to fly and look out the window.

6. If you’re 200 pounds overweight, don’t choose – or in some way, get out of – using the middle seat.

7. If you’re in the aisle seat, when the plane lands and is ready to deplane, stand up in the aisle immediately so the other people next to you can stretch a little bit.

Dalepeterson.us