Early War Post: April 21st- "Lean into the Pain"

Last Sunday I posted my ROW goals for the week, because I wanted to accomplish a lot before my schedule got worse.  I thought that I would need to take up a fourth job to make ends meet for my family, because of our current financial situation.  However thinking about that along with other things going on in my life (lies that I've heard from some family members and the stress of being back from a deployment) took me into one of the worst depressive episodes I've ever had.  I felt the icy fingers of addiction reach into my chest and rip my heart out, and for a brief moment I was deliciously numb as I spent way too much time last week playing video games and isolating myself from my family, from myself, and from my writing.  It literally destroyed an entire week of progress for me in my fiction.

So as I am coming back from Never-Ever land to focus on what I think is most important I thought, I'd share with you a little bit about the issues a person can deal with in depression and why exactly it is real.

My first deployment overseas didn't have me doing what people think of soldiers typically doing.  I'm sure everyone has seen folks who go over and they are breaking down doors, taking down bad guys, and generally kicking butt and taking names.  For me I wasn't on that mission.  I wasn't on a mission to seek out and destroy the enemy.  Instead I served the enemy.  I worked as a guard at a Detainee Camp.  This means those folks the other guys found and brought in, we took care of until their trial dates.  We made sure they didn't hurt each other (which we failed at), we made sure they had food, and we tried to make them as comfortable as possible while we watched them day in and day out.  It might not sound so bad until you realize that if you are trained to seek out and destroy the enemy serving the enemy (who indeed would slit your throat in a heartbeat) does some messed up things to you psychologically.  Most people left this specific duty with terrible cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD and it took us a long time to get over it.  I almost lost my marriage as a result of the issues I came home from that deployment with.  And I'm still feel broken even now.  Just I've had a little help to put most of the pieces back in the right place since that time.

When I was there I often indulged in my addiction to games and just zoned out because I had to deal with the pain somehow and there wasn't a lot of other options.  I don't smoke, and I don't drink, and I really didn't want to start up any other addictions so I just did a lot of writing and played my games frequently.

But when I got home was when the emotions came full force.  I went from being an Honors Student who loved being in class to sleeping through all my classes everyday.  I could go to work, because for some reason when I'm helping someone else I can forget all my pain for that brief moment (which explains why I always look for work where I serve others), but school just was too much.  There were days I could barely crawl out of bed because I was so sad.  I went to a therapist who said I was okay because I was still going to work.  They told my wife that I was being responsible because I took care of my obligations.  But I didn't, I didn't give her love, I couldn't care about myself, and worst of all I hated almost everyone I had gone overseas with.  And anyone who knows me knows hate is not a natural emotion to me.

It is the fact that I wasn't willing to deal with the emotions and either slept or played videogames that was sinking me.  I didn't have the coping skills to deal with such volume of painful emotions.  Depression is a disease.  It forces a person who is dealing with horrible things to deal with them in unhealthy ways.  I know some folks who eat when depressed, others who cut themselves, and some who sleep it all away.  When we don't know how to deal with the things the world has given us sometimes we crawl into a hole and hope everybody goes away because we don't know how to deal with their company and our pain.

I've met people in my life who have said that they don't believe in depression.  And there was a time in my life that I didn't understand it very well myself, and I wouldn't have been able to truly deal with my wife's depression very well.  But that was all before I had visited its depths myself.  I just want to say that it is a real illness.  And for some it goes beyond that because they are missing chemicals to balance their bodies properly.  For them it is more than a coping mechanism, it is a struggle to find real joy in life.  They have to fight against this disease to even find their emotions in the first place.  And I don't envy them in that fight, because I know from my own experiences that it is a very difficult fight to deal with.

The only reason I'm coming out of it at the moment is because I heard something in group therapy that really helped me this past week: "Lean into the pain."  By leaning into the pain it causes me to actually recognize that I'm in pain, it causes me to seek out some help from my family, and it causes me to look into the depths of the emotional hole that lies inside of me.  I can't say by any means that I'm whole yet, but I know that as I take more time "leaning into the pain" I'll be better able to deal with the things that life has put before me.

I no longer hate the people I was with back then, but I realize that that period of my life was probably the most pain I've ever been in.  And because I didn't learn earlier appropriate ways to deal with that volume of pain I chose addiction and depression over connection and family.  But I'm learning that now, and that's one of the reasons I do ROW80, because I want to replace my addictions with my writing and make it the lifeblood of my life.  It isn't an easy process, but it is entirely worth it.  Because one day I might not be broken anymore, but through all this I'll be whole.

I don't plan on posting goals with this.  I'll wait till Wednesday to do that.  I got a lot of work to get done though and I'm not going to be wasting any time.  Too much reading, writing, and living to do to allow the pain of my life to tear me apart.  But if you don't see me for a minute, know I'm off fighting for my life, my family, and my writing and that is the most important fight of my life.  As always, I'm Jayrod Garrett the First OG.

My question for you today is: What gets in the way of your goals?

The Culture Blogs: The Microwave Nation

On a normal morning I wake up and immediately get on my computer to check Facebook.  Mind you that is likely what I did shortly before going to bed.  This is a symptom of a much larger issue in first world countries known as instant gratification.  Ultimately it affects us in everything we do, from playing on our phones with Twitter, to how we prepare our food, to how our doctors prescribe medicine.  In both life and literature this can play in our favor or against us, but more importantly than anything else we simply need to be aware that it is the present state of affairs for our society.

Look at the various entertainment industries.  Once they marketed a product to an industry.  Camera companies sold not only cameras, but film.  The music industry focused on record and later cd sales.  And even now in the beautiful world of publishing they once focused on books.  But none of them were thinking in terms of living in a microwave nation.   Our society now demands that we have the greatest and the best as soon as possible.  We will rant and rave when our computer takes two minutes to start up, or grumble when our cell phone doesn't have service, and perhaps worst of all when we are driving we are so focused on getting where we have to go that we don't move out of the way of emergency vehicles, because we have to get where we are going now!  So it came as a natural consequence that we as consumers would want easier and faster cameras, instantaneous music, and books on demand.  Honestly if we had just thought about the trends of technology we should have been able to see this coming years ago.

But we didn't, though as smart consumers and wise writers it is our responsibility to prepare for the future and that future is patience.  You're wondering why in the world I would bring up patience in a blog about instant gratification, right?  It has to do with how we interact with the world.  Instant gratification isn't a bad thing, it is the fact that we are growing so dependent upon it that makes it dangerous.  For instance instead of taking the time to teach our children discipline when they have too much energy, instead our doctors are giving them drugs to regulate their behavior.  Oftentimes this is done after only a few months of a certain behavior.  The same thing happens to adults when doctors prescribe for us depression medication.  We take it because we want to be fixed right now, when oftentimes if we learned better how to have patience again it would help us out more in the long run.  Like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory we are losing the virtue of patience.  Admitted she never had any.



Don't misunderstand my meaning here.  On Facebook I saw a poster that stated: "Depression, anxiety, and panic attacks are not signs of weakness.  They are actually signs of having tried to remain strong for too long."  And why are we needing to remain strong?  Because everything in the world around us demands that we have to do things right NOW.  Constantly, incessantly, and without mercy our world requires us to act NOW.  Which means we have to think about how we are going to handle ourselves in this new and dynamic world.  We can see how not thinking about how to deal with the new world has affected these huge businesses that never thought things would change.  We have to think about how we are going to deal with the change in our world also.  What things are you going to do to make certain you make time for relaxation, rather than entertainment?  When will get away from the rush of things and pursue the beauties of the world around you?  How will you learn to control your emotions when you don't get everything you want right NOW?  Before I got caught up in the rush of life, I took walks and they enabled me to be able to deal with everything in a much more patient and capable way. I don't do walks anymore and I miss out on so much of what life has to offer, because I know I am caught up in the rush of everything.

As writers it is very important for us to understand how this affects our characters inside a book.  Think about what kinds of illnesses or disorders characters will get when they try to keep up this pace all the time.  And our character who are able to cope, how do they do it on a regular basis?  What keeps them stable?  And in terms of economy, what does having a nation like this do?  Currently our entire economic system is changing, because of the microwave nation we live in.  The food industry, the computer industry, and oil industry all understand how this functions.  What groups in your world understand it and don't?  Perhaps you have an alternate history where instead of entertainment groups getting caught up in the instant changes it is your food industry?  What kinds of effects would that have on the world?

As both readers and writers we have a responsibility to think.  To understand the world around us and prepare it to give to the next generation.  Mind you they are growing up faster too, cause our children want instant sex.  Between parents not teaching them about sex, a throughly sexualized culture, and easy access to others who want it, sex has become as instantaneous as our food.  There are ramnifications of the microwave nation to discover all over the place.  What are some of the ideas that come to your mind?  And what are some of the solutions you can dream up?  Any fool can make things faster, but it takes patience and courage to make the world a place where we can have serenity.

As a reminder I wanted to mention that to share my gratitude with my readers for commenting on my blog, I am offering three lucky people a copy of a book I am currently reading: "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" by N.K. Jemisin.  It is a great book that I'm really enjoying.  Think of it as my way of saying thank you for conversing with me.

My name is Jayrod Garrett and I'm the First OG.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going on a walk.