A thing that happened to me.

About a year ago, about the same time I tried to start this blog, I fell into melancholy. Clinically referred to as mild depression, melancholy is something that happens to people for a lot of reasons. In my case it's usually just one of the emotional phases that I go through periodically. This time was different. It wasn't just a couple days or weeks of being at low ebb. For months, I was unable to be happy or joyful about anything.

I avoid conflict and stress instinctively, even more so than most other people. And while there are a number of healthy ways to do this, I often do so in unhealthy ways like put off important things that I feel insecure about or just plain don't want to deal with. Obviously, this doesn't solve the problem and in fact almost always makes it worse when I finally am forced to confront what I am avoiding.

In this particular case, I was supposed to apply for EMT class. It's something I have wanted to do for several years now and was intended to be the beginning of my career as an emergency medical professional. Thing was, I had a few things going in my life that were going to make that more difficult.

For starters, when I went to college, I flunked out. I wasn't a bad student and my grades were good. My major was criminal justice, I wanted to be a cop like my mom. Towards the end of my first semester, the pressure of deadlines and uneasiness towards a future of even harder classes got to me and I suddenly folded up. I made a lot of excuses for myself, but fundamentally, I just stopped trying.

Guilt and self doubt became good friends of mine at this point and they helped lead me into a years-long cycle of: Find a job, try to care about job, fail to to care about job, begin to sabotage myself at said job and ultimately lose job. Increase levels of self doubt and guilt, then repeat exercise in futility. Finally I tried to break the cycle. I put everything I had into my job, despite not liking it. I started angling for a promotion and after almost 2 years, I became a shift manager. 3 days later, I was fired for violating a zero tolerance policy for tardiness. I tried appealing to the owner of the establishment and was cussed out and mocked for my efforts. I felt betrayed and completely rejected. So I went back to my first love, law enforcement. I applied for a position at the local police department and began the process of qualifying. It was a competitive situation, they weren't going to hire all the applicants and my first attempt had failed (it was about a year after flunking college). I got to the same phase I had previously, an interview with three current officers to explain to them why they should let me be a cop. And... I choked. I just didn't show up to the interview. I told my parents and my girlfriend that my job had me scheduled for that day and time and wouldn't let me off. Truth was, I made no effort to be available for that interview. At some point, I had become filled with fear of rejection and failure. Once again guilt and self doubt crippled me.

Two successful, but poorly paying jobs later, I broke down and got a position at my dad's workplace. It paid well, I wasn't at odds with my dad anymore (I had grown very far apart from him in my adolescence) and I wanted to marry my girlfriend, Valerie. Her encouragement and support was a huge bright spot in my professionally unfulfilled life. Eventually I decided to find another career that I cared about emotionally as well as financially. I looked to the closest field to my law enforcement interest, emergency medicine. I got a job transporting people in wheelchairs to their medical appointments and started to learn more about the business. Eventually, I decided it was the field for me and I started to looking for education options.

Now we are back to just about a year ago. I'm working full time and I want to learn how to be an EMT and possibly then a Paramedic. However, I still had this personality defect of putting off things that intimidate me. And boy, was I intimidated. It had been almost ten years since I had graced the halls of higher learning. Ten years filled with bad life choices and patterns of behavior that I hadn't completely recovered from. I had been working in the medical transport field for about a year and a half already. The idea was to be already working for a company that would employ me as an EMT once I acquired the certification. So far so good, but I kept finding reasons not to go ahead and apply for a class. I found the course I wanted to take and had even contacted the people running it to make sure I could get in. And yet, once again, fear and doubt crept up and paralyzed me.

So I let the deadline go by without enrolling.

Immediately after, I left on a week long trip to indulge in my favorite hobby, boffer weapon combat. I had a great time and met many cool people. I forgot all about going to school, my career and all that stuff.

Then I came home. I went about my routine as before, working, playing, eating and sleeping. There was no event or moment that I can point to and say, “right there, that was when I became depressed.” You see, it happens gradually, creeping up on you until it's too late to stop it. And that's what happened. It was almost two moths before I was able to realize something was wrong. Valerie noticed well before then, but she only knew that “something” was off, not what. As I said, melancholy is a natural part of my spectrum of moods. Normally it comes on and then it cycles out in favor of something else. And for two months, it hadn't. I went deeper and deeper into numbness and joylessness. I'm not sure I can describe what this is like to someone who hasn't experienced it to that degree. You may think of depression as sadness or grief. That's not really accurate. A lot of people with depression often refer to it as being filled with nothing. A Nothing so big and impenetrable that it crowds out all emotion and feeling, even pain. This is more like what I experienced.

I won't go on about it. If you never understand what it's like, be at peace with that.

Once I began to understand what was happening to me, two emotions broke through the cloud of Nothing. One was terror, a fear more intense than any I had felt before. The other was rage. My own mind and body had betrayed me. Although I couldn't express these emotions outwardly, inside I was roiling. And I'm pretty sure these negative emotions are responsible for my eventual recovery. Because I started fighting back, hard. It was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I'm choking up thinking about it right now. Every day I got up and lived my life. And every day was agony, forcing myself to embrace the pain of terror and anger, because it was the only thing I could feel. You may think this is horrible, but understand, they were all I had and I clung to them desperately. (Three Day's Grace has a song called “Pain” that very bluntly describes this experience).

So I fought and I fought and I fought. I refused to give in to Nothing. At some point, I rediscovered sadness through listening to music and I cried for the first time in months. It was exhilarating and cathartic. I quickly dove into listening to music to try and extract the rest of my emotions from the dark place they had disappeared into. I talked with a counselor about things that might help accelerate the process of recovery. I prayed and listened to God, asking for my joy back. I mostly struggled privately, though I told a few friends about it afterward.

Valerie was immensely supportive and patient throughout this experience. She's an incredibly good listener. She doesn't try to make you feel better, just hears you out.

One day, I laughed. Actually I bellowed so hard I almost passed out. My ribs hurt, but it was awesome. The battle was over, I had won. It sounds too simple, even to me. And yet, that's where it ended. My joy was back. I could be happy, sad or whatever, and my mind and body were mine again.

A couple of months later, I enrolled in emt classes and am currently doing quite well.

So, there you are, this thing that happened to me.

Clarity, I hope so.

And another thing.
Sorry, I shouldn't make Douglas Adams references I probably can't tie into my actual post.
Having said that, another thing about me that some may find interesting, is how many seemingly conflicting viewpoints I have.
For instance, I am (in terms of what I personally believe) a rather conservative Christian. I  believe the Bible is the written word of God and it is completely valid for the modern age. Including the prohibition against the lifestyle of homosexuality. I completely reject the concept of two men or women being in a marriage. However, so long as the federal and state governments continue to tax and regulate people based on their legal union status, I happen to think it is absolutely fair to allow any two people to enter into a legal status that protects their interests in the same way a traditional marriage currently does for heterosexual couples.
My preference would be to take the word marriage out of the legal code involving this union. The word "marriage" means something very important to a lot of cultures (including mine) and it is unfair to ask us to accept a meaning that offends us. Since we will never agree to surrender our meaning, I think we should take the word 'marriage' out of the law and leave it up to the respective couples and their society to label the relationship. You want call two men in a committed sexually active relationship 'married'? Fine, go right ahead. It's a free country and you can think and say what you believe. Please, just don't try to force me to compromise my deeply held beliefs while you do so. And don't condemn me for my stance on this issue, none of you have the right to do so.
Both sides in this argument have valid points, but as long emotion clouds reason, I don't believe we will come to an acceptable solution.
In summary:
If you think homosexuality is wrong and that marriage is only between a man and a woman, good for you. We agree, on that. We just don't have the right to force people to accept a law that penalizes their consensual behavior. The constitution doesn't recognize that right, because God didn't give it to us.
If you think you have you have the right to the same legal status with your same-sex partner that I'm entitled to as a result of my marriage to my wife, good for you. We agree, on that. We just don't have the right to force people to accept a law defines marriage's meaning as something that deeply offends their beliefs.

This is a pretty good outline of beliefs on this issue. Some people on my side of the meaning of marriage will never accept the concept of letting homosexuals have their legal status, no matter what is called. Some people on the other side of the meaning of marriage will never be satisfied with merely agreeing to disagree. They both want to use the law to force the other side into submission. I utterly distance myself from both of those elements.

An introduction of long-winded meandering.

I'm on a journey.

I don't know where it's going to end. 

I do know why I'm on this journey. I'm becoming. It's a process that's going to alter me fundamentally and irreversibly. I couldn't stop it, even if I wanted to. I can slow it down, speed it up, change direction sometimes and look behind at what I used to be. Otherwise, I'm stuck in this roller coaster car humanity calls "life" and "growing up".

I'm like most people and put my life on cruise control when things appear to be going well. It's just that, for me, things never appear to be going well for too long. 

As of this writing, I am very tired of certain aspects of myself that refuse to change, despite my efforts. I want the journey to end. I don't want to die. I'm just tired of enduring this process of "becoming". There are days I just give up, but it just keeps dragging me along anyway.

Sometimes I glimpse the destination for a brief moment. It glorious and during that time I feel like I can do anything, be anything and life is what it should be. It always fades away in the face of my current reality. That fading hurts. I want to hold on to the moment and never let go. Because, my currently reality is that I am a broken person with many flaws and imperfections. Some of them weigh heavily on my heart. Some of them weigh heavily on the hearts of others, I am certain. It can drive me to tears. 

People laugh at the term "existential crisis". It is often used when someone doesn't know who they are anymore and starts acting in uncharacteristic ways. 

I use the term differently. Every day has the potential for me to lose grip of who I am. Every day I can become disoriented and confused about my identity. Most days I am (at least) uncertain and doubtful. For me, a crisis occurs every so often when my usual methods of recovery don't work.

I live much of my life inside my own head. I share very little of myself with others, using their expressions of self to blend in with them. Most people are so eager to talk about themselves and not so interested in someone else's life, that it's easy to exploit this weakness. The few folk who can see past my facade, are welcomed as my friends for life. To date, only one person has recognized that welcome and accepted it. And it's my own fault. I'm not really willing to do the work of making friends. I just want it to happen on it's own.

I am primarily a creature of emotion. That is one of the biggest factors in my instability of self and identity. It can be a great gift. I possess a great well of compassion for others. I can make almost anyone feel better for a time. I am a human antidepressant and that's pretty cool. Saying just the right thing at the right time time is a highly valued talent. And very rewarding. So, it's not all bad. Just difficult at the moment.

Writing this out in the open is a huge first step for me. Please forgive my errors of grammar and structure. Or don't, because I just stopped caring about the opinion of others for the first time, ever. So. There.