Mindful of Smallness

I do not like large families.

Never have.

Never will.

I have never even liked it when my family got together for holidays or reunions. Some have uttered or hyperbolized that it is because I never had a good experience with a large family. First this is greatly disrespectful to my family member. Second this marginalizes some of my key personal traits.

I am an introvert. I have also mentioned I suffer from the Dark Duo of depression and anxiety. The anxiety is not being a little nervous about things. It is generalized anxiety disorder. I worry about everything. The worry can get so overwhelming that I get frozen in place. It is not a small thing.

As an introvert I tend to like quiet places away from large groups of people. This does not mean I cannot or will not be social. It means that after a while, a short period of time, that being in a large group or crowd becomes taxing. It causes irritability, physical pain (for me these are headaches), and a general sense ill-being. Just the noise and motion of the people becomes unbearable.

Large groups are for short periods.

Couple the introvertedness with the anxiety. In this case our jittery friend social anxiety. I always worry about how to act in public or with groups. I don't know what to say. The anxiety makes it so I want to slink away even though I, nor anyone else, have made any faux pas. My chest gets tight. My guts hurt. My brain gets cloudy. I have trouble breathing.

As the anxiety feeds off of the introverted tendencies, it also opens the door wide and invites its friend depression to the party. Depression's contribution is a plummeting self-worth and feelings of uselessness.

It all cascades into a painful shame spiral. I am then expected to make nice and communicate when all I want to do is escape or die. Yes die. I have self harm issues also.

It has been like this for 25 or so years. Maybe longer. I have learned to avoid family get-togethers, bars, clubs, parties, and large outdoor events. Even when I am being properly treated and guarded against the Dark Duo, I avoid groups with high numerical constituency. I am fine with this.

I have a group of close friends and family, a small group, whom I can stand to be around all the time. This is good to me. However, I do not like large families. I do not have anything against them. I am not out to tear asunder familial groups with numbers greater than my comfort zone. I have seen how some people like large families. How having a large family has helped them. This is not me however.

I do not like large families.

I do like my network of relatives and friends, my family, very much.

Pizza Night

In the beginning of June 2016 The Wife and embarked on a cross country trek the goal of which was to provide our son with a better family environment. We arrived in our new home state (well my wife's original mother land) of Oregon. The decision to move meant she would leave behind a 10 year long career and I would leave a well paying and well loved position. We swallowed hard and put rubber to asphalt because it would be better for the kid.

It is now the dawn of September and I have been unemployed for three months. The Wife got employment almost immediately but did not start the new job until August. I however lingered in the resume devouring abyss. Doubting. Dreading. Fearing. Worrying. Questioning my worth to my family.

Today that changed. I am a new hire again. Amusingly it is with the same company that hired The Wife. So tonight we celebrate with pizza.

The recent journey from unemployment to salary has given me time to ponder a few things. In most of my interviews the comment inevitably comes up about my short periods of employment. Questions as to why I was not employed at any one position for very long.

Some of these questionable periods of employment are short because they were contract based. Most were short because I have suffer from daily attacks of the Dark Duo: depression and anxiety. This analysis only comes with the benefit of hindsight.

It is on those short periods of employment I began to ponder. When seeking a job, a paycheck, they are detrimental. However for my preferred career, my passion, of being a writer and a game designer, they are priceless.

Where an employer sees a lack of dedication, indecisiveness, and an inability to stick with a project the writer sees knowledge derived from a lengthy breadth of experience. A multitude of past lives from which to pull and craft stories.

I will not recount all I have done and what I have learned from it, but I will say I no longer view my past work experience with dread. From this position of once again being employed I can calmly analyze my past.

So tonight we celebrate.

Tonight we eat pizza.

A long absence

It has been a long time since I wrote a blog post. I originally started this blog as a means to cope with the devastation of divorce. Then the weight of my personal misconceptions became too much and I stopped sharing.

Now, four years since the last post, I have move across the country twice, quit graduate school before they kicked me out, fell in love again, and remarried. I have waged war against the nebulous beast of depression and the prickly liar of anxiety. I have a family.

I am currently in another battle with the dark duo, depression and anxiety, as I look for gainful employment and/or a way to make my dream fiscally stable. Sometimes I think I am losing too much ground. At other times I wonder if consider parts of me as an enemy is the wrong way to handle this.

It has been hard, this west coast move. We just got insurance again but we have no income yet (it is forth coming). I ran out of the medication that controls the dark duo weeks ago. So I am spending most of my energy trying not to succumb instead of on the interview process and taking care of my family.

It is hard.

It is difficult to see past the self hate. It is difficult to not take the blame for everyone's displeasure. It is difficult to accept praise and the blame for making people happy.

I struggle daily with feelings of guilt. Feelings of uselessness. Feelings of inadequacy.

I have never liked myself. I have mostly despised my own existence. This baffles others who always see things in me I do not. It angers them. Their anger is my fault and makes me want to hide more. It makes me want to stop being a waste of oxygen.

It also makes me tired... and the lack of eating is excellent for weight loss.

It is hard but I am still here... for now.

Grape Jelly

Grape Jelly sat on the shelf at a local grocery store surrounded by his brothers and sister and cousins. They would spend their their days talking and laughing and generally had a good life. Deep down Grape Jelly and his relatives really were just waiting for that one special person to adopt them and take them home. There were many false hopes in Grape Jelly’s young life; being pick upped and looked at or moved so that a person could get to one of Grape Jelly’s siblings. Then one day The Man in the Black Hat walked by Grape Jelly.

The Man in the Black Hat looked over all of Grape Jelly’s siblings and cousins first. Then he bent down and with a smile picked up Grape Jelly approvingly.

“Whee” Grape Jelly squealed as into The Man in the Black Hat’s cart he went. In the cart Grape Jelly met other food from isles in the store he didn’t even know existed. It was fun being wheeled around at such speed. Then at the end The Man in the Black Hat bent down and placed Grape Jelly and all of his friends from the cart onto a sliding belt thing.

At first the it was scary as the belt would start then stop. Then Grape Jelly began to enjoy the ride. Soon another person, someone else Grape Jelly had never seen, grabbed him and passed him over a criss-cross of red lights. Some weird device next to Grape Jelly and this new person went BEEP. Then Grape Jelly was set down a slide and into a bag.

In the bag Grape Jelly waited while all of his cart friends were also beeped and bagged. After waiting a short while, The Man in the Black Hat began to push the red wheeled cage that Grape Jelly and his cart friends had been placed in. Grape Jelly began to get exited as he saw the opening of the store’s doors! Sunshine! Outside! This was amazing to Grape Jelly.

Outside The Man in the Black Hat began to put some of Grape Jelly’s cart friends into a red bag. When the bag seemed full The Man in the Black Hat put Grape Jelly in the red bag in the same compartment with his friends Diet Mountain Dew and Diet Dr. Pepper. Then with a pat The Man in the Black Hat zipped the bag shut.

The next bit of the journey was bumpy and dark. Grape Jelly wasn’t too sure what was happening but had a feeling that they were going home with The Man in the Black Hat. After several minutes in the dark bumpy bag a sliver of light began to show. Slowly the crack began to get bigger; little by little. Grape Jelly saw amazing blue sky, buildings and heard cars it was wonderful and beautiful.

“This! This must be our new home!” Grape Jelly exclaimed as The Man in the Black Hat entered a large building. In the large room were little metal boxes and a desk a big metal doors that slid. As The Man in the Black Hat slid a plastic thing in a little black box one of the metal doors slid open again. Grape Jelly was only half paying attention as the sliver of light had now become a very large hole. Grape Jelly leaned over to see more but began to feel alarming sense of motion. Then there was pain and… nothing. The last thing Grape Jelly ever heard was The Man in the Black Hat saying, “Well sh…..”