Tag: depression

This is Depression

Something is wrong.
Once again, something is off, and you don’t know why.
You only know that you don’t feel right. You feel less than 100%.
Maybe, not even, 50%…. You feel like you are dragging your feet thru the day,
Like your spirit is dragging even further behind… and it takes forever to catch up.[…]

Something is wrong. 
Once again, something is off, and you don’t know why. 
You only know that you don’t feel right. You feel less than 100%.
Maybe, not even, 50%.... You feel like you are dragging your feet thru the day,
Like your spirit is dragging even further behind… and it takes forever to catch up.
…
This is depression. 
This is your brain with a boo-boo. 
Just like our incredibly complex bodies break down in incredibly complex ways,
Our brains can do just the same. 
Just like you go to the doctor when your body, your bones and organs, need treatment,
Our brains, our thoughts our emotions, deserve the same kind of treatment. 
…
Nothing is *truly* wrong, 
Bodies have glitches, brains do too. 
And at least 20% of the people around you are experiencing this now.
And maybe more, maybe more that are unaware,
that help is nearby, and your spirit can catch up.
 
M. L. Michael
06/14/2021

About…

I used to tell people that I got depressed, but I didn’t have depression. I was never clinically diagnosed with it. I also had a more subtle distinction. Getting depressed every now and then was ok. If it never goes away, then it is depression.
I wasn’t until late in my thirties that I found myself seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. I found out my understanding of depression was naïve and narrow. There’s a lot about depression that goes on behind the scenes. It jacks with your chemicals, your levels. And no amount of journaling, or listening to music, or whatever can change the biology of what is happening in your brain.
So, I am getting treatment now. I’m optimistic about the results. (I find optimism is the best outlook for anything related to health.) And I ended up writing this poem as a kind of PSA about depression, and, a life jacket, for whomever may need it.
As always, take care out there.

The Cycle (of Pain Pills)

The Cycle (of Pain Pills) //

So the cycle goes…
You’re hurting more, so you take more pain medicine. “Surely, I’ll be hurting less in the future.” Is your reasonig. Or – “That’s a problem for future me!” is your answer. Really, it doesn’t matter what you tell yourself. All that matters is an end to the pain. 
And then there you are, a week before you medicine is to be refilled, either almost out or completely out. 
So you ration. 
You go thru withdrawal. 
Cold sweats. Unescapable aches, 
Jesus Christ, give me a bullet or give me a pill. 
You make it thru (you always do), 
you get your medicine refilled. 
And you hold it together long enough until the next time you break down and take an extra.
Because surely, you’ll be hurting less in the future… or – that’s a problem for future me. 
…So the cycle goes.  

05/16/2021
M. L. Michael

About…

Residue

7 AM – a sublime sadness stirs you from your slumber, and in those fleeting, fogged out, moments, you’re barely able to maintain your grip on the ghost of a dream now wanting.
it’s the last dream on your mind.
the one dream that always stays on your mind. […]

Residue

7 AM – a sublime sadness stirs you from your slumber, and in those fleeting, fogged out, moments, you’re barely able to maintain your grip on the ghost of a dream now wanting. 
it’s the last dream on your mind.
the one dream that always stays on your mind.

this dream is your gold standard, your grasp at a perfect ideal, at a model worthy of transcribing. it’s your very definition of bliss…

until you wake, and that dream begins to turn. it wraps around you and it rots. it seeps into you, into your blood, and it poisons your heart.

the specifics of the dream fade, and emotions flood in to make up for the loss, leaving a residue to stain your day with the unshakable weight of naught.

you forget that the dream happened, and as the day trudges on, everything seen and felt remains tinted by its grayed out lens.     

the luster that comes from life spent wisely is lost – it might as well be forgotten. only a dull existence remains, one sparked into creation by a dream that can no longer be recalled.

work seems meaningless, visits with family and friends, pointless. because within the wells of your dreaming, upon the moment of your waking, a bad seed was planted.

your entire day plays out like this, and even though you cannot track the coordinates of the cause, you’re still able to take solace in some familiarity, however brutal it may be.  
you've been down this road before.
and you will be down it again.
because you dare to dream the fool’s dream –
the one of obtaining perfections only found
in dreams that sour upon waking.

M. L. Michael
9/7/13

About…

15 Months later

This is almost a nightmare.

The setting is right, it’s 4 something-god-awful AM and you’re in a dark bathroom, trying to escape the ravages of a body gone ape shit, trying to shut all the dark doors it has kicked open, trying to quell the murder of thoughts threatening to blot out the sky.[…] 

15 Months Later…


This is almost a nightmare. 

The setting is right, it’s 4 something-god-awful AM and you’re in a dark bathroom, trying to escape the ravages of a body gone ape shit, trying to shut all the dark doors it has kicked open, trying to quell the murder of thoughts threatening to blot out the sky. 
But this isn’t a nightmare because you feel a monkey clawing up your back, you can hear it screaming in your ear, “this is not a dream, but you still better wake up. because this. is. not. a. dream.” 
Those words hit like thunder and throw out flashbacks that disorient. Flashbacks to nights of no sleep, days of exhaustion, and the blurry gray, guilt inspiring, times of wanting to give up the fight. 

This is dangerously close to a nightmare. 

A totem in the form of a pill bottle is what drew you to this spot. Your pain delirious steps brought you here, and your spirit-fueled stubbornness holds you back. 

Here you are…and there it is – the bottle with the quick answers and backwards directions. 

The simian in the spine screeches, “you can take just one, just one will be okay. 
And the coven of crows caw, “You’re in pain. You’re exhausted. Just one is understandable. Just one is an honest break.”
Their noise is so convincing, so conniving, that you feel yourself falter for a second, a second where you are too indomitable to fall and only human enough to falter.
Faltering on the edge of that cliff overlooking a terrible abyss, where you can see the past tense threatening to swallow the present, a shudder of revulsion causes you to take a step back.

‘Just one’ holds the gun, ‘just one’ is apathy on the trigger, ‘just one’ and the abyss has won.

No. 
…The abyss cannot win. As long as you are feeling, the abyss cannot, it will not, win.

With one step back, the memories flow in and the tape plays back. Mute and out of focus, the tape plays back. Feelings of the abyss reach out from every moment. The tape plays back and you step back, again and again. Again, until you find yourself out of the bathroom, into the hallway, and finally back in your bed.

Instead of a bottle of pills, you reach for headphones and lose yourself somewhere between the ears and on a river.

This is not a nightmare.
You made sure of that. 
 

7/23/13
M. L. Michael

About…

Wait For The Punch Line

A surreal horror begins when, in the devil’s depths of depression, your mind begins planting insidious questions. “Am I losing my mind?” “Should a sane person ask that? Will an insane person answer?” “At what point does this fear become pointless?”
…… “Am I broken?” […] 

Wait For The Punch Line

A surreal horror begins when, in the devil’s depths of depression, your mind begins planting insidious questions. “Am I losing my mind?” “Should a sane person ask that? Will an insane person answer?” “At what point does this fear become pointless?” 
…… “Am I broken?” 
Those questions have yet to sprout, and already you are ill from a fevered opinion of yourself. Already your mental landscape resembles a nuclear wasteland. Here, the remnants of the war waged in your brain pockmark the landscape, and the sun can’t be teased through a fallout fog. Here, your detoured, devious, mind begins by sowing seeds of destructive doubt. These seeds-on-steroids, gestate negative thoughts that end up spreading their anarchy like poison ivy across your fertile nightmare.
That last question –the “am I broken?” question– is arguably the worst; because the tone of the question suggests darker implications. You may ask, am I broken, but what you mean is, how broken am I? 
Taking mental inventory, you become the bull in a china shop. You’re too terrified to commit any serious investigation for the disruption it may cause. Instead, you opt to sit on your hands and judge the damage from afar. In a state of mind not fit for survey, you imagine every break as a heinous exaggeration. Each crack represents a chasm of dysfunction. 
If any truth is to be found in this experience, it will be buried beneath a landslide of doubt.

An absurd horror persists when, doggedly treading open water, the life-vest offered by many family and friends is to simply, “stop thinking that way”. As if, in this permeating funk of despair, all it takes is the flip of some epistemic switch to see the light of day and part the gray sea. 
Unavoidable bitterness belches up like heartburn whenever you try to swallow their kind naivety, and the salty slap and choke of a harsh mistress muzzle your need for a calmer sea. Oblivious, your loved ones throw pearls of wisdom that they gathered in their travels. These pearls that they see shine with a determined brilliance burn to your irritated eyes with the violence that reflects your turbulent waters. 
Knowing nothing else to extend, they’ll tell you that this is an illusion, that you should go outside and walk around in the sunshine, you should go see a comedy with kin, you should visit the shelter and rescue a furry friend. They’ll suggest to you all the things that make one happy – thinking, as if somehow, somewhere, you had forgotten the way.

Yes, this horror may persist, but you *will* persist longer.  
And then a comedy will erupt when you wink at the surreal and chuckle at the absurd. 

Remember, this is your movie; there’s a comedy to be found in the errors; 
and redemption is ready – for those who see it through to the punch line.  
               
  1/12/13
M. L. Michael

About…

this is medicine (go for gold)

since I got off all the pain medicine, I have begun experiencing new pains, pains that possibly might have always existed before. Although undesirable, these pains are nothing to cause me much worry because they aren’t anything new.. but one pain, one that comes and goes with a fearful intensity, is this pain in my brain, in the back of my skull. […]

this is medicine (go for gold)



since I got off all the pain medicine, I have begun experiencing new pains, pains that possibly might have always existed before. Although undesirable, these pains are nothing to cause me much worry because they aren’t anything new.. but one pain, one that comes and goes with a fearful intensity, is this pain in my brain, in the back of my skull. 
rather it happens and I become depressed, or I become depressed and it happens, I do not know, but suddenly my head and my thoughts ache, all I can think about is a pervasive gloom stretching out across the horizon 

a feeling that was born in my spine, one that spread to my hips, to my knees and hands, this is a pain of indeterminable ache – a sensation that cries for cessation, I have the inane desire to wish these bones stretched or ripped out. 
but with this pain of brain, I feel something disturbingly darker, I react to the ache in the back of my head, at the top of my spine, in the permeations of my thoughts, with ideas of blowing it all out.

such a thought is vitriol in my veins and I whip myself for such desolate desires. 

in these moments I _must_ seek out the pleasure songs of my special being,
to replace the dissonant noise of pain I must seek out anything that gives my spirit reason to sing along..

…in light of all of this, in the dark of all of this, I question my sanity. When one bounces around so wildly from mania to despairia, one questions the role of their subjectivity over gauging reality. If all this pain is imagined – then how does one un-imagine? Once something is created, can it be truly destroyed? If this all undeniably fixed, then is fighting it as sad to see as a funeral? Or is this our epic marathon, and it is as exhilarating as the Olympics?

07/03/12
M. L. Michael

About…

the monster behind the eyes

In this waking nightmare called chronic pain,
I am afraid of a Monster that lurks within me
that I wish I could gamble away.

Let’s call him Firo, and let’s call me Kindle.

Firo spends his every waking hour terrorizing
the villages along my spine,[…]

The Monster Behind The Eyes
(Trying to Poetize My Chronic Pain)

In this waking nightmare called chronic pain,
I am afraid of a Monster that lurks within me
that I wish I could gamble away.

Let’s call him Firo, and let’s call me Kindle.

Firo spends his every waking hour terrorizing
the villages along my spine,
but his home is somewhere in my mind –
a place I can never quite seem to find.

When Firo is in his mere, normal, foul-fever,
I only have a tiring time of quieting
every scared and hurt villager that comes to me crying.
All that energy and stress is gobbled up and processed…
but it is never anything I’ve ever fought against and lost…

But there are times…sometimes only once or twice a week,
sometimes every, wretched, handful of every hour in a day,
when Firo becomes this frothing-flame-flinging-fury,
the hellfire-demon who attacks my villagers
with all the pent-up rage of an imprisoned Devil,
frozen up to the waist in a lake of ice;
…his beating wings – only solidifying his prison.

These poor villagers, they cannot bear to stand it,
they cry, and they scream, and they beg in my ears,
for every second that Firo rages, and roars, and rips at their heels.

…These are the times that I am at my worst.

…It is during these times I am afraid the most.
Because it is the clamor from my spine
that drowns out the baritone of Reason from my mind.


…and I just can’t seem to think solid, straight, or right.
 
All I can seem to muster are crooked thoughts of
the any ways of appeasing my poor-vilified villagers,
wishing to silence Firo, and his never-ending violence,
for once and for all, so they can have their goodnight…

….

Now, suddenly, I’m the Monster.

I’m doing things I would never do in a quieter mind.

Like,

Being capable of the slight of hand slipping of pain medicine,

similar to vein-slapping, dragon-chasing, addiction-based-actions.

Of waking up wasted, and going to sleep shit-faced.

Of disregarding taking more than I am prescribed,
to shut that fucking Firo up,
to give those constantly-complaining villagers,
their good-god-damn and good-god-given peace.

Of praying to some Super-Hero-God,
to grant me my magical-reprieve,
to grant me my mystical pie in the sky.

and,
,worst of all,
Of debating taking a bottle full of what-the-fuck-ever,
and drowning it down with a bottle full of what-the-hell-ever,
to chance sweet oblivion for a ticket to
the pain-free, forever-and-never-after show.

…

….but it’s only that there’s this brave little voice that can still be heard,
now, only barely…over the din of this diseased, pissed, Monster…

Which is the weakened voice of Reason passionately begging of me,
that I know I cannot gamble on the only thing I ultimately own – my life,
that what I know to be so breathlessly beautiful, and so wordlessly wonderful,
is not a gamble worthy of losing anything as awe-inspiring, such as the southern sunset.

Ignore Pascal. This is My Wager:

There’s the gamble of the nonexistence of the eternal,
of the internal loss of all pain and/or pleasure,
and of some unknowable deal of any(kind of)every(kind of)thing, possibly (un)imaginable…

….Against the gamble of an esoteric Creator, who [I can hope upon faith],
understands just how torturous his Creation can cruelly become,
and [I can hope upon faith] will welcome me,
with [what I can hope upon faith are] eternally forgiving arms…

So, you see,

I’m the Monster, with the chip not worthy of such a large gamble…

I’m the Monster, the only real  Monster, there is to fear in this nightmare.


M. L. Michael 
03/07/11

About…

suicide; the atom bomb

When their life is taken by the best (self) kept secret,
an Atom Bomb is Dropped,
and everything they ever are, and everything they ever would be,
is gone in a phosphorus-flash…\in an ignited-instant/…
there’s nothing left but the smoldering crater: a reminder, of an echo
of everything they ever were…and everything they never will be… […]

Suicide; the Atom Bomb
(death is hardest for the living; a post traumatic suicide disaster)



When their life is taken by the best (self) kept secret,
an Atom Bomb is Dropped,
and everything they ever are, and everything they ever would be,
is gone in a phosphorus-flash…\in an ignited-instant/… 
there’s nothing left but the smoldering crater: a reminder, of an echo
of everything they ever were…and everything they never will be…

All around the crater, 
stumble the shellshocked-survivors – 
beleaguered by their beloved, these family and friends
are left with infinite questions on their minds,
and zero answers in their hearts,
wondering: what they might or should have done, 
to save what might/what should have been…

                          Call it: Post Traumatic Suicide Disaster.
This grasping for closure, like the grasping of straws…
…In a world where all it took was *just one more straw* 
to break their special one’s spirit for good and gone…

If anyone, unfortunate enough, is left to stare at such an empty, empty, crater,
They tend to beg for some kind of epiphany to enlighten the whys…
or they tend to pray for some kind of answer to fall from the skies… 

When staring at this lonely, lonely crater,
It’s only the silence that can remain fulfilled…

Because really, 
what answers are there in a crater?

12/27/10
M. L, Michael

About…

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255

Please call or contact someone if you are having thoughts of suicide.

Talk before you act. There is always someone willing to listen. (like me)

Dear friend, do not give up

I went into the darkest forests of my mind
and came out with eyes more sensitive to the light…

I ate from the most bitter of fruits
and developed a taste that sings of the possibilities of sweetness…

I had ears ravaged by the wailing of my woes
and discovered peace in these sublime stretches of silence… […]

Dear Friend, Do Not Give Up


I went into the darkest forests of my mind
and came out with eyes more sensitive to the light…

I ate from the most bitter of fruits
and developed a taste that sings of the possibilities of sweetness…

I had ears ravaged by the wailing of my woes
and discovered peace in these sublime stretches of silence…

I held in my hands my own broken spirit
and felt along the cracks for what needed to be mended…

I became revolted by the stench of my depression
and I fell back in love with the perfume of life, love, and laughter…

11/30/10
M. L. Michael

About…