Tag: health

That Elephant

Some things are too painful, too personal to deal with,
and so we box them up, throw ‘em in the back corner,
hoping that we never have to deal with it,
or even ever talk about it.
…
It’s that elephant, that box in the back corner. […]

Some things are too painful, too personal to deal with,
and so we box them up, throw ‘em in the back corner,
hoping that we never have to deal with them,
or even ever talk about 'em.
…
It’s that elephant, that box in the back corner. 

…

A word to the readers:
It’s okay if you see the elephant,
You know the drill; it’s not really there.
So avert your eyes, and talk about the weather, whatever. 

…

Some tasks require a lot of work to be completed,
and so we must get the ball first rolling and rolling.
Don’t worry, the momentum of going will carry us through. 
Fore it all begins with that initial push.
…
And there goes that elephant, that box from the back corner.

M. L. Michael
07/31/2021

About…

(Warning, hari-kari gut spilling ahead)

For a while I’ve been walking around with an elephant.
It’s been following me since at least 2013.
…that’s when my teeth first started to fall apart. Altho I had no idea at the time, a combination of my history and the suboxone that I was given to come off the pain medicine, my teeth started eroding and then literally just breaking apart when I would eat anything.
I have always had weird, childhood issues, with dentistry and my teeth. So when this happened, the last thing in my mind was to go to a $%&*ing dentist. And so I did the next best thing. Denial. I boxed my issues up and shoved them in the corner. I did this as they got worse and worse. A couple/few years back I found a sedation dentist in Goliad. I went and saw him. He is an amazing dentist, he dealt with my concerns expertly, but he said he had to replace all my teeth. …that terrified me and I never went back..
Fast forward to now. I finally have the tools to deal with this. I have been dealing with this in therapy and the medicine helps too. My loved ones are helping me and pushing me along. I also found an *amazing* dentist. Dr. Zboril here in Victoria. He can repair most of my teeth and only needs to replace some. His bedside manner was the best out of any dentist I had ever been too to. Thanks to all of these things I am now taking the steps to repair my teeth.
*phew*
Thanks for reading,
and as always,
Take Care Out There.

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…

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…

6 months later…

You know something is wrong when the pain medicine begins to take on weight in your palm.
When despite the screech of ache and ache, up your spine, through your mind, you find yourself hesitating at the sight of this medicine – your pain medication, your discomfort dispeller, this neural novocain, this sunday solicitor. […]

You know something is wrong when the pain medicine begins to take on weight in your palm. 
When despite the screech of ache and ache, up your spine, through your mind, you find yourself hesitating at the sight of this medicine – your pain medication, your discomfort dispeller, this neural novocain, this sunday solicitor.
You eye the pills with a fluctuating mix of shame and acceptance. You juggle them around to buy some bullshit time before you concede to a relative truth and toss them down.
Your gut is uneasy. Not just because this synthetic opium is a molotov-cocktail thrown at a combustible problem, but because this bottle of pills that you have refilled every month is a mere hop, a skip, a jump away from poorly lit alleyways with guttered dreams and phantom candles flickering out.
You’re sick at the sight and you don’t need a mirror to see what’s under your nose; the stench of desperation gives it away every time you find yourself in a panic, because the ache is rising, unchecked, demanding, and your finding yourself lost without your pain medicine, without that be all, end all, answer all.
That’s where the line between what you will do to stop the rising wave of discomfort, and what you wont do to raise a barrier of numbness, is easily blurred into insignificance – just like scratching a line in the sand, you make a distinction, knowing the coming wave will wipe it away.
You no longer know who calls the shots. You are almost certain it is no longer yourself, but a question remains, a scenario, a picture in your mind, the all encompassing ache controlling your strings, guiding your hands to the pills, the pills controlling the ache’s strings, controlling you, controlling it, and on and on, a programmer’s loop into oblivion.
You find yourself in the absurd play of one being control—one being consoled by doctors convincing you that you are not an addict.
Everything is legit, the stacks of reports from past surgeries and prior hospitalizations are all reasons for taking their junk. You are not like the yucks on the streets, because they don’t have a reason like you, they don’t have an excuse that’s been documented, they’ve never been diagnosed, and if they have, they certainly aren’t under any medical help, not anymore…
For years you argue with them like a kid trying to grasp a simple truth against an adult’s abstractions. You fight even as you wonder why. You fight because you instinctively know that is who you are, what you do. You fight them, you fight the medicine, because you owe it all to the fight. Life, in one sweeping motion, is a fight to survive. Survival is a chance to love. And a chance to love is a chance to be free.
The pills they give you are nothing more than medicinal apathetics –extended release pacifiers. The ‘sweet release’ from the ache that you so desperately seek is more like the ‘letting go’ of all that’s cherished and known. You know you are stronger than waving a white flag and then swallowing it down. Your very life is a monument to countless battles won. Times you will never know, times you tried to forget, times you continue to brag about. You owe your all to the fight, to the push, that persistent, so close to nagging, drive that whispers, keep on keeping on, don’t stop driving you tenacious fool, burn like the furious flame that gives your spirit warmth.
You know something is wrong. Now fight, now right that wrong.  
 
-10-11-12-
-m.m-

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…

that crumple in your smile

that crumple in your smile,
those wavering pond eyes,
reflect the pitiful creature you see in me.

as sweet as it sounds,
don’t tell me you are sorry you can’t take it all away,
because you shouldn’t shoulder such responsibility. […]

that crumple in your smile,
those wavering pond eyes,
reflect the pitiful creature you see in me.

as sweet as it sounds,
don’t tell me you are sorry you can’t take it all away,
because you shouldn’t shoulder such responsibility.

as dear as it may be,
don’t tell me you think I deserve better,
because there was little reason in the toss of this dice.

as lovely as it can feel,
don’t tell me that you wish things were different,
because then you and I and us and this would cease to…


/07.03.12/
M. L. Michael

About…

wake up to this

Wake up to the sight of a dozen crows perched on the horizon
and the dream of Dorothy becoming a fickle thing,
and her ruby toed goodbye being a sour sort of thing,
because now a swollen bruise hangs in the sky, and the crows wont stop cawing.


Wake up to find there’s no place like a home that’s haunted.
-there’s no reason to fear the dark- but reason enough to save yourself;
its the do or die test– the water is coming, its a sink or swim race;
now try and run with your dreamers legs and your clown shoes. […]

Wake up to the sight of a dozen crows perched on the horizon
and the dream of Dorothy becoming a fickle thing,
and her ruby toed goodbye being a sour sort of thing,
because now a swollen bruise hangs in the sky, and the crows wont stop cawing.

Wake up to find there’s no place like a home that's haunted.
-there's no reason to fear the dark- but reason enough to save yourself;
its the do or die test– the water is coming, its a sink or swim race;
now try and run with your dreamers legs and your clown shoes.

Wake up to the racket of a dozen crows ready to roost,
(there’s a murder causing hell over your roof, 
ready to rain away any chance of a parade
if you don’t claim your higher ground.)

Wake up to the panic of there’s no time left on the clock.
the storm is here, and the flock has found their cuckoo nest.
ready or not, you better fly and finally soar like the rest,
so take heart, steel your mind, and summon old courage
and forget the crutches – they’re only handicaps on a brick road.

Wake up to the alarm of a dozen years dreaming,
so encumbered by your heavy coat of slumber -
you fight familiar demons masquerading as nightmares,
discouraging you from leaving a house now flooding,
making mute this place you called home
where now only the crows sit and the water waits.

Wake up to find Dorothy had bailed from this merry-go-round
left a note saying you weren’t ready this go around –
that the storm is here and you’re still struggling with the baggage.
still sluggish from a longish slumber,
yet to comprehend the emergency of sobriety.

Wake up to the sound of sirens singing the murder song
and you cursing out your best swan song -
“the ship is sinking – abandon all ye sleeping, make out for land!
No time for weeping, break past the line of constant return.
This time, wake up for real!"

M. L. Michael
04/30/12

About…

By April of 2012 I had enough with the cycle of taking more and more pain medicine until it eventually unraveled into a destructive downwards spiral. As soon as I noticed this happening I told my pain management doctor and we decided I should go to a 30 day rehab clinic right away.

This poem was written in the middle of that night from a dream that woke me up. In a mere six hours or so after this was written I was being driven by my parents to the clinic.

(addiction observed)

Addiction can be so insidious … a muted snake in the grass…
without a hiss or rattler, one can easily become bitten…

And depending on the snake in question –
because of the local anesthetic of a devious snake
one can doubt if they’ve even been taken;
and only the widest-aware, can recognize a ‘minor’ sting of irritation,
for the spreading disease of the venom’s deconstruction.] […]

(Addiction Observed) 
The Story of the Serpent’s Aisle

[…]

Addiction can be so insidious … a muted snake in the grass…
without a hiss or rattler, one can easily become bitten...

And depending on the snake in question – 
because of the local anesthetic of a devious snake
one can doubt if they’ve even been taken; 
and only the widest-aware, can recognize a ‘minor’ sting of irritation, 
for the spreading disease of the venom’s deconstruction.]

[–1–]

This courtship begins…

I was lead into the tall brush by people who we were all told to trust,
White coats that I came to revere, in a unquestionable, priestly, veneer,
who –upon the moment of finding traces of venom from snakes they well knew,
drew me an arbitrary line – like drawing perfect circles in the Sahara sand,
that gave them the power (or divination) to plot a  schedule to work with their appointments]

     ‘Physical Dependence’ –which is now part of most medical jargon,
     and ‘Psychological Addiction’ – a weighty term that’s cropping up more often… 
 

[These words are always defined in referenced books; but never taken as seriously
as anyone who from anyone has felt the dehydration, the delusions, from the weeks, 
the years, of confusion; when one’s delirious decisions making more hills for the all inclusive desolation of their desert resort. their regrettable conclusion.]

White coats, with allegorical colored collars, 
gave me the venom I readily desired, 
and explained it all away as an, ‘increased physical dependence’, 
and, vehemently sold that anything else was rarely ‘physical addiction’.

                      “Because, based off what we have here in your chart – you have every good 
                       reason to hop a long our pres   cription branded ponies…
                      You may not see it…but your body’s failing at its internal-repairings.”

So, under the threat of breaking down in the middle of hell’s nowhere, 
I billed my repairmen by the hour,
and in return they gave me everything,
all of their super-synthetic everything,
…in increasingly, unaffordable, increments.

And always…”psychological addiction” was the word next on their lips.
…they warned me of a desert of addiction, 
yet they’d mentioned it first, in its lowest  key…
so that by the time I found myself in the desert,
I was already over so many sandy hills – that this mind’s desire to thrive 
created mirages out of things I knew to be an ongoing desert’s divide…

But then! 

White-collar-coats swoop in as soon as I give the signal;
and rescue me to another prescription…maybe, now, an anti-venom.

And, now, their saying it is my mind that’s malfunctioning too, 
and as my only  repairmen, I bill them by the hour,
for their super-synthetic rewiring,
of incredible, damageable, redefining.

[–II–]

Now, this courtship is finally revealed…

Although one is called “dependence”, and another is called “addiction”,
They’re two sides of the same, unbalanced, coin. 
That can only balance when I decide to say, “I do”. 
     …with words that taste of sand, and sound of broken acoustics…
     …with a taste that thrashes the throat, and a tone that irritates the ears… 

But when it reaches this heart…
when it reaches this heart,
it hits upon a well of buried wishes, 
it gushes up promises of a shooting star,
that if I honor it at all,
till death do I, and only I, depart…

[–III–]

Finally, this courtship is threatened…

When I can snap out fast enough from the delusion,
and fight back for my life, my freedom of choice;
to become that lovable lion, 
and fight for my courage to make all right.
To defeat my beat of being so snake entangled,
and come out with my life stronger - via that divorce…

06/17/11
M. L. Michael

About…