Actions and Variables

I watched the sun rise this morning. Really not much different than that of any other morning these past few months. It seems sleep won't come and when or if it does, it is fitful at best. I'm not really complaining, it is something I have grown accustom to. It has given me the chance to think about a lot that has been going on in my life, take stock of myself so to say.

I posted a small leaf under my profile here, I guess you could say it is the culmination of everything I have been thinking about. For the most part, it is true, we all have learned lessons in life one way or another, whether by seeking an answer and learning from that discovery or having it come to us by our own actions. I have also learned that life is full of variables, and that those variables are determined by many things, our words, our thoughts, our actions or how we present or represent ourselves. All these are determining factors that create the variables in which we are viewed or to a degree judged.

These variables I speak of come in many guises, such as insomnia, lack of appetite, low self esteem, lack of tolerance, inability to have cohesive thoughts (confusion) and many more. I call them variables instead of moods or mental depression. The reason why is because they are controllable without the use of drugs or outside intervention. Anything that you can put yourself into, you can pull yourself out of. It is something that with self discipline and the will to want to change, it can be changed, unlike a chemical imbalance which is something we do not have control over.

When by our actions, deeds, words or thoughts we have experienced one of these variables, it sets us on a path of discovery about ourselves and what it was that may have put us in that specific variable. A lot of times we seem to want to shift responsibility and not own the reason that we are there, it is much easier to think that it was because of another's action we have been thrust in that particular event in our life. In some cases that could be justified by another seeking some sort of vindication, but most of the time it is nothing more than our own actions that have caused it. Once you start to accept responsibility for what it was that has put you where you are, that is when you start to understand why you are there.

One of my personal beliefs is that everything starts with self, no matter what it is, it's origin is with self. As will the result or the final outcome. With that thought in mind and to go back on something I said, "what you can put yourself into, you can pull yourself out of", is something I believe strongly in, because I have been there. We all have the willpower to make a change in ourselves, in our lives and in the outcome if it is something we truly want. I do not believe anyone lacks the willpower to do anything, we are born with it, from the first gasp of air we breathe in until that final gasp we exhale, it is in us. It is those who do not wish change or lack the desire to change that feel they do not have the willpower to make that change they lament about. Utilizing that willpower within you is the controlling mechanism in that variable I have been speaking of.

As an example: Being a "child" of the 60's and 70's I had a very rebellious and turbulent teenage life. There was nothing I felt I could not do or nothing I felt that could affect me, that everything was in my control. To a certain extent that was right, but it was the abuse of that control that led to me being taken to the emergency room at the age of 17 and my parents being told I would not live out the night. That they should go home and start making preparations and the hospital would call. There wasn't a drug I had not done during those years from age 13 to 17. In four short years I had virtually tried everything except heroin, my only personal taboo.

I think a lot of it was due to the freedom I had as a child, even though at that time I did not feel I was one, after all, I had a job, I earned my own way and did not have to depend on my parents. I have worked from a very early age in my life, my first real job at 13. My father always told us that if we were old enough to work, we were old enough to make our own decisions. Little did he know I think how destructive those words could be. It gave me the freedom to come and go as I pleased. I mean I was one of very few, if any other at all that carried a notarized piece of paper in my pocket from my father that basically gave me that emancipation all kids want. To be looked at and thought about as an adult.

My drug of choice after running the gambit of what was offered at the time turned out to be methamphetamine. Crystal. I had tried all kinds of hallucinogens, chemical and organic, smoked pot and did any kind of prescription drug that was put in my hand, but it was crystal that finally won out so to say as my drug of choice. To me it was a euphoric drug, one that made me feel invincible. One that I let destroy me. Not just physically and mentally, but morally. I lost interest in school, family and my work as this drug slowly started taking control of me. Actually, I let it take control, the feeling I got when under its influence was one of, I felt anyway, self enlightenment, and I thought it could give me a deeper understanding and meaning to myself and to the world about me. To give me that chance to understand life and my place in it. Truth be known, it is all about the rush and the euphoria you experience.

As I said it was that abuse of self control, not the lack of it that finally ended with me in the emergency room three days before my senior year in high school was to start. We had been on a run for a week, not coming down, but pushing our bodies as far as we could, it turned out to be too far. When I ran that final shot, I got nothing from it, I felt no different than I did before I took it. I looked around and told the friends I was with that it was enough, I was going home to crash and sleep the next few days before school started. I got home, made me one of those dagwood sandwiches you see in the comics, grabbed the bag of potato chips and a glass of milk, then headed for my bedroom. Finishing what I had ate, I laid down and closed my eyes. Thoughts were screaming through my head as I tried to bring myself down. I started to feel a numbness in my left arm and a pain radiating from my chest, up my neck and through my jaws. I had a cold clammy feeling and my heart was pounding and started skipping beats or beating irregular. I made my way to my parents room, I was disoriented but still managed to make that few feet down the hall to their bedroom. I woke my dad and told him what was happening, he wasted no time and started making the phone calls. We end where this started.

The reason for this personal example was to demonstrate something. I was addicted to a chemical drug, one most would go to rehab to recover from. What I would suffer afterwards I would not wish on my worst enemy, it was my living hell. I spent eight weeks in the hospital recovering from the physical damage I caused to myself, but the mental healing would take years before I felt as if I were back to myself. I felt as if I were bathed in a storm of emotions, I could not think, I could not understand simple things and I found myself slipping into a darkness within me. The drug was still working in me, still screaming in my head. The spasms and cramps that would attack my body at night when I tried to sleep were like demons that beat at me. My mind and body screamed for it, begged for it. I was not going to give in to it. My love of life was stronger than my love for this drug. I was determined to beat it.

The physical addiction was one I could deal with. Eating right, exercising and and getting rest, I found soon that the physical addiction was wearing off and my body slowly started recovering. I was 5"7" and 87 pounds when I went into the hospital, not much to me at all. It was the mental addiction that proved to be the hardest to beat.

A friend of mine that I went to school with mother talked to me one afternoon about what all that had happened. She asked how I was feeling, I told her fine, I was gaining weight and I could finally sleep at night, my body no longer experienced the cramps and spasms that would come upon me each night. She looked at me and again asked, this time with an inflection in her tone, how was I doing? I told her with a trembling voice how I was feeling, afraid, alone, confused, ashamed and any other emotions. She held my hand and told me I wasn't alone, that I had friends and family all around me. I told her that I felt I was going crazy, that I was losing it. She squeezed my hand and smiled. She said that I wasn't crazy, sane people think they are crazy, it was crazy people who thought they were sane. She said that it all started with me, in me, that no amount of help from a doctor, psychiatrist or drugs could heal me. It had to be with me, that there was nothing they could do that I couldn't do myself. I had to have the will, the desire to want to heal, to make that change I was wanting. She said it was in me and it was up to me to bring it out and make it work for me, that before I could depend on others, I had to depend on myself first. It was with her words that I found that willpower within me and it was with those words that I bolstered that willpower and it was with that willpower inside of me that I was able to recover, to find reason to want to make something out of my life and beat this demon I let take control.

To take control, take responsibility, to see and understand, take responsibility. To overcome and heal yourself, find that desire to want to. Master it, just as you have things in your past, find that willpower you were born with, strengthen your resolve to heal yourself with it. It has not been your first time in this life that you have had one or more of these variables place on you and it won't be the last. If it something that you really want, you can do it, you just have to have that need, that desire, that conviction to do it and see it through.

What was it that echoed these thoughts through my mind? Last night I was told by someone that they could not marry a nobody. After we departed our online session it started me thinking about my past and all I had been through to get where I am at today and I found out something, I am not a nobody, I am somebody. Someone of substance, of worth. I may have slipped, transgressed and hurt that one that I love and I know that I have a lot to make up to her for what I have done. It will be with that same willpower within me that I have used to overcome the demons in the past that will give me the strength to see this through. It will be the determination that willpower gives me and the subtle persistence to win her heart again.