Splendid Indifference

Just what am I on about this time?

Well, for once, or is it twice, I am not too sure.

Perhaps Clarity?

Life requires clarity.

Clarity is a rare and beautiful thing.

It is something to aspire to and to work towards throughout your life.

Once experienced, you feel the overwhelming urge to repeat the feeling time and time again, but the fog of normal living can and will rise quickly and obscure that wonderful view.

Clarity is like an extremely addictive drug but with no side effects, well none so far as I can tell.

Clarity is like reaching the top of the tallest peak after years of strenuous effort and having the whole of your life’s experiences and memories arrayed out in front of you.

The sum of all your life history, all the things that made you the person that you are.

Each and every painful, joyful, heart rending, soul destroying and spirit lifting step of the way from conception to that particular instant of time of absolute pure clarity.

None of it is all good, or all bad.

I see it as a series of ridges, hills, both large and small, and a diverse array of ravines, both narrow and broad valleys, where the ridges and hills define the sunlit uplands and the ravines and valleys the darknesses.

It is what you do with the knowledge you perceive that matters.

It is your choice and your choice alone how to interpret the knowledge exposed to you at that moment.

And yes, you really do have a choice on how to deal with what you see.

What is past is indeed past but it will have shaped you up until this moment and will continue to shape your future, if you let it or wish it to, or you can simply breath it in, understand it and let it go, thereby understanding who you are and what made you who you are

You can choose to acknowledge it and simply move on.

Mind you that is not always easy, not easy at all.

Some of the revealed knowledge, has the stickiest of tendrils, the clingiest most venomous of embraces and the sharpest of skin puncturing poisonous fangs.

Be careful of those, they are hardest to shift.

I struggled to get clear of those.

They hooked me, entangled me, poisoned my heart and mind, made my timeless feelings of cold self-loathing into a waterfall of utter bile that I stepped into willingly, time after time, because that is what I felt I deserved. The soundless screams of mental anguish clamped shut my mouth and closed down my mind.

For protection, I senselessly wrapped myself up into a cocoon of dark self-hatred. Thoughts incessantly pounding away at my sanity. Corrosive waves of black acid battered the light and the love of life within me, until life hung by a very slender thread.

I survived, though it was a close run thing,

A few things helped me recover,

it certainly wasn’t the drugs,

it wasn’t drink,

it wasn’t the mental institutions or their staff,

it was the simple unconditional love, care, thought, time and superhuman patience of my, “Bridget”....

Thank you.

If no Bridget or Bridget equivalent available here are some suggestions

Not in any particular order:

• Exercise, it does help, yes, get out of the house and walk and walk and walk, or run if you have to (I shudder at the thought). Movement really is good for mind and body, it’s a scientific fact.
• Mindfulness and yoga helped me, though it has taken a few years to make the yoga a habit.
• “Zen it out”, which is my terminology for using The Breath, Mindfulness and Yoga all at the same time to get you out of a downwards spiral.
• Know your Triggers,  
• The Breath (™) is a powerful tool in your box of tricks.
• Cut back or stop the drinking (be brave, it is possible). Sadly alcohol is a poison, but what a sweet and surreptitious siren she/he is; watch out for her/him (On the grounds of equality, the gender of the surreptitious siren can be whatever you want it to be.).
• Talk to people, talk maybe cheap, but it is proven to help (terms and conditions apply)
• Ask for help, you really, really are not alone, really, you are not! Did I mention that you are not alone?
• Build slippery shoulders, so that unhelpful thoughts can easily be dismissed out of your head, be made to roll off your shoulders and in one motion be kicked under the table; they deserve no time or energy from you at all (apart from a decent kick in their vitals), If all the bad thoughts cannot be found quivering with fear in the dark under the table (hmm, sounds a little like my childhood - ed) then you just haven’t kicked them quite hard enough. Get them out and each time they slip back, kick them out again. “Just say no”, to bad thoughts.
• Eat proper food, nope home-delivered pizzas are not proper food, even if they have pineapple strewn all over them.

Hmm, this list is getting a little bit long and prescriptive, so time to stop, this isn’t a self help blog I will have you know.