Wednesday, May 5, 2021

     Last Saturday night my best friend and long time adventure companion Rich Beckman died suddenly. We still don’t know why, and even after the autopsy is completed in several months we may not have a definitive answer. All I know for certain is that night he, some friends and I had a few beers after work and Rich appeared in top form. He regaled us all with some of his horror stories from Covid and we made plans for future bike rides and maybe a spring snowboard trip. Now if I do any of those things he can only be with me heavily in spirit.

This profound loss has left me somewhat fractured. I feel halfway between swearing off alcohol and nicotine and starting two-a-days at the gym, or throwing myself off of a tall building. To be clear, the second option is entirely not a possibility,  I only use it as a metaphor to illustrate how broken I feel. The strange thing is I feel mostly unable to express this feeling in a physical way. I generally avoid emotional displays and I’d like to keep my behavior as cerebral as possible. I’ve had a few breakdowns in the past, and I want to do anything I can from becoming unhinged. Unfortunately a complete dedication to physical health seems almost unlikely as suicide, but maybe I can make small steps towards self improvement, beginning with writing this.


I met Rich while taking smoke breaks during our Microbology class in my prerequisites for nursing. Rich got an A in the class and I barely snuck by with a B. This is a fact of which he rarely would hesitate to remind me. We talked about our love of snowboarding, and that winter I helped him get a job teaching snowboarding at Snow Summit in Big Bear. I don’t teach snowboarding professionally any more, but his Mom told me that he was planning to work up there again next winter. Rich didn’t need the money or the free lift pass, but he loved an audience.


He was always looking for an opportunity to entertain and to help. Service to the community had been a lifelong passion of his, from his time in the Army, as a firefighter and paramedic and most recently performing emergency medical technician duties in the hospital. He was pursuing a Master’s degree in medical diagnostics, mostly with the hope of improving his odds for acceptance into a physician assistant program.


His professional acumen does not truly define him because above all Rich was a comedian. In virtually any situation he was looking for a laugh. If he didn’t make a joke I usually felt like he was just setting me up to deliver the punchline. Like most comedians he also carried an air of confidence in his insecurities. He wasn’t afraid to admit that he felt disappointed in his ability to find a wife or sire a child. He felt something must be fundamentally wrong to not have been accepted into PA school but he still pursued it with fierce determination. He compensated for these self perceived flaws by flexing his biggest muscle, his mind. Rich had taken a series of advanced calculus courses and found a plethora of inopportune times to share equations with friends and acquaintances, even after we had made it abundantly clear that we had no desire for this knowledge.


Everything fun I like to do outdoors was better with Rich along. He could snowboard anywhere on the mountain and had a bag full of buttery tricks and nose rolls. I usually had to wait for him a little bit at the bottom, but he always made the lift rides back up the highlights of the trip. The best thing about his snowboarding was that even at 48 years old he was always improving. When we first rode together he was very hesitant to go off a jump and now he would regularly do 180s and could pull a few grabs. He could link together some proper carved turns, which is something 90% of snowboarders don’t even realize they can’t do. In the summers we rode mountain bikes together a few times a month. I let him borrow a kayak one time and the next time we talked he’d already purchased his own so we could do more of that together too.


Now as I look forward to doing all these things that we loved I know that a particular piece of that joy won’t be with me. It is the nature of humanity to search for patterns and find meaning in the world. I’ve tried to make peace with this loss by seeing balance in the world through it. I believe that we cannot have miracles without tragedies. That rainbows would not exist without the preceding storm. For us to deeply savor great joy we must also know the bitterness of grief. But knowing this, doesn’t make it any better right now. All I can do in this moment is to be aware of my thoughts and emotions. Let the pain enter and recede and enter again. I can have faith that this cycle will improve over time and the happy times will gradually become longer than the sorrowful.


I’ve heard that there are several stages of grief. I’m not sure if they will all apply to me but I briefly wanted to flirt with anger. In this situation there is nothing to be angry at or with. Some might want to blame God and demand satisfaction from such a tragic and sudden death. How can someone so kind, hilarious, talented and smart be gone so suddenly? And why? I suppose the only meaning in life is that which we create for ourselves. I can also feel grateful for having him in my life at all. Six years ago Rich came about as close as possible to dying in a motorcycle accident. Everyday with him since then has been a miracle. The best I can do for now is to take steps that increase my wisdom and wellbeing.


I’d given Rich a copy of a book that I don’t think he ever read. The Power of Now by Ekart Tolle describes the author's pursuit of mindfulness meditation. In essence the practice is to recognize that your thoughts do not define you. To meditate is to focus on a period of time where you listen to your thoughts as an impartial observer, and then willfully allow them to pass along. This can be aided by sitting in a still area and focusing on your body. One internally assesses themselves and listens to their breath, breathing in and out with intention rather than letting the autonomic nervous system carry out the function. While doing this it is only natural that thoughts will enter one’s mind. The key is to hear them and let them go so you can resume focus on breathing. Some people also include a mantra, a simple saying or sound to help avoid the mind becoming obsessed with thought. A quote from the book summarizes “You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.”


Dealing with Rich’s loss has given me more desire to meditate and examine my own soul. I hope that other people going through this or similar grief can do so as well. I think as I go forward I am much more likely to follow up with my primary Dr. for a check up, quit smoking and reduce alcohol use, but I’m not completely confident just yet. It’s only been three days so far, at least I didn’t get drunk on one of them. In any case I believe that everything that happens in life is an opportunity to improve myself and gain wisdom and strength. I just wish this lesson didn’t have to hurt so much right now.






Tuesday, October 1, 2013

stream of consciousness for tonight

The fire burns
Consumes
It is all of me and none of me
Taking away
Sometimes to make room for new growth and
Sometimes it’s just destruction

I look back and wonder
At the charred remains
The regrets
Sometimes it’s just hopeless

Don’t tell me about self control
I can’t always be the firefighter
When sometimes I’m just the fire
I don’t don’t
I don’t want it to be like this

Just take your pills and everything will be alright?

Until when
What
Why

Don’t
Don’t tell me you have the answer
Don’t think that you know
Because the answers you have are the ones you found for yourself
They apply to you and you alone

The simple well
Wishes
And motivational sayings
Your proverbs
And rules
And guidance
They work for you

I’ll find mine
In mine
In the mine
Of my soul

Sometimes it’s just buried too deep

Let the rain fall
And the sun
Shine in

Tomorrow

......................................................

As always, Tom Gabel said it better... "the revolution was a lie." 




Sunday, December 9, 2012

Some Nights

I don't want to write right now. I'd rather spend more and more time putting thoughts together and coming up with a final answer. A solution for the meaning of life and how to live it. What my own personal goals really are. I've noticed that most of my conversations never get as deep as I'd like them too. Sometimes I'm interrupted and don't fight to get back on the track I had going and sometimes I just need to guard myself.

My former fiance and I have been going through a break up that will never end and it's deeply hurting us both. I've told her some of my deepest fears and failures and she has later thrown them back in my face as insults. I've let her down emotionally, financially and otherwise, and these sins she has vowed not to forgive.

Right now is a very strange place in my life. I've made a commitment to pursue photography as my profession. It's a dream I've had since childhood that I was always afraid I could not achieve. The way I'm pursuing the dream now is not what I originally wanted but it is close enough and I hope it can lead closer to that original dream. Sometimes I think, oh shit, I'm really trying this time. I can fail, but that wouldn't be so terrible. But I won't fail unless I choose to give up.

My mother says there is no unforgivable sin. That when you make the pact to place faith in Jesus your soul will be eternally covered. I can remember being a young child, maybe even 6 or 7, and being worried that this was not so. There is a lot more to this deep feeling that I don't think I can uncover yet. Sometimes my life feels like a gift. Sometimes I feel like this life is a punishment for things I did in a previous life. Sometimes I think it is redemption.

Nate Ruess said it better.
I don't think I should be afraid to admit that this video made me cry:

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Identity


Finding identity may be one of the hardest things for someone with mental illness to do. For all people it may be one of the hardest things to nail down. Are we our jobs, our achievements, our dreams, or even the plain monotony of our everyday existence? What are we besides our actions, both what we have done in the past and what we are doing? My father has been working on his auto biography for some time under the working title “Deeds Not Words”. For someone in my position finding self can be harder than saying it’s what I have done. Should I define myself by some of my more outrageous actions under the throws of a manic episode or my complete apathy and despair while wallowing in depression?

For some time I have been haunted by the idea of destiny. The genes we are born with have some of the deepest effects on our personality. While a child is still young they exhibit signs of who they are and who they are to become. Even fraternal twins are often incredibly different people despite that they share many of the same experiences in their formidable years. The other major contributing factor to who we are comes from instances of chance beyond our control and how respond to them, although even these responses will tend to fall along patterns of behavior that developed before we knew ourselves.

I would like to believe that I am who I have been as much as whom I will myself to become. It is a terrible thing for someone to define themselves by a label that has been assigned to them. Diagnosis with mental illness is far different than any other form of malady. There is no blood test to determine, no brain scan to show, or visible wounds to diagnose the demons that afflict us.

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.” John Stienbeck wrote that in  The Winter of Our Discontent and it has stuck with me ever since. Mental illness often leads to isolation. For months, even years on end I can lead a “normal” life. On the outside I probably appear much like any one else. But occasionally I enter mania; my actions stray outside of society’s acceptable limits. While I feel elated inside every one around me suddenly no longer knows who I am. Eventually I come back down to normal and my family and friends (those I haven’t driven away in the process) breathe a sigh of relief. Normal for me is ok, but I miss my wild side and even hold onto some of the delusions I experienced. And suddenly I feel that the people around me are not like myself. So begins the cycle of depression and isolation.  

Maybe none of us really know ourselves. Deep down below the layers of actions and thoughts is something our minds cannot fully fathom. As a race we have sought to add meaning to our existence and to understand ourselves in terms of where we have come from and where we are going. The culture of the western world is shifting towards a faith in science, where only what can be quantified and repeatedly tested can be trusted. Throughout history every religion has appreciated a metaphysical connection to something we feel but can barely describe or understand.

The journey to finding me is long and nowhere near over, but at this juncture I am certain of several things. I am more than a collection of genetic information. I am more than the chemical reactions and seemingly random synapses that occur in my brain. I am more than a label. I am a soul and I am not alone. 

Saturday, October 6, 2012

This guy said it better



"We have another name for recovery, bored."

I identified with that statement so much that I laughed when I heard it. I'm researching for my next article and found this. I think he sums up my condition better than almost anything I've heard before. I will definitely be looking at bipolaradvantage.com a lot more in the future.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Finding Direction


I've been reading my friend Matti's blog, http://breathebrattleboro.blogspot.com/, for about three months now and it is inspiring me to take this blog in a new, and actually focused, direction. His blog deals directly with mental illness and the recovery process. Until reading his blog I never thought about bi-polar as something to recover from but just something I had to deal with. While I will likely need to manage my illness for the rest of my life using medication, he points out that there are other avenues to pursue such as fitness and support groups. They are suggestions I've heard of before but maybe the message didn't get through to me because I wasn't ready, or maybe just because they weren't from someone I knew.

I think I would like to use my blog in a similar fashion, as a way to communicate my experiences with mental illness with others so they can help themselves along their path to recovery as well. Additionally, "I've seen and experienced things" that I think are worth sharing, if for nothing more than entertainment value. I don't want this to become some narcissistic "look at me" kind of blog though and aim to have a good balance of researched and informative posts along with self reflective guides on my recovery.

I think my current readership is mostly just four people, my former fiance, mother, brother, and some guy I don't even know. It would be nice to know if there is anyone else out there reading this and I plan on trying to expand my audience with this new focus in mind. If I don't start posting here on a regular basis (at minimum twice a month) then I would like someone to email or speak to me so that I can be motivated and held accountable to this goal.