Restlessness

For a while now, I've understood that one of the biggest impediments in keeping me from getting noticeably better is how little sleep I get. So about six months ago, I started changing my routine so I could make sure I was in bed at a reasonable time and getting at least seven solid hours of sleep every night.

I especially took advantage of the past three-day weekend and with my alarm off, tried to let myself absorb as much unadulterated rest as I could.

I didn't get out of bed until about 10 a.m. yesterday and by about 3 p.m. or so, I was so tired, I think I could've fallen back to sleep for another 5-6 hours.

Now if I'd gone and run a couple miles or did some heavy labor, or spent all day getting a million things done, I suppose that would make sense. But all I did yesterday was go down the street to get some work done on my car, take a 30-minute walk in that interim, come back home, sit on my couch and pretty much just putz around.

I got into bed at about 9:45 last night, read for about an hour or so, then fell right to sleep with my alarm set to go off at 6:30 this morning. I woke up even before it went off, then went back and forth, in and out of sleep until it finally did. I then slapped the almighty SNOOZE button until I finally pulled myself out of bed at 7:30.

Based on how I'm feeling, this means that by the time this afternoon rolls around, I'm going to be rather wiped out, and this is pretty much par for the course for me.

It's a weird place to be, knowing that if I really don't want to sleep, I can make it so I don't have to. But also knowing that if I want to rest, for some reason, I can't seem to bring myself to do it.

And I do want to rest, because I am tired. My friends have been telling me that for months now.

"Dev, I see how exhausted you are. This is killing you," said one the other day, actually.

To be fair, it's not that I haven't tried things to help me get better sleep. I used to take melatonin pills when I needed to, but the side effects were pretty nasty because they either wouldn't work, or I wouldn't reach REM sleep, so I wouldn't dream.

I also know that not being able to get that sort of rest is a big part of what is going on in my head. This has been a problem for a long time, dating back to when I was barely a teenager, and has gone relatively unchecked.

My life has always been about trying to do more with less and making the most of my time, even if it meant I wouldn't sleep for a prolonged span of time. As a country and a species, I've heard no end of the stupid cliche', "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Well, I am dead.

I feel dead, and the only way I know that is going to start changing is if I can get some much-needed rest.

Century Mark

I've been writing this blog for 100 posts now.

A hundred posts in a little over four months. In the grand scheme of things, I guess that means I've had a lot on my mind and almost as much to say.

In the last few weeks, for every instance I feel compelled to finally get in front of all the things that are still holding me back, I've had these equally long spells where I get that all-too-familiar feeling.

That I can't beat this thing. This Yang. This part of me that my friends have called a "a monster that's blacker than black."

I hate admitting when I can't do something. It's a combination of all the anger I've hung onto and the pride of fighting as hard as I have to get even this far that keeps me from saying it.

Truth is, though, that I can't beat it. I really can't.

It's not an admission of defeat as much as it is simply realizing that I'm trying to get by something that knows me better than I know myself. It can anticipate my moves, understands my strengths and how to exploit my weaknesses. And it's at its most dangerous in convincing me that every friend is an enemy and every enemy is a greater enemy. It understands that the more isolated I am, the easier it is for me to feel more beaten and that this is all I am ever going to be.

I know I can't beat it because I don't know how. I've thrown everything I have at it. Every trick. Every weapon. I can make dents in it. I can get it off me for a little while, but it always comes back. Sometimes in weeks, sometimes in minutes.

That doesn't mean it can't be beaten. It just means I know it can't and won't as long as it's just me standing in front of it.

So, if I am going to take that horrifying First Step, then this is the way I know it's going to have to start.

If you're reading this, and if you care about me at all, then I am asking you...

It's not going to be easy. It won't be pretty, and there will be days where I will fight back at you because that is my defense mechanism against getting away from the dependency I have for all that anger and stubbornness.

but I am asking you...PLEASE...

Help me beat this damn thing, once and for all.

No Confidence

There is a classic Chinese proverb that states, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."

Over the weekend, I got into another heated discussion with a friend about my inability and unwillingness to get past the stasis I've remained in.

"I know you've been really beaten down and I know it's a terrifying idea, but I promise you, if you can get moving again, it'll be worth it," she said. "And you don't have to do it alone."

In the interest of context, it should be noted that I told my friend the exact same thing repetitively over the last year or so, as she had sworn off the idea of forming new relationships herself. In the last three weeks, however, she allowed herself to meet someone and things appear to be heading in a more positive direction.

"You kept telling me to do it and you see what's happened," she said. "So why shouldn't you be able to have the same thing?"

The short answer is that's not how the world works.

The long answer is because I don't deserve it, because being able to take that first step means putting a certain level of trust and faith both in the world to not let me fall again, and in myself that I know which direction to go.

Having been dropped several times now, I'm not willing to put my faith in this world to support me anymore.

And I have no faith, absolutely none, in myself. I never have. Not in a single damn thing I do.

From the time I get out of bed in the morning to the time I get back into it at night, I anticipate that I'm going to fail at something. I'm not going to say the right thing, or perform a task to the level of expectations that those around me and oversee my life have. It's been that way for I don't know how long, but the simple reality I grapple with every day is that I'm just not good enough. Not for my job, not for my friends, and definitely not for anything resembling a love life.

Such is what comes with having people tell me they'll, "always be there," then running away when times get really tough. And before you start with the tired cliche' of, To err is human, I don't care.

I don't care because that mindset got hammered out of me over a very long period of time. I don't get to be just human. I HAVE to be better. I have to be both smarter and stronger than all of you and don't get the luxury of fallibility. It is a privilege that I lost along with a great many other things, and I honestly have no idea if I can ever have it back, no matter what I do from here.

Do I want to remain stationary forever? Of course not. Being like this for this long has been bad enough. But whereas it's so much easier for other people to look to the horizon and think of how they can get past it, that's not what I see any more.

All I see is a very thin sheet of hope separating me from that hole I've fallen into and climbed out of more times than I ever wanted to.

And I also know if I take that step, and it gives way, I won't survive another impact.

Fortifications

This week, I've had two conversations with two separate friends who live on opposing sides of the state and don't know each other at all, but they both said the same thing.

"Dev, you have so many walls up that you refuse to let anyone see who you are and can be," they said. "I understand why because you've been through so much and got hurt so badly, but you've walked around for most of your life practically dead and closed off."

While I smiled and nodded and meekly agreed, my Yang was screaming at me with a very blunt response to their observations.

This is really a surprise?!

If our experiences shape both who we are and who we will become, I figured out at an early age the only way I was going to get this far was to make sure I was as insulated as possible from the things that are most potentially hurtful. In that respect, I can't think I'm any different than anyone else.

Admittedly, I've taken it to an extreme because I felt I had no choice.

As I explained to one of my friends last night, I've understood that my purpose in most people's lives is to be a fixer or a caretaker. If someone has a problem, they come to me. If a substitute or a stand-in is needed, they come to me. I fill the role or do the work, and then when it's done, I'm discarded. With incredibly rare exception, I feel like I am both expendable and/or disposable while I hold those I care most about so close, that I can't bring myself to let them go.

"You can't have the sort of relationships you want if you don't let someone in," she countered.

What I don't like admitting, to myself or anyone else, is I've grown very used to being this way. After all, this is work I started when I wasn't even 10-years-old, building layer upon layer of defenses until I have what's around me now, and the few times I've dared step out from behind them resulted in me getting completely and utterly crushed.

So what makes you think I'd be willing to step out from behind them now?

It may be lonely at the center of all these walls and traps, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm safe here.

You can't break my heart if I don't give you a clear shot at it.

Persona Non Grata

Call me weird, but the best stories I've ever related to are the ones which illustrate the constant duality of good and evil which exists inside the human mind.

I am so enamored with it, in fact, that I'm eighteen chapters into writing my own novel that deals with both it and society's views of how we apply those definitions.

Just what is it that makes us go one way or the other? If you say it's the result of social constructs like family and school, or the everyday exposure to media (both real and fictitious), then the influence can be seen as external. If, on the other hand, it's the result of our own physical and psychological development and our choices and actions based on that and our processing of that external stimulus, then the influence can be seen internal.

We've been trying to figure it out since the beginning of recorded time, and with respect to Jung, Freud and the other great analyzers of the human mind, I think we've only scratched the surface of what truly makes us tick.

I'd like to tell you that my fascination with our psychological makeup is purely because I read too many Sherlock Holmes books as a kid or tried to figure out the plot to every episode of Law & Order ever made.

*Editorial Note - I am guilty of both counts, actually, but everybody's got to have a hobby, I suppose.

It's because I've been trying to figure out my own psychology and which side of the line I actually fall upon.

In my life, I've been called both an angel and Satan, and I've never understood the logic behind either. I am far from a righteous, incorruptible man and my conscience is such that it's truly not in my nature to behave like a psychopath or even a sociopath. And yet, my experience has shown me that as a culture, we're content to slap someone with such labels all the time.

The one constant I've heard through the years in both mass media and my own bubble is the notion that once a person commits a crime, that's all they are capable of doing and that is all they'll ever be. Rehabilitation and reform are myths and pipe dreams, and therefore the only logical conclusion is indefinite, passive-aggressive punishment.

Now don't mistake me. There are some people who are indeed psychopathic, sociopathic, sadistic, or predatory and are fully aware of what their actions will result in. I've never subscribed to the concept that a true utopia is possible in this world because there will always be a percentage of humanity that simply doesn't care to follow the rules and laws laid down by civilized society. They just don't, and for whatever justification they come up with, they'd rather commit brutal atrocities at the expense of their fellow neighbors. But they are also a much smaller percentage of the population than we ever like to admit.

In many ways, we glamorize evil because it seems more attractive than being the proverbial starched-shirt, straight-backed Dudley-Do-Right. We recognize that aspect of human nature and romanticize it because we find our own darker impulses and potential intriguing. The darker and more diabolical we can make a character, the more exciting and appealing they become to us.

As much as we condemn Dahmer, Bundy, Lanza, Loughner, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler and the other historical evil figures, we also clamor for stories of characters like Hannibal Lecter, Michael Myers, Professor Moriarty, Leatherface, Norman Bates and other personifications of the very evil we've tried to eradicate for millennia.

The dichotomy will always exist, because we'll always want to know what makes supposedly "evil" people do what they do. We'll always want to study them because in doing so, we hopefully will learn more about ourselves and what we can do to evolve into something better than what we are now.

Lightweight

I was sitting at work the other day when a friend linked to an article called "22 reasons to start enjoying whiskey," and for whatever reason, it peaked my attention.

By the time the day was over, as I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some other stuff, I was perusing the liquor aisles, looking for one in particular and wondering if it was as good as it sounded.

And that worried me.

I've never been much of a drinker to begin with. In my time as a legal-age consumer of alcohol, I can proudly say I've never been drunk once, nor do I intend to be any time soon. The reason is not because I think myself superior than anyone else or somehow beyond the idea of sitting down with a drink and enjoying myself.

I just don't like the act of throwing up under any circumstances and having that accompany the debilitating effects of a hangover has never struck me as a productive way to spend my time.

Call me a square all you want, but there it is.

The other reason why I've always been more than a little hesitant about letting myself dive into my cups is quite simple. I am from a family of alcoholics. My father is and was an admitted drunk when I was a kid and my mother has used quite a bit in her younger days as well. My aunt was nearly killed when, after a night of heavy drinking with my mom, she drove home drunk and slammed into a tree. Her husband, my Uncle Mike, was also a longtime drunk and fought it for most of his adult life.

*Editorial Note - Both my father and uncle have been sober for a great many years now and I'm very proud of them both.

I lost a cousin who got drunk one night and fell asleep at the wheel, also hitting a tree head-on. I was four when that happened, but I still remember the impact it had on everyone he knew.

My first stepfather was also a pretty consistent drinker and his liquor of choice was Jack Daniels. Considering how he treated me even when he hadn't had a nip or two, the realization I made even before I was a teenager was this:

If I start drinking, there was a very realistic possibility that I could never stop. And if I started drinking whiskey, I'd end up becoming an abusive, belligerent prick. 

So as I got older, I kept finding excuses for why I wouldn't drink. I didn't think it would be accepted by my friends if I just said I didn't want to risk becoming another alcoholic in my family. The best one I came up with is that I was allergic to alcohol because of something in the fermenting process was an issue for my system.

It may have been a stretch, but it worked, and so I didn't take my first drink until I was about 25.

When I started, it was with wine and over the years, I've finally taken a liking for beer. I also developed a taste for sake as well, but hard liquor was always something I figured I was okay living without.

So when I suddenly found myself thinking about buying a bottle of whiskey because it sounded very appealing, it was a scary realization. Do I think that I'm immediately going to crack it open and get bombed out of my tree? No, but I'd be lying if the thought didn't cross my mind every time I took a drink of what if this might be when I suddenly didn't want to stop.

The thing I figured out early on was to establish and know my limits, and that they were okay. I could go have a drink with my friends and be coherent enough to drive myself home without being a danger to anyone. I could have a glass of wine with my dinner and it didn't mean I'm an alcoholic.

I make no apologies for being a lightweight. Considering what my family's history is, I'd rather be that than the alternative any day.

Exclusion

I remember when I was a kid, being in P.E. classes in school, and how much I dreaded them every week. It wasn't only because I was the prototypical 98 lb. weakling, but also because most activities were predicated on the idea of picking teams.

Despite my ability to run fairly fast, be somewhat elusive in traffic, and hit a ball pretty damn far, I could always count on being the last man to go to a given side, and also being received without much fanfare.

I'd like to say that was the only time when such a thing happened, but unfortunately, it wasn't. There's been many other times in my life, at many social levels, where I've felt both out of place and unwelcome.

Like many other things, I got used to it after a couple years. It became just another thing I grew relatively numb to. Where it didn't bother me as much because it became an expectation more than a surprise.

What I never understood, however, was why me? What was it about me that made it so difficult to just blend into the crowds I wanted so badly to be a part of?

In lieu of an answer, the only logical conclusion was it was because I was just different than everyone else. As a result, I just wasn't going to ever be inside the same spheres of the people I cared about or were interested in. That was the conclusion I reached even before I was 16, and not much in the years since have changed my perspective.

It also made it so hard for me to disregard the people in my own sphere, no matter the things they may do to hurt me, or the trouble I caused them in return. I gave second chances, even if they weren't always deserved, because I always wanted the same thing for myself.

Being out on the fringes most of the time isn't always fun. As much as I found the privacy of being left out to be occasionally refreshing as I didn't have to be part of the usual drama or other things I wanted no part of, the older I've gotten, the more I've still wanted to belong to something or someone.

The difficulty lies in trying to find that something, whatever it is.