Nobody Knows I'm Not Okay

This is how it feels when you try to explain mental illness to someone who won't/can't really understand. 

Verse 1

Nobody sees the hurt inside.

Because I hide it with a smile.

Nobody knows the pain I feel

I've been feeling for a while

Verse 2

Nobody's tried to fight

The thoughts that come at night.

Nobody knows how to breathe

When you're not alright

Chorus

And it seems like i'm okay

And it seems i'm doing fine

But i'm barely holding everything in

It's tearing up my mind.

Verse 3

Nobody thinks that it's okay

When the pain will paralyze

Nobody knows that the darkness helps

When sun's blazing in the skys

Chorus

And it seems like i'm okay

And it seems i'm doing fine

But i'm barely holding everything in

It's tearing up my mind.

Bridge

It gets hard to move

And your body aches 

And you're standing still

When one's mind it breaks

And you're falling fast

But you're holding on

But nobody sees, your strength to carry on.

Verse 4

Each day live I've won

Each step's a marathon

But nobody cheers me on

Would they notice if I'm gone.

Chorus

And it seems like i'm okay

And it seems i'm doing fine

But i'm barely holding everything in

It's tearing up my mind.

Verse 1 repeat

Nobody sees the hurt inside.

Because I hide it with a smile.

Nobody knows the pain I feel

I've been feeling for a while

Nobody knows...

The Bloody Finger and other scary stories

It's really quite morbid that I was secretly a little glad my throbbing finger woke me so that I could get a good look at the two holes the needle made and then of course clean it and put lydocaine and a new band-aid.  I have always been a bit like a little kid.  Cry out in pain when it happens then constantly peeling back the bandage.  Poking the wound.  Peeling the healing sunburn.  Squeezing the puss from an infection.  Okay yes that's enough.  I'm an odd person.

I also have been fascinated by monsters and creatures.  I didn't really tell people why I became so interested.  Fear.  As my friends and peers were growing out of childish fears of the dark, vampires, werewolves and such, mine stayed.  Until I was much older than I would like to admit.  Of course, I now understand my anxiety issues started long ago and these were warning signs.   This particular fear drove me to try to face it.  Even though it persisted into young adulthood I began to gain more control.  I learned how movie monsters were made.  I read the classic novels, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Phantom Of The Opera.   I read Mary Shelly's writings about how she gained the seeds of her story.  I was often still afraid into full adulthood but the more I knew how to make my own monsters (make-up) the less it controlled me.  Halloween decorating and costume making was therapy.  How similar that is to some of the early traditions of the celebration, masquerading as a spirit so one could safely walk among them.  How many wonderful memories the hobby of costume making has given me since then.  How my wife Tina Smelbatoast Mair and I could do it together because it combined skill sets that we both had.   How we both gained new skills from each other and from others when neither of us could solve a problem we came upon. 

So maybe my fascination with the gross things like puss and such comes from a fear of mortality.  That's ok.  If it means I want to live, cool.  It probably also means that I am gaining something from it all that I haven't recognized yet.  And werewolves are cool.

Icky, obstruction, tissues

This is going to take a turn into icky, so wait to read this post until you're not eating.  When you are ill with the nasal ickies, you can become do backed up so gradually that you can't recall when or for how long you've been plugged in the nose.  It's very natural at this point to...
...you thought I was trying to take this post to a nose picking joke.  No. 
It's natural to clear it.  You grab a tissue and with the force of the human lung power (which is a great force), we expell the offending ick.  Upon completion we close the disgusting  goo up to keep it away.  However, here's the icky, most people are curious and take a look.  We often even pause to realize the extent of what was obstructing us.  Many of this same group also seek out another close human bond to share this with.  Some of our human connections will look and marvel or ask that it be kept away.   Neither is truly judged.  The moment goes and we are able to start breathing and moving on. 
Sometimes we don't catch our own struggle with breathing until those same humans bring it to our attention., "Do you need a tissue?"  Or we might ask for one.  Still much of the process is there.
We grow things inside our minds and our hearts,  we have to get it out sometimes to breathe.  Sometimes others ask us if we're struggling.  Other times,  we take it to ask for help.  In the end we still often marvel at how bad it got.   How terrible it was inside.   We open up and seek out another human bond to share the digustorous goo with.  Some need to look, some don't.  Eventually, we move on.  But we don't ever keep or reuse the tissue.

Grace - An Epistle to Arkansas

Elder,

You've been in the bible belt long enough to get caught up in a bash already.  You've likely been warned to stay out of them.  Not to hide from or back down from declaring the truth against the firey anger of half truths.  But simply that the fire and anger are not a place where the spirit dwells.  As I said, you've likely heard that already so enough.

But thinking about that reminded me of the most common argument I heard come from such gnashing teeth.  The anger that we deny Christ because we don't believe in his grace.

One would refer to the grace without works is dead" reference and they always had additional scriptures, so did we.

Once again, not fuel for a bash but a recent post of mine to my friends on Facebook discusses this in a way.

"Everyone struggles with fighting who they were.  We often haven't learned to recognize who we are.  One struggle all through coming back was that when I came to the school it was from a position of having received so many scholastic chances as a younger man and with those grades holding me back I was truly asking for one final chance.

Or so it appeared. While the scholastic system might not be set up to nurse me through struggling grades my performance since then has given me a gpa that can handle a more difficult semester if it happened.  

So many times the thought of, "If I don't finish this now I can't, because this my last chance." Has both spurred me on but often pushed me too far and those were the times I almost quit because I thought hope was gone.

Good mentors and a great wife have pulled me back everytime.  But this semester it was finally seeing that no matter what, I have built something that can't be lost if I have to slow down, I gave myself permission to enjoy the experience.  Especially the opera.  My recital.  Finishing the fulltime student part of it all.  It's wonderful.  

Even last chances can become infinite possibilities with time, tears and toil."

While the university has finite chances to receive mercy or grace, the Lord's is infinite.  These bashers are correct, it's all we need.  But imagine if the school was the same.  I could have gone back, failed, gone back and failed, and continued to receive their mercy.  However, I'd still be imprisoned.  In a loop that never ends.  Their mercy would be worth nothing.  Their grace is therefore dead.

On the flipside, it was easy to see that I was imprisoned by not fully understanding what grace had done for me.  Trapped at looking at an old image of myself and not the new one in the mirror.

As we sin, we can only move forward by grace.  We can be trapped by continuing to receive grace for the same things over and over and over or we can be trapped into seeing only the old image and not the one transformed by grace followed by toil.

Infinite possibilities. His grace is true.  His sacrifice real.  

Love, 

Dad