So, I share it with you guys and galls. And then I thought of the love and understanding that is sometimes not present or assumed so. Been there, done that. Then something came to mind which I still remember, but wanted to apply to the here and now. Without any change to my views, and drawing only from literature.
Just paraphrasing, all quoted sections left as is.
I Corinthinas 13, for the modern age;
If I speak of understanding, but have none of your dilemma, "I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." If I have the gift of your presence and all that you are and cannot fathom how it could go astray, and if I have the ability to see you through it, "but have not love, I am nothing." If I throw all the money I possess and surrender my acquity, "but have not love, I gain nothing."
Understanding is patient, and love is kind. It does not blame, it does not hark on assumed weakness, it is not pride when one is right. "It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs" but only noted so as not to repeat mistakes . Love does not delight in subjective truth but rejoices with the truth that you are only human. Love and understanding "always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
Love never fails, when there is true love. But where there is preaching, ears will grow deaf; "where there are tongues," there will be mute indifference; where there are prescriptions, we assume resolve, where there is knowledge, it will fall to the wayside, unless applied securely as a warm embrace. Although I may assume to know you, I know that you are ever changing and ever affected, so we should watch for ever changing tides, and secure our anchor with our hearts so as not to be set adrift. Remembering always that, the anchor is heavy and is only lightened with both our hands. "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child." And, that child is still here and can hurt just as easily. "When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." Yet, the child sometimes remains. Ever loving, and sometimes unconditionally when both heart and mind are healthy.
Mainly it's just creating, good, bad, whatever. You even have bad days where you might only do 20 minutes at the gym, but you went. The day at work was horrific, but you tackled it. Jump in, work that mind. It's just between you and your dreams.
"Depression, anxiety and panic attacks are not a sign of weakness. They are signs of having tried to remain strong for too long."
"Love never fails, when there is true love. But where there is preaching, ears will grow deaf; "where there are tongues," there will be mute indifference; where there are prescriptions, we assume resolve, where there is knowledge, it will fall to the wayside, unless applied securely as a warm embrace."
Something comforting and unexpectedly cathartic about these quotes.
I've never heard of this youtube channel, before, the "Big Think". *Subscribe button clicked* Thank you Evi
When you're in it, it's hard to see around it. I just try to step back once in a while and remember that I'm not alone, and that beauty and peace are palpable. Now, "move your big toe."
And yes, wrong title on the song, but don't worry about life's little hiccups.
..to think beyond yourself, and of others. The heart knows what it wants. And, sometimes, it's doesn't yearn for the same things or know the same things yours does. One thing it knows is love, and how to replenish.
A friend of mine posted this, his love is in England, but the man don't wanna let them be.
Another friend this week told me about having issues with her ailing mom. She's trying to keep it together without affecting her hubby and her daughter. I told her, you gotta count on that support system. Talk to the fellow grown up, and let her babe erase the hurt afterward.
Thanks SAS, sorry, I don't like the word slut, just not my bag, and glad you dig the thread. Here's a little out of the box stuff, and my personal hero, and one of the two first reasons I started to write. The second was a drop dead gorgeous English Teacher.
I think that Sylvia Plath gives a stark insight into her own mental health at the time of writing this poem, which really touched me the first time I read it. I've revisited it many times since and shared it with friends when they've been at a low ebb...
I hope that you guys get it too:
Tulips
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
God, I just read it again... I find it very moving indeed and scarily, there have been a few times where I've completely related to it...
“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them — every day begin the task anew.” -Saint Francis de Sales
“A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear [that results] from the injury of the oyster. The treasure of our being in this world is also produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl.” -Stephan Hoeller
“Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keep friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.” -Greenville Kleisser
Suffering from these ailments is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. You can't see it like a broken arm you can't fix it with a cast.
I, you, others big and small write in the same fashion. Alone, wondering, perceptive, creative, yet sometimes and most times self-deprecating. Words and feelings lay at our tips without advance even though they would actually be a beautiful addition to this experience. Unfortunately, hers only learned after she'd left.
Since the thread turned towards authors, which should come as no surprise, I just wanted to share someone who has always baffled me. Someone who wrote alone without any measurable interface with people, in general. Yet, consumed literature, hearts, and imagination with aplomb.
I can't even imagine what her facebook page would've looked like.
Wow, she was an interesting woman, Evi... Thanks for sharing that.
I confess that I'd never really read any of her work, but I read through the link and also a few of her poems...
It seems that the line between genius and mental health is very often blurred. I mean, from great personal distress/turmoil/unbalance can come amazing things.
One of my favourite performers was Peter Sellers. He was an incredibly talented and funny man, but beset by personal demons (many of his own making).
In this performance/interview, you can see that he is quite clearly in a 'manic' state.
It was funny, I was thinking about this on the drive home this evening and thinking about some of my favourite actors, authors and artists and how they often struggle with their mental state.
That can be a temporary thing or a more permanent one.
Think of someone like Vincent Van Gogh for example, his works are easily some of the most recognisable today, even over 120 years since his death at the age of 37 (he died of a gunshot wound, which it is believed was self-inflicted, although no weapon was ever found).
He was spurned often in relationships and also in love and took it very badly. It sounds to some degree that he suffered from mania (and certainly there was religious mania throughout much of his life) - in fact, it reads as though he became a bit of a stalker to the ladies and even friends and acquaintances in question; inflicting burns to his hand and famously cutting off at least part of his own ear, wrapping it in newspaper and asking a prostitute to keep it safe for him.
It is thought that he suffered from syphilis and he certainly suffered from an addiction to alcohol, specifically absinthe.
There's no doubt, in my mind, that he was a genius, however his daily struggle with mental illness made him a very intense person and he struggled to maintain any sort of relationship with anyone; family, friends, lovers, employees and in the latter stages of his life, he mainly kept the company of prostitutes in order to have contact with people in general.
So sad, his life, however, I wonder if he would have been the creative force had became after his death had he been more balanced? (of course, his frustration at remaining largely unsuccessful as an artist also seemed to fuel his depression). I doubt it...
Anyway, I forget where I was going with this, given that I've now written an essay! (I feel like I'm back at school)
I can only write ... thank you Eviotis, for creating a wonderful thread.
And to T_Elle, I was given "Invictus" framed and written in his calligraphy art, from a dear friend, after I had made it through my own painful hurdle in life. I have carried it with me in my life, as I have carried his heart in my heart, knowing comfort and hope and if another day blesses my life, I am unafraid!
Found a recommendation in a thread. Read 1Q84, and another of his books. More to be had. Here's a review of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. "This is your brain (an egg). This is your brain on Murakami (an egg sprouting arms and legs and attempting to hump other eggs while doing the Electric Slide and attempting to save the world to a killer soundtrack)."
Anne Sexton was a wonderful poet who suffered from manic depression all her life. She eventually committed suicide. I always love that as a poet she never shies away from the ugliness and honesty of her mental illness.
For the Year of the Insane - Anne Sexton
O Mary, fragile mother,
hear me, hear me now
although I do not know your words.
The black rosary with its silver Christ
lies unblessed in my hand
for I am the unbeliever.
Each bead is round and hard between my fingers,
a small black angel.
O Mary, permit me this grace,
this crossing over,
although I am ugly,
submerged in my own past
and my own madness.
Although there are chairs
I lie on the floor.
Only my hands are alive,
touching beads.
Word for word, I stumble.
A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine.
I count beads as waves,
hammering in upon me.
I am ill at their numbers,
sick, sick in the summer heat
and the window above me
is my only listener, my awkward being.
She is a large taker, a soother.
The giver of breath
she murmurs,
exhaling her wide lung like an enormous fish.
Closer and closer
comes the hour of my death
as I rearrange my face, grow back,
grow undeveloped and straight-haired.
All this is death.
In the mind there is a thin alley called death
and I move through it as
through water.
My body is useless.
It lies, curled like a dog on the carpet.
It has given up.
There are no words here except the half-learned,
the Hail Mary and the full of grace.
Now I have entered the year without words.
I not the queer entrance and the exact voltage.
Without words they exist.
Without words one may touch bread
and be handed bread
and make no sound.
O Mary, tender physician,
come with powders and herbs
for I am in the center.
It is very small and the air is gray
as in a steam house.
I am handed wine as child is handed milk.
It is presented in a delicate glass
with a round bowl and a thin lip.
The wine itself is pitch-colored, musty and secret.
The glass rises on its own toward my mouth
and I notice this and understand this
only because it has happened.
I have this fear of coughing
but I do not speak,
a fear of rain, a fear of the horseman
who comes riding into my mouth.
The glass tilts in on its own
and I am on fire.
I see two thin streaks burn down my chin.
I see myself as one would see another.
I have been cut in two.
O Mary, open your eyelides.
I am in the domain of silence,
the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.
There is blood here
and I have eaten it.
O mother of the womb,
did I come for blood alone?
O little mother,
I am in my own mind.
I am locked in the wrong house.
Thank you for your posts Highwayman. Being introverted can be a difficult thing. We don't "put ourselves out there" with as much ease as some. Realizing our own self worth, disregarding the expectations of others and just being true to ourselves is paramount to our growth.
I'm a "quiet achiever", happy with my own accomplishments, but still struggle with letting my light shine for all to see.
Each one of us is special in our own way, let's recognize that, be happy for ourselves.
