Tag: life

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#45 Breaking The Spiral

Jenna sat on the plane, at the start of her two hour flight home. She’d been away for a few weeks, and was eager to get back to her world. As she at buckled into her window seat, she began to think about her life.

Always a bright girl, she had just finished four weeks at a prestigious summer program for teens who were entering college the next year. She had graduated as the valedictorian of her high school a month earlier, and had forgone the summer of partying with her friends for the two week program. In those four weeks she had  taken two accelerated college courses, which would transfer to her college in the fall, exempting her from two requirements she would otherwise have to take. The coursework was exhausting, and she was drained tonight as she had taken (and passed) the two final exams for the courses just hours earlier.

The plane taxied to the runway and before Jenna knew it, they were in the air. She peered out the window at the darkness, seeing the lights of the airport and city begin to disappear as the plane went higher and higher into the pitch black sky. She felt the attack starting as she mused in her mind the next few weeks.

Jenna was first diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder when she was 12. She had been having trouble sleeping, and her mother had noticed quite a few behavior changes in her. She became irate every time something went wrong, couldn’t concentrate in school, and seemed tired mid-day, well before her quite active siblings even began to peter out. Since the diagnosis, she had worked with a therapist employing cognitive behavioral therapies to try to control her anxiety. Tonight as she squirmed in her seat, she began to go over the techniques they had worked on.

But alas, not much of it worked. Around an hour into the flight, the woman sitting next to Jenna reached down and picked up something off the floor. Jenna saw it was her own cell phone, which must have shifted off of her lap as she moved around in the seat. She had been so pre-occupied by her own thoughts, that she hadn’t noticed it had fallen.

“Is this yours, dear?”, the lady asked.

“Yes, thank you”, Jenna replied as she took the phone back and put it into her purse.

“Are you alright?”, the lady asked.

Jenna was a bit annoyed – it was obvious that she wasn’t doing alright based on her body language, but the last thing she wanted was to get into a conversation with the lady next to her about her own psychological issues. But in the end, she figured the remaining hour of the flight might be better with an ally rather than the enemy that lived within her mind, so she decided to talk.

“I’m just a bit anxious”, Jenna said.

“You don’t like flying?”, the lady replied.

“No, it’s not flying. It’s just that I have a lot of things going on right now, and I don’t handle them especially well”.

Over the next hour, Jenna told the lady, whose name was June, about her life. June listened attentively as Jenna detailed the expectations she had of herself, the problems she perceived, and the stress she was dealing with. In the end, as they began preparing to land, Jenna finally finished talking and allowed June to get a word in.

“GAD?”, June said.

Jenna was a bit shocked – she hadn’t told June specifically what she had been diagnosed with. When June said the abbreviation, Jenna was taken aback.

“Me too”, June said reassuringly.

“How do you deal with it?”, Jenna said.

“It’s all about control”, June said.

“I know that I should be able to control it”, Jenna said sadly.

“That’s not what I meant”, June began, “I mean, you might not be able to control how your mind obsesses about things, or how distorted your world seems, or how the smallest thing can become a catastrophe. But you can control how you feel about the whole state of it”.

“What do you mean?”, Jenna said.

“I simply mean that when you find yourself falling into all of it, you shouldn’t become angry at yourself for how you feel. You should just understand that those feelings are how your mind operates. I found that once I let myself ‘off the hook’, I felt more in control of the whole thing. And once I had that, I could begin to rationally think about things. But if you’re too angry with yourself for how you feel, you’ll simply spiral out. I know, I did it too many times before I stopped yelling at myself for what I was feeling”.

By the time they finished talking, they’d both sat at the arriving gate for 30 minutes. They walked to baggage claim and found their bags had been taken to an airline office, where they retrieved them a few moments later.  They then exchanged email addresses and went their separate ways.

Author Note: There is still quite a bit of stigma associated with mental illness, especially disorders like GAD and other anxiety/depression/mood conditions (By those who think “just suck it up and deal with it”). If you know someone who needs help, please help them. You don’t need to understand why they feel the way they do to be supportive. 

[SSDay]

Spiral 2 © by Vlad Nikitin

 

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#42 Rage

Tim was always a little bit of a loser. Not that anyone ever called him that. Most people referred to him as ‘meek’, ‘mild’, or ‘reserved’. All of those meant that he wasn’t exactly known to be the life of the party, the outgoing guy everyone wants to hang with, or the man you’d most like to stick up for you in a fight (verbal or physical). Tim existed most days, and lived on rare opportunities.

One day, as he was walking home, a man walked by a bit too close and pushed into him. The man hadn’t done it intentionally – it was a crowded sidewalk and he’d simply moved a few centimeters to the right when he shouldn’t have. But because the man was taller than Tim, and bigger, the push happened to sting a bit, physically. Tim’s emotions had long ago been stung by society, so it wasn’t really any sort of emotional reaction he felt. He did, however, become angry when he realized that the man had made no attempt at apologizing. No small “oh – sorry” or “pardon me” had occurred. The man simply walked along as if nothing had happened, no doubt wondering why his arm felt slightly warmer than it had before. No pain though, so no stopping.

Tim slunk down into his seat on the bus, thinking about the incident. For some reason, it began to make him madder and madder at every stuttering stop and start that the bus made. Finally after 20 blocks or so, Tim was livid and angry to a point that he’d never been before. It wasn’t just Mr. Push-you-over-guy, it was his whole life. It was the fact that he had a low paying job and couldn’t afford a car. It was the fact that his managers regularly promoted others below him to above him, citing vague reasons. It was all of those things. So when the bus lurched one more time, Tim decided not to stop his fist from tapping against the window next to him. In fact, he accelerated it’s arrival.

That’s when the most amazing thing happened. Tim slammed his hand up against the window. But rather than the window pushing back, it began to crack. A long, deep gash began to spread up the window, spidering out into smaller veins of brokenness, until a few moments later, the window shattered, with pieces of glass covering Tim and the seats around him.

The bus driver pulled over, and since the bus was fairly empty, Tim simply told him that he’d been thrown into the window by a sudden stop, and it cracked and shattered. The bus driver called for paramedics, to look Tim over, and within a few moments various cars began to pull up.

Months later, Tim received a check from the city. Seems that if a bus shatters you with glass, prompting you to receive stitches, miss work due to injuries, and subsequently be ‘let go’ because you missed a few days, the city rewards you with several thousand dollars. Of course some of that went to his attorney, but he still sat with a somewhat large chunk of change. Within a few weeks he’d found another job, and life went back very much to the way it had been before the bus incident.

Then one day, Tim saw the man who had pushed him, walking along the street. The rage he felt from that day became more pronounced as they neared each other. Finally Tim was going to stand up for himself. As the man approached, Tim boldly crossed into his path. The man, however, didn’t notice Tim and again pushed past him. Harder this time. So Tim reached down and grabbed a rock, spinning and throwing it at the man. The rock landed well shy and bounced along the ground, while passersby wondered why Tim had thrown it. Enraged, Tim ran to catch up with the man. But even cursing at him on the loud city street did nothing – the noise of the cars and the man’s earbuds killed any effect it would have had.

Moral of the story: Sometimes violence solves problems. Most of the time, it doesn’t.

[SSDay]

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#37 What If

What if in the moment that we die, death arrives
offering us the opportunity to stay in that second
for as long as we like.
How long do we stay behind?

What if we’re not waiting for the next big thing.
We’re in the next big thing, and won’t realize it
until the little things return.
Will we be happy with our actions?

What if time is more subjective than we believe, and
the only thing holding us back is
our own expectations?
Can we find the secret to controling it’s pace?

What if the meaningless conversations we have,
are actually the most important ones
we will ever have with another human.
Would we appreciate them more?

What if we’re only supposed to enjoy life,
our plan is not to conquer or accomplish.
Our plan is to simply exist.
Could we handle that reality?

What if my victory is really a defeat to 1,000
and the victories of 1,000 are only a small setback
to me.
How would I live with myself?

What if your life can’t be measured by any number
but only by a thought, emotion, or mood.
Of those around you.
What is your rating?

[SSDay]

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#33 Eeek!

“Eeek!”, the author exclaimed.

“What is it?”, was said in reply.

“I didn’t write my story for today yet”, was all she heard as he flew to his computer.

“Now what can I write about…”, he said, as visions of sugar plums and dynamite, cannons and catnip, dragons and bagpipes, and all other forms of fancy arrived into his consciousness.

“But should it be serious?”, he thought as he banished the humor from his brain. Proverbs and wisdom, wit and thoughtfulness fluttered into the fingers. Maybe he should write about how life is short, or how self-imposed problems are long, or how annoying car alarms are when you’re trying to write.

“Light-hearted fiction” he thought, as he envisioned a story entitled “99 ways to murder that guy who can’t keep his car alarm from going off during my writing”, or perhaps one called “How to get your cat to stop biting your toes while you sleep”. Oh the possibilities could be endless – or had he used that phrase before in this story? Sugar plums? No, he’d definitely used that before. At least he didn’t write “sugar plus”, which he caught just in the nick of time. Otherwise one might think he was writing ad copy for the latest sugar substitute.

“But what should it be about? I have an audience to entertain”, he mused. “Perhaps they won’t notice if I blow off one night. Maybe they’ll be too entertained with Jim the Bunny and Jabberpaw and all those dark depressing stories I’ve written in the past few weeks to notice that #33 is phoned int!”. The plan began to take shape in his mind. He’d rush to his computer and just type any darn thing that came to his fingers. His 1 or 2 faithful readers wouldn’t notice – and if they did, maybe they’d be entertained, or at least bemused.

“Well, it’s not like they’re paying anything for it”, he said as he comforted himself. He’d come up with a better, more fleshed out idea tomorrow, he assured himself. Until then, they’d just have to deal with this quickly conceived and ill-designed short work of semi-fiction!

[SSDay]

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#31 To Do List

The list grows long and short again
I wish it would be gone some days
It makes one long for the time when
I simply sought relaxing ways

But now it’s ever near me
Shorter and longer it forms
Checking items is the key
Keeping away from life’s storms.

[SSDay]

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#26 Flash

It had been 6 months since the day when Mark found the list in an old hoodie he was putting on for the first time that September. It wasn’t too remarkable – just a list of chores for the day, 11 months ago.

call insurance agent
buy eggs
call Kelsey’s school
drop off Jo’s car
print resume

Mark paused as he recalled the day he wrote the list. He’d just been in an accident the day before, hence the call to his insurance company. Jo was having her boss over for dinner, and needed the eggs. Kelsey had been caught smoking in the bathroom at school, and her principal wanted to speak to her father. Jo’s car was acting up, and he was tasked with getting it fixed. On top of that, he had been told a few days earlier that his temporary assignment, which he hoped would be made permanent, was ending. He’d have to get his resumé out there once more. It was just another rough day after a series of rough months in the life of the 43 year-old divorced father of 1 troubled teenager, who was trying to make it work with his fiancé of two years. The previous 6 months had been hard on her as they struggled with her parent’s deaths. Kelsey could care less, but Mark had grown to think of Jo’s parents as the ‘good’ in-laws he’d never had with his first wife.

But all of that was before he got the call that changed everything. He remembered that his phone rang while he was buying the eggs listed on the note. He could barely hear the voice on the other end as he stood in the supermarket, and he didn’t recognize the number. Finally after a few moments of exchanging whats and huhs, he figured out it was Jo. She was at the doctor’s office, and needed him to pick her up. He didn’t understand – she had his car while he drove Kelsey’s old beater. Why couldn’t she drive home? When he reached the doctor’s office, Jo’s doctor took him into her office. They exchanged pleasantries, and while they talked for at least 30 minutes, Mark couldn’t remember anything after he heard the word “cancer”.

She hung on for 5 months, but it was aggressive and it took her. Today, six months after the funeral, he found himself thinking how 11 months ago, dozens of tiny annoyances kept him aggravated and upset.  In a flash, all of that changed. Somehow during her struggle, he found a job that was sympathetic to what he was going through, allowing him to start a few weeks after the funeral. Kelsey came out of her ‘rough’ period and tomorrow he was scheduled to drop her off at school. It was hard without Jo, but he was getting through. He crumpled up the old list and threw it out as he replaced it with the shopping list of things to buy for Kelsey’s dorm. Life wasn’t less hectic now, but given the alternative he experienced in those 5 months, he was happy to have a mile-long list.

“Ready to go, Dad?”, Kelsey said as she came bounding down the stairs. “The stores might be crazy busy today!”.

“Yep, I’m ready for anything”, Mark said in reply.

[SSDay]

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The Bookmarklet Combiner is Awesome – and So Are These Bookmarklets

A bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript code that is run by clicking on a bookmark on your browser’s toolbar. Lots of sites have them, and I use a bunch in my daily life. One thing that’s annoying is the requirement that each has it’s own bookmark on your toolbar – so after 3-4 bookmarks, you’re out of space! Thankfully there is a really cool tool named Bookmarklet Combiner which allows you to copy the javascript code from each of your bookmarklets into one “super” bookmarklet.

Here’s how it works. Load up the Bookmarklet Combiner and put in the Title and URL of each Bookmarklet you want to combine. You can get the Bookmarklet’s URL 1 of 2 ways.

  1. Open up your browser’s bookmark manager, locate the bookmarklet, and copy the code. It probably starts with ‘javascript:’
  2. I was able to drag the bookmarklet directly from the toolbar to the URL field in my browser (Chrome). It kept the “URL” text in the box, so you’ll want to remove that so that ‘javascript:’ is the first thing in the URL box.

Now add in all of your Bookmarklets and use the rest of the page to customize the combiner to your liking. Finally you’ll drag your new bookmarklet to the toolbar. Clicking on it should produce a full menu of bookmarklets you can then choose to run! Better yet, the Bookmarklet Combiner will give you a special link you can use to come back and edit your bookmark in the future!

So you say you’d love to combine some Bookmarklets but you don’t have many of them? Well here are the ones I use, they’re pretty awesome

There you go – a great collection to get you started!

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#13 Attention to Detail

He had a keen sense for details, and she hated that about him. As they walked along the beach, he might interrupt the sunset to comment on the missing screw in the “swim at own risk” sign. As they stood at the train station, he’d point out the open plastic weather flap over the bolt on the read out. And as they fought over how to deal with delicate issues, he was prone to correct her grammar, or her handwriting.

He hadn’t always been like this. Several years ago, right after their 4th anniversary, he had lost a job. He was fired after a long battle with a manager who disliked him, and while the reasons were never really known, in his mind the origin lie at a mistake he had made on a presentation, years before his termination. After his termination, he fell into a deep depression, and while therapy had helped him get back to a functional state, the obsessive need to attend to every little detail kept him from fully embracing his former life.

She had handled it gracefully for the first few years, she had even entertained him, by turning it into a bit of a game, to see who could out nitpick the other. But after a year she had to admit it wasn’t fun for her, and it didn’t seem much relief to him. Instead, it honed his skills. She tried ignoring the problem for awhile, and finally she lost all patience and held it in outright contempt. The man she loved taken prisoner by the obsession she loathed, and she knew that given a few more years, she would either leave or go insane.

It so happened that she went for a physical exam at his urging one spring, as he had become a preventative health nut, looking to check off a list of the optimal ways to keep oneself in shape. They found a tumor on her neck, no bigger than a walnut, and the decision was made to remove it. It was the easiest way to deal with the problem, and while the doctors were fairly certain it was benign, he insisted that they be sure.

It required her to stay in the hospital for one night, for observation, after the surgery. He vowed to keep watch, and she let him mostly so that she wouldn’t need to answer a thousand questions over the telephone regarding exactly how she was doing. He kept everything in line for her, organized her paper work, kept track of her personal belongings, and made sure she got everything she needed. At night, they attached her to some monitoring equipment, and he heard the subtle tone every five minutes, as a light flickered on at one of the indicators.

“Nurse, what does that mean”, he asked as she entered the room.

“Oh Mr. Smith, that light goes on when we haven’t hooked up a certain sensor. Your wife doesn’t need that sensor tonight, but without it the machine will emit a small tone and light up on that spot” she said as she gestured.

“Are you certain?”, he asked. She stared at him in amazement. She had been working there for 10 years, and had been using this particular piece of equipment for five. She knew it would do this, she knew why it was doing it, and she also knew he was of a nervous disposition. She reassured him, but was firm. “I’m certain it’s fine Mr. Smith, your wife will be OK”.

He sat there all night, watching her sleep, and watching the light. He had resolved himself to the fact that nothing he could do would make the nurses stop the beep and light – they were fine with it on, his wife didn’t find it disturbing, and the world wasn’t going to end with it’s presence. He would need to put it out of his mind.

At about 2 AM, the light turned off and the tone stopped. He thought “Perhaps it times out after 6 hours of inactivity”, but kept vigilant incase it would return. He was not surprised when it did, about 10 minutes later. But this time, it was different. The tone was more shrill, and the light was slightly to the left of it’s former position. He raced out of the room to the nurses station and told her.

“It’s fine Mr. Smith, that has to be the same light – there aren’t any others on that end of the machine”, she reported. He couldn’t accept that. He’d lived with one detail out of order for hours now, and another could not be tolerated. He began searching the hallways, interrogating every person he found with a badge about the machine, while periodically checking on his wife. Finally, after about 30 minutes, a doctor took pity on him, and went to her room with him to check.

“Mr. Smith, it’s just like they told you – look, the light is the same, and I can show you the page in the operators manual for this machine that explains why the light and tone persists”. The doctor was incredibly kind about the confusion, showed him the manual, and suggested he get some rest.

“You must have nodded off for a few minutes, and when you noticed the tone again, it seemed different due to your lack of sleep”, he said. Mr. Smith was tired, and in no capability to protest at this point. He stayed there the rest of the night, asleep in a chair.

The next morning, his wife woke him with a sharp command and stern look.

“I hear you had half the hospital going crazy last night about that silly light”, she barked. He meekly told her his side, but she would have none of it. “I know you mean well, but this is crazy. We need time apart. You can go home, I’m going to my mother’s” she said.

Weeks passed as he languished at their home. She seemed more and more distant, more sure of her decision to leave. She was the only thing holding him together, and without her, he knew that the obsession would own him, he would end up committed, and his life would be reduced to rubble.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. He looked out the window and saw her standing there, papers in hand. This was it, she had come to show him the end of their marriage on paper, he would not be able to convince her otherwise. One night he had let his obsession go too far, and now he would pay for it.

He opened the door but could not hold back his tears, as she walked in and asked him to sit.

“I need to show you this”, she said as she opened the large file. To his surprise, it was not filled with legal papers, but with medical X-ray images. He saw the walnut sized lump, and saw that the papers contained were a lab report.

“When they analyzed it, they found out it wasn’t benign”, she said. “In fact, it would have grown pretty quickly, and within a few months, been inoperable.”. He was shocked. His obsession with details had saved her. Maybe not that night in the hospital, but if it hadn’t been for the same motivations that haunted him that night, she wouldn’t be sitting in the house today.

“I think, with some help, I can learn to be there for you, like you’ve been there for me”, she said. She showed him the card of a psychologist that she had been seeing. “I don’t think I ever realized how much the obsessions you have were driven by a need to protect me, and us”, she whispered. They collapsed into each other’s arms on the couch, and for the first time in years, no detail seemed out of place.

[SSDay]

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#10 Staring Her Down

He sat on the edge of his seat, while she looked at him. They’d been together for so long, seen so many things together, and been through the good and the bad. It was hard to believe that she was the only constant in his life up till this point.

They’d met in highschool, and been together ever since. He was now in his late 20’s, and knew she would be leaving him soon. Don’t misunderstand: She wasn’t unhappy, there wasn’t another woman, and he wasn’t going to walk out. But it was the way life had dealt the hand. Her condition had been known from the start, they both knew that he would outlive her. Tonight they simply sat and watched each other, giving each other that knowing look. Whoever blinked first was largely forgotten by both parties the next day, however as the years passed by, the number of next days was uncertain.

“As soon as this is done, I’m going to make dinner”, he told her as he gestured toward the kitchen. She followed his gaze but said nothing. She was a professional at these staring matches. Her record had nearly 4 times more wins than losses. She only ‘stared’ with him, so those losses were all in his stats as well.

“You can’t watch me forever!”, he playfully told her. She still said nothing – concentrating as hard as she could. This was a battle, after all.

As they sat in the bedroom, him on the chair, her on the bed, they were surrounded by memories of their life together. The toys of youth, the casual messiness of their belongings that bothered neither him nor her, and of course, the bed that they shared. In the mornings, light would stream on to it, waking both of them up. Some mornings he would rise early while she stayed asleep. Other mornings she would be up, the veritable ball of energy, moving around the house, eating breakfast, watching the world outside. She worked in the home, and wished he could as well. They were perfect for each other, which is why the inevitable end was so hard to understand. Why would their creator put them together like this, and then yank them apart so soon.

“HA – you blinked!” he said with delight. He had won one, the first in a long time. They then both went toward the kitchen, ready for their dinner. For now, all was right in the world.

[SSDay]

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#8 Winning Big

Mary couldn’t believe her eyes. The numbers matched – all of them. And the special number in red – it matched too! A few hours later, it was confirmed. The lady from the lottery commission had accepted the ticket, done the paperwork, and scheduled the press conference. Tomorrow, Mary would go from a broke single mom to a multi-millionaire. After taxes, she would receive $4 million dollars (or so) a year for the next 25 years. Visions of what she could buy danced around her head.

But first, she had to tell Jamie. He was young, and probably wouldn’t understand all the commotion over the next few days as news came out. Mary had braced herself for the media and her family, but Jamie wouldn’t stand a chance if she couldn’t talk to him about it today.

“Honey, Mommy’s got something to tell you”, she began.

“ooo-k”, he replied as he set aside the toy truck.

“Mommy played a game last week, and she won some money in it”. As she spoke, she hoped he wouldn’t remember the previous times she’d played the same game with different results.

“Why?”, he said.

Jamie was firmly in the ‘why’ stage of his development. Like most children he longed to draw out conversations with “whys” until the adult, her most of the time, couldn’t take it any more. When they’d get frustrated and leave, he’d laugh. It was a game, but she couldn’t play just now – she had to tell him the news.

“We can’t start with this Jamie”, she said firmly, “this is serious – you know what it means when Mommy says ‘serious'”. He did indeed know what it meant – it was a word reserved for when he got in trouble. He paused for a moment and Mary felt that she might have a chance at having the conversation.

“Why?”, he said with a grin. She decided to just go with it.

“Because Mommy needs you to understand what’s going to happen now”, she started.

“Why?”, another impish grin.

“Because this is big news honey”, she said.

“Why?”, a small chuckle.

“You’ll want to hear this Jamie”, she said with a bit of exasperation, “do you understand?”

“Why?”, he replied. She couldn’t take it – this was too big to play games over.

“Because this is going to change your life, my life, and the life of a lot of people we know”

All he said in reply was exactly what she expected “Why?”. But for some reason, the question hit her.

Why would her life have to change? Why would her son’s have to change? Tomorrow the press conference was supposed to be her victory day, the day to show the world that she could become something out of nothing – that she was in some way better now. But all she was going to be was richer. And that worried her.

She’d recently watched a show about lottery winners losing everything, and as she looked into the eyes of her son, Jamie, she made a decision to call the financial planner at her bank. The lady promised to help Mary set everything up for the long term, keeping her and Jamie with enough money to live comfortably, splurge occasionally, and never have to work again. Mary could raise her son, travel to see her family, and own her own home. It was all falling into place.

Winning the lottery was supposed to change her life into one of dramatics, but why should it? If freedom was what she sought, shouldn’t that include freedom from pressure to spend? After all, the wisdom of Jamie was evident over a number of conversations she’d have with friends over the next few days.

“You should buy a new car!”
“You should buy a boat!”
“You should buy your entire family something nice!”
“You should buy a new house!”

“Why?”

[SSDay]

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