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The Middle Way

~ A journey between extremes

The Middle Way

Category Archives: Mental Health

One Hand

10 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Buddhism, Compassion, Conspiracies, Corruption, Dingleberries, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, First Amendment, Human, Indivisible, Love, Mental Health, Open mind, Pain, Patriotism, Politics, Prayer, Revolution, Sameness, Terrorism

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Like a lot of people, I have been looking at a lot of heartbreaking videos. I just don’t understand that much hate. I really don’t.

I can understand a verbal explanation of it, sure. But I can’t wrap my heart around what it takes to twist your soul into so many knots that the only explanations you will accept anymore are based on the idea that everything around you is really a deception. A place where secret societies pull all the strings, and where everyone wants to make everything about you and your life irrelevant. A place where the hope you have is that if we can somehow just eliminate all of the physical differences we find objectionable in people, then we can some sort of Super Utopian Alpha society.

But that kind of hate doesn’t just go away once it gets what it wants. Things would just end up playing out like all of the nasty parts of American history, but in reverse and way worse. Once they got rid of the first (and darkest) layer of people, you know they would suddenly discover some other social group to degrade. Bullies just look for new victims. And then who knows… But, left-handed people may want to quietly remain on notice.

Personally, I could not, and do not want to live in a world like that. And like a lot of people, there doesn’t feel like much we can do right now. We voted already. And we can’t fight this with violence. That’s exactly what they want. But there is one thing we can do. And they’ll never see it coming.

The next time we see someone that you really don’t like right now, say something nice to them. Something that reminds them know that we are all still neighbors. Do it for no other reason than that it is in forgiving that we are forgiven.

Rome falls

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, First Amendment, Hate, Indivisible, Mental Health, Moscow Mitch, News, Patriotism, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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You know, even an idiot like me could see that this was coming from miles away. The idea no one saw this coming is just wrong. Those who didn’t see it coming were either not paying even a little bit of attention, were whistling past the graveyard, or they were quietly hoping.

This was predictable, and it’s not over. Donald Trump has always been willing to do whatever it takes to stay out of prison.

He has just over 14 days left in power. He needs to be removed as soon as possible.

Julio Cortez/AP

haiku without the mask

05 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Conspiracies, Death, Dingleberries, Ego, Grief, Healthcare, Human, Mental Health, Revolution, Sameness, Terrorism

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the others don’t count
Death likes to play with its food
low and slow for fun

like your life depended on it

26 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Migraines, Poetry, Writing

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each word draws the poison
suffering and anger leach
angst and puffed the same
the way I rid yourself from me

ink lathered in blood on page
tear-soaked paper scraps
shriveled napkins tinged with rye
a collective act to ward off life

haikus of blotting all else

13 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Pain, Poetry, Uncategorized

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Skull full of daggers,
shooting ache of burning. And
pain causes migraines —

enemy within
nails and scrape to outside out
blind shot of deaf thought

Strobe Vision

20 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Healthcare, Mental Health, Migraines, Open mind, Psychedelics, Quantum

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This particular migraine has been going for a couple of days now. The other night I walked into a dark room and for the first time during a migraine, I experienced what we used to call “strobe vision” back in the neighborhood. Strobe vision is just like it sounds. There’s just this flashing light on the outskirts of your vision all the time. It’s just there pulsing out in your periphery, just enough to mess with you. And in complete darkness, it’s quite the light show. Back in the day, we used to get it when we dropped acid, or ate some other psychedelic. It was a common enough experience that we even gave it its own name. That tells you something, I guess.

So, with everything I’m reading these days about migraines and alternative treatments, it has me wondering what areas of my brain these little electrical storms called ‘migraines’ are screwing with. And it sure makes me wonder even more than usual about psychedelics.

Making Flippy Floppy

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Brain Droppings, Depression, Healthcare, Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Migraines, Recovery, Uncategorized

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Today I woke up with an even worse migraine than I went to sleep with. This one has a roller coaster attached to it. It has been it hijacking my vestibular system and turning them into a rocking horse with afterburners. On it, it will ride a glorious steed to Valhalla on.

Days like today make me consider every little factor just to decide if so should take the day off sick, or should I force myself to power through it. I have found that, depending on how freely I can treat the symptoms dictates how well I can function. Since there isn’t a “cure”, I’m really left either treating symptoms, or working on prevention.

Prevention is out the window once the storm hits (outside of taking note of any factors that may help you avoid migraines in the future), now it becomes triage time. It’s pretty much always triage time when one hits. Right now is one of those. Enough for now…

So, what’s been up?

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Brain Droppings, Cannabis, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Grief, Growth, Human, Love, Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Middle Way, Migraines, Open mind, Pain, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Writing

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This used to be a cohesive blog to some extent, until a few years ago. A few years ago I started to get migraines.

Actually, based on what I now know about migraines, I guess I’ve had them for most of my life. So the fact that I say it the way that I do means they got pretty bad. Bad enough to have screwed with every part of my life, in one way or another.

I always loved writing, but as the migraines got worse, the ability to string two thoughts together has gotten more difficult. Add to that the fact that most of it is written on a tiny little phone screen, and I fat-finger things when I trying to ride an epiphany and get the words out as fast as they roll through.

Then there was this thing I learned about that can go with migraines, called aphasia. I can ‘see’ exactly what it is that I want to say, but its word isn’t with it anymore. When I am writing and it happens, I give up. In daily life, I just come out with weird shit, like referring to a cutting board as ‘the under-the-knife block’. I get frustrated because I want the writing to be good. I’m starting to not care about that as much as i used to. Fuck it. If my typos bug you, there plenty of other blogs you can visit.

I’ve written a lot, but I think I deleted even more.

Poetry has helped me though. Because I don’t have to string thoughts. I have to evoke images and feelings, and tie them together in some sort of dance. And so, that’s been the majority of what I’ve been writing.

Many times I have tried to write about what I had been going through, only to delete it the next day when everything seemed to change again. If you know someone suffering migraines, you know what that means.

Much of it is related to chronic pain, and so a great deal of this involves dealing with that, when I wasn’t in migraine. And often with both at the same time. Although migraines tend to take over the show. Back pain is kind of like a guy who follows you everywhere playing a harmonica. He would be obnoxious and drive you crazy, right? But imagine if he were to then follow you into a Lou Reed concert or something. If you were even able to hear him, even then he would at best be mildly irritating. Migraines are like that. They’re so loud, they drown everything else out around them.

And with pain, comes pain management. And with pain management comes medicines. And I am in recovery. And it’s at that point that Pandora’s Box comes apart at the seams, as the scotch tape repairs let go again.

That’s been the juggle lately, anyway. Or at least it’s a good jumping off point for a few things.

Do Not Touch

17 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Coronavirus, Emotional Intelligence, Healthcare, Mental Health

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Someone needs to do a study to figure out if OCD people are less susceptible to COVID-19, just by virtue of all of the ways we’ve learned to interact with the physical world while avoiding touching it at the same time.

Painting himself into a corner, in an oval room

02 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Conspiracies, Corruption, Fear, First Amendment, Indivisible, Mental Health, Moscow Mitch, News, Patriotism, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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So, the only organization that has called winners and losers in a U.S. Presidential elections on election night have been news organizations. They make predictions based on the percentage of counted votes that the States themselves make public. But suddenly this president is demanding that “we accept the call that’s made on TV the night of the election.”

Okay, so ignoring the fact that anyone who voted 20 years ago knows that’s not true. And ignoring the idea that most people prior to the mid-20th century must have just stared at the blank spot on the wall where their future TV would go, and waited for some answers from it. And ignoring the fact that the only reason he is president right now is because of the electoral college, which does not vote for at least a few more weeks (you’d think he’d want to wait around for that one, right? [*cough* *cough* 3 million votes *cough* *cough*])…

Putting all of that aside, you’ve got to wonder why the guy who has been doing his best to delegitimize “the fake news media”, suddenly wants to hang all of his hopes on what they have to say tomorrow night.

Editorial comment: Somehow a very important few words disappeared from the first sentence when I first published this. The first sentence has been changed to reflect that I meant ‘on election night’.

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