Insidious Adaptation

"The popularity resides in the clothes," a thought that drove my summer vacation. A fear that I would be seen for the inadequate self I truly identified as. The kids seeing me as this once-popular student, now nothing more than another, “poor” kid. I knew the truth, I knew that the clothes I wore were expensive, and yet, I HAD to have them. I was consumed by the inevitable situations I would land in, depictions of Tommy Hilfiger commercials running in my head as my cargo handle was grabbed by some girl in a midriff top, interested, giving me that which I could not establish within myself.  This is all in retrospect for in the moment, as I worked all summer long, babysitting and mowing lawns, to get the coveted check from my father to then go and budget appropriately, along with the minuscule amounts donated from mom, I could afford the clothes to match the persona of a “cool” kid. I missed the part where I was supposed to live and experience life, and instead I isolated...

Unfortunately, us as a species has this impulsive ability to react to an emotion, resulting in some of the most abhorrent things fathomable. One response to emotion can be as swift as taking another's life, when if that moment were allowed to pass, it might have not happened. This could be fueled with anger or rage; deeper driven by hurt and shame. These feelings we all have causing us to react to a situation are just that, feelings, and they do pass. Like the waves in the water or a fart in the wind, it might be intense, or in my case, nauseating, as my dog Benny likes to produce, but then it passes, gone. For both a person who commits a violent act, as well as the people's response to a violent act, our FEELS will soon pass, thus leaving in their wake: destruction, isolation, increased shame, increased anger, more fuel for resentment or some external act of change to justify the intense emotions. Unfortunately, last week, as in many cases before, there was an act of violenc...

Isolation manifests shame, validation increases safety.  How bad can it be, after all, I live in America, I am a white male with a degree and a job, technically, I am richer than most of the world. So then, what could I possibly have to complain about? Unfortunately, like a passive-aggressive remark from a parent reinforcing a competitive environment, some of the most subtle, excused things in life cause some of the biggest problems. No, not problems like lacking clean water, inadequate amounts of food, or having parents that don’t love, or abused me, but in their own way, the forming of the mind around problems too minimized to take note of can be invalidating. Invalidation seems to be the root cause of many life’s a folly. When you see a couple arguing, usually when you cut through the yelling, the little comments, you see that the invalidation, or discounting of each other’s feelings lies at the surface. This can extend to children who's parents didn’t acknowledge them o...

For something to make sense, the mind has to adapt it in its own way, interpret it in some absorbable form that makes sense. To think of a concept like water and ground above and sky below  for instance,  doesn’t make sense, however a manipulated, drugged, or altered state of conscious can start to question or alter what was once concrete rules of  consciousness, a very Inception -driven concept.   Just like depression and anxiety, the two most common mental health diagnosis, impact their hosts; like roots of a plant reaching out growing towards the source altering states in the process.   Suicide, to a non-accepting person, is ridiculous and against all understanding, for the most logical of thoughts says that by dying there can be no solution to the actual problem, you are side-stepping only to end all, the positives with it. The thought of killing someone else, in a rational state of mine, again, psychotic, or requiring extreme stress to ensue, but we ar...

Depictions of a life, long lived, like that of a man whom paints his picture; not like the pictures one would find in a hotel for those are too perfect, too temporary, too cliché in their color schemes, paint strokes done by machine, lacking uniqueness or flaws, mechanical, cold, hard; but the ones found in a crack house, the modern versions of Picasso for the authors of their domains are no longer with us and insignificant until death and some sycophant determines that these are the highest of arts for they represent death; conveyed as the painful representations they are in the way they are, here, for us all, an inevitable reminder that the world as we want it to be, unable to be, and therefore we are left to take what was given by those who lived, and their representation of death while living; now immortalized as simply, death.  (My Hemingway attempt)  The dad from This is Us, Moses from, well, The Bible, Leonidas from 300, Troy from the Legend, what do all of these...

What is it about the naked human body that we deem such a, "thing?" I believe there are people who try and pretend to make it less significant, determined to make all places nude, where a beach is no longer for serpents in the sea, where the grocery store’s banana and melon sections could be on the move, where the dinner’s napkins and bibs more crucial as the soufflé comes out as the sales of baked Alaskans decrease significantly. I believe that besides the novelty that these same people are pretending exists, they feel the most comfort clothed, and there is a shock factor involved, a sort of “look at me, I am free, unlike you clothed, ‘restrained’ people." However, the body is not necessarily the most comforted clothed. Why? The Bible is why. Genesis is why. Being naked from the dawn of the fallen man, an indicator of significance.  The latest fads could have been merely ways to shave the body’s hair, or a tattoo, for which if the latter went out of style, much li...

The cycle repeats, like a piston in a car engine commercial. A revolution-movement, pumping the metal on repeat, the intensity depending on the demand that must be met by the driver’s needs. I am not a mechanic, my crude understanding of engines is maxed out in this description, however I do know food and I somewhat understand behaviors, just enough to assist people in seeing their own patterns, intent on gaining an understanding and coping more efficiently the next time. No, I am not a doctor either, for that, to me, would be a waste. Rather, I am a person who has survived, for the time being, their own tumultuous patters of “disordered” eating. The quotes are necessary because the patters are no longer based on my opinions but rather clinical guidelines for which I meet.  This doesn’t matter though, for unlike the piston which is forced in and out, never deviating, I have a choice to interject, interfere with my path of trajectory, no longer succumbing to the same thing on r...