Poor ignored blog. I suppose, though, that this was intended to be a kind of discussion of my path, my Odyssey so to speak. I think I've tried too hard to avoid discussing anything personal, and so, as a defunct tool it might be worth ressurecting it as a tool for my own well being.
So in October my "primary health care professional" decided to put me on medical Cannabis rather than up my usual pain meds. Of course I've spent my entire life AVOIDING Cannabis, so this made it very difficult for me. What's worse is that this coincided with the 20th anniversary of my death. The fact that I've been having to do a lot of my own medical research has been very triggering for me.
The use of the material, although high in the supposedly pain related CBDs, has been a struggle. Not just finding the right delivery method (which has been tricky) but also finding the right WAY to use the stuff. It's not great, but if I get really stoned I can actually feel distance from the physical pain.
But then it unlocks a lot of emotional pain.
I have no idea how to even articulate the overwhelming sense of loss, anger, frustration, ect... which forcefully bubbles up when I use the Cannabis. There's over 20 years of repression, loss, and personal damage that just has no way to ground. I feel as though doing anything WITH it would be to poison whatever or wherever it goes. There's been a lot of sobbing.
A big part of this feeling is the sense of loss. I feel as though the last 20 years has been utterly stolen from me. From 25 to 45 should have been some of the best years of my life, and they haven't been. That's not to say that some of them weren't pretty good, but I so seldom have my pain in proper control (especially now with a squeamish healthcare practitioner) that I just try to get through each day. I've spent most of these years simply existing, and not actually living. When I look back, I miss my youth and good looks, and feel that they were literally stolen from me. In fact, it's as though my life was irrevocably broken in 1997 because of what those doctors did back then.
It's like, my life went off the rails when my step-father hit me in, what, 1991, and it's never been back on track since. That was the event that made me end up with my first wife, who would have made a better friend than otherwise, but she was pursuing, and I was alone in the world with nowhere to go. I love the boys, but I think we would have had a better relationship if I hadn't been their step-father, but rather a friend of the family. Or something.
Then dead at age 25, evacuated to a northern community, and the subsequent shit and abuse and just horrors that I've been through since.
I'm so afraid of burning out the one light I have in my life. She's pretty much everything to me, which is patently unfair to her. And yet, no matter how many times I've tried to build a broader network up here, it never works out. I have different views on life, I have different interests, I'm a very different person from the norm up here, and I generally lack inspiration. I'm lonely and I don't see it getting much better any time soon. Those with whom I do click are, of course, all too ready and willing to get the hell out of this town and to go somewhere civilized. It hurts to see them go, but at the same time, I cannot blame them.
Most people who live here are from here. They have common experiences growing up that I don't. It's very hard to fit in to a foreign place.
But it was after a severe panic attack while I was up at the hospital for X-rays on my degenerating hips that I realized there are depths to trauma that the Occultist cannot necessarily work through on their own. The entire system is built on psychodrama, subconscious programming, and meta analysis, which are fantastic tools, but even the most talented surgeon relies on radiologists and medical doctors to feed them good information. Making the best incision is pointless if you don't know where to cut.
It's become very clear to me that I don't know where to cut, at least when it comes to working through my own trauma. It's becoming something I cannot ignore because I expect to have a number of surgeries over the next five to ten years, and having the very hospital itself as a trauma trigger is not conducive to successful surgical treatment.
So I decided to go looking for help.
Our Mental Health Care System is worse than our Medical Health Care System. Nowhere else is the two-tier system more clearly defined than in the cases where one needs therapy. Perhaps part of it is that I never seem to have normal problems. A dubious way in which to be "special."
That is not to say that advances have not been made. If I'd been sexually assaulted as a child, there are now supports for men as well as women, something that didn't exist before. If I was struggling with work and employment, there are groups where men can talk about, whatever it is... I assume it has much to do with the way society has programmed us to equate our self-worth with our careers.
If I were an addict, there's help. If I had a mental illness and was in trouble with the law, there's advocacy. There are many, many programs available, and I don't feel in any way slighted by them as I see the necessity for those programs on a social level. But when we get right down to it... I seem to fall between the supports finding the cracks where nobody is waiting to help. I'm getting a little tired of hearing sympathetic people tell me that, although they see that I need help, they're not the ones qualified to help me, maybe I can try x or y service.
For Simple PTSD, there is apparently nothing. I have an appointment with someone who deals with Complex PTSD, and since my Simple PTSD is not unrelated there might be some help there. At the very least I hope I can root out and burn some of the bad programming that resulted from my first marriage. I absolutely know that this must be done, but after the panic attack at the hospital, I really feel as though the Iatrogenic PTSD needs to be a priority. I have 2 weeks before I need to go back up to get needles in my hips, and who knows how long before I actually have to go for full replacement surgery.
I feel it is a testament to the Occult training that I've not turned into a bitter asshole over any of this. Pain and trauma often erode the personality leaving people acting more like wounded animals than representing the better angels of their nature. Equally, it has allowed me to identify clues as to my own mental state. Getting angry about the Medical Cannabis was a good signal that something was wrong, and from there I made the connection to the Anniversary Date. The panic at the hospital was a surprise, but I can see it from a larger perspective. I'm also very aware of the anxiety I feel any time I encounter men on this journey. I honestly don't know how honest I can be with a male counsellor/therapist. My experience is that they tend to be competitive and judgemental and I instantly feel defensive. At the very least, the process of navigating the system is pointing out mile markers on the roadmap of the Shadow.
In Western Occultism we build something called the Magical Personality, a separate "self" which is used during the Work of magic, meditation, ritual, etc... This personality is supposed to be free of the random baggage which is attached to our primary personality which is formed at the whims of external forces. It's the difference between a cultivated formal Bonsai tree and one that's grown on a windswept hill.
One has to be careful not to corrupt the magical personality, so it cannot be used, say, for undergoing a medical procedure. On the other hand, if one is in an hospital waiting room and they take out a mala in order to practice ZaZen, well that's a perfectly normal use of that secondary personality. The Magical Personality tends to be "detached from results" and focuses on the work at hand. Perhaps one could call it a fine line between Mindfulness and Mindlessness.