Energy

Night Terrors

I have a few friends who are going through some rough times right now. Without telling you who they are or giving too much information about their situation I want to tell you about them.

One of my friends is an addict. He is addicted to alcohol. He had been sober for a long while and then he relapsed, and then got sober again and then relapsed again. He is in a relapse phase right now. The thing about him is I know he feels horrible about the situation. He feels guilty that he can't stop and sad that this is his battle, his situation if you will. He has gone to the meetings, he has been to rehab, he has talked to people about how he feels about things. But he keeps going back to drinking. It has now jeopardised his job to some extent. He has not been there for the past  few days. I have tried to be a supportive friend and listen and talk to him about what is going on, tried to be open and understanding and caring. He has a good heart and I know he just wants to not feel so hopeless. But, he is hopeless. He feels like he has nothing to live for, nobody to really care for besides his family and not any real passions to get him through the day.

I get that. When you go to a job you don't really feel is all that great, go home and just watch tv all weekend, don't really want to socialize or go out much and have no goals or plans for the future... what is there to have hope in? Why do we go on forward from day to day if there is no hope for something better tomorrow? What can we do to help those who feel no hope? I have had multiple conversations with him about wanting to help him and support him but being unable to do anything if he is unable to care enough to want help or try to get better and heal. There is so much pain and suffering all around us. Sometimes I just wish there was a way to take the pain away. I wish there was some magic tool that would heal our emotional struggles and lift up our spirits for the future. I often ask myself when I myself am in a bout of deep depression - How do I get from this dark place into the light? How was I ever happy? Will I ever be happy again? And somehow I rise out of the darkness back to knowing who I am and what I want. But, that is because I have hope. Do we all have hope somewhere buried that we just forget about? Or do some of us truly lose it and it is lost forever?

I recently learned of a friend of a friends' death. This was someone I had not physically met but felt I knew to some extent through my friend. And of course through facebook, we were facebook friends after all. He was a man who struggled with addiction. He died of an apparent overdose. This death came in the middle of knowing that my friend who struggles with addiction had relapsed again. And the reality of the dangers of what he was doing to himself brought tears for my facebook friend and my friend who had relapsed. Sometimes I feel like people see death as the easy way out. That this life is too hard to keep up the struggle. I know this life is hard. I have dealt with some heavy struggles of my own. I try to keep in the light and stay positive that the path I travel is where I need to be and that  I am learning what I need to learn. I feel like the difference between me and them is that I have this belief that if I die tomorrow I will be back to relearn all the stuff I didn't learn this time around. Yes, I am speaking of reincarnation. Which, is a totally different discussion. But, I do think that people that have some sort of belief of there being something after death instead of nothing would choose to live rather than to die. Not that dieing isn't incredibly scary for most. But, it is a door that some choose to take when this life has lost it's hope.

Onto the night terrors.

I don't have night terrors. I'm not gonna say I never have dreams that frighten me but I don't think they can qualify as night terrors. Today I had a friend tell me he has night terrors. You just don't realize what people are going through until you stop and really listen. So, my friend was in the military. He was a soldier and had some pretty rough experiences over there. He did things he really regrets and it has been causing night terrors. I can't imagine being given something like a gun to help protect other people and then having to use it on someone when you really should not have. War scares the hell out of me. It frightens me that we put people through that hell. That people choose to go over there and fight for something and then to come back a mess, with night terrors. For the love of all that is good I wish we as humans did not fight. That we didn't choose killing each other as a way to decide who can have land or who can be "right". Damn us. But, this is our reality. Who am I to say that peace is better? Oh, wait... why would I not say peace is better? The truth at the end of the day is that there are so many different types of people out there that we are never all going to agree. But what I would want to see is us fighting with our minds not our lives. What is that really accomplishing but hurting the people that the people in charge are using to fight these battles? I hate to see anyone in pain. Any kind of pain and I just want to take it all away. And I have done that for a lot of people over the years without actually realizing it. Once, again that is another story.

In the end I just want to convey to all the people that are struggling that there is hope. There is light. There is love. There are people who care and think you are worth being here, being alive, being whole and happy. This life may seem so difficult today and so full of pain and suffering (and it is) but that doesn't mean there aren't a million other reasons to be alive, to be strong to move through the pain and come out a stronger person on the other side. Please love your fellow human beings. They need all the love you can give. <3 nbsp="" p="">

We all are a bit different...

I am about to apply for a job I am good at. I kinda like it too. I mean, it's interesting and challenging and I am good at it. (wait, I just said that)  I like a challenge. I like logic puzzles and helping people figure out how to get from here to there. I like helping people. (oh, I just repeated myself, again) And while on the outside I try to exude patience and understanding there are times when my patience is tried, my understanding lost and I want to just roll my eyes and give up. Ok, so maybe I really want to shake the person and be like "Have you not learned anything from the past 6 weeks of training!?" But, really... I feel some sense of gratification that I have knowledge that I can impart on people and that people are grateful for what I can give. But at the end of the day I am exhausted and just ready to go to bed. Where does time go anymore?

The thing is that there are these two very different sides of me. I have this part of me that wants to create aesthetically pleasing things that make people happy to use. I want to create art and I want people to appreciate the art that I create. And then there is this very logical and rule following (In fact I have been called a rule nazi) part of me that just wants someone to tell me what to do and I do it, I will do it well too. This rule following part of me has always been at battle with the part of me that wants to be in charge. Because, I honestly don't like people telling me to do things that are anything but logical. So, what's a rule following, anti-authority girl supposed to do? Apply to be the boss! Or start my own business. So, today I am choosing both. Even though I know in the end one will prevail over the other. In my heart of hearts I am hoping my business will explode into something else and I will not have to have a boss over me anymore. But, for now if I can get some more authority and some more money along with that (ideal) I would be able to put more money towards my dreams and goals. Because dreams don't have an expiration date.