I’ve Got The Power…Or Do I…?
Anyone can make changes; no one can work miracles.
Before I dive in, I’d like to express my thanks to Jess the Avocado for putting me on to this writing prompt by Sadie Seroxcat over at Counter Arts.
I read very few people here on Medium, not because I don’t find many of the subjects on offer worth reading, but because I’ve a history of getting overwhelmed by too much information. As such, I’ve learned ever the years the value of limiting the scope of input in order to take care of my own mind. This came about as a result of suffering severe depression in the use of social media actively almost ten years ago; the depression likely stemming from the fact that I kept looking for validation from outside of myself and was never able to get what I felt I needed.
So I limit myself to writers with a favorable utility in line with my interests, which is mainly Art at the moment, with a helping of the absurdity of human nature where it concerns religion and abuses of power. I was fortunate to discover Jess because not only is she actively interested in Art as well, she also does double duty dipping into the world of psychology, another area of human interest toward which I have found myself drawn over the years.
When I read her response to the aforementioned prompt, it resonated loudly with me, her thoughts on the current state of psychiatric practice and how the industry places a heavy burden on the patient to affect change, perhaps undeservedly. This is not a new phenomenon by any means. Structured social hierarchies have expected a lot of people at the bottom for ages. History shows that those who attain power usually attempt to hang on to it as tightly as they can, generally at the expense of the poorer masses.
In our present state here in the U.S. poor people are getting squeezed unjustly thanks to inflation, by the rise of food prices and other goods and services. What makes it unjust is that inflation is not a constant but the level to which prices have risen will not go back to where they were before inflation surged, and people will be stuck paying higher prices then before regardless of where inflation goes in the future.
It’s also familiar to me because some years ago I read a book by Barbara Ehrenreich called Bright-Sided, wherein she spoke about, among other things, the downside of breast cancer treatment for women; specifically about how women who don’t get better from treatment are shamed for not having the right attitude, as if cancer really cares about your level of positive thinking. Thoughts don’t change reality, nor do wishes and silent prayers. If they did, I’d have been a center fielder for a professional baseball club right out of high school.
Reality exists independent of our mental constructs and doesn’t bow to our wishes. If such were the case, there would have been a lot of people wiped from existence thanks to the personal turbulence I’ve experienced these last 25+ years, dealing with the social marginalization which comes from chronic mental illness, likely religious trauma syndrome and an irregular sleep cycle.
That’s not to say that perception of reality isn’t important in the quest to heal from mental illness; it absolutely is, but I’ve also come to realize that having a grounded perspective, in addition to a proactive approach to wellness, is just as vital. It helps us to understand where, when and how we have the power to act for change in furtherance of our mental health goals. I know it’s helped me to recognize that some people don’t get better and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up for a miracle to occur, but be content with any improvements which come as a better thing.
Jess, for her part, speaks of her personal issues in relation to work, asking if it’s not completely irrational to have an aversion to work. It’s not an unreasonable question to ask by any means. Many people of low economic status in the U.S. at the moment are questioning just why they should continue to prop up an economic system from which they will never get any tangible reward, hence why we have terms like ‘quiet quitting’ filling up the sociological zeitgeist, why there is a renewed push for unions in the service industry, and why the local fried chicken take-aways nearest my house are only serving through the drive-up window because they can’t find enough people willing to work for substandard wages and no benefits.
Like Jess, I have written recently about some of my own mental health struggles. For the most part, I feel pretty hopeless in that regard. I don’t respond well to medications and am nearing the end of my list of viable options with regard to the same. If the ketamine treatment I’m due to initiate at clinic tomorrow doesn’t pan out, the only real chances I have left are TMS and Vagus Nerve Stimulation. I would consider ECT but I haven’t the support network for that. I don’t trust the people in my family when it comes to the associated memory loss ECT patients endure. We’re a highly dysfunctional lot, sufficed to say.
What’s more, I have a whole catalog of complexes and biological disorders interfering with my efforts at effecting proactive strategies toward wellness. Not only do I feel like I’m dragging most of the time, mentally and physically, I’m actively treating the previously mentioned free-running sleep disorder with an ‘orphan drug’ which costs thousands of dollars for one month of pills (thank Odin for the welfare state). For those who don’t know, a free-running sleep disorder is one where the internal body clock insists that the day is longer than the standard 24-hour solar clock. It’s seen mainly in people with a sight impairment who can’t respond properly to light cues, but a smaller group of people with no sight impairment, such as myself, are known to medical science.
And the medication I’m on does help in that regard, but in order for the medicine to work, I have to stop eating by 1800 hours, so that I can take the medicine on an empty stomach by 2000 hours. The expectation going in is that I’m suppose to fall asleep within an hour after taking the pill but that is rarely the case. In most cases, I can’t fall asleep until around 0100, maybe midnight if I’m lucky. And I have to do it this way EVERY day, for the rest of my natural life, if I want to maintain the slightly more stable sleep patterns which have emerged. At the moment, that can mean I wake anywhere from 0900 to 1230, leaving a very narrow window to live anything resembling a normal life if the treatment pattern is to be maintained.
What’s important herein is that I do have a somewhat more stable sleep pattern within which I can live a slightly more normal existence. I recognize that specific improvement in my condition and can plan my activities farther out, more so than before. It used to be that I would have to schedule appointments and then wait until the week before to see if I could make them or would have to reschedule. Now it’s a near-certainty that I will have afternoons free, so I can say with some confidence that I will be available six months out at 1400 hours if I need a follow-up for some reason. So I’ve managed to find a certain power to control parts of my life now that the stress of temporal unpredictability is lessened.
Of course, being able to work is still a problem and, as such, managing a healthy diet on a tight budget isn’t easy. I do get a more healthy diet thanks to a fresh produce coupon program available in my area, so that’s a plus, but it’s still not perfect. In order to enjoy a diet that is completely healthy in all the ways I need, I would have to forego eating every third or forth day, perhaps even every second day depending on current food prices. I certainly don’t have the power to change the economics of the food supply chain where I live, but I do have the power to effect small changes with regard to my own eating habits.
For one, I’m somewhat fortunate to be a bus person at the moment. When I still had a vehicle at my disposal, I would have no problem running wherever I needed if a craving arose, say for a Whopper or an ice cream sundae. Can’t do that on a bus now because the buses don’t run at night, and it’s not very practical to take a bus out for a fast food craving alone. Hence, it’s more practical to bring home a greater variety of healthy options on shopping days and process them at home for use in a better diet over a longer term.
In that respect, I’ve taken to using mason jars to store chopped produce for use in other applications, like soups and salads or rice dishes or boxed macaroni and cheese. I’ve also taken to buying 4-meat freezer pizzas on-sale and then adding capsicum, mushroom, onion and green/black olives from the jars. It’s a significant savings from the conventional pizza route of ordering in. The use of mason jars is also good for storing fresh berries of one kind or another for use on cold cereal in the morning. I know boxed cereal isn’t the healthiest option but it’s the option which appeals most to me, and I always have it with whole milk because flavor is just as important to a satisfying diet as is nutritional value. So I pick my battles.
In that respect, I’ve stopped eating bread for the most part because the added sodium isn’t good for my borderline cardiac and renal issues. And bread isn’t really the best from an environmental standpoint either. I’ve also taken to cutting out potatoes, apart from the occasional basket of fries at my favorite cinema. Instead, I replace mashed potato, for instance, with a sweet potato and parsnip mash which has a better flavor profile and doesn’t require the same additions of salt and butter as would be needed with white potato varieties.
I’ve also taken it upon myself to not waste as much when it comes to produce proper. As I’ve written elsewhere, I’ve begun using the white rind from watermelon in recipes as an added source of fiber and nutrients. I also try and use as much of a plant as possible, as in not peeling carrots or not throwing away celery scraps, but using them later for soups and stews. I’ve also taken to saving bone scraps from when I eat pork or chicken so that I can make bone broth on occasion.
As far as it concerns the environmental side of life, using mason jars goes a long way toward lessening my plastics impact on the planet. I’ve also taken to using plant-based storage bags, like the Matter brand, in addition to the use of jars. I know that plant-based plastics are still having an impact on the environment but it’s the lesser of two evils having a Matter sandwich bag deteriorate in less than a year as opposed to a conventional plastic bag staying in the environment for years on end. It’s not a perfect solution, but…again…pick your battles.
In this regard, I’ve given up waiting for legislative solutions to emerge to the problems of climate change before us. Instead, I’ve tried to focus on finding ways and means consumers can rely upon to effect a lesser environmental burden. We’re still in the early stages of that movement but I’ve come across some interesting ideas in my every-day meandering through the daily news chaos, some of which I’ve written about in the past.
In the end, there are a lot of things I can’t control, but what keeps me alive is knowing that if I find something good I need to pass on, I have the power to do that. If I happen across some absurdity in the human condition, as happened recently with a select group of migrants on the part of some regressive minds in the GOP, I have the power to rage and point out the inhumanity of it all. If I happen to be confronted by a conundrum of the human condition, as is constant given my medical issues, I have the power of reason and rational inquiry available to facilitate answers or work-arounds to my issues, so that I’m not swindled by some snake-oil goop salesman or unscrupulous prayer merchant who purports to have the answers to my problems, for a hefty fee anyway.
So, to answer the question Jess posed — Do you need to change yourself — I say yes, but only in so much as the change proposed is reasonable with regard to your circumstances. In the grand scheme of things, we’re largely insignificant and have very little control over most things in life. I certainly have no control over the volume of oxygen my lungs absorb, nor do I have a say in how effectively my collective gut flora processes the food I ingest, nor can I easily alter on my own the atrophied structures in my brain which are at the heart of my mental health issues.
What I do have the power to do is increase my knowledge base and my understanding of reality so that if an opportunity for change emerges, I can give it a fair run for its money. I may not have a lot of hope for a better life, but I have a rational, objective understanding that I’ll have a better chance going forward if I stay grounded in reality by cultivating the best data-set I can with my abilities, picking the battles I have a fair chance of winning given my circumstances, and doing what I can add some sense of equity to this ever-changing, unjust world, no matter how small. Even if I only make a minor impact on the life of another with my efforts, it will be a contribution none the less and my life will have meant something in the end, if not to me then certainly to that someone else.
Adieu Mes Amies.
If you would like to read more of my varied works from the last year and a half, check out my catalog of writings here.
