Not nuts enough

Well, that does it. I was officially rejected for psychiatric help at the Freedom Trail Mentla Health Clinic. i was found to be not nuts enough for thier pity, charity, or help. I felt kind of sad really, all those years suffering in silence out of fear of having control over my treatment wrested from me from these very institutions, but now, having found recovery and wanting to talk about what to make of the experience I am turned away.

I see the homeless talking to themselves, bedraggled men with grey ropes of greasy hair bent over like oil pumps talking non-sense into thier beards. I see the men sleeping on the train, drollong nad waking ot shouting horrors. I see the woman stumbling in this hallway with cuts on her wrists and followed by the patronizingly calm voices of nurses and I know them for my family. I feel a kinship there, although thier worlds and thier holes are deeper than mine ever were. But there is a borhterhood, a compraderie in those of us who have known our bodies to be traitors at a young age. Breaking down in old age is expected, tolerated, even planned for, but youth? This was to be the trade off, healthy viverant twenties for a slow decline to the bed. And I see those people, with cnacer, with mental illness, paralyized, broken and spent, and I wonder if we related.

I still want to talk to someone. Like an obese person who has shed the walking coffin of fat slowly over the years, I am a little bit lost now that I am reaching my goal. Lost. Thats how it feels. I have all these dramas, and these rules, and these patterns, behaviors, cares, disciplines and now they are all becoming like baggage, heavy and redundant.

Of course there are still rough days. Yesterday was a rough day. A day where I am tired and dragging and it feels like sand is running in my viens. Sometimes the pain gets so bad that there is naseau and I float on top of it trying to distribute my weight. I did not sleep last night. my heart was banging like a timpani. I reluctantly saw the sun come up. It was not welcome, but the world keeps revolving.

I went to my little Zen group tonight. Boundless way Zen. I dont know what I am looking for there, but sometimes I find it anyway. There is a prayer we tell, which always takes my breath away:

I am of the nature to grow old
there is no escape from growing old
I am of the nature to have ill health,
there is no way to escape having ill health
I am of the nature to die,
There is no way to escape death
all that is dear to me and everyone I love
are of the nature to change
there is no way to escape being seperated from them
my deeds are my closest companions
I am the beneficiary of my own deeds
why deeds are the ground on which I stand.

Tonight we talked about taking responsibility for your mind. It is a subtle concept. Feelings, reactions, bitterness, regret, anger, dissapointment, we are not victims of these things. They are part of us. They are our reactions to circumstances. We can be alchemists, at our best, turning the hot coals of anger, anger even at being sick, into gold, or better yet, laughter. I dont do this every day, but I am sitting with it. I take solace in the fact that I was, for the most part, a good man while I was sick. While I feel that I have fallen short of my hope to do good acts in this world, and leave it better than I found it, I acknowledged adn respected that hurt inside without letting it become angry action. So there is that. A karmic null I should think. A push. but I am not done yet. I still have time to play.