Collapse - Up Close and Personal

WARNING! My thoughts are of such a dark nature these days that I have been hesitant to share them. I thought about starting another blog where I would be more anonymous. I don't want to concern or hurt anyone in any way. But for my own sanity, I want to share openly about the things I perceive. If you think the subject matter might bother you, please do not read further.

It becomes more and more difficult for me to function within society. I overestimated my readiness to return to the workforce and took on 3 new jobs in one week. It was a costly overestimation. I'm now down to one job 35 hrs/wk and having difficulty maintaining it. I've only heard one description for the type of anxiety I'm experiencing - PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Last Thursday, 3 hours into my shift, I had a major panic attack followed by an emotional meltdown from which I'm still reeling. I could not regain my equilibrium that day and had to leave work early.

The first thing to be affected by an attack is my breath. Suddenly the air will not move beyond the top of my chest and the more I try to force it, the worse it gets. The panic rises with each shallow breath, I feel the sweat break out on my face, noises become unbearable: the ding of the cash register, the jolt of static from the radios, the hard light, the hard people. Sights and sounds begin to merge until nothing feels solid anymore. Reality is a full-steam ahead freight train headed straight your way. Logical thinking disappears and pure instinct is all that remains. My language and actions are hard to control and the only option that seems practical is to GET THE HELL OUT!! As soon as possible!!

The job is a cashier position at a local home and ranch store. The rate of pay is a new low for me, but I like the store and it's grand central for gardeners in the area. This was my 2nd meltdown in the three weeks since I started, but the first happened at the end of a shift and I was able to regain my footing, however tenuous, until Thursday. For the following 18 hours I just cried, a lot.

I've spoken with my parents, always loving and supportive, and my mental health therapist with whom I have an appointment on Monday. I also spoke with my manager at the store and he wants me back next week. Sometimes kindness makes me cry more for awhile although I've learned to be leery of it as well. It often comes with a high price-tag, although I don't sense an underlying agenda here. That's one skill I've been steadily improving.

When the oil disaster in the gulf began, everything I've leanred over the past few months became more ominous. I think it's impossible to become really aware of the state of the earth and her inhabitants and not be affected by it. Media news would be laughable if it weren't so sad, and bad I might add.

Did you know that GM and an american electric conglomorate are buying large swaths of Brazilian rainforest?
They say they're acquiring "carbon credits", business as usual only they seem to know the commodoties are going to be oxygen, clean water and farmable land. Big Auto, Big Oil and the government show no signs of remorse or responsibility. If you still think anyone whoever ends up in the White House is not a puppet already, I feel sorry for you. I had high hopes for Obama. Now I have none.

Did you know that Henry Ford gave his wife the electric car he designed because it was so much cleaner, more efficient and easier to maintain?

There is one thing I don't think the big guys are counting on: not only is it not nice to fool Mother Nature, it's impossible. We are part of Mother Nature and when we abuse her we abuse ourselves. If she dies, we die. Even if they counted on disastrous climate change, they must realize it's a total toss of the dice who will make it and who won't. All the carbon credits in the world won't save them from our fate.

Despite working through a lot of my own denial about civilization's collapse, and even more importantly, the extent to which we as a nation are complicit, I was still shocked to see BP officials and the Coast Guard working together to cover-up what's happening with the "spill". I wonder who asked the locals if they thought it was a good idea to pour toxic dispersants over an already over-heated Gulf of Mexico. Might as well call it the Gulf of Texaco now. Trust me, the gulf is not a "big ocean" as that asshole from BP would have you believe.

As the earth warms and warms, my blood runs cold and I despair. I can't tell if the PTSD is post or pre. The only safe place is the present and I find it increasingly difficult to stay here. I'm practicing DBT skills in earnest: tactile information. What do you see, feel, hear, right here, right now. Touch something. Hold ice in your hand. Breathe if you can. Ground. Small ritual helps a lot. I add to my compost pile. I help Peggy in her garden. Every bite of fresh food is sacred, clean water a blessing beyond belief, the warmth of the body next to me comforting. I call that prayer.

Mom says we just can't think about these things and I know she's right - we can't dwell on them. But I am unable to not think about it. I could go back into one of my addictions or bury my head in the sand some other way, but I won't. It would never feel right to me. If all I can do is be a witness at this point, I'm goddam well going to be an awake one. I may be herded into the inferno along with everyone else, but I'm going with awareness and hopefully a little courage and a whole lotta grace. By the way, if I thought I could distract myself from what's coming, I probably would. My distractions are currently all used up.

So I gather dandelion greens. I watch the hummingbirds, the red-tail, osprey and eagle. The sky is still blue even if the Gulf of Mexico is black. Right here, right now, I have what I need and I am grateful.

Addiction/Collapse

It's ugly when an addict spirals out of control. I should know; I've experienced it enough times. I believe that as civilization spirals out of control many of the same events, mental processes and responses that have been seen and used with addiction will be useful in deciding on responses to collapse. The two situations seem not just similar; they seem identical.

While my own denial still pops its sandy head, I do believe civilization is going to collapse. I think it's collapsing right now as I sit in a newly thawed city park where it looks more like fall than spring. The early frost last year caught the trees still dressed in brown leaves. The new green shoots haven't changed the skirt to its seasonal green yet and I keep losing track of the seasons. Is it fall 2009? Spring 2010? Oops, did I just fall back in time? It's with a great sigh of relief that I realize it is indeed spring. 2010. Somehow I lived through 2009, have pulled through another personal spiral and am on the road to health. As my senses and sanity return, I realize that society is just beginning its awareness of descent and I understand from my personal experience how ill-prepared we are to deal with it.

When a human being spirals out of control with an addiction a variety of likely events takes place. Since drug abuse is happening, the ability to cope is markedly lessened, there is a higher incidence of illness and accidents, an increased likelihood of lost jobs and relationships, mental problems are born or exacerbated and probably worst of all, a spiritual emptiness envelopes the addicts entire world. All the while, the addict is trying to maintain some semblence of normalcy and will be mired in a great deal of denial which tends to come and go depending on outside circumstances and inner acceptance or resistance. Or sometimes they're not in denial. Sometimes they're just too despairing to do anything but keep playing their assigned role until the inevitable crash happens.

After the crash, if one is lucky, one gets to see what pieces are left to pick up and which ones are gone forever. One has to decide which ones to pick up first and what to do with them. While one is doing that, one has to deal with the pain which inevitably sets in, the self-recriminations and guilt, the sure knowledge that so much more has been hurt than oneself, so many more than oneself. The fear that one may do it again. Immense courage is called for to take those halting first steps toward recovery. Even more is called for as it begins to dawn on one how tenuous it all is, how easily it could all break down, the possible consequences if that happens.

The signs of civilization's sprial are everywhere. I think when we look back at this time, we will wonder how anyone could have possibly missed them. The problem is that we're all so used to the signs, we take them for granted, we don't see them as signs - we see them as normal. We've become so numb to the reality of the world in which we live that our vision is affected, not to mention our cognitive ability. We've been trained to run our rat race well and attempting to slow down or stop running causes intense anxiety. However, as more and more people are affected daily by the consequences of society's loss of control, there will be no choice but to stop, no choice but to deal with the ramifications and no choice but to respond.

Since so many of us are still in an extreme phase of denial, here are some of the signs: homes being foreclosed in record numbers, skyrocketing unemployment rates and various factions of society becoming less patient with each other creating civil unrest and individuals who just want to fight. Violence lessens the anxiety for a time; any action lessens the anxiety for a time. Do I really need to go into all the illnesses affecting our environment? Dead-zones the size of Texas in the oceans, disappearing species, unusually destructive weather patterns, masses of land that will no longer bear fruit. All of these point to one big thing: less food and water for all. The human species, like all species, is designed to adapt and survive and on some level all of us feel, even if we can't yet admit it, the writing on the wall.

When one lives with addiction, one becomes comfortable with riding the unknown, with knowing that one's choices will go only so far to provide healing, realizing the rest must come from that ineffable realm known as grace, where human choice meets divine intention. To get there, we must either be forced or led out of our own denial, our own culpability, our own delusions. With vast experience on the matter, you can take it from me: being led is preferable to being forced. But being led requires willingness.

What do you think the signs of society coming out of denial might look like? I'm going to talk about that next time and your comments always help me put my thoughts into something like coherence. Denial-buster: read the ingredients on food labels, look them up, see what they do.

What Happens to Me

It's going to be two weeks before I can get into treatment. I'm not drinking now.

The last few times I've begun drinking after a period of sobriety - four months in April when the tension with the owners of the Inn got to be too much, two months the last two times, it's like I'm actually leave my body. I'm observing myself get the alcohol but I don't feel like I have any control over whether I do it or not. The only place I felt really safe was at Claudia & Bob's house and I suppose I should've stayed there but I needed to check on Attaboy and they've already been way too kind to me by opening their home when I needed a place to stay.



So my hope is that in an in-patient treatment facility they can begin to help me with the mental health issues that accompany my alcoholism. The medication I'm taking for depression helps a lot but my anxiety is hard to control and I literally get into this frozen place - body frozen, mind frozen, spirit frozen. I have severe insomnia and sometimes go a week or more without sleeping well. It's my belief that my inability to effectively deal with the depression/anxiety is what causes me to drink again. It's so hurtful when someone thinks I'm just making all this up or that it's not that bad or that I should just get over it. But I guess that's what the majority of people do think which is why having a recovery community is so important. In a recovery community they understand the powerlessness over alcohol; they understand the deadliness of it; and they understand that there is a real person in there and they're suffering, a lot. Especially if they want to quit drinking, which I do. They understand that we don't want to start drinking and smash our own lives and everyone eise's that we're close to. They understand how difficult it is to gain a foothold on life and sustain it. They will never say it's okay to have a drink and I've had several people very close to me in my life who have said that to me over and over again. "It's okay if you need to take a drink, Angela. We all need some relief sometimes. " Yeah, some relief. These people can be dangerous for us if we take them seriously which I've decided to stop doing.



I see so many women with these same issues. Mosf of them are highly creative, caring, sensitive women and they're usually holding someone else afloat, either financially or emotionally, but they have a helluva time solving their drinking problem. And they're so easy to blame.