Happiness is not a Birthright

[nenkohai]

It's taken me 48 years to figure this out. And then, only when someone else said it. Noah Levine said this. One of the coolest dudes I know. He's "punk."
And Buddhist.

The Buddhist approach has done nearly as much for me as active therapy has. Its main concern is reducing and try to eliminating suffering. The Four Noble Truths address suffering. The Eight Fold Path is the road map to reducing suffering.

I'm not trying to convert anyone, or anything like that. It just that it works. At least, for me.

At age 32 I found myself getting angry a lot. Anxiety. Family on eggshells all the time around me. My quality of life sucked so, I felt I HAD to do something.

Two rounds of therapy a few years a part. Diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I reluctantly agreed to try meds and they were a huge help.

What I didn't know at the time was that I was also Bipolar (2) - hypomanic. That laid fertile ground for me to have repeating online emotional "affairs" with women. None of them came of anything. Except lots of hurt on both sides.

I stayed clear of online chats. Especially sexually-oriented ones. I found a "spiritual" chat forum. A powerful place to explore spirituality. I began speaking to a Native American woman. a Reincarnationist and a shaman. Completely chaste in all respects. For about a year and a half. Then we starting discussing the possibility that we shared past lives together. And our relationship began to slowly change. We fell in love. Or, what I thought was love... assisted by hypomania. It ended badly. She felt I had played her. I assumed all the guilt of the whole mess. Extended depression ensued... even while on the meds.

Eventually I recovered.

Then it happened all over again when an old college friend found me on facebook. Accept this time, it was all real life. A true extramartial affair happened. I asked my wife for a divorce while keeping the affair secret. My wife son confronted me with evidence of the affair and I completely imploded. Emotionally lost with enough self-hate that I began planning my death at my own hand. I would OD on the anticoagulant I've been taking for a heart condition. Basically a drug-induced bleed-out. My children, though they don't know it, saved me. I had visions of my son finding me in the bathtub, blood coming out nose, ears, eyes, and ass... and dad dead. I couldn't allow that level of pain into my family's life.

So, for the next three months, I began a tandem cycle of therapy with a counselor therapist, a psychiatrist, and a marriage counselor. My wife and I talked and talked and talked. Both of us crying most times. My soul was shredded... mourning the relationship with my lover - missing her.

Journaled my heart out. And then, found the Buddhist way of looking at suffering. Then, the earnest healing began.

Healing, like happiness in general, takes work. It just isn't gifted to you. You must desire it. And that means you must rid yourself of the victim mentality.

I am still rebuilding, but I am in such a better place than I was even a short month ago. My short term goal? To have a good holiday season with my family and friends.

This is me. Or part of me, at least. SPiritual, creative guy. Heavily right brained. Loving. Sensual. And getting more and more balance every day.

It requires work. But its a good work and well worth the effort.

[nenkohai]

I want to report that the holidays were good, but, for some reason, I feel reluctant to say that. That it somehow might jinx the past. Or maybe the future.

Perhaps the reluctance is borne out of the text I received from the woman I broke off with. (how do you put this?). Months ago I asked that she never contact me and she has three times. I've ignored the messages but not without a significant cost to my healing and mental health. I don't expect anyone to have good feelings over what happened... but, I wish she could understand the devastation each communication creates.

So, this is probably why I am reluctant to call my holidays "good."