Throwing Apples

Today, my wife recounted me scenes from Glass Castle , a book she had read about a family raised by alcoholics. The neglect and abuse was astounding. Although my story is less severe, I had dizzy spells listening to her, and could see many similarities.  “They even had to pick around maggots in their food!” She mentioned. I suddenly recalled a time when our potatoes starting rotting. I am not sure if many readers have smelled rotten potatoes. The starch in them ferments, causing a smell like rotting flesh. It is a truly horrendous smell. One day, when I was about ten, my dad told me to take our rotten bag of potatoes and wash them off to find the good ones. As I took them out, I found that they were not only rotten, but crawling with maggots.  I gagged, and protested, but he simply told me to keep doing it.  I remember distinctly holding the potatoes under the tap water and rubbing them vigorously, without looking at them. I did not want to know...

The other day, while backing up a winding/difficult ramp to our customer, I forgot a feature of the truck. I got out to fix it, and realized I had forgotten a second thing. I had a 🤦‍♂️ facepalm sort of moment and began thinking of every other thing I had done wrong that day.  Wow, Ishmael. You’re really having an off day. Scarcely had the words been though than a second voice piped up and very adamantly began staying and repeating,  No, you are not having a bad day. I refuse to believe you are having a bad day. Take it back! This is not true! Do not say that! This is not a bad day! If you had not forgotten that one thing, you would not be thinking this is a bad day. You would think it was a good day. So stop it! This is not a bad day! Don’t say this is a bad day... I listened to the voice and actually had a pretty good day.  This got me thinking...Kim is basically a great guy and a very competent employee. But he has epically bad days. These bad...

Yesterday, I had an appointment with a doctor, and asked to go on meds. My wife has been taking some anxiety meds for a few months now, and I have seen a marked difference in her. At a previous doctor’s appointment, I had discussed with a doctor the possibility, but we had both decided that I probably didn’t need them. I later realized that I was also really afraid that meds would alter who I truly was, or make me unable to really process the trauma. I didn’t want to mask my inner voice, but to hear it. What I have seen in my wife so far is that the meds have given her the ability to listen more clearly to her inner voice. She has made a huge amount of progress in these past months, whereas before she seemed just stuck in her issues. I have been spinning and perhaps spiralling with a wide number of issues, and sometimes frustrated that I cannot “focus” on just one thing. My wife recently helped me realize that this inability to focus was itself a stress response. She had some ...

Lately, my wife has been telling me — in increasingly more forceful language — that I need to slow down. It is having a deleterious effect on my health and mental wellbeing. And so I have tried to slow down, as mentioned. However, it is not entirely clear how to do so. It seems to me that the most difficult thing for my mind is unresolved trauma, and questions it cannot answer. This is why it was so addictive to keep unraveling more and more of the mystery. I was not so much unraveling, as I was remaking myself. With every post, I felt that I was growing stronger.  I do recognize that it all got too much. Some things were out of my control. They changed the work schedule to start at 6:00 AM. With kids, and time with my wife, it was a rare night where I could see sleep before 10:00 PM: and so I was getting 6.5-7 hours, when I really needed more. Often, kids would wake up needing to be changed, and sometimes I had nightmares. Sometimes I woke up an extra half hour earl...

I decided to download and read one of the classic books on evil, Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897 . My rationale was that if I wanted to understand a  dark triad personality , books written with truly evil villains would help me understand that. I could not have been more right. Dracula thinks and operates exactly the way my dad does, although of course perhaps in less dramatic format. Although perhaps not. Dracula always has a smile on his face, and he is always in control. He doesn’t look the part of the villain, and that is part of the evil. He is a psychopath, not a sociopath. He is in control of himself, and in control of others. One thing that especially stood out to me is that for his first victim, he says, “come freely, leave some of your joy, and leave as you will." This theme of free will is played out. Actually, Dracula traps his victim. There is no way out. When he tries to escape, he finds that he is surrounded by supernatural dangers: vampire sisters that ...

I think I will begin blogging again. Not all at once, but as thoughts come to me. I think it would be more helpful for me to put my thoughts on paper than try to repress them in some way. I will redirect my input towards more positive things. But as darkness and disturbing images come to me, I will also write them down and seek to explain them, so that they do not have mastery over me.

I dreamed that I saw my parents yesterday. They came up quite quickly on me in a crown. Before I knew it,, and was sideways hugging me. I gingerly took his arm off my neck. “Oh, we are doing that?“ He asked. He feigned surprise, but backed off. My mother was more difficult. She pretended to be ill, and fell down, forcing me to pick her up. When I hold her up and I needed to carry her around like a child she shrink down to the size of an ugly child, and I can still feel her boney hips clinging to me. I still felt as though they were able to use social pressure to manipulate me in that dream.  it feels like a weakness, but really, what weakness is it to feel the need to respond to a salutation, or to offer someone simple kindness when they fall down? But for a narcissist, these things are Weaponized. I will try not to think too much about this, except that perhaps I should study the book “the Christians guide to no contact,“. I believe there are rules of no co...

Today I woke up with a fairly intense dehydration headache. At least that’s what I thought it was. I tend to get these fairly often, so was disappointed but not surprised. I should’ve gave her decaf coffee before bedtime, I guess. I lay down in the darkest room in the house, with some Gatorade, and anticipated it would be gone by 10, noon at the latest. But it just stayed on. Noon came and went, too, I thought for sure three. But at 4:30 it was still there. My wife began to be concerned about me. I assured her that I was in good spirits and did not seem sick other than my headache. No need to test for COVID-19. As I lay there, I listen to a worship lullaby over and over and slept for two hour chunks for about six hours straight. Some spread strange and simple thoughts went through my mind. I thought of a butterfly, struggling to get free of its cocoon. “It must be very difficult to give birth to oneself!“ I did EMD are, and as my body, “why are you hurting ...

Yesterday, I woke up with an ethical dilemma on my hands. My first day off I felt a tickle in my throat, and some pressure in my chest. But on the second day off, I woke up with half my face feeling very stuffy. I gave an experimental cough and could feel the phlegm in my chest. Throughout the day, it was evident that I had a cold. I’m not worried about covered, but the guidelines are pretty clear that I am not go to work if I have a sore throat or cold of any kind. It is what I would expect of others, if they are feeling sick. Rather than call in sick, I pulled in a favour and got a friend to cover my shift. I spent the whole day napping. And nap in the morning, and afternoon, and still slept eight hours. Today, it was the same. Morning nap, afternoon nap. I’m feeling a bit better, but still sluggish. Again, I am not worried about Covid. There’s not a reasonable way that I could have been infected (although I suppose nobody is save these days, especially since everyone ...

The man wore a brown shirt with a floral pattern. I remember this because when it was all done, I asked if I could take a picture of it, to have a tailor make me one. It was a fairly normal request, and he was not offended. I had studied it as he talked.  There were about twenty of us. All gathered in a tight room. “…and then,” he spoke with passion, mixed with pity, “ebola came to the next village. Before anyone knew it, people were dying. People left, to try to warn the next village, but it was already there..” I had come in late to a prayer meeting at our mission. I had no idea we were having a special guest speaking, or what the topic was. “The disease was being spread by local merchants. Traders and those who traveled. Nobody could believe the speed with which it was spreading! Before it would come, people would say, ‘all is well here. It will never come here,’ but before they would know it, it would be there. And there would just be death, and death, a...

The bun was far too sweet to be a hamburger bun. There was a glaze on top, which paired strangely with the seseme seeds and the hamburger patty. But my boys seemed to be enjoying them. Sitting in the glaring heat of an african midday, my seven and four year old boys were laughing and calmly eating french fries. As though nothing in all the world was wrong. I made a mental note. I would need to remember this place. It was another one of “those places.” A haven of Westernism, in the midst of chaos, poverty and danger. A small butcher shop with a cafe and restaurant. A place of relative familiarity. I felt safe here, with my boys. Even if the buns were far too sweeet. I do not remember now what I had been doing that morning. But I remember the text.  “Come quick. Our son has been taken.” I did not understand, but I came. My wife was “in all her states,” as they said in old English. She told me the story. She had finally gotten up the courage to walk out of our w...