Behind The Blue Mask....

What happens to the human mind when that said mind's actual body is subjected to constant, debilitating physical pain and trauma. Throw in a mammoth dose of emotional, psychological and spiritual stress, confusion and yea...even more pain and you have a recipe for several potentialities: Insanity, Suicide or an opportunity to focus all that hard-ache and hard-ship into something miraculous: a brand new perspective and outlook on life...A Fresh Start.

Although this sounds like the set-up for a TV or movie drama plot, unfortunately it is not. In reality, it is but a brief description of what I am currently experiencing after over 15 months of living this mad medical nightmare called: "My LIFE".

On the surface it sounds like it is an easy choice to make...choose the high-road and stay positive. WAY, way easier SAID then DONE, my Friend! My reality says that it is anything BUT an easy choice.

After 15 months of uncertainty, pain and heartbreak the easier options by far are to simply quit life. The first is to simply take one's own life. Not recommended by this BOY I assure you. I made an attempt in late May of 2006 and though mercifully I was spared death, it was very, very close. TOO Fucking Close, believe me. I not only suffer physical problems to this very day from the failed attempt but the psychological baggage runs deep....painfully DEEP.


But there are also a multitude of ways to "quit life" without ending it....Some folks simply stop functioning and revert back to a vegetative state of being. No movement, zero laughter, no smiles, no way to live......NOTHING. Nothingness becomes their sanctuary....others will call this mental illness and if you think for a second that I am exaggerating.....then be watchful little friend because it happens a quite often and to the best of them.

For me, I have chosen to move on...TO take each day, whatever may come my way. And why have I made this choice to follow the more difficult path? It started awhile back when I caught myself looking back in the mirror. To this day that image freezes me in time and makes me SHUDDER. Behind the BLUE mask I call my eyes, the shutting down process had indeed already begun. There was no light...no depth...NOTHING behind that falsely protective shield  of burned out Baby-Blues.

This frightened me. Not because I was surprised that I was shutting down inside....but because I wasn't. No I had known that was happening for some time. But to actually SEE the process happening for myself, in real time lent more reality to the situation then I wanted to even try and comprehend. I had to shift gears and embrace the horror of my situation. I learned to actually LOVE and face the pain and hardship that was beginning to destroy me from within.

With that recognition and admission....I began to change and the way I chose to live changed as well. No matter the difficulty, the hurt or frustration...I now will draw myself towards the hardship and become it. I know somehow, someway there must be a higher purpose not only to life itself but to my life in particular and I was going to SHOW UP FOR IT even if it killed me in the process. 

Everything that I believed in from the time of my birth was challenged and eventually discarded. My FAITH was simply turned on it's head. I had a major problem believing that God would allow people to suffer for no reason. 

The way I worked through that one is I decided that God indeed had a reason for my suffering and that I was not always going to be privy to the answer. Because that information was often WAY above my pay-grade...so to speak. Today....I have learned to simply trust God...he knows the deal and all I have to do is to listen to his whispered direction, deep down in my heart...and FOLLOW.

It sounds simplistic, way to easy...yet it worked for me in this case and honestly, that was literally a Life-Saver for this long suffering SOUL.  Now the world is not always a kind, loving or happy place yet I know deep down that there is a higher purpose to this existence...pain, heart-ache and suffering included. Believe me, That goes a long, long way  in settling the troubled waters hiding just out of view...behind the BLUE MASK.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Another....MOTHER

April's Beauty

One of the lesser know realities of my life is that I was adopted, basically at birth. I know next to nothing about my birth parents except my birth-mother was the legal secretary for an older, prominent attorney in the Grand Rapids, MI area in the fall of 1962. He had 4 grown children and a bunch of grand-kids....The story being she got pregnant and agreed to put the child (ME) up for adoption. Other then the fact that she was 20 years old or so, that is the extant of my knowledge of them and the situation.

Though I have never had the desire to initiate contact with her (My birth-father obviously would be long dead since word at the time of my birth is that he was 65 years old) I often think of her and how she is doing. Somehow I sense that she is still alive and suspect that I will know when she passes on to the after-life.

It does feel odd knowing the person who gave birth to me is out there some where and I haven't a clue where. I could have already run into her for all I know.

I have mixed feelings about my birth mother in particular but they are not what people would normally expect under such circumstances. I have NO DESIRE to seek her out...NONE. But I would welcome her with open arms if she was searching for me. Why.....I have not a single solitary clue!

 I am super sympathetic to her situation. In 1962 having a child out of wedlock simply was not done in certain circles...including in the middle class as well as the lower and upper classes. Only the super wealthy could "hide" an unexpected child at home with nannies, distant relatives and tales of adopting from long lost relatives.

I assume she made the only true choice available to her at the time and have never harbored any negative feelings toward her in any way, shape or form. I often envision my birth father coercing her to give up the child or have a dangerous, back-alley abortion. I have always supported having children and giving them up for adoption vs abortion because of my situation. Had I been born a mere decade later, I may have never left the womb alive....I'm not trying to be sensational....just realistic.

No I am not standing on any soap-box for anti-abortion...mainly because I am very uncomfortable telling a person what they can do with there bodies. Ultimately they have to live with the decisions they make. But in addition to being adopted, I am also a rape victim. I just happen to be unable to get pregnant because I am male but I know for a fact that if I was a girl when that happened instead of a naive, 12 year old boy and I became pregnant as a result of what happened to me....I would NOT WANT that thing growing in me that represented what happened. Abortion would have been an easy choice for me then...and now under those circumstances. 

But my daughter Chelsea was an unexpected arrival yet her mother and I never so much as discussed or considered having an abortion. I just don't think it is the right thing to do under most circumstances. So I have a major amount of respect for this young woman, who in 1962 made a commitment to carry me full term and then deliver me into what she must have believed to be better hands (at that time) and simply trust enough to walk away. It must have been a bruising....and a crushing kind of hurt.

I so love her for that. I believe in my heart that she senses that too.

My birth father on the other hand evokes a completely different set of thoughts & feelings from me. At first blush....I resent and blame him in a way for all of this though I realize that may indeed be very unfair. For all I know he may have wanted to raise me and my mother chose to continue with the adoption. The bottom line is by putting me up for adoption...I was adopted by loving parents who showered me with love and affection as well as providing me with all the material advantages a young person would need to grow up healthy and well in early 1960's America and beyond. The truth about my birth parents...positive and negative is that unless I meet my Mother or relatives of hers or his....I will never know the truth and I must learn to accept that.

Any way....this past Mothers Day provoked enough thought and emotion to drive this post from inception to it's completion. I sincerely hope and pray that she is alive and well and I wish her, her family and his family the very, very best in all things.                                        

Painting "APRIL'S BEAUTY" by Cathy Frick http://www.cathyfrickfineart.com

Warts And ALL

Anyone who has read this blog before knows that I hold nothing back. That's basically the point of the blog...it is the story of a life with a lot of good stuff...some  bad stuff. So we do what we do, mostly because  we don't have any other choice.

I'm making an attempt at Reviving this blog for several different reasons, mostly because it helps me and perhaps in some certain way it may help somebody else going through s similar experience. Little disclaimer here....I  am not proud of some of it because I made a lot of mistakes in my life. But I  figire if you don't correct them they just stay mistakes and the lack of accountability promotes the negative.

I'm in Kalamazoo today to get this gimps right prosthetic worked on.... hopefully we can get it right this time! I'm signing off for now, peace!