I did the grocery shopping by myself today. I didn’t even have to hold on to my grounding stone once. That’s something functional people do. Except for the whole mental illness and work situations I’m more like one every day. Speaking of work I can hear the call of my people wailing in the distance. Every team needs a bat boy, it’s not all doom and gloom.

I was mixing the a capella of Lauryn Hills ‘Lost Ones’ over the instrumental of the Psycho Realms ‘Stone Garden’ earlier. The headphone cue buttons on my mixer are fucked so I haven’t played around much in a while. When I was in the inpatient addiction/trauma program a couple of years ago improving my mixing and turntable skills was one of my goals that I set.

The problem with goals is that they need to realistically fit within your limits. I haven’t established what those limits are, and I’m loathe to have to face something else not working out right now. ‘Goals’ and ‘doing things’ and ‘achievements’ are all great but to go from a feeling of contribution to seeing the world as merely a chance of trying things for the sake of keeping busy is difficult. I suppose this is the ‘helper helping themselves’ or something of the sort.

Find an activity, find a hobby, be passionate about something. Initiate. Engage. I’m in a play without a script and everyone is waiting for me to perform. In therapy they ask what you enjoyed doing before addiction and illness. Then they tell you isolation is bad. So listening to music, cooking, gardening, reading, writing, tinkering with stereo equipment and minor home repairs don’t count. Consuming weed rates even lower.

Do something.

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I gained some perspective during my psychologist appointment today. More specifically in the quiet of the car afterword as is the case with a lot of what we discuss. No music today. Holding on to the past takes on many forms. A memory, feeling, belief or habit can all prove connective. How does one honour but not get trapped? How does one move forward without satisfaction?

Me and my mental entourage spent some time together again this evening. Nobody was making me cry but I started to wonder what the discernable difference is between coping and numbing. Is communication pivotal? I’m most familiar with angry. When I’m feeling sad or scared or overwhelmed or anything else negative I find a way to be angry about it. Sometimes I can successfully swallow it. In the past it would come out as an overreaction to something unrelated, usually to do with kids and a minor transgression, or a traffic insult. I didn’t really know what to do with the anger.

It’s okay to feel. I don’t need to feel angry or frustrated about it. I should have all sorts of feelings about a dead young man with a bullet hole in his neck, or a christmas morning VSA, or a young woman in a self-inflicted crimson bath. I’m supposed to have feelings when a homeless AIDS patient I frequently transport dies in a shelter bed, going unnoticed for hours. I’m supposed to have feelings.

These aren’t ‘critical incidents’. No red flags get raised. In the culture of EMS these are not the calls you are led to believe will become the midnight visitors. I was ashamed. I felt I shouldn’t need help to cope with the average calls. I was a fraud and a failure. I didn’t have an extreme freak incident to blame; I just fell apart doing my job. Weakness I had concluded. “Drink up, stop being such a pathetic loser and go do your fucking job tomorrow you disgusting, worthless piece of shit paramedic”. I knew what to tell myself.

I am not immune. I’m supposed to have feelings and they don’t make me anything but human. Perspective is the high road; it’s learning to constructively experience those feelings and realizing when something uncomfortable is masquerading as anger. There is no understanding in anger.