Everything that downs me...

Everything that downs me makes me want to fly.
                       -Ryan Tedder

I have times like the last post where everything seems hopeless to me and the darkness consumes me, tearing away at my being and assaulting my soul. Now it's not true everytime, but quite often, new moons wreck me. Full dark means darkness for my mood. I know it's a depressive state; and that the xanax and welbutrin and the like are what so-called normal people take to get them evened out again, but I've seen too many walking horror stories on that stuff. I don't believe that modern pharmaceutical medication is any better than weed.

When the moon is full, it's exhilarating. I swear I can feel it in my bones. I can tell it's full right now without even checking. Overcoming the depressive state and moving on to the manic one makes you feel like you can leap tall buildings. All those things that downed you seem so unimportant. If anything, they reinforce how strong you are, to  have overcome the  depression. Like the song says, "Everything that kills me, makes me feel alive."

I have several tattoos, but one is more special to me than the rest. I use it to focus myself during the bad spells like I was going through in my last post. It's a peacock on my left wrist with a small Semicolon worked in there. I get asked about it occasionally and I explain what it means in general terms. The peacock is a reminder to not be too proud. The semicolon has another meaning

If you haven't heard of  the Semicolon project, it's a movement presenting hope, love, and solidarity between those struggling with mental illness, suicide, addiction, and self injury. The semicolon is used in punctuation where an author could have ended a sentence, but chose not to, because there was something important to add; sometimes something important that changes what went before to give it new meaning. Thus the story continues instead of ending.

The project, hopefully, encourages mental-illness sufferers to go on with their lives during those dark moments; a reminder that there is more to the story, so don't let it end there. People who support this cause have a tattoo of a semicolon (;) somewhere on their body.

I got the tattoo after my ex-wife was hospitalized and checked herself into a mental health facility after a breakdown. I told her the tattoo was for her. I didn't tell her of my own issues ever. I didn't tell her how close I had come to ending it several times already. And I didn't tell her I had the tattoo on my left wrist because I wanted to see the scar on my right from an earlier suicide attempt at age 12.

It was a bad cut that ended just before the artery. In those days, there was no internet to show you the proper way, and I chickened out before completing it, as I had not fully prepared for it, did it on the spur of the moment, and freaked out at how much blood there was. I told my parents I had fallen on a broken bottle. I didn't tell them I broke it and used it on myself. Just smashed it down on the river's edge and pushed my wrist down on it.

So on those bad days, I look at my right wrist and think about it, and then my left wrist to focus and reconnect, and I remind myself not to be too proud to ask for help should I get so deep that I can't see any way out.

The right scarred side:
Old scar https://imgur.com/gallery/KuzE1

The left tattoed side:
#semicolon project Proud peacock https://imgur.com/gallery/WxFYN