The Hashtags of Tit-for-Tat

The rain

will pack

the old dirt down.

There is no such thing

as fresh soil

however many

years they toil.

A Collection of Strangers, “Dust to Dust,” by Summer Collins

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oprressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. and I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than Both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3

One v one me, bro!

Any Xboxing 12 year old at some point in his career

I was tempted to go and finish my final essay for my Religion class that was due about 27 months ago (a story for another time) but felt as though I would have more fun doing this.

I made a post today (March 2nd as I’m starting this) where I made the comment of how one should not treat others how they have been treated, but how they would want to be treated. I was tempted to just leave it at that, along with the piping hot tea emoji and boxes of teas in the background, but I decided to do a hashtag instead, because who actually uses them unironically, right? I put “#titfortatis” and two results popped up. The one being #titfortatischildish, which I used because it matches my opinion on the idea. The other, which was right beside it, was #titfortatisfairplay. I had work to do, so I didn’t bother to look into the hashtag (like I actually follow any hashtags), but the phrase kept in my mind.

In the world we exist in which civilization has existed for a few thousand years—note I said civilization, not creation or mankind, that is a post for another day—tit-for-tat has been the basis for general fairness. Hammurabi’s Code, the four thousand-year-old preserved written law from Babylon, has the idea of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That is the basis of tit-for-tat: retribution.

A brief explanation of tit-for-tat: in a situation in which two parties are in relationship with one another, each will act in turn how the other acts. In the case of a handshake, if a hand is extended, the other offers his hand and they shake—positive-positive. Now, let’s say that the first party extends his hand and the other party decides to slap this hand—positive-negative. According to the strategy of tit for tat, the original party should slap the, now opposing, party’s hand—negative-negative. This slapping continues until the original slapper extends his hand again in peace, in which case the hand extends once more.

This idea appeals to all rational minds. Everyone is treated how they treat others. Problem solved! Israel and Palestine, everything’s good now, go back to your corners! Russia and Ukraine, you guys are fine! Just extend hands and forget the last couple years happened.

Wait… that’s not happening?… the violence is still going on?… tit-for-tat is flawed due to the reality that it can only truly work when both parties are on equal footing and doesn’t take into account escalations of violence resulting in a feedback loop?… it also doesn’t take into account biases of past experiences, the emotional spectrum, and various other illogical consistencies that summarize what it means to be human?… and in application people only seem to consider tit-for-tat more when they seek retribution and revenge, not with gifts and blessings?… well damn, that sucks.

And yet, who can talk down on tit-for-tat? We’ve all done it. It might not have been an initial reaction. Some of us might keep getting bullied and degraded by the same party over and over again. I’m not going to try and argue that the opposing party doesn’t know what they are doing. Sometimes that’s the case, but people seem to have the habit of continuing to do something when they know they can get away with it. Sometimes there’s a rationalization: “Oh, they think it’s funny, it’s just a joke hahaha.” Or, “they just need to grow some thicker skin.” Or, and we’ve all heard this one before, “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Apathy: the ultimate flaw and the ultimate fuel of tit-for-tat.

It’s very easy for a bystander to support tit-for-tat. It’s even easier if you are a friend of the two parties and want to see them get along: you love both of them. However, in the midst of conflict, especially after a prolonged period of abuse and injustice, even is sometimes not the answer. This doesn’t even go into the idea of what is considered “even.” 

To use an example in notable history, after the Holocaust a group named the Nakam (Hebrew for “revenge”) sought for the death of six million Germans to pay for the lives of the Jews who were slaughtered. Abba Kovner, the leader of the fifty man organization, was seeking what Dina Povet, a scholar on the radical, used the phrase “a nation for a nation.” 

Like many of you, there’s a discomfort that comes with the Nakem group. Tit-for-tat was the fuel and fire of their campaign (which was thankfully unsuccessful as they tried to poison water mains), and, like the Nazis, they didn’t care if you were mother, father, child, son, daughter, saint, or sinner. If you were German, you were a fair target. 

When we hear about the Nazi’s mass killings the feeling is one of disgust. It is the example used of the evil that humanity is capable of. And yet, with the Nakem, we don’t feel disgust. Our discomfort comes from the idea that we get why they want to do what they do. The reason we are not on board is because we know that won’t fix anything. Six million Jews will not come back if the Nakem were to enact their plan, but 12 million humans, born of mothers and vulnerable to the tearing of flesh, would be dead. 

I use the example of Nakem to irritate the subtle feeling that tit-for-tat gives all of us on an individual level. That trace of a tension, that iota of itching, is the awareness that when the day ends and the sun is gone, tit-for-tat does not work. The morning sun will rise, sure, but it may be shining on soil with more blood than the day previous. Tit-for-tat’s only success is keeping the world and its people in the uncomfortable reality that the broken system that we have made for ourselves will continue to be broken as long as everyone plays their parts. 

And yet, throughout history we can see astounding light from archetypal individuals who saw that the law of nature that tit-for-tat represents was not the way for things to get better. Those who recognized that the way to beat the system of tit-for-tat was not to fall into the cycle or to step out of the cycle and drift away from humanity, but to act as a force that goes against the system of retribution and slow the vortex’s of human violence with peace and love. This group of people who I call Buffers. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, Billy Graham, John Lewis, and Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu ie Mother Teresa are some of the last century’s Buffers who recognized that the only way to help heal the world was through an idea explicitly stated in the book of Titus, “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say,” and empowered and delegated through spirit of the Second Greatest Commandment, “Love others as much as you love yourself.” And all these people I have listed recognized that the One who said this was on to something. So much so that they saturated their lives through this idea, having great masses following them to enact change in the world through it. Though not a Christian himself, Ghandi could say nothing negative of Christ’s teachings… only that his followers were nothing to write home about, to put it nicely. 

And I’m sure of the people who read this no one can say that they fully disagree with the idea of the loving their neighbor as themself. And I’m also sure to bet there is a quick “but” that follows this slight head nod, in that there is no confusion that their disagreement outweighs their agreement:

“But you don’t know ___ and what they’ve done.”

“But you don’t understand what ___ feels like.” 

“But this idea has not been working, look at what ____ did ____.”

I don’t mean to say I do not believe in a world without punishment. I mean to say that our motivation on seeking and receiving consequence needs to change for the world to be better. Retribution and revenge is the language of tit-for tat; justice and mercy is the pulse that carries love and change that is found in the heartbeat of Redemption and He who gives it. Throughout the last decades of our global history, the sound of justice has penetrated ears and minds so powerfully that many folks have either chosen to be deaf or hypersensitive. Some will claim that no justice is needed, look at all our peace; some may reject peace, calling us to look at what we try and pass as justice. 

I could quote the entirety of C.S Lewis’ essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”on the subject of justice and mercy, but I’ll try my hand at the quote which will make uncomfortable both those who hunger and thirst for justice and those who fear mercy will not come: “To punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal.” And I’ll go a step further than Lewis. In a world in which Justice is perfect and mercy is overflowing, the criminal will humbly approach the victim of their crime themself, fully aware of their actions and its consequence, and filled with guilt—not shame, but guilt—asking that they may do what they can to make things right. The victim, in full right to ask of what is needed to be make things right, will ask for less. They need not go so far as to set the criminal completely off the hook, because what kind of deterrent would that be? Instead they will see that in complement with the criminal’s humility and recognition, love and mercy will help grow not only the one on his knees asking for forgiveness, but to those touched whenever he stands in the freedom of forgiveness and mercy. 

We needn’t be scared of punishment in a perfect world; and we oughtn’t to be frustrated through mercy. And to those who say that this is not a perfect world, I ask then to what are we aiming? Are we rehearsing that we may not curse at the driver who cuts us off just so that missiles may barrage citizens in the East? And should every war end in ceasefire at high noon tomorrow, who is to say that the everyday actions of all the common folk would not have another raging by dinner?

I say this because we will not experience a perfect world, but what is to stop us from living our lives as if we did? What is to stop us from holding those we love accountable to their actions and having those we wish not to see a feeling of peace when they step away from us? Michelangelo did not take a chisel to a piece of marble and smash as hard as he could indiscriminately to burn off a little steam. Over the course of three years, he appropriately applied more pressure to the edges that were harder, and mindful of the edges which needed only a light polish, so that he made something beautiful. Though the marble resisted, though it may have cracked under little pressure and stayed like a rock under greater, it slowly passed away to the artists design: accepting both what was meant to be stripped away and what was designed to remain.

I have experienced this from the perspective of the statue. Though I felt I was pretty altogether, there are those in my life have seen a sharp edge that needed to be smashed away. I have lived with those men and I am grateful for them. They saw immaturity in my humor and preciously chiseled so that I may have humor that uplifts. They saw an inconsiderate intellect and took a sharp tink to the heart of the issue, hurting for a moment, but then polishing and sanding to ensure that a slow and steady tongue would remain.

As we go along the paths of this world, take into consideration the words of Alphonse Elric, who existed in the fictional world where alchemy exists and the law of the land is that, to obtain, something of equal value must be lost, proposed this idea at the end of the journey for his body: 

Alphonse: “We feel like it’s our turn to repay the happiness that’s been given to us.”

Miss Hughes: “Isn’t that like what the alchemists believe? Equivalent exchange?”

Alphonse: “It’s equivalent if you take ten and then you give ten back… but if you take ten and add something of yourself… you return eleven. It’s not much, but it’s an all new principle we are trying to establish. And now we just have to go out and prove that it actually works.”

Al doesn’t know if this idea will work, but after all that he’s seen and the way in which the law of equivalent exchange has ravished his world with blood, violence, and genocide, he is willing to sacrifice a little bit of himself with every interaction in order to offset the ineffective Natural Law of his world. I believe that when one is blessed, they should bless others, not as a gift, but as the natural response to that blessing. For this blessing was not mine at first, so what right do I have to not pass it around. In kindergarten, did we all not get a chance to touch Jimmy’s model plane when he brought it in for show-and-tell? Did we not treat it with care, happy that we just got a chance to touch it that we didn’t have before. Sure, there was the kid that cried that he wanted one, thinking that if he took Jimmy’s plane than he would have one, but looking back we know that that is the behavior of children. Though such things have grown in scale as we grow into adults, should we not remember the lessons of these foundational teachings? Thank Jimmy, for he gave us a chance. Let us not go out and spoil it. 

As a final word, for those who cannot quench the frustration that the perfect world will never be formed in our eyes and that no matter how much of ourself we give the blood will still cry from the earth, consider this: 

If we view God’s wrath as merely divine disappointment, Jesus at the cross becomes less a necessary sacrifice and just an act of humanitarianism. It is because God has a wrath that seeks to destroy genocide, sexual slavery, domestic violence, and all the things we know to be evil does he want to destroy the small, everyday part of those things inside of ourselves. He merely asks us to give a little of ourselves so that we may comfortably make the mistake of accidentally cutting off our neighbor and be forgiven, but also so that we may choose to be cut off and forgive those in front of us. 

And for those who can’t make the stretch to believe in the supernatural resurrection and the entity of the Father, I ask you to consider the future of us rejecting the Natural Law of tit-for-tat on the scale of humanity. We are not looking turn the heater off, but to slowly turn it down so that we may not set our house ablaze. Let us not look to ignore evil, but treat the one who has been taken hostage by their actions as the person you needed when you were younger. Let us not brush away blessings nor keep them close-fisted, but let them increase so that curses may in turn decrease. Whether that looks like reducing expectations, having that hard conversation in a slightly softer voice, hugging the person who slapped your hand, or just taking the extra minute to clean the dish that isn’t your mess, showing the one who did it through love so that they themselves may know the beauty of cleanliness. 

I speak to myself on the last one. 

Now, I’ve spent four too many days on this essay. I’ve got a much longer book to write and a much shorter 27 month late essay to ignore. 

In peace and love for peace and love to the One who gives peace and love, 

Nic Nelson

#blessingsforblessingsisgood

The Drafts

When the master sees that the Warrior is depressed, he says:

“You are not what you seem to be in these moments of sadness. You are better than that.

“Many have left-for reasons we will never understand-but you are still here. Why did God carry off all those amazing people and leave you?

“By now, millions of people will have given up. They don’t get angry, they don’t weep, they don’t do anything; they merely wait for time to pass. They have lost the ability to react.

“You, however, are sad. That proves that your soul is still alive.”

– Warrior of the Light, Paulo Coelho

If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!  I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far;  but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. 

–Philippians 1:22-24

There have been three separate occasions in which I have begun writing a letter for my suicide: my junior year of high school, my senior year, and my freshman year of college. Thankfully, none of these drafts were ever finished or followed through with an attempt to take my life; the one attempt I made had no letter to go with it but was brought about by an intense need to release myself from the hardship and chaos of life going on around me that I had no hope to control. That is a story for another post.

The intention for this e-journal post (yes, in the year since I started this site, I still don’t like the word “blog”) is to fully and completely exorcise any and all feelings concerning the control the Thanatos (death instinct) has on me through memories and anxieties about a past I cannot change.

To qualify, I have no feelings of wishing to die right now. With the change of the seasons and the coming of colder winds and shorter lights, I have started feeling twinges of anxiety bubbling underneath. They are average bits of anxiety that people my age go through: feeling like I don’t look attractive; wondering if that person I want to see is actually busy; feeling that my degree and education are worthless; what’s really going on at home, etc.. I feel it is necessary to deal with those sparks before they go aflame and they take over my conscious thoughts, leaving me shaking and looking over my shoulder most of the day. After all, no anxiety is preferable to a little anxiety.

Regarding the “departing drafts,” they were all styled the same. With the popularity of the show 13 Reasons Why, which came out in my sophomore year of high school, my goal was to create a document that left no questions as to the “why” of my suicide. Becoming a writing and reading fanatic, I started out the drafts with a general introduction that included thoughts, insecurities, and struggles that have led to what I felt was an appropriate decision (the theme of irrational rationale once again reveals itself in my writing of my life). After each introduction, I would make a long list of names of the people in my life with whom I felt like I had to explain my decision. Family, friends, close acquaintances, and anybody that I felt could possibly be hurt by my parting.

Thankfully, this second part of my letter had a couple advantages to it. First, it was so, so damn long. If there are 75 people I’m writing to, and I’m writing 2-3 single-spaced pages for each person to ensure I get the message across of how much I loved them and what they meant to me, I was thankfully going to get out of my dark mental pit during that time. Suicide is never a logical choice; it is when the mind takes someone down a train of logical fallacies after the difficulty of life has made it to where they can’t stop, just take a break. They want to distract themselves, but their mind keeps racing. They can’t steady their breath, so they want to stop breathing. They feel ashamed to look at the people around them, so they want to never see anyone again. But there is no “break” to life. Kendrick Lamar says that “sleep is the cousin of death,” but even still, one has to wake up to the cruelty of sunlight (or in my case, for much of my high school career, a quacking duck alarm clock).

Second, I was literally writing to the people I had been living for, reminding myself of what it is I love about them, subsequently giving me a reason to keep pushing forward. Your commitment to death greatly diminishes upon writing to your parents about who they have been to you. Your sickness of life is treated a little bit as you write the letter to the girl you went on a date with telling her how pretty you think she is. Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and brother is born for a time of adversity.” Pretty hard to want to die when you remember good talks and laughter with brothers at arms.

Reflection is a gift to be taken carefully and with responsibility for one’s sake. Lessons can be learned and memories can fill a heart. However, the trials from those lessons can be haunting and memories can also be like knives that slowly twist throughout the heart and mind. One of the beliefs of Friedrich Nietzsche is that forgetting is one of life’s greatest gifts. It’s your mind’s way of expelling information that is no longer serving your life. As someone who has Athazagoraphobia, the fear of forgetting and being forgotten, is a terrifying lesson that I am trying to learn. My belief is that the greatest desire in life by people is to Know and to be Known–by Him above and those around. I also think that there is a real connection between our greatest desire and deepest fear, but that’s too much of a tangent. So accepting that perhaps it is God’s blessing that I didn’t remember to wish Happy Birthday to the girl I liked in youth group six years ago is sadly harder for me than most. The strength that God has given me to care for others and seek after them has the potential to become my weakness and chains that drag my life down, causing dissatisfaction and, eventually, despair.

That is why it is so important to understand that the search for meaning is often more important than the meaning one finds. I didn’t decide I wanted to become an author/teacher quickly. It took a long time of liking reading, then betraying it for math, then realizing that calculus sucks, to finally finding a passion and skill in writing and craft (which I am trying to get better at). And who knows, maybe God will further narrow down my niche. Maybe in 10-15 years, you’ll find Nicholas Nelson’s name in the romance section of Barnes and Noble writing the next generation’s Fifty Shades of Grey (I hope I’m writing something a bit more…appealing to the larger general readership, but who knows). Maybe I’ll be writing instruction manuals like my mom believes my major’s use was at one point (I might rather live in the Arctic).

The point that I’m trying to get across is you, the one who is lonely; the one feels lost; the one is drowning, suffocating, and gasping for breath; broken, bleeding, and bruised seemingly beyond repair; shame-filled, cast away, and lost with no home; you: write your heart. Express your hurt and bring it to where you can see it. Then express your love. It doesn’t have to be about people. Walt Whitman has some dope poetry about nature. Write about trees and moss, figs and pears, coffee and Kava, Cookout and Zaxby’s, bendy and swirly straws. Write about what you need to forget and leave it buried, to decompose over time as all things of the mind eventually will be.

For those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please get help. The number for the suicide prevention hotline is 988. If nothing I said helped, please call this before you do anything. Help is here and victory is on the way.

-Nic

Disorder Stalking

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.

1 Corinthians 16:13-14

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you whenever you go.

Joshua 1:9

 Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? I don’t know. Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.

Gandalf the Grey, The Hobbit

A few weeks ago, my roommate got a tattoo of his angel numbers. Angel numbers are a repeating number or numbers that catch our attention throughout the day that are a sign that the divine force (whether it be God, the Universe, etc.) is telling you that you’re on the right path. I confess that my knee jerk reaction was that angel numbers are simply a coincidence that grabs the human attention in a textbook case of Theory of Mind (which I will not delve into; read it yourself). However, as I though on it more I began to understand it. Although I am not spoken to through numbers, I am spoken to in a different way by God. I am given ideas and words repeatedly in order to show me something. It may not necessarily tell me I am on the right path, but it feels a lot like foreshadowing.

For example, last spring semester I had the sudden urge to study Lamentations with my discipleship partner. We spent three months going through the book (which is essentially a guide on how to grieve biblically) and then that summer I was put in a condition where it was essential that I face the demons of my past in order to not emotionally, mentally, and spiritually implode. Thankfully, God’s grace permitted me to do so and I was put on the other side stronger than I was before.

Can I completely deal with everything that comes my way? No.

Do I still have the occasional unprompted panic after spending days or weeks thinking too deeply? Yes.

Am I still here after those things? Always.

Now coming to the present. This semester I have been emotionally and spiritually stable even though the conditions of the world and my reality are telling me not to be. Since the last time I have written in this journal, Russia has invaded Ukraine, putting the entire world on the edge of its seat; I’ve started creative writing again, which often times starts nights where I wake up with deep scratches along my body; my family has been going through an intense hardship; and several other events and developments.

And yet I feel ok… which makes me scared.

It was today as I was playing poker with some brothers from Cru that I really considered how much of this is me being alright and how much of this is, in reality, me emotionally suppressing myself, not allowing myself to feel my full range of emotions as I am afraid what would happen to me if I did.

There have certainly been moments in my life where I have allowed myself to feel the full range of my emotion and I was either hurt by it or scared afterward.

Regardless of whatever patient persona I give off, when I am angry I get PISSED! It’ll probably happen over the course of a few minutes where I’ll throw something, dig into someone as deep as I can, walk away to sulk, and then return to try and undo whatever damage I’ve done.

In regards to sadness, there’s some shit that I’ve experienced that I hope no one else ever has to experience and there’s some shit that people very close to me have gone through that has caused a great weight to be hung on me because I love them and wish I could help them; and I wish that no one has to experience their loved one’s go through that.

Then that goes to love. Both familial, (which is storge in Koine Greek) and romantic love (eros, in Koine Greek) are two I have an incredible struggle with. With both, there is certainly trauma that I need to work through in order to allow myself to feel the full range of passion that these loves entail. Until then, when I get to a certain point on the “meter” of these loves, I find myself near paralyzed thinking about what it means that I’m allowing the deeper parts of this emotion to be felt.

  1. I’m allowing myself to be put in a position of pain.
  2. I’m putting this other person, who at this point I care about, in a position where I can hurt them either intentionally or, more than likely, accidentally.
  3. Can I focus on the other people in my life if I allow myself to spend more emotional energy in this area of my life?
  4. Is there someone else who can support and love them? If so, should I cease pursuing so they have a better chance to find somebody.

The list goes one, but let’s focus on the idea of emotional energy. I don’t think I’ve been able to be the friend the people around me deserve this semester because of a lack of emotional energy. I’ve certainly been resting a lot more than I used to, which I think comes from an incredible amount of emotional energy already being spent on the different areas of my life. I’ve promised SO many people I love to get in touch with them this semester, yet have found myself unable to do so because I feel the need to recharge so often.

This brings me back to the beginning of this rambling. The idea of being strong and courageous appearing in my life constantly throughout probably the last month. First it comes in the form of The Hobbit, next my discipleship partner recommends a study on Joshua, then my Bible study has a random passage about this idea that didn’t even have to do with what we were talking about.

This has either caused me to be aware of or to begin to feel a looming over my life. Whether you consider life to be a journey and the storm clouds are starting to rumble on the mountains in front of you or you consider it a walk and feel a stalking force looming near, you can probably get the idea. What I have decided to title this feeling is “The Agent of Disorder.”

There are three ideas of order in my worldview: order, which is simply the state God’s creating agency allows there to be stability throughout creation; unorder, which is the state that is without God’s creating agency keeping creation apart, the most notable example of this in scripture being the plagues of Egypt; and disorder, which are the forces of sin and darkness that seek to put the world in a state of unorder to separate humanity from God’s order, putting their physical and spiritual life in peril.

Now that this idea has been explored, this Agent has resulted in a feeling of unease. I feel like something bad is about to happen and God is telling me to strap myself in cause its gonna be hard and its gonna be stinky.

And I don’t want that because… I’m a wuss, if we are honestly gonna put it into honest words.

I have this terrible, natural part of the human condition in me that doesn’t chase after or simply lets go of things I want and holds onto things that don’t serve me. It’s awful, truly.

I don’t want to be uncomfortable, but I’m being told that to go on this great next step that I’m chasing I have to be ready to do so.

I have to be ready to have that conversation, I have to be ready to fight for what’s right, I have to be ready to sacrifice, to chase, to break down, to want, to lose, to trudge, to brace, to hurt, and to ultimately just do whatever and survive.

And I suppose that’s my problem. For so long, my goal was to simply get by and survive. But now, the means to which I survived have become my captor. I feel terrified to use the full capabilities of my mind and body because if I do so, I won’t go back. My life will be put on a road that I will not so easily leave. Although I hate quoting from the same book more than once in one journal, J. R. R. Tolkien writes this exchange between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit about Bilbo going on his journey.

“Bilbo Baggins: ‘And you promise that I will come back?’
Gandalf: ‘No…and if you do, you will not be the same.'”

That is what I feel preparing to turn and fight this Agent, or go head first into the storm, the fire, or great disorders of the world. There is no assurance that going into it I will be ok; the only assurance is that if I come out of it, I will surely not be the same Nic that went in.

I am certain that this looming feeling will come to climax itself in this season of my life. Whether it be through the actions of myself, another, or simply the different forces at work in this world. I have been told several times during my life that the times where I wasn’t suppose to come out on the other side and did show purpose for my life. Whether it be me sprinting to the edge of a cliff at Bryce Canyon at 2 1/2, near drowning myself in a pool at 4, or approaching a gun to my own temple as a broken teen, there is a guardian angel working his ass of to make sure I can do my work.

I suppose the least I can do is make some good out of it.

Have a good night and a blessed Holy Week.

-Nic

Concerning Pain

“You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.”

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Sean: My father was an alcoholic. Mean fuckin’ drunk. Used to come home hammered, looking to whale on someone. So I had to provoke him, so he wouldn’t go after my mother and little brother. Interesting nights were when he wore his rings…

Will: He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, “Choose.”

Sean: Well, I gotta go with the belt there.

Will: I used to go with the wrench.

Sean: Why?

Will: Cause fuck him, that’s why.

Good Will Hunting

One of the greatest challenges (and if succeeded, accomplishments) in the Christian journey can be summarized in James 1:2-4, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Not only being joyful amidst trials, but rejoicing that you are experiencing them in the first place. As an athlete, I enjoy a good workout. Sweat covering my face and dripping onto the ground, my muscles shaking from effort, lungs on fire from exertion, it’s cathartic and therapeutic to me. However, no athlete enjoys getting injured. It’s a pain that represents setback, a lack of progress, an obstacle that cannot pushed through, but only patiently waited out.

Now, this article goes to how I have chosen to deal with pain and the complex relationship I have with pain in my life. I am often told by friends that the pain I am experiencing is for a reason, I should take advantage of what pain is teaching me, God has us grow through trials, etc. etc. etc. Now, I agree with all of these things; but to these remarks, I normally consider that if I was a prisoner serving a sentence in prison, I would do my best to make good of the situation. However, if an opportunity would come to escape or shorten my sentence, it would be very hard not to grasp onto that. This has manifested itself in ways in which I numb myself in order to not feel pain and struggling with desiring to die early.

Disclaimer: Before I write about any of the substances which are named on this list, I hold no judgment for those who choose to use them. In a controlled environment, clear mind, and moderation, they can be used to have a merry time with friends and family. However, my relationship with some of these substances have been toxic and a means of an escape, in which case help should be sought after and these substances limited.

Alcohol
Ah yes, the most classic method for numbing among not just college students, but adults as well. People have told me that it’s not possible for college students to be alcoholics because everyone is doing it. To that I respond often for why they are choosing to drink. For me, I definitely began heading toward the path of alcoholism. I would drink to forget, numb, to distract, and speed things along. I first started drinking in college because it was either that or be alone in my dorm room on the weekends. Once I started, I made rules for myself that I eventually broke as I started becoming more comfortable with it. Drink on special occasions: broken. Never drink alone: broken. Never drink when depressed: very broken. Especially with the rise of COVID, going through a semester at home and alone away from my friends at school, me developing a feeling of loneliness even when I am around people, me not understanding why, etc. During my sophomore year, I convinced my parents to buy alcohol for me so that I could experiment with writing poetry while drunk. Really it was just an excuse for me to have some steady access to alcohol while trying to cry for help. Even though its a bit metaphysical, this poem can reveal where I was:

Tail of the Drunken Poet

12oz

  1. What will we do with a drunken poet?
  2. What will we do with a drunken poet?
  3. What will we do with a drunken poet?
  4. Put him at his wit’s end!
  5. What’s the result of a drunken poet?
  6. What’s the result of a drunken poet?
  7. What’s the result of a drunken poet?
  8. A soul that’s broken in writing!
  1. All who have entered the craft have
  2. been put face to face with the door of the unconscious 
  3. and can choose to open it to embrace treasures of untold value that lay
  4. past its threshold!
  5. However, these treasures come with a curse, nay, a weight!
  6. This weight seems but a small price, 
  7. but drags those who wield it down through the dirt and 
  8. breaks their bodies and minds only so that they may 
  9. deepen their soul’s reach.

24oz

  1. What will we give a drunken poet?
  2. What will we give a drunken poet?
  3. What will we give a drunken poet?
  4. A chance to be a heard voice!
  5. What will we take from a drunken poet?
  6. What will we take from a drunken poet?
  7. What will we take from a drunken poet?
  8. Everything that matters!
  1. There once lived a boy from Arizona.
  2. Sometimes he felt like a lona’. 
  3. He said what he did,
  4. and did what he said,
  5. but after all that ended up dead! 

36oz

  1. What will we see from a drunken poet?
  2. What will we see from a drunken poet?
  3. What will we see from a drunken poet?
  4. A life of questions and whiteout!
  5. What will be said of a drunken poet?
  6. What will be said of a drunken poet?
  7. What will be said of a drunken poet? 
  8. At least he put his heart out!
  1. Of what do we know is pure?
  2. Of what do we know for sure?
  3. Where do we go when we die?
  4. Where is the kingdom of the sky?
  5. How is this life a blessing?
  6. How is our God this testing?

48oz

  1. What will be heard from a drunken poet?
  2. What will be heard from a drunken poet?
  3. What will be heard from a drunken poet?
  4. Absolutely nothing!
  5. What will be remembered of a drunken poet?
  6. What will be remembered of a drunken poet?
  7. What will be remembered of a drunken poet?
  8. Absolutely nothing!
  1. To try and find perfection in writing is to try and find meaning in everything.
  2. To try and find happiness in everything is to try to see and be blind to the tangible.
  3. To try and be blind with sight is to try to remove one’s mind and soul from the world.
  4. To try and remove one’s mind and soul from the world
  5. is to become the world and feed the world with your body.

60oz

  1. How will it end for the drunken poet?
  2. How will it end for the drunken poet?
  3. How will it end for the drunken poet?

Yes, I know, humorous over your first read. However, there are some lines I read and I think “Damn… I was not okay.” For example, lines 56 and 57 are in reference to me feeling that it would be better that I die and allow my body to be nutrients to the Earth because, at least then, I’ll know I would do something of value. My death would be more significant than anything my life could offer.

It would also suck because there were also people who knew I was not okay when I drank and they looked at me like that. Whenever I would begin to drink, it felt like I was treated like a baby by some people. It’s not that I cared that I was being treated like that. I just cared that I was being treated differently than everyone else. I was being treated like a burden and responsibility instead of a peer.

After this summer, I realized I desperately needed to remain sober the fall semester and just not touch anything. It helped, but it didn’t cure me. I found myself whenever I was feeling depressed or anxious very much wanting some gin or rum. It was especially hard as the people around me are turning legal drinking age this year and want to celebrate and go out drinking more. I like being around them, but it’s hard to be the only person in the room who’s sober. I certainly know some people in my friend group look down on me that I am not drinking, but they have also never asked why I stopped in the first place, of which I hope this is illuminating.

I decided to break my sobriety during winter break three times. The first two were fine, I was around good company and having a great time. The third, not so much. On New Year’s Eve, my roommate insisted I come with him to a New Year’s Eve party instead of being alone in the apartment. I grudgingly accepted, not really wanting to go. I had a decent time though. I danced, I had a little bit of party juice, certainly not as much as I had the other two times, but I was having fun.

And then it turned midnight.

There are two events of the year that are hard for me personally: New Year’s Eve and my birthday. They both represent an explicit passage of time, reflection over what you’ve accomplished, and turning a new leaf to what is ahead, looking back on previous birthdays and New Year’s events, etc.. However, the problem is that most reflection I do is depressing because I feel alone in my reflection, feel as though I have accomplished nothing, and fear turning a new leaf will result in deafening loneliness and the continuous, uncontrollable death of relationships around me. I can grasp as hard as I can to what I have, but it will be taken away nonetheless.

Upon this mental flooding, I went outside and simply sat down in my buzzed state. Soon after, a sober ride brought myself, my roommate, and a couple others back to our complex. I went back to the apartment while my roommate went to someone else’s apartment in our complex to continue hanging out. So there I was, alone with the thoughts of my mind.

I tried to cut my arm open about 25 minutes getting home. It wasn’t intended to be suicidal, just a distraction from what was going on in my head. I didn’t end up doing it. Not because I couldn’t physically, but because I thought about those I was close to. I felt as though I couldn’t put my family through even more stuff going on (they will also most likely read this, so sorry). I felt incapable of being able to express my pain and simply had to sit and marinate in it, feeling like I had to cry but being incapable of doing so.

So because of this, I am now sober again. My 21st birthday is in about two weeks, I am scared as to how my mind will react upon another symbolic day of “progress” and what I imagine will be an incredibly high social pressure to drink.

Let me establish that I personally do not believe that alcohol is inherently bad. I think under the right contexts, it is a great thing. In Luke, Jesus turning water into wine was the first miracle that he performed in his ministry. It should be used for occasions of celebration and life such as birthdays, weddings, holidays, etc. However, I feel as though I am confined in an area and culture that uses any minor excuse as a celebration to drink. “It’s Friday! Let’s drink!” “It’s Saturday! Let’s drink!” “It’s two days before Halloween! Let’s drink!” “The vibes are on! Let’s drink!” “We are going to do ____ and get drunk for it!”

This unfortunately puts me in the situation of being in a difficult environment full of tempting substances that I know will bring me to a hole in my mental health or be alone, which is also not good for me.

Marijuana
I have never had an “enjoyable time” smoking weed. In the moment it can be fun, but the next morning, I feel like I did absolutely nothing. During high school, I held weed at a very long distance. I was an athlete (and a long distance runner, at that), if I were to ever smoke, so many of my opportunities would go out the window if I were to fail a drug test/get caught. Then I go to college and experienced my demons from my upbringing following me and creating a difficult reality that made challenges near unbearable. Toward the end of my first semester, I tried smoking for the first time. It’s funny, a couple hours before hand, I was at Cru and our speaker insisted that we end the year “on a high note.” The irony of this statement is not lost on me.

I was most likely giggly during my first experience and the occasional times I participated in it. It was a way for me to be able to hang around people and some of my friends. Instead of some of them saying “we’re gonna smoke” and then I go off by myself, I could actually join them in the festivities. The occasions that I want to smoke though are when I am already under the influence of alcohol. It doesn’t matter what I am using as long as it would cast me further from sobriety.

Further from having to feel pain that wasn’t unbearable, but to me seemed unending.

It’s infuriating. This is literally my comfort to pain because afterwards I can just sleep it off and pretend it was a dream. Kendrick Lamar says in his song “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” “I’m a dreamer and sleep is the cousin of death, really stuck in the schema of wondering when I’mma rest.” I’m essentially dreaming my fantasy, or really what it is is “un-reality,” and then trying my best to just drift off into the closest thing to death that a human can experience. For people who struggle with suicidal thoughts, the train of thought isn’t we want to be done with life, we just want a break from it, but there is no break without just ending it, so we suck up the latter.

At this point I’m done with pornography and lust and just going to go on a tangent on suicide and death (the former of which I’ve struggled with and the latter of which seems to be constantly teetering between the forefront of my mind and my subconscious). I remember seeing this post about “30 reasons why life is worth living” or something like that. It goes into these things I’ll miss like “falling in love,” “the places you haven’t gone,” “liking a new book” etc.. I regret to say that I approach this thinking with an air of cynicism. Most of the things listed aren’t promised in this life. It is very possible I go my entire life without being able to experience what I consider to be authentic love-falling. And are books and exploring really what life is about? Sure, they can be seasoning to the meat of it; but without some real substance, then I’m just eating spoonfuls of spices that leave my mouth dry and in need of water.

I didn’t put love on the “seasoning” part of the metaphor because I do think that love is worth living for. God’s love sustains us and human love (however flawed) shows us a glimpse of who God is. In response to the KKK putting a flaming crucifix on his front lawn, MLK gives this response to the media about love: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” That is what I think that life is about. If loving each other is how we show people God, then we are turning thorns into roses, rotted wood into strong oak, walking dead into true life.

That’s why for me, relief from pain doesn’t really come from things that distract me from whats going on inside me. I love going out to eat with people, going outside to just walk around and explore, and just talk about whats going on inside of them and how the outside is affecting it. Some of the most memorable conversations I have with my friends are the ones of how we are struggling and are willing to just help each other through it however we are needed. Even though our struggles are different, pain in of itself is still pain. It is felt by everyone and needs to be felt in order to understand a deeper longing of what we as human’s need.

Theres this idea going around about not texting or reaching out to people because then you see “who the real ones are.” That idea seems stupid though because if everyone followed that idea, no one would ever be the first one to reach out. I know I need to be better about reaching out to people. I kind of just hope that I run into them and say “hey, let’s get lunch this weekend.” But sometimes that just doesn’t happen. I’ve gone through almost a month of classes and know who I’m not going to see now.

So my thing is just reach out to people. Desire to understand the why of their character. Understand that there are things going on that we can’t see that people may feel scared to talk about because they may be seen as less, weak, or unworthy of love. But love is what is needed for healing.

-Nic

Can I Do Anything?

In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
– Aeschylus

I actually read this quote at the section break for Part Two in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. I have no idea who Aeschylus is, but he seems like a wise fellow with a lot of the same stuff I got going on.

I’ve been reading a lot as of late. In the past month, I’ve finished three books: Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, Will by Will Smith, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and am currently reading The Promised Land by Barack Obama and Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu. My roommate and friend has observed me doing this and asked if I’m doing so much reading to avoid thinking about and addressing my problems, to which I confirmed and continued to read.

I occasionally will get asked, “How can you read more than two books at once?” My joke answer is “because I’m an English major,” but there is honestly a strategy to it. I will generally have a book that is my “soda”; a book that is easily readable and does not require much if any contemplation or meditation to understand, much like drinking a soda, and I have a book that is a “smoothie” or a “steak”; a book that requires slow reading, has more colorful language and style, and needs to be thought on after sections in order to fully appreciate it, like a smoothie or a steak. So currently The Promised Land is my soda and Tao Te Ching is my steak.

However, an unexpected -but not entirely unforeseen- result has occurred from my switching back and forth reading of these two pieces of literature along with the reflection of how they compare to my worldview: they have made an already incredibly loud internal dialogue of my responsibility to the world and its people even louder and more unbearable.

Before diving into my dilemma, I’m going to explain this part of my worldview:

Ever since I have decided to try and be an authentic Christian after 8th grade through a series of traumatic events combined with me having to mature faster than I should have and coming to the conclusion I can’t do this shit called life by myself and I need God to give me real life, I’ve felt that I need to constantly give back to God. It kind of goes to the idea that good works being an effect of faith as opposed to faith being an effect of good works. While good works is a good thing, like all good things, it can become an idol if done for the wrong reasons.

This desire to give back to God has caused -and I suppose is still causing- a few psychological issues.

  1. If I fail in loving someone like God loves them (Matthew:Something, “Whatever you did for the one of the least of these, you have done for me.”), then I am failing as a Christian and my identity. This has two sides to it: one of me not loving enough, and one of me not loving at all.

The former comes from an understanding that I will probably not see the fruits of my effort. Therefore, I am left with the question after interactions with others of “Did I do enough?” The answer always being “No, I could have done ___ and said ___ along with not allowing my mind to wander to [insert past mistakes] and distracting me.” I see this connect to what I understand as a sort of “Savior Complex” that I have. During one of the few sessions of family therapy that I was obligated to attend, the therapist would tell me that based on what everyone else said, I was the poster child for “The Hero” in a dysfunctional family. The definition of which is, “The hero appears to be a high functioning, well-balanced individual who the family can point to as a solid example that backs up the family’s facade of doing well. The hero allows the family to continue perpetuating the notion that everything is fine, despite there being some serious issues going on within individuals, as well as the entire family system. The hero:

  • As a child may be parentified and take on the role of spouse when one of their parents is physically or emotionally unavailable
  • May feel immense pressure to carry the family’s appearance of success and achievement
  • May insert themselves to help resolve familial issues”

I observe this role as having evolved through a conviction that ideal human society functions through the recognition that we are part of one human family that is brought together by a common source, which I identify as God. Now, I apply this responsibility that originated in my nuclear family and spread it to those that I am around. This results in a constant need for control, a nearly paralyzing fear of intimacy, and a feeling that I can only be loved if I am accomplished. I was talking with two of my friends about this and I used a metaphor of a diamond and a smartphone. I try and view everyone as a diamond: an object which is seen with inherent value regardless of what form it may take; however, I view myself as a smartphone, which is only valuable to a person if it can fulfill the function it is meant to do. If a smartphone runs out of battery or starts operating at less than ideal performance, a person will start to look for a replacement smartphone. Therefore, I feel that I have to constantly be excelling in everything I put myself into in order to feel as though my acceptance from others can be validated. And the only way that I can help bring humanity closer and put more good into the world is if I can put my 100% into that 100% of the time.

To address the latter statement of when I just completely fail at loving others. When I do that is when shit goes completely sideways in my mind. I, like anybody who understands that they are imperfect, can think of many times I have just blatantly used someone else as a target for my frustration, exhaustion, or general dissatisfaction with the way my life is. This has manifested itself in forms ranging from pursuing a girl just to satisfy the feeling of sexual and romantic insecurity I often feel; to not being patient with others and making a personal attack on them when I feel like I am being pushed into a corner. Then I come to my senses, I feel an extreme weight of guilt, I apologize for it to mend the relationship so that we can move past it and continue to cultivate and grow with each other, and then I proceed to continue and feel an extreme weight of guilt.

Both of these insecurities adds up to me feeling like I have to do my best to display God’s love on Earth -so basically be Jesus- to feel worthy of value. Is this reasonable? Absolutely not. Is this healthy? Clearly, no. Does being conscious about this help? I feel like it probably is the reason I get depressed instead of pissed off.

2. I am not allowed to do things for myself when there is an opportunity to do things for others. Anything that I want to do is immediately vetoed to what I should be doing.

For example, due to the error I made in my application resulting in me not going to study abroad in Scotland, I am now faced with three decisions.

  1. I can go to Scotland Fall 2022 or Spring 2023, effectively missing one of the last two semesters I’ll have with the friends at school who I don’t get enough time with already.
  2. I can go to on a different study abroad program this summer and not work at the camp I’ve worked with for the past two summers that spreads the gospel to kids and have fun with them.
  3. I don’t go study abroad at all and fulfill the obligations I have of being a present friend and faithful servant.

I’ve talked this predicament with a few of my friends and they have told me that I should pursue option 1 or 2 based on the fact that “its a great opportunity you need to take advantage of” or “You’ve already served for two summers and you don’t owe those kids anything. They will be fine without you.” Both of which I agree with, but cannot rationalize because that is not where my guilt comes from.

Let’s make it clear: Camp Willow Springs, the camp I work at, is not a chore or something that I have dreaded doing either of the years. It’s so much fun. The staff is great. They love Jesus, they love the kids and each other, they engage in amazing conversation of gospel, theology, and God, and we become a happy family incredibly quickly.

The kids are also fun. While they are a handful at times, being able to explain the gospel, God’s love, and help them through whatever they are going through is an amazing feeling. It is the most emotionally exhausting job I’ve ever had, but its also the most rewarding.

Seeing the way in which not only the kid’s lives, but my own life and the lives of the other counselors impacted makes going to camp feel like something that I not only want to do, but I need to do for myself and for others.

I don’t have much more time to do camp. Before learning that I wasn’t going to Scotland, this was my last summer where the chance of me attending was greater than the chance of me not attending. I would say I was 65-35; but now, I don’t even know where my odds lie. I feel trapped over the conviction of serving I have at camp and fulfilling my responsibility to God, and going on a trip to explore the world and satisfy my heart’s constant desire to travel.

I look at it like some sort of divine test where God is looking down on me, stroking his beard, adjusting his glasses, going, “Hmm… show me Mr. Nelson, where does your heart truly lie. Are you a faithful servant, or am I going to have to put you in the belly of a whale to get you where I need you to go?”

Again, not a healthy mindset nor an accurate portrayal of the God of the Bible and our existence; but the one that I have and must learn to correct nonetheless.

The obvious issue with this mindset is that it functions under the assumption that God does not care about what is going on in my life and instead acts as an authoritarian dictator who accomplishes his plan through whatever means necessary (which is unfortunately the view that many theists and non-theists have).

God is -thankfully- more complex than this according to the scriptures (yes, this is my transition to the theologically heavy portion of this article mwahahahaha).

Here is a passage from Exodus 32, the chapter where Moses is chilling with God on the peak of Mount Sinai while the rest of the Israelites make a golden calf to worship. The following exchange is between God and Moses regarding the events taking place:

Exodus 32:7-14, “7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”

Summary

Lord: Aye yo, these people fake. Who even is this calf? It’s on sight.

Moses: Aye, chill. You don’t want these other nations to catch you slippin’. Remember, you was tight with Abraham.

Lord: Word.

Aside from the fact that the Generation Z translation of the Bible could use me on their team, the idea of this passage is while God is jealous for his people and often uses wrath as a means of cleansing, he is also not deaf to the cries of his people. While Moses does not justify the actions of the Israelites, he does appeal to the promises from God to Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars, rebuilding what humanity is suppose to look like through his lineage.

This passage is one of many throughout the Bible that captures the complex between the desires of man and the plans of God. This tension is most often battled in the modern debate of free will and predestination, but that is not the point here. Regardless of the metaphysical law that dictates the personal narrative of myself and the overarching narrative of humanity, the struggles to make certain decisions as well as addressing the consequences set through decision is how wisdom is developed through a lifetime or generation. This experience is how people set priorities of either themselves or others. Oftentimes, decisions to help others at little to no expense is where the feeling of selflessness comes from. However, the decisions that come at a price of convenience and desire in order to benefit others is where selflessness becomes character.

The problem I face with others is watching the former often being the case. It’s a foothold in my heart for feelings of contempt and judgment to take hold. This is especially true during depression when I am more tired in every aspect of my being. I’ll hear people tell me they care about me and want to help, but then the back of my mind whispers “All liesssss… they tell me they care, but at what cossssst? Will they help if it required sssssacrificccceee? They probably just want to usssseeee me.” It very much does feel like the doubt Ron experiences when he stabs the locket in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. These thoughts often have a doubly damaging effect. It results in me distancing myself from others because I feel like they don’t care, isolating me; and it allows me to become more depressed because I’m not worth being cared about.

Damn. My mind is tragic, isn’t it? This goes back to the question of my situation: can I do anything about this?

This is where the two books I am reading plus scripture comes into play.

Tao Te Ching suggests that true satisfaction comes from balancing action with inaction and bending to the forces of world while not letting it break you, essentially the idea of “Nothing in excess.” So, essentially connecting with the universal source by allowing yourself to discern when to act and not act, and allowing yourself to accept the result. This is similar to aspects of a portion of the biblical wisdom literature, Ecclesiastes, which tells the author that even though life is meaningless and the world is broken, look for joy anyway and find solace in the fact that God wants us to find joy in a world where circumstances take it away from us. The biblical literature also tells us that while the just may not always be rewarded, it is better to be just than wicked; and while we may never understand why bad things happen to good people, God does.

Then comes The Promised Land, the story of a young grassroots activist turned young senator turned President of the United States. In a book about being a progressive president, Obama constantly struggles with knowing if what he is putting so much effort into will have any effect. Will people be helped? What about those who still struggle? Will any of this have meaning lifetimes from now?

The words he chooses to respond to this have helped me. While incredibly simple, they make me want to fight. I’m not a guy who has nothing to lose, but also a guy who feels like he has the passion of “something worth fighting for,” but this is what he says:

“The idea that I, or any one person, could bring order to such chaos seemed laughable; on some level, the crowds below were cheering an illusion. And yet, in the flickering of those candles, I saw something else. I saw an expression of the spirit of millions of people around the world: the U.S. soldier manning a post in Kandahar, the mother in Iran teaching her daughter to read, the Russian pro-democracy activist mustering his courage for an upcoming demonstration-all those who refused to give up on the idea that life could be better, and that whatever the risks and hardships, they had a role to play.
Whatever you do won’t be enough, I heard their voices say.
Try anyway.“

That is what I hear God tell me. A reminder that I can’t fix everyone, even though my demons tell me I need to. My demons tell me that if I fail once, I might as well give up.

I Am tells me if I fail, stand up, dust yourself up, and try anyway.

Good night and happy holidays.

-Nic


A Show of Cheer

The holidays are generally one of the more difficult times of the year for me. The onset of the cold weather, less sunlight, dying leaves and barren trees, and an expectation to be extra cheery amidst scheduled exams and unscheduled depressive episodes have left me trying to avoid reminders of what time of year it is. Imagine how easy it is when shops puts out decor matching the next upcoming holiday, every ad online has to do with Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and all the Christmas commercials have functional minority or mixed families (points for the enlightening of media to no longer have their advertising casts be white as snow) enjoying their favorite brands as gifts under the tree.

As a note, when I am depressed I tend to have a more cynical and less forgiving view on the world, people, and most things. Its terrible trying to love people unconditionally when the voice that you are used to hearing is swapped by a voice that says, “This/he/she is stupid because they don’t understand how ____ is ____.”

Its truly a disease of the mind and I fear I am becoming more of an Ebenezer Scrooge than remaining a Ralphie Parker (the main character of A Christmas Story). And I think a lot of why I feel this way toward the holidays is because I’ve started feeling a bit more lonely whenever this time of year comes.

When I was in high school, I would spend two weeks crafting specialized messages to people who meant something to me during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wanted people to know that I was thankful for the role that they played in my life and that they were loved. I didn’t care if they even read what I said, I just wanted them to know that I reached out to them that I cared. Even then, if I failed to message or forgot someone, I would feel an immense amount of guilt doing this.

It was after a couple years of doing this that the wonder of the holidays started becoming lost on me. I started to be more exhausted by the most wonderful time of the year instead of letting it fuel me to be what other people needed this season. Now whenever the holidays come, here is an example of my inner dialogue:

“Oh its Christmas. I want to talk to ___ and wish them a Merry Christmas. But mostly I just want to talk to them. Should I call or text? I could leave a voicemail that says everything I want to say cause texts are impersonal. But what if they pick up? Then what I want to say will be different and it will be awkward. What if I’m bothering them during their family time? They haven’t gotten to see their family in months (but I haven’t seen or heard from them in weeks). Maybe I should wait to see if they send me anything. Thats what I’ll do! And if they don’t send me anything, they sent it to everyone else and either didn’t text me cause I wasn’t important enough or forgot me because I wasn’t important enough. Oh man, what if I call and they just don’t pick up cause I’m not important enough to them. What if-.”

Then my brain shuts down due to overcorrection of hormones that try to calm me down and I end up thinking of nothing and lying in my bed all day being unproductive and depressed.

It sucks and I feel like I am the weird one feeling this way. I understand that all college students are feeling stress right now and see break as a relief; however, I feel stress right now and don’t see the break as any sort of breath of fresh air. I see it as a time when its harder to see people I actually want to hang out with because they’ve gone back to their corner of the world. I see it as the New Year approaching and I naturally look back on my year and see if I’ve made anything of my life yet. Patterns are the creators of mindsets. Pavlov demonstrates this with the bell and feeding his dogs, making their mouth water after hearing the bell.

I want to get out of my pattern. Right now I feel like I’m living a hollow existence. There was a quote from Marvel’s recent movie Sheng-Chi that really convicted me: “If you aim at nothing, you will hit nothing.” I want to aim at something. I want a goal or a dream that I can bring to reality. I don’t want things or presents for Christmas; I want to experience things I’ve never felt and see things I’ve never laid eyes on.

But I don’t want to do it alone.

Last winter break I tried doing this. I went on a two week expedition out west to visit national parks and enjoy nature while trying to reconnect with God. I went to the Grand Canyon, Zion, Arches, and Bryce. I also ate a 72 oz steak, but thats beside the point. I remember I was on a hike in Zion to visit a natural waterhole. I reached it and sat down at its base and I look up the hill to see a group of six friends, three boys and three girls, laughing and talking and having a grand old time.

As I sat and prayed under stars, on mountaintops watching the sun rise or set, a thought entered my mind.

Mountains can’t tell a joke and canyons can’t tell me about their day.

Even though everything I saw on the trip was majestic and beautiful, I look back on it with a longing that I shared with it with someone. It was the longing of relationships that I was longing on that trip. There is so much to worship about the beauty of nature, but its a conversation with a friend that I would stay up all night for instead of staring at the stars alone. Genesis says that man was not created to be alone. That is wisdom I believe to be very true and also dangerous.

I have this fear of knowing people deeper. I worry about when I start to care about people because I know that it is at that point that they can start to hurt me. At any moment, they can pull themselves out of my life and it will tear me apart. My depressive mind tells me that I am on the outside of some kind of joke. Instead of trying to reel me all the way in like a fish, keep me fighting on the line. I’ll be dragged for a bit, then let go, only to be yanked two or three times, then swim for a bit longer before it resumes.

Damn, now it’s just getting to the heart of the issue. I wrote this poem one time about how Earth is a special kind of torture that hell can’t deliver. When you go to heaven, you know you’re going to be rewarded forever. When you go to hell, you know you will be tormented forever. But on Earth, you have no idea what you’re going to get and how long it’s going to last. Thats why it’s hard for me to listen to people who try and reassure me. Some part of my mind, the rational irrationality tells me they can’t promise me it will get better. It is just as likely that it will get worse. I’ve read Job, I’ve read Ecclesiastes, and I’ve read Lamentations. God’s people get it bad… a lot.

Yet, I have to remember I’ve also read John. I’ve read the end of Revelation and I’ve read the last few Psalms. They tell me to praise the Lord and look ahead to the Son of Man who washes clean all who come with the blood of the Lamb.

It’s a bittersweet dichotomy, really. Being trapped in a depressive mindset with an unchanging hope. Its like being trapped in a deep, dark hole with a speck of light coming from the way out. You don’t know how you’re going to get out of the hole, but the fact that there is a light shows that there is a way out. Jesus has shown me that there is a resurrection and that death is not the end. There is more than the pit. There is light. I suppose that’s the meaning of Christmas, isn’t it. A light that reveals itself when the hole is as dark and deep as it can possible feel.

Now, I guess the way I get out of this episode is I start appreciating this light. Even though it’s fixed, the rays on my skin are proof it’s real. The metaphor is getting too deep so I’m going to pull myself out. I have blessings in my life that scare me. I’ve struggled with my life on if I even deserve blessings. Thats not my choice to make. God has decided I have certain blessings that aren’t going away, at least not yet. Jesus talks about celebrating with the bride-groom while the groom still lives, for there will be time for grief when the bride-groom is taken. It’s time to eat, drink, and be merry, as Ecclesiastes says, for that is the wish of God for his people.

I could’ve ended on that delightfully serious note, but alas, I have a Netflix show to reference. Big Mouth Season 4 (?) features a creature called the “Grati-Toad” (yes, I am using a show that satirizes the chaotic reality of puberty and features masturbation amongst animated pubescents, shut up). When the characters are feeling overwhelmed by life, Grati-Toad tells them to start telling people that they are grateful for that they are appreciated it.

I don’t do this, at least not wholeheartedly. This leaves my heart in a position to be stomped on and disappointed. But as I’m doing this, I remember that nothing will change in the world if I follow the patterns. Mindsets are created through patterns, but reforms are started through slight disruption.

This was a good writing session, good job Nic. We feel a good bit better going to bed tonight.

Have a ecstatic exam week.

-Nic

Exceeding Impossible Expectations

I think for my entire life I have felt the need to work to be recognized or of value to any person in my life.

Whenever I look at my philosophy for how to look at other people, I never allow that philosophy to apply to myself. The lock screen of my phone is the philosophy of my life I try to abide by. It goes as follows:

  1. When people ask who you are by what you say, make sure it’s as a Servant of the Most High.
    • I am first and foremost a citizen of Heaven going through this world to bring others with me to the Kingdom of Heaven.
  2. When you see and love others, do it like you will die after you see them.
    • Don’t be scared to show love. It is the only thing that can ever turn an enemy into a friend.
  3. Everyone needs a free meal once in a while.
    • Everyone has equal dignity and should be treated as the lowest needing to be raised up.

Its a very Gospel Oriented life that I try to live. Its a very love others more than I love myself life that I try to live. And yet, I won’t let this love for others apply to myself from myself or from others. To me, I don’t feel that I can or should be loved freely, but only if I am giving something in exchange for that love. During this time I’m in, I feel like it would be more accurate to change rule 2 to “When you see others, know that no matter what you do, you don’t deserve to be loved by them.”

So yeah, this post is about my unhealthy interpretation of rule 2 on myself.

I think part of that reasoning is from being told my entire life that God’s unconditional love can only be understood by observing all of humanity’s conditional love. Being told that people will only love my if I fulfill certain conditions and preparing to be dropped at any point if those criteria are not being fulfilled.

I can only be loved by my parents if I am an obedient child. This included getting good grades, doing what I’m told in a timely manner, and being seen as a model child that all other adults brag about.

I can only be loved by others and make friends if I have something to bring to the table. Whether its making food for people to have, the willingness to help with assignments, providing plans and room for gatherings, or an incredible drive in all things competition.

When I was on the cross country team, we would often play ultimate frisbee after practices some days. A saying began to roll around my teammates after observing my commitment to catching the frisbee. They would throw the disc to someone else, it would go out of their reach and there would be a turnover, and one of my buddies would yell, “You know who would have caught that? Nelson. Nelson would have caught that.”

Another time during a 4×400 race in my spring track season, I was the anchor and had been put in a terrible situation where my third leg was lazy and jogged his lap. We were in second and first place was 50 meters ahead when I grabbed the baton. So I chased him. At 300 meters left he was 40 meters ahead. At 200 meters left it was 25 meters ahead. At 100 meters left it was 5 meters ahead. At 75 meters he was behind me and I flew down to the finish line.

Regardless of the gap in ability, I never wanted anyone to feel like they would win against me without a challenge. This resulted in a lot of people who tried to play casually to be incredibly pissed off at me. I was viewed as a try hard by them and I viewed them as lazy.

This drive would also tear my body and mind apart.

During races where I lost, I told the coach to push me harder than the rest of the team so I could get better. In games of Spikeball where I got swept, after my friends left I would go into the backyard and serve for another 1-2 hours to get better. If I saw my grades slipping, I would go to the library and study without sleep so that I got the work done and understood what I needed to.

But none of this could be sustained for very long.

When this started in middle school, it was to please my father who was in an incredibly manic episode of his bipolar disorder. If there was any time where he was being unproductive and not giving something his all, that was time wasted. Because he was a mentally sick man who was trying to raise his son to be a man that would succeed by the world’s standards, he pushed that philosophy onto me. My parents were split on a philosophy of how to raise me. My mother believed I needed to take care of myself and do what was right for me while my father believed that in everything I did, I could always push myself a little harder and exceed my limits.

In my early development of my philosophy, this resulted in me pushing myself to my limits in an attempt to protect myself from disappointment. At the time, I was on the wrestling team. In the 24 hours before a match, I would eat a light dinner, no breakfast, some cucumbers, and little water so I could meet weight. I would do Boy Scouts to please my father who wanted me to learn the values of being a man and secure the slot on my resume that said “Eagle Scout.” I would make A’s to show that I had everything all together. But in eighth grade, I recognized that no matter how hard I worked, there were factors that were out of my control. I saw the cruelty that a manic father could extend to his family and children. I tried to serve as the peacekeeper who offered his body, time, and energy to the ravenous beast that was my father’s mania.

From here, I began to break. I would have panic attacks in the morning and spend an hour stuck on the ground crying. Then I would go into school with the excuse I had overslept. I would call authority figures out on flaws in school because I knew to do so at home would fall on deaf, angry ears.

It was at this point in my life that I made a promise to myself: if I were to ever be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I would never marry or have children. I wanted to stop that generational curse because no one I would care about and love should have to deal with my flaws. No one will have to deal with the monsters I saw on each edge of that spectrum.

So now that I sit here with depression, I’m scared. I look back at my life where I have drive and put impossible expectations on myself to succeed and try to load up my plate as full as it can go and wonder if that is a glimpse of mania. And all this fear doesn’t stem from me having bipolar. This fear stems from me being alone if I do.

Last night I had a nightmare. I was walking down a busy street of sorts in the afternoon, and during this walk I would see people I knew along the way and yell out to to them to get their attention. In response, they turned from what they were doing, lost their smile, and screamed at me that they didn’t want me and that I needed to leave. I saw my roommates in a bar and they yelled at me before I could walk in the door. I saw my friend Lauren with some of my other friends in a restaurant and she pretended she didn’t know me until she screamed at me. I saw my extended family and they didn’t even look at me.

I woke up and the first thing I thought of was that I wanted to make a coffee cake to give out to the people in my dream. After I sat for a bit, I wondered if I wanted to make a coffee cake or I had to make it. Then after a bit longer, I realized it was both. I wanted to do this because I love them, but I also felt like I needed to because it was my responsibility to constantly remind them that I loved them. Its not even that I love them, just the fact that they are loved and cared about, regardless of who it is. Thats why whenever I make food, I will generally drop it off or leave it out on the counter. I’m scared to give and receive love directly because of all the ways in which it could go wrong. All this because it has gone wrong in my past.

This reminds me of a quote from Will Smith’s memoir, Will, where he talks about his romantic relationships. I think from the way that I have relationships with people, it applies to all of the relationships in my life. It goes, “To me, love was a performance, so if you weren’t clapping, I was failing. To succeed in love, the ones you care for must constantly applaud. Spoiler alert: This is not a way to have healthy relationships.” And right you are, Will. I feel like if I am not putting everything into a relationship, someone will feel like I don’t care about them.

This kind of mentality becomes problematic when I have a fear of rejection that comes when I reach out to others. As soon as I send a text or a call, a timer starts in my head for how long I’ve done it. The longer that timer goes on, the more I am failing in that relationship.

So where do I go from here? How do I continue to love people but also allow myself to be loved in the process? I think the first step is to understand the relationship between who I do and who I am. I need to accept that people’s love for me is independent of what I do for them. But then, that just leaves who I am… and that scares me.

I have not adapted to having a facade or any sort of outer layer to survive in the real world. People will often say “fake it till you make it,” but I don’t feel like I made it if I’ve faked it. So I’m left with this idea in my head that it is important to be myself, but am left with a belief that just existing as who I am is not valuable if I’m not displaying agency. In a way, I feel like I am apologetically myself.

So the question I’m left with is this: do I abandon who I am as someone who gives love freely in order for it to be more of a delicacy, or do I remain who I am and try to just do what I’m doing harder?

I worry about my future girlfriend. Will she feel like she isn’t special to me because I treat everyone with love and kindness? Do I need to be more sparing with it so that those who are special to me know that they are special to me?

I don’t know, and thinking on it brings me down.

– Nic

Depressed Fear: A Contradiction

“Somehow I know that my heart will keep breaking / But may it stay open and soft / Till I am finally back to the source of it all.” – Gungor, “The End”

After spending a fair bit time in this hole called depression, I can say without a doubt that this shit is stupid and sucks.

I imagine that those who happen to die of exposure, starvation, or dehydration and are in situations in which these deaths occur often have some time to contemplate the reality of their situation. Its not like a war where you are constantly being gunned down and your heart is beating out of your chest or drowning where you have a couple minutes to look back on your life before your lungs run out of oxygen and you slip away. But those whose deaths are dragged out days or weeks probably think a few times “damn… this shit is boring.” At first, that thought is probably followed by “I wish someone would come and save me already.” But after some days without food or water, this thought probably evolves to “I just wish I had a gun so I could shoot myself.”

Right now, I’m still on the idea of wishing someone would come save me from my pit. Its not uncommon for me to evolve to wanting to be put out of my misery, but I’m spending all of my energy right now trying to not go there. That is one advantage of being in the middle of a journey with depression instead of the beginning. When you first have it, the feeling of never-ending emptiness is new and overbearing and it easily crushes your mind and body. Granted, when one is depressed, the feeling that the emptiness will never go away is present when one is depressed. But I think that my spirit has evolved from the exposure to these episodes to be able to endure a bit longer each time.

I’m going to go on a tangent about the psychology of hope for a bit. I promise there is a point to this. There are two stories I want to tell.

The first: I was listening to this speaker talk about hope and he began to tell a story about a case study that was done at some point before animal rights and cruelty was prevalent. This doctor took a group of rats and put them in a vat full of water one at a time to see how long they would tread water before they gave up and drowned. On average, these rats lasted about 15 minutes before accepting their fate. However, he collected a second group of rats, put them in the vat again one at time, and had them swim until they gave up. Just before they drowned, he picked them up out of the water and put them on dry land. After letting them fully rest, he put them back in the vat to see how long they would last. Because the rats now had hope that they would be saved, the average time they tread water went from 15 minutes to 60 hours! All because of their experience to being saved.

The second: I was talking with my therapist and telling him how I was doing -as one does with a therapist- and I was telling him that I don’t like telling people about the reality of my situation because I felt that telling them would just add more stress to them and not change the my reality. He then proceeded to tell me about a case study that also probably occurred before people cared about animals. The purpose of this experiment was to observe an idea called learned helplessness. In this study, a dog was placed in a box with two metal platforms under him, one on each side of this border the dog could jump across. The platform that was under the dog would then be sent an electric current and electrocute the dog. The dog, feeling the shock would jump across the border to the platform that was safe. After observing the dogs reactions to this, those running the experiment decided to send currents to both of the platforms simultaneously. They did this and the dog jumped across the border a couple of times before realizing the reality of his situation. The dog then proceeded to passively lie down in defeat of being shocked.

Now some people may be thinking “Life is not as simple as drowning rats and dogs presented with a dichotomy,” and my depressed mind tells me the same thing. But you would be missing my point!

I have a quote from Rocky Balboa (yes, I do know that he isn’t a real person, shut up) that hangs above the desk in my room that I never use. It goes, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”

The irony in this is that I have been reading it over and over again this week because it’s been a Herculean task to get out of my bed in the mornings, but it has a point to it. Life can be summarized as moving forward and falling down. Now, those who study game theory can argue that neutrality is an option, but I will put that in the same category of falling down. Going backwards and standing still is how one stops getting closer to that thing they are reaching for. While I have plenty of goals and dreams in my life, my goal is in the quote from the top of this article: The Source of It All. The thing about depression is that it makes going forward that much harder and excruciating. It puts me in the position of dog in the crate: what’s the point? Nothing will change.

That is stupid part about depression. Instead of being healthy and able to rationalize, my mind has to deal with a constant barrage of irrationality that comes my way and try to figure out which of these thoughts is truth.

Now, here we go onto the theological part of the article that I promise won’t be too preachy and also has a point. Whenever I talk about truth being evasive to my friends or getting out of a hard situation, I always ask them “Have you read 1 Kings 19?”

Now to my friends, it probably sounds more like “HaVe yOU rEad 1 kiNgS 19?” I always know the answer: They haven’t. No one reads 1 Kings 19. I’m not going to summarize it, here is the text:

3 Elijah was afraid[a] and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.”6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.7 The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire,but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Two ideas to pull from this text: the first is that rest and food does wonders for the soul. Elijah went from wanting to die to being ready for the next challenge. The good thing about depression is that it puts my into a place where I am resting, the problem is just being ready for the next challenge. The second is the elusive nature of truth which is personified by the presence of the Lord. All these great disasters happen around Elijah, but it is emphasized that none of these things carried truth with them. Instead, truth is carried on this small whisper that Elijah would have to be silent to hear. This scene is the perfect example of what a depressed/anxiety-ridden mind feels like. So much stuff is going on inside me and my mind is being treacherous and self-destructive and making it impossible to find truth with my own strength. This is where praying often comes in handy. God reveals truth to those who pursue him.

The most horrible advise I’ve ever heard for my condition is “Listen to your heart/guts.” As a depressed person, that is arguably the worst thing that I can do. If I did that, I would have been strung up on a tree a long time ago. But with depression I am currently faced with a choice: keep swimming and waiting for something to save me or lie down passively in defeat. I feel myself teetering to the edge of the former and don’t know what to do.

This is where the contradiction of depression comes in: wanting help but being too afraid to ask for it.

Whenever I get like this, there are always friends and family who reach out to me and let me know that they are here for me, they will be praying for me, they want to see the best for me, etc.. All of that is so amazingly appreciated and that is exactly what I need, the problem is the feeling of having a gun pointed to my heart. I want to ask for help, but I can’t. I feel scared of all the possibly irrational realities that go through my head.

Lets use an example of what this looks like:

I’m in my apartment alone and I feel scared being alone at the moment. I want to text my friend this to have support. Here are the following realities my mind might present to me.

A. No response.

B. I’m sorry, I’m busy doing blah blah blah with so and so

C. Nic, you need to figure this out yourself. You got it! *high five emoji*

D. No response, but they are doing something on social media.

E. Its game day, don’t bring anyone down right now.

F. Of course Nic, I’ll be right over.

Now, the healthy mind would be able to easily figure out which of these responses I would get from someone who cares about me. However, depression makes these choices go from logical to a lottery winner. It’s not a matter of which one is real, but which one reality happens to land on. Yes, there is a chance that it lands on F, but there is an equally likely chance that I would get A-E and be crushed in the process, making being alone with my thoughts even worse. Therefore, I choose not to ask for help and instead just sit alone, because that is better than being rejected in my solitude.

The step to getting out of my depression is taking the step forward and asking for help, I know. But it is scary. Especially in times like this with finals, the irrationality of everyone being too busy for me is incredibly prevalent. Even I make excuses to get out of getting help. I use the too busy excuse too because I don’t want to be put in a situation that may be terrifying or overwhelming for me. Hell, the scariest part of this entire article isn’t reflecting on my thoughts or pressing the publish button. The scariest part is putting the link out that pretty much says, “Hey, look at how broken I am today.” Thats never something someone wants others to know. It’s the idea that something broken never sells.

Understanding that people care about me is something I need to get through my head. I know one of the big things I think about when I’m alone: I think and pray on other people. This may sound like bullshit and that I’m doing “Look at me! Look at me! I care!” But my mind is constantly running through the names of people in my life, people I haven’t seen in a while, and people who I have had brief but memorable interactions with. The problem with me is that I don’t think that applies to other people for me. I believe that as soon as I am out of sight, I am out of mind. If I am not present for a certain period of time, I will then cease to exist to that person. In other words, I don’t feel important or worthy enough to be memorable.

In all honesty, I don’t know where that comes from or how to fix that. The easy answer is “dEppReSiOn,” but somewhere along the line, learned helplessness came into play. I think the step for me is to not just lie down passively, but lean on something stable that will support me.

I have several pages of Amish Education systems to write about, so I must go on with my finals season. Enjoy your day and stay busy.

-Nic

Dogs in Learned Helplessness: https://medium.com/thrice-removed/seligmans-the-hope-circuit-e7989178473f

Rats in Resilience and Hope: https://worldofwork.io/2019/07/drowning-rats-psychology-experiments/

The Next One…

In the 24-ish hours since I have first posted, I have not gotten any better at titles. I feel as though whenever I have an idea of how I organize my posts, they may actually be somewhat witty or meaningful to the article. But until then, I will accept that these titles have no meaning and serve necessary text I need to fill before posting.

In my day of mostly laying in bed feeling depressed, I have had time to think on what I don’t want to do with this site. I don’t want this to be something I write at the end of the day to rant about the way that having anxiety affected my interactions with my peers or how depression keeps me from living my life.

Ex.: Oh my gosh guys, I went to go get coffee today and the barista told the guy in front of me to have a nice day, but not me. Is it something I said? Did I not say something? Should I stay to see if she said it to the girl behind me? Does she know something about me? Should I know her name?

Thats an extreme example and my anxiety doesn’t work like that in pointless interactions like that. It generally acts up in regards to relationships and people that I care about. But the gist is that I don’t want this to be an emotional outburst where I rabble on in circles. That is how anxiety is strengthened and how I crash and spend the next 24 hours trying to feel safe in my bed.

I also don’t want this to be a depressing biography that goes over events that I feel have had a negative impact on who I am and that I wish never happened. That is equally as pointless because I can’t change any of that.

Ex.: When I was in 6th grade, I liked this girl and thought she liked me back, but then she told me in front of a lot of people she didn’t like me and that made me insecure.

Again, an extreme example, but isn’t it crazy how stuff from 6th-8th grade never really leaves the forefront of your mind? Granted, context may be necessary in some cases, but if I wanted to replay traumatic experiences, it would be a lot easier to just stare off into space for five minutes instead of spending an hour writing it down.

I previously mentioned that this is not my journey’s beginning, but something that I have gone through for quite some time. While it is unfortunate that I have had to spend so much time and energy feeling like I’m not worth the time and energy, it has allowed me to practice reflection and attempted understanding. While my understanding is often hindered by my depressed fog, reflection has allowed me to figure out where I’m stuck… just not why.

One of the things I have thought of is what is the point of knowing the why. If I go into a computer repair shop cause my computer won’t turn on, I am much more concerned with leaving with my computer turned on than leaving with it turned off knowing that manufactured obsolescence is a bitch.

But as one of my friends recently told me, thats not how fixing works. It’s a process and I won’t just be fine in one day. Talking about it will make me feel better.

The only problem is that I feel like I’m not suppose to talk about it.

The image that I used in the last post was one of having a gun pointed to my heart. If we are having this conversation of “what else aren’t you telling me?” then here is what I will look like. You’ll see me look up from whatever it is I’m doing, close my eyes for a few seconds and press my lips together. My hands might clench into fists or grip each other. Then I will open my eyes, I will look into yours, and I will not say a single word.

This isn’t a tactic of intimidation, this is what I look like as a hostage of my depression and anxiety. I feel physically incapable to tell you what I really want to say and I wish that I could.

A few weeks ago, I returned to a place of anxiety after being away from it for a long time. I was shaking all day, my mind was racing, and I could not calm my mind to save my life. I cancelled dinner plans with a friend that evening and told her I was on the edge of freaking out and I didn’t want to lay all of it on her. I then proceeded to sleep for 5 hours. I wake up late evening to feeling like my mind was completely hijacked. It told me to not talk to anyone, don’t ask for help, go drive to the parkway and figure this out on your own. So I did that. As I was leaving, my friend who I was suppose to have dinner with, let’s call her Lauren because I don’t want to use the names of anyone I know, calls me. My mind just completely rejects the idea of answering and tells me to just let it go to voicemail. As I drive the 20 minutes to the parkway, I just feel my phone blowup. Text, text, call, text, call, text, text. I started to feel overwhelmed and felt I was digging myself into this hole I couldn’t dig myself out of. I would have to explain myself to so many people, answer texts apologizing for not responding, and all of this while trying to lie and telling everyone I’m alright and not backsliding into a bad place. So I get to an overlook on the parkway, park the car, and just try and pray. I do this for about 10 minutes and I realize that I need help. God wasn’t going to send an angel in my passenger seat to bathe me in holy light. So I look at my phone to see that Lauren has texted me a few minutes ago, demanding I call her back. I realize that of all the people I could call, calling her would be the scariest one, but also the best one to do. So I call her and she picks up, voice filled with concern. I tell her I’m sorry. Thats all I feel like I can do. She asks where I am, I tell her, and she comes on her way.

During the time she is on her way, I just sit there in fear. I start going through the scenarios of what happens when Lauren arrives. I imagine her seeing me and starting to scream at me, telling me that I’m selfish and to never do what I did again because I worried everyone. I imagine her telling me that school isn’t the place for me right now and that I should just go back home. I imagine her hitting me and crying because I made her worried and sad.

Then out of my peripheral vision, I see Lauren’s car pull up. I just keep looking at my wheel because I don’t want to see her disappointment or for her to see my shame. She comes up to the window and knocks. I look up and she beckons me to open the door. I close my eyes and do so, ready to receive whatever I deserve.

She hugs me.

I had hugged her plenty of times, but at this moment I felt so undeserving of any sort of kindness or love that I had to hold back from crying. But I didn’t want to let go.

I confess that whenever I find myself needing comfort and feel alone, I try to conjure the memory of Lauren hugging me that night.

After a bit, we start talking about what’s going on and why this came upon. I talk to her about how I don’t know what’s going on and that I feel ashamed of feeling this way. I thought my dark thoughts had left me, I wanted them to have left me. I told her about how I feel like my life won’t be as long as others; that at 30 I wouldn’t want to continue living.

After comforting me and talking with me for a bit, she asked me what else there was. That feeling came over me of “yes, but I literally can’t tell you,” and I was able to tell her that. It took 10 minutes of me looking at her and of her stubbornly sitting there in silence before I was able to tell her. It felt like I had to grab the words from down my throat and pull them to the top.

I hate that feeling and I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t want it, but its there. It feels like I’ve been conditioned to not tell people what is wrong. I have to try and pretend like everything is alright and put a smile on for everyone. I want everyone else to be okay, so I’ll be okay for them.

It seems that acting like that has caught up to me as I don’t have the energy to be okay anymore.

But from that experience, I understood that when I am like this, I have to be completely terrified in order to feel peace. I imagined that God wouldn’t send an angel to sit in my passenger seat and give me peace, but apparently he had one that I could call and would come take care of me.

It’s through this writing that I hope disarm that gun on my heart. I’ll be able to share with those I care about what I want to tell them. Until then, I don’t feel like I’m living life. I feel like I have child restrictions and that certain parts of this strange, wild world are just cut off from me.

But it is late. Rest is important for me to understand this. Sleep well.

– Nic

Um… Hello.

Sorry I couldn’t come up with a better title. If I were trying to write lengthy essay for university or a creative narrative, I may have come up with something that draws more attention. Truthfully, I was worried that if I spent to much time thinking on the title I would just trash this whole idea and continue my essays that I should stop procrastinating.

When I was doing the whole “set up your site to look more stylish and organized” part that I wanted to skip over, the default heading for the site said “The Journey Begins.” I was tempted to put that as the title, but I felt it would be over cliché and make myself feel like a truly terrible Creative Writing major instead of a mediocre one. However as I saw that title, I confess that I laughed. This is not the beginning of the journey for me; if anything, this is the part of the journey where the hero has fallen in a pit of which there is no escape, gone into a coma, has lost the will to fight the good fight, etc.. The latter of those three examples is the most accurate for my situation though. Before I try and articulate exactly how I am feeling and tackle the even bigger challenge of why, I am briefly going to explain who I am.

My name is Nicholas Nelson, or as my peers call me, Nic. I am currently a junior attending Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and am studying English with a Creative Writing Concentration, History, and minoring in Religious Studies. I could type away about my various interests that one might do if I was introducing myself in front of a seminar styled class, but I honestly just want to get to the heart of who I am.

I am a Christian who struggles with depression and anxiety. I also attend a public university, have friends with similar and different world views, and have my share of vices (or sin, if you were to use religious jargon). I struggle with small talk, and because of that I feel like people struggle with me. I know what I want to do with my life, which is write stories for people, but the path looks so difficult and unrealistic that I hesitate to take even a first step.

The original reason I created this site was to record my semester abroad at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. But as of yesterday, I will no longer be able to go due to a mistake that I made in the application form. My motivation for my semester has vanished, depression is at an all time strong, and I have spent my entire day in bed because I do not have the will to do anything anymore. So now, as I sit inside my school library feeling very uninspired to do anything related to school, I have decided to test using this site try and feel better and become better at expressing myself and being honest. I had dinner with my -concerned- mother today and she told me it always feels like I’m holding back from telling her something. That is very true, but I feel as though I have gun pointed at my heart and if I were to tell her, or anyone, whats going on in the deepest parts of myself, that gun would go off and I would not be ok.

I imagine that my entire story will come out at some point of me creating posts on this site, but I don’t feel like spilling my entire past onto the first post is the best idea for me at the moment. The purpose of this site (I’m not comfortable with the term blog yet, it feels weird) is to have a healthy outlet and help me understand how the Lord is working in my life.

Let me clarify; I HATE the sites that rabble on about how God has blessed them, he’s working all the time, all you have to do is believe in him and he will provide you with the deepest desires of your heart, and then quote out of context scripture to support their fairytale that heaven is disguised as their home in a gated community. That is the prosperity gospel, and it is a load of shit. Let me tell you what I do believe.

  • God is working all the time, but that doesn’t mean hardships are easy.
  • Behind pain, there is a promise; but that doesn’t mean I won’t cry out cause it feels unbearable.
  • Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (John… something.)
  • God has a plan for my life, but that doesn’t mean he always gives handouts.
  • By grace, I have been saved; but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t respond in good works and faithful lifestyle… and that also doesn’t mean I don’t have a hard time responding with those good works and faithful lifestyle

My thoughts on the gospel are much longer than that, but I don’t want to have it take up the entirety of this post. What one should take away from it is that its very important to me and I care that it is communicated authentically in my personal life and its metaphysical implications.

Returning to how I am feeling: pretty trash, depressed, unmotivated, lonely, sad, and the list goes on. I am now looking forward to nothing and me not going to Scotland next semester ruins a lot of plans that I had and will require me to make future decisions I don’t want to make.

As far as why I am feeling like that: I feel that if I never reached out to anybody, I would fall out of existence in everyone’s mind; I ran out of appointments with my therapist last week and the next time I can see him is in January; I am caught between the feeling of wanting to throw the chair I am sitting on through a window and of wanting to lay on my bed, sink into it, and cry; and I feel as though I am failing as a follower, a friend, a son, a brother, a student, a cousin, a nephew, and every role in my life because I neurologically find myself having lower worth than of all God’s creation.

However, this summer I also felt the Lord. He touched me and gave me back the joy I had lost and took away the pain I felt. He healed me and made me new. It’s clearly not a permanent fix because the world is a tough, mean place, but I know it is possible for him to keep doing it.

So what do want from this habit of posting articles on this site? I want to find the energy to love and care for God’s people to my fullest ability, because that is what I miss the most. I want to ask my stressed friend to have lunch with me and set up a picnic for her as a surprise. I want to joyfully be the DD my friends can count on. I want to be the person to help others instead of being the person that needs to constantly be helped. I want to smile through trials and now it will be alright.

That is what I want.

The first step for me to do this is be transparent. This site helps because I can’t go on and publish an article like my passing conversations with friends. It’d be titled “How ya doin?!” and I’d write, “fine, how bout you?”, and it would be a lie. This requires me to be articulate and think things through. Maybe it’ll make me feel a little better. I don’t know if I’m feeling better cause of writing or because I’ve reached the bottom of my Bang, but its a start.

I won’t have a schedule for this, just whenever I post. I suppose that means I should set up a way for people to be notified… I’ll figure it out.

Have a good night and go to sleep if you haven’t yet.

– Nic