Category Archives: Family

March 25, 2016

Divorce and Marriage: Things Missed and Things Taken for Granted

By Topaz
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Source Unknown

My sister posted this on her social media account recently. It speaks for itself and needs no introduction:

 

As the one year anniversary of my divorce is approaching, I’ve made a list of things that I miss and that were taken for granted while being married (beware: it’s a long list). I’ve become an even stronger person and I’m doing great at handling everything. I’m Supermom. smile emoticon

-Having someone give me their honest opinion about anything.
-Having a date for every function.
-Family nights.
-Going to dinner somewhere other than McDonalds.
-Sending out Christmas cards from the four of us.
-Knowing certain little things/quirks about him that no else knows.
-Reminiscing about the 25 years we spent together.
-His friends and family.
-His sense of humor.
-Countless numbers of ‘inside jokes’.
-Being silly and immature together.
-The smell of his cologne.
-His back rubs.
-Having an adult conversation with someone in the house.
-Helping the kids with homework while I do house chores.
-Our own language/lingo.
-Spending 7 days a week with my kids.
-Having someone to share my good and bad news with.
-His muscles to lift heavy objects and move furniture.
-When I’m sick or injured (I’m clumsy), having someone to run errands, make dinner,    take the kids to their activities and laundry.
-Knowing that I have someone to grow old with.
-Our family summer vacations.
-Having someone ask how my day was and hearing about his.
-The security of a two-income household.
-Both of us watching the kids open presents on Christmas.
-Decorating the Christmas tree and talking about the significance of each ornament.
-The kids having both of us together at their birthday parties.
-How easy it was to get things done and being a ‘team’.
-His health insurance.
-Having someone clean out the vacuum cleaner (ha ha).
-Having someone to help with car maintenance.
-Fixing things around the house.
-Helping me take care of the dogs and their vet appointments.
-Sitting down as a family at dinner and hearing about the kids’ day
-Sitting on the deck and drinking a beer on nice summer evenings
-And most of all: Missing him.

~t

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Family, Friendship, Marriage, Parenting

March 17, 2016

5 Reasons Not to Kill Yourself

By Topaz

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Credit: Topaz

Disclaimer: This post is ultra-serious. However, as they say, with us crazies it’s either laugh or cry. Well, today is a laugh-or-cry sort of day for me (hence the topic of this post), so please forgive me if I seem flippant about this whole topic. At least it’s kept me from crying.


My psychiatrist has had me on about five or six different types of medication for anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. Seroquel has left me groggy and in a zombie state of mind for who knows how long (My short-term memory has suffered — I can’t even remember what activities I did with my kids yesterday.)

I have decided to go off all of my meds except for Xanax and Klonopin (two benzos — uh oh). The Klonopin is supposed to provide more stability to aid my Xanax which is more short-term.

I could be setting myself up for something major. I don’t know. All I know right now is that I would rather have a clear (depressed) mind than one that is hazed and spaced-out.

I’m typing this while being on sub duty at my school. Things got so bad with my groggy and forgetful side effects from my meds that my doctor wrote me a note stating that I should be on light duty at my school for a month. Hopefully it doesn’t come back to haunt me professionally.

Talk about feeling useless. All around me today, teachers are upbeat, full of energy, chatting away incessantly, and having an overall grand time in life.

Me, I’m relegated to my empty classroom. I am typing this post instead of throwing up my hands in surrender and quitting everything in life — even my family. It’s that bad.

Which brings me to this blog post. 5 reasons not to kill yourself. Here goes:

 

1. It Takes Effort

All the research involved in how to successfully take your own life (and, believe me, I know) is overwhelming, and, if you’re already on the brink of suicide, why would you want to spend the effort doing all that research? It’s too hard.

And what if you fail in your attempt? Which brings me to…

 

2. You Will Probably Fail

This really sucks. Believe me, it’s happened twice to me already. The first time was traumatic to my wife, children, mother, and to my bank account. Not to mention my reputation and career.

There is a very good chance that your suicide attempt will fail. Need some statistics? Then Google some. They’re out there. And you don’t want to be hooked up to a feeding tube living out the rest of your life as a vegetable. (Couldn’t they just unplug me? You may ask. It’s much more complicated than that.)

 

3. Someone Will Miss You

Someone will. Who, you ask? I don’t know. But someone. Not only that, but that one person (or two, or three, or…) will slowly start to die from the inside out. I know. I watched my aunt slowly waste away to nothing after my cousin killed himself.

I’m beyond caring, you may be thinking. My pain is too great. Well, then, imagine that person saying, “[your name], I love you.”

 

4. What Awaits You? / Are Your Really Prepared For The Great Unknown?

If you’re a person of faith, wouldn’t it be against your religion? Wouldn’t you go to hell? For you atheists, what? What makes you think something better awaits you “on the other side” or wherever you think you go? Or, do you subscribe to Ozzy Osbourne’s theory that, after you die, you’ll be merely a turd flushed down a giant toilet, gone forever. [paraphrase]

Isn’t watching your favorite movies or drinking a nice craft beer under a shade tree better that being flushed into the big septic tank in the sky?

 

5. The Little Gems Hidden Throughout Every Day

You know what I mean. Biting into your favorite chocolate candy bar. Ordering pizza and watching a new movie on Netflix. Taking up a new hobby like bass guitar, not because you hope to ever join a band, but because you love the thumping pulse of the bass, and you like to feel the satisfaction of playing the intros of your favorite songs.

There are other gems: Feeding newborn kittens from a bottle at the local animal shelter. Treating yourself to a coffee and pastry at Starbucks. Curling up beside the fireplace with a good book.

Go find your nugget.

~t

 

 

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Death, Drugs, Family, Inspiration, Mental Illness, Suicide

February 6, 2016

Unchained: Fear of Going Ballistic in a Public Place

By Topaz

 Here I am in a well-visited bookstore. I sit with a book on one knee (The Name of God is Mercy by Pope Francis) and my smart phone on my other, typing this.

I don’t know if it’s from my Starbucks mocha that I’m still nursing, or if it’s from losing my temper with my two little boys this morning after my younger one’s basketball game.

But I’m suddenly having flashbacks of the mental ward and how I was kept in there against my will — a prisoner cut off from the real world.

I recall pushing my face against the barred window, straining to get a glimpse of some trees or grass.

The feeling of helplessness. Madness. Panic in being trapped.

Now here I am. I’m free. My body. I can go wherever I wish. I can sit here at a bookstore and read while the old, the young, the obese, the hot eye candy, the children pass by, consumed by their Saturday afternoon.

A staff member walks past me, unaware of my thoughts. My feelings. My darkness.

I can simply lash out at anyone — anything — in an instant and ruin lives. Ruin my own. Forever.

The thought scare me. They cut through the medicated complacency that I enjoy.

This book could help me. The entire religion section could. The self help section could. Even the half-nude women on the car mags, on the literary mags, on the _______ mags.

Oh well, just my thoughts. Don’t mind me.

Or should you?

~t

Photo by Topaz

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Catholic, Death, Family, Mental Illness, Suicide

December 13, 2015

Send Them an Angel: The Less Fortunate at Christmas

By Topaz

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I was driving through a neighborhood street on my way to church about a month ago. I noticed a house that seemed deserted: The garage door was up, revealing torn and battered walls. At one time, the front door was open, revealing an empty living room with battered, torn-up walls.

I thought nothing of it. Just another foreclosure. And I continued passing the house on my way to and from Mass every week.

Recently, though, there was a mountain of stuff (rather, junk) piled in front of the house, taking up the whole front part of the driveway and side yards. What a friggin’ mess, I thought. This is a complete eyesore! Where is HOA when you need them?

On my way back from Mass a couple weeks ago, something made me turn my car around and go back to the house. I saw a Dora the Explorer pink kids’ suitcase sticking out of the rubble of broken furniture, scraps of wood, and old papers and files. I even saw an old battered photo. (I couldn’t bring myself to look more closely at it; it was heartbreaking enough to know that someone’s memory was among this.)

While surveying the destruction, I noticed a stuffed animal and a pink play kitchen. Obviously a little girl had lived here. Where was she now? Where was her family?

One time in college, when I was a Bible study leader for a non-denominational church, I contemplated quitting because I felt I didn’t have what it took to “lead” others spiritually. One young guy in my group, a former Satanist and drug addict, told me I belonged with them as their leader because I “felt.”

I felt.

In other words, I had a gift of seeing people for how they are and accepting them. However, that has come to be my curse. I feel so much for others that it consumes me like a fire.

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What I was seeing in the pile of a family’s discarded life affected me like nothing else. My heart began hurting for the family, especially for the poor little girl who was probably forced to uproot suddenly with her family.

I guess my point to all this is that, had I not stopped my car, I would never have seen those mounds of “junk” as anything other than junk. By stepping outside of my own selfishness, I entered a spiritual state that, I believe, showed me a glimpse of what Jesus sees.

Even if it were .00000001% of the beatific vision of heaven, it was enough to make me lose sleep and to be preoccupied day after day about this poor family.

So, during this holiday season, whether you’re surrounded by family, friends, presents, and tables of food; or whether you’re alone in an empty house with no Christmas warmth, please pray for those whose lives aren’t as blessed as yours.

And please pray for that family wherever they may be.

~t

Photos by Topaz

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Catholic, Christianity, Family, Prayer

November 23, 2015

The Reality of Suicide Attempts

By Topaz

 

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A family event yesterday caused me to spiral downward in a most drastic way. Before I knew it, what seemed like such an insignificant event brought me to the point to where I locked myself in my room for two days, refusing to eat. My two young sons didn’t know what to think; I imagine I hurt them a great deal with my irrational behavior. I was trying to prove a point to my wife, but the children were the ones who got caught in the crossfire.

I reached rock bottom this evening. I read in a mystery novel recently about a character committing suicide by swallowing Drano, a drain cleaning product made mostly of sodium hydroxide (lye). They sell it at any store like Walmart, so I was planning on making a trip there to pick up a bottle.

However, something told me to research it online — on my phone, of course; I didn’t want my family seeing the search terms “drano suicide” in the browser history. After my Xanax-and-booze attempt, I wanted a sure-fire way to kill myself.

What I read shocked the hell out of me. I found out that the most painful form (among many, I’m sure) of a suicide attempt is swallowing lye. If a person does indeed die from it, it could take days or months. The reason is that it burns the mouth, tongue, esophagus, and it also burns holes into the chest cavity. Years of painful surgeries would most likely be required.

That settled it. I was fortunate enough not to be turned into a vegetable for taking 40 Xanax pills mixed with tequila. (However, my memory has suffered somewhat — I can trace it back to that fateful night.)

From what I was reading, the human body is tough and harder to kill than people realize. For instance, slitting one’s wrists wouldn’t necessarily kill them. It may just damage the tendons and nerves in the wrists instead.

I remember the nurse at one of my hospital stays telling me about a man who once put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The barrel of the gun wasn’t where it should have been to kill him. Instead of blowing his brains out, the bullet traveled right behind his eyes. He survived, but he was permanently blinded.

There were other deterrents that I came across: hanging oneself could just cause permanent brain damage; jumping from a high place might only cause permanent injury; overdosing on aspirin could only damage the kidneys, lungs, and liver instead of resulting in death.

After learning all of this, I became

1. disappointed and

2. scared.

Soon after that, my sons came into my room (I let them in) and asked if I could play outside with them. I said no because I was sad. My youngest left the room saying, “Daddy doesn’t want to play with us.” It broke my heart, but I was still too inwardly focused to do anything.

God knew I wanted to do the right thing. Before I knew it, I was outside in the dark, playing tag with my kids and having a great time.

If you are considering suicide, please remember this:

*Suicide is often messy, and the rate of success is not very high.

*If you by chance are successful, your loved ones (and you DO have people who love you) would be devastated for the rest of their lives.

My cousin committed suicide, and my aunt was never the same. Many say it caused her early death.

Hopefully this post will prevent your attempt. I pray it does.

~t

Information taken from the book Here Comes the Sun by Gayle Rosellini & Mark Worden

 

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Death, Drugs, Family, Mental Illness, Suicide

April 20, 2015

I Try Really ******* Hard

By Topaz

I really do. I do everything that is expected of me. I go out of my way to do well at my brand-new job. I really do try ******* hard at life.

I try hard to get accustomed to a new parish in a completely new city, a city that hasn’t shown any kindness yet. No one gives a **** whether I attend Mass or not. The local K of C council welcomes me by ******** and moaning about not having enough volunteers at events. 

I try really ******* hard at my marriage. I’m pleasant, loving, and I cross all of my *******  T’s and dot all of my ******* I’s. Doesn’t do a bit of good. The wife doesn’t care when I get home each afternoon.

I try really ******* hard to pay off my DWI debt to the county, state, and to the city. Everyone wants my hard-earned money; I can’t make it fast enough for them to snatch it out of my hands.

I try really ******* hard to enjoy life, but I don’t see the point a lot of the time. We live, we go through hell on earth, and we die. 

Bunch of ******** if you ask me. 

 

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Family, Marriage, Mental Illness, Suicide

December 28, 2014

Not-So-Holy Family

By Topaz

Wikimedia Commons

In the Catholic tradition, today is the Solemnity of the Holy Family. This morning at Mass, the homily really struck me; the Spirit called me higher in my own life: fatherhood, marriage, my responsibility as the head of the family, and so on.

During the homily and after, not once did I try and justify myself. Normally I would only pick and choose what to apply to my own situation, in my mind knowing that my wife is a non-believer and that’s why my kids are not being raised in the Catholic faith.

On the contrary.

Amen, I was saying to myself, listening to the points that were being driven home by the priest. I’m gonna start getting my kids involved in my parish. I’m gonna live out my faith to the very best of my ability so my wife will see the Holy Spirit in me.

All these are good things, right?

Well, before I even walked through the door after getting home from Mass, my wife blurted, “You need to fix the refrigerator ASAP. It’s not cooling properly. Call your brother.”

I always go to my younger brother for any handyman-related problem. A firefighter/paramedic, he has that manly “gift” that somehow bypassed me.

Before I called him, I took a drink of bottled water from the fridge. It seemed cold enough. Then I opened the freezer and took out one of those plastic bricks that substitutes for ice in our cooler when we go on picnics. “It looks like it’s working.”

That set my wife off the deep end.

So there I was in a yelling match with her while the kids were in the very next room playing. You’re really putting today’s homily into practice, I kept thinking to myself.

Without playing the blame game, let’s just say that I could have prevented the huge argument.

A heart check from God? Probably. It really sucks, though. What sucks most is that I haven’t seemed to learn anything from our 12+ years together.

Like the rock band Extreme lamented in the 90s: “Am I ever gonna change?”

~t

 

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Catholic, Christianity, Family, Marriage, Parenting, Sin, Sunday Musings

November 8, 2014

Picture-Perfect Catholic Couples

By Topaz

I’m sitting here in front of the computer feeling dejected. How did this happen? Probably being confined to bed rest for the past four days hasn’t helped.

But what about the nice family dinner we had tonight? There we go. It’s balanced out now.

No, wait. the picture-perfect Catholic families who I unfriended on Facebook. It’s their fault, attending every parish function in their Sunday finest; praying the Rosary out loud on the living room floor every. Single. Night.

Happily.

Unified.

Yuck.

What I wouldn’t give to have a Catholic wife. One that wouldn’t dismiss images of the crucifix with the wave of a hand: I just don’t understand that, she utters, passing my bloody and pathetic God on the cross. How gross. They should ban those things.

The kids were “christened” in a Shinto shrine. They cannot go through catechism classes at my parish because it’s “too weird.”

Picture-perfect Catholic families: Count your blessings.

Picture-perfect single Catholics: Don’t you dare marry anyone other than a faithful Catholic.

Lukewarm pew-warmers who show up for cultural reasons: Get your heads out of your rectal cavities and get with the program. There’s more. Lots more.

Don’t end up like Topaz: carrying a full-grown paralyzed woman on my back while trying to survive The Hunger Games. (You’re comparing your wife to a paralyzed deadweight? That’s not very Catholic.)

Shut up and go back inside your glass house.

Oh, back to my introduction.

What about the Xanax I took to make me feel alive like living? That went straight out the window as soon as you caught hell for giving the kids an after-dinner snack. I hate it when she stares me down.

I put up with seven years of people staring me down in that giant Pachinko hall they call Tokyo.

Husbands, don’t yell at your wife and kids to hurry up in the morning as you’re all getting ready for church. Wives, don’t nag at your husbands for taking too long to get ready for church in the morning.

Just be thankful that you share the same faith. The same religion.

And count your lucky stars that you’re not trying to live out that God-awful “Coexist” bumper sticker.

~t

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October 16, 2014

How Silver Linings Playbook Affected a Blogger with Mental Illness Who Didn’t Quite Know What He Was About to View

By Topaz

The Weinstein Company

And if you say to me tomorrow, oh what fun it all would be.
Then what’s to stop us, pretty baby. But what is and what should never be.
–Led Zeppelin

 

Lately I don’t want to write unless there’s something totally pressing on my mind.

Like now.

I started watching the first 30 minutes or so of Silver Lining Playbook. I haven’t looked into it, but it seems like it’s billed as a nice romantic comedy. Well, the first 30 minutes was enough to trigger all sorts of feelings in me. (The movie was released in 2012, so that shows how “hip” I am regarding pop culture.)

The main character, Pat (played by Bradley Cooper), is bipolar, and his father (played by Robert DeNiro, a nice surprise since I only knew Cooper was in the movie) has issues to a certain extent such as OCD and anger.

I had to stop watching after the scene where Pat was having flashbacks of assaulting his wife’s lover while the soundtrack played “What Is and What Should Never Be” by Led Zeppelin. Ironically,  Zeppelin happens to be my favorite band of all-time, and their songs and mystique have weaved themselves throughout my life since I was in middle school.

I’m not criticizing this movie (I’ve only seen the first 30 minutes); on the contrary, this post is just a half-hearted rant about wanting to see a basic romantic comedy between two people who suffer from various mental issues — and instead being subjected to scenes from my own darkest days in a theater from hell.

I’ll probably continue watching the movie now that I know what to expect — and deal with the triggers as they come. How wise is that, though? I don’t know.

Wow, I started watching during my lunch break, then I had class, and now I’m back at the desk, and it’s still with me — or maybe it’s because I’m still writing this post. However, this movie definitely hits home because Pat is so much like me — heck, the story is so much like mine.

(By the way, at the beginning of the movie, Pat is at the psychiatric hospital wearing a hooded sweatshirt with strings. Those strings would be the first things to come off when one is admitted to such a facility, along with shoe laces.)

I don’t like to write reviews. I don’t consider myself qualified to inform people about such things as movies. Books, maybe.

So consider this an anti-review.

Whatever that means.

~t

 

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Books, Domestic Abuse, Drugs, Family, Marriage, Media, Mental Illness

September 4, 2014

Everything is Meaningless

By Topaz

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I’m sitting here in my home office surrounded by a Catholic calendar, a crucifix, and various prayer cards featuring great saints through the ages. Knights of Columbus plaques line my walls.

My two beautiful, healthy sons are asleep in their bunkbeds. My loving wife has just gone to bed.

But I don’t feel anything.

I am empty, confused, angry, suicidal, dejected.

You can have all the Bibles, crosses, religious stuff, and everything else: the “NOTW” stickers that I see on the backs of so many cars, et cetera, but it is all meaningless.

Just like the wise teacher states again and again in Ecclesiastes.

Today I had to go outside to the far edge of my campus where I work because I had to get out of the building. I was on the verge of killing a student who had pissed me off with his smart-ass tendencies. (Sorry for the potty mouth — but it’s a big, bad world.)

I had to get away. There is a nature park on the grounds of my college campus. I sat there on a large rock and cursed at God the whole time. Cursed at him for the hand that I was dealt in life.

It takes EVERY OUNCE of my strenth and sanity EVERY DAY to “keep my head above water” in regard to my mental illness. Most other people hover above the water, floating around, singing and humming, enjoying life, enjoying work, enjoying being alive.

Not me. I curse God for giving me this depression/suicidal ideation/insecurity/anxiety/bipolar tendencies.

If you’re a nice church-going individual, I don’t expect you to be reading this far. Just take heart, you say. Have faith.

Ha.

If only it were that simple.

Last month, one of my favorite comedians of all time, Robin Williams, committed suicide due to depression. The nation mourned and paid tribute. Countless articles about depression and suicidal thoughts appeared on all sorts of blogs and news sites such as CNN, Huff Post, and Yahoo.

That’s all fine and great. But what about now? After the storm has blown over, people will just go back to forgetting about us. The articles will be fewer and fewer.

But know this: If you’re in the same boat as I am, I will never forget you. If you are reading this, whether you’re Catholic, atheist, whatever, I am with you in the crappy hand that life dealt to you before you were even born. I am at the poker table with you, crying and blubbering over the worthless hands of 2s and 3s that we’re holding.

Suicide hasn’t appealed to me as strongly in the past two years as it did today. A nice flowing river runs directly behind the nature park at school. I’ve read that drowning is an excruciating death. How bad could it be, though? Inhale a few breaths of water, keep my head underwater, and voila: freedom.

You’re a Catholic blogger, Topaz. Be more positive, some of you have told me.

It’s a cold, hard, motherf****r of a world, and right now, I’m being crapped on by laughing vultures.

same ol’, same ol’.

Hey, normal Christian/Catholic person out there, be glad that you’re “normal” (I’m not supposed to use the world “normal” because it’s relative. But I couldn’t give a s%@& right now.).

If you have time, pray for the poor bastards like us who have to talk ourselves out of suicide and dark depression before our feet even hit the floor after waking up every morning.

Remember us.

I’m out.

~t

(random photo by Topaz)

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Catholic, Christianity, Death, Family, Mental Illness, Suicide