Saturday, July 15, 2006

Death, Debt, Deployment… Depression

Emotionally, the past month has been an especially brutal one for me.  Within 3 days’ time, tragedy struck two families I know, leaving two barely-past-newlywed, pregnant widows; one of whom I felt compelled to defend from attacks in the public sphere due to her celebrity status.  Then I was forced to come to terms with our dwindling finances (blecch!). Last, but certainly not least, I learned that a dear friend of mine is going off to war for a year an a half.

Oh yeah, and I’ve been having a few health issues, too.  I fainted one night; I think it’s the second time in my life I have done so.  The first time probably shouldn’t even count, as it was most likely directly related to the substances I’d ingested that night.

I suppose it says something about my state of mind that it’s 10:30 PM and I’m still in the little dress that serves as a nightgown that I put on last night.  I’ve been sitting outside with my laptop, smoking cigarettes while reading and posting on Pharyngula since I woke up at 7 AM, even though it was 114° here today.

But it’s time to write things down, so I can get my feelings out, get myself together and carry on.  The anti-depressants seem to work fairly well to keep the “normal” stresses from hurtling me into the abyss, and to tell the truth, even these more severe stresses seem to affect me differently now than I’d have expected.

I don’t have that crushing despair type of feeling, or constant dread; but I’ve noticed that I’ll quite suddenly feel overwhelmed with emotion to the point of crying, or nearly so. And it’s not just feelings of sadness or even only negative feelings that wash over me in such a way that I can’t speak without a sob escaping or at least a catch in my voice.

These recent emotional stressors or events are important enough, to me at least, to warrant separate posts.  Especially since they’ll be more like stream-of-consciousness ramblings and attempts to put into words those things which have of late caused deep feelings to rise to the surface, and have driven me either to tears, or to sit behind this monitor and keyboard and read/write about something… anything that provides an escape from the realities I don’t want to deal with at the moment.

Gotta get a grip… and get back to something like “normal"…

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Why Be Born Again When You Can Just Grow Up?

While wandering the web I came across this interesting post, with links to recent studies and data, posing the question:  Is Christian Morality Harmonious?

Can there be a harmonious Christian society? Even the United States can hardly be called harmonious, at least compared to the average. There is a certain level of disharmony to be expected, by virtue of human nature. So the question becomes - does Christianity improve on this, or regress ? Christians would say the former, but the data shows the latter.

I know I’ve ranted about my take on Francois’ next bits… like here

Now let’s look at the issue from the perspective of moral development. As I’ve proven before, Christianity is an order-based morality - a morality adapted for babies and little children - imposed on adults. So you necessarily have a tension there. What you get, is a society full of repressed children, grown adults who hoot and holler at sexuality and bodily functions as if they were schoolchildren, like a lot of Americans. People who are morally retarded in this fashion cannot truly appreciate the finer things of life. This tension results in the fight against alternative lifestyles, alternative worldviews, censorship, and the breakdown of responsibility and civility (for example, people dealing with each other by lawsuits and public recrimination).

What’s more, such moral retards often pose a DANGER to themselves and to the rest of us due to their ignorance and/or shame about their own bodies.  The pervasiveness of this attitude that everything between your navel and your knees is something secret and shameful often makes it quite difficult for many people with conditions like Crohn’s Disease to seek treatment until they’re in rather dire straits.  After all, one’s bowel habits or butt pains aren’t to be discussed… that’s dirty! 

The second tension is between order-based morality and natural morality. As adults, Christians still have the brain development, the instincts, the desires that all adults have. But on the other hand, their order-based morality directly contradicts all of these elements, in fact attacks these elements as being of “the world”, “anti-Christian”.and “sinful”. So we end up with a situation where people are conflicted and feel tremendous guilt about their own mind and their own actions. This is not the recipe for a healthy society, but rather the recipe for an oppressive society. We see the results of this tension in high teen pregnancy, high rates of adultery and divorce, high rates of obesity and preponderence of violent crimes born out of insecurity and frustration.

And I wonder how many of today’s “good Christians” caught something nasty during their coked-up days in the 80s or 90s before they got hooked on Jesus, and think they’re safe now because their naughty bits haven’t seen the light of day (never mind any thorough self- or outside exams) for such a long, long time… their shameful behavior is forgiven, being from their “old” life and all… until they give it to their new spouse?

How the hell are we supposed to not be “of the world” when this is where we friggin’ LIVE?  Disconnecting from reality is NOT the way to go… educating people to deal with today’s realities IS.  That includes the children—because otherwise they’ll be freakin’ children FOREVER.  We all have to grow up, which really sucks ass most of the time.

The third moral tension is between Christianity in general and Western civilization. This civilization of ours, regardless of its many faults, was founded on the tearing-down of authority, on the progress brought about by reason and science, on trade and material progress, on the freedom of being (through “human rights"), belief and lifestyle. Although we may have strayed from these ideals in the past century, we can still identify living Western values, such as material gain, romantic love and sexuality, equality, tolerance and respect, the importance of life – as well as our most noble and venerable institutions – the discovery and application of scientific principles, peaceful trading and commercialism, as well as acting and being judged based on one’s values.

[all emphasis mine]

We’ve been straying farther from those ideals in the past 25 years than I’m comfortable with, and it’s no coincidence that in that same 25 years the fundie Christians have been finding more and more devious ways to subject all Americans to their order-based morality with the support of government.  Why wouldn’t the sort of people who make up our government be on board with that?  What could be better than ruling over a nation of children… ignorant, fearful and easily led?  Big Brother, Heavenly Father… someone to save them from the demons and monsters… it’s all good.

We rational people, the actual grown-ups, know who the real monsters are.  They are those who warp children’s minds with tales of vengeful gods, heavenly rewards; with myths and lies about sex, drugs, people unlike themeselves in whatever way and the realities of everyday life in our own country and the world over.  They are those who aim to create a world FULL of children by limiting what we learn, know and speak of to those things appropriate only for children.

Children who giggle and snicker and blush when discussing anything that happens below the waist.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Up Again In the Middle of the Night

Slept from 9:30-3:00, and here I am still up at 5:00… goddammit!  Oh well, I managed to get a few things on my to-do list done anyway, like paying a few bills, balancing the accounts.  So now it’s off to make my usual rounds to my daily reads and then be off to work.

It’s only Wednesday and it’s already been one long friggin’ week.  Pain makes time move so damned slowly.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

I Work, Therefore I Am

I’ve had pain in my lower abdomen, mostly on the left side, since Saturday.  It feels like there’s something stuck in there, but that’s impossible, so I can only conclude that I’ve got some inflammation in my colon… which I can’t seem to do a fucking thing about.  It hurt so badly yesterday that I was in bed and asleep shortly after I got home from work.  That sort of sucked, because I woke up at around 12:30, and having already had a good 5 hours’ worth of sleep, I was awake for the next probably 3 hours until I finally… ahem… medicated myself so I could grab a few more hours’ rest before having to go to work today. 

Some of my friends, who know how sick I am, and how much pain I’m often in, have asked why I don’t just take some medical leave rather than continuing to show up day after day no matter how much I hurt.  There are a few people in other departments, with less time on the job than I have, who have gone on leave for less serious problems than mine, so why am I hesitating?  I’m not sure why, but it’s almost a point of honor for me to not cave in to this disease, and at this point working every day is the one thing in my life that’s giving me some semblance of being “normal.” I’m having a difficult time living up to the expectations in the areas of my life unrelated to my job, so at least I have one thing I can cling to as proof that I’m not totally useless.  As long as I can keep paying the bills, maybe I won’t feel so bad about all the other things I’m unable to accomplish, or how I’ve gotten to the point again where everything I do, every plan I make, is subject to revision or outright cancellation because it’s all dependent upon whether or not my guts are giving me trouble and the degree to which they are.

Even my choice of dress more often than not comes down to how much or how little my stomach hurts on any given day.  Yesterday I wore jeans, and even though they weren’t that tight, it turned out to be a poor choice, because they were riding right at the point on my belly where all the trouble seems to be.  So today will be a “muumuu day,” and I’ll wear something that isn’t fitted around the waist at all (and hopefully disguises the abdominal distention that comes with the gut-ache).

I’m hoping this bout of inflammation will hurry up and go away, but in the meantime, I’ll sit at my desk for eight hours and do what I must to earn a paycheck.  After all, those muumuus ain’t free!

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Last Remicade Treatment

I had my last Remicade treatment yesterday.  And “last” is the operative word there.  15 minutes or so before the end of the infusion, I started itching… and then came the hives… everywhere.  The nurse stopped the IV pump and called Dr. C, who prescribed 25mg intravenous Benadryl.  That helped somewhat, and at least got me through to the end of the infusion.  I took another 25mg of Benadryl as soon as I left the hospital (thankfully hubby had driven me to the appointment so I could go home and scratch in peace rather than be stuck at the hospital til they felt I was ok to drive), and another 25 a couple hours later. 

The hives have gone down, but I’m still more than uncomfortably itchy.  I woke up at 4 AM today, and my joints are killing me.  I took 500mg of Naprosyn, and am waiting to see if that’ll provide any relief.

Signing off now… it hurts too much to type… :-(