Homeostasis

 

A few days ago, somehow, somewhere, I heard the word homeostasis.  For some reason, it now has taken up lodging in my brain, and will not go away…sort of like one of those jingles you hear on the radio or TV commercials, and then it plays over and over in your head for the rest of the day.

I have decided I like the word very much…hoooo…meeeeo…stasis…just for the way it sort of rolls off your tongue.  (or the tongue in your brain if you are saying it to yourself.)  But as a person who loves to play armchair psychologist, I realize that there must be some other reason why I am now a little obsessed with the word homeostasis.

I have a vague memory of using the word in science courses in high school, (was I ever that young?), so have some idea of what it means.  I figure maybe I like the word because I would like to think my life, and me in the center of my life, have finally achieved some sort of…homeostasis.  But really, the word means something that has been there all the while.

When I decided to look up definitions of the word…these are some of the phrases or definitions that are used to explain what homeostasis is:  “a relatively constant internal environment , despite changes in the external environment;  “the tendency of a system to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function”; and “a process in which the body’s internal environment is kept stable.”

Reading further, it seems that this is a condition of all living things, that there are inherent mechanisms in all things from amoebas to us, to thrive and live, in spite of changes outside of themselves. 

So now I know why I like the word homeostasis. 

It helps me understand how the heck I have kept on going after all that has happened in the last eight years of my life, including the loss of my dear son.

When it states that it is what happens to the organism in response to “any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function”…I had a bit of an aha moment about the word.   Could any situation be more disturbing than finding out your loved one has committed suicide?  Could anything be more likely to disturb our “normal condition or function”? 

I am thinking we would all agree that our normal conditions and ability to function were severely disturbed when we lost out loved ones.  I am sure that all of us had moments when we thought we could not keep going or survive.  Sometimes I catch myself looking back or remembering and wonder…How did I get through that part...How did I get through that day?  

And while there were a multitude of ways we got through, and strategies we used, and support systems that came our way, I have to think that part of the drive to use them, the deep down gut work that had to be done to keep on going, was part of our homeostasis.

So I am glad the universe has provided us with homeostasis…I think I will use it as a “buzz word” for myself if I start to falter.  “Mary Ann, you can get through this…you have…homeostasis”. 

 

 

 

 

Words I Hate

I hate these words:  “Suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem”…or…”Suicide is a quick solution to a temporary problem.”

Granted, my perspective of having watched my son’s obvious downward spiral into mental illness over a span of well over five years, closer to seven, is not always the norm. I watched Erik fight and fought with him to battle his illness and try to get better, day after day, year after year.  The heartbreak of watching your child go through this is difficult to describe.  It seemed like it lasted decades, not years, and the despair and loneliness of someone with schizophrenia is beyond description. 

I think the above words were only said in my presence two or three times, but those times took every modicum of restraint for me to not lash out at the person, and scream at them that they had no idea what they were talking about.

To be fair, I understand that from the outside there may suicides committed by a seemingly successful or at least well functioning person, in response to what may be seen as a typical life circumstance.  However, the fact that suicide is their response means that there are realms of information we don’t have about that situation, and quite frankly, people need to not say the victims took an easy way out!

Using my guideline of “logical”, if someone commits suicide, the logical thought should be that something fierce and horrible was going on in their minds. 

On another page in this blog, “The Enigma of Suicide”, I wrote a long time ago about this, but it always bothers me.  If the instinct for survival is so strong in the “normal” person, that people survive being lost in a blizzard for a week or sustain difficult treatments when battling cancer, or continue on after severe injuries of losing limbs or being paralyzed, then clearly our reflexes, as well as our desires, tell us to go on living at all costs, and provide us with the motivation and stamina to do so.

The flip side of this then, at least to me, is that if someone is able to actually take the significant action of putting a gun to their heads or a noose around their neck knowing they are taking their last breaths of life, how dark and deep is that despair within them that they are able to complete this act?

How many times have all of us felt like “giving up” or that it just “isn’t it worth it all”, yet as horrible, sad, or depressed we may feel, never come even close to truly trying to end our lives?  How much worse then, how much pain then, do these poor souls have who feel the only way out is give up their very lives?

What I also hate about these attitudes or these expressions is that there is an inherent suggestion that we are somehow better than those who “took the easy way out”.  We are not better than them.  There was no better person than my son.  He was kind and sweet and provided me years of joy by being my son.  He was dealt a horrible hand of having mental illness which snuck up on us in his late teens.  He tried so many doctors, counselors, rehabs, and medications that I lost count, and every time it seemed he gained ground, he relapsed into a more progressive stage of the disease.

So I would beg of everyone, let’s not allow ourselves to think that this is just a ruthless act of a lazy or inconsiderate person.  This is the act of a person who knows more sadness, despair, and sheer pain than we could possibly imagine.  And once we try to imagine it, or imagine trying to walk a mile in their shoes, forgiveness becomes so very easy for how can we be angry that they could no longer endure such pain? 

So let’s let go of our judgments, let’s let go of our anger, and let’s let go of our guilt.  The person we lost took the only action that seemed possible to them at the moment, and could not bear another minute of excruciating mental and emotional pain. 

We are still here to forgive, love, and embrace life because we are fortunate enough to have that indomitable will to live, in spite of our sadness.  We can breathe for those we lost, and with them.  And we will.

 

 

 

 

Love

Valentine's Day

 

 

Letter From Heaven

 

When tomorrow starts without me,

and I'm not here to see,

if the sun should rise and find your

eyes filled with tears for me.

 

I wish so much you wouldn't cry,

the way you did today

while thinking of the many things

we didn't get to say.

 

I know how much you love me-

as much as I love you,

and each time you think of me,

I know you'll miss me too.

 

When tomorrow starts without me,

don't think we're far apart

for every time you think of me,

I'm right there in your heart.



Sadness - A Normal Emotion

For someone who has lost their loved one to suicide after a prolonged mental illness, there is a unique situation where one intense emotion is “traded in” for another.  The trade-off for me was that the last few years before Erik’s death, my days were filled with constant stress of when and what the next crisis would be.  Not if the next crisis would come, but rather when would it come, and what would it be. Would I arrive home and he would be threatening to kill himself? Would the local police department be calling me because he was there saying they should arrest the employees at Time-Warner TV service because they were collaborating with the CIA to spy on us? Would my ex-husband be calling to say Erik was planning on climbing on our roof to dismantle the power lines? So on and so forth. 

As the days and months rolled out after his death, I began realizing that while I was feeling extraordinary grief and sadness, there was also an absence of a group of emotions that had taunted me while he was alive, those emotions amounting to an incredible level of stress, consisting of anxiety, fear, apprehension, loathing to go home and find out what was going on, and sometimes anger.  These feelings became a daily way of life, and allowed little room for or leftover energy for the other tasks of my life.  They were exhausting and draining.  So while the grief process was so very difficult, I also had an extreme sense of relief to not have to feel so much fear and anxiety. 

This would have been great news, except for one thing.  Using my logical brain, I quickly began to realize that it was a relief to not have these circumstances as part of my daily life, and that Erik realized that, and therefore how much of his motivation to leave this world was to relieve me of the stress he caused me? 

For those who have survived suicide loss, you know this means one thing…GUILT. 

To make it worse, the more time goes on, the more I realize how difficult things had become, how much less stress I have now, and therefore…I have more guilt. 

It seems that I should be able to accept my sadness as a good penance for not handling Erik’s illness better, as a punishment for getting so stressed out and letting him see how hard it was to live with him at times, but that thought doesn’t seem to help.

I think that’s because if I had to choose between sadness and stress, sadness is actually in some ways easier to function with.  I have thought about this a lot, and decided that when you come down to it, sadness is a “normal” emotion.  No matter what life style someone lives, or what kind of person they are, they will experience sadness because it is a normal part of life.  I am assuming the even the cave men felt sadness when someone died.  Sadness is a normal part of life.

But mental illness in a strict sense of the word, is not a normal part of life.  We don’t expect it to happen to us or our family.  It does not present us with situations that are readily handled.  And most frustrating of all, there often seems to be no end in sight, nor any way to “fix” the situation.  Money, work, effort, caring, and even medicines, don’t help.  Just when hopes are raised that the situation may be getting better, it gets worse.  And it is relentless.

There is so much knowledge now about how detrimental intense stress is to our minds and bodies, and I think it is because our stress is often man-made or because of unusual circumstances.  Well, I suppose the cave-men were probably stressed if a dinosaur was chasing them, but that would be short-lived. Either he killed them and they didn’t have to worry about it, or they killed the dinosaur, and they had extra meat for the winter. 

So, I guess the daily stress of trying so hard to carry on in a normal fashion when someone we love just isn’t acting “normal”, is an aberration of human functioning.  I think there were a lot of times I didn’t handle it well, but I did my best.  Because I am no longer in the middle of it, I feel like there were so many things I could have done better.  I generally work hard to keep my brain off this yellow brick road to the land of guilt, but it sneaks in every now and again.  My initial thought in writing this was to be positive and say that because sadness is a normal emotion, it is possible to be sad and still function fairly well.  I am able to attend to the work and play of my life so much better now.  I am used to being happy and sad at the same time.

 

Sometimes I wish Erik was here again so I could try to do a better job.  But he isn’t.  So I’ll just be sad.  At least that’s normal, and I can be happy at the same time.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

My First Grade Catechism

New Age Spirituality and my first grade catechism are one and the same!  How can that be?  I have taken so much pride in, and been so self-satisfied with all of my reading and communicating with others, to learn about the new spirituality that has caught fire. Then, a “moment of clarity”.  I suddenly realize that the tenets of the spiritualists and those who study afterlife are exactly what the nuns in first grade were telling me more than 50 years ago!

Where is God?  God is everywhere.  So said the first sentence of the Baltimore catechism.  I remember it like it was yesterday, second only to:  See John; See John run; and so forth.  And now, in the 21^st century, as described and pondered by so many spiritualists, mediums, and healers, I have learned that God, although called or named many different things, is…everywhere. 

Those who believe in a higher spiritual being no longer envision a nice elderly man with long, wavy gray hair, shepherd staff in hand and flowing robes, hands held out to heal us.  They envision a powerful energy force or light force, which permeates all of creation and the universe, including our innermost selves, which is God, goodness, love, whatever name you choose to feel comfortable with, and it is…everywhere.  The irony does not escape me that it has taken me two to three years of fairly intense study and mindful consideration, to come to the same conclusion as what I was told in three words as a first grader. 

The difference is, of course, that at the age of six, in the good old days or happy days of the fifties, in conventional Catholic schools everywhere, we were told something, and we were to believe it.  Sisters and priests, as well as parents (amazing thought), could expect to say something and be heard and believed.  So, I did, although I think even back then I was skeptical and found it puzzling that this gray-haired man could be everywhere.  How could he be everywhere?  If he was with me, why didn’t I see him?  And, how did he float around up in the air, and how many millions of miles away was he? 

On the other hand, in my new studies which espouse that the universe is fathered and governed by a force of energy and goodness, this all makes so much sense, I wonder how others can not believe it.  Of course, the world, universe, and people consist of energy.  No one seems to dispute that.  But while there are all forms of energy studied and explained by physicists, astronomers, chemists, and doctors of many disciplines, I agree with those who believe there is also a core energy that is our mind and spirit, the driving force of life so to speak.  Taking it a step further, we are all part of this same force, either within our bodies, or, after carnal death, outside of our bodies.  And, taking the final step, it is this that connects us all, living and dead, and I think is what the Baltimore catechism called God.

 What is God?  God is love.  Of course!  I knew that.  Why have we humans been trying to explain love, define love, find love, curse love, from the beginning of time?  Easy answer is, we got it mixed up with lust…that really confused everything.  Taking lust and sex out of the equation, what does love consist of?  It is an intangible force, is not created by human hands, and once present cannot be destroyed by human hands.  It does not begin or end, it just “is”.  It connects all who embrace it, and the more it is embraced and believed in, the more it envelops our existence.  It supersedes every aspect of the human condition, often felt more strongly and believed in more fiercely in the darkest of earthly situations.  It is often understood so much better by the youngest children than the most educated scholars.  It does not require physical presence, or proof of being.  It is what makes us human, and seems to be what makes life worthwhile. 

Taken within the context of romantic love, true romantic love, it promotes us to our “best selves”.  Our best selves being someone who is giving, honest, sincere, and totally unselfish, maybe the one time when we feel almost “godlike” because of the ethereal feelings inside us, and the confidence that there is something so good about being alive.  The other love that is so tangible and irrefutable, is of course a parent’s love for their child.  Again, mere humans are transformed into beings that embrace a passion they have never felt before.  There are numerous “moments of awareness”, of a parent’s emotionality, love, caring, in which someone can say, “aah, this is what life is all about”.  So, I think, the final analysis of this three word answer, is simply that God, being love, is our humanity, our reason for living.

Who is God?  God is the Supreme Being who made us in His image and likeness.  What could be more simple?  Now, again, this becomes complicated if you are trying to think that our bodies were molded from clay or some poor man’s rib, so we could resemble the gray haired guy with the robe and shepherd staff.  I had to take it at face value when I was a kid.   But, following my beliefs in energy/light/ positive force, it’s not so hard to think about me having at least potential or some small part of this god persona within me. 

I don’t really care if my body has evolved from apes or some sort of primate, or somehow formed as part of a cataclysmic explosion which transformed energy into matter, my body is what it is, and will eventually be gone. But the thought of my soul being a reflection of something good,