Disillusion. A new way.

The world seems helpless and it seems hopeless.

I find myself in total disillusionment with everything. The work of several years to better myself and to come to terms with myself, work which was going so very well, is collapsing.

I learned to trust and love my friends, my family even my enemies. I moulded the remnants of depression and confusion into a beautiful contentedness. It became an unshakable grounding from which I could approach each wonderful day with joy in my heart.

I learned to meditate each day, to foster only positive emotions and to discard all negativity from my life. We only curse the earth with our presence for so long; what madness would make us choose to spend it in sadness and suffering? My inspiration was calm. I lost my anger.

I lost something else too, something which took me years somehow to spot.

I lost my spark. I lost the inner fire that makes us fight to live and love each moment, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. I was at peace, but all passion was gone.

And what now?

In a matter of months, the world I see has changed for the worse. The leaders of the world have gone wild and their supporters wilder. Racism, nationalism, sexism; every imaginable form of baseless, weak-minded discrimination is on the rise. It becomes increasingly clear that we have pushed the earth to her limit and the environment is close to a point of collapse. All that is solid melts into air  and this time we are entirely to blame.

How can I then, in a time where it all is falling apart, possibly remain content? How can I hold firmly onto the contentedness  that I have fostered, even nourished in these past years?

I cannot.

That time is gone. It taught me much and I am thankful for a truly essential development in my self, but now is not a time where apathy serves. I have joined the disillusioned.

How can I sit in acceptance, as hate becomes the norm of society?

How can I sit in acceptance, as the people become divided over lies?

How can I sit in acceptance, as we burn nature to the ground in pure, brutal indifference?

I am a liberal, left-wing, environmentally-minded, vegetarian, bi-, non-binary, creative, introspective, radical human-being. In these times, the only element there I regret is the last.

In these times, where to sit in acceptance is as dangerous as to fight against the rising tides we face, my fostered neutrality has been smashed into tiny little insignificant pieces.

After years of purging pain and anger from my life in the name of breaking through my negativity, I am letting it all back in. Perhaps that seems like a truest form of madness, as if I were a monk jumping out of deep meditation to burn his temple in spite. I think however that this is a necessity.

Now?

Now I feel an uncontrollable rage at humanity’s encroaching madness. The world seems to me to be on the edge of a crumbling cliff: Past it is the void. The void is growing, in size and in strength. It can’t and won’t be stopped.

A curious feeling has grown however out of my new rage and this feeling is perhaps even stronger, or at the very least more striking. Out of the rage has grown an uncontrollable love. Suddenly I have so much joy to see the magpies each morning as I leave for university. Suddenly each falling leaf is a universe with its own story to tell. When I see my friends, they cannot possible know how thankful I am now to see them, and know that they are well, that they survive in the face of our world in flux.

I feel some of the other disillusioned are giving up. But no, why should helplessness mean giving up? Are we not still alive?  Are you not still breathing, thinking,  whilst you read my twisted  words so lacking hope?

Let me tell you then, that these words are of hope, at the very least for myself. With this development of new emotion – of conflicting love and rage – I realise: Our experience here, no matter how dark it turns, will always have glimmers of intense beauty. For each person who joins the ranks of mindless nationalism and discriminators, we can fight back with rage-fuelled love. As contrary as that seems, Love and anger are linked in impossible ways. The enemy here is apathy.

It has often been times of darkness where great writers have appeared from the shadows. I am not one of them, but I have learned from them how important the mighty pen becomes in such moments. Brecht attacked national-socialism. Lu xun gave up a medical career to take up the pen and challenge the early 20th century society of China. I am writing because although I sense a painful future, I see glimmers within its blinding darkness. I am one of the disillusioned, and it has made me see the beauty we will have until the last moment. It may hide in caves or under rocks at the very end, but it will always be there.

And so I throw away the work of years to become a content soul, thankful and accepting. I embrace now my new-found love and rage. I will stare into the encroaching void, and laugh with pure joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

vessels of being

An odd escape

This is a continuation of my ‘honest’ posts where I finally say things which I haven’t said before. It’s not happy at the start, but please fight through it. There’s a light at the end.

I think it’s relatively clear to anyone who has read my earliest posts that I had quite a long stretch of depression a few years back. It flavoured probably the entirety of the first year, and certainly influences everything I write to this day. What has changed is how. It was at first a dark influence, entangling everything with chains of negativity, but now it has become a positive force.

Today I want to talk about how my former depression made me who I am today. A huge proportion of people experience depression during their lives, and every experience is different. I really feel that the more there is about turning that depression around on the internet, the better. There is only so much you can learn about depression from a health website, as it’s such a personal condition. Personal experience is important in getting above it.

I’m going to a gig in a few days. A band called Anathema is playing in Leeds Minster and I’m more than excited. I feel like it was an inevitability to see these beautiful people eventually, Because despite the apparent disconnectedness to today’s theme, Anathema is an integral part of my escape from Depression.

Funnily enough, I’ve talked about this band before on the blog. Why? How does a single band get so much coverage on a blog with very little link to music? Because their music changed me. They are one of a few bands in the world that are so important to me that they have influenced who I am very clearly. I’ll come back to Anathema in a bit.

It took me a long time to realise I was depressed. Several years actually. From about 14 to 17 years old, I was depressed without accepting that fact. I only realised when it became too much, when the darkest ideas had sprung into my head and I noticed that it wasn’t healthy to be having these thoughts. I won’t go into them too much, but they weren’t too happy.

I went to the doctor. I was given a form. I filled it out. I got very close to the ‘ seriously dangerously depressed’ mark on the form. The doctor sent me to talk to a counselor.

At this point I still hadn’t worked out why I was depressed. Depression is confusing – it has to be for it to go relatively unnoticed for 3 years. I was about to find out why I was in this awful position.

I only needed to see the counselor once. She referred me to a more serious counselor, but I never went. In a few days, I wouldn’t need to.

The meeting with this counselor was strange – terrifying at the time – but the realisations I made in that meeting changed everything. It was the first time that I explained everything to another person, and in doing so it was the first time I explained everything that was making me depressed to myself.

I found out that my depression boiled down in the end to a lack of trust, A feeling of failure, and fear.

the worst part is that it seemed to stem mainly from my family.

When I was 17 I genuinely no longer trusted a single person in my family. The only person I trusted in the whole world was one of my friends. One friend. And I got to this point because…

Fear. Two people in a household of four were prone to being incredibly aggressive and I have always been pretty non-confrontational. I was however for a while convinced that one day I would be attacked during one of their uncontrollable rages. Because of this I had the entire house mapped. Despite hating violence, I knew what I could use as a weapon in every room of the house if I needed to. Some days I was convinced I would need to know.

There was also the constant feud between my two divorced parents. Little did they know how much that feud tore me into pieces. I didn’t know who to believe, so I chose to believe no one. One parent always told me how I was being manipulated by the other. The other parent did not say how I was being manipulated by the other. I only realised a few years ago that by being told I was being manipulated, I was manipulated by those comments.

Then there was the feeling of failure. I always prided myself in being smart. Up to the start of secondary school I was at the top of the class for everything but sport, and depending on the sport I wasn’t awful at that either. Then, from a mixture of boredom of the ease of work, and pressure from the formerly mentioned things, i stopped caring. By the time I was 16, my grades had dropped considerably and I didn’t enjoy learning anymore.

I also had loved extra-curricular activities. I had loved music lessons. I had loved Scouts. I had loved swimming and table tennis. A couple of years of feeling like a failure and I didn’t enjoy these things anymore.

And perhaps the most important part of my feeling of failure, was a member of my family who certainly didn’t hold back on telling me how stupid I was. Every day I would be called ‘stupid, moron, idiot’ +numerous angry expletives. After a while you start to believe that rubbish. My reaction was to become completely apathetic to it. Which naturally made me appear more stupid. I wouldn’t answer questions, lest I appeared stupid. I certainly wouldn’t ask questions, because that’s apparently what stupid people need to do (NOT TRUE IN THE SLIGHTEST), I wouldn’t shout back at the accusations of stupidity, because I hate confrontation. Withering away under an onslaught of insults was the only option.

And so it was this realisation of distrust, fear and failure that I found myself after this counseling meeting… I had one very bleak day after this.

But just one…

Now back to Anathema. They started out as a doom metal band. Doesn’t sound like a too hopeful solution to depression, does it? The thing is that their music has evolved beyond recognition from those early days (which are also excellent, but very different) and now Anathema creates some of the most soul-resonating music, I would argue, ever made.

And so the following day, as i was walking back home from school I was thinking about the dark place I was in, desperately looking for a solution now that I had pinpointed the causes of my depression. I put Anathema on on my mp3 player.

This I what I heard.

“Needed time to clear my mind
And breathe the free air find some peace there
I used to keep my heart in jail
But the choice was love or fear of pain and

I…
Chose…
Love…
Cos everything is energy and energy is you and me…

Light shines in through an open window
Shines inside your heart and soul and
Light will guide your way through time
And love will help you heal your mind and

Life…
Will…
Be..

Cos everything is energy and energy is you and me…”

A choice of love or fear of pain.

And my solution became completely clear.  The answer was to forgive and love everything.

In a moment, the world turned beautiful. It was like the switch of a light. One moment It was dark, and suddenly the world was beautiful and I was crying. I looked around me as if I had never seen the world before, marveling at the sky, the birds, the trees.

I never told anyone that I had done this. I didn’t run up to my parents and say ‘I forgive you’. They would have been confused if I had, because they wouldn’t have known they had ever done anything wrong. In fact in many ways, this is a horrifically brutal blog, because I never said to them that I felt they played a vital role in my depression, and now it is on the internet for the world to see. 6 billion eyes could potentially look at this. But they can rest at least in the knowledge that they were completely forgiven a few years ago.

Over the course of the following week, I was called stupid numerous times by that particular family member (it still happens to this day actually). It didn’t matter. I’d forgiven them and I only had love at that point. Aggressive comments were directed from one parent at the other (but not the other way round – that rarely happens, to this day). It didn’t matter. I’d forgiven both parents for any wrong-doing they had done, and I had only love. The completely blown out of proportion aggression towards normal every-day inconveniences from one family member continued. It didn’t matter. It was forgiven, I no longer looked for weapons around the room I was standing in when it all kicked off.

I made my odd escape from depression through total forgiveness and love. i only found the answer through a band called Anathema. For all I know, that band might have saved my life.

.

.

.

And now I sit here, wondering if I should publish this or not. It’s a completely honest piece, and I have been striving to be as honest as possible, that honesty hurts. If certain family members read this, they would be hurt severely by it.

But honesty is honesty.

And so it becomes public honesty.

daemons

Under the veil of teardrop skies,

The daemons have returned.

To heed the call of a thousand lies,

They take away peace earned.

 

Yet they may find their journey erred,

By their own weak prey.

In their prey a strength has stirred;

The daemons turn away.

Dämon mit Hautunreinheit (Photo credit: Philipp Spreckels)

Rebirth

Yesterday I died.

 

Years of being someone else

Brought me to a sudden end.

Yesterday the blow was dealt;

A blow I didn’t want to fend.

 

Yesterday I died.

 

The build up long, the moment swift,

Was gone before the eyes had blinked

To clear a tear, a head to lift

Towards a light before I sink.

 

Today I was reborn

 

From ashes I become myself

My mind is made my path is set

Conviction for the goal is held

To find the future I haven’t met.

 

 

 

(Feel free to comment, like my facebook page or follow my blog! i appreciate both praise and criticism!)

on inspiration and moving thoughtofvg to new places in the blogosphere.

It goes without saying that I don’t write regularly enough for this blog. I would love if i felt inspired every day to write, but I haven’t quite got there yet. I was however just reading a lovely post from Talin Orfali which made me realise something I had forgotten, yet is important not just for blogging but for everything creative-you have to always be on the search for inspiration.

The search for inspiration is a wonderful thing. It’s only stressful if you make it to be, like when thinking desperately for something to write about after a mundane day of not doing much. Because of this i’m setting myself a goal from now on. From today onwards I aim to not see any day as mundane, choosing to find interest in the smallest events and moments of the day. I’ll start with today. Talin Orfali’s post on the wonders of blogging itself is my inspirational small moment today. I logged into wordpress with the intention to read a few blogs and check any comments and have instead found a new goal to fulfil-to blog everyday, no matter how large or small the post is. Any regular readers would probably know that finding and reaching goals is very important to me, so finding a new exciting goal is fantastic for me.

In order to do this, I will continue to write alot of poetry, but it won’t neccessarily be the focus of the blog. Instead i hope to come back more to the original idea of thoughtofvg and have a bit of everything-poetry, music, art, philosophy…basically whatever springs to mind as long as it is creative or thought driven. Any followers who are here just for the poetry, sorry about that but it will become much more in line with my original vision and hopefully you might just enjoy following me even more (hopefully…in a perfect world at least).

thoughtofVG’s attempt at posting everyday starts today!

 

 

 

The Hand Of Time

The hand reached out towards escape

From a perfect unbroken cage,

But pulled back to reality

It rotates for an age.

All it wishes is to run away from

Ticking ticking time,

Its purpose of existence in

Itself is but a crime.

 

The hand that turns accused numbers

From boundaries one and twelve

And at each point a person finds

Or loses in themselves

The drive to put away this tool that

keeps us in one place

To never look again upon

Its staring ticking face.

 

The curse of time held in its place

It never can escape,

From turning round a ticking clock

Never early nor is it late.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A change of fate

All has changed since I first stood

Upon the ground that I now stand

And thought what if I’d understood;

My dreams fell through fingers like sand.

All hope was lost life goals had gone

To leave but memories of a dream;

The soul left body with pain alone,

Good thoughts lost to a raging stream.

 

Yet time came to reverse the pain

To bring the soul to body whole;

The daemons of misfortune slain

By hard passion to take control.

Although the horses pull away

From straining chains of charioteer,

They did not break; to my dismay

My Self combined to one, can cheer.

 

All has changed since I first stood

Upon the ground that I now stand,

The changes made for greatest good;

A fate my conscious can’t understand.

What we can’t know may pain the mind,

To flee from changes in our meaning

But heard my fate and grasped- I find

After years that I am  dreaming.

 

As my first post proper post for over a month I am glad to say that i think this is my favourite poem I have ever written. I have been spending the last few weeks working hard for exams that, as of yesterday, are now done and gone. This poem is a reflection of my current thoughts and how I have come a long long way since the beginning of this year-Academically, emotionally and although I am not religious-even spiritually. I said a few months ago that i planned to implement some of Yeats’ poetic techniques into one of my own poems and you may notice some here. I would never say that i am anywhere near the genius standard of Mr Yeats, but i can say that I have learnt alot from studying him and writing part of my English exam on his work.

Feel free to comment-I love both criticism, analysis and praise!

(one last note-I have also been awarded graciously a new award-and to the kind person who gifted this to me, i have not forgotten! I will follow this up in the near future!)

 

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)