Cruciare

I'm currently on my seventh beer of the day (it's 6:15pm and I started at 6am, so they were spaced out). When I drink on a weekday, I know it's the anxiety. It's my salvation. Not really, but in my desperate grasps at sanity, it feels like it.

Along with the booze, A Beautiful Mind is playing in the background. It's taken me all day to get through it; the writing is so good and the acting to match. I feel less alone in my version of crazy.
Wow, I just started crying writing that. It's devastating what our minds can do to us. Schizophrenia and Bipolar are both classified as mood disorders, so, the similarities, especially with my occasional audio psychosis, helps me more than relate with John (the paranoid Schizophrenic genius), and sympathize with Alicia (his wife) as his caretaker. The psych ward scenes are particularly hard for me to watch. Russel Crowe (my celeb crush) does a great job exciting the fear and confusion that comes with mandatory admittance into a psych ward.

But, the main reason I'm posting is because today, I'm anxious. None of my meds helped, I went on three one mile walks and drank more beer that water. But nothing could taking the feeling of falling away, out of my gut.

'Anxiety' comes deep, deep from the word 'anguish.' Anguish is defined as 1. excruciating or acute distress, suffering, or pain. Yes. My psychiatrist once explained my drinking problem (the first time) to my parents like this, "A person can live depression; it's the anxiety they can't cope with. They will desperately attempt anything to temporarily cure the pain, the feeling of falling."

So here I am, without any answers. My Jedi psychiatrist put the ball in my court and I'm playing. I just don't know the rules. They change all the time, with the mind. It's a very transitory, ephemeral, and convincing organ. My psychiatrist said I was handicapped by this mental illness. I understand what he means; it's just hard to hear.

There is one relief. The word 'excruciating' from the definition of 'anguish'. Christ knows excruciating; it means 1. to inflict severe pain upon, torture 2. to cause mental anguish, irritate greatly. Yup, Christ knows. In face the word comes from 'cruciare' to torment, crucify (derivative of crux cross).

I remember a critical moment in my faith in Christ that changed me forever. It was at a Young Life camp. They were playing videos of the devastation around the word explaining that Christ took all the (physical) pain on himself at the cross. But in that moment, something clicked and I realized he also took all our psychic, our soul pain. I don't know why, but when I think of the cross, I always think of that aspect first, now. I cry almost every time, okay every time, I hear the gospel story. Because my pain has drowned me at times and I can't imagine what Christ experienced, taking on the psychic malaise of the world through all ages. I thank him. Thank You, thank You, thank You. I was 16 years old and crying at the gospel message. I looked over at my Young Life leader, Ally, and she nodded solemnly, knowing what I was just now realizing.

I am not alone in this wasteland of mental anguish; I am not alone.