Been fighting depression the past few months. After yesterday's psychotherapy, something clicked and I am now in full rage against behcet and uveitis -as opposed to being almost resigned.
At the moment, i am expressing rage by pushing my body, and taking off the straight jacket of precautions that have been preventing me from fully enjoying the present moment. I do not know if there is wisdom in this approach, but it feels so good!
Sharing with you a poem that seem to have been one of the triggers that made the click click.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Written by
magician
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Oh this is a real rage-inducing favourite of my own. Another of my favourites - expressing the disbelief that when something enormous happens in your world the whole world isn't mourning, is, W. H. Auden's:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
Loved both or those poems but my favourite is.....
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
And. Magician I think you are right, we have to fight. We have a life to live until it is our time. I certainly live mine not only for my children but for ME.
I also think that what we give we receive, what we take we must give back, what we learn we must cherish and what we can teach we must strive to do.
Oops getting a bit carried away with myself!!!!!
We can get through this alone but better still together.
Good old Rudyard Kipling bucks me up when I'm wallowing in the mire. Though in my head I alter the last line to "And what is more, you'll be a survivor, Hun"...
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
What an amazing bunch you all are! I enjoyed each one.
Really pleased for you Magician to hear you turning a corner...even if it's a metaphorical one. I remember so recently when I was having to accept letting my career go that I felt more than a little lost.
I tend to completely throw caution to the wind when I feel "well/strong/normal" it's not as often as I would like.....it's a little like being high on life .... I just enjoy it so much and everything is so vibrant and I try and capture every moment in my head and camera.
Just the once I managed to totally detach myself from real agony and felt I transcended the pain through the beauty of the moment.....just the once but I now know it's possible.
Goodlife - the CAMERA OF the MIND is such a great idea! THANKS! These vibrant moments are so precious. Savouring every moment, consciously storing them in our databank and drawing upon them will help us through the "ordinary" days.
As Billi says, we can do this alone, but better still together.
You know I don't mind the ordinary days.....it's the excruciatingly painful days that I find hard. It's so difficult not to let the pain cause me to be irritable....yet I don't want to "zone out" on meds unless I have to. Where in the world are you Magician? Sounds like I need to put a pin on the world map with your name on it!
Wow! What an honor to have my name pinned to a point in the map! You are all such great virtual friends, maybe someday we can all make it to google map and gps?
Yes, the ordinary days are so much better than pain days. But I still find myslef aspiring for vibrant days. The tiniest bit of pleasure stolen by Behcet makes me feel that it is killing me oh, oh so softly.
Meds as last resort - I so agree with you, Goodlife. Uveitis and the fear of blindness force me to shut up and take all the good and that bad that comes with Humira. But I try my darned, utmost best to live with all the other "gifts" from Behcet without meds.
Which brings me to say: By lineage, I am eurasian, born and raised in Asia and now residing in Switzerland. But asia has had a much stronger influence on me - and I am very much into practices that seek to develop the chi - taichi, chigong, yoga. Taichi masters say that chi is that subtle yet powerful force that drives everything - the force that drives the union of egg and sperm into a human being, the plants to grow, etc. That force is perfect but we lose touch with it in the course of growing up in the modern world. If we can reconnect to our chi, we can draw upon the healing energy of that force.
According to the masters, every effort expended by our chi to address the incremental poison or insults faced our bodies reduces our well being by so much. Unfortunately, most meds are poisons. Coclhicine is officially classified as a poison.
Doing MORE taichi is one of the cornerstones of my rage against behcet and uveitis. I started my day today with taichi and it really made me feel good. Sometimes, I feel an oncoming wave of pain, I do taichi and the pain disappears. But darned those days when the pain behaves like an overstaying unwanted guest
What you have just said 'but better still together' is something you must hold in your mind. We are all in it together, and the whole point of this blog site is to let each other know that we will support each other as well as we are able.
There is no reason why we should have a rage against this horrible condition. My grandfather was a bishop, and lots of people asked him why some terrible thing such as the death of a child or a huge disaster had happened , Where was God? I am not such a good Christian, but I remember what his answer was. He said that God was around everyone who had sustained a tragedy. He knew those who were left behind were strong enough, or would make themselves strong enough with His help to bear the burden. As I see it, we are all here to help each other in a time of crisis.
We are here, as you are, to give each other a buffer from this Behcets Disease, so we are all entitled to say, 'Why me'?
Our pals on this site have given you to some very powerful poetry. I will not try to add to it. It was so great to know that you are feeling mentally stronger. Give yourself a huge pat on the back. I say, well done.
Lovely Suzanne....and exactly why my personal goal is to meet as many people as I can with BD...it has bought me such a lot of comfort and happiness to turn these cyber friendships into a real hug....sometimes illness makes it difficult but I am lucky that travel is not always impossible for me.
DevonshireDumpling, Billi, Jaxxi, Goodlife, Suzanne, and everyone else who takes time to read and respond - May you all be blessed! You are such great comfort, an oasis in this journey through the desert!!
Magician you paint beautiful pictures with your words!
I have been wanting to ask for such a long time - the name Magician? I am a reader of the tarot and The Magician is a very powerful character, somebody who has achieved mastery over the elements of his/her world by learning to understand his environment and by the sheer application of will. I find this such an apt name for you; that is not to say I believe you have achieved such mastery but that I believe you have the dedication and ability to do so, should you decide to.
Tarot reading is so fascinating and you have the skills for it! DevonshireDumpling, your many talents amaze me!
By what tarot reading attributes to The Magician - mastery over the elements of his/her world by learning to understand his environment and by the sheer application of will - it sounds like The Magician would be an apt monicker for all of us in this forum. For it is through understanding our minds and bodies and by sheer will that we manage to live with Behcet. Perhaps even conquer the beast?
Magician is my allusion to what it takes me to meet life's slings and arrows, having to pull rabbits out of hats and birds from hankies. I do think that it is the universe, not me, that creates the magic. But then, I am, we all are, one with the universe.
My dear DevonshireDumpling - your choice of name fires my imagination, perhaps a name with a very interesting genesis known only to those closest to you, like a password of sorts... Pretty please, share with us
Magician.. What form of Tai Chi do you practice? I was learning an offshoot of Tai Chi Chuan, as I was beginning to have trouble with the hard/external martial arts I was practicing. Now I cant seem to even get going with Tai Chi, let alone the Gung Fu I know (knew?). Martial arts must have been helping me keep fit and keep behcets somewhat at bay. Keep it up..
Wu style, 108 form. Also doing the single forms. Continuous flow gives me increased sense of flow, while single forms seem to make me feel greater quality of chi flow
Might be an opportune time for you to shift to internal martial arts, as these are reputed to help with the healing process.
Unsolicited advice - starting with Qi gong might make for smoother transition to internal martial arts.
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