Tyler Skaggs lost his life to his addictions. What trauma or traumas were behind his addictions we currently seem not to know. What we do know is addiction of any sort is to manage trauma. Abuse, neglect emotionally unavailable parents all play their part and the more acute the violation the more violent the self soothing of the trauma will tend to be. 

I speak from a place of the knowledge of my own addictions to alcohol, e’s, cocaine and crack. Starting off drinking, swearing never spirits; moving to spirits sweating never hard drugs and needles; it all ended up with cocktails of all. 22 1/2 of the last 26 years clean. A couple of forays into research to make sure drugs and booze were no good for me – they aren’t. 

If I’d died I would hope no one would have chased a dealer blaming them for my death – they provided a service I needed. I’m OD’d numerous time mes and more than a few I would have been glad not to wake from. But I’m here, I’m 54 and I’m reading a heartbreaking story of a young addict who lost their life. 

More heartbreaking is a family needing so ferociously to blame someone for the death of an addict who would have had the finest rehab facilities at his disposal – he was a serious investment for the Angels. Blame Kay, easy fruit. Yes, supplied to definitely a few players it seems. One who’s now at the Red Sox if my memory, that lacks notes on a flight, serves me. Nothing to look at in Boston? 

I do not for one minute believe his family had no idea of Tyler’s addictions. His wife didn’t notice he might be just a shade out of kilter? Apparently she noticed an alcohol problem but did little to address this…was the alcohol in the cocktail what took things over the edge to his death. Needing scapegoats I’d ask the Skaggs to be at least both consistent and honourable and go after the alcohol companies and barmen who served him. 

Because alcohol kills – domestic violence, drunk driving, liver failure. Come to think of it the government needs to be on your he Skaggs sue list – they give a free pass to one of the most abused drugs in our society. It’s of course legal because the tax dollars would have a lineup with Betts, Trout, Acuña, Scherzer, Sale, Cole, Perez, Tatis and more without charging spectators  a dime. The same goes for cigarettes, simply a joke and this is coming from a committed smoker. Sugar. 

The common thread there is great income for the government. I’d like to know the percentage from these takes that go to rehabs, supporting addicts with therapy? I’d wager, another addiction the government, states and sports are allowing to run rampant – who cares about the kids who won’t be able to eat, the battered wives or those ending up on the streets so long as you get the tax dollars and the advertising revenue. 

Each sport should be ashamed of its behaviour but it’s not as it always get away with it.

I feel great sympathy for the Skaggs family, I do. But what does getting a low level dealer get you? Someone your son wanted and needed to provide him with a service; a service to self medicate whatever trauma he was carrying. Was the trauma rooted in experiences in the family or perhaps the trauma of struggling in the minors to make it, to keep a job, to keep the contract. I don’t know. 

Absolutely the Angels screwed up but it’s no surprise it it. But look to the top who were either utterly complicit or ignorant to a degree that probably in excess of fifty front office positions should be going. 

Why no surprise? 

You’ve got Bud Selig in the Hall. A man who presided over the steroid era yet did nothing until he was forced to be journalists who cared about the essence of the game far more than he did. If Selig knew he should be arrested, if he didn’t what the hell is he doing in the Hall….oh yes, turning a blind eye until he could no longer make the owners a lot of money. But you’ve stooges in Bonds and Clemsons who did possibly more that any other individuals to bring baseball back from another strike’s darkness. 

MLB, the Skaggs family have a lot in common. It’s a lot easier to blame the little guy than be accountable at the executive level, the very level where blind eyes were turned so long as there was profit for the game. Selective blindness has colluded in the steroid era and I would hazard a guess it played a part in Tyler Skaggs death and has make a mockery of the Hall not to mention the owners and commissioners past and present however sadly they will be lauded for winning series, growing income at this he expense of their duties of care.

The Skaggs appear to have had their selective denial crushed or, they knew all along their son or spouse was using and now have found someone to take the fall for their son self medicating pain that was evidently unbearable. They seem to have achieved nothing but tarnish their own son’s image and find a defenceless fall guy. No way we’re they going to the top, where the real culpability lies.

Major League Baseball is corrupt, the stench is awful, truly awful. Oh, and America’s pastime is on strike.

#mlb #tylerskaggs #skaggs #opiods #selig #manfred

I’m heartbroken.

I’m angry.

Fucking angry.

I am sick and tired of reading about death by suicide. Of self harm.

Because it’s wrong? Because god doesn’t approve? No.

I’m angry because it’s an indicator, an indicator of an individual’s distress. An indicator of the state of mental health both individually and collectively. Of broken hearts.

I’m sick of seeing homeless people on the streets of a supposedly caring and financially stable country, of child poverty in a privileged Western nation.

I’m not a professional in mental health but I have my own experiences and the stories I hear. My own suicidal thoughts and self harm have always been deeply entwined with shame…the internal voices saying I’m not enough, a failure, unlovable. My grandfather took his own life due to the shame of financial difficulties. Shame has driven friends to overdose, shame led me to overdose.

I struggle daily with shame and fear, that I’m not enough, that I’m a failure because if I wasn’t Given To Live would be a bigger ‘success’, I’d be fitter, slimmer. I’d be able to make the calls that terrify me, I’d stop freezing out of fear. We’re asked to succeed to be deemed enough. But what defines success? It seems to be money, achievement, looks.

For someone struggling with mental health success is often getting out of bed, washing, meeting a friend instead of cancelling, eating a good meal, sleeping, compassionate self talk. These aren’t small feats, sometimes it’s all we can do for ourselves. These are among many reasons that GTL works the way it does, works with mental health, works to honour and value the people we take to shows no matter their experience.

We need help collectively. Kindness, compassion, empathy. Why aren’t these part of school curriculums?

I’m heartbroken.

For those who take their lives today, who self harm, for the brutalised part of me that still struggles.

I’m heartbroken I live in an affluent country that loves to tell others how to live their lives but our streets are full of homeless humans, that has an absurd level of child poverty, that has its children taking their own lives.

I think it’s time we took care of our homeless, our children, our mental health, our suffering. Until we do that we really have no right to tell others how to live.

#BecauseYouMatter

My Commitment, a Gift: a desire to reacquaint and recommit to my own self, my own journey, my descent to soul.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

The Journey ~ Mary Oliver

After a life filled with traumas, both child abuse and self inflicted I spent years making love with my soul. Dancing into to journey soul with delicious willing, drinking my own tears knowing they were a salvation and realisation, a freedom unlocking gifts, empathy, compassion from a soul hardened and protected from the deep griefs of betrayals to many to count, too old to remember when the first arrived.

And then this journey, this utterly exquisite unraveling started to slip away as life, my head took over once again. Slowly. At first barely noticeable, I have to work, earn a living, drifting away from soulwork. My soulwork. I stopped writing, my connection to Spirit, my place to fall in love…with life, myself, my journey.

Trust slipping as I veered away from a path that, at times, ached with the joy of both beauty and grief. The so important griefs of our heartbreaks, both small and those seemingly there to kill us. I forgot to meet them, instead chasing them away as for five years now or maybe me barely has a tear traced my cheek. Those tears that bring me freedom, breath, peace, quiet. Chased away.

I know how to chase away the grief and betrayal. I learned early, I had to – no one would listen to my tears, let alone say yes! Yes, this is yours, your soul releasing and learning from your grief. No one said that with the tears of grief comes the space for tears to celebrate beauty and joy.

I’ve lost me over the last few years. I’ve also been close to death needing a heart operation, before that I did die, briefly, due to an overdose. Shortly before my heart operation I walked, in a daze of despair and desperation, in front of a truck wanting to die only change my mind at the last moment.

I’ve so, so many wonderful and destructive ways to run from me, my journey, my descent to soul. Necessary as a child, teenager and even into my adult years. Then, I’d shut down totally to survive. Alcohol and narcotics aiding that survival, killing me at the same time. Rehab has let those go. Today, since I started to run again from myself to diversions are no longer alcohol and narcotics but binge watching tv, sugar, excessive coffee, inertia, excessive eating. Fear and shame lock me into patterns, destructive patterns lock me into fear and shame. I’m afraid of my shame, ashamed of my fear. Eat, smoke, distract myself, become small, smaller, die inside. Too dead to cry the tears of my death inside. To afraid to face myself.

Paradoxically I love life. I love my life and what it could be if only I could meet my fears, visit my shadow, the shadow part of my psyche that holds me in this place of inertia. What’s in this shadow? Love, grace, courage? Greed, envy, anger? This is why shadow is shadow, until we visit we don’t know.

I am a bundle of nerves daily, brought on by sugar, nicotine and caffeine. I know these are no longer useful to me. I know how afraid I am to face the need to let these go, afraid because I’m ashamed as I believe I will fail.

To write as a practice, to face my fear and shame of not knowing how to create a better, healthier Given To Live. Ashamed that I won’t pick up a pen, that I don’t exercise, that I’m addicted to avoidance. I’ve lost my voice and courage.

Writing this is my gift to myself on my birthday, my 51st. A gift that is a prayer, a payer to ask myself to remember to comfort of prayer and this too is discipline. A disciple that has given me so much and provided evidence Spirit exists so clearly on a Vision Quest and in Sweat Lodge only a fool so afraid of beauty as I am would dream to ignore this truth.

I simply need to remember, to remember to trust in the truths I’ve learned. That alone I can’t live this life soulfully. That simply I’m afraid and that the last time I was utterly afraid and lost, in a treatment centre for over five years I found to speak with Spirit. This led me to trust and understand I’m not alone. This took me on a journey I would never swap, drenched in tears, breathtaking beauty seen in mountains, bugs, winds and people, both of this world and others.

I need to remember. That this journey is my way, my way home, home to me, to myself. I lost my faith, my trust, my courage.

If the Spirits, my Spirits, are willing to to be generous today, to me, I ask you to remind me that I am worthy of my life. That I can live a life of service and I ask for your support on this journey, to humble myself knowing I’m merely a wretched human and ask for your pity and guidance, your strength and compassion knowing I only have this one precious life.

Say hello, that’s all.

Just say hello.

A simple hello. Look me in the eye and say hello.

Please. Please don’t pass me by or cross the street. Your whispers to your friends breaking my heart. The looks of disgust reinforce what I’m starting to believe, that I am no one.

I may be homeless but I’m just like you. Flesh, blood, human. My heart beats and breaks, so does yours.

I may speak to myself or look a little crazy to you.

Do you use that word crazy about me? Do you? They say a homeless person’s mental health starts to go after three days on the streets. Some of us got here because of our mental health issues. So please, next time you think of calling me or my friends crazy, don’t. We’re just calling you Pearl Jam fans. You’re people who’re going to a concert.

I’m a person who lives in a shelter or on the street or in my car or a disused building. Even so, I’m a person even if you might forget that sometimes.

Please say hello. Even ask me my name, I do have one you know. It’s not the drunk, the bum, that fucking tramp, get a job you lazy prick. I have a name.

Just like you.

Some of us drink, use drugs, that’s why some of us got here, others use it to get through the day.

Most of us would love a job, some of us are too beat up we can’t. But with care, compassion and patience we may be able to work again. My buddy up the street knows all about tech stuff, I don’t I’m older but I used to love working with cars. The lady over there, she was a waitress but the place closed down and she couldn’t find another job, then the bills, the rent…anyway, you know the story. Or do you? Or are we all just bums? Did you ever stop and talk to one of us and find out how we got here? You know a lot of us were abused? You knew that.

A day of shame, hopelessness, hunger, grief. A day spent looking down, a day spent waiting for it to end, to turn into night to hopefully sleep. A night of rest, maybe somewhere dry and safe. Sometimes we get pissed on by drunk people but that’s ok, they’re on a night out so getting drunk is acceptable and who cares, I’m just a bum and it was only for laughs.

I might make it through the night. If I do I might find some food or somewhere to wash. I forget I don’t wash because when I remember the shame is so great I want to die. I don’t want to stink. None of us do. The guy who lost his good job and couldn’t pay the mortgage, then his wife left and he slept in his car thinking there’d be another job but there wasn’t. The lady whose husband beat her and no one did anything and she ran away to nowhere because it was better than beatings. She wants to wash. To sleep in a bed. The booze gets her through the pain, the terror. She hasn’t started working the streets. Some do. They all hate it. We’d all love a wash. Oh to soak in a hot bath then sleep in a bed with fresh sheets. I remember that. It’s been a while though.

Just say hello. Please. Find out my name. Take ten minutes before you see your band, stand in line for a tshirt.

Go to your show. Have a great time. These shows might change our lives, that band you love are doing so much. But I still need to be seen, it won’t happen overnight. See me as human. My heart beats like yours, breaks like yours.

I have a name.

Do you have the time to find it out, to treat me as a person before you go to your rock n roll show? Before winter comes and some of us die from the cold.

My friend used to go and see your band before he had the breakdown that lost him his home. He tells me he couldn’t get out of bed for weeks and lost his job, depression really hits some people hard. He says sometimes a crowd at a Pearl Jam concert all scream hello. We laugh and say imagine if just one said hello today, just one stopped and didn’t walk on by.

Can you be that one? Please?

I do have a name.

#JustSayHello

#BecauseYouMatter

#BecauseTheyMatter

#PJHomeShows

#PJLive2018

#Seattle

#Homelessness

I’m Tired.

I’m tired. So fucking tired.

I’m tired of reading about another death by suicide. Knowing that for each one I read there are hundreds I don’t read about, knowing that so many people are suffering.

Tired that mental health is massively underfunded in this country yet we can spend billions on bombs.

I’m heartbroken that we’re taught to say nothing when we’re hurting by a society that prizes false positivity. A society that, on the whole, would rather we ignore or bury our wounds than listen to them.

As a young man the only thing that would stop the fantasies of killing myself were drink and drugs. I couldn’t tell anyone, I got fired from a job because my performance dropped. It dropped because it’s hard to do paperwork properly when I’m wishing I had a gun to shoot myself with. I couldn’t tell anyone I lived with so I suffered in silence. Then I drank and used to quiet the torturous scenes playing in my head. And this was a pattern. Use something, anything to stop the visions.

I’m tired of meeting people who have asked for help but are put on waiting lists. Tired that a broken heart isn’t taken as seriously as a broken finger because it can’t be seen.

There are many reasons Given To Live exists. One is to tell the hurting they matter. Because so often that’s what we need most, to feel like we matter. But when we lose our voice and don’t speak our suffering we likely won’t feel like we matter. We have to feel safe, have to know the listener won’t dismiss our story. Our broken hearts brake that little bit more when we hear…oh, that’s not so bad…I had it worse…count your blessings, there’s others worse off…put your big boy/girl pants on…the list of platitudes is endless. And they each hurt.

There is more mental health awareness than before. And there needs more. Much, much more.

#mentalhealthawarenessweek

#mentalhealth

#becauseyoumatter

http://www.giventolive.com

via Am I Loving Now…the beginning.