Knackered has Patterns with Benzos

 

   Hey there, Knackered here.  “To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven”.  Many of you may remember those words from a song that was written first by Pete Seeger in 1959.  The ‘Limeliters’ later picked it up and recycled it for their folk album a few months later.  It was all driven home for keeps by the folk rock group, ‘The Byrds’, in their rock revision in 1965.  While they made it a musical hit that year, the lyrics had been a smash hit thousands of years ago in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament of the Bible.

   Regardless of what version you prefer, it’s all true.  Everything has a time, season or pattern of some kind.  Calendars, day planners, and scheduling are all products of the human race. Societies throughout the ages have left behind structures that sought to do the same.  Only the natural realm knows the truth.  Seasons, days, and migrations all have and will occur on regular basis.  Despite, the mess we’ve made of things, I’m confident that in the end, all will be as it’s supposed to be, with or without you and I.    

   Here, we speak a lot about windows, being in tolerance, sleep cycles, nausea patterns, etc.  If we’re into our taper more than just a few months, all of us have, no doubt, noticed patterns of some sort emerging among the chaos of just plain suffering.  

   Yes, I realize that many of us can go months without having any kind of window or season of relief.  It sucks.  But somewhere along the line, we can at least find some pattern of highs and lows; times when things are not quite as bad as others.  We can come to a point where they’re predictable to a certain degree.  Of course the whole thing can betray us in a split second.  I’ve left the house a few times feeling great, only to feel like ‘death warmed over’ in the short time it’s taken me just to get downtown.  

   When that occurs, I don’t want to go downtown or anywhere else for that matter because I really can’t predict what version of myself will show up.  Heading out for a short drive and a burger? Good luck.  You could just as well be waylaid by crippling nausea by the time you get there.  

   When I presented myself at my last psych provider appointment, I’d kept careful notes on my phone that clearly displayed the fact that I felt alright for a couple hours in the morning, quickly reaching the top of a bell curve of misery about noon and then got a much needed break as the afternoon slipped into the evening hours. It seems to happen like this all the time, every day, over and over. 

     Alas…a window this AM found me hacking away at the garden weeds.  Now…well, I’m sitting and doing what I can; not a whole lot. My dad, a man of few words, told us that we had to “Make hay while the sun shines”.  So take advantage of those windows.  You don’t have to run a marathon or kill yourself in the garden.  You might just want to sit back and smile.