I’m back! I have had a pretty long hiatus from this blog (by my standards at least) and it was not without reason. If you look at my previous blog, I speak about insomnia and all the mental issues that I was dealing with, and how I kind of overcame that state of mind. Well, even the toughest of the toughest have relapses sometimes, and to call mine a relapse is probably an understatement. Not too long after I wrote that blog, a childhood friend of mine who I used to hang out with at family parties passed away, at the age of 30! What the f**k man? !?!?! Right after I feel like my head is clear, something like this happens, and although I had not seen or talked to him in years, the mere fact that I knew him and his age was extremely close to mine was enough to f**k me up once again. It’s somewhat similar to an alcoholic having a party to celebrate his sobriety and someone decides to spike the punch during that party. SMH.
The funny thing about problems is that the same solution that worked the first time will not work the second time around. The last time I went through this a few weeks ago, I was able to confide in a few friends and talk my problems out. This time, no matter how many times I talked to friends, the thoughts would come lingering back. I even tried going to different friends to gain different perspectives, but still no resolve. I am no doubt thankful for all the listening ears that were given to me during both of these times (Diana, Elisa, Jason, Bryan, Yolie, Joe, Jon, Mylo). Thanks a million. Notice that I did not list the person I am probably closest to on that list, my younger brother. Well, in talking to Jon about my sh*t, I realized that as an older brother, it is extremely hard to go to your younger sibling and admit vulnerability. Call it an ego thing, but how many of you eldest children actually do that?
Back to my issues, they reached their peak last week when I decided to check myself into the emergency room due to heart attack-like symptoms. But were they heart attack symptoms or just a simple anxiety attack? I had my annual physical the week before and was perfectly healthy. And then during my full cardiac exam in the emergency room, they could find nothing wrong with me. In fact, the person performing the ultrasound on my heart said I was a good candidate for companies who wanted to demo their new equipment at those huge conferences. Hahaha. There was nothing wrong with me. Backtracking a bit and re-tracing the events leading up to that fateful day explain a few things. The chest pains? After a bit of research and some talking with my cousin (who is a doctor), it appears that I have strained something in my chest. When I was feeling the pains, it did not feel like your typical soreness after a chest day workout, it was something deep and I could feel it every time I breathed. Turns out I may have strained some cartilage or something (costochondritis, look it up). What about the shortness of breath and flushing type feeling? Those are also symptoms of an anxiety attack, which I believe was triggered by my underlying mental problems combined with the chest pain. What about the weird feeling in my left arm (like how your arm feels after getting a shot)? That is something I cannot explain except for the fact that I train like a madman all the time and any other time, I would have ignored it as simple wear and tear to my body, but in this state of mind, definitely a heart attack symptom. Finally, what about the feeling of anxiety or impending “doom?” Well, when you believe in your mind that you are going to die at any moment and are already suffering from minor anxiety attacks, this is pretty much inevitable.
Sounds a bit insane huh? Well, I seriously thought for a minute that I was going to have to check myself into one of those places filled with padded rooms and strait jackets. The mind is really a powerful thing and its ability to control your life, your actions and pretty much everything is absolutely mind blowing (no pun intended).
Today is day 2 of feeling pretty good again. I’ve noticed a substantial decrease in anxiety and I am on my way to recovery. Hopefully there are no more relapses for awhile <>. I do feel a lot stronger this time around; kind of like when you hurt something in your body and they say that when it re-builds itself, it is much stronger. Well, that is how my mind feels. When I had no one to turn to, not because I did not have a strong support system, but simply because that method was just not working for me anymore, I had to deal with it all myself. And while I went through what I felt like was rock bottom, it feels even better to feel like I have accomplished something and gotten over that extremely high hump or impossible obstacle. But was this blog supposed to just be some dramatic story of recovery from my personal sh*t? Yeah f**king right!
Every morning I like to go through my list of websites and read up on the articles whose headlines catch my attention. One of those websites is http://www.wsj.com , and today’s article was “Are Alpha Males Healthy?”
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903532804576566553268698820.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_health)
Before reading this article I had no idea if I was an alpha male or not, nor did I know what an alpha male truly was. The term gets thrown around a lot and its interpretation is different for so many people that I do not really think about it much. I think that most guys would like to classify themselves as alpha male since society dictates that man is the most powerful being on earth, but we all know that’s not true. Anyway, I read the article, along with the side bar that shows “Alpha Males Strengths and Risks,” which is pretty much a list of traits and a quiz to see if you are a part of the Alpha Male population. To summarize it, if you are a competitive person, you are pretty much an Alpha Male. Well, I am a hugely competitive person, so I guess I have alpha male tendencies. It’s funny because just the other day, I was talking to my friend Diana about competition and described my “game-day” attitude as wanting to de-moralizing other people. When I am competing with someone at something, I not only want to beat them, I want to beat them so bad that they either never want to compete with me in that sport ever again, or never compete in whatever we just did for the rest of their life. Sounds pretty f**ked up, but I play to win damnit! Hahaha.
Again, where am I going with all of this? Well, I know for a fact that I am not the only one of my guy friends feeling this way or going through some sh*t like this right now. I just turned 29, and a lot of my friends are in the same age range, so as that magical number 30 approaches, your mind just does not operate the same way. There is something about the turn of decades that subliminally makes us look at them as deadlines in life. Guys like to pick on girls for all their milestone dates, lists and deadlines, but we do the same sh*t they do except we don’t publish it in magazines or tell every single person we encounter about them. Hahaha. So as I realized that I was much closer to 30 and leaving my 20s, I started to focus on what my mind state was when I was in college and 30 was an eternity away and where I thought I would be at this point of my life. Motherf**ker, I was nowhere near what I had imagined! Time to f**king panic! Right? Well, I settled that little debate in my last blog, but it’s hard to imagine that my inner alpha male was the root that this whole mental collapse I’ve felt the last few months. So to answer the question in that article, are alpha males healthy? I have to give that answer a big, fat NO!
I have been called “ridiculously” healthy by nurses and doctors before, and I have never felt as unhealthy as I have in the past few months. With the way that I take care of myself, you would think I was crazy with all the hypochondriac tendencies I was having these past few weeks. I hit the gym almost daily, don’t eat too much junk food, and normally help people change into the healthy lifestyle, yet here I was feeling like my health was failing me. To put this into perspective, I had to hear it from three different doctors before I gained about 5% of my sanity back. I don’t even know what my bill from the emergency room visit was, but I already received one for $110 for my physical. So 3 doctors and who knows how much money later, as well as all the sleepless nights, and I can finally say that I’m back on the right path.
It still kills me (hmm…bad choice of words considering what I just wrote up above)…how about bugs…It still bugs me how something that I believed was a gift, was actually a curse for me. I used to brag and embrace my competitiveness and overachiever-ism all the time and felt like they were great traits to have. But now I have an even higher respect for balance in life. The article mentions that alpha males tend to push things to the extreme and I definitely fall into that category. All or nothing right? While nothing will ever rid me of my competitive nature and alpha male tendencies, I now understand that there are certain aspects of life, particularly life itself, where balance is the blueprint to success. A blueprint that includes embracing your gifts, but controlling them and preventing them from being turning into a curse. (A few people will actually get the references I just dropped in that last paragraph hahaha).
