Happy Birthday to Me

                      Today is my golden birthday:  I turned twenty-four on January twenty-forth.  It's been a wild year, with lots of blessings and a few hard choices.  I've learned a lot about myself and who I want to be, and I've made some progress toward becoming that person.  I took a huge step toward feeling independent by renting my first apartment, and finally figured out what I want to do with my education.  I've made some amazing friends, and for perhaps the first time came to truly understand how to lean on the love and support of my family without losing my independence.  I've taken risks, and even if they didn't all work out the way I hoped, they were all worth taking.  I am sure that the next year will bring me plenty of surprises, and I hope you will join me as I uncover them!

Lots of Love,
~Jennifer

My Heart in my Hand

                     Yesterday I broke up with my boyfriend of more than two years.
                     It sounds so simple, so easy, when it's put like that.  People break up every day.  I know that. And I know that it's never easy, or simple.  Not for the people involved.  Everyone knows that.  Everyone has been there.  And they all say the same things when it happens to someone else.
                     People keep telling me that I'm brave, that I'm strong.  They say that because I chose to end the relationship, and did it not out of anger, but because I saw that our personalities weren't quite a perfect fit.  I chose to end a good relationship because I know that I could have a better one with someone else, even if I don't know who.  So everyone tells me that I'm doing the right thing, and that in the long run this will be better for both of us.
                     I try to believe them.  Sometimes - most of the time - I actually do know that they're right.
                     But the truth is that when I think about the break up, I don't feel brave or strong.  I feel like a coward, because I knew for more than two weeks that this was coming, and didn't say anything.  I tried to take the easy way out and ignore the problem until a "better" time, feeling more and more like I was lying to him every day.  The only reason we broke up when we did is that he could tell it was bothering me, and asked what was wrong.
                     One of the first rules we set in our relationship was honesty.  He asked.  I answered.
                     I feel broken because this amazing person I just left is someone I have loved deeply for two years.  I still love him.  I hate the fact that I hurt him this way.  I hate that I have to push him away, even knowing that I'm giving us both a chance for something even better.  I'm trying very hard not to hate myself for doing it.
                     Once before I had to break up with someone with whom I was still in love, for all the right reasons.  That break up was the trigger for the severe depression that I have written about elsewhere on this blog.  I hated myself then.  Even knowing that my circumstances are so different now, that I have a support system and a greater self knowledge of where my emotional limits are, a part of me is terrified that I'm going to fall into that darkness again.
                     Another part of me, smaller but present, is tempted by it.  The depression brought with it numbness, and it is tempting to prefer that over the pain.  Sometimes I feel like my heart has been stabbed and the knife still in the wound, cutting deeper with every breath.  It would be so easy, this part of me whispers, to run from the pain, to hide so deeply inside myself that it could never touch me.
                     I know, of course, that that is a false promise and a temporary refuge at best, so I bear the pain.  Instead I talk about it, write about it here, and if the sharing doesn't ease the hurt, at least it makes it easier to handle.
                     To everyone who has offered or will offer me comfort and support, thank you.  With all of your help, I know I will make it through this, and be stronger for it.  Your kindness means a great deal to me, even if I'm not always able to show it as I go through this process.

Lots of Love,
~Jennifer

The Power of a Memory

                    After sharing my memory of one of the harshest parts of my depression, I have been thinking about the power of sharing personal experiences.  Mental illness is one of the least understood problems in first world countries (possibly in the world), and it is made all the more difficult because the average person who does not have a mental illness may have no context to understand what a sufferer is going through.  Add to that the huge variety of mental and emotional illnesses, and the dozens of symptoms which may or may not present in any given case of even a single illness, and it becomes nigh on impossible.
                    Especially in the United States, where terms like "psycho" and "retarded" are tossed around as casual insults as well as to describe people with mental illnesses, there is an enormous stigma and shame that tends to be associated with any one who admits to needing mental help.  I don't mean to imply that there hasn't been great progress toward closing that sympathy gap, because there has, especially in the last decade.  But most people, if they have any non-personal exposure to mental illness at all, know merely a list of signs or symptoms.  The transition from knowing that list, to being able to imagine experiencing it, for many people, is simply a jump too big to make, despite their best efforts.
                    This is why I have been considering a long term project to write a book that would allow those who suffer from mental illnesses to share their experiences in their own words.  I know that right now I am not really qualified to attempt to compile such a book.  I would have to be much closer to my counselor's license, if not actually holding it, and I would have to be very careful about disclosures and conflicts of interest.
                    But I think that a book of first person descriptions like the one I shared might make it a little easier for others to understand.  And it wouldn't just be personal accounts:  In this vague idea I have for a structure, I would introduce and follow each memory with information about the illness and how to find appropriate resources if the reader or someone the reader knows might have the same illness.
                    What do you think?  Is this a horrible idea?  Is there already a similar book on the market of which I am simply unaware?  Am I being vain and egocentric to think that I could pull this off?  Let me know in the comments, or shoot me an e-mail at the address at the top of the screen.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

                  Any of you who have read the previous post on this blog know that I am currently going back to school to study psychology.  My ultimate goal is to gain a counselor's license, though I'm not completely sure right now what type of counseling I want to do.  Lately though, I've been ruminating on a particular memory, which I will be sharing below, and thinking that I may want to work with high school or college students.
                  Some of you reading this blog know that I have struggled with depression.  The narrative below is drawn from the darkest, deepest part of my depression.  I want to assure my readers that this memory is over two years old, and my mental health has drastically improved since then.  I have a better support system now, and more importantly, I am much better at letting myself use the support when I need it.  Nevertheless, my experience with depression was a life-changing one, and in many ways is the root of my desire to seek a counceling license.  The account below is as true to my memory as I can make it, and as a result it includes graphic descriptions of not only what I experienced, but what I contemplated while in a very dark place.

                   Consider yourself warned.

...

 

                  I sat down on the edge of the futon, letting it sink beneath my weight as my backpack slipped off my shoulder to land on the floor with a heavy thud.  I gripped the side of the mattress, but I didn't feel it.  There was no sensation from the thick fabric under my hands.  I could feel nothing but the dull ache deep in the center of my chest, which I had long since learned to ignore.

                  I stared blankly around the empty room.  I had deliberately stayed in the dining hall until I knew my roommate would be in class, but now I wasn't sure why.  The silence was oppressive.  I couldn't hear any of our neighbors, though I had seen at least one other girl returning to her room at the same time as me.  I couldn't hear myself breathing, or even my heartbeat.

                  Everything around me appeared dull, washed out, and faded, like a photograph left too long in the sun.  It was as if nothing was quite real.  Or I wasn't.  Almost, I could believe I was a ghost.

                  Something on my roommate's desk caught my attention - a flash of silver.  Without thinking, I stood and took two steps forward to pick up the object.  It was a straight edged razor, the kind used in utility knives.  The metal felt cold, almost icy to my touch-starved flesh; the metallic reflection seemed blinding against my sepia-toned fingers.  Unbidden, a question rose in my mind: If I cut myself, would I even feel it?

                  I don't know how long I stared at the blade in my hand, envisioning exactly how it would happen.  In my mind's eye, I could all but feel the sharp steel slicing into the soft underside of my forearm, leaving a thin, clean line of pain.  I could see the tiny, crimson drops that would well up in the track, each one a perfect, beautiful sphere: a proof that I still lived.

                  That thought brought me up short.  Slowly I turned the razor over and over in my hands.  The cool metal had warmed by now, but the edge whispered across my skin like a silken band.

                  What if I cut too deeply?  That was how people committed suicide.  I knew, suddenly, that I didn't want to die, not then.  Until that moment, I hadn't even realized that I was unsure.

                  Half-formed scenes flashed through my head, of misjudging and bleeding out alone in my dorm, or waking up with bandaged wrists in a hospital.  Of judging correctly, only to be accused of attempting suicide by friends (or worse, family) who discovered the marks.  Of being forced to try to explain why I did it - reasons that seemed simultaneously to be both obvious and impossible to me.  And interwoven over and through all these images was a bone-deep, gut-wrenching shame and terrible nameless fear.

. . .

 

                 I wish that I could say I thought of how my self harm would devastate my family, or of all the things I still had left to experience and learn.  But it was neither the people who loved me nor the things I loved that made me put down the razor that day.  In truth, my depression had driven me too deeply into myself, disconnected me too much from the world for those arguments to have even occurred to me.  The only thing that kept me from self harm or worse was a blind, selfish, primal desire for survival.

                 According to recent data, about two million cases of self injury are reported annually in the United States alone.  Millions more go unreported due to the secrecy which participants in self harm tend to maintain around their injurious activities.  It is estimated that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 7 men engage in some form of self injury, up to and including suicide attempts.

                 In a way, I was fortunate that my depression had no focus, no conscious reason for my misery, or else I might not be writing this today. If my will to live had been even slightly diluted by such a reason, I might well have made the ultimate gamble, and lost.  I had the means and the opportunity to become one more datum of that horrifying statistic.

                  This is why I want to be a counselor.  If I can help even one lost, lonely young person out of the sort of dim, lifeless place I found myself in, I would consider all the time and money spent on my education to be well repaid.  If I can show just one young man or young woman that they don't have to face that terrible choice alone, support just one person through the sort of crisis I survived unsupported, I will be well satisfied with my investment.

                  No one should have to live in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.