A Paradox of Grief

                    I know it's been a couple weeks since I posted anything.  Sorry about that.  The start of classes  combined with the emotional fall out of my recently ended relationship ate up all my time and inspiration.  Today, though, I had a moment of clarity that I wanted to share, regarding that emotional wreckage.
                    When I ended things with my ex-boyfriend, it was painful.  I was still in love with him, and I knew I was hurting him.  Though I was braced for anger, my new ex was nothing if not understanding.  He made sure that I had support from my family, then quietly took himself out of the way to allow us both to heal.  He told me within two weeks of the break-up that he forgave me for hurting him and that he hoped we'd find a way to stay friends.  Though encounters with his family have been a bit awkward, they too have expressed no anger at me or my decision.  It all seems like a best case scenario, right?
                    Well, not quite.  I still felt guilty for causing pain to someone I loved.  In a twisted sort of way, I wanted them to be angry at me.  I felt that I deserved to be the target of anger, that I deserved to be shunned or shouted at.  I felt that my ex, or a proxy for him, should strike back at me for the emotional wound I had delivered.  And with no other proxy forthcoming. . . I took the position.  I became angry at myself, over and above my guilt.  On a very basic emotional level, I refused to forgive myself for choosing to end the relationship.
                    The last time I ended a long-term relationship, my new ex responded with anger, and even led one of our mutual friends to a similar level of anger.  At the time I was hurt and frustrated by their reaction, but now, looking back, I can't help but wonder.  In a strange way, it seems that their rejections freed me to forgive myself and move on.  When my first relationship ended, my former boyfriend was not angry with me. Like in my most recent break-up, he simply removed himself quietly from the situation and told me that he didn't blame me and wanted to stay friends.  It makes me wonder if I didn't do something similar then, directing anger at myself because no one else was.  Could it be that my whole slide into the darkest period of my life was some kind of misguided punishment I was giving myself?
                    I honestly don't know.  The idea is both horrifying on an emotional level and intriguing on an intellectual one.  Regardless, I don't intend to give in to my depression again.  I will keep telling myself that I did the right thing until I start to believe it, no matter how long that may be.  After all, if the person I hurt has forgiven me, what right to I have to withhold forgiveness from myself?

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.

Compassion for All

                    As I'm sure you are all aware, tragedy struck Newtown, Connecticut last Friday.  Everywhere you can see expressions of grief as the nation mourns the loss of twenty of the most innocent members of our society and six of their caretakers.  Yet as horrible as this tragedy was, I cannot agree with all those who have labeled the shooter a monster.
                    Adam Lanza was only twenty years old - the same age I was when I had my own crisis with my depression.  The pictures I have seen of him show a young man with wide eyes below an almost comically large forehead and full, slightly parted lips above a narrow chin, giving him a perpetually surprised expression.  Some of the news reports suggest he might have had a mild form of autism, a disease which is poorly understood, at best.  His family have expressed shock and regret for his actions.
                    This was a boy who reached a breaking point and did a monstrous thing, but I don't think that makes him a monster.  For twenty years he was a "shy, awkward boy" who was loved by his family.  A family that must now cope not only with the loss of their young relative, but also his mother, whom he shot to death before going on his rampage in the school.  And unlike the families in Newtown, they must do it not with the support, but with the condemnation of the nation bearing down on them.
                    Very few people are truly monsters.  So despite his monstrous actions, please, think twice before you label someone's cousin, nephew, or child a monster.

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.

Passions

                        It's been a while since I updated the blog, I know.  I'd blame writing for National Novel Writing Month, except that I got about seven hundred words in and realized that I was writing garbage just to make a word count.  That's not how I want to write.  I write because I have something to say, something to challenge others with or make them think about.  I write because it lets me get into another mindset, see things from a different angle, and hopefully show other people that same view.  Having a story is nice, but it's merely the vehicle for the ideas I'm exploring.  That is what inspires my writing, both fiction and non-fiction.
                        I realized this while talking with a co-worker about my short story "Rose Briar."  To my embarrassment, I discovered that I had monologued excitedly for almost ten minutes about the themes and twists on conventional thought that the story explored.  This got me thinking about other subjects that I am passionate about - things that I can talk or think about for hours at a time.   Specifically, I started thinking about my interest in psychology.
                        This interest started over ten years ago, though only within the last two years did I realize the subject that occupied my internal pondering had a name.  Way back then, a stranger complimented my thirteen year-old self on my lack of accent.  The seemingly innocuous comment sparked a deceptively simple question: "What do other people sound like to themselves?"
                        Of course it is impossible to know exactly what other people sound like to themselves, though you can get an approximate idea by comparing your own voice recorded to how you sound to yourself.  But the question got me thinking about how people think about themselves and others, and the things that influence those thoughts.  For years I made quiet observations of myself and the people around me, noting wherever possible what assumptions were made and why.  In college I learned everything I could about other cultures and religions, fascinated by the way two people could literally think in different ways about seemingly very basic concepts, such as what made something morally right or wrong.
                        Then two years ago I took Psychology 101, and it was like discovering Mozart after years of never knowing music existed.  For the first time in my college career, I had a class that I was always eager to do the homework for, work that never bored me or frustrated me.  Not to say that the class was easy, but occasionally the text would cover a concept that I had already worked out for myself, but simply never known had a name.  Those moments excited and encouraged me when wrestling with other, more difficult concepts.  Even more exciting, though I didn't realize it right away, was the fact that at last I had found a subject that I was truly passionate about, one that could lead to a degree and ultimately a career I could be equally passionate about.
                        It took two years of bouncing around the DC area before I settled down enough to seriously start looking into going back to school, but a few days ago I decided it was time to stop stalling and get serious.  Last night I submitted the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.  I don't expect them to offer me much, if anything - for some reason I am still considered a dependent and my parents make too much money for me to be likely to qualify for any grants.  But it is still a good starting place from which to negotiate with the Financial Aid departments of various colleges.
                        For the first time in my adult life, I think I might actually know what I'm doing with my career.
                        Wish me luck.