How One Depressed Person is Coping with Social Distancing

Covid-19, Coronavirus, Social Distancing, Quarantine. Potential economic collapse. A president who can’t even speak in complete sentences. Our current context is incredibly difficult for anyone to cope with. I can only really speak from my perspective, though, and as someone who suffers from depression and anxiety I’m here to report: we are not ok.

Holy shit, this is scary. People with anxiety are prone to catastrophizing: jumping directly to the worst-case-scenario possible in literally any situation. This is a legitimate thought distortion that many people experience during times of great stress. The general hysteria leading regular, every-day people to ransack big box stores for toilet paper, Ramen, and peanut butter is all evidence of this.

But when you spend a good deal of your daily energy trying to keep yourself from dissolving into paranoid hysterics on a regular day, the rest of the world succumbing to those kinds of thoughts is a horrifying trigger. One tried and true method for bringing yourself back from the edge of a panic attack while catastrophizing, is trying to find evidence for how likely that worst-case-scenario would be. Usually, it is really difficult to find that evidence because our worst-case-scenarios are super unlikely. But right now, our worst-case-scenarios are what everyone else believes will happen too.

So, what the fuck do we do now?

What we’re going through as a collective is tough. As always, I have been on a little bit of a roller coaster because of it. That being said, I’m doing ok. And I want everyone to be ok. So I’m here to tell you what I’m doing, and how I’m coping; in case it helps anyone out there. No strategy will ever be 100% successful, but together we can help each other survive.

Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance is something I learned at my partial hospitalization program I did in December. Essentially, this strategy acknowledges that fighting against painful realities achieves nothing but suffering. In other words, desperately wishing a painful aspect of your current reality out of existence achieves nothing but anxiety. If you are practicing radical acceptance you are: accepting the situation as true and final, understanding what you can and cannot control about the situation, being non-judgemental, allowing yourself to feel your negative emotions rather than pushing them away. Once you engage in radical acceptance, you free yourself from the burden of worrying about the outcome of a situation you have no control over. You allow yourself to build a reality that works for you within the boundaries of what is possible, even if it’s not ideal.

How have I been practicing radical acceptance while social distancing? Well, we are not supposed to spend time in public, in situations with 10+ people, we shouldn’t touch our faces, or go to work, we can’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. All of that is fact. I can’t change it, no matter how much I want it to not be true.

But there are things I can control about the situation. I can use the privilege of my able body and salaried position to help others however possible. On one hand, that means social distancing so I don’t contribute to others contracting something that could impact them worse than it would me. It also means giving the money I’m not spending on recreation due to business closures to those who don’t have financial privilege to get them through this mess (if you haven’t seen people posting about ways to share your disposable income with those who need it, scroll down and check the links at the bottom of this page).

I can also control how I use my time during this crisis. I could spend my days stressing about the rate my supplies are depleting, missing my friends, desperate to leave my house. Or I could see this time that’s been given to me as a gift.

We could all really use a vacation

I want to start this section by acknowledging my privilege. I understand for many reasons this time off of work is stressful to many not in my situation (this is why I have been venmo-ing various people and organizations money for the last week).

I also believe that if we take care of each other, and take it upon ourselves to redistribute resources to support members of our community, we all could take advantage of this time off.

Capitalism is hard, dude. Whether you believe in it or not, the colonial capitalist system we live in is not easy to navigate. There’s a lot of stress in capitalism. There’s always pressure to be the best. There’s a constant race to cover your bills and afford the material goods that prove your worth to those around you, while only ever looking out for “number one.” Our culture doesn’t value breaks. It doesn’t value down time. It doesn’t value taking time out to refuel and support your mental health.

Well, regardless of whether or not Capitalism values it, we are all officially on a break. Seeing this time as a “break” doesn’t erase the fact that it’s scary, it’s difficult, it’s overwhelming, That being said, spending your time being scared and overwhelmed won’t fix anything either. So we’re on break.

What have you been refusing to do because you don’t have time? What hasn’t fit into your schedule because of work and family obligations? How long has it been since you’ve taken a walk in the sunshine? How long has it been since you’ve written a poem? Or learned a new skill? Or practiced meditation? Or made a scrapbook? Or baked cookies? Or learned a new language?

Within the parameters of what will keep you and your community safe, what could you use this time for if you weren’t scared?

Let’s make art

A new friend I’ve recently gotten close to reminded me that destruction is a gift.

This is kind of a radical idea but, what if everything falling apart was clearing the way for new growth? What if desperately clinging to the safe reality we had before is keeping us from creating something that will actually work for more of us in the future? What if accepting destruction will clear the path for creation and growth?

Basically what I’m saying is: during this quarantine, if we’re not making art, finding ways to laugh, and orgasming as much as possible, what are we doing, really?

Links to where you should send your money (I’ll post more as I find them):

Navajo and Hopi Family Covid-19 relief fund

Help youth climate activist Daphne Frias fight Covid-19

No Kid Hungry

Unified Phoenix Service Relief Fund for people in the service industry in Phoenix going without pay right now

Donate to help Navajo families maintain their access to fresh water

Please Don’t Pop my Bubble

Until further notice, I’m on vacation.

Va•ca•tion.

I am on medical leave from work. What that means is, the status of my mental health is so extreme it poses a significant risk to my wellbeing. My medical leave became effective 3/9, and it ends 6/12/2020.

That means, from now until mid-June, my only job, and I mean only job, is to heal.

Even if I wanted to work at another job between now and June, I legally couldn’t (why would I want to though, really?).

I felt the need to clarify this on the record. As is natural when someone suddenly leaves their job (after several false starts), people ask questions. I have no problem being honest about the circumstances of my mental health. I will proudly defend my assertion that mental health is a worthwhile reason to take leave from work. But there is one specific “type” of question that is exhausting me.

When I say “type” of question, I am referring to the fact that in my head I’ve been lumping questions I’ve been getting into genres based on the type of information the questioner is seeking.

The “type” of question that is exhausting me is any question having to do with one of the following categories: school, work (past or future), next school year, my students (past or future), job searching and/or applications, next steps, salaries, insurance, my “purpose.”

Questions like: “Are you returning to teach next school year?”

And, “If you don’t end up wanting to teach anymore, what’s next?”

So this post is my manifesto. My final statement of employment and social status for AT LEAST the next three months of my medical leave:

I am on vacation. From everything.

Literally everything.

For the next 3 months, please, please, please expect nothing but the bare minimum from me.

I need therapy. Lots of therapy.

And cuddles. Lots of cuddles.

I need entire afternoons spent fully mentally and emotionally present. In a room where words and music become limbs of the same tree. A room pregnant with natural light filtering through the cloudy vibrations of combined emotional and creative energy (but like, on a spaceship).

I need new experiences that both scare and excite me. And a wide open calendar that has room for spontaneity. I need to be able to get up in the middle of the night and take a bath in the light of the full moon filtering through the west-facing windows at the back of our house.

I need to pay my bills on time, make sure we have money to eat, and not give a damn about retirement for a hot second.

This is what I need. And I have the time to take it. My job is still mine after this leave. No one needs me to commit one way or another to teaching next school year until June. I still feel lots of love and lots of stress about my teaching position. I really have no idea what else I want to do after teaching.

Or what kind of work I will value.

Or what kind of lifestyle I will want.

This is the first time I have ever been off the conveyor belt. This is the first time I have the freedom to not give a fuck about any of that right now because I have the privilege of working for a set of administrators willing to support their employees.

No one is relying on me to get it done.

No one needs me to meet a deadline.

There are no qualifications I need to earn.

And I apologize in advance if in the next three months I become flaky. If I won’t commit to plans ahead of time. If I become forgetful, or oversleep, or take too long to respond to a text. I promise to my loved ones that I will respond. I will do you the respect and the dignity of not ghosting. I will always provide explanations for why I can’t or won’t do things, but I will never expect these explanations to be good excuses.

I just need this vacation. I need to take a break from responsibilities and expectations. I need to learn, and explore passions, and take risks that I’ve never been willing to take before.

Please, please don’t pop my bubble.

An Update on my Life: For those who are interested

Yesterday was my last day of teaching. I am officially on medical leave for the rest of the school year. Deciding to bow out at this point in the school year is the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make. Half of me wants to write this to desperately justify my decision. On the other hand, I’m hoping continuing to process through my reasons for leaving my job will help give me renewed confidence that it was the right decision. So here we go.

I have been struggling ya’ll. On the best day, teaching middle school is a really challenging job. Middle schoolers are out of their mind, high on hormones. Their brains have not developed the ability to assess risk or think about consequences before their actions; meaning they are impulsive, emotional, and chaotic (and those are the good days). Combine this reality with:

the traumatizing state of national and local affairs,
the rate of family deportations that have taken place within our school community over the four years I’ve worked there,
institutional policies and practices in American public education at odds with the needs of my students of color and LGBTQ+ students,
the individual childhood trauma many students bring to school with them every day,
we don’t have air conditioning so it is likely to be around 95 degrees in my classroom in September and June,
my classroom was built in the 1960s when class sizes were two thirds the size they are today, and the hormones in our food have resulted in middle school students you could mistake for 30 year olds,
political pressure for teachers to prove they are “effective” has resulted in so much standardized testing we’ve lost at least a quarter of our instructional time to testing that does a poor job actually assessing students’ learning as it’s format is at odds with what we know to be best teaching practices (this results in even more loss of instructional time as we now also have to spend time teaching the students how to test),
and I barely make enough money to cover all my bills (and we haven’t received our promised yearly raises a single time since I’ve worked for the district)

By the time you reach the end of this list, you probably can understand why teachers usually burn out after 5 years. The thing is, this is the reality before you add in any issues going on in teachers’ personal lives. One of the most unfair things about it all is that, through all of the bullshit put on our backs, teachers are often expected to act as emotionless automatons that come to school every day, check all the right boxes, and take responsibility for the educational and emotional development of 150+ kids on our caseloads.

Personal trauma, deaths of loved ones, financial struggles, sickness, mental health issues; all of these are inconveniences that teachers are often expected to compartmentalize in order to stay effective in their jobs. I’ve been lucky that I’ve had a supportive administration, as I’ve heard stories of principals telling their teachers to “leave all of that in the parking lot,” because school is no place for teachers to have weaknesses.

And I’ve been going through a lot of shit in my personal life. When I was assaulted at a Halloween event in October, it fucked me up mentally. Obviously, it triggered my trauma from my original rape that happened in college, but it added on to the pile in unexpected ways. My inability to cope with the immediate fallout of this assault resulted in my first hospitalization that forced me to go on medical leave for November and December. But, as I processed through this event, and worked on rebuilding my mental health, there was a sneaky new trigger for my PTSD that I had no ability to discover until I returned to school: crowds.

All of a sudden, I don’t do well in crowds anymore. When I was assaulted in October, I was grabbed at a crowded event because I had my guard down with no ability to control everything going on around me at that moment. So now, when I am in a crowded and chaotic situation, I can literally feel my lack of control and it makes my brain shut down.

Do you see the issue here? Teaching middle school is nothing but spending time in loud, crowded, chaotic situations where any sense of control is an illusion.

So basically, since I returned to school in January, I’ve been living in a constant state of anxiety. I am triggered all day every day. My body is in fight or flight mode 24/7 resulting in a bottoming-out of my ability to sleep, feed myself, cope with sudden changes, relax physically, and accomplish most of my required tasks. It also hasn’t helped that in the month of February we had an evacuation due to a gas leak and a bomb threat.

It’s not that I don’t want to do my job anymore. It’s that I literally can’t. If I keep going like this I will die. I am not exaggerating. Feeling like you’re in constant threat of attack is not a life many people would want to live. I initially asked my district for partial leave so I could cut down to part time. This would allow me to engage in trauma-based therapy, have the restorative down time I desperately need, but still finish the year out with my students (whom I love as if they’re my own. Yes, all 153 of them). Unfortunately, the policies of my school district don’t allow partial leave. They offered me full time leave through the end of the school year, or nothing at all.

Considering the extreme state of my mental health, I obviously had to take the full-time leave.

That doesn’t change the fact that yesterday was one of the hardest days of my life. My students were devastated that I’m leaving them. Just as I feared, many are feeling like I am one more adult in their lives that is abandoning them. My heart broke into a thousand pieces as students cried into my shoulders and clung onto my limbs. I received so many thank you and farewell notes from students I lost count. I have to come to terms with the fact that, although I’m leaving for reasons that have nothing to do with them, I’m still failing these beautiful impressionable souls by not achieving my goal of seeing them through to their middle school finish line.

It would be an understatement to say that I am sad. There’s so much going on here that is really difficult to process, and it is going to take me some time to move on. People keep asking if I will return to teaching next school year, and honestly, I have no idea. At this point, the furthest out I have been able to plan is the next 24 hours. I can’t even conceptualize September, let alone what I’ll be doing in September.

Releasing myself from this school year has officially closed one chapter of my life. I now have to embark on a new chapter where I confront my trauma in a way I have not been able to up until this point. I am terrified, I am sad, I am anxious, but I’m also eager and excited.

I’ll keep you updated on all that this next chapter brings.

Thank you for reading.

29 and alive af

On Saturday February 22, I turn 29. I haven’t historically been a huge “birthday person,” but this is going to be a big one. Not only will it be the last year of my 20s, but I wasn’t even sure I would make it to 29, so I’m fairly excited it’s happening.

My 20s were a hard fucking decade. I think that phenomenon is pretty common for people in general. During my 20s, I: survived sexual assault, married my partner, earned 2 degrees, got my first big girl job, bought and renovated a house, was inducted into three academic honors societies, won an award for educational excellence from the MEA, got diagnosed with anxiety, and depression, and PTSD, and ADHD, and endometriosis. I traveled the world, became an aunt twice over, helped my sister through a divorce, stood as a bridesmaid a million times, got at least 25 tattoos (I’ve honestly lost count), made friends, lost friends, survived suicide, fell in love with New Orleans jazz, started a blog, and came out as bisexual.

I’ve been so low I didn’t think I would make it out. I’ve had adventures. I’ve accomplished goals. I’ve coped with failure, death, and pain.

Those were my 20s. Doubtlessly the most formative decade of the three I’ve been alive.

And standing here, looking down the barrel of my last year of my 20s, it is difficult how to adequately express the extent of my happiness that I am still alive.

The knowledge and understanding that I almost committed suiced in October has weighed on my mind in interesting ways over the last four-ish months. Considering I had no plans to wake up on October 30, 2019, I could have never predicted the ways that fact would ultimately bring an end to many chapters of my life, and a beginning to many others.

What I can no longer do is…

Look, I made a suicide plan and scheduled a time to follow-through on it. We have a detached garage, and I therefore knew my Subaru and I could poison myself with carbon monoxide without harming my dog and cats in the process. But, on the day I was planning on doing it, I went to the hospital instead. And here I am.

I consider this event a “mental breakdown” in the very purest sense of the term. I survived my 20s by gathering up all of my symptoms from PTSD, anxiety, and depression, all of my endometriosis pain, all of my emotional needs, and shoving them deep into a well in the pit of my stomach. Within me lies a Mariana Trench packed with the ghosts of my past I refused to acknowledge. And it totally worked. I had everyone convinced that I was “normal.” Better than normal, actually. Ask my bosses and/or teachers from this time period and they would describe me as high achieving, exceeding expectations.

But as I tried to keep them captive, those ghosts fused together like the Power Rangers once they transform into that robot thing. They became stronger, angrier. A demonic beast that ate me alive and almost killed me.

And now that I’ve fought that demon, and won, I can’t lock it back up anymore. Like, I literally can’t. My brain has literally lost the ability to perform that function. I think about mental health every single day. I talk about mental health every single day. I have to. My near-suicide didn’t kill me, but it did kill my ability to suppress. I have completely lost my ability to pretend. I can no longer “fake it til I make it.”

This means I acknowledge and work through every thought distortion, every distressing emotion, and every trigger as it comes. This is exhausting. Some days it feels like all I am capable of is surviving. It also means that there are lots of things I was able to do well before, that I can’t do at all anymore.

For instance, I can’t commit to plans. I hate myself for it, but I’ve bailed kind of a lot lately. I usually make plans with someone ahead of time, and will spend the intervening days fully committed to going. But if something triggers me on the day of said plans, I bail. I have to. Because I learned the hard way that, if I don’t put my mental health first, it could kill me.

I also can’t take control in chaotic situations. Honestly, most large crowds give me anxiety right now. But, if I don’t have to be in control, if I don’t have to be the one that makes sure everyone gets home safely and nothing gets lost, I can relax. On the other hand, if I am given any kind of responsibility in chaotic situations, I completely shut down. This has made doing my job almost impossible. I don’t know how many of you have spent time in middle school lately, but it’s a pretty chaotic place. Teachers constantly need to be on guard and in control or everything will fall apart. Everything often falls apart anyway, even if we teachers think we are in control. And I cannot handle it anymore. Luckily, my coworkers and administration have been incredibly supportive. But still, every day is an uphill climb. Every morning I start back at the bottom of the hill.

What I can do now that I couldn’t before…

I can be honest. I can be the most honest version of myself possible now. This is momentous for me. I no longer have the energy to try to “get” people to like me, or impress anyone, so I don’t anymore. Obviously, I still have low self esteem. It will take much longer than four-ish months for me to topple that mountain. That being said, I no longer let it change my behavior. I no longer let my low self esteem stop me from asserting exactly what I want and need.

And I can assert myself now. My long history of perfectionism made it impossible for me to ask for help. Both in and outside of my school career, I limped my way through many things I could have made easier for myself if I would have just asked. Then, asking for help literally saved my life. I was self-aware enough to realize what I was going through was an emergency, and I reached out to a coworker who took me to the hospital. More than anything else in my life, this event made me realize it is OK to ask for help. I would love to say that asking for help is easy for me now, but that would be a lie. Still, I can ask for help now, and that is a triumph. I can assert my existence and validate my own needs. I can lean on the people in my life who have been desperate for me to do so in the face of my lifetime of fierce independence.

Finally, I can talk about and work through my emotions, rather than letting them conquer me. That demonic beast of suppressed needs that almost killed me in October? I calmed it. I gave it the validation it so desperately needed. I gave it a home in my life, and my heart, and my brain.

I shake hands with the symptoms of my PTSD, and my anxiety, and my depression. I acknowledge their existence. I acknowledge their importance. And I allow myself to walk away.

I ask myself what I’m feeling regularly. I allow myself the time to define my emotions. I am compassionate with myself. I utilize my skills and my support system to fulfill the needs of my emotions. And I put them to bed.

Then, there’s grief…

I don’t know about anyone else, but I was never told that humans can experience grief for many types of loss; only one of which is the death of a loved-one. I have cycled through many different and unexpected iterations of the five stages of grief over and over again since October.

I’ve had to grieve my former, “perfect,” self. As I mentioned above, my ability to exceed everyone’s expectations was fueled by my ability to suppress all of my trauma, emotions, and needs. Therefore, my inability to suppress those things has resulted in a considerable drop in performance. I can no longer do the things I once did, to the standard to which I once did them. And this is really difficult for me to handle.

Releasing myself from needing to be perfect has not taken away my feelings of failure every time I fall short. I relied on my former perfection to prove my self worth to the world. I derived self esteem from my productivity. I am currently in a time of life where self esteem and feelings of worth are running in short supply. Additionally, I no longer have my perfect performance to draw from. I therefore am experiencing an intense loss.

A loss of identity (as the “best” at whatever I’m doing). A loss of confidence in whether or not I’m still meeting expectations. A loss of confidence in how my bosses and colleagues feel about me.

Furthermore, I am daily coming to new understandings of the roots and consequences of my mental health. I have a lifetime’s worth of connections being forged in my brain as I truly analyze my emotions for the first time. These connections often result in epiphanies, often that knock me on my ass.

I’ll give you an example: while talking to my partner about something unrelated the other day, it hit me that I have spent the last decade of our relationship truly believing that I was unworthy of his love. I literally believed that I had nothing to offer a partner. I believed that, in order to keep his love, I had to prove myself worthy over and over again. I lived my life in an intense state of anxiety that, at any moment, I was under threat of losing the love of my life once he realized I couldn’t maintain the standard of domestic excellence that I was pretending I could.

That’s fucking depressing.

My self esteem was so low, I wasted an entire decade of life refusing to allow myself to feel loved, when I had an overabundance of love available to me.

Please tell me I don’t have to illustrate for you what I lost in this scenario.

Happy Birthday to Me

My point is that my 29th birthday is a big deal to me. This year, I will shamelessly celebrate myself to the fullest. I will be loud, outrageous, and silly. I will overdress for the bar I’m going to.

And everywhere I go, I will let everyone know that it’s my birthday.

Because it is not just a birthday.

It is more than an anniversary of the year I was born.

It is a symbol of the hellfire I walked through.

It is a trophy forged out of the ashes of my old life, and reborn in the phoenix of my new.

Let’s Talk About Valentine’s Day

I work in a middle school so, naturally, Valentine’s Day is super obnoxious. Awkward couples manifest out of lots of giggles, and lots of social media interaction. On Valentine’s day, cishet girls either 1) walk around the hallways standing tall, proudly carrying ostentatious monuments proclaiming their relationship status or 2) walk around the hallways depressed, cranky, and/or pouty because they haven’t entered the a-list tier of the middle school social landscape reserved for those “in a relationship.”

While cishet boys spend whatever money they were able to make selling takis and gum to their friends on material items to prove they are worthy of being in a relationship with a cis girl. Because they know that failure to provide said material items – the more ostentatious the better – will result in them not having a “girlfriend” for very much longer.

Those who identify as neither cishet girl nor cishet boy, or something in between seem to disappear altogether as our societal preoccupation with cishet monogamy rears its ugly head amongst those as young as 11.

(Not to mention, they are all sugar high).

And I can’t help but look around every year and reflect on how toxic this relationship culture is.

Raging puberty hormones naturally make middle school kids interested in engaging in relationships, and that’s ok. It becomes a problem because social acceptance and social dominance is often tied deeply to one’s ability to attract a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.”

The social pressure to engage in heteronormative relationships before adolescents even really know themselves leaves them vulnerable to potentially serious consequences:

Mental Health

The types of relationships modeled by the media leave adolescents with unrealistic expectations for their relationships. They may think there are certain proverbial boxes that need to be checked as their relationship progresses. The disappointment associated with their relationship not living up to their expectations at a time in life when raging hormones are changing the chemical makeup of their brains has resulted in severe depression and suicide attempts. Consider the added condition that young girls are fed the image of the old spinster, crazy cat lady, and bitchy man-hating career woman so often and it won’t surprise you that cis girls are more likely to suffer these mental health consequences¹

Teen Dating Violence

Although the media models the type of relationships kids are “supposed” to be having, it rarely models what constitutes a healthy relationship. On the contrary, the media overwhelmingly contributes to rape culture, domestic violence, and sexual assault.² The CDC reports that 26% of women and 15% of men experienced intimate partner violence before the age of 18. Intimate partner violence – or teen dating violence if they are adolescents – can include: physical violence (like hitting, kicking, or choking), sexual violence, psychological aggression (using verbal or nonverbal communication to intentionally harm, threaten, or exert control over another person), or stalking. ³

Homophobia

The sex and gender norms inherent in heteromnormativity ⁴ lead to a culture of homophobia among young people. Students who identify as LGBTQ+ are bullied, harassed, physically assaulted, sexually assaulted, and commit suicide more often than their cishet peers. ⁵

If you are not a parent of a middle-school aged child you may be wondering why any of this is relevant to you. Well, the relationships we have as teenagers often set a pattern for the types of relationships we have as adults. Teen dating violence can lead to intimate partner violence and perpetration or victimization of sexual violence throughout the rest of our lives.³

Anecdotally, I have examples of toxic relationships amongst those I’ve loved floating to the front of my brain as I write this.

People I respect either are currently engaging in, or in the past have engaged in relationships with abusers.

And I can’t help but think that our relationship culture has to hold some responsibility here.

So, basically what I’m saying is this:

Being single is not a disease.

No one’s clock is ticking because there is no deadline on doing amazing things in your life; whether one of those things is having children or not.

Fuck the patriarchy.

Sources:

A Letter I Wrote to My Younger Self

Dear R,

You are one of the smartest people you will ever meet. I felt it important for me to start with that because you spent too much of your life thinking you were stupid. And, now that we’re on the subject, most of what you thought about yourself was wrong.

You have always been worthy of love, darling R. It was your constant need for them to prove their love to you that pushed people away. Figure that out ASAP and you’ll save yourself loads of grief.

Their attention they are willing to pay to you does not equate love. On the contrary, it’s the ones who pile you high with the positive attention you crave who are actually just using you. Trust the ones who show up when it’s really important, not the ones who look at you like you’re a Michelin Star meal. Trust the ones who are rooting for you.

Oh sweet R. You are quirky. You are unique. Your mind sees things differently than a lot of other people’s. THAT’S A GOOD THING. Don’t get too caught up in “fitting in.” Go find all the other freaks – they’re your family.

Your voice is powerful, R. Your moral compass is accurate. Your dedication to justice is important. Do not allow the push back to eat away at your self esteem. Use your voice as loudly as you want, as often as you want. Unless you could benefit from a different perspective. Their perspective is valid. Just because it will never happen to you, doesn’t mean it won’t happen to them. Be quiet when they speak, because their voice is as important as yours. I want more people to learn that when they’re young.

This life is beautiful, R. You have so much opportunity. You have so much love to give and receive. You are worthy of this life, R. Don’t ever forget that.

Love,

R D B

P.S. You’re bisexual

What am I doing here?

This blog is a risk for me.

I literally went from being the most guarded, closed off, artificial, seemingly perfect person alive to ripping myself open and spilling my guts across the internet for everyone to read.

I am a habitual exaggerator, but for once, I promise I’m not exaggerating.

I did not live as an honest person to very many people in my life. I kept most of myself locked deep inside – choosing, instead, to focus my energy on fulfilling everyone else’s expectations so I could hide in plain sight. And that gave me such terrible anxiety, fear of abandonment, and deep self-loathing I couldn’t do it anymore.

So, with this blog, I’ve done my best to embrace vulnerability for the first time ever. And, as a result: I feel like I’m going to puke for the first hour after publishing every post, I’ve shocked many people who thought they knew me, and I’ve made many family members concerned.

Naturally, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from those who know me. Questions about the content of my posts. Questions about whether or not I’m OK. Questions about whether or not it is cool to share my posts with others.

So, I thought it would be a beneficial exercise to really explain my purpose for this online space. Because the content I share in my posts is what I want people to know about me now. Because I am OK. And because I ABSOLUTELY want you to share my posts.

So here’s the deal. I want to be a writer. Like, poetry book publishing, short-story in Newsweek, get paid for doing this, kind of writer.

In order to be a writer, you have to take the kind of risks I haven’t historically been ready to take. Like sharing your guts, and your heart, and your soul, and your mind. Like sharing things other people are too scared to share. Like sharing parts of yourself others can relate to or find a connection with.

I am finally ready to take these risks. And it feels really fucking good.

Every single thing I publish in this space is something I am ready to share with the world. That does not necessarily mean I want to divulge any more details than those contained within my posts. So, if you ask me questions, please don’t be offended if I don’t want to share any further details with you. If we had the kind of relationship where I could confide in you, I would have already given you all the details and you wouldn’t be shocked or surprised from reading my posts.

And, I am not sorry about this. These are my boundaries. I’m working really hard in therapy to get to the point where I trust more people so I can confide in those who would like to support me. But this is slow work. I have to dig myself out of a ditch of low self esteem I have spent 28 years digging. It is what it is. Pushing me by asking invasive questions, and then getting upset when I don’t want to answer them, isn’t going to make me want to confide in you.

That being said, I am OK. I know I write about a lot of dark shit. That’s because I have a morbid personality. I’ve experienced trauma. I struggle with real mental health issues that are not easy to talk about, and definitely not easy to read about. But, rest assured, that by the time something is being posted on my blog or social media, I have processed through it healthily. Once my writing is ready for the world to see, it is because I am on my way out of my crisis and am ready to talk. I am not writing this blog as a cry for attention. I am not looking for anyone to notice me so they can save me. I have a powerful, dedicated, proactive and reactive support system that is a well-oiled machine ready to grind into motion the minute I call on it. What I’m trying to say here is, thank you so much for your love and concern. Thank you for reaching out to me with words of encouragement and support. Thank you for letting me know you’re there for me if I need you, and that you’re rooting me on.

Just please don’t let yourself spend too much energy worrying about me. If you’re reading my posts it means I’m OK. I am a habitual isolator in coping with my mental illnesses, so you should only really be concerned if I fall silent. If I stop posting. If I disappear from the world for long periods of time without explanation.

And that brings me back to my main point: I am trying to be a writer. If I really, honestly think about my dream career; writing is it. I’ve always loved writing and the written word. I’ve been writing creatively since elementary school. I think in syntax. I communicate best in verse and prose. I feel connected to someone when I read their writing. I am desperate for people to have that same feeling when they read mine.

So, PLEASE PLEASE SHARE. Share my writing. Share my social media posts. Share with whomever you think needs to read what I have to say. Share with whomever would feel a connection to my struggle. I am writing this blog because I’m ready to stop hiding. I am working on a poetry book I would like to publish by January 2021 because I’m ready for the world to know my guts. And my heart. And my soul. And my mind.

So please share. And thank you for sharing. And thank you for reading. And thank you for your love and support. I love you too.

Yup, Still Depressed [pt II]

Just in case anyone was wondering.

I have been doing really well recently. My intensive therapy gave me so many needed skills for improving my resilience, coping ability, and all-around mental health. I’ve been high on life lately. Confident. Trusting in my relationships.

And, I have depression. That means my brain is wired to think and react to triggers in very specific ways. These habits of thought have an impact on my emotions and behavior in ways I can’t predict, and often for reasons I don’t fully understand at first.

That’s where I am right now. A minor series of events that happened throughout the course of last week chipped away at my self esteem. First, my mood started to slide down hill. And then all of my old depressive behaviors started to creep back out of the shadows of my symptoms.

I think it’s the behavior part of depression that people understand the least.

My life looks completely different when I’m depressed. All of the sudden, any ability to behave like an adult disappears. I become flaky, unreliable. I ghost. I don’t clean the house, ever. I nap a lot. I spend a lot of my time laying down. I definitely can’t feed myself.

But the behavior people seem to understand the least – the behavior I have the most difficult time admitting to – is engaging in self-harm.

I have engaged in self-harm since I was a child. For most of my life I would hit myself in the head and face in moments of extremely low self esteem. I would also dig my fingernails into my palms, or opposite biceps, until they broke skin. In my 20s, I progressed to cutting myself.

This is very difficult for me to admit. Frankly, I’m embarrassed. Our socio-cultural understanding of self-harming behavior, or non-suicidal self injury (NSSI), is extremely narrow. When most people think about self-harm, they likely picture a melodramatic teenage girl. This isn’t altogether inaccurate as self-harming behavior most often takes place when someone is a teen or young adult.

That being said, the stereotypes and myths we carry about self-harm can increase the feelings of shame and guilt for people who engage in it. For instance, there is no reliable data showing a gender bias in self-harmers as toxic masculinity makes it less likely for those who identify as cis males to admit to engaging in NSSI. Furthermore, although females are more likely to cut themselves, males more commonly choose different methods for self-harming. Being a member of the LGBTQ+ community can make someone more likely to engage in self-harm – 47% of bisexual females have engaged in self-harm at some point. A lot of people grow out of engaging in NSSI. But, like acne, a lot of people don’t.

On the contrary, self-harm can actually become addicting. Just like any coping mechanism, our brains like to form habits for reacting to specific triggers. Habits allow the brain work less hard throughout the day. This becomes a problem when the habitual behavior is toxic and dangerous to the person engaging in it.

Self-harm helps us cope in the first place because of the endorphins released from the brain as it reacts to the pain. These endorphins create a short, but intense, feeling of euphoria that helps humans cope with pain. They are the same endorphins that the brain releases while engaging in physical activity, and can also help people cope with emotional pain (which is why mental health professionals generally advise their patients to exercise). In this way, engaging in self-harm is similar to using alcohol and drugs as a coping mechanism for emotional distress.

The brain forms habits through engaging in a “habit loop.” First there is a trigger (an emotion I can’t cope with), in reaction, there is a behavior (cutting myself), followed by a reward (intense euphoria).

Not only does this euphoria feel better than crushing depression, it is likely the only thing I have even felt in days by the time I’ve been pushed to self-harm. And this is why it becomes addicting. Because, like any high, those endorphins don’t stay in my system forever. And, as they ebb away, I am left with shame and guilt in their wake.

I’ve engaged in self-harm since I was a child. This is not something I’m proud of. Honestly, this is one of my deepest, darkest, secrets (that I’m now putting on the internet). I’m embarrassed that, at 28 years old, I still engage in self-harm.

But, there’s nothing I can do about it at this point. Radical acceptance right? And this is part of my story, even if I don’t like it.

And, obviously I’m trying to stop. But, that’s the thing about addiction; just like depression, it’s for life.

And that brings me back to my present: my self esteem is in the gutter. My exercises for coping with that fact aren’t working as well as I want them to. Need them to.

And I know that cutting myself will fix it. Cutting myself will give me the energy to unload the dishwasher, do yoga, play with the dog.

I’m obviously not going to cut myself. Literally every fiber of my being has been working at full capacity for days to make sure I don’t do it. I’m way too stubborn, afraid of failure, and exhausted to give into the temptation now.

Also, I’m having withdrawals that are testing every fiber of my will. My body hurts. All over. As if I have the flu. Since Saturday I’ve had an on-and-off migraine that has made me sensitive to light and sound. I have a persistent anxiety stomach ache. I’ve had three panic attacks in three days. I have been able to think of almost nothing else (which may be why I just had to research the topic to death and write this post about it).

Yes, I am still ok. I am taking care of myself and my husband is supporting me through this. I’m seeing my therapist tomorrow. I’m proud of myself for doing my best. I’m accepting that doing my best is good enough.

I also have to be present in this struggle, this pain. Because it is my truth.

This is what recovery looks like.

This is what recovery feels like.

It isn’t pretty and it hurts like hell.

Yup, Still Depressed

I want to unzip my skin from my body and hang it out to dry.

This skin is no longer serving me.

It has seen too much. Weathered too much. Been used too much.

I need a break from my skin, let someone else walk around in it for a little while.

My mind would be so free without the burden of this skin.

Imagine the me that could exist without the scars I carry around,

without the fingerprints of my abusers,

or the stains of my mistakes.

Today, this skin is a prison.

My Coworkers Found Out that I Love Celine Dion Last Night, and I’m Not Even Embarrassed

How long has it been since you’ve danced?

Full on

Every limb engaged

Breathless

Dancing?

I don’t mean the kind of dancing we are told we need to do in order to attract a mate.

I mean the kind of dancing we did when we were toddlers. And the familiar song from our favorite Disney movie came on in the car on the way home from daycare.

I mean the dancing where you are nothing

but yourself

and the beat

and off-key repetition of the lyrics.

and every ounce of

your energy

your spirit

your self

is fully invested in this kinesthetic expression of the sheer euphoria achieved by being fully, totally, and inescapably present.

At what age do we stop dancing?

Not competitive, structured, dancing.

With methods, and rules, and schools, and choreography.

The kind of dancing where you move based

on instinct

on emotion

on vibe

Your limbs writhing on

(or off)

rhythm

each with a life of its own

performing movements

and making shapes

never before seen by humans.

Let’s make a promise to each other.

Let’s dance more.

And think less.