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.

And in the Middle of the Chaos, a Love Story [pt II]

I love my husband. I think the feeling that I am the most excited about right now is how much I love my husband. I don’t think he gets enough credit for holding me together. So I’m gonna tell the whole world the extent to which he deserves some credit.

My husband and I met in college. Right around my sophomore, his junior year we were really starting to develop actual real feelings for each other (beyond the “let’s get drunk and try to get laid” attitude inherent in American university life).

That fall I also got raped.

And I didn’t tell him.

But I went crazy.

I capital H, Hate when we call women crazy. And I can’t find a more accurate adjective for what I was.

I entered into a period of severe mental and emotional instability that impacted my relationships with everyone in my life. I reflect on this and I wonder why no one in my life told me about myself back then. Were they that scared of me? Or was I as good at hiding my inner chaos as I thought I was?

But during it all, there was my friend. So caring. So stable. So funny. So sexy. So god damn laid back. So absolutely in love with me.

So naturally my friend turned into my boyfriend. And then my live-in boyfriend. And I was still unstable. But I had the grounding force of my boyfriend containing my chaos within its shores.

And I continued to function. Regardless of the chaos.

And then we got engaged. And we took a nice long time to plan what was still the most fun wedding I’ve ever been to or heard of in my life.

And then I became a wife. And a wife is something different. A wife has weight to it. A wife has a standard to live up to in the role model of both her own, and his own mothers. And the standard is very high among these women.

Let me be clear, this being held to a standard? It wasn’t something my mother, nor my mother in law, ever held me to. This came from my brain and my brain only. And it was due to my feeling of just being “different” *cough*queer* that stressed me out. My mother and mother in law were both good mothers. And their style of mothering were both traditional in the sense of being caretakers and child rearers in the home.

This would not be my style of motherhood. In fact, I don’t actually want to be a mother. I feel that way for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the fact that I do not have a caretaker personality. And my mother figures both had stellar caretaker personalities.

I cannot cook. My ADHD makes it difficult for me to stay clean. My husband annoys me when he’s sick (sorry babe).

No, I want to engage in a deeply emotional and/or reasoned discussion. I want to connect on interests and vibes and creative sparks. I want to help you grow emotionally and spiritually. I am such a fucking Pisces.

But I’m no good at helping anyone – like not even myself – maintain physical well-being.

So my inability to reach this standard I saw before me started eating me alive. And my anxiety started peaking like never before. And I entered my blue period. This was a period of depression of which I had no idea the magnitude until I was able to look back in hindsight.

Then between 2015, the year we got married, and October 29, 2019, the day I almost committed suicide, my trauma got triggered. Over and over again.

At first it was a few small triggers. Being alone with a strange male on an elevator. At a gas station. Dropping off donations at Goodwill.

Then a rapist got elected president.

Then Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar and Brock Turner and #metoo.

And then Brett Kavanaugh.

And then I watched a boy choke a girl in my classroom.

Then a girl got raped in my school.

Then I got assaulted at a Halloween event in Detroit.

Then I almost committed suicide.

And then I took a leave from work, did the best and most intense therapy I’d ever done, increased my dosage of medication, started to love myself again.

And the whole time?

My husband was there. Working on our communication. Working on his own mental health so he could better support me. Developing himself through education and starting a business. Having respect. Being an ally. An ally to me. To women in general. To anyone over whom he has any privilege. To plants. To animals. To the earth.

He helped me develop my understanding of my own sexuality. And didn’t feel challenged by it a single god. damned. second.

He broke himself out of the binary. Became willing to accept the depth of human beings on many grey levels so utterly terrifying for a Taurus.

He pulled us together after a terrible year and turned into the support system for his whole family.

He dug down literal roots into the soil of his own creation, and made the sexiest vegetable garden possible, that was able to feed our family for months.

He has big dick energy in literal droves (with his nose piercing, and painted nails + personal trainer physique, manly beard, and canine teeth that are just a tad wolffish).

He is the ultimate caretaker. The ultimate support system. The ultimately perfectly designed partner to me on this wild ride of a decade we’ve spent together.

I know you will say you don’t need it. But CREDIT babe. Take every single drop of credit I can ring out of my poor mangled heart.

Stay grateful for your support system.

And in the Middle of the Chaos, a Love Story [pt I]

I started work again on Monday. And just like that, it feels like I never left. It was a good week, an uneventful week. Even with that being so, my feet are swollen and sore, my knees are killing me from being on my feet all day. I’m exhausted, I’m breaking out, and I’m realizing how difficult it is to take care of yourself when you are a teacher. Most of all though, I hate what it’s done to my relationships.

I’m the kind of person that will do what it takes to do my job well. Unfortunately, teaching is the kind of job with an infinite to-do list. If you’re like me, and you have to be perfect, there will be an unending list of demands to keep you busy and distant from everyone in your life but your students.

My initial concept for this blog post was a detailed assessment of the aspects of being a teacher that makes this the reality. But I quickly got bored. As shocking as the details are (or should be) to everyone else, they are the mundane reality of my day to day. Instead, I ended up daydreaming about my husband.

You see, on Sunday before I went back to work, my husband admitted to me he had anxiety over me going back to work. He was anxious because he felt like he was losing me. Since I would be going back to work. And he had gotten used to having me around.

I have to admit, this crushed me. And it’s all my fault. I started reflecting on my and my husbands relationship, and really realizing how much my mental health and my job has had an impact on it.

I realized how much I had put my husband through.

I realized how badly I needed to make changes, so my work life could no longer suck the life force out of my physical, mental, and relational health.

So on that note, I will be following up tomorrow with a poetic narration of my own reflections in this vein that ended up in a love story of epic proportions.

And as it goes for everything else, I’m kind of starting to lean into this theme of freeing myself from the mold of how I thought my life should go. So who knows…

Force of Nature

Look into my eyes.

Is there fire there? Do you see how the spark has returned?

I let my spark go out. It got put out.

Years ago.

When the kindling that once resided at my core was dampened by the dark void that swallowed it as I looked deeply into my own eyes reflected in a mirror over a dirty bathroom sink during one of the worst moments of my life.

But it’s back, I can feel it.

It started at the base of my pelvis. And caught. Traveling up my spinal column, flooding my senses with a sense of assuredness. Gusto. Moxie.

And others can see it too.

“You have that spark in your eye.”
“I love when you give me that fiery stare.”

“You look beautiful, full of energy.”

Look into my eyes.

Is there fire there?

Strength

A redwood.

Tall.

Steady.

Thousands of years old.

With stabilizing roots stretching down, extending their plump, life-gathering tendrils towards the molten core of

Me.

You.

Everything.

A volcano.

Fierce.

Willful.

The force of which cannot be stopped. Cannot be tempered by any man.

It bursts forth with the power of an exploding star.

And then, as its grit settles softly into the nooks and crannies of existence, it whispers:

“You are strong.”

Darkness

I was halfway through writing a post about why the capitalist consumerism of Christmas bums me out when I stopped mid-sentence and burst out laughing. Oh my god I thought, I am so morbid.

I immediately thought about a conversation I recently had with my sister.

I am a writer. I have been a writer since I started crafting my own letters and narrating my own stories to picture books in kindergarten. That being said, I’ve never shared my writing with anyone. I have a bachelor’s in history. I’ve written history. I’m getting a masters in curriculum and instruction; I’ve written curriculum. But my personal writing, the contents of my brain, and my heart, and my soul; I’ve never shared that.

And now I am. With this blog. This is my first taste of uncensored sharing of the deepest part of my brain, and my heart, and my soul. And it scares me. And I know people are reading it. Not that many people, but still, people. But I am getting zero feedback. Not negative, not positive, just none.

Well, that’s not completely fair, nor true I guess. There have been a few who have reached out and thanked me, told me they’re proud of me, and told me to keep it up. I appreciate that feedback so much! Knowing I have support at all has been key to keeping me going.

But I’ve not gotten any specific feedback. No critiques, no comments about how certain things made people feel, or how they may have been changed because of what they read, or how they connected to something I said. And that makes me hella anxious.

I don’t know how people are actually reacting to my writing.

When I voiced my concerns to my sister, her answer was so simple I had to mull it over for a few days before I was able to accept it as true. Basically, she said there is nothing wrong with my writing. It is honest, it is unflinching, it is dark. And people have a difficult time processing through the kind of feelings this writing makes them feel.

I knew she was right. It made sense. My darkness has been present my entire life. I remember my mom freaked out when I was in preschool because I said my favorite color was black and she thought I was depressed (I don’t really remember if I was yet, but hey).

The reality is, I’ve always been drawn to thinking really deeply, realistically, and morbidly about things. I’ve always been drawn to dark colors, late-night discussions, cemeteries, and the quiet solitude of large bodies of water at night. My curiosity is ignited by decaying buildings, bones, skulls, fungus. I relish the intellectual challenge of true crime, against the background of the crimes themselves.

It probably isn’t a coincidence that I’m also terrified of most of the things I just named.

I have no idea where that morbidity comes from. Maybe it is just my depression manifesting in my personality. Maybe I am just a pessimist. Either way, I’ve slowly come to realize how my darkness can make others uncomfortable. My sister is right, darkness scares people. Darkness brings up feelings people usually try to avoid. Sure, I have set my own darkness free and am glorying in the freedom I feel because of it. But a lot of people are perfectly happy suppressing their darkness and keeping it positive.

I guess it makes sense the masses wouldn’t want to consistently have to confront something they fear so much.

I realize that, just because I’m ready to talk about this stuff, that doesn’t mean everyone is.

I guess I hope that one day, we will progress as a people to regard the darkness with less fear. For, why should darkness be so scary? Why are we so terrified of the unknown? Why do we literarily apply the color black to evil things, “the dark side?”

In the meantime, dear readers, I realize the emotional rollercoaster I’ve taken you on. I thank those of you who have returned to more than one of my posts. I will work on sharing more of my triumphant feelings associated with my mental health journey to lighten the tone a little (at least more so than I am now). And I promise I won’t ruin your holiday with a rant about my critical analysis of the Christmas season.

All I ask in return is that you allow yourself to spend more time with your darkness. Ride the wave of that uncomfortable feeling, let it all out, and see where it takes you. Allow yourself some time to really process through an intense emotion, and see what you find out about yourself in the process.

Love & Happiness to you all.

A Night in the Brain of a Depressed Person Whose Working on It

I have been attending a Partial Hospitalization Program since Monday 12/2/19. This program is 9:00a-3:30p Monday through Friday and includes group therapy and CBT/DBT skills training. Opening myself up to being vulnerable and experiencing rather than suppressing my emotions is new for me. When I came home on Thursday night I unwittingly mounted a roller coaster of my own emotions, the following is a transcript.

Parks in front of house.

Turns off car.

Head down on steering wheel.

Exhausted.

Depressed.

Why am I depressed?
Why do I still hate myself?
I know this is a distortion.
These thoughts are distortions.
How do I reframe these thoughts?
I can’t reframe these thoughts, because I am worthless.
I am broken.
Stopthoughtstopthoughtstopthoughtstopthought

Distracted enough to forget the thought.

Gets out of car.

Walks into house.

Changes clothes. Doesn’t put pants back on.

Sits down on couch.

Bursts into tears.

Why am I crying?
Am I sad?
Do I feel depressed?
This feels like a good cry.
I’m just gonna keep crying and see where this takes me.
Ugly crying. Sobbing.
Sobbingsobbingsobbing.

Dog jumps on chest and licks all over face.

Laughing now.

Happy now.

Euphoric now. Not sure why. Rides wave.

Turns on Spotify.

Puts on favorite song. LOVE FEAT. ZACARI.

Bursts into tears.

I miss my best friend we always used to listen to this song when we hung out I hate that he lives so far away he probably doesn’t miss me at all. No. That’s a distorted thought. You’re trying to read his mind. How can you reframe this thought? He has a life and a girlfriend and a job and he’s living his best life and you’re so happy for him it’s ok that he is absent you actually see him more than you would think considering and everything is ok everything is ok everything is ok everything is ok everything is ok

Cries harder. It’s a good cry not a sad cry now though.

Receives message from someone I haven’t talked to in a while.

It’s a fun conversation.

Thinking about fun interesting things.

Content. Excited. Warm and Fuzzy.

Old friend asks to hang out.

Shuts down immediately.

I can’t hang out. I can’t do it. Last time I saw him I was my best self and we are having an awesome conversation and he thinks I’m this interesting fun person and I’m not and if we hang out he’s just going to realize I’m not this interesting fun person he thinks I am and then I’ll have to deal with rejection which will be inevitable no these are distorted thoughts too how do I reframe these thoughts? I am an interesting fun person just sometimes I get depressed and isolate from people but I’m working on it and every day getting closer to being this interesting fun person more often and I think I could probably hang out with him on a day I feel up to it

Feels better.

Feels calmer. Less anxious. Contentment returning.

Husband comes home. Sees mountain of tissues. Are you Sick?

No I’m crying.

Husband immediately gets concerned.

It’s ok it was a good cry.

Husband makes dinner.

Starts to make and set up Christmas decorations to Christmas music.

Thinks about how lucky it is to have a husband who isn’t scared away by crazy.

Bursts into tears.

Big hugs.

Lots of kisses.

Heart warms.

Exhausted.

Rebirth

Today in therapy I learned the Latin root of my name is Renatus, which means “reborn.”

I’ve been in full-time therapy since Monday and, as the sun finally starts to come out in my brain, I can’t help but feel the significance of this meaning.

So, to celebrate my emotional gestational period, here’s a selfie of me without makeup, in a Christmas sweater I picked up off my bedroom floor and had to smell before I put it back on.

Cheers to rebirth, finding my way back to self love, and the UofM hospital psychiatric team