Big Shiny New Year: how a party about new beginnings set the tone for a spectacular collapse into depression

The last few months of 2013 were a horrible, terrifying slide into Major Depression. I tried all the tricks, followed my treatment plan, and still nothing. I wasn't eating, I wasn't smiling, I wasn't even able to laugh. It was pretty darn bad. So imagine my surprise when my friend P from church invited me to a dinner party on New Year's Day. He said no one would pressure me and I could hide in a corner if I wanted to, but that we would play games, and I would have fun. So, for the first time in my life, I went to a New Year's party. I was really looking forward to it!

We played a super hilarious game called Braggart (I think that was it, anyway) with cards where we made up stories and then stole the good bits of other people's stories. Everyone was so entertaining, and I had fun. I felt like I hadn't had the chance to even pretend to be happy in so long.

It was a very cold day, thirty below freezing or so, but the condo was toasty from cooking and company. While I was doubtless the boringest, wort guest ever (hello crippling depression), I was happy to be there. It was especially nice to be out of the house and away from my parents on the first day of the new year. New starts and all that.

As a thirty-year-old paying rent, I knew I had every right to go and and do whatever I wanted to do, even if I was still living with my parents. But, in some sort of bizarre quest not to be a total bitch, I did try to be considerate of them. So I told my mother that if I didn't call by the 9:00 train I'd be taking the last one of the night. I'd also arranged with a friend that if something went horribly wrong I could stay at his place. I had this shit under control.

Because I think it's rude to have telephone conversations while you're at a dinner party, I turned my phone off and left it in my bag by the door. To be honest, I also didn't want to risk having everyone find out that my mother still checks up on me - that my own family doesn't think I'm capable of running my own life, that my mother still treats me like a child. Even though I was sick, it's not like I didn't have my shit together on this one.

But I hadn't counted on my mother waking up at 10:00 pm and deciding it was too cold for me to walk home, and single-handedly scrapping my entire plan. She texted me a couple of times, and of course when I didn't answer because my phone was off, she started calling and leaving messages. Not one to be put off by the fact that I was obviously still having fun with my friends, and was an adult fully capable of taking care of myself, my mother put her detective skills to good use and somehow located the phone number of the place I'd gone. She then proceeded to call them and ask for me. The second I heard their phone ringing, I had this cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, and started feeling lightheaded and disconnected, like a deer caught in the headlights. I knew - I just knew - what was happening. And I so wasn't prepared to deal with it.

Once our host figured out that the person on the phone wanted to talk to me, he handed over the phone. It was obvious that he was as taken aback and embarrassed as I was. Since there was nowhere for anyone to go, everyone got to listen to my half of the conversation.

Like talking to a two-year-old, I kept my voice calm and level, speaking clearly and simply. I told my mother that everything was fine, and reminded her that I'd already told her about my plans and there was no need to be calling. But it was no use. My mother was already in a full-throttle fit, yelling at me that I should have answered my phone, and insisting that I had to take the metro home immediately so my father could pick me up in Laval and drive me home - it was absolutely too cold out for me to walk home from the train the way I'd planned. Never mind that I've spent my whole life weathering cold winters, or that I was capable of making my own decisions, or even that being a renter in my parents' home didn't give them the right to control my life. She'd made a decision and wasn't about to be mollified or dissuaded or derailed.

So I gave in. I 'okayed' and 'fined' until I finally got her off the damn phone. Then, of course, I had to explain to my hosts that I was leaving because if I didn't give in to my mother's irrational demands she'd be having a fit for hours - maybe even days - before I'd finally be able to calm her down. That I'd spent my whole life hostage to her moods and didn't know how to stop giving her what she wanted, even though I knew that just made things worse in the long run.

Everyone was incredibly nice about the situation, telling me that it was alright, but for me it absolutely wasn't.

I felt completely humiliated. My mother had embarrassed my in front of everyone by treating me like a child in public.  I felt ashamed that people knew that this is my family, this is my life, that I wasn't allowed to be a grown-up. I felt deeply ashamed at having allowed this to happen, at not having kept my phone on because I know how my mother is. As I bundled myself up and left I felt so small, and so hurt, knowing that my mother would do that to me just to make herself feel better, that she'd cost me a chance at friendship and that I'd probably never be invited over again (and, of course, I haven't been).

As I rode the metro, the shame started to fade and be replaced by anger. Rage, even. How could she do this to me? It was completely inappropriate! I felt so, so angry! By the time I got to Laval, this too had faded, and I just felt weary. Weary of the life I was living, of the way people treated me, of being depressed. When I got to the car, my brother was there, too, and it turned out that everyone in my family thought I was wrong and should have had my phone on, and needed to do what my mother said. I felt so betrayed: I felt like no one in my family ever protected me from anyone else in my family, and I was all alone. I wanted to cry.

The next day, I went to work and realized that someone had to make the first step in repairing this mess, since my mother had decided she was still pissed off and not speaking to me. On my way out of the office, I texted her to say that, while I understood her perspective, what she did was unacceptable and I wouldn't tolerate it, and that she was never to do that to me again. She totally flipped out, telling me that I  was the wrong one, and everyone knew it, but that I'd find a way to save face with my friends, probably by lying to them and saying that she had a serious mental illness.

I couldn't take it. I just couldn't. It was such a hurtful and personal attack. I saw that she didn't understand how I was feeling at all, and didn't want to. She didn't see that there were boundaries, and I apparently wasn't able to enforce them. I was so unhappy, and so sad, and I didn't want to go on struggling so hard against my pain for nothing, just to be shot down. So I went straight to the store and bought my favorite cutting knife. I hadn't owned a serious knife like this in years, intended only for this, to hurt myself, to open my skin, to cut myself wide, to end my life with precise incisions. I felt like, even in this, I was giving my control over to someone else, and I didn't know how to get it back. I just knew that this was one straw too many - one weight too much - and I couldn't stand against the tide anymore.

When I told a shorter version of this story in my DBT therapy group as an example of an invalidating environment, there was an audible intake of breath and one 'eiiigh' when I got to the part about my mother phoning the party host to make me come home. In the back of my mind I'd always been thinking that I'd overreacted, that the situation wasn't that bad and that, really, I was the one in the wrong; since I'd made a mistake, I deserved to be punished by being humiliated. Sharing this story, I felt for the first time that maybe the way my family treats me, and has treated me, is not okay. It's really not okay. And maybe it's not my fault. And maybe that makes it okay to stand up for myself.

O Tannenbaum: My First Christmas Morning Without Gifts

This is my first Christmas in my own home, and a few factors (like being broke and spending most of my time in treatment, work, or volunteering) meant that I didn't adorn my abode with very much festive cheer. Back in September when I had all the time in the world I dreamed about lights on the balcony and in the windows, an Advent wreathe on the table, tinsel, an evergreen wreathe with berries and a bow on it, and maybe even my first (small) real tree.

In the end, I put out my collection of snowmen and realized that between working overtime to cover all my hospital treatments without getting paid for it, and travelling to my brother's wedding in November, I was too wrung out to actually do a Christmas for myself.

I also decided not to go to my family's this year. I'd just spent six days trapped in a foreign country with them sharing a hotel room, and I didn't think I could bear any more of the old familiar patterns. I've also been doing a lot of difficult work in group and in therapy, and right before leaving for the holidays my psychologist decided to spring the phrase "your abusers" on me for the first time. Needless to say, this just wasn't going to be the year where I could sit around comfortably and pretend everything was normal, and happy, and that I have forgiven the hurts I've barely begun to acknowledge. 

Anyway, I realized about a month ago that the immediate impact of this decision would be that I wouldn't be able to have the traditional Christmas morning of everyone sitting around in their pajamas opening gifts. There wouldn't be a tree hung with ornaments I'd spent hours hanging, there wouldn't be stockings, or brightly colored ribbons, or arguing over how to fold the tissue paper. Most emotionally, I wouldn't have any presents on Christmas day.  At first I thought about buying myself some stuff and wrapping it up, but I decided that was stupid. I'm a big girl: I don't need gifts on Christmas morning. I'll just suck it up until whenever I end up seeing my parents. And anyway, I was going to church, and it wasn't like I'd be seeing other people receiving gifts to remind me that I wasn't.

Wrong.

To add to what my friend said when yet someone else gave him a gift: when you don't have a family, everyone gives you things, but if you choose not to see your family to try and protect yourself, nobody gives you anything. 

I had that sad, small, crushed feeling inside like a kid who finds out all their friends have been invited to a birthday party and they haven't. I've never been the most lovable person. I've never been the type to elicit unsolicited gestures of love. In my own family, I'm the one that everyone ignores, while my brother is the bright shining star. It's like that in every group I join -- some people help share the last of the Communion wine and I wash the dishes; I do the un-glamorous jobs without waiting to be asked and no one says thank you; I prepare the stuff for s'mores while other girls lead the campfire; I compose the prayer services and someone else leads them. I am the invisible girl, and I don't usually bring out the grand gestures in people without asking for them.

I thought it wouldn't be a big deal, but I went home and cried like a small child. This dovetailed nicely with the fact that I cry every time I come home from church now because I'm having some kind of crisis of faith. Only this time, it was all about Santa Claus forgetting to bring me anything. I know I brought it on myself by deciding not to go home this year, but I still couldn't help feeling sorry for myself.

At any rate, I thought I'd give you all a small gift this holiday season. I know it isn't much, but I'm going to share a little story about Christmas. When this happened I was about four years old, and this is one of my earliest memories.

My uncle R had come over to our house to celebrate Christmas, and he'd brought us presents. I unwrapped mine and saw that he'd given me a pair of brightly-colored Fisher Price roller skates that attach to your regular shoes. They were really cool, obviously. I said thank you while struggling not to cry, and then crawled behind the orange rocking chair to hide and sob. Since I was inconsolable, my uncle asked my mother what was the matter, and she had to tell him that they'd already given me the same pair of skates. My uncle apologized to me and said he didn't know. He promised to take me shopping at Toys R Us the next day and get me something else. Once I realized that he really understood that I was sad and wasn't angry about it, but wanted to make it better, I calmed down and stopped crying.

And he really meant it. The next day he took me to the store, and I made a beeline for the doll aisle. Faced with a dazzling array of Barbies, I picked the one with the long ponytail of hair that you could make even longer. Her hair was mesmerizing. It was one of my first Barbies and I was quite pleased with it. My uncle kept trying to convince me to get something else to go with it, but I was perfectly fine with my prize. They did eventually convince me to get her some accessories (sets of extra clothes and shoes), and I was really happy with her. I was excited that I got to pick my own toy, and I was happy that my uncle wasn't upset with me for being sad, and that he didn't think it was funny.

It was one of the best Christmases ever. And man, did I love that doll!

I Dreamed A Dream (And Remembered It!!!!)

I've always been jealous of people who have amazingly vivid dreams and then remember them, especially since I've been taking Effexor: it's one of those medications that can cause wild dreams, and I was kind of hoping that would happen to me. I don't doubt that I dream every night -- dreaming is something your brain does during certain phases of the sleep cycle. On occasion, I've even known that I've woken up from dreaming, or been awakened by a dream. But it's pretty rare for me to remember a dream even moments after I've just woken up, and I've always wished that wasn't true. So imagine my delight when I remembered this beauty that I woke up from the other day!

In my dream, we were all still living at my parents' house, and were in the process of getting ready to go somewhere. It was morning, and I must have been finished whatever I needed to do, because everyone else was doing stuff and I wasn't. I was looking out the window in my old room.

I could feel the earth rumbling beneath me, and hear sounds like explosions, like the earth shattering. I looked out the window, and in the distance I could see volcanoes exploding. The sky was filling with smoke, and I could see the fire pouring to earth. I felt a dull sense of dread and panic in my belly, and I was telling my family that we needed to hurry, that we needed to get out of there, but no one else was in a rush. I felt like no one was listening to me, that no one saw how dangerous the situation was, how we were all on the cusp of being consumed.

I went downstairs and put my hand on one of the external walls, and it was warm. I was totally convinced one of the volcanoes was close by and ready to explode. I kept pushing, telling everyone "let's go," until finally we were ready to head out to the car.

As soon as I stood outside, I saw a patch of dried lava in the front yard near the side of the house, near our neighbor's retaining wall, so right near the property line. The lava was oddly grey, and the patch was small, but I knew that I had been right. "You see," I told them, "there is it. I was right." I remember they were like "Where?" and I was like "Right there," and pointing right at it, but it was like they couldn't see it. My father was walking around the lawn, looking and looking, until he was practically right on top of it. And finally he was like, "Oh yeah, I see what you're talking about." So finally there was an acknowledgement that I wasn't delusional or seeing things that weren't there, but everyone was still acting like it wasn't a big deal.

I was telling them that we needed to leave, to get out now, that it was going to blow any minute, but my family was unconcerned. Finally we were getting in the car when my brother realized he'd forgotten some sort of important document. My father gave one of those long-suffering sighs he gives and told us to start heading down the hill away from the house while we went back for it, and that he'd meet up with us with the car. So we started walking quickly away, until suddenly we were at the bottom of the hill.

We were looking up toward the house, wondering when he was going to show up, when our house suddenly exploded, blowing violently outward and apart. I knew right away that my father was gone, but I didn't feel anything about it, not sad, or relieved, or anything. In that moment, everyone started to panic, and we all started to run. Objects and bits of things were flying through the air -- more like a movie about a tornado, really -- and my brother and I were dodging. I knew my mother can't run if her life depended on it (she just physically can't), but I wasn't looking back for her or thinking about her. I was just sticking by my brother, trying to make sure he got out of this alive.

Something was flying through the air toward us, and I knew it was the car from our house. It was coming toward us, too hard and too fast. We dodged, we ran, our lungs burned from the smoke in the air, and our eyes streamed from the fire breaking out of the earth in the distance. The car just missed me and hit my brother square in the back, and he was gone instantly.

And then I woke up.

I was like, holy shit I had a dream and I remembered it! Now what do I do? I felt sort of like the dog that finally catches the car.

Being me, I couldn't just leave it alone: dreams can be a treasure-trove of information, yes? I'm not saying that, like Freud and others in the psychoanalytic tradition, that dreams are a direct product of the unconscious mind shedding insight into repressed desires (dreams, and techniques like free-association, are particularly important tools for the analyst who proves to be terrible at hypnotism). But I am saying that the mind/brain is particularly adapted for finding patterns that make sense out of even random stimuli, so much so that we can perceive patterns where none exist as the brain tries to process dispirate and disjointed pieces of information. Even if neurons in the pons (a part of the brainstem) are firing randomly, that doesn't mean that the patterns the cerebral cortex uses to synthesize the information doesn't tell us anything about ourselves. It stands to reason that the brain is going to use patterns that are accessible, that fit into previous schemas and belief constructs, or that reinforce concepts we've already accepted.

Our mind can also challenge us, revealing ideas and patterns that we know are there but haven't consciously accepted. Sometimes, I find I really do have two ideas or two constructs that fundamentally contradict each other, or that I know on some level to be true, and I'm sure that's the case for lots of people: sometimes we don't notice the non-dominant one, or fail to pay attention to evidence that supports it, simply because our mind is using that as a strategy to reduce or avoid cognitive dissonance. It helps us go about the daily business of functioning. But it can be really unhelpful if the schema you're running around with is one that needs to change.

To make a long story short, I think dreams can be interesting and informative regardless of where we think they come from. And so: onwards with analyzing the crap out of it!

I think it's interesting that the events involved in the dream were events about explosion. That's often how I felt living in that house: that we were on top of something that was constantly simmering, constantly threatening to blow-up in some irreparable way. It was there beneath and behind everything we did. Obviously, that fear of explosion, of one thing too many or one day too much, causing a kind of violent destruction, is something I still think about, and also in some way know is inevitable. In the dream, I try to warn my family to escape, but already know there is nothing I can do to stop the volcano from happening because we are past the point of no return.

I think it's interesting that I was trying to tell my family something was wrong but no one was listening to me: there was no sense of alarm, no sense of having understood or believed what I said. Of course this reflects the reality of what it's like to live with my family. I keep saying over and over that things are not normal, not the way they're supposed to be, and my family either ignores me or tells me I'm basically delusional because everything is perfectly fine. In the end, everyone goes calmly about their routine while I stand alone, looking out the window watching the shape of our destruction.

I think it's interesting that, in the dream, everyone dies in the exploding volcano but me. On the face of it: this is the opposite of what actually happened: my family members are managing their lives pretty normally, whereas I am the one who has self-destructed with sudden and explosive violence. But in other ways that's not true. There are ways that they've been consumed by these patterns as something that just is true while I've had no choice but to try and desperately escape them. In the end, the net effect is the same: I am standing alone and the family I should have been able to rely on to weather the storm is absent.

I think it's interesting that the volcano I see on our front lawn is located on the property line, the boundary or limit that defines what belongs to whom, and beyond which you aren't supposed to go. There are major boundary issues in my family. I've spent most of my life confused about who and what I am to at least some extent, and as I think more about it I'm realizing that, given the circumstances of my life, maybe that's not such a surprise. My family has laid claim over my emotional and psychological life by telling me that my beliefs are stupid, that my emotions are wrong, that my memories are incorrect. I am porous, open to manipulation, the playground for other people's needs and perceptions. My boundaries have been violated by the people closest to me telling me my reality isn't real. My family has used their emotions and ideas inappropriately as well, using a lack of their own boundaries to try and blend the line between us and to create unhealthy relationships.

My family has laid claim over my space, time, and possessions, to the point that I could never be guaranteed privacy in my own room, or even in the bathroom. Nothing ever really belonged only to me, or was really mine -- not even my activities or decisions -- in a way that just wasn't true for the rest of my family members.

My family has laid claim over my body, saying things about my body and treating my body in ways that disregard any sense that I should have control over my own body, or even that my body belongs to me. My family has used their bodies to encroach on my space, to impose themselves on me, to make what should have been private to them into something public that pierces through my space. Suffice it to say, it doesn't come out of left field that the focal point of our destruction lies at the boundary of things.

I think it's interesting that the house is destroyed, and that I'm uncomfortable in it even before it blows up, because I don't have an archetypal image of "home" as a place that is comfortable, or stable, or safe. I think it's interesting that my father is the focal point of the explosion even though my mother is the more daily problem. I think it's interesting that she is the one telling us to take our time getting ready, to stick around, to be comfortable in a place that's about to kill us. I think it's interesting that I feel the heat from the outer wall in the basement, which I was always afraid of growing up.

I think it's interesting that I stay in the house as everyone takes their time instead of just running for it and saving myself. Because that's exactly what I did in real life, isn't it?

I think it's interesting that, when we finally do get out, I don't try to help my mother when it's time to run away. Over the years, I've had various dreams of having to save family members from our house as it burns, but I've never abandoned any of them before. But in this dream I absolutely know my mother can't help herself, but I easily turn my back on her and save myself instead. During the years I was in therapy with my original psychiatrist, we talked a few times about how I felt obligated to take care of my mother and needed to find a way to let go of that burden.

I think it's interesting that was trying to protect my brother, because that's something that was discussed, too. In the dream, I felt like I was trying to save us both. But I wasn't really, was I? We were just running side by side. In the end, I didn't throw myself in front of him, or push him out of the way, and take the blow of the projectile car myself. I dodged and lived.

I think maybe that's what I need to learn to do: to protect myself, really protect myself, without guilt or remorse. The reality is it all blew up and was consumed by fire. It happened. And I'm standing here, shaped and surrounded by those old patterns that tell me to go back into the flames, to keep standing still, to try and preserve everything the way it was. But being stuck in a house that's about to be consumed, constantly on edge, is no way to live.

I don't know exactly how to recover from barely escaping from an exploding volcano that swallowed my entire family. But I'm pretty sure it'll be a long and messy journey with scalding steam-vents along the way. And I'm certain that it will be a long time before I've gotten far enough away not to see the fire in the distance or smell the smoke clinging to my hair.

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

This Halloween wasn't all about my costume (although my costume was pretty awesome because I basically dressed up as  health insurance processing joke). It wasn't about the cool prizes I put into a draw for my colleagues (although those candy bars were pretty nifty). It wasn't even about the teensy chocolate bars (although I did learn that waiting until the last minute means all the best minis will be sold out by the time you get to the store).

This year, Halloween was about my younger brother getting on an airplane and flying to the United States of America for true love. He's moved down there to live, in wedded bliss, forever.

I'm so, so happy for him. They truly are very well-matched.

People keep asking me if I'll miss him. And the thing is, we're not really that close. Oh sure, we have inside jokes, and the intimacy that comes with growing up in the same home with the same people, and being able to blackmail one another should the need ever arise. But my brother and I grew up to be very, very different people. The truth is, if we weren't related, I doubt we'd want to be friends.

He can be quite cruel, abusive even, in ridiculing people whose beliefs are different than his -- and that, of course, includes me. He has a way of keeping on going when he's clearly gone too far. He makes rape jokes in front of me all the time, as if it will ever be funny, or I'll ever want to hear it. He has said some of the cruelest things I've ever heard from anyone in my life: he has a way of figuring out people's vulnerabilities and cutting right to the quick. He's not really that interested in people who aren't directly relevant to him -- even people he's known for years. The outcome of other people's lives is largely a matter of indifference. Things roll off him in a way I can't imagine, and he seems to have a lot more inner-peace than I do because of it. Or maybe it's emptiness. Sometimes I really envy him, but the truth is I wouldn't want to be that person if it came down to making a choice about it.

Will I miss him? I will and I won't, if that makes any sense. I do know that I spent the week in between his goodbye dinner and his Halloween departure eating every piece of food in sight. This is unusual for me because, prior to the recovery period from this major depression, I've never done anything like that. The whole binge-eating thing has always been kind of a mystery, because I don't like eating that much to begin with. Yet here I am, eating (terrifyingly) large amounts of food to comfort myself, feeling out-of-control, So there must be something going on here, something more powerful than I realized.

At first I thought it must be that I was feeling bad because I was going to miss him a lot and I didn't know how to express that kind of emotion. But I thought about it a lot, and I think I was wrong. I think I'm feeling jealous that he gets to escape our family and I don't. I'm still here, and he's left me alone to be responsible for my parents. It won't be easy to ever miss a holiday if I'm their only option. I've seen them go to my father's parents every year because they're all alone otherwise, and I'm afraid of that happening to me. I feel like he's dropped all the responsibility for them onto me, and I'm not the kind of person who easily says no, even when it means protecting myself. I guess I've always felt he was selfish for making me be responsible for my mother but then never protecting me from her, and that now he's done it again, but on a much larger scale.

I guess my next life-lesson project should be working on convincing myself that I'm not responsible for anyone else but me! And that maybe -- maybe -- this is the time in my life to put myself first even if that means letting people down, and feeling less-than-perfect, less-than-enough, and learning to be okay with that.

The Music Man: Of Course it Continues *trigger warning*

After I stopped seeing him, MM and I kept in touch sporadically, exchanging emails every once in a while and occasionally chatting on Facebook. I'll be honest, even though we didn't meet up again, we did flirt a little sometimes. A girl needs to practice her sexy, you know? And even though I found myself conflicted about the nature of our relationship, over the time we'd known each other I'd come to care about him a great deal, and wanted to keep in touch. I'd read drafts of the early chapters in the book he ended up publishing...I wanted to know how he was doing, know the general outlines of his life. I wanted to know that he was happy.

In 2009, I ended the most emotionally difficult intimate relationship of my life, and I wasn't quite sure how I was feeling. Although I'd loved my partner, I'd struggled for over a year-and-a-half with the dynamics between us that made me feel deeply unhappy and unhealthy. I'd always felt a little bit controlled and restrained by the way he seemed capable of taking over my life and my affairs; he didn't do it on purpose, but I ended up feeling incapable and small. After I had behaved particularly badly, my partner told me that he would feel better and trust me more if I dropped MM from my friend list on Facebook. So I did. For the first time -- and I hope the last -- I allowed someone else to determine who I could and couldn't be friends with.

When we broke up, one of the first things I did was get back in touch with MM. Part of it was revenge, I'll admit it: I wanted to do what I hadn't been able to while I was with my ex-partner. Part of it was a feeling of expansive freedom. Part of it was wanting to feel desired and desirable after feeling sexually unworthy, unattractive, unwanted, and messed up. And part of it was just wanting to be able to talk to MM again, about all things psychological, about our lives, about the parts of ourselves that people keep hidden for fear of being judged. I wanted to be vulnerable and have someone accept me.

As it turns out, MM had recently been missing me as well, and we quickly struck up a flirtation. We ended up meeting for hot chocolate soon after getting back in contact, and I was pleasantly surprised by how things went. We talked about our lives, our recent relationships, and what I'd learned I wanted. I found myself very different with him than I used to be: I was shy and deferential, but now I found I was expressing myself with confidence and behaving more like who I really am, instead of like a student trying to impress her teacher. He remarked on the change as I, too, was noticing it. I was older. I was more sure of myself. And I knew that, if I liked him, it wasn't because I was star-struck but because I knew him and I knew myself.

I often wonder what exactly it is he saw in me. I know he liked that I was smart and we could talk about a range of topics. I know we found each other insanely attractive. But, more and more, I think it was that I simply wasn't impressed by all the crap he usually impresses people with. I didn't care that he was the equivalent of a psychology rock-star, because I'd known him before that was true. I didn't care about his house, or his cars, or his clothes, or his job, or his money, although I knew that those things all represented success to him. And he knew that I didn't give a crap. I think what he liked most about me was that I looked at him and saw him with all those things stripped away, and was interested in him anyway. I got the feeling that he was surrounded by people who focused on what he could do or what he had and was, and I was part of a smaller number of those who took him for who he was. We seemed to give each other something we were both missing, along with a lot of desire and tenderness.

I 'dated' him from late spring through to early fall, meeting up once or more a week. I invented a fake graduate student working in a psychology lab so my family would know I was seeing someone and wouldn't constantly be asking where I was going. I wasn't sure exactly what our relationship was, but we were having a lot of fun, and I was getting to know both of us a lot better. I met and had dinner with one of his friends from out of town, and actually went to a block party with him. We had a lovely and memorable day trip. I knew I had feelings for him, and him for me, but it didn't seem important to try and define what we had or where it was going. I was much happier and more fulfilled dating him this time around than I had been the first.

But, as time went on, it started to bother me. I felt like, in a way, I was letting myself get comfortable in a relationship that would, in the long run, keep me from pursuing what I really wanted. I was still young and I knew I wanted children, and that he didn't. I knew one day I wanted a life partner, but I didn't think that was in his plans. Ultimately, I started feeling like I was selling myself short and allowing myself to be less than I hoped to be by choosing to be with someone who couldn't give me the kind of commitment that I wanted. I felt like we were both settling for less than we deserved.

I knew it would hurt, but after crying it out all over a friend in Dio's basement after a Friday morning Eucharist, I decided I needed to stop seeing him and re-evaluate what it is I needed in a relationship in order to feel like I was growing, like I was a real partner, like I could be fulfilled.

Ye Olde Homestead (or, a post composed entirely of rant)

Yes, I know, I am a terrible daughter. Or at least I feel like one every time I put off going home to visit with my parents. It's difficult to find an excuse not to go over when some of my things are still living at their house. I'm just so much happier here, in my own space, in my own little world, with no one intruding on my privacy, my routines, my emotions, and my life. I'm so much more at peace.

It isn't that I don't love and appreciate my family: I'm pretty sure that I do. But when I see them, when I'm in their house, I just feel so...unhappy. I feel like the familiar walls are crushing me. I feel numb and anxious at the same time. I find myself slipping too easily into old patterns of behavior. My mother encourages me to eat my feelings, maybe because she does it too, and when I visit with her I do -- even though I know sticking to a proper diet is crucial to maintaining my equilibrium. I feel terrible now, tearful and uncomfortable the way too much food always makes me feel -- heavy and suffocated. I'll feel heavy and bad for the next few days until it wears off. 

I can't afford to do this right now. 

I don't want to do this right now.

It isn't always possible to cut the people and things that make you unhappy out of your life. I'm not an island alone in the middle of an ocean. I'm connected, intimately, with people I have no desire to hurt. They would never understand it if I said I didn't want to hear from them for a while, until I can hold onto the person I want to be when I'm with them, the person I know I can become if I let myself change and grow. Change is slow and fragile, and it would certainly be easier if I wasn't surrounded by people who, in one way or another, rely on me being the same as I've always been. They would never understand if I said that what I need is time to be completely alone in the world, without a family and without a home: no phone calls, no emails, no visits. 

I understand how people can go into a fugue and find themselves in a new place with no idea of who they are or where they come from. The mind is powerful, and Lord knows it's easier to build a new life without the old one following you around. It isn't possible for most of us to leave the past behind us and begin completely again: you can't erase your memory and your connectedness like a chalkboard.  

But I feel like I can't breathe. I feel an unnameable dread. I feel alone when I am with them, and uncomfortable in their space. I need it to be over, but I will never be able, or willing, to bring myself to do that to my own family -- to walk away without turning back. Maybe I would heal. Maybe I would be the same. I struggle constantly with the boundaries I need to keep them out of the space I am trying to build for myself. It is so familiar for my family to take over my space and my life, like a fog seeping into unguarded corners. 

I just need a lot of space right now. Maybe too much space, more than is really reasonable, or possible, or fair to demand. I need to figure out who I am, and whether or not I can accept this person or this life. I've never had the chance to be alone. I've never had the chance to put myself and my needs before what everyone else needs or wants or requires from me. I have thrived on giving myself away in relationships with others. I have been consumed by other people and the worlds they've created for me to live in.

But today I am tired. Today I want to be alone. Today I want to be free. I'm like a child demanding the impossible: leave me alone, but be there when this is over. Don't try to come into my life, but let me love you in yours. Don't make me be the person you love and want, but accept me however I feel like being right now in this moment. Don't demand or expect anything of me, but let me give you what I am able to. 

Nobody could accept that, most certainly not family. But I really, really, really don't want to see them, or hear from them, or think about them, for a while. I want to get the hell away from that place. I don't want to set foot in that house, and I can't quite put my finger on why.

I came back to my home today and cried, couldn't get off my couch for hours, after I visited my parents and they dropped off some more of my things that I don't want or need...more pieces of their house that I don't want in my life but that are, slowly but surely, shaping my new home in the image of my old one.

I want it to be over. I want it to be enough. But you can't outrun your family any more than you can outgrow the years spent loving them, trying to weave and unweave a life together that everyone can live with.

A Slow Awakening: An Early Spring Photoessay

You might know that I've been having something of a difficult time. Part of that is probably due to my brain settling into an old, familiar groove as the rTMS treatment I received moves further into the past. Part of it is undoubtedly due to therapy -- engaging with trauma, or any difficult issue, often results in feeling worse over the short term.

Obviously, what we're most concerned with is the long term: will I survive this illness? If so, for how long, and with what quality of life? But the short term matters immensely, too. After all, I live in the here-and-now, not in the future. And anyway, what with the Morlocks and the Eloi, it isn't as if the future looks like that awesome of a place to hang out.

One of the first things I noticed during rTMS is that the color green was brighter.

Spring was the ideal time for me to receive this treatment, as it turns out. My senses were awakening at the same time as the world burst into riotous growth around me. From a landscape laden with dead, bare branches and hard, barren earth sprung up buds, and new plants, and the beginnings of life. 

I felt like things I had all but forgotten were growing within me: humor, and lightness, and hope. Like a seed dormant in the ground, I had not lost those things whose absence I felt so keenly and with overwhelming pain. They were only sleeping. I couldn't feel them, or remember them, or reach out and touch them. I felt like I would never feel happy again, that nothing would ever change, and that there was no point to struggling on in the midst of lifelessness. But, when I believed I couldn't take it anymore, not even for one more day, the world around me burst into life and reminded me that feeling like I could live was hidden, but not dead.

Under a layer of dead leaves slumbered a field of flowers. And under the darkness of my despair crouched a hidden sunlight. I began to have hope -- hope that I could get better, hope that I could feel differently. Hope that, one day, I might even recover. I looked at the world around me with hungry eyes and an open heart, amazed at the way my own mind could take me by surprise. I had been afraid that I couldn't get better, that it wasn't possible, that this was going to be my life. In the onslaught of vibrant color, I was caught unawares by the possibility of change residing even in me.

I felt an openness, an expansiveness, like a body of water in the breeze. I began to see that life could be beautiful. Life could be beautiful emerging from death, and going into death. Maybe life is beautiful too when it lies in stillness, dormancy, a dreamless sleep. If I can remember this, hold onto it, when I feel like I'm dead and wish to be dead, maybe I can hold the beauty and the suffering in my two hands at once, cradling and cherishing both. Both can be tended to, and both frame the boundaries of my experience.

 Spring is not all beauty and new growth and sun reflected off water. Spring unearths muddy ground, trees that have not survived the winter, stagnant water overflowing with the detritus of decay. Plants that greedily take more than their share of water come back to life, dominating the fragile seedlings around them. It isn't all easy, it isn't all pretty, it isn't all what you're hoping to find in your foray into new beginnings. But it is there -- an undeniable part of what it means for life to come charging back in.

In its own way it is beautiful, because it is true. As I started to feel better, I began noticing painful truths about myself that had been buried under the agony of suicidal, backbreaking depression. I had opened the door to hurting myself again, and the longing plagued me. I have difficult relationships that take up a large place of my life, that have contributed to my illness and that I don't know how to manage. I have enduring trauma and recurring memories that flow through my mind. I hate myself, and wish I didn't. I live with a lot of shame. I am somewhat obsessive. I have difficulty understanding my own emotions.

These things were hidden under the blanket of winter. But now I see them again, reappearing, taking up time and space in my life. There is a layer of decay that fomented under the snow, and it needs to be reabsorbed into the life around it; changed into life, it can once again bring forth goodness and color and meaning and strength. It's good for a tree to fall in the forest and be reclaimed. But it isn't easy when you first see it lying there, tumbled across your path.

It will be hard. It will be painful. And it may cause me, sometimes, to forget about the springtime. But I have to look hard at myself if I want to reclaim the parts of me that have been damaged by depression -- the parts of me that have fallen under the unbearable weight of ice and snow -- and integrate them into a healthy life.

As I struggle, it is too easy to focus on the bark of a decaying tree rather than on the seedlings springing up in its midst, drawing their nourishment from it. I'm writing this post to remind me of how I felt when I saw vibrant green and new flowers. And to remind me that spring is a coming into being that enfolds both the remains of winter and the beginnings of new life.

On Faking Happiness (or Energy, or Excitement, or Surprise, or...)

During one of my therapy sessions, my psychologist asked me if I was as animated at work as I was when we'd start out our meetings. The short answer is yes...and also no.

I interact with people on the job a relatively small amount of the time. I see people in the morning, which is when we do most of our socializing: before our shift starts. I ask people about their night, their plans for the weekend, and we talk. We hang out. It's great. It also lasts less that fifteen minutes a day.

During our daily team meeting, I try to be as peppy and upbeat as I can. This has always been the way I present myself: fun, energetic, ceaselessly amusing, always, always smiling. I wear happiness like a second skin that I don't quite fit into. The meeting is relatively short, and we spend most of it listening.

Sometimes, I have lunch with one of the girls, and we get half an hour to talk while we shovel food into our mouths. It's nice! But, most days, my lunch breaks work out so that I'm eating alone in a room. 

At the end of the day, we pretty much just say goodbye to each other as we run out the door while the next shift is coming in. I'm really lucky, because I get along well with the person who shares our desk, so I get to spend at least a few minutes chatting with him. It's a nice way to end the day, getting to talk to someone who's just starting his day but understands how the job can suck the life right out of you by the time eight hours are over. 

So yes, I am animated at work. For short, constrained periods of time. And then I get on with doing my job, which is inherently pulling me into my own little world of focus and concentration, and I don't have to be anything anymore. I don't have to be funny, or friendly, or social, or lively, because I'm by myself, and everyone else is, too. I can recover for the next time I have to be those things.

This is much, much better than last fall and winter, when I was so depressed I couldn't pretend anymore. Co-workers who'd known me only a few months told me I'd changed, that I never smiled anymore. My manager recommended the employee helpline and told me to take a sick day, or a vacation, or anything. So it's very, very important to me that I be able to keep putting on my second skin, day after day, so it looks like I've gone back to 'normal.'

The truth is, I haven't all-the-way recovered the range of emotions I had at baseline -- which is what I call my normal 'functional' level of moderate chronic depression. I don't feel happiness like I used to: it seems to come around now without a spark, without that sparkle. But I can feel something, and I have worked as a receptionist so I know how to look cheerful even when you want to yell at someone. I don't feel excitement like I used to: I really can't get enthusiastic about anything, although I'm learning how to perform excitement socially so that other people are satisfied and pleased with my reaction. I don't have the social energy I'm used to: interacting with people and pretending to feel things I don't feel takes it out of me more than I expect. 

A lot of feelings are just blunted, or missing, or layered with something else -- like I'm grabbing at them through a filmy fog. I just, somehow, don't feel like myself. In small ways, like the way I haven't planned for or gotten excited about Comiccon at all this year. I'm trying to keep doing all the things I used to do, but it's hard, because I just don't feel the same way about them anymore: I don't feel the same passion, the same drive, the same intensity, the same pleasure anymore.

I betray myself in little ways, like when I say I'm planning to do a certain thing when I'm feeling better. But the thing is that there's no guarantee that I will, is there? I never fully recovered my cognitive abilities after my last major depressive episode in 2009. Likewise, I never recovered my full energy levels after becoming acutely ill in 2006. Maybe, this time, it's my emotional range that's getting the short end of the stick. I hope and I pray that this isn't true, that I'm just having a slow recovery. I have a lot of hope, and with the grace of God a lot of patience to ride this thing out. But I am still afraid.

I feel scared because I don't want to let people down: people get a lot of pleasure from seeing others' excitement, especially when you're involved in something together. I worry about how this will affect some of my relationships, the ones that are grounded on things that I just don't feel right now, and the ways that might change my bond with the people I love and who love me. I am afraid of what my life will look like when this is over, and who I will be, and whether or not it will allow me to be who I want to become.

The psychologist and theologian William James believed that we can behave our way into emotions, and in many ways by choosing to fake happiness what I'm really doing is trying to bring it back into my life as something I really feel. Of course it's also about looking 'normal' to the people around me. But it's something I choose to do for myself as well.

I'll take it one smile at a time.    

Oh, Hello Failure: On Sucking at your Job

To be fair, I am excellent at half of my job. The half that involves me typing things into a computer all day, classifying documents at light speed, and verifying that the numbers the computer has lifted are, in fact, the correct ones. (In unrelated news, the computer could not spell the name 'Robert' if its life depended on it. Seriously, sometimes it thinks there are j's in there! But I digress.) I think I got good at this job by going to graduate school and learning to read things quickly without really reading them: looking at forms and documents all day is really not that different from skimming 17 articles on short-term spatial memory in order to figure out which ones will be helpful for the experiment you're designing.

It's the other half that I suck at. Part of my job involves removing claims from their envelopes, flattening and un-stapling all the papers, deciding whether or not anything needs to be taped back together again or shouldn't even be in our office, and then putting it all on a roller conveyor belt so that it can be 'scanned' into image files by this big-ass machine. The images are then dropped into our proprietary computer programs so we can manipulate them, which is what I do the rest of the time.

The machine jams. It hates cash receipts. Sometimes it randomly rips things in half as it's depositing scanned items on one of its trays. It gets dirty and scrawls ink lines all over documents. God forbid you have to change the imprinting cartridge and planned on having ink-free hands that day. Machines will sometimes stop working for no apparent reason, or refuse to start at all. If you're me, you'll drop the back door of the machine on your own hand while trying to pull a stuck document out. Occasionally they'll make annoying or horrifying noises that refuse to go away. People swear smoke was coming out of the back of one once! 

Sometimes people fold their mail up as tiny as possible, while others staple every document in triplicate. Setting up the documents to be scanned is the longest part of the job. Unfold, un-staple, stuff into machine, repeat.

I've gotten a little better at controlling my frustration when the machine is acting up. I do all the right things: I take the oldest mail first, I share the gigantic envelopes so one person doesn't get stuck with them all, and I move as fast as I possibly can. This is a production environment, so every task we do is based on numbers and speed. I work my hardest all day, and leave the office exhausted and aching from making the same motions over and over. But the numbers don't lie: I just don't measure up.

On Thursday, I put 5,772 pieces of paper through my machine. 5,721 count as scanned: the difference comes from documents I had to scan more than once either because a processing error occurred, the document got jammed in the machine, or I put it in badly and it looked horrible. My average jamsort time was 2 seconds, which means when something went wrong between the machine and a document, that's how long it took me to fix it. This doesn't take into account envelopes I opened that turned out to be in the wrong department, the entirely wrong company, or contained 3-D objects or x-rays.

On the face of it, that doesn't seem too bad. But we measure our production by envelopes, or what we call 'transactions.' An envelope with three documents stapled once is one transaction. An envelope with 50 documents stapled a million times with coffee spilled on them is one transaction. I scanned 846 transactions. The daily target for each person on scan is 1,000. A thousand! I've never made the target, not even once!

I can't tell you how bad it feels to be hopeful all day about how well you're doing, going your fastest, trying to make every image look its best while staying a step ahead of yourself, swallowing painkillers during your break to try and decrease the upper-back-ache that goes along with scanning, massaging the stabbing heat in your un-stapling wrist, and then pulling up your stats at the end of the shift and seeing how you failed.

I'm the kind of person who doesn't inherently believe I'm good. Either that I'm a good person in general, or that I'm good at specific things. I need that feedback. I can't seem to generate it on my own. The part of me that pats myself on the back has gone on vacation and gotten lost.

I am always so hopeful that today will be the day I scan a thousand transactions. Today will be that day. But then I get my numbers, and it never quite happens. It doesn't matter how good the mail was, how much of a rhythm I felt I got into, or how little I had to take breaks to go pee: I just can't seem to make it. Every day, I get the feedback that I am not good at my job, that I am failing. And the next day, when I'm back at the computer where I have a chance, I'll get my error messages informing me of how many mistakes I made the day before. A document might have been folded. It might have gone in crooked so information got cut off. It might not have supposed to have been scanned at all. The error target is 4 per month. I can do that, and more!, in a bad day.

I'm not used to constantly failing because I tend to quit things that consistently make me feel bad -- yes, I am a quitter! I've quit relationships, hobbies, and sports because they made me unhappy, and a lot of the time that unhappiness came from just not being suited to the tasks. But I can't quit my job, even if I suck at it. 

I'm not sure why I'm so bad at it, but I hate the feeling of wanting to not care, of wanting to quit trying my best, of failing to succeed when so many people have assured me I can do it. At the start of another day, there's nothing left to do but take a deep breath, turn on the machine, and try my best knowing that it won't be good enough.

And it makes me sad.  

I Like Small Spots and I Cannot Lie: Remembering a Childhood Spent Hiding in Things

Last week's post about visualization made me think of all the time I spent hiding -- or practicing hiding! -- in small spaces as a child. It wasn't always snow tunnels, you know. For one thing, they have a tendency to melt when the weather starts warming up. For another, it's good to have as wide a variety of self-concealment skills as possible if you're planning on living a life centered around paranoia, self-hatred, and regret.

Some of the most vivid memories I have of hiding aren't of hiding at all, but of playing at hiding. Like everyone else I knew growing up, I would drape scarves and blankets over tables, chairs, and assorted furniture in order to construct a private space for myself where I could play unobserved. I could read in there, hug a stuffed animal, play with my toys, or just be comforted by the muted quality of the light filtered through knitted scarves and thin blankets.

With other children, and sometimes adults, I built pillow forts and snow forts, indestructible precisely because they could so easily be rebuilt.

Although I don't remember it, I have many pictures of myself as a child where I've crammed myself into laundry baskets, boxes, and tubs from laundry detergent. I've played hide-and-seek and fit myself into hampers. And, of course, I know as well as everyone that if you cover yourself completely with your blankets, nothing bad can happen to you during the night because you are invisible.

This kind of hiding is more like playing at hiding than actually hiding. For one thing, most of the time you're only partially hidden. For another, sometimes people can actually see you. It's fun, and the whole objective is to have fun. It's enjoyable. You aren't hiding for any reason other than the pleasure it gives you.

As a child, I would sometimes spontaneously hide, and I'm not really sure why. Occasionally I would hide under my parents' bed, amid the boxes and dust, thinking that no one would ever think to look for me under there. Playing by myself outside, I would hide behind the shed, within the lilac bush, inside fur trees, high up in the maple, crouch down in window-wells, and below the driveway retention wall.

Inside the house, I would hear my father's footsteps coming down the carpeted hall and crouch down flat behind the end of my bed, or behind my brick-red stuffed chair, desperate for some reason that he not see me.

This kind of hiding wasn't really a game. I'm not sure what it was about, but I know I wasn't doing it for enjoyment. I didn't feel good, or happy, or relaxed while I was doing it. I just know I was gripped by this sudden intense fear and felt compelled to hide. Hiding made me feel...not so much safe as less bad. It helped take the edge off. In a way it wasn't really hiding either: as a child in a confined space like a house or a yard, it's likely that someone will find you sooner rather than later if they're really looking, and that they'll be pretty pissed off when they do. I think most hiding, in the end, is not like this.

This is the kind of hiding that's followed me into adulthood. I'm not sure why, exactly. I know that sometimes I feel driven to hide because I'm under a lot of stress, or experiencing other peoples' conflict around me. This has been worst when I am at my most depressed -- naturally, I've felt most compelled to hide when I've been hospitalized, thereby making my hiding habit super problematic for the psychiatric team trying to help me. It makes me the most annoying patient in the world.  

Back in St. Jerome, I hid in the closet that was in my room, eventually leading the staff to start locking it. I hid under my bed. I hid in the shower. One night, I caused a code white that had the hospital searching for me for an hour after I'd run past the (glass) nursing station unobserved to hide behind a chair in the games room. I hid in the elevator after running past the nursing station in the middle of the night. The night I escaped into the basement but couldn't get through the connecting tunnel to flee from the main building (which would be less suspicious) because it turned out you needed a code, four orderlies eventually dragged me away from where I was hiding among lockers (and clinging to them).

At St. Mary's, I hid behind a door. I locked myself in showers and curled up under their benches. I hid in my own bathroom, and under the covers. I eventually settled on routinely cramming myself into the cubbyholes in the wall that once held fire extinguishers. Some doctors thought it was hilarious. Some people thought I would fall out and hurt myself. One doctor walking past commented that he could still see me. My own psychiatrist thought it was an ingenious solution because I had somehow combined my need to be small and concealed with the staff's need to know where I was and what I was doing. I liked it because I could fit myself in there without the staff coming to unlock the door and extract me.

Now that I live alone, when I'm very distressed I still find myself hiding, especially when I wake up during the night. I hide on the balcony, under the table, in the shower, and any small corner I can wedge myself into. I have no idea why I would hide when I'm completely alone, but I guess it just goes to show that wherever you go, there you are.

As a child, I also used to practice hiding. I would climb into my closet, get as deep and as far into it as possible, and pull the clothes and boxes around me so that it looked like nothing had been disturbed. I remember how it felt to be in the dark with the doors mostly shut, the light only a thin sliver muffled by the clothes hanging softly around my face. I would pull things out from under my bed, crawl into the space under the headboard, and pull the stuff back in again. In the total darkness, I felt safe. Nothing could get to me here; no one could ever find me. I practiced breathing in the dust without coughing or sneezing, being as still and as quiet as possible. I would come out of my hiding spots after carefully listening for several minutes to make sure no one was around to discover where my spots were by seeing me emerge, dust-covered and prepared.

I don't know very much about developmental psychology, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that all these forms of hiding are completely normal for a child. The fact that I still try and hide as an adult, however, is somewhat more problematic. Since I don't know why I'm doing it, I don't have any idea how to fix it, either. Suggestions?

On a completely unrelated note, I've printed out 25 pages of the crappy book I'm writing. If anyone really loves reading incredibly drafty-drafts that end in the middle of a sentence, you're welcome to borrow it!

How to Get to Your Happy Place: Visualization in the Face of Difficult Emotions

Like many people who live with chronic and major depressive disorder, as well as trauma (lucky me!), I struggle with intense sadness, anxiety, hopelessness, terror, helplessness, and a host of other difficult thoughts and feelings about both myself and the world I find myself inhabiting.

I haven't always dealt with these feeling productively. That probably goes without saying! Before you can begin to process and resolve painful feelings and memories in a therapeutic setting, you should probably have better coping skills than cutting yourself with knives or trying to kill yourself. Probably. I mean, I'm taking a guess here, but I think that's the general idea. I seem to have somehow skipped this step in my previous decade-long attempt at therapy, which might partially explain why, in crisis, I return to harming myself, sometimes severely.

Anyway, this time we're approaching things a little differently. One of the tools I learned in therapy this week is called visualization. It involves thinking back about a time in the past when you felt completely calm, safe, and at peace. You then immerse yourself in the memory by recalling it through the five senses: sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. You try and find as many aspects as you can for each of these senses, which helps to really activate the memory and give it depth. Once you've put yourself in that space, you rest there until the sense of calm starts to suffuse you and you find the difficult emotions you were experiencing begining to subside. This will keep you from doing anything rash and stupid, like eating all the dish-washing soap thinking that will stop the memory from endlessly replaying itself in my head while I run the scanner at work: problem solved!

For me, my happy place is hiding in the snow.

From the time I was a young child to the time I stopped wearing snowsuits -- so around the start of Junior High -- I loved to go outside and play in the snow. Of course, I had snowball fights, and built snow people, and forts, and went sledding and cross-country skiing, all with other people, but I regularly played by hiding by myself.

Due to the fact that this happened in the past, we used to get a lot more snow in winter than we do now. (Also, everything was uphill both ways, but I digress) When we shoveled our front walkway, the snow would pile up to the living room window where we dumped it against the side of the house: it was so high! It was also perfect for building a tunnel. I'd dig with my hands in the center of the pile, beginning at the driveway and working my way into it parallel to the window, digging myself a Kat-sized hideaway. Once I could burrow all the way in, I would make my way head-first into my snow tunnel and hide there for as long as I could, usually until frostbite started to set in or my mother called me inside. I liked to take naps in there. It was warm enough from my body being in such a small space that the cold didn't seem to work its way inside me so much. I loved the solitude, that no one could see me, that I had created a world for myself that was only mine and where I could be safe. I used to think about what it would be like to go to sleep in my tunnel and never wake up. It was just so peaceful.

Inside my space, I could see the dark outline of the snow around me, its closeness to my body. I could see the darkness in the middle of the day where very little light penetrated. Sometimes I could vaguely see an icicle I'd brought in with me from off the eaves-troughs, and the outline of my woolen mittens. I could see the inside of my eyelids as I began to nap, and the patterns of light and color from squeezing my eyes shut.

I could feel the rough wool of my hand-knitted mittens, and the string pressing against my back beneath my coat so I wouldn't lose them. I could feel the cold of the snow on my mittened hand, and the icy smoothness of my snow hollow when I took my mitt off to lay my hand against it. I could feel the end of the tunnel pressing gently against the top of my head through my hat. I felt the warmth of being enveloped by warm clothing and snow, and the chill of crisp winter air on my uncovered skin. I could feel my scarf against my mouth, and my breath against my skin, the dampness of my scarf where I had breathed on it in the cold. I could feel the length of my body supported by the packed snow, and the closeness of my snow walls around me.

On my tongue, I could taste the coldness and sharpness of the air, and the lingering coolness of an icicle if I'd eaten one. I tasted the inside of my mouth, and my lips where I had bitten them. I could taste the dampness of my scarf pressed against my mouth, and the anticipation of hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Inside my tunnel, I could hear the silence of winter, and the distant sounds of children playing. I could hear the muffled footsteps of someone walking by my hiding place. I could hear the slow deepening of my breath as I grew sleepy, and my soft heartbeat. I could hear the snow gently settling, and the sound of the breeze. I could hear my own movements against the snow, the swish of snowpants and the scrape of boots. Sometimes, I could hear the soft wisp-like falling of gentle snow, or the scrape of a shovel against pavement, the short thump of snow being thrown on snow.

I could smell the winter in the air, that smell you grow up with in the cold and never forget, and the way that it freezes inside your nose and smells clean and new and pure. I could smell the woodsmoke from fireplaces in our neighborhood, and the distinctive smell of packed snow. I could smell the dampness of my scarf from my breath, and the snow-dampness of my woolen mittens.

Inside my snow tunnel, I felt safe, and peaceful, and alone. I felt enveloped, enfolded by a space I had created that seemed like it could last forever but was really quite fragile. Enough snow piled on top of it, especially heavy damp snow, and it would collapse. But I knew I could always build it again after the next good snowfall. I felt content. I felt the closest thing I can remember to an uncomplicated happiness. I believe I was happy.

When I bring this memory vividly back to mind, I feel all these things again, and as I stay in the space, recalling it, I start to feel calmer, and the chaos and pain inside me ebbs away to where it becomes bearable. It also gives me back a vibrant piece of my childhood that I had all but forgotten, because I almost never take the time to sit and think about it, though declaratively it is always there. That's the magic of visualization.

I hope that the next time you're anxious or depressed or scared or homicidal you take a moment to find your happy place, go back there, and spend some time visiting with your own precious memories.

I Can Has Internet!!!! (Or, rejoining the land of the living)

Well, I finally moved out of my parents’ house into my own place, which was a milestone for me not only because at the age of 31 I’ve never had the opportunity to live on my own and be truly independent, but because I’ve never moved in my life. Ever. Yes, that’s right, lived in the same room in the same house, always.

I meant to blog about this whole process, but in the upheaval and overwhelmingness of all that was going on, I totally forgot that the internet can’t be magically and instantly delivered to your dwelling. A shame, really.

It was a long, drawn-out process because I hired movers for the first day I could take off work – July 11^th – but really wanted to move in before. So I had all my Ikea furniture, including a bed that was a nightmare to put together (apparently), delivered the Saturday before, and my family helped me build it. Well, my family built it while I washed dishes and then lay helplessly on the floor, curled into a fetal position when faced with the enormity of what I’d done. I mean, I made my family build a crap-ton of Ikea furniture together: it was a nightmare.

I’m the kind of person who hates change. My life is carefully structured into tiny and large routines that govern my days, everything from what coffee cup I use any given morning of the week to how I do my makeup, what I eat, what time I get up in the morning, to how and when I pay my bills, the kinds of jobs I apply for, and the rhythm of my days. I like routine, and structure. Sure, I make allowances for when things inevitably don’t go as planned, but when I’m facing huge adjustments I’m an absolute nightmare to be around. I run the gamut from sobbing hysterically, to withdrawing and shutting down, to hiding under the kitchen table only to be bribed out with jars of peanut butter.

When I was about to start kindergarten, my stress drove my brother so batty he moved out of our shared room and into his own space in the basement.

Anyways, this whole moving-into-my-own-apartment thing was a really, really big change. I spent every night the first week crying. The first day was particularly distressing because, even though I had a bed, I didn’t have a table or chairs, so I ate dinner sitting on the hardwood floor balancing my plate on a stepping-stool. I admit, the thought ‘what in God’s name have I done?’ crossed my mind a few times.

I had a difficult moment in my first week, when the Douglas hospital called me to say I was eligible for maintenance treatment one week a month, every day, for six months, the thought being that I would benefit by seeing an increased duration to the effect of treatment and a possible delay of recurrence. Unfortunately, none of this was included in any of my return-to-work medical papers, so I had to turn it down because I can’t afford the two-week exclusion period that comes with a new claim.

To be honest, I’m lucky my health insurance is so good that I don’t have to choose between food and medication. Please remind me not to lose my job!

I struggled in the middle of the first week when I unpacked a bottle of Remeron that I’m not taking anymore (but, of course, I hoard medication I’ve stopped taking). When I cried at my desk at work Wednesday morning, I reflexively dumped them all on the desk and counted whether or not I had enough to kill myself with if I needed to.

I know that having my own space, my own independence, control over my own life, is a stepping-stone in the direction of changes in myself that I need desperately. But, for today, I’m still battling to live with my dragons.

Remembering Ellen, my Mentor and my Friend

I didn't think I was going to write about how I've been feeling about Ellen's death. It feels so...narcissistic and self-involved to be thinking about how I feel in the face of a devastating loss affecting so many people. Sometimes I worry that years of being in therapy has made me be all me me me. That isn't the sort of person I want to be, but maybe it is, underneath it all, who I am.

Anyway, there was nothing else to write about because this is what's been on my mind.

I first met Ellen in the summer of 2006, when she was the head of McGill' Bachelor of Theology program. She was curious about the unaffiliated woman who was joining the program and asked to meet me in her office. Back then, she was in the basement of Birks, in what I felt was a very comforting and open space; the kind of space that made you feel welcome right away. I don't know if I was what she was expecting, and I never asked her. I never asked any of my teachers or fellow students if I was what they were expecting, or what they saw when they looked at me. I had long pink hair, and a lip piercing. I wore what can only be described as odd clothing. I don't know how she saw me when I walked into her office for the first time, but she was openly curious about what had drawn me to the program, and what I hoped to gain by studying with them.

Ellen was perhaps the most accepting person I've ever met. She was the first person I ever told that the reason I'd changed the whole course of my life to enroll in theological studies was because God had told me to, and had confirmed these instructions in a vision. She listened to me as if I was telling her the most normal thing in the world. She made sure I knew that I was more than welcome to worship with the Anglican College across the street if I found myself searching for a spiritual home during my time in the program. She made sure that I knew that, if I chose to, I could pursue an honors degree that would let me do either independent studies, graduate seminars, or both. Leaving our meeting, I felt more convicted than ever that I had chosen to follow God in the right direction and had found myself in the right place.

As was true for all of us in the BTh program, I had Ellen as a New Testament professor my first semester. Her classes were challenging and invigorating, and - along with many other fantastic courses - made me realize that reading the Bible for the first time was an experience that could draw me ever deeper into relationship with God. While some people did question their faith, the rigorous academic standards to which we were held provided me with a fertile ground to discover the sacred texts shaping the living history of my belief. I began to see that I could find, in these texts and in this research, a space from which God was speaking to me, about the ways in which I must learn to question the ground under my feet that I had felt was solid and really ask God what it is that God wanted from me. I could no longer rely on the answers blindly provided to me by the Catechism and documents of the Roman Church. Instead, I had to discover God for myself. With her and my other teachers' encouragement, I found myself suddenly feeling expansively free. I was ridiculously happy and alive and full of fervor for God. I felt the power of the Spirit running through me as I tackled the work in this program Ellen had welcomed me into.

Ellen made sure I knew I was welcome to worship with the Anglican theological college, she made sure I knew I could join her at her church when I wanted to experience an Anglican Holy Week and Easter celebration, she made sure I knew she was always willing to talk with me. She helped match me with my first spiritual director, with whom I had a rich and rewarding experience that deepened my trust in God. When I began thinking seriously about joining the Anglican church, Ellen helped prepare me to be received, and was there to sponsor me.

Once I left graduate school, I had the unsettling experience of saying hello to a former professor at an ordination we had both attended only to have her walk by me without acknowledging I was there. Ellen was the next person I ran into. She said hello warmly with one of her beaming smiles. I replied, oh thank goodness, I didn't know if you'd be speaking to me. She looked at me, puzzled but still smiling, and asked why on earth she wouldn't talk to me. When I replied that it was because I'd withdrawn from the program (and, frankly, caused quite a fuss over it), she was like, oh, that, and waved her hand dismissively. She told me that I should come to her office and we'd have tea. And I did. I realized that, in Ellen, I'd found not only a teacher, a mentor, and an ally, but a fierce, fierce friend. When I saw her again this Fall for our sporadic tea get-togethers, she became the first teacher in my graduate program to ask me if I was okay, because she hoped the whole experience hadn't hurt me. She was happy that I had a new job, and we talked about our churches and how we were experiencing worship.

When I became very sick this winter, Ellen followed my blog and prayed for me. When she, too, became sick this spring, I prayed for her and read what she was writing. One night, hours after I am usually asleep, I found myself wide awake and praying fervently. I envisioned Ellen and I, and several other people (none of whom I know personally) holding hands with each other as I prayed. I prayed that God Who knew fear would hold Ellen fast and envelop her in love. I prayed that God Who knew pain would take her pain away. I prayed that God Who knew death would be by her side, and that she would know she wasn't alone. I prayed that she could feel all of our love for her. I prayed these intentions over and over again, until the words fell away and I was just praying. I prayed until I fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning when I woke up I found out that while I had been praying Ellen had been praying compline, and then had stopped breathing when it was over. Ellen is one of the most generous, spiritual, and alive people I have ever known. I wonder how many of us received this kind of Consolation during her passing. I feel like God and Ellen together wanted to give us something. She was so concerned that all of us who cared about her would be prepared for her passing.

I don't know what her death means to me yet. I haven't grasped it. It is still, in some deep sense, unreal. At the church hall after her funeral, I saw the back of someone's head and reflexively started to go toward her, thinking it was Ellen and that I must say hello. I feel an emptiness, a sadness, but it doesn't have a shape.

When I think of her death, I feel like I have no right to feel sad, no right to grieve. There are so many people who knew her better,who loved her more, to whom she meant so very much. I feel like I just don't have the right, and certainly not the right to write about it. Of course, I know Ellen would be the first person to look at me gently, and say kindly - but leaving no room for doubt! - that this idea is complete bullshit.

And I feel deeply ashamed and immoral because, just like every time someone I care about has died in the last decade or so, I feel deeply jealous and I don't know how to talk about that because it's absurd. It's absurd to wish that you were the person who got to die instead. I'm pretty sure Ellen would put her arm around me and remind me that I'm human, and it's okay to have difficult feelings so long as they become a space in which and from which to grow.

I feel so sick and so insane sometimes, because I know that what I feel isn't normal. But I am committed to the path I'm following, where God is leading me and where so many people have guided me and are guiding me - toward becoming fully the person I can be, and being able to give back some of the blessings I have been so lucky to receive.

Who We Are

Because of the nature of this blog - and in fact much of what I've written on the topic of mental illness over the years - I sometimes start to sound like a combination of broken-record and one-dimensionality. The truth is that I am so much more than this illness. I am not just depression. I am not just trauma survivor. I am not just chronic illness. These things have shaped the person I am today. These are things I have sometimes desperately concealed and sometimes spoken about in detail and at length. I think this is an important topic to open up about and, for me personally, a conversation that I need to have with myself and with others. But depression is not the sum of who I am, even when I am sunk so far in its depths that I can't move and can't breathe and can't feel anything else.

We are not just schizophrenics, or borderlines, or bipolars, or anoretics. We are not just antisocials, or anxious, or autistic, or alcoholics. We are people. People with hopes, and quirks, and struggles, and passions. We are people who love, who hate, and who are indifferent. We are teachers, and mechanics, and assembly line workers, and doctors. We are artists, and appreciators of art.

There are a number of art installations on the grounds of the Douglas, placed there for employees, patients, and visitors to enjoy. Here are some of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.