[NSPW17] feel the wonder.

September 13, 2017

heh, i suppose here, around the halfway point, is where i start to wonder why i decided to do this for seven days because i’m petering out, i’m running out of steam. i started drafting this whole series in early september, and i’d gotten down pretty significant chunks of drafts down for all the other posts except this.

(though most of them have gone through heavy revisions/rewrites, which is par for the course.)

i wanted to say something about beauty, though, the physical beauty of the world that constantly startles me and soothes me. i posted an instagram once, i think earlier this year, about how the fact that i can respond to earthly beauty is something of hope for me, an indication that there is something living in me that reacts viscerally to what i see and finds not only pleasure in it but some kind of profundity, something of which i can’t quite explain or put my finger on.

i’ve heard it told to the suicidal and depressed to look around at the world, at the beauty that surrounds us. i’ve found that to be pretty useless advice because one of the things depression and suicidal thinking do is that it cuts the connection between recognizing beauty and drawing meaning from that beauty.

to put it in other words, it’s not that we don’t recognize the beauty in the world around us. it’s that that beauty has no significance, doesn’t have that profoundness that non-depressed, non-suicidal brains can compute.

and, yet, when i think about wellness and what that means, how we can try to achieve it, i include go on long walks in those mental lists — and they are lists because wellness isn’t as simple and one-note as just going to therapy and thinking that’s enough, or taking meds and thinking that’s enough, or doing hatever bare minimum and thinking that’s enough.

wellness is the whole goddamn package.

it’s going to therapy and seeing your psychiatrist and taking your meds. it’s eating well and exercising, going for long walks and breathing in deep and exhaling hard. it’s seeing movies and going to concerts and spending time with friends over meals, on road trips, over drinks. it’s taking naps in the afternoon. it’s watching late night talk shows until you fall asleep. it’s talking to people, listening to people, letting people be there for you. it’s letting people love you.

it’s taking all that generosity and all that love and storing it up for when you are better and can put that generosity and love back out there in the world.

it’s getting out of your head, out of your room, out of your apartment when you can. it’s eating entire packages of pepperidge farm chessmen in one go. it’s reading and reading and reading because that’s escape, too.

it’s staying in bed all day, not showering, curling up and sleeping the hours away when you just can’t take it anymore. it’s listening to your brain, your body, and modifying your life to match the energy you can spend. it’s being present, exulting in your successes, big and small, and learning to talk down fear and anxiety and pain.

it’s the whole goddamn thing.

i will give this to california: the damn state knows its colors.

national suicide prevention week '17.

[NSPW17] one day you'll learn the contours of yourself.

September 12, 2017

someone told me once that it’s difficult for therapists to get clients to open up to them about suicidal thoughts, not only because clients might have reservations in sharing those but also because therapists themselves are uneasy at broaching the topic. there’s a fear of legal limits, of actions therapists and mental health professionals are legally obligated to take if they believe someone will kill her/him/theirself, and, sometimes, no one wants to get into that — no one wants to be saddled with that kind of obligation, that kind of responsibility over someone’s life.

no one wants to go to a therapist and open up only to be thrown into a hospital (or worse) against her/his/their will.

and maybe that’s where the problem starts — the lack of trust, the inability to trust for whatever reason. we can blame culture, and we can blame the system, and we can blame a lot of things, but where does that get us?

because it’s easy to look at the ills in the world and try to parcel out blame. it’s easy to point at social media, at technology, at growing wealth, and it’s easy to lump together entire generations and try to diagnose them, to pigeonhole them into “this generation” or “that generation,” like that really explains anything.

it’s easy to look at statistics and create charts that mark cause and effect, that say, oh, a trans kid is at highest risk for suicide or, oh, this person, that person, blah blah blah, just like it’s easy to say, oh, it’s depression? here’s a pill for that. oh, it’s this? here’s a pill for that, too — and it’s easy because it all makes it easy to bury the real human being at the center of it all. a statistic is a statistic is a statistic, and a diagnosis is a diagnosis is a diagnosis, but is a human being a human being a human being?

can we sit with the pain someone carries, a pain so deep and excruciating that that someone wants to end her/his/their life? can we be there through the darkness; can we hold on even though it hurts us?

one of the things i’ve been learning this year is to speak up, to scream if i need to. as someone who’s largely non-confrontational and hates conflict, i’ve usually been the kind of person who retreats when faced with an argument, who shuts up and just lets people say and think whatever they want and internalizes that rage. it goes without saying that that hasn’t served me well.

2017 has been one elongated lesson in communication, and that also applies to my medical care. i’ve been learning how to talk to a therapist, to a doctor, to a psychiatrist, to explain my needs and the shit in my head. i’ve been learning to voice my concerns about medication — i’ve been lucky that all the people i’ve come across in the medical field thus far have listened and have laid out my options with my concerns in mind.

because the thing with suicide and depression is that, yes, there are physical symptoms, but these are things that live in our brains, and, unless we learn to be our best advocates, no one else will be able to be there for us in the ways that we need.

and, yes, sometimes, we will try to be our best advocates, and we will speak, but people won’t understand or will refuse and try to assert their way, anyway, because that’s human, too — this impulse to fix, to override, to dominate.

in a perfect world, being our best advocates would be enough. unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect world, but i still stand by that because, unless we start with at least that, with at least speaking up for ourselves and saying, hey, this is going on; i need you to listen, we will never have a chance.

and the great thing for us today is the wealth of connections lying under our fingertips. if you can’t physically get to a therapist or talk to a professional in person, there are counsellors and therapists just a text away. if you’re feeling isolated because of a lack of community, because you live in a corner of the world that’s toxic to who you are, there are welcoming, affirming communities to be found all over the internet.

and this is why i will never dismiss social media or the internet or technology. i mean, yes, the internet has brought about a whole new set of social issues, and, yes, maybe in some ways, it is contributing to the rise of mental health issues amongst people today. however, at the same time, the internet, technology, social media — they all have created invaluable resources and spaces for people to find the help they need, to hear the voices they need to hear, to find the hope they need to live.

i guess i’ll leave you with this: as someone who takes meds and sees a therapist and meets with a psychiatrist regularly, i can tell you that there is no one solution. a pill alone is not going to fix you. a therapist alone is not going to fix you. a psychiatrist alone is not going to fix you. i believe that you have to start by letting go of this notion that you need to be fixed to begin with, this toxic idea that you're nothing but a problem, a tangled mess of brokenness and damage that doesn't deserve to be heard or seen or understood when all of that is bullshit and none of it is true because what you are is human, and to be human is to carry hurt and brokenness and damage, to learn to live with it, to learn to love with it, to learn to be loved with it.

you are no better and no worse than anyone else because you’re depressed, because you’re suicidal, because you feel like you’re walking around with a bomb in your brain and a break in your heart.

you are simply you, and you are simply human, and you’re trying, and that is more than okay.

national suicide prevention week '17.

[NSPW17] i wrote a thing to hope a thing.

September 11, 2017

to be honest (and this might sound weird, but hear me through), sometimes, i wonder where i fall on this suicide thing. i firmly believe in holding on, in sticking around, in staying alive, but i also just wrote an entire book (of fiction) that occurs in a world in which an organization exists to provide the suicidal the death they desire.

(it sounds bleaker than it actually is.)

(or maybe i just think that because i wrote it and i’m trying to get an agent who will hopefully sell it so it’ll be published by a house with a team that loves my book as much as i do.)

part of the reason i wrote it is that i was comforted by it, by this idea of a place that could painlessly provide the deliverance some of us seek so badly sometimes — and maybe that sounds terrifying to others, the idea that people want to die, but i don’t know — i guess i see no point being afraid of things and situations that are often the reality for some. it doesn’t stop being true just because it makes people uncomfortable.

i’m not going to patronize anyone by saying that suicide is a bad, permanent solution to temporary problems because i find that so horribly reductive and cushioned in its own privilege — like, what if you were young with the weight of the world on your shoulders or if you were trans and stuck in a body that didn’t align with who you are in a world that despised you and treated you with horrific violence or if you were queer and trying to be out and open but beaten down, physically, mentally, and emotionally, for it?

what if you were alone and lonely and backed into a corner in a shitty situation? what if you were disappointed by life constantly, afraid that this is it, nothing truly changes, and you’ll always be stuck, a good-for-nothing, a loser? what if you failed at something so spectacularly; what if you lost your faith; what if, what if, what if?

what if you know that suicide is a bad, permanent solution to temporary problems, but the thing is that they’re not some tiny, little, one-off problems but things that have been building and building and building so everything put together is so overwhelming that your desire for the pain and hurt and damage to end outweighs the fact that maybe you don’t really want to die, per se, you just want all this shit to be over and dying seems to be the only rational way to find some peace?

what if you were hurting so bad, you were that desperate?

none of this is to imply that you need to have some kind of reason to be depressed and suicidal, that, if you haven’t endured some kind of trauma or catastrophe, you’re just being stupid and immature and selfish. i don’t mean that at all, and i don’t believe it even a little. mental health isn’t about circumstance, even if circumstance might be the explosion that sets things into motion and throws your brain into that initial spiral that keeps going and going and going. i mean, given that everyone reacts to the same (or similar) set of circumstances differently, it’s not fair to set that kind of thing as causality and say that, if this something bad happens, then it makes sense to be depressed and suicidal — and, conversely, that, if this something bad doesn’t happen, it doesn’t make sense at all. it doesn’t work that way.

besides, i believe it’s impossible to talk effectively about suicide and depression and mental health without talking about the real human lives that carry its weight. i also tend to believe that causality is pretty convenient bullshit to disregard the fact that real, physical, human lives are at stake. it’s easier to try to distill the depressed, suicidal human into a problem to be solved, not expanded into a human being to be seen.

it’s important to locate the things that “trigger” us, though, not so we can hang the status of our mental health on them and painstakingly avoid every single situation in which we might inadvertently be triggered but so we can learn how to work through those episodes and diffuse them. the first thing my therapist had me do when i met her was to note when my panic attacks were happening over the course of a week, what i was feeling in those moments, and what i was thinking when they happened. that helped isolate patterns, which helped us figure out practical ways for me to work through panic and anxiety attacks during my day-to-day.

and it helps — it helps to know the things that make your symptoms worse, just like it helps to know the things that help you cope. when i’m going through a bad episode, i cook. i try to read, and i try to write, and, when i can’t read or write, i spend a lot of time thinking about the things i want to do someday, the things i will do on my better days. i spend a lot of time being ambitious and storing up hope somewhere in the corner of my brain that i will see my ambitions through.

because it can often be difficult to feel justified in being ambitious when ambition requires some kind of long-term thinking and planning and you live with this belief that you won’t be around for long, anyway. it’s hard to be ambitious at all when you feel like you’re a damaged, broken mess, and who are you to hope, to dream, to want?

i dare say, though, we are ambitious — we have dreams; we have goals; we have shit we want to, we’re going to do with our lives — and none of this brain stuff gets to stop any of that. i mean, think about it, everyone has obstacles to overcome, and everyone has challenges to dismantle or work around, and everyone has issues and damage and brokenness.

which maybe is my way of saying that you can hurt, that you will have days when everything hurts so bad that everything seems to lose meaning. you will have days you just want an out, even if (or maybe because) it’s permanent. you will have days you just want everything to be over.

you will have days when you want, though, when you think about all the things you wanted to do but won’t be able to if you die, and i admit i cling to those lists sometimes. those mental lists have literally saved my life, providing that last fragile lifeline that kept me here because it would make me angry — i want to travel, i want to fall in love, i want to eat everything, i want to hear my favorite band live (again), i want to say the things i want to say.

i want to live.

because maybe here’s something that people don’t always realize: it’s not the lack of wanting to live that often brings us to the brink. it’s wanting to live but finding it too impossible, the pain too overwhelming, the damage too unbearable. it’s wanting to live but finding the world so intolerable and filled with hate and violence and prejudice. it’s wanting to live but finding the future so bleak and devoid of hope.

it’s wanting to live but finding it terrifying, the way dying feels like the rational, better option because you know, this is not how anyone should feel.

things i think about when i think about my book:

how i plan on having NO DECKLE EDGES be a part of any publishing contract i sign
how i’ll either be a pain in the ass to or best friends with my art department
how i don’t want a blue cover or a black cover or people on my cover or anything that looks sad or dramatic or moody
how fun it might be to sit around and go through pages and pages of type, all on the hunt to find the right one
how much of a difference proper margins and line spacing make
how i love it when art departments play with dimensions
how so much of what i dream about when i dream about this book is how it will look and feel in my hands because books are physical things, whether you read them in paper or on an e-reader, they’re still physical things and they have shape and form and design

national suicide prevention week '17.

[NSPW17] it comes around every year.

September 10, 2017

here’s the thing with time: it keeps marching on. it doesn’t matter what state of mind you’re in or how you’re feeling or whether life is going well or going to shit — time keeps going.

sometimes, that’s a terrifying feeling, especially if you’re like me and you feel like you’re constantly running a race against time, trying to prove something to yourself or to others and feeling the pressure of all that, even though you know cognitively that that isn’t true. other times, though, if you’re also like me, that’s a comforting thing to remember, that time goes on, that it brings about change, that the very seasons before us are evidence of that.

because this is the thing i might tell everyone who’s feeling suicidal and/or depressed: when everything feels impossible, just put your head down, get through the days, and count time because, when you look up again, you’ll find that time has passed, and you’re still here, and that counts — that counts for a lot.

for the uninitiated and the new, i have major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, and ADHD, and i have a history of suicidal thinking. for some, that might be uncomfortable to read, and some might think it’s a stupid thing to share on a public space because mental illness is something that supposedly makes you undesirable, unhireable. others might think this is stupid because everyone gets depressed at one point and everyone feels anxious at one point and everyone has attention issues at one point — it’s just about discipline, about willpower, about wanting to be a better person.

except it’s not that simple, and that’s one hell of a condescending reaction, one that goes to show why modern society is in the mess it’s in when it comes to mental health.

i’m not here to make a defense for my intentional, deliberate disclosures, though. chances are, people who react along any of the above lines aren’t likely to change their minds, and there are actual, physical, human lives at stake, lives that are more important to use this space to address because, at the end of the day, it is what it is. i am who i am; my brain is what it is; and i feel no need to hide or be ashamed or afraid of what i live with because none of it means i can’t be a productive, thriving member of the world.

it only means i’m human, no better and no worse than anyone else.

and so are you.

because, like i said, time goes marching on. mental health isn’t something that stays locked in the same place forever; it also exists in flux; and we have good days and we have bad days and we have days when things are stable and okay and whatever. we have days when we’re overwhelmed, when we’re distraught, when we can barely breathe and stand up straight and need to curl up in bed under the covers and wait for this to pass.

we have days we think about dying.

we have days we think about living.

one of the tricks i’ve found is to remind myself constantly that this — whatever this is in this moment — isn’t it. this is not the defining moment of my life, and so i shouldn’t make decisions for my life based on this one specific moment. it doesn’t matter whether it’s a positive moment or an exultant one or a horrible, low one; all these moments pass; and the important thing is to make it onto the next moment, the next day, the next whatever and make it through that, too.

it doesn’t mean living in the future, though; don’t misunderstand. it doesn’t mean disregarding the present — on the contrary, it means being present, being attuned to what is going on in my brain, in my body, in my life at any given time and learning to listen. it means paying attention. it means being aware that this present is all i’ve got, that i have one chance to live it and experience it, so i better damn well be awake for it.

to be honest, i actually hate the phrase, this, too, will pass, partly because i hate platitudes of any kind but mostly because i have recurrent depression, which means that, yeah, it might pass this time, but it will be back, and it will be stronger, darker, more dangerous. i hate the phrase because it’s attached to this idea of a survival narrative, and i don’t like those either because i think it’s so much more important to be able to talk about these things, these “episodes” as they’re happening, instead of making conversation and dialogue contingent upon having “made it through.”

because the bitter, terrifying truth is that, sometimes, this is it. sometimes, we don’t “make it through.” sometimes, the monsters in our brain win and we take our own lives. i am not here to tell you with any level of certainty that you will be okay, that you will “survive,” because i have neither the confidence nor the arrogance to make such an audacious claim.

i am, however, here to tell you that you are stronger than you think are, that you can be okay, that time will pass. i am here to tell you that there is no such thing as a perfect life but there is such a thing as a valuable life, and yours is one. i am here to tell you that you are worth fighting for, whoever you are — i don’t need to know you personally to know that to be undeniably, inarguably true.

so give yourself the best chance you’ve got, and stay.

don’t hurt yourself. don’t hate yourself. don’t kill yourself.

stay.

national suicide prevention week '17.