A Mother, A Sister, A Friend

When confronted with the death of a person, all cultures and religions respond in equally different manners. A Jewish funeral is one of mourning, of black coats and dreary grey souls. An Irish Catholic funeral mourns by celebrating life. I tend to favor my Jewish heritage, but not today. Not for this newly-lost soul.

On Monday evening, the news that a dear friend of mine had passed away traversed quickly through my social media. She had been in a car accident the night prior, and fell into a coma. She never came out. Her spirit now floats among the stars.

We met under duress – in rehab. While I struggled with my sobriety, diving deep into the depths of melancholic depression and anxiety, she embraced her new life with grace I still wish I could possess. In my free time, I would look over the ranch and wonder “why me?”, but she never did. Her happiness was found through the pounding bass and soulful vocals that flowed through her headphones. She danced her addiction away.

By far, her most impressive accomplishment was becoming a mother to a special-needs son. Despite not being able to see and having low motor coordination, Patrick knew exactly how much his mother loved him. He never knew a day when he was not supported or surrounded by care. Her love for him fill their house to the brim.

No. It is not you who is newly lost. Your soul has finally been returned to its ethereal homeland, for your spirit always existed on a plane apart from this grey one. Without your vibrant color, it is I who has lost my way.

Rest peacefully Jillian. May you forever bounce among the stars, infusing them with your joyous laughter for every day yet to come.

Thanks for Giving Me a Headache

Ah, the holiday season. Thanksgiving, Hanukkah (if the extended family is Jewish, which mine is) and Christmas of course. ‘Tis the season to be joyful without reason, or maybe the season needs to be the only reason. Winter weddings approach, time with family flies closer, and the snow has covered the ground so courteously. What could possibly make the next six weeks any better?

Of course, the question is both facetious and rhetorical. There is always something. Always.

This school season has found me overwhelmed with all sorts of emotionalism that hasn’t been seen for the past four years. I love my job, I do truly, but working with at-risk kids does hand out more than its fair share of tough days. One of the kids is clearly on the autistic spectrum, but until he receives a formal diagnosis there is little we can do for him when he has a major tantrum caused by sensory over-stimulation. Several others are simply stubborn and act out for the sole purpose of receiving attention. Theoretically it’s easy to do what is correct and ignore them, but more often than not there’s a communication breakdown and the behavior gets reinforced. Is this all my fault? Of course not. But some days we all walk away feeling responsible.

As for me and my schooling, graduation draws ever near. The last set of classes and student teaching remains, and then I will finally have my BA. This should be treated as a gift. In truth, I’m terrified. I’ve been working towards this degree for eight years now, and in six short months I will finally receive it. This has been a goal for so long that it’s become a part of my identity. By receiving my BA, who I am will change, and that is enough to cause me to have an anxiety attack. It’s not like I’ve dealt well with closure in the past either. The last time I tried to graduate from a program, I ended up so terrified that I backed myself out in failure.

And as for the holiday season itself, dinners with extended family are nothing more than an exercise in political decorum. Everyone save my mother, brother, and I are stuck in the family dynamics of the 1950’s, and so grandma is always right, mother is always wrong unless she agrees with grandma, and good old aunt is the first lieutenant and is trying to recruit me to be her second-in-command. The power vacuum is filled at the expense of degrading my mother, and that I have not been able to abide for quite some time. As a result, I am overtly rude to the aunt (yes, the proper qualifier would have been “my,” but I refuse to claim her when she is so openly hostile). And yet, every holiday season I am repeatedly told to play nice. There’s no need to bring up former hostility. Yes, they were rude, but let’s let bygones be bygones.

And yet, maybe not. Elephants have a long memory after all.

This Thanksgiving, I cannot foretell how I will react to the machinations of my extended family. Will I attempt to defend my mother and brother, both of whom often serve as the scapegoat for all that goes wrong? I’ll try, but success may be out of my hands. Will I be openly rude? Probably not unless the comments are outrageous. But really, will I remain true to myself? I don’t know. Unfortunately my allegiance to peace is still stronger than the one to honesty. Until that changes, it makes for a profoundly tense holiday season.

Through Lying and Death, Loving What’s Left

I’m so good at lying that I’m able to believe my own lies.

While a ridiculous epigram, it’s also true. It’s also incredibly ironic given my absolute love of all thing factual and objective. I portray myself as an honest, independent, down-to-earth individual in the off-screen world while being all of the latter two and quite little of the former. It’s not that I lie about everything; there is no reason to manipulate hard facts or even most subjective interpretation. But when I talk about myself, I lie all the time.

I lie the most when I talk about my life prior to college.

This has left you with a undoubtedly shadier version of myself, but I need to clear a couple things up. First off, I was never in trouble with the law – nothing like that. No robbing, no violence. Second, I should be more clear about the type of lying in which I am proficient. Not all lies are created equal, and some lies aren’t just lies: they’re cognitive distortions, or thinking errors. Not all of the errors apply to me now, but one still remains. I am still someone who constantly lies by omission, or who fails to tell crucial details of a tale so that the listener incorrectly interprets my story by design. For example, here’s the story I tell to everyone who knows nothing about my life prior to college: I graduated from high school, took a gap year to go work on a farm in Texas, went to school for the first two years in Idaho, ended up moving back due to family issues, decided to finish my Associates while working part-time, and now I live downtown and the rest is the present.

To say that is completely inaccurate is wrong, to call it truth doubly so.

Here’s the real story: my junior year of high school I was hospitalized for depression for the first time. Three subsequent hospitalizations followed soon after, and I was sent to a residential facility in Utah due to my emotional instability. I turned 18, got my GED, and worked on a farm in Texas that was also a women-only rehab. I completed my first years of college in Idaho while living at a transitional housing facility (think halfway house). I moved back home because I was homesick and the program kicked me out. After two months of paralyzing depression, I was given the choice to either finish my AA, work full-time, or move out. I chose to finish it. I ended up finding a major and a career path that I loved, so I decided to pursue a BA and moved downtown. The rest is the present.

See the difference?

I did not ever intend to become a liar. Ever. But I cannot absolve myself of all blame, as it didn’t just happen overnight either. Learning how to lie was a process. A little white one here, a slightly more grey one here, up until the present day where sometimes I question both of my duplicitous lives. But if the meaning escaped anyone, let it be known that I don’t obscure myself through words and deliberate misrepresentation for fun. I do it to hide my struggles with mental health.

Again, the reason I lie is to hide my battle with depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

The reason I lie is shame.

It still shocks me that, in real life, I’d rather someone find out that I qualify for both Medicaid and food stamps than that I struggled severely with mental illness. That I don’t identify as straight than that sometimes PTSD still gets the best of me. That I’ve been homeless than that both depression and anxiety still rear their ugly heads from time to time.

This is a problem. And despite my occasionally floundering mental health, the problem is not me.

As a society, we have demonized mental illness. Completely, utterly, demonized it. In this country, there is little worse than being 100% mentally safe and sound. Yes, I know some would argue that there are other social factors that take away more, race and gender being the primary two off the top of my head. Both lead to huge social inequities. But if you’re mentally healthy, then you can take that inequality and kick it in the ass. That’s not possible if depression zaps your energy while anxiety paralyzes all forward progress. Fighting is hard. Fighting more than one battle is even harder. Sometimes it’s impossible.

Would I be comfortable opening up completely about my pre-college life if a mental health diagnosis was as accepted as a sinus infection? Yes and no. There are still bits and pieces that I would still not be comfortable discussing on a consistent basis, yet I might talk more about what it’s like to live with a chronic illness. Because we’re not there, I honestly don’t know. And until we’re there, I graduated high school several years ago. Who would lie about that?

Yes, I Have Problems with “No”

The key identifier of a confident and well-adjusted individual is being self-centered. This isn’t necessarily the same thing as being selfish, which is focusing on the self at the expense of others and is actually a marker of narcissism. But self-centered? Complete awareness and focus on the only thing important in your life: you.

Whatever actions you take are in your own best interests. You are your own master, confidant, supporter. There is no reason to act otherwise, in the best interests of another, unless that action can also serve yourself as well (which as harsh as it sounds, is an actual social psychology principle called Social Exchange Theory).

While formerly the exact opposite, I’m now a semi-adjusted but fairly confident individual. I am aware of how I act and how others react to me. I believe I can accurately judge the intent in the actions of others. I know when my plate is overloaded. I have no problems turning down invitations.

I think.

Well, I thought I did.

The first two weeks into this summer, I had been working three jobs while wrapping up the last week of classes and finals for the year. I would either go to school and then to one job, finish one job and then go to another job, or go to one job and cram in some study time in the remaining hours. Each of those 14 days was consumed entirely by one of those three options. There was no other choice.

There was no other choice because I chose not to make one.

Working three jobs while going to school was not an instantaneous decision. There were checkpoints, forks in the road, where I could have easily said, “no, I’m sorry. I’m too busy to take that shift,” but I did not. Instead, I agreed to all of them. I could have worked two jobs while wrapping up finals, which is what I had been doing for the past year. In a frivolous spree of confirmations, I ended up turning that option down.

I chose my misery. I told it, “Yes.”

I used to think I was a confident person, someone who was unafraid of telling others “No” just because they wanted to hear the opposite. And while that is still a true statement, it is only partially so. As I discovered during those two weeks, I am still not afraid to deny a lie no matter who the speaker may be. But there is a people-pleasing component to myself, one which I was not aware existed until it, quite literally, worked itself out.

Am I confident? Yes. Am I well-adjusted? I believe so. Am I self-centered? No.

It turns out that yes, I do have problems with “No.”