The Grim Reality

My depression rules my success. The two, for me, are a package deal. I cannot experience one without the other.

I thought I had broken that link. I went for a couple of months in which I was able to do so much, to experience, for the first time, the joy and pride of doing well, of achieving goals and actually seeing progress in my life. I discovered that the dedication, determination, and drive that I thought had died when I began to lose my health in high school, the feeling of being trapped in a world where I would never, ever thrive, only ever able to just barely survive, was actually just dormant; put in stasis from a life of being placed in a box where I wasn’t able or allowed to thrive.

And then this month hit. Trigger/content warning for intrusive thoughts, abuse, and suicidal ideation ahead.

I’m preaching next to my pastor next weekend, closing a series about gratitude in a season of my life where I have been given the gift of space to soar under the guidance and support of the friends, family, and faith community that surrounds me.

I found out loved ones feel unsafe and neglected by me, that I am doing them harm and didn’t even notice.

I am assuming leadership in my church that will allow me to help others the way I have always wanted to and become a bridge for people to discover a safe and welcoming environment for exploration and growth.

Hate was once again left on our door, mocking our sense of safety. “Ha”, it boasted five times in all too familiar scrawled lettering. We called the police with rage and resignation.

I found medications that worked for me and was making astonishing progress in my therapy. Walking to and from therapy each week.

I lost my health insurance, making needed medical treatment and, if not for the generosity of others, we would be dead in the water simply trying to absorb the costs. I went to the emergency room a week after losing insurance.

I gained a disability attorney and am the closest I’ve ever been to being able to contribute financially to my family.

My family seems riddled with resentment and fragmentation and I’m left with the urge to simply walk away. I give up and I delete my daily reminder for all of us to express gratitude for one another from our shared calendar. I seem to be the only one who bothered to try. I’m looking at cheap studio apartments daily.

I am overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of others.

I am left reeling by a betrayal in the same breath.

I spend a day working hard and feeling the love and appreciation of my faith community, my found family. We discuss a bright and happy future. I feel proud.

I come home and sob and think about taking enough of my medications to send me to sleep and climbing into a bath full enough that, when I fall asleep, I don’t wake up again.

I truly, deeply believe in the love of a higher power.

I truly, deeply believe that I was created to suffer and to make others suffer alongside me. I know these words will hurt so many as they’re read, but I write them anyways. I promised you truth and you won’t like my honesty here.

My depression and my success are a pair that refuse to part.

Changing what I see in the mirror means I will be cut and bleed.

The death and the rebirth of your self seem less positive if you don’t know if you’re going to survive it.

;

What Does Failure Look Like?

This question was posed to me a few times throughout the last couple of weeks. Depression, for so many of us, myself included, means having a constant presence in our minds that spends all day every day mimicking our own voice or the voices of other people and lying to us.

Those lies sound different for each person. They are tailored to what our depression knows will do the most damage. For some, it says they have to achieve something tangible to be deserving of love or kindness. Others, it whispers that all their success is a lie. Others yet are told the are worthless or a burden.

Mine has three things it says more than anything else: I am a bad person, I am a useless burden to the people around me, and that I am a failure and will never achieve any kind of success.

After explaining my depressed mindset a couple of times, those things came up quite a bit and each time and led to the same questions. “What does “succeeding” even mean?” “What does failure mean?”

I had to explain that success, to me, means helping people and making an impact on people outside of my direct influence and leaving a positive legacy. I feel as though I am failing because despite the work I have put into my endeavors to do those two things, I’m not seeing any progress.

Now we were getting somewhere. Having it all spelled out meant those lies have to pass under the scrutiny of logic and facts. This is a common technique in many kinds of therapy. When you put your depressed thoughts under the microscope or pit them against real facts, they will almost always wither.

The first thing I had to do was downsize. “Help people and have a positive impact on people outside my direct scope of influence and leaving a legacy” is quite a lofty goal with lots of room for interpretation. For someone with depression, you can pretty much immediately replace “lots of room for interpretation” with how your depression will spin it: lots of room for failure.

So downsizing begins. You create smaller goals. Between my physical and mental health, I’ll be the first to admit that, with the obvious exceptions of bodily functions, I pretty much never get out of bed anymore. I don’t even move to the living room or front porch anymore. The solution? Have my only goal, for even just a week, be to get out of bed. If I only manage to get to the couch or the front porch, that’s great. It means I still got out of bed. Put on clothes? Bonus goal! Go for a walk? Holy shit, that’s so much more than usual. Little goals that help you feel like you accomplished anything starts dismantling the idea that you can’t do anything, that you’re failing.

I hope that helps some of you the way it helped me. I’m obviously not the first to think of it, but having someone point out how high up I had placed my goals and how much room that gave my depression to work with slowed my swan dive into hopelessness. If it can do that for even just one person that reads this, it also helps with those big goals, whether I know it or not.

That is kind of the purpose of this whole adventure into blogging and writing, after all.

Six Months Later

Six months ago today, nearly down to the minute, I had my surgery. The time seems to have flown by, the memory of what it felt like afterwards a distant afterthought.

The difference it made has been nothing short of miraculous. The changes to my health and mental well-being went far beyond what we even dared to hope for.

Six months ago, we planned for my recovery to take about a year. However, I got up and voted only a week after my surgery (so don’t expect me to accept and weak sauce excuses on why you can’t get to the polls, I made it after having my entire reproductive system sucked out). After two weeks, I was able to walk around and the pain had not only subsided significantly, but I was getting tired less. I had more energy than before, my mood was improving. I could joke about the fluctuations of my hormones, even though I can never express my sympathy for those of you who read this and have experienced menopause and all the fun that comes with it. That shiz is insane and I applaud you.

December is the last time I remember being genuinely sore from recovery still.

My seizures and passing out has ebbed. Physical therapy has begun. I was cleared by my doctors, conditionally, to be able to work up to twenty hours a week.

There have been setbacks and challenges. My mental health did some interesting gymnastics over the sudden changes. When you don’t expect a future (and didn’t really want one some days), then suddenly having a future handed to you caused nothing short of a full blown existential crisis. Not just for me, but Nikki and Pam as well. Especially Nikki and I. When you spend fifteen years with someone whose health is slowly deteriorating and their life coming to an end, then suddenly find yourselves in the clear, it brings a whole lot more than relief to the table. You mourn the sacrifices made along the way. You get the chance to really see how living with the constant threat of death or suffering did to your brain. The constant anxiety of never knowing if today was the turning point for the end or just a bad day. The personal fear every night, the question that would inevitably flicker through me: when I close my eyes and fall asleep, will I wake up in the morning?

Relapses and horrid days filled with flare ups still happen. I’m still grappling with what my future holds. My hope for my unknown future gets a little brighter each and every day as I take on projects, make plans, and take baby steps or flying leaps forward, even as I mourn and grieve for what I lost and how I had to live.

Without those chasms of challenges and despair, though, would I really be able to experience and appreciate the joy I have waiting for me now?

Listening for Lent

I think long and hard about what I want to do or not do for Lent each year. I’ve never been a fan of the “give something up” mentality because, in my opinion, deprivation in the name of God isn’t a healthy way of cultivating a positive relationship with your spirituality. I tend to add something instead, like connecting with people more, doing something more, anything to add to and ignite my faith.

This year, however, I’ll be doing a combination of giving up and adding in. Speaking only when necessary and listening more. I talk too much and miss so much, so when I finally spent some time really soul searching for this year’s goal, I found that what I wanted, the path that I thought would bring me close to my faith, was one walked in silence and with eyes, ears, and mind open to the world around me.

Vows of silence are tough and, of course, there will be times I have to speak. I will continue to blog, as it serves as a reflective outlet, not just a means of talking to you, writer to reader. I hope this time will strengthen my voice by giving me clearer perspective.

My journey as I come to terms with having a future I never planned for, a future I wasn’t expected to have, has been full of things I’ve felt I needed to say and do. Perhaps the better option is to be still, listen, and find answers in what the world around me presents.

The World Turned Upside Down

Cleveland Clinic was last week and we were, as usual going in with no expectations. This, historically, hasn’t ever been a visit that yielded positive news. Even when I called my parents to update them, they braced for the news things had gotten worse.

Except this time was different. I felt almost mechanical when I explained that I was no longer considered terminal. “Chronic, but stable”. Better news than anyone could have even dared hope for. Almost ten years of a life on hold, survival mode the only full time job I’d ever have, and an expiration date promising both that I would never have the lifespan or time to do everything I wanted and that, eventually, there would come a time where I would no longer be in pain, however sad that ending would be.

In a single moment, an unknown future unfolded long and winding out of sight. A horizon with limited opportunity became a labyrinth of possibilities. Instead of joy, I felt hollow. Scared. Overwhelmed.

There was bitterness and rage. Almost ten years of living on hold, only to be shoved back into a variation of normalcy, normal’s bastard cousin because I am still sick and in pain and disabled, but no longer dying, suddenly able to pursue a life and a future previously unreachable. What was it all for?

The expectations mounted immediately. “God obviously has big plans for you.” One individual said. My own anxious mind began to race at the idea of how much I had never even let myself consider because dreaming of a future I couldn’t have led to heartbreak. Grief embraced me and chilled me. Now I’m left grieving a decade of time lost, hopelessly behind the rest of the world as I figure out where this new road will lead.

I will be happy. I will join my friends and family in thanks and celebration.

For now, I search for the path and start walking and pray this new reality is a good one.

“Strike That, Reverse It”

“This time I’ll stick to it.”

“This time I won’t put it off.”

“A schedule! I’ll be true and make it happen!”

To quote the Charlie and the Factory musical song, “strike that, reverse it, I meant the other way.”

In other words, continuing to tell myself I’m going to implement a schedule, rigid and strict, and stick to it, is only pushing me further away from wanting to do this at all. Inspiration be damned, nothing kills me faster than forcing structures where I want to color outside the lines.

That said, I’m sure I’m not alone. Every creative spirit, fights the neverending war between inspiration and artistry, and producing said artistry in a timely manner. Doubly so if you want to make a career out of it, as many do. A schedule can be, and often is, the undoing of many. Leaving everything solely up to the whims of inspiration and the inner muse, however, takes out just as many. Combine that with crippling anxiety that nothing is ever good enough (hello, Imposter Syndrome, my old friend), and you’ve pretty much eliminated every pool of artist that exists. Which begs the question: “how?”

The answer? Who knows! For some, they have the drive to overcome the obstacles. Others, they have to struggle for an inch of progress. Some make it, some don’t. Where will I end up? I have friends doing so many amazing things and think “wow, if I didn’t suck so much, I could be doing that well”.

Whoa there, cognitive distortion! How many of them think that about me? How many times have they dropped the ball or given up, only to pick it up one more time and then it takes off? How often do they ask themselves why they’re crazy enough to want this life?

There’s another song from the same musical, though, that reminds me of the most important, the critical ingredient in this recipe of being creative.

“It’s simply second nature to dream of something new, then wake on fire and try to sculpt each day! It’s a blessing and a curse! Wait…no, strike that and reverse. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

That’s it. That’s the secret. Create to create. Bring to life what makes you happy and let success find you in joy instead of dragging success into your life by force. Sure, a schedule helps, accountability is a good call, but whatever else, create to put something into the world a little piece of you it didn’t have before. If you’ve done that, you’re doing just fine.

Tears to Shed, Plans to Make

Amy Krouse Rosenthal passed away yesterday. She was a children’s author and also wrote a couple of memoirs that I’ll admit I haven’t read, but had heard about previous to her death.

Today, I read that she passed just before writing what would be her final published piece in the New York Times, You May Want to Marry My Husband, which ripped my heart out.

She died at 51 at the hands of ovarian cancer. She said, in the article above, “no wonder the word cancer and cancel look so similar.”; A stinging accuracy for what occurred to a beautiful person and millions like her who pass at the hands of terminal illnesses.

My heart aches for her family and all those who knew her work. I ache for the lack of her and what it will feel like.

And, selfishly, I ache for myself. I ache because, even though it isn’t cancer, I’ve felt some of the things she describes.

She had 51 years on this earth and it wasn’t enough. I don’t know how many I’ll have, but I hope its a lot. I hope I’ll be ready when the time comes. I doubt I will be, just I doubt any person who has been told they have limited time will be, but hope is important to have.

I’m at a loss, because there is nothing to say that hasn’t been said by writers more wise than I am. That’s one of the challenging parts of writing; knowing that, at the end of the day, we’re all just reorganizing the same twenty-six characters into the same countless words, just in a different order than other people.

There’s still such value, though, because the words we make have meaning and the order we ourselves decide to put them in gives them meaning. There are things I will say that no other being has said. Everyone has that ability, that blessing to impart on the world.

It isn’t easy to know that my time is limited, but living isn’t easy anyways. Perhaps its more important to focus on the fact that I have time. Period. I have time and you have time and regardless of how much or how little, we should use that time to the fullest of our abilities.

I love you all, Lemons and Spoonies. Go live and love today. Don’t take an instant for granted.