Flagless Play

 2 out of 11. 

That's how many of the "warning signs of suicide" I displayed before I tried to kill myself in February of 2010. 

What's interesting is that, looking back at my journals from my sophomore and junior years of high school, my sophomore journal is full of thoughts of suicide. I mention it almost daily. In my junior year it never shows up. There's no cry for help. There's no swirly "I want to die" forever ingrained on the thin pages of paper. 

My junior year is when I attempted suicide. My junior year, a week before a choir concert, past the stress of exams, and after seeing a therapist who told me, and my mom, that I was "fine", I swallowed every pill I could find. I crawled into my bed, goodbye notes to everyone I loved neatly stacked on my nightstand, and I cried silently. 

I was incredibly lucky. I survived. But, just like with every story of suicide you hear, the warning signs I unconsciously displayed weren't noticed until after I sat in a midnight ER vomiting up pills at 16. Part of the problem, is that I was smart enough not to give away my possessions, or be vocal about wanting to die. In all honesty I didn't even have an internal, suicidal dialogue until the night I made the choice. 

I don't blame my parents. I don't blame myself. I don't blame God. At 17 I had absolutely no idea what mental illness was. I didn't know what depression was. I didn't know that when I was hyperventilating in the bathroom between rehearsal numbers for the school musical I was having a panic attack. 

I come from an educated family. I went through the teen health classes in elementary, middle, and high school. I lived in an affluent community. No one talked about mental illness. No one ever conceived that my moodiness was more than hormonal mood swings and "part of growing up".

Maybe, just maybe, if somewhere in my life, before that February night, someone had talked about mental illness, or depression, or social anxiety, things would have been different. Maybe if that therapist had asked me more than what I wanted to major in, she would have seen past my rehearsed, expected answers to the shattered, hurting teenage girl who was barely functioning. 

I will never know if my suicide attempt was preventable, but I do know that others are. Talk to your kids. Explain mental illness. Don't let them rock back and forth, silently begging God to kill them, because they don't know that they are ill, not broken. 

Awareness is free. Everyone can dispense it and everyone can access it. So please, learn. Learn so that these beautiful kids with incredible futures live to see them and to change the world. 

 

 

Prince of the Disoriented

Today I saw an article title (shameless clickbait) about how Prince Harry feels disoriented not having a job or schedule now that he's a "commoner" in California. I thought for a minute about how disorienting it must be to go from having every moment of your life scheduled, and every task aligned with a specific purpose, to suddenly having no structure to lean on.

As I pondered the Prince's predicament, I realized this sensation isn't foreign to me, or to many of us. In fact, I'd venture to guess this is how every high school senior is about to feel as graduations occur and their uncertain future looms closer.

From age 6 we wake up, Monday through Friday, and show up at school where we follow a curated routine designed to help us build the skills we need to move up each year, and tick off accomplishments that serve to propel us further forward in our education. We do this for 13 years, and then suddenly we're handed a "job well done" and expected to suddenly do it all ourselves. At 18 we're expected to plan the rest of our lives out, and plot out every step we need to take to make it happen.

Is it any wonder that high school seniors throw some serious attitude? I can't speak to your years of schooling, but my education did nothing to prepare me to plan out my entire life, much less plan for my first semester in college.

Sure, I could write one hell of an essay with beautiful MLA citations (which was a cruel joke because in college you only use APA), but I had no idea how to function as an adult and map out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I didn't even know what Watergate was! In school you just restart history at the beginning each year (because so much about the 13 colonies has changed) and then your teacher acts shocked when you only get to 1925 by June.

All jokes aside, high school did nothing to prepare me for life outside those four secure, scheduled walls. I didn't know what my passions were. I didn't even know what skills I had outside of having the ability to pass a regurgitative curriculum year after year. I didn't know how to file my taxes, find a physician, or determine if the Quick Lube was overcharging me to change my air filter (They are. Always.) All I knew was that my next step was to pick another educational institution, where I would pretty much start the same process all over again, except this time it cost me $25,000 per year to not know why I was doing what I was doing.

Sure, there are counselors, but honestly all they're trained to do is help you check off society's agreed upon list of 'necessary education'. College counselors are a bit more helpful, but only if you know what you want to do with the next 60-80 years of your life. Y'all at 18 I didn't even know there were different sizes of tires, much less what degree I wanted to spend $100,000 to earn. My career aptitude test told me I should be a taxidermist, so that was less than helpful.

Kids shouldn't be graduating high school, after 12 years of education, with no life skills and no clue what to do about their future. We need to be building a public school curriculum that educates students about every aspect of life. They should know how to craft a well-researched essay, and how to change a tire. They should have an understanding of the events that shaped our history, and how to compare car loans.

We should be engaging their brains and discovering their passions so that when they move the tassel on their graduation cap, we aren't pushing them off a cliff thinking they can fly, when we didn't teach them how. 

That Crazy Chick with Happy Pills

It was late, likely around 1 or 2 a.m. and I was in my college dorm room, silently sobbing and hyperventilating in the throws of an overwhelmingly intense panic attack. I sobbed, prayed, screamed into my pillow, and gasped for air as minutes passed like hours and I wondered if this would be my reality for the rest of my life, and if it would be, how long would I be able to live like that?

I remember one thought with immense clarity, because it was one I had on almost a daily basis from the time I was put on antidepressants at 18, to when I was nearly 23 and finally at peace with having medication play a key role in my life.

"I don't want to have to take pills for the rest of my life in order to be happy". I was angry that my body didn't function the way others' did. I felt like all the joy in my life was fabricated by tiny pills I took daily, and I felt like a slave to a medical routine that I felt no one else needed to smile.

I was ashamed and embarrassed. I didn't want anyone to know I had depression, or that I was on pills. I didn't want my friends to think I was crazy. I didn't want to be labeled as the weird girl, or the moody girl. I had nightmares about being seen as the emo, clad in black character from every movie about high school hierarchy. I was worried others would define me by my depression, because I was defining myself by it.

Thankfully that all changed. Thankfully I found a phenomenal group of friends who saw me for me and didn't care that depression was part of my life. More importantly, they became my support system for when I couldn't battle it all alone.

I don't hide my mental illness anymore. I'm not afraid of it defining me and I'm not afraid of people judging me. I know anyone who would only see me as "depression girl" is someone I can help educate, and I know the people I love don't see me that way at all.

The little green and white pill I take each night is no different that excedrin for a migraine patient, insulin for a diabetic, or the zyrtec I take when spring blooms and I become allergic to outside. My body needs a little help to function at its best, and honestly I am so thrilled that a single pill can do that for me.

I'm so lucky that my mental illness can be managed so easily. I'm so thankful that it only took me two tries to find the right antidepressant for me, and I am incredibly blessed that in the nine years since my diagnosis I have only had to change medications once.

Most of all, I am not ashamed. I have clinical depression. I take Cymbalta each night to combat it, and because of that I am able to live my best life.

Just A Crazy Girl With Her Happy Pills!

Fading Away

The world is in shambles, and even before everyone fell into chaos I existed there.

Every time I clawed my way to a new summit it felt as if the wind blew with the sole purpose of pushing me back. Some days I fought against it. Others I clung to the faintest existence of hope until my finger bled and I collapsed into a relapse.

Some days I was the sun in my own world, propelling everyone forward, my heart so full of hope I served to shine onto every struggling person and hopeless heart.

Others I awoke in such a deep crevice of pain that I could barely beg myself to believe that light existed somewhere outside my own soul shattering pain.

There is no cure for this rollercoaster of life. There's no way to snap out of depression so deep it aches in your bones, and even on the best of days there isn't enough love or time to heal everyone my heart holds dear.

There is, however, music. Through every peak and crevice and day of hopeful or hopeless dreams there has always been one way to temporarily cast out every terminal ache and tears of abandoning hope. Forever there has been a song, a piece of someone's soul that they sent out into the universe to fill the gaps in every heart that's scars were still bleeding and healing.

No medication, no therapy, no night of sobbing or screaming can soothe my soul and purge my denoms the way that disappearing into music has.

Sometimes I just need to put in headphones, turn my music up loud enough to drown my own thoughts out, close my eyes, and let everything fade away into nothingness. The music is in my veins, cleansing my hopelessness. The bass is my heartbeat, never fading, never giving out, beating strongly even when minutes earlier I thought it might stop beating forever. Lyrics send a chill down my spine and through my fingers as it purifies my soul and pushes every reality away. A voice whispers prayers into my mind as I disappear into a galaxy free of pain and chaos and hate and where life only exists three minutes at a time before it fades into another melody.

Word of the Day: Eviscerate

In the last year or two I've started to find myself enraged with increasing frequency. I took to describing it as my "irrational anger at the patriarchy". Then I realized something. I am not irrationally anger. I am the perfect amount of angry. I'm not becoming oversensitive, I'm growing as a woman and losing the naivete of my youth that led me to think the way men act is okay.

Guess what? It isn't.

When numerous guys in college refused to date me because I set boundaries for physical intimacy, it wasn't my fault. I wasn't a prude. I had the audacity to tell men upfront that I would not have sex with them until I was ready and they shamed me for it.

When my first boyfriend pressured me into having sex with him because I didn't completely know how to articulate "I like kissing you but I'm not ready to have sex with you" it wasn't okay.

When men played the "sex isn't as good with a condom on" and I didn't know I had the power to tell them to take a long walk off a short pier, it wasn't okay.

When a man named Jerry came up to me at work and began massaging my shoulders without any effort to ask if I was okay with his hands on my body, it was not okay. When I spent the next year with my back pressed against walls to avoid him touching me again, because he was older and my superior, IT WAS NOT OKAY.

One of the only regrets in my 27 years on this earth is that I did not stand up the first time he touched me and loudly ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.

All of those not-okay moments led to me not reporting a rape. They led to years of me questioning if I had any worth. They led to bad decisions in bad relationships because I thought it was my job to make men happy, even if it meant compromising my safety and comfort.

I wish I could have known these things earlier. I wish I had always had my voice and used it. I wish I didn't live in a world where I am worth-less and worthless in the eyes of men purely because they are men and I am a woman.

So yes, I am angry, and I plan on using that anger every single day of life I have left to fight for women who don't have their voice yet. I will use my voice, at every volume necessary to let men know that I have value.

I have many wonderful men in my life, but you can bet everything you own that the men of the world who are not so wonderful, will be hearing from me. From all of us. Because we are sick of it.