down from the ledge...postcards from the edge of suicide

Revenge: It’s Not Just A TV Show on ABC

2012-01-28T19:08:00.000-06:00

(Although it IS a friggin’ awesome one)

Revenge is a sweet, sweet word. Can anything beat the delicious satisfaction of a primal instinct, the illusion of justice being served? If we, personally, could have the power to right the wrongs of the world – or, more importantly, the wrongs done to us – wouldn’t life just be grand?

After all, revenge is about ego. We all have our own little visions of how our lives are supposed to unfold, and how we deserve to be treated. And when someone tramples our world without a shred of remorse, we tend to feel entitled to brandish our weapons of retaliation, proceeding at all costs. At least, we fantasize about doing so. Most of us. Others of us take the leap to act on those fantasies.

My first lick on the ice cream cone of revenge came after I ended my engagement and found out the little bastard was selling stolen merchandise on his ebay account from the store we had both worked at. The balls! I knew he was a lying piece of crap, but a thief?! That was new. I was ashamed to have known him, much less almost marry the loser. It took some work, but he was eventually fired as a result of the tip-off to loss prevention. Finally he could get what was coming to him, right?

Wrong. A couple years later I find out he had a BETTER job which, in some sick way, I helped him get. Now the crook is ‘Store Manager’ at a place that sells the same type of merchandise! He had gotten fired from the first place with a little slap on the wrist, no charges were filed, and he charmed his way into a great position banking way more money. Chapped my ass. So I sent documentation to the store owner of his honesty problems. I never followed up to see what happened, but I heard from an old friend he doesn’t work there anymore.

My next foray into justice-seeking came on the heels of his engagement to some dingdong who apparently didn’t know he picked up trash off websites like “adultfriendfinder,” where he advertised for “1-on-1 or group sex” (it didn’t occur to me that he may have met her on one of them, LOL). So, being the Good Samaritan I am, I proceeded to inform her of some choice details via MySpace message. Then she was like, “What? Seriously? Gross; I’m dumping him.” Not really, not a chance. She blocked me and married him. Like Ashley Hebert on The Bachelorette: if she wants Bentley, she can have him. You were warned, dumbass...

What I love about the show Revenge is that it encapsulates the inherently flawed logic of trying to settle the score. Amanda Clark (aka Emily, the main character) is hell-bent on ruining lives in her pursuit of vengeance for her father’s life, which was destroyed. In so doing, she squashes her own joy and loses out on love. With revenge, attainment of the goal simultaneously annihilates one’s own opportunities for happiness.

Why would anyone act on an impulse that stands to cost them more than could ever be gained? I am convinced that retribution can only consume the heart of a soul devoured by pain.

There was a period in my life where hatred completely took me over (see above). It boiled down to a mentality that, if my life was irredeemable, the people who had hurt me should not be allowed to walk around smiling.

In a situation where I felt completely powerless to fix myself, the opportunity for revenge gave me the only sense of power I could brandish. I couldn’t get a job, but maybe I could take someone else’s away. I couldn’t find love, but maybe I could wreck some jerk’s blissful relationship.

Modern technology fuels this breed of sickness. I didn’t need to see my exes’ wedding photos online, but there they were. I didn’t care to know what store they registered their first babies at, either, but thanks to Google, “name” + “town” = “too much information.”

The worst part of revenge can be summed up in seven little words:

"Seeking revenge is a confession of pain."

Sh*t. You mean, I thought I was weilding the mighty sword of retribution, and instead I just inflated those jerks’ egos by showing them how much they STILL affect me, STILL hurt me, STILL control my thoughts and feelings? Wow, did I screw up.

Payback *is* a bitch, apparently.

They say “Living well is the best revenge,” but if I could do that, I’d love to rub it in a few peoples’ faces how great my life is (methinks that may be a confession of something else).

The moral of the story is:

A) Those people are all doing just fine, and I am not.

B) While they were getting on with their lives, I was wasting time sinking energy into the past.

C) I need to grow the hell up.

D) My life should be about ME, instead of about other people.

Suicide Notes: A Final F!*# You to the World...and to Select Individuals

2012-01-20T02:50:00.000-06:00

I guess the only thing good about coming across old suicide notes is still being alive to read them. It’s painful to relive the sentiments expressed to people, especially if the emotions were never resolved.

I am nothing if not methodical, as evidenced in my painstakingly thorough suicide note catalog. There was the note I wrote to my parents, for when they found out. There were the notes to my (two most significant) exes, whom I perceived as having “ruined my life.” I say note(s) because there most certainly was not just one. No, I really had a mouthful to vomit on the two of them. There was even the note to my former boss; not so much a suicide note, perhaps, as a crafty letter of resignation. This was in the batch of outbox letters: sent, never to be taken back. What’s done is done, what’s said is said, what’s humiliating will forever more be. The embarrassment’s enough to shame a person into death-wishes all over again.

Two years later there were more notes written, stamped, addressed ... but never sent. Thank GOD. Because the only thing worse than having a mental breakdown is living through it to face the humiliation of all you’ve said and done. Truly. The second round of letters were reserved for ex-friends who had let me down and failed to be there for me, and even former colleagues whom I felt had a hand in destroying my career and my self-worth. The picture becoming clearer and clearer here: anyone and everyone who I could blame for the state my life was in (almost) got a piece of my mind. If I was going to die, I wanted people to feel bad about it.

There’s a saying that, “90% of the solution lies in accurately defining the problem,” and the clarity that coincides with composing one’s final words brings the tree out of the forest, so to speak. What better way to really get down to the nitty gritty of what’s bothering you than to lay it all out with no one to talk back to you, defend their actions, or invalidate your feelings?

In my final summation of things, I glimpse a person who pins responsibility on every single person around her ... but not herself. Countless hours have burnt up in fury at the wrongs that have been done to me, while the worst have been done to myself. “We may be the product of our past, but we are not victims of the past unless we choose to be.” I am the one who conceded that others’ appraisal of my worth would have ultimate bearing on my destiny. For all the hurt I may have wished to inflict with the anger that consumed me, the only life I destroyed was my own.

“Holding onto resentments is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

No truer words were ever spoken.

My former profession placed a lot of emphasis on the symbolic acts of closure: burning items that tie us to the past, or releasing balloons into the air with our feelings written inside. My personal method is the shredder, because I latch onto documentation. There’s some sort of perverse gratification to be found in re-reading old love letters, old hate letters, old crazy letters. Up until two days ago, I was still hanging onto a few, perhaps in case I was to regress and decide to actually send them.

The fear of someone else coming across the psychotipapers got the better of me, and I finally took action to destroy the evidence of my lunacy. It was hard at first, because of the catharsis of purging all those emotions once again. The hurt and betrayal remains locked inside, after all, never expressed to these intended targets. What if I want to relive all this again, I thought. Even more difficult to demolish were the last “I would die if I lost you” letters from my first love (more accurately described as my first hate). Possibly because it was the only remaining proof that I once mattered to someone?

In the end that little machine ate the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then I tied a few of those paper shreds to a shoestring and invented my cat’s new favorite toy; from pain came someone’s joy, at least.

Letting go is an act of surrender; where something in us clings to the past, holding on at all costs, we employ the discipline required to give it up ... a contradiction of sorts. The harder it is to let go of, the more we obviously need to in order to move on. And it’s long past time for me to move on. Like they say: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Reading over the admissions in this post, it remains difficult for me to discern if it’s extraordinarily ill or extraordinarily human.

Didn’t we go to high school together?

2012-01-11T00:09:00.000-06:00

We’ve all had that stomach-dropping moment when, looking maximally disgusting, we realize the person standing across from us went to the same high school as us. Terror sets in as it clicks that we cannot avoid the ‘summing up’ of our lives and what we have(n’t) made of ourselves. For me, this moment was proffered courtesy of an appointment with the cable company yesterday.

Now, the worst part wasn’t that I had failed to make it into the shower after my walk ... so it wasn’t my greasy face, the (likely) rank smell emanating from my body, the hideous workout garb, or my frizzy half-out ponytail. It wasn’t the blessing of a grotesque zit that had mysteriously appeared on my 31 year-old neck that morning (seriously, does it ever end?). I don’t even think it was the hundred additional pounds hanging from my once-cute little figure. Even the fact of living with my parents was not the most embarrassing aspect of the experience.

Although any one of the aforementioned circumstances was enough to humiliate the crap out of me, the worst part was something he didn’t know and couldn’t see. Totally internal.

As my mom proceeded to launch into her usual life-story-conversation-technique, he casually (or maybe braggingly) mentioned that he banked $60-70k a year doing installations. This is the pinnacle of disgrace, I thought to myself:

1998

Him: self described “little punk” in high school, goof-off always running his mouth and getting into trouble, short for a guy, glasses. Bottom of the class.

Me: nerdy little teacher’s pet, never speaking out of turn, pulling in straight A’s and not so much as touching a cigarette or a can of beer. Top of the class.

2012

Him: glasses are gone, tall, cute, nice guy. Upper middle class, three kids. Doing well for himself.

Me: not a pretty sight, obese. No boyfriend/husband/kids, broke, unemployed. Nothing going for her.

Undoubtedly, I shudder to think of his perception of me, or the offhand remark, “You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day” potentially unloaded from his lips at some point, with description to follow. Frightening. A million times worse: what I think of myself. When I reflect on all the things I could have done-been-had, I just want to crawl in a hole and die.

Amazingly, there are things I can do to top this feeling: I can look up the other salutatorians on facebook and puke over their Ivy League educations, aerospace engineering degrees, and wedding photos. I don’t even think it’s about envy, it’s more this sense that they’ve won, and I have lost. Even the people who didn’t even try, THEY won, too! The cable guy rubbed that in for me.

It’s not a competition, you say? Ahhhh, but it was for me. Ever since 5^th grade when the chubby quiet girl beat the “smart boy” on a test, I felt like there was nothing I couldn’t do just as well (ok, usually better) than anybody else. Was it ego, or just a big “F you!” to all the little bastards who used to make fun of me? I think I thought that, one day, ONE day, I was going to show all of them. I was going to work super hard and make something of myself and they could all go F themselves.

Some people would say, “Karma’s a bitch.” Except I didn’t do anything to anyone. People were cruel to me as a kid, and they’ve been cruel to me as an adult. It’s only life that’s a bitch.

Pro-sparrow on, yo.

2012-01-01T01:57:00.000-06:00

Y felicidad. Well, Dixie Chicks, it’s been FOUR long years now since the top of the world came crashing down ... apparently I’m reeeeaaally taking the long way around. Maybe I peaked early, and cracking 30 put me “over the hill,” so to speak. As another year screeches to a halt, I reflect on the build-up of all my life’s accomplishments one after the other, the wall I smashed into, and the straight drop down.

Straight A’s. Scholarships. Awards. Prodding from my professors to move onto Ivy League PhD programs. But I stayed at my safe local university for my MA, because that’s what a practical, naive girl does. I had a fiancé. I had a life in mind, a plan that was going to unfold MY way. I would graduate, get married, pop out kids, and embark on my middle-class career in a secure field.

Turns out I had to ditch the guy along the way (and all my ideals about love), but the career! Now that was going to be the shred of stability I could focus my perfectionism on. I plodded on with my accomplishments, “growing” professionally by about five grand per year, always moving on to bigger and better opportunities. And then it all vanished, never to be found again.

I literally cannot figure out where I went. The old me would not even recognize whatever I am now. She would be disgusted by me. She could not begin to relate to “giving up.”

I am a nobody. I am a has-been. I am nothing to no one. It used to be my life’s work to help people in this very frame of mind, now I can’t stand the thought of helping myself. I can’t stand the thought of continuing to pretend all the time. I can’t stand not being able to fix myself. I sit here crying at the prospect of another year to get through. I just don’t understand when it’s going to get better. After all this time, why hasn’t it?

It’s funny how, if you go long enough without something you thought you wanted sooooo bad, you can end up not wanting it anymore. Period. Like kids. And marriage. If given enough time, you’re forced to examine why you wanted life’s traditional ends to begin with. You analyze the lives around you, and ask which shoes, if any, you long to be in.

What if you can’t even find anyone to envy? I mean, if you see someone who has something you want, you can try to go out and get it. Well there’s nothing I want to go out and get, folks. I’d rather sit around and waste away, apparently. If you think long and hard enough, you may not end up finding the solutions to your life’s problems; instead, you may just grow terribly sick of mulling it all over endlessly.

Holiday Blues

2011-12-23T23:20:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow the relatives will all be at my parents’ house, and instead of avoiding the Christmas Eve charade as I’d planned, I’ll wear my fake smile and pretend I give a sh*t about all these people that have never given a damn about me. Like Thanksgiving, my dad won’t be there, so reality’s creeping in.

I’m in a sour mood. I didn’t anticipate this year being difficult as far as holidays go, because I’ve been feeling a little more even-keeled over all. But then, I didn’t anticipate having to listen to my parents argue out the final details of the divorce settlement right before Christmas. I thought this year I’d finally have a job and not have to feel like a failure once again when people ask what I’ve been up to. I’m so sick of feeling like a loser. Or else I’m sick of *being* a loser; one of the two.

Then there are the things you have no control over, like dreams about the past, and old memories creeping in. Somehow the old pain flares up, like scar tissue that never quite healed right. I try not to ponder too long on the happiness people from my past are experiencing in their lives; new babies and families that are celebrating instead of breaking apart.

Even still, the past hurts me. The fact that my life fell apart over the holidays has hung over every Thanksgiving and Christmas since. It’s easy to say that one shouldn’t allow things from so long ago to ruin the present, and I believe that if I were more satisfied with my current life I might have an easier time keeping the sadness out. Instead, it’s one more unhappy year. Maybe not quite as miserable as the few before, but gloomy nonetheless.

To top it off, my hip pain has really been flaring up, and I don’t know when I might be able to get insurance next. Will life always be about coping with, and overcoming, and pulling through, and never about living? I just want to be put into a drug-induced coma. Srsly.

Suicide: What’s It About?

2011-12-21T22:59:00.000-06:00

I mean, fundamentally, what does it come down to?

Sometimes I think suicide is about pain. The too much, never-ending, all-encompassing pain of existence. The kind that wrenches you from the inside out.

Or it could be escape. Maybe we just need a way out when we’re out of options. Sometimes all the options suck, and it’s truly the lesser of the evils. Sometimes we’re too paralyzed with indecision to even*pick* an option. Or there are so many options we don’t want the responsibility of being forced to choose one, and then live with the consequences.

What about love? Maybe it’s a lack of love. Love from others. From family. Love for our own self. Like Matchbox Twenty, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been really loved ... by a hand that’s touched me.” And I feel like something should have given by now. And I’m more than a little bit angry. I spent seven years in a relationship that was more dysfunction than love. It wasted my time, my life, my .... goodness? The part of me that believed in the grander meaning of love, the goodness of people; not the fairytale ending, mind you: I’ve never bought into that. But there’s a certain kind of lasting spiritual connection to another human being I used to believe in, which got trampled along the way.

So then maybe it’s anger. I’m so angry at the people in my past, my present, and probably my damn future that I can’t stand myself sometimes. I’m angry at life for all the things it could be, but is not. I’m angry either AT God or that I don’t believe in God, one of the two.

Religion, then? A lack of faith in anything or anyone? The fact that everything I’ve ever trusted in has left me despairing? Religion, after all, is “ultimate” in our lives, so perhaps it’s the *ultimate* disappointment, the overarching emptiness, the aching whole in life that I have no way to fill.

Other times, I think it’s about needs that will never be met. And I’m not talking about food, shelter or water – although sometimes the mere act of trying to survive is enough to take us out – but also human needs. Affection. Companionship. Trust. Security. Sometimes I ask myself what I will do if I never experience these things again. If no one ever hugs me or holds me or stands by me. More importantly, what if I never have sex again? I’m not effing kidding here, I miss it. What if neither the grand nor base pleasures of life come my way again; is a world without joy a place worth staying?

It might just be the struggle. On days like today, my being wants there to be a foreseeable end to this sensation that I’m trying to run through water. I’m tired. I’m just sooo, soo tired of trying. And failing. And flailing. And having to try again. It feels as though, at any given moment, one more try will be too much to bear.

Maybe it’s all these things. Maybe it’s about being human. Maybe it’s far more universal a concept than we’re led to believe in our shame-ridden society. Maybe it’s the knowing that I’m not alone in all these feelings, yet being unable to connect to anyone in any profound, meaningful way. So many things well up inside with no outlet; despair ensues.

Alienation, then? The outsider to life, always looking in, wondering how the others are making it?

Merry Christmas: The Divorce is Final

2011-12-20T17:46:00.002-06:00

With less than a week left ‘till Christmas, my parents are traipsing into their respective divorce lawyers’ offices today to make it official: their marriage is over. After a year and 9 months of the back-and-forth, could it really not have waited a couple more days, I ask? As much as I wanted the whole thing to be over with, having the reality slap you in the face in the midst of this “joyous” time of year is just too much for anyone involved....my parents, my sister and me, the grandkids.

The timing makes the irony of our holiday plans all the more ironic: my mom invited all of my dad’s relatives over to their house for Christmas Eve. Without asking him. Or even telling him. Furthermore, he has to work, so he won’t even be there! Her own family she barely even speaks to, but lately she can’t seem to get enough of all the in-laws she couldn’t stand before. It’s too much dysfunction for me to bear.

No one tells you how to deal with this as an adult. There are a thousand books for little kids who have parents that are splitting up, and for grown-ups who survived divorce as kids. But for those of us whose parents have been married for 20-, 30-, 40-odd years ... where’s the manual? How do I keep this from feeding right into my cynical outlook on life and love? Where do I look to see the plausibility of a happy ever after?

It’s gonna be a holly, jolly Christmas: that’s for sure.

Six Weeks, Two Days, Three and a Half Hours

2011-12-13T21:07:00.000-06:00

Doesn’t sound like a very long time, does it? Well, it’s the longest I’ve lasted at any job in the past 4 years. Woohoo for the personal record I set there, bummer that I had to stick the punctuation mark at the end of that sentence today. I wanted it to work out. Desperately. But given my history with sales focused jobs, the writing was on the wall from the beginning.

Nonetheless, I accomplished a few small feats in the short weeks I was able to remain gainfully employed . . . pretend you’re impressed:

1. I arrived early to work every single day. Sometimes by 15 minutes! I realize other grown-ups do not consider this a marvel because they are on time to their jobs every single day. As a perpetually-5-minutes-late person, however, this goes down as a bloody effing miracle in my book. And no, I’m not English.

2. I (almost) secured a full-time position with benefits . . . if I would’ve met the metrics required to last beyond the probationary period, that is. The only other time that’s happened these past 4 years was when I got hired to sell gym memberships. Lasted one day at that.

3. I functioned as a semi-normal human being for the entire duration. I showered daily, put on makeup, and did my hair. I packed a lunch, ran errands, did chores when I got home, and carried out the mundane tasks of living. Again, not a grand triumph unless you barely leave the house. Brushed my teeth twice a day even, how do ya like that?

4. I socialized both in- and outside of work and was only a grouchy introvert a small portion of the time. In fact, I made a few friends and found it could be plausible that I am an acceptable human being. I went out for (3) drinks and pushed through my feelings of being a pathetic loser while surrounded by blackout-drunk coworkers who seemed to be just getting started as I was cashing in for the night. I stayed past what was comfortable, so at least I stretched outside of my box even if I’ll never fit in with my peers.

So I rejoined the land of the living. For a brief spell, at least. Built up some momentum. Now it’s time to hunker down, fill out a thousand online job apps again and pray to high heaven I don’t fall back into severe malfunction.

Unrelaxing relaxation.

2011-10-13T22:53:00.000-05:00

I went for myofascial release today.

Periodically my hip gets so bad that I nearly go berserk. Then I google and research and strategize what I will attempt next to make the pain go away.

So for various reasons I am running late to get to this appointment that is twice as far of a drive as I had allowed for. Rushing to go relax, I thought to myself. Makes a lot of sense.

Because I am late, she forgoes the 2-minute clothing removal and does the MFR with my clothes on. On any other day I would’ve thrown on yoga pants or something comfy, but no, toDAY I wear jeans. Awesome.

We can’t start on my hip right away because my sacrum is tilted out of whack, so we start with spinal decompression. Have I ever injured my tailbone? Why yes. Yes I have.

I knew I should have gone to the chiropractor first. I scold myself for another failure. I am annoyed that I always do the same crap, that I am always late, that I am supposed to be relaxing but my jeans aren’t very bendy and the whole thing is the opposite of the slow, gentle healing it is intended to be. I wonder why I ever leave the house.

She works on my jaw next. I try to put aside my OCD issue about people touching my face in hopes that my TMJ will be alleviated, but mostly I think about my pores getting clogged and the breakouts I will wake up to tomorrow.

On the drive home I call to see if there are massage openings at this other place I go to sometimes. In 25 minutes...perfect. I squeeze in an adjustment since the chiro’s in the same building and, after all, why do another treatment when everything’s in the wrong place? More scurrying around.

For the massage I go bare. Well technically, first I get on the table with my panties and my dignity in place, then I decide it will just make it awkward for her to access all the hip and glute muscles that have aching trigger points. Sigh.

Facedown with my head in the little circle, I fail to close my eyes soon enough and have to ponder the handwritten “grandpa” tattoo on her feet, along with her french-tipped toes. She starts with my legs, and I anger at the stretch marks in places that weren’t there a couple of years ago. I beat myself up over a few hundred more things. I panic at the slight breeze in my nethers, where a properly-tucked massage sheet normally should be shielding. Oh, well. Look at my privates. See if I care.

I tell myself that even fat people deserve massages as I internally apologize to the girl for having to squeegee across my fat rolls and dimples and stretch marks. I contemplate the vulnerability of baring one’s ugliness to a complete stranger, who - truth be told - doesn't really have much of a say. I wonder about the stories these people could tell of the bodies they have to look at. The possibility, not the promise, of being in slightly less pain allows me to surrender to this humiliation.

Accompanying me as always, the despair lingering beneath the surface. This is my body I’ve destroyed that I don’t want anyone to ever see again, this body that nobody (save a massage therapist or doctor) has touched in years and maybe never will again. This is my pain that may never go away that has ruined my life and my hope and my health. This is my summation of failures in the world and the reason I don’t want to be with myself, much less someone else.

Knowing when to give up

2011-07-19T01:06:00.001-05:00

I've never been great at letting go. At times, the refusal to quit is a great trait to have. But there are those other moments in life when the line between persevering ... and trying to force something to happen ... gets blurry. When is enough enough? When you're satisfied that you've given it your best last shot? When you're foolishly clinging to something that is probably not meant to be?

Being a person who has immense difficulty accepting failure, I've certainly held fast to many a thing long past its expiration date. I've doled out too many chances to people who didn't deserve it. I've given friends the benefit of the doubt, when clearly calling to see how I'm doing never crosses their minds. But what's really weighing heavily on me at the moment is my career path.

I have a useless master's degree that hasn't been put to use in nearly 4 years. I invested 7 years of my life in college, worked 2 years in my field, and now can't even get a job close to what my degree should be worth. Am I desperately clinging to my "investment" because of what it *should* have earned me by now, under some delusion that the seven hundredth job application-resume-cover letter-transcript-reference letter sent out will pay off with a position after all this time?

Ironically, I DID give up on this career 3 years ago. I gave away all of my books and resources and 99% of the materials I had spent years gathering. But after trying in vain to get any kind of other job, I have found my degree essentially useless for that purpose. In fact, I could have gotten more job offers with JUST a high school diploma. So I tried once again to get the job I am licensed to do and loved at one time. It's not happening.

Honestly, I just want to say "f**k it." I am so blessed tired of begging for a job I don't even know if I want anymore. I have screwed the whole daggone thing up: life, love, work, home, friendship. *sigh*

One of those days. SOME of those days.

2011-06-27T22:44:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I just wish I’d had the guts to get it over with the first time. The thought crosses my mind a lot lately.

I am so tired of struggling. I know I’m not the only one, but the only head I’m in is mine. I just want ONE thing to start going right, instead of trying to cram pieces together that never seem to fit.

Facing the reality of having accomplished so little to get my life back on track in (going on) four years now ... I just can’t effing stand it sometimes, and I want out. I’m tired of playing this game and watching everybody else win. A-holes that don’t deserve to win get to raise their trophies and gloat, and to be honest it makes me really friggin’ bitter sometimes. Okay: a lot of the time.

These are the feelings you’re not supposed to admit, that you don’t dare speak aloud, so I lay them out here where no one gives a damn ... much the same as in real life.

Perched in a church pew at my cousin’s wedding this weekend, all I could think about was my parents’ dissolving marriage. The start of a new family; the end of another. This “impending” divorce just can’t seem to make itself happen. Over a year later, there are no papers signed and appearances would suggest that nothing’s really changed. And yet soon, I’ll be one of ‘those’ people (whatever that means, right?) from a broken family with no home to go back to. Get it over with already, I think constantly.

The difference between me now and me a few years ago is that naive old me believed without reason and beyond reason that things were going to get better. If I just get through this, or make it to that, or accomplish the next most important goal, it’ll all work out in the end.

It’s not the presence of happiness I long for, but the absence of misery. And that sentiment epitomizes the core of depression that outsiders have no grasp of; in my mind I hear traces of a thousand know-it-all phrasings of the “well nobody’s happy all the time” line the blissfully ignorant throw around. Only somebody who’s basically happy most of the time would be stupid enough to say something like that to people who think about killing themselves. It’s ‘cause we believe we should be happy all the time and us self-obsessed whiners aren’t, gosh darn it!

“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.” That’s how my mother would put it, anyway; in a judgment-laden cliche purporting to be a comforting truism.

On optimism, and other qualities I usually don’t possess.

2011-05-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

I have a little bit of hope today.

For the first day since December of 2007, my hip doesn’t hurt. That makes me blissfully happy.

This is a momentous occasion for me, because it’s only the second time in about a dozen years that I’ve been pain-free. The other one was after a massage at the end of day 5 of RAGBRAI (a week-long bike ride across the state of Iowa) in 2006. I hope it lasts more than a day this time!!!!

Torturous pain will fuel the fire of depression like no other. Hurting all day, every day, every night for years could take even the best person out. And I was pretty screwed up to begin with. It has hurt so badly, for so long, that I’ve had a hard time believing it would ever end. And I would rather die than live that way forever.

If I can sit in a chair, or stand for more than 20 minutes, or get to sleep at night, or function somewhat like a normal human being, I could maybe keep a job! I could maybe lose all the weight I’ve put on during the years I couldn’t exercise the amount I’m accustomed to.

This could be the beginning of a way out of the darkness.

“Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.” -Rabindranath Tagore

The Un-Life

2011-05-18T02:16:00.000-05:00

Right now I am living the opposite of anything that could possibly resemble a life.

An existence creeping far too slowly towards death, perhaps. But a life? No.

My eyes are open twelve hours a day. I try; I fail. I try harder; I still fail.

On most days, it seems the best is all in the past (“best” being a misnomer, because nothing I had was worth keeping).

Someone loved me. Once.

I had a career. Once.

I was great at some things. Once.

Now I am nobody doing nothing headed: nowhere.

Most of the time, it feels as though I’m never going to make it back “in.” Whatever that means.

I’m terrified every moment of every day that I don’t have what it takes to do this.

I used to be the naive fool who believed if you just work hard enough, you can get what you want.

The way the world actually works is: you can try to do it all right and still wind up with nothing.

Or, as House aptly summarized, “People don’t get what they deserve, they just get what they get.”

“You’re Fired”

2011-04-16T01:02:00.000-05:00

If my life were Celebrity Apprentice, I’d be giving Donald Trump a run for his money.

I’ve gotten great at firing people from my life. You wrong me, you’re done.

Some people get a few more chances than others, until that final slight that sends their sum of missteps over the top. Yes, I keep track. If you’ve ever worked with me, lived with me, befriended me, interacted with me in any miniscule way whatsoever, you have a running tally. Unbeknownst to you, the tiny ways in which you thought you were screwing me over and getting away with it were all being accounted for. Sound much like a dysfunctional, paranoid worldview with a ‘get them before they get me’ mentality?

Depression is as ruthless as the cutthroat world of business. One by one, those around you enter the metaphorical boardroom, their performance as friend or mom or sibling appraised. Those who failed to show up during my hour of need are goners.

My chiropractor is next in line (yes, I realize how ridiculous this perverse game is). After a couple months of teetering on the edge with his pushy sales tactics, the attempts to guilt me into coming more often have gone too far. Sorry dude, I don’t owe you anything. I come when I want, I pay you for services rendered; that is the extent of my dues. I’m real nice until you try to take advantage of it, then (as CeeLo Green put it) forget you, and forget you, too.

Then the day comes when you look around, and there is no one left. In all honesty, I’m less miserable and more at peace the fewer people that are in my life. That way I don’t sit around wondering why people don’t call, why they don’t care, why I’m worthy of neither their time nor attention. I’m tired of caring more about others than they do about me.

Then there are the other days, when the empty void you have created sucks the breath out of you.

My aunt passed away on Tuesday morning in a hospital room by herself. No one in the family even knew she was there; a coworker had driven her there two days prior. Fifty-seven years old and morbidly obese, she’d been alone since a divorce and subsequent rape in her early twenties. It’s always sad to see another human being essentially give up on life and love and happiness. When it’s YOU, your own pain outweighs the sadness of others.

The sick part is, I’m jealous. I don’t think I can do 30 more years of this bullsh*t. Hell, I don’t know if I can do tomorrow. I’m pretty sure no deity would answer my prayers to just up and die, but I beg to be let out of this mess anyway. Let someone live who’s enjoying it.

I turned 31 yesterday. Still jobless, hopeless, and a hundred pounds overweight. Another year passed in paralysis, the weight of my screw-ups so unbearable that stillness is my only solace. I have effectively shut everyone out of my life, and the only reward is that they can no longer hurt me.

I can’t help but wonder if it’ll be another three decades before I’m dead and no one gives a damn. The thing is, I don’t want anyone standing over my dead body who never stood beside me in life.

Penelope Trunk tackles the suicide of Bill Zeller

2011-01-11T03:38:00.000-06:00

And I’m glad. There will be enough talking heads spouting their opinions, doing more harm than good.

Case in point: A teenager in small-town Iowa committed suicide last July, and the local news anchor condemned the act on air with a stern reproach: “Suicide is never the answer.” As though he could scare away suicide with his disapproval. Of all the things to say, KWWL chose to render judgment rather than extend compassion.

Perhaps I am uniquely sensitive to such remarks, having been suicidal for quite some time ... but isn’t that the point? Scoldings convey reproach, instead of any sort of understanding or empathy. “If you’re hurting, there is help.” A thousand other axioms might have actually been helpful in reaching out to others in pain. Suicidal people chastise themselves enough without others chiming in.

So I’m glad that Penelope wrote about his death, because she can speak from a place of courage instead of fear. Having experienced sexual abuse, she’s endured much of the same trauma. When you’ve actually gone through terrible things, you know better than to say all the wrong things to people in genuine pain.

I’m also glad Bill Zeller publicized his last words. In so doing, he gave the public a glimpse into the despair that leads to suicide. People will judge him regardless, but at least it won’t be for someone else’s version of why he did it.

I understand, even though I don’t. I can’t pretend to have any concept of the agony he endured over the course of his lifetime. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have been shamed into silence for his feelings. He could have spoken his truth looking forward to compassion and understanding instead of condemnation. But that is not the world we live in. It is a world where people feel it is easier to die than to be looked upon with the stigma of mental illness. It is a world where people internalize the hatred of everyone around them and pull the trigger.

My comment on Penelope’s post:

"He couldn't stand the idea of how the truth would cause people to think differently of him. Was that really his own distortion, or did he accurately internalize the stigma that would befall him? We, as a society, let him down. Something is backwards if you can be honest in death, but not in life.

The sad part is, the shame and hiding reinforces the crippling alienation (when in fact, sooooo many people are hurting).

The sadder part is, people will pretend to be compassionate and empathetic towards Bill Zeller NOW, when they never would have in real life. Same with all the publicized gay teen suicides over the past year. GIVE PEOPLE YOUR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE WHILE THEY ARE ALIVE.

Not a single thing he wrote seemed "crazy" or even "abnormal" *given what he has been through* - I guess I share your amazement that more people do not succumb to suicide given the trauma life inflicts on so many.

Those who are suffering cannot speak their truths for fear of the condemnation of others - just look at your last post!!! People cannot even conceive of the kind of despair so many go through. They are the sort who judge suicidal people as selfish...all the while their only concern being how the death affects THEM. Hmmm.....

When I write about trying to come back from the brink of suicide, I sure as hell don't do it with my name attached. Would I ever work again (will I anyway, LOL), is there a snowball's chance I could be a legitimate member of society ever again?

I almost killed myself 3 years ago. And 2 years ago. And last year. There are a lot of days I feel as Bill did; the pain and darkness have been intertwined with your very being for so long that there's just no way out. Most days I don't see a way back from all that has happened. Your courage to keep trying gives me hope. I have tried to "get help" but not found the kind I really need. It's not as easy or available as everybody thinks ... and even if you DO get real help, that in itself incites revulsion in some. Is it any wonder that people feel trapped and hopeless?"

Secrets kill.

“Anytime you need a friend....

2011-01-01T01:45:00.000-06:00

I will be here...” So sings Mariah Carey.

But some words are only true in a song.

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”

Maybe those are the kind of friendships other people have.

Lucky bastards.

In the real world, you don’t always get back what you give.

“Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.” -Albert Camus

In my life’s darkest times, no one has “shown up” for me.

If I wanted to hit the bars, there are a bazillion people, friends-cousins-acquaintances, I could call up.

If I wanted ditzy bimbo friends to gossip with about who’s sleeping with who, I could go be another dime-a-dozen trollop down at the bar all hoed up with my group of girls.

But when your life’s falling apart:

Do you call the friend who’s not there for the little things to be there for the big things?
Who can’t be burdened for an hour lunch...for a life crisis?
Should you unload on someone too busy to post back on Facebook, much less reply to an e-mail?

My so-called “best friends” have known about all the major losses in these past several years of my life ... and not bothered to call or see how I’m doing, or even if I’m alive or dead.

“Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say.”

For a time you continue to reach out anyway, to act normal, hiding your pain so as not to be a burden. You try to be the kind of friend you wish you had, until that nagging question in the back of your mind one day leaps to the forefront: where WERE you?

Where were you when life was kicking my ass?

When I couldn't get out of bed?

When I had no one?

I didn’t even show you the darkness, I pretended for you...wasn’t I a good enough actor?

I know, I know: it’s always more fun to knock back a few margaritas with the happy, laughing bunch.

Failure might be contagious. Despair is catching.

And I...am a leper?

So before you shut me out completely, best friend, I will throw you out along with the rest of the world.

I never wanted you to feel sorry for me. I didn’t need your pity. I did need to look in your eyes and see that I was the same person you called “friend” before this bulldozer ran over my life.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares." ~Henri Nouwen

"But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away." ~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

HATRED KILLS: Seth Walsh, suicide, and bullying gays to death.

2011-01-01T00:10:00.003-06:00

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

Do these words ring any less true today than when Martin Luther King Jr. first spoke them in the 1960’s?

Fifty years later, people die, and we stand by.

2010 draws to a close with coffins nailed shut on good people who succumbed to their tormentors.

That’s right: this is America, and it’s the year 2010, and kids are killing themselves in the land of the free.

How hard should it have been to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

Think there was a chance in hell it would’ve happened without Obama in office?

I am almost as incensed at the lack of outrage as I am at the injustices themselves.

Examine for a moment the teenage bullying epidemic Ellen DeGeneres refers to in this PSA:

Seth Walsh. Asher Brown. Tyler Clementi. Zach Harrington. The nameless others we’ll never know about because it seemed easier to commit suicide than to face the hateful condemnation of society. Can you imagine living with the internalized hatred of strangers, friends, peers, family members?

"While their straight friends and siblings can hope to fall in love and have their most important partnerships lifted up, celebrated, and supported by the community, the best that sexual minorities can hope for is to slip under the radar, unnoticed by those who would call their loving partnerships abomination.

Some internalize this condemnation. They accept the message that their deepest impulse toward love and intimacy is an affront to God. And since that impulse is an ineradicable feature of who they are, some come to see their very existence as a blight on the world."

“Their rejection of me is as deep as their faith.”

Excerpt from "Gay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response," by Eric Reitan

It’s a national travesty, yet no one seems to give a damn.

YOU don’t have to care if YOU aren’t gay. Right?

See if this rings a bell:

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” -Martin Niemoeller, on the failure of Germans to speak out against the Nazis.

Maybe you throw around phrases like, “That’s so gay,” equating homosexuality with stupidity. Harmless?

Or call someone ‘faggot’ as the worst possible insult, but you wouldn’t dare utter ‘nigger’ because that’s vile…if you think it’s not hate speech, you’re wrong.

Perhaps you tolerate gay people…instead of valuing who they are, much less *loving* them…

Maybe tonight another young person bows out of the torture, because:

"even if the self-hatred does not sink in all the way, the experience of alienation from the community, the sense of being alone in the world and despised by the community, can lead to suicidal despair"

-- Reitan, Organized Ugliness and Gay Suicide

No mother, brother, sister, friend should EVER have to endure this kind of senseless loss. Chely Wright, founder of Like Me, was on the Nate Berkus show earlier this week in support of Seth Walsh, who could no longer cope with the cruel bullying he was forced to endure at school. Wright spoke openly about how close she came to suicide as a closeted lesbian. “When you wake up every day and you know that a good portion of the world doesn’t like you for who you are naturally born to be, it hurts.” Her phenomenal autobiography Like Me outlines her breakdown and subsequent renaissance. Find out more about Chely’s work on Facebook, follow her organization Like Me on Twitter, or join the No H8 Campaign.

As for me, I am ashamed to live in a country where the ignorant, the hateful, the intolerant - the bullies - reign in tyranny. In a seminal piece on this issue, Reitan argues that, "The problem runs much deeper than overt bullying" ...

"Harrington killed himself, not because he was being bullied, but because he became painfully conscious of the self-righteous intolerance of a large segment of his community."

Never give hatred a forum.

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." – MLK Jr.

Tidings of (no) comfort and (lack of) joy...

2010-12-24T00:14:00.000-06:00

It’s been a hard day. A hard week. And it’s not over yet.

2 more days of Christmas. One more week of holidays. One more year to kiss goodbye in which I didn’t “pull myself up by the bootstraps” and “get back on the horse” and “take the bull by the horns” and all those other bullsh*t anti-motivators that mysteriously haven’t rescued me from my chosen (right?) anguish.

Yeah, it’s one of those days. There’s no place to go, no book to read, no show to watch, no project to undertake ... that could sufficiently distract me from the pain that I’m feeling.

If I were a drug addict, I’d be high as a kite right now, but I’m too chickensh*t to go that hardcore.

So I sit with it.

Despair creeps in through the cracks, the same ones hope is seeping out of.

It might have something to do with the seventy-ninth (if I want to exaggerate I’ll f***ing exaggerate) job I couldn’t make it at, and the ensuing disgust with myself for adding to my quit-list this week.

It might have something to do with my refusal to participate in family events this holiday season, and my rejection of *things* in place of love.

You aren’t supposed to be weary at 30, are you? I mean, really. I’m not talking about exhaustion; that was 5 years ago when I was 25 going on 40, dead weight dragging through the days.

I’m weary of 1-being me and 2-hating me.

I’m weary of life, and the suffocating alienation of being unseen. And yet, in premise, invisibility sounds so liberating...

I’m weary of reaching out to people who don’t reach back, though I know it is my very nature to give the most to people who are incapable of giving another human being what they need.

I’m tired of people who don’t try, who don’t change, who don’t care. They drain my soul.

I’M tired of trying, of changing mySELF, of caring. It drains my soul even more.

I’m tired of the questions-
The demands-
The requirements of life-
Where will I go and what will I do and who will I be and what is the point?

Yeah. Weary.

“Tonight at the end of light
Tonight I feel lonely
I thought I heard my heart stop beating
I long for you to hold me.”

An Alli Rogers song creeps in (and I’m not even a Christian for cripes sake).
I could go cry in the back pew of a raggedy church.
I could thrown myself down in the aisle and scream, “Why?” to a god I don’t believe in.

I guess we all have the same questions, and the lucky ones are able to find solace in someone else’s answers.

But when there’s no comfort in faith, in friends, in family, in love ... is there any true comfort to be found at all?

Or just emptiness...

Unemployment … and the downward spiral.

2010-12-18T05:07:00.001-06:00

When I decided to be done with life, the job was the first thing to go. Buh-freakin-bye. And let me tell you, there’s a moment of pure, blissful emancipation inherent in the simplicity of the decision to not – ever – return to the place or the people that have led to your demise. In my case, I think it was my first real act of rebellion in life. A resounding “NOPE!” to life’s ceaseless demands and ‘musts’ and obligations.

At the end of the day, you always have options. Yes or no [or in Shakespearian terms: “To be, or not to be,” as Hamlet stated with slightly more eloquence than me]. If you spend enough of your life as a doormat, it’s possible to forget that, in fact, no one can *make* you do anything. You have to decide for yourself if your life is going to be what YOU want it to be, because this isn’t a dress rehearsal. And that’s the Sartre in me speaking…..

You actually don't have to white-knuckle it until you hate your life so much that you want to kill yourself to *finally* start saying ‘no’ to the psychic vampires who would be content to suck the very soul out of you. There’ll be other victims around the corner for them to beat down to a pulp. So decide it’s not gonna be you.

Between a bullying boss, a degrading attack on my being, and a sudden personal abandonment, it was as if a switch had been flipped: I was just -done- with it all. Tired of doing things I didn’t want to do. If there was never going to be anything more to life than jumping through somebody else’s hoops, and going through the motions of an existence I can’t even stand, I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. Why stick around so other people can tear me down and rip me apart; how long are you supposed to bend over backwards doing for others, only to get crapped on in return?

And so, on what was to be the last night of my life, I composed a bye-bye letter of resignation to my bitch of a boss. You know, the sort of thing everybody secretly wishes they could do, but which you shouldn’t even *think* about doing if there’s even a smidgen of a chance you’re going to have to live with the consequences (HELL-O, take it from me). The mature part of me is, of course, ashamed of such childish self-indulgence. And then there’s the smug part of me that bubbles over in self-satisfied hysterics just thinking about that slore checking her inbox that next morning. There are times in life when people get exactly what they deserve. It just happened to be her time to be humiliated in front of HER colleagues in the same manner she liked to dish out. Karma’s a bitch (and yes, I’ve certainly gotten *my* come-uppins, so don’t worry about that).

So in my case, you could really say I brought on this whole “unemployment” situation mySELF, so boo-hoo WTF are you crying about, you moron?!?! Yeah, yeah, I get it: there are bazillions of laid-off workers who – through no fault of their own – have found themselves unable to support their families. Believe me, I have immense compassion for everyone in that situation. I don’t want anyone’s pity, nor do I expect anyone to feel bad for this mess I have gotten myself into. I screwed myself, and I know it. It wasn’t the smart thing to do – but then, do you honestly think a suicidal person is in a rational frame of mind?

But regardless of the circumstances that lead to unemployment, I’d wager the emotions are pretty much the same once you’re swimming (err, drowning?) in it.

It’s humiliating. You feel like the scum of the earth and start to believe that everyone is thinking what a lazy, worthless drain on society you’ve become, and how easy it is to just go out and get a job if you’re willing to work hard. You’re desperate to prove your worthiness to civilization by jumping back into the swing of things … if only you COULD. If only someone would give you the chance. “If only _____ would happen, I could get it all back on track,” you think to yourself. You feel ashamed of yourself (even if it’s not your fault in the slightest) because, after all, if you really wanted a job bad enough you would be working, right? That’s the message from society.

Well, if you’ve never been unemployed, you need to keep your damn mouth shut, because you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. You don’t have a clue what it’s like to suddenly feel powerless over your own life and feel sick with uncertainty in the pit of your stomach. You couldn’t possibly know how disconcerting it is to find yourself at the mercy of factors beyond your control, blowing around in the wind with your future up in the air. And you sure as f*** don’t know the existential dread of waking up wondering, “Where in the HELL am I going in this life, and WTF am I going to do to survive?”

Next, your disparaged soul sets about to the task of job-hunting, a process my (former) friend Singlutionary at Unabashedly Unemployed once described as: “demoralizing and dehumanizing and just shitty in general. It would wear down even the strongest person into a blubbering pulp.” She always did have a way with words.

Alas, that friendship was another casualty of my erratic, suicidal behavior. It really bites to glance in the rear-view mirror and catch a glimpse of all your ugliest self has left in its wake. Especially when your destructive fight-or-flight antics cost you those precious few in life who ‘get’ the floundering groundlessness of life for the simultaneously unattached and unemployed. Add it all to the list of things that can’t be undone…

Back to my point: There is a peculiar desperation unique to long-term unemployment that can easily culminate in surrender. Truly, you reach a point where it literally becomes absurd to fill out the three thousand and fourth employment application, and you are absolutely convinced that you will never be a productive member of society again … so why bother to keep trying?? Then you awaken wide-eyed for the next 3 weeks and frantically search the job boards until your eyeballs blur over and roll into the back of your head. Until you ditch the pointless effort, crash, and take refuge in your bed for a week … only to revive the panic cycle once again in a few days. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, yet I know there are millions in the same boat as me.

Never in a million years would my younger self have believed that I would end up 27 years old (then 28, then 29, then 30….) and unable to get back into the workforce. That a lifetime of striving and hard work and straight A’s would amount to nothing. That 7 years of college and scholarships and 4.0’s and summa cum laude would bring me to: a dead end. In one fell swoop, I rendered my entire life’s work null and void. No one cares about the decade of solid employment with a strong work ethic; all that matters now are these “gaps in employment” I’ve got to account for. Try conjuring up the confidence to make it through an interview after you’ve flushed your career down the toilet … good times. References? Don’t make me laugh.

Thing is, I didn’t intend to be here dealing with all of this.

I’ve spent plenty of days wishing I would’ve just gotten it over with, because it feels like a trillion miles on this journey just to get back to the place where I was barely hanging on to begin with. And that absolutely terrifies me.

So, yeah. Being a disgrace unto yourself certainly feeds into all the pre-existing suicidal impulses. Unemployment is a fitting companion to the severely depressed, because your feelings of worthlessness can be reinforced on a daily basis!

A few months ago, I purged the utter despair of my unemployment into a little ditty:

Seasons of Hopelessness - "Rent" theme song: The economy tribute version

Can you hear the "Rent" theme song? This is the economy tribute version...

2010-12-18T04:28:00.001-06:00

Slight variation on this classic: hit play and sing along to the new lyrics!

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Job app-li-ca-tions
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
rebuffs to bear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
com-pan-y websites
How do you measure—a wasted degree?

In networks - on LinkedIn
In resumes - or cover letters
On Monster -or Twitter
In e-mails and tweets
In - five hundred twenty-five thousand
di-fer-rent job boards
How do you measure a year in this strife?

I’ve had e-nouuuggghhhh

No unemploy-mennnnnnnt
Or health insur-annnnnnnce

Measure in loss
I’ve lost my liiiiiiiiiiifeee

I’ve lost my liiiiiiiiiiifee

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
racked up achievements
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
interview preps
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
hoops that I jumped through
How do you measure the worth
Of a woman or a man?

Soloist #1:

In A’s that she earned
Or the days he just cried
In loans they deferred
Or in bankruptcies filed

It's time now—to scream out
Cuz the job search never ends
Let's commemorate

Remember the year that we wished we were dead

My sala-ry’s now wa-gessssssssss
I’m on antidepress-annnnnnnnnnts

Can’t take more re-jec-tiooonnnnnnnn

My savings is gone

Everything’s gooooooonnne

Soloist #1: Measure, the money in savings

I can’t pay my reeeeennnnnt

Now I am home-leeeessssssss

I don’t get – how I can
Be under- over- qual-i-fi-ied

On food stamps – we’re poor now
The educated un-em-ploy-ed

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
loans in foreclosure
How do you figure the interest on that?

Everything’s goooooooooonnnne!!!!!!!

How to kiss your career goodbye in one great big gratifying letter of resignation

2010-12-18T04:07:00.001-06:00

Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 2:56:37 PM
Subject: RE: action plan- updated

Sure thing, "Boss"!! Whatever you say:)

wait, on second thought, why don't you do it yourSELF???? cuz frankly bitch, i don't think i care to ever do anything you tell me to do again. correction, take out "think." i'm never going to do anything you tell me to do again. especially when you could have just as easily sent the plan to **** yourself as told me to do it. f**k that!

and no, dumbass, i told you all 7 thousand times that isn't what we needed to turn in for the grant. but. no one ever listened. just complain, complain, bitch, complain - my god do you people ever listen to yourselves? can't figure out that - if instead of bitching about the way things are, you did something to change them - things might actually be different someday. I've finally realized, however late in the game, that people don't actually WANT things to be different. duh! why was i always too stupid to figure that out???

Wow, I wish I had recorded your voice on tape for your superintendent to hear who you REALLY are and how you treat people "Mrs. M***** - a bully and a coward just like all the other little cowards on this committee who say all kinds of things about you behind your back they would never have the guts to say to your face. It's curious to me, how no one can ever stand up to people like you. No one ever stands up for anything, makes me sick really. can't even stand up for these kids they like to pretend they all care so much about. oh well, it's a losing battle anyway.

oh, how you hated that i could see exactly who you are C****. isn't that why you liked to come stand over my desk and puff up your big 7-foot self to try to be something you're not? E***'s theory was that you needed to get laid. It's probably a little more complicated than THAT, right?

Anyhoo,

Happy (___) evaluation to you all!!!

Wish I could be there....

On Shame.

2010-12-10T00:45:00.001-06:00

This evening I commented on a post from my kindred spirit Suzanne of The Invisible Prison on the topic of "Shame and Setbacks." As usual with Suzanne's posts, I felt like she had somehow gotten into my head and was writing down everything I think and feel on a daily basis while fighting not to succumb to the weight of wanting to just give up.

Depression assassinates your former self, and substitutes an imposter that might look a bit like the old you (though admittedly less well-groomed), yet bears little resemblance to the person you once were. What remains is a sham of an excuse for a human being. A fraud. And it's hard to feel proud of being THAT.

Nearly a year ago, I divided a paper into 2 columns entitled "Who I Used To Be" and "Who I am Now" (give it a rest you cognitive behaviorists ... I know those headings are misnomers & that who I AM has not fundamentally changed). It was hard to swallow. Self-loathing oozed from my pores. What I was looking at was the result of internalizing the hatred and cruelty of others. My new "characteristics" seemed to scream, "If everyone is going to treat me like a worthless piece of garbage not worthy of respect...I may as well become it!!"

It looked a WHOLE lot like surrender.

My full comment as posted under "Shame and Setbacks:"

"i - literally - can't even tell u how much i relate to everything u wrote, ESPECIALLY paragraph #4. i get SOOOO ashamed and disgusted with myself, i regret any commitment i make when i'm feeling a little better, because inevitably the time comes and i just don't want to go out and be a member of the human race.

what i hate most: this is the complete opposite of the person i used to be. the dependable, responsible one. the one you can count on. now, i don't want anybody to count on me for anything, or i will disappoint them AND myself.

grief/loss on top of depression is what put me over the top 3 years ago.

ur right, it all becomes one and the same; a big blur of pain.

i'm filled with fear at the moment, because i accepted a job the other day. just a part-time seasonal gig. it's the only interview i've made it to recently; the others have been no-shows and, like u, i just can't even deal with how bad i am making myself look so i usually don't cancel. i end relationships because i feel like all i do is let people down. i HATE this. i hate myself for being like this. anyway, i am afraid i can't even handle this dumb job or the possibility that - once again - i won't make it out of bed in the morning to get there and the self-loathing will overflow once again...

‎"There are four ways you can handle fear. You can go over it, under it or around it. But if you are ever to put fear behind you, you must walk straight through it. Once you put fear behind you, leave it there."

grief is misery; sometimes u gotta just lean into the pain instead of resisting it because "What we resist persists." eventually, if we're lucky, we come out the other side...

it is hard to try and show yourself the same compassion that you would extend any other person in your situation. i mean, really: ARE u a horrible person? do u deserve what ur going through? i can think of some pretty terrible people, and i doubt u fall into that category."

As I wrote before in this post about the revelation I had the night in Nashville when I came close to annihilating my existence on this planet ---

The question I have to answer every single minute of every single day: Who is going to win - the people who have treated me like sh*t in this life, who don't give a damn if I live or die - or the people who love me [and...am I one of them]?????

Hatred is a strong sentiment, after all. To wind up in the category of people so despicable as to deserve hatred is really quite reprehensible. I feel ashamed. Not just of things I have done, but of who I am. My very being.

"I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be"

TEEN SUICIDE: What Will It Take For People To GET It?

2010-12-04T22:06:00.002-06:00

[Recently I posted the following questions to my local craigslist; how else do you ask the community a question?]

Tonight I watched the movie "To Save a Life," about the aftermath of a young man shooting himself in the head at school.

I don't live in Mount Vernon, don't know Jacob or his family personally, and it's none of my business.

Except, really, it's everyone's business.

I know it happened in a small town, and it's a taboo subject, and it's uncomfortable to talk about. But that's too bad.

Because we failed him. Every one of us. We have to do better: as schools, as communities, as a nation. How many teenagers have killed themselves the past few months across our country? Here are just a couple:

I'm sure I'm not the only one with unanswered questions, and it's not because I don't respect the right to privacy; I have no desire to be a voyeur into this tragedy.

I just don't want his life, and death, to have been in vain. Right now there is an outpouring of love and compassion for the survivors. My question is, where was everyone's love and support when HE needed it?

I don't know any more than was reported on KCRG or in the newspaper. And that's the problem. There is a person behind that headline, a headline that will fade away before we as a community answer for the fact that we might not have enough access to counseling for kids in school, not enough bullying prevention, not enough WHAT??? How can we prevent other kids from dying if we, as a community, do not require answers to these questions? There are no simple answers for what might have led up to this tragedy, but the worst thing we can do is NOTHING.

In the midst of my anger and sadness that this happened, I ponder the statement his death has made and wonder: who was he sending a message to? So many things had to go wrong for him to arrive at the conclusion that life is too painful to endure.

Jacob did not talk to a friend - he didn't tell a trusted teacher - he didn't stop in the counseling office or call home. He died alone in a bathroom stall, in the middle of a crowded school full of people, and we will never know why he felt that he could not turn to a single one of them for help.

I wonder if the headlines have already faded, if everything is already slipping back into the status quo....

Are we going to get the message????

What is it going to take for people to pay attention? To give a damn? To actually *DO* something about the kids who don't know what to do with the pain they're holding?

Will YOU be a little less of a jerk today, or do you think your actions don't matter?

"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

It's not about finding someone to blame, or pointing the finger (unless, of course, we need to do that...don't know enough). But we've got to wake up.

We all need to look in the mirror and ask the hard questions.

Jacob's not here to say "I'm sorry" to. So I hope we get the message.

"Hero" by Superchick

"No one sits with him, he doesn't fit in
But we feel like we do when we make fun of him
Cause you want to belong, do you go along?
Cause his pain is the price paid for you to belong
It's not like you hate him or want him to die
But maybe he goes home and thinks suicide
Or he comes back to school with a gun at his side
And a kindness from you might have saved his life..."

On the eve of my 3rd anniversary.

2010-11-19T21:19:00.000-06:00

But not a happy one.

3 years ago today a plan was unfolding.

I stopped answering the phone.

I stopped going to work.

I penned a letter of resignation.

And a will.

And a suicide note to my family.

I picked a place to die.

I printed my mapquest directions.

Then I packed some pills and some bags and started driving.

I’d always wanted to go to Nashville, so I went there.

I checked into the downtown Hilton.

In between hysterics and crying, I walked.

I peered into the Cumberland River over the E Street Bridge.

I circled honkytonks and landmarks.

The city was empty and dead.

Everyone had left to be with their families for Thanksgiving.

Homeless men talked to me.

They were the only other ones walking the streets alone.

I know they could see it in my face.

I ate my “last meal” in a dark corner of the Wild Horse Saloon.

I tipped the waitress extra well.

Then I walked back out into the cold, misty night.

So many other things happened before, during, and after all of this. Telling this story takes more concentration than I possess at the moment. I don’t know where to start or end, what to include or omit. My brain ping pongs off a thousand details and emotions. There is the story of how I got THERE, and how I got HERE. Obviously only 99% of my plan got carried out that evening in Nashville, but the 1% that didn’t is really all that counts.

I am in a far different place than I was even last year at this time. In November of 2009 I was starting to carry out a third suicide plan. I wish I could look back at how far I’ve come since Thanksgiving of 2007, but instead I continue my fight to avoid getting down to that last 1% again. I don’t have my life back, or my career, or even a job. I can’t sustain friendships or follow through on commitments. Where I could be or should be or need to be threatens to overwhelm my panic buttons at any given moment.

But I’m trying to focus on just one thing that matters, so I can feel like something I do is of benefit to another human being. Halfway through my QPR training to certifty as an online suicide intervention specialist, I clicked on their link for the video Moments by Emerson Drive. It’s one of those songs I’ve heard a hundred times, but never *listened* to. Déjà vu prickled the little hairs on my arms as I watched a familiar story unfold on the rain-soaked E Street Bridge in Nashville. The lyrics hit me straight in the gut:

“I stood there tryin' to find my nerve

Wondered if a single soul on Earth

Would care at all

Miss me when I'm gone

That old man just kept hanging around

Lookin' at me, lookin' down

I think he recognized

That look in my eyes

Standing with him there I felt ashamed

I said, You know, I haven't always been this way…”

Three years ago I roamed the streets of Nashville preparing to die, and the only people who looked me in the eye or spoke to me were homeless men. I recall that flash of recognition in each others’ eyes: That night, we were all somebody’s throwaway. I wondered what made them choose to go on living day to day in their circumstances, while my reasons for not wanting to suddenly seemed absurd in comparison. I couldn’t comprehend why they would care about me in the slightest, when people who “loved” me wouldn’t pick up the phone. I marveled at the irony of the situation, and how the wrong people almost won. The people who didn’t give a damn.

All of these moments, and the utter lonliness that gripped me on the Shelby Street Bridge, welled up as I cried my way through the video.

Part of me wants to get in the car and drive to Nashville next Thursday to give back to the people who saved my life. But I can’t exactly take off like I used to without sending off the “cuckoo for cocoa puffs” alarm bells. I haven’t been hospitalized and I don’t care to be. Maybe I will get up the courage to ask a friend to go with me so that I can have a full circle moment and finally begin to move on with my life. We’ll see. I don’t tend to stick to my plans these days, and sometimes that’s a very good thing.

“You’re only as sick as your secrets” – Ashley Judd plays the role of Helen TOO well . . .

2010-09-12T22:04:00.000-05:00

I’d love to spill *all* million thoughts I have about the release of Helen, but I’ll settle for expressing my gratitude to Sandra Nettelbeck for having the courage to make this film, a 10-year process she describes in this Huffington Post interview. Despite the movie’s leap from Sundance straight to DVD, the very fact that this taboo subject matter is seeing the cinematic light of day gives me hope that the door to increased understanding has been opened. The movie will strike a chord deep in the souls of all who have suffered the torment of their inner demons as it explores “this extraordinary nightmare of the mind from inside.” Nettelbeck bravely assumed the task of telling the tale of suicidal depression from the point of view of the person afflicted. Yes, we glimpse the devastating impact on everyone around Helen, but it’s not often a movie portrays the depth of despair the sufferer is undergoing. Having lost her own childhood friend to suicide, Nettelbeck undoubtedly sought to do justice to the fragility of human life, and Helen’s poignantly disturbing denouement attains the intense realism she strove for.

Just a few of the dynamics at play in Helen which resonated with me:

• Rage. NO ONE will control your decisions. If nothing else, you will live and die on your own terms.

• “I want you to GO!” Pushing away the very people we, in fact, wish would never let us go. Every relationship is tested to its limits in pushing ‘unconditional love’ to the brink.

• Ambivalence. You’re always teetering on the verge, wanting death as little as you want life.

• Destruction. As Judd portrays so well, self-indulgence in the compelling urge to destroy yourself and everything around you is sometimes overpowering.

• Impulsivity. Hair trigger. Any little thing or - more importantly – *nothing in particular* could send you over the edge . . . and that is terrifying to loved ones.

• Flight risk. At any given moment you might up and leave. Because you can. You are done staying in places you don’t want to be.

There comes a point when there’s nowhere left to run or hide. Believe me, I have done both for as long as possible . . . nearly three years to be precise. The choice to “get busy living, or get busy dying” cannot be interminably dodged.

Helen can’t give us the “why” or “how” or "cure" of depression – as those answers remain elusive to researchers, psychiatrists, counselors, and sufferers alike – but its authenticity hit home enough to make me want to own my life again (as if I ever had a choice). Judd reminded me that the only thing that can save us – if anything can – is honesty. She has spent time in the grips of severe depression herself (see her interview here), and I look forward to her upcoming autobiography with great anticipation. “Her no-holds-barred portrayal brought me closer than was comfortable to feeling what it must be like to be severely depressed.” --Read Joseph Smigelski’s full review here, along with a Q & A with Judd.

Listen to "No Place to Fall" from the soundtrack:
(featuring Norah Jones of The Little Willies)

“If I had no place to fall

and I needed to

could I count on you

to lay me down…”