Walking Away

There's this song currently playing on the radio. The first time I heard it, I thought it was beautiful. I was driving in the car and as soon as I heard the piano introduction, I was hooked. I got home that evening and wanted to share it with my kids, so I looked up the YouTube video. Like many others, the song became even more poignant for me after seeing the video. Take a look:

Now here's what makes me different from most others: Most people, when they watch the video, become emotional at the scene where the elderly couple is introduced. Watching the emotion of the man as he is saying goodbye to his wife stirs great emotion. For me, though, I'm teary from the first scene. The scene of the little girl huddling on her bed, with a blanket wrapped around her, which she eventually pulls over her head.

I've mentioned bits and pieces of my childhood before, that things weren't good. So when I reacted with strong emotion to the little girl, I assumed I was simply identifying with her fear, her isolation, hiding under the bed to escape frightening scenarios. From there, I went on, always listening to this song with a touch of emotion, remembering each time the little girl who felt so alone. For that reason, I typically avoid hearing the song, I don't need to spend every day remembering my childhood: I find that best left for the occasional thought.

Then, a friend of mine posted to Facebook a cover of this song. The band covering the song is called Pentatonix and I absolutely love their music, I sang in an a cappella choir for eleven years. When I saw the video, I absolutely had to watch it, knowing the music would be even more beautiful than the original song. I commented before I clicked the link, "OMG, I know I'm going to cry!"

Sure enough, I did. I bawled my eyes out watching this video, crying so hard tears were dripping off my chin.

Afterward, because I take a walk down memory lane every time I hear this song, it finally dawned on me why it is this song touches me so much. It can't possibly be just the image of the little girl, she's not in the Pentatonix video.

No, what touches me is realizing I did exactly what this song suggests one might do: I walked away.

I've mentioned previously walking away is a big deal for me. One of the reasons I end up (and stay) in abusive/disrespectful relationships is I can't stand walking away from people. I felt like my parents walked away from me when I was a teenager, because they kept passing me back and forth, "My spouse has a problem with her, I need you to take her for awhile." "I can't handle the stress, I need you to take her back, I'll pay for her plane ticket." And so it went until I moved out on my own.

Wait. I moved out on my own.

In light of my previous recollections/thoughts from, "A Promise to Myself," I remember from a very young age I couldn't wait until I was old enough to get away. I promised myself over and over and over again as soon as it was legal for me to be on my own, I would move out. That is exactly what I did.

When I was thirteen, I needed out of my mother's house so bad, I wrote every adult relative I had asking if I could move in with them. When that failed (one of my aunts turned me in, read the letter to my mother), I turned to looking for my father. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of him in seven years, my last memory of him was him being arrested outside my house while I screamed and cried and was dragged away from the window by my older brother. The military police jailed him and held him long enough for my mother to pack up my brother and I and move us out of state.

When I went looking for my father, my mother reminded me he was a junkie and an alcoholic and abusive. "Not to me," was my reply, "he never abused me." With that, the search went on until I eventually located my father, who was five years sober at that point. How that ended can be found in, "Attention, Love, and Affection," after telling my father for over a year that I would leave and never look back if he didn't stop abusing me and start parenting me, I finally left.

This is the point of this story: My parents didn't leave me, I left them.

While I was homeless, shortly after moving out of my father's house, my mother begged me to come back and live with her. I told her, "I can't. I have to stand on my own now, I have to prove to myself that I can stand on my own and be okay."

So I did.

The little girl who sat huddled in a ball, rocking, crying, stroking her own hair, she got up and she walked away. She proudly and boldly looked her abusers in the eye and said, "No more. I will not take it anymore."

Just like the song says, they were the ones that I loved and I said goodbye. Now that's empowering.

A Promise to Myself

One day in mid 1992, a nearly thirteen year old girl sat huddled in the smallest place she could find. Here, she found solace. She felt reasonably hidden from her abuser and as safe as the moment could allow her to feel. As she sat rocking, crying, arms wrapped around her knees, pulling herself as close together as possible, she reflected on her life.

"Life only sucks because I'm not in control of it," she told herself. Rocking, stroking her hair now in long comforting strokes, she thought, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. All I have to do is make it to 18, then I will have all the power and I can make myself happy, it doesn't matter what anyone else says, thinks, or does."

Fast forward twenty-one years.

The same girl, now a woman, divorced, with three children lays in bed reflecting on her life.

"Wow, I think I've let myself down. Yes, I've been in control all this time, but at the same time, I haven't. I let society tell me I needed someone else to make me happy, but look."

And look she did. She reflected on the previous weekend.

Through a number of circumstances, she found herself completely alone for the weekend. Only one other soul occupied her home for most of the weekend.

What did she do with herself?

She loved herself. Friday, Valentine's day, a day which she never really celebrated except in small ways as expected by others (an "I love you," here, a pack of Valentine's cards in school there), she decided that she needed to treat herself.

And treat herself she did. She took herself out to see--of all things--a love story. Sitting by herself in the theater, she laughed for 10 minutes straight and burst into random tears of joy and sorrow as a beautiful story unfolded on the screen before her. After the movie, she bought herself dinner, went home and watched an episode of her current show. As she headed to bed, she felt buoyant and alive. Overflowing with joy and happiness and a feeling of being loved. In a moment, she stopped and reflected on her feelings and the words surfaced to her mind, "I love me. I love being alone. I forget, so easily how much I love to be alone. Why? Because nobody loves me like I love me!!" And with that, she went to bed, smiling herself to sleep.

Over the course of the weekend, she went out and spent time with people, casual acquaintances whom she desired to know better and perhaps spend more time with. People with whom she had a good time, good conversation, good food. But at the end of it all, she returned home, alone.

But she did not feel alone.

And now, she remembers that day, all those years ago. She remembers promising to love herself, take care of herself, make herself happy. She remembers how she spent the first eighteen years of her life almost totally alone and hardly ever regretting it.

She remembers, too, all of the times where she has lain in her bed and cried for her loneliness. She remembers all of the times where she has felt that she is destined to walk the world alone. And in this moment, where she remembers all of this, she does not feel lonely. Nor does she feel sad.

Instead she feels powerful. Because she realizes she loves and is loved. She is surrounded by people: friends, family, lovers. Some she talks to nearly daily, some she talks to only when they remember to do so. But none of this means that she is lonely or unloved.

And in this feeling of power, she knows that it is her heart's earnest desire to live alone. Not in a state of never having company. Friends, lovers, family, these will always be welcome in her home for days at a time. But in the end, they will return to their space and her space will be her own.

Because no one loves her like she does and that's exactly the way she likes it.

Accomplishments

So, I sat and announced to the world at large that I was setting myself a goal. And in this announcement, I indicated I might fail. I indicated I would struggle, work hard, falter, steady myself and walk on.

In the end, I think this is exactly what I have done.

Yes, I understand the goal was to write a blog post a day. And yes, I understand that I did not write a blog post a day.

Here's what I did do:

I thought about writing every single day. I sat down to my computer to write at least half of the days. I discussed my writing with everyone close to me. Every time a thought occurred to me that seemed shareable, I started formulating in my head and eventually put at least a couple of sentences down somewhere. I made notes in my phone while laying half naked on an examination table in the doctor's office, waiting to see a specialist.

What, ultimately, did I accomplish?

I accomplished allowing my writing free. I opened up my heart and my mind to let the ideas flow through me. I walked away from conversations so I could write. I wrote several posts that I simply haven't yet gotten up the gumption to share.

And I posted more blogs in one month than I had posted in the previous six.

So, while yes, you're correct, I didn't exactly meet the goal of writing something and publishing it every single day for thirty days, I did accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.

To get in the habit of writing. To open myself up and let myself flow free. To publish some things that I thought were utter crap and to publish some of the most intimate knowledges of myself I ever shared with any single person, I shared with the entire world.

My writing itself may not have improved over the last thirty days, but I did.

I became a better person with more self-understanding and I wouldn't trade that for all the blog posts in the world.

Reconnecting with Myself

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
--Joan Didion

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you are aware that I have spent this year in a state of self-discovery and self-improvement. This has been quite the life-altering process as I have done more growth in the last year than I had done in the previous ten.

With everything that has happened this year: the car accident, repeated hospital trips, break-ups, moving house...the list simply goes on...it's a wonder I've had time to introspect and at the same time, not surprising at all. Great stress brings with it great change--whether for better or worse.

Some of this year's changes have seemed for worse. Lately, it has been brought to my attention that I am overly critical of myself. We all know the phrase we are our own worst critics. This year, my internal critic has been a right bitch. Completely and totally unforgiving of even the slightest mistakes. And to boot, I've been fighting her through the haze of all the stressors of this year. The language I've used on myself recently has been the very thing I would take another to task for were they to use it on someone I love.

Why, then, would I use it on myself?

It's become quite obvious: I do not love myself.

I do not think I am a bad person, I do not think I am an ugly person, but at the deepest root of my being, not only do I not love myself, I also do not find myself a lovable or worthy being.

Once I concluded this last weekend, a friend pressed me on this topic: "Andrea, why? Why don't you love you? Why are you unlovable and unworthy?"

Initially, I could not answer this question. I've always known I don't hate me and while I've been harsh of myself lately, I know there's no way I've been this harsh my whole life or I would think much less of myself than I do.

But in digging through my psyche, I realized I have never believed myself lovable or worthy. I have been told, "When I tell you there's nothing wrong with you and you are beautiful, you dismiss my words. You don't believe me." And this has nothing to do with the speaker, this has entirely to do with me and my self-view.

Now, I could go on and tell you what happened in my childhood that led me to this place. I could tell you of the drugs and the abuse, the absent and/or unavailable adults, the way I jumped between an adult and another child in the hopes that my tiny body could shield someone I loved from pain. And the feeling of utter defeat when I realized I had no power to save the people I loved.

In the end, though, it makes no difference. The fact is, I was a child. And from my child's perspective, I could not understand the grown-up things that were going on simply took more precedence than me and whatever I was doing. Later in childhood, I tried to make up for it by becoming a delinquent and miscreant, since it seemed to garner attention. Then, in late adolescence, I came to the conclusion this was not a sustainable life model and I began my journey to who I am now, carrying with me the most unworkable conclusion I had come to.

That conclusion was that no matter what I did, I could never be worthy or lovable. But that I should always try. My entire self is predicated on this notion. I have struggled for the last thirty plus years to make myself lovable and worthy, the one thing I had already concluded I could never be.

Damn. No wonder I could never feel secure in a relationship. How can a person prove they love me if, at my root, I believe myself to be unlovable?

So, then, the question now stands: What do I do with this information?

Who am I?

Knowing that I came to such an erroneous conclusion frees me to know that I am lovable and worthy. But without this notion of unlovable and unworthy, again the foundation which I have built my self upon, how do I know who I am?

The answer to this is really quite simple. I am still me. All of my values, goals, loves, hard work, remain the same. What is removed is simply the notion that no matter how hard I try I can never be loved. What is also removed is the need to be loved, the feeling of desperation, the feeling that I am not worthy. Don't get me wrong, it's not wholly gone, but it's on its way out the door, I can feel it.

And in the meantime, I'm spending time reconnecting with myself. Doing things I haven't done since I was a child, things that when I was a child I berated myself and called myself unworthy for. As silly as it may sound, I have started coloring. Actually went out, bought two coloring books and a box of crayons and sat down and colored some pages:

The simple act of sitting down to color has created not only a sense of zen, but a quiet appreciation of myself. Something that I did not do, even in childhood, because I told myself I was incapable of doing so. And here I am, finding peace in the smallest of activities.

But more importantly than peace, I'm finding love. Love for myself, my capabilities and lack thereof. My daughter sat next to me at the table and while I know I can't draw or color as well as she can, at the same time I know that I'm capable of anything I set my mind to and that anything I choose as worthy is worthy because I'm worthy. And that's the long and short of it.

Retreating

You may be wondering where I've been for the last week or so. Well, in part, I've been high. No, I'm not talking about being high on life, though I've had plenty of that as well. No, I've been the other kind of high. The kind that's not so much fun because of the loss of cognition and the reason I'm taking the drugs. Last week was a bad week in terms of pain and I was taking either muscle relaxants or pain killers every day. The lack of cognition caused by either one of these, much less than both together makes it quite difficult to write anything, even a grocery list, coherently.

So this last weekend, I attended a four day-long retreat at a state park, which was similar in both spirit and togetherness as my beloved conference which I've previously mentioned attending.

And true to form, over the weekend of the retreat, I attended only one session, choosing the one which held the most sway over my mental desires.

Rather than discuss what I attended and why, let's discuss why, when I pay to go to a conference or retreat which has plenty of sessions to choose from and interesting topics to be heard, I only attend one session, EVER.

This retreat was no different than my beloved conference. For me, attending retreats and conferences is not about attending sessions on various topics. As interesting as I find them, and as much as I may say in advance that I might like to attend them, once I'm on location, I have a desire only to revel in the energy of the other attendees. I learn about sessions from the attendees or the speakers themselves. I wander and smile at passing faces, stopping to hug whenever I'm so moved.

Mostly though, because I'm me, I suppose, I end up hanging out with kids. Mine, other people's, kids I've known for years and kids I've only just met. Kids seek me out to hug me and to talk to me.

As I said in Collecting Children, children just gravitate to me. There is no conscious effort on my part to make this happen. In reflection, I think part of this is how balanced my regarding of them is. I treat them as equals, as persons in their own right, with their own thoughts and opinions. Moreso, I believe they gravitate toward me because I challenge them. I fully acknowledge that a child is a product of their upbringing and I challenge them--just as I would any adult--to examine that belief system and find if it holds value for them as an individual. I listen, listen as if whatever they have to say is just as valuable as what any adult has to say.


When they proudly tell me, "I made a leaf person at the crafts table!" I say, "Awesome, why?" "Why, what?" "Why did you make a leaf person, was it the purpose of the craft or did you choose it? Why did you choose it, what is the significance?" And I find this is what makes me different from most other adults and why children gravitate to me. I force them to think about themselves and their choices and I listen to what they have to say.

In turn, I gain their perspective, their insights into the world and adult interactions. Their questions on why adults don't just "do what they want," the way a child does. Questions like these cause me to question myself, my belief system and to find if it continues to hold value for me. Unlike most adults, I find the key to happiness is being constantly willing to review myself and remake myself as necessary. To find that this or that didn't work and to try something new. As we all know, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. If I want different results for myself and my life, the key is change.

Change is why I attend conferences and retreats.

Managing Depression

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up, we'd no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability...To be alive is to be vulnerable."
--Madeleine L'Engle


You'll find I'm not ordinarily this vulnerable to, well, anyone and I'm certainly never vulnerable in public.

In this particular instance, I have a friend who was suffering recently from a series of setbacks. And I was standing there, holding them while they cried when they stepped back to look at me. I said, "Okay, go do x (thing that will be accomplishment)," and they blinked and said, "Okay," and walked off. In the moments after, I felt bad for having sent them off, but then I realized I did it because I know how important it is to accomplish something when you're having a bout of depression. So then, I thought I'd write this for everyone.

This may come as a revelation for many of the people who know me:

I have been chronically depressed for most of my life. Really for as long as I can remember.

The first time I recall contemplating suicide was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My sadness at the world I lived in, my constant feelings of being alone, these were too much to bear at that age. I lived on a road that was a horseshoe and I lived right at the curve, the road sloped so that my house was at the bottom of two hills. I remember thinking that one day I might just jump out in front of the school bus and let it end my pain.

Thoughts like this plagued me my entire childhood. When the stress that was my life became overwhelming, I would hide myself in a small, dark corner (eventually on top of a shelf in my closet) and hold myself crying, wishing that I could just stop the pain. End my life, be done.

This perhaps explains why I was such an underachiever as a child. I recall my mother talking to my babysitter once when I was about 6 or 7. I had just moved to Texas from Washington after my parents had their final split (which in itself had been a traumatic event) and I was listless, I suppose. I don't recall the experience internally, because it was all a haze of not wanting to exist anymore. But I recall the babysitter and my mother discussing it while I sat on the stairs and I recall my mother saying that she attributed my behavior to what happened with my father and then the move, that perhaps after being given enough time to settle in that I would improve.

When I was about 11, I discovered for the first time what might be going on in my head. My mother had the newspaper spread open on the kitchen table and she was talking on the phone. While I stood patiently waiting for a moment to ask permission to go play, I saw an advertisement talking about depression. There were several questions, you know the standard, "Is it difficult to wake up in the morning, blah blah," and as I read the list, I found I had answered yes to five of the six questions and the ad said if you answered three or more with yes then you might have depression. When my mother turned her attention to me, I asked permission to play and she granted it. I then said, "Hey Mom, you see that ad there," pointing, "I answered yes to five of those questions."

My mother stopped, "Are you sure, Andrea?"

"Yes, I'm sure," and I pointed out which ones I answered yes to.

She read them, looked at me again and said, "And you still want to go play?"

"Yes, I don't feel that way right now. I feel happy and I want to go play, Steve and the guys want to play basketball."

And for my young brain, the situation was so black and white. Sometimes I feel that way and I can't function and sometimes I don't feel that way and I'm happy.

The results of this revelation to my mother however, were not good. I did end up seeing a child psychologist (not necessarily bad), but I ended up being diagnosed as manic depressive.

Because you see, I had already been living with the depression so long, it was already so much of who I was that I self-managed. And the opposing end of the depression was a happy, hyper girl. I had become already used to kicking my own butt out of those feelings and into the only ones that felt good.

But I was prescribed Lithium, which made me likely to fly off the handle and hit someone. And I did, I broke a boy's nose on the bus one day for swatting my butt with my textbook. Because that is what anti-depressants do to me, they make me so agitated that I'm ten times more likely to lose my cool and strike someone.

And anger for me is a scary thing. I witnessed abuse as a child, I was abused, I became angry and abused others. And that, too, like the depression, I learned to rise above on my own. Because more than any other thing in my life, one constant has been that I have been on my own. No one but me to take care of me and since, like every other human being on the planet, I want to be taken care of, I rose to the occasion.

So, here we are, roughly 20 years since I broke a boy's nose and decided that I would never use anti-depressants again. When I was 18 years old, a psychiatrist overturned the diagnosis of manic depression, indicating that I was far too grounded and aware of myself and my actions to ever be considered manic. We never addressed the depression and it's entirely possible he never noticed it. Because I have lived with it for so long that most people, even professionals, don't even notice that I have it unless I'm in the middle of a particularly bad bout.

And ask any one of my friends. Unless they are in my inner circle, they would answer "no," to the question, "Does Andrea suffer from depression?"

But I know the truth of the matter. I know that I am probably one of the most highly functioning depressives you will ever meet.

For me, a bout of depression is an automatic signal to go through the motions of my regularly scheduled day. Without thinking, I set little goals for myself, a to-do list, so that I can methodically tick off accomplishments. I re-evaluate myself and my life, look for what kicked off this bout so that I can avert one in the future. And most importantly, I reach out to people. To have them remind me that I am not as alone as I feel in that moment. And I keep within reach those strong enough to take my hand when I need it.

In short, for me, being chronically depressed simply means to manage a part of myself. Like any other feature, I notice it when it interferes with what I'm up to and I learn from it and find ways to make it better for next time. People who notice I have depression (professionals, other sufferers) often ask me if I self medicate. I guess you can say that I do, in the ways noted above. I also drink energy drinks, on constant bouts of quitting and restarting. It has been pointed out to me that these may also be self-medicating.

Either way, I see it not as a disease, but simply a facet of the being that is me...another part to consider as I go about the daily business of conducting my life.

Drugs are not the answer, self-awareness is.

Updates

There's something about a day in the ER, lots of narcotics and doctor's visits that makes a commitment to my writing become secondary to my health.

I napped this evening and now can't sleep, so I'm sitting up with lots of thoughts in my head and hoping to get them out before heading to bed.

In the meantime, I own more than one gorgeous cat, this one's called Parris. He's nicknamed Purris or Purry because his motor is so loud it can be heard from across a room. Oh and in this pic, he's demonstrating his other nickname, "Dashcat," because he loves to ride on the dashboard on road trips.