Living Broken

Just a little mental health reminder.

#talktosomeonebesidesyourself

This is just a reminder to talk to someone besides yourself.

I learned the lesson AGAIN (and again and again and again) this past week when I literally almost blew up from the inside out from not saying things and keeping them inside of me.

I am still not sure how all of that works, apparently.

Keeping it in. Getting it out. Keeping it in. Getting it out.

It seems I’ll be doing a good job of getting it out as things come in and then OMG all of a sudden there’s something in there that gathered some traction and there’s nobody to tell about it because it’s too late to tell anybody because it’s too late for anything at all because OMG it’s too late.

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“My love for skateboarding … has saved my life so many times.”

@justinthebishop @_leopfeifer #amazing

 

“One Day You’ll Go Blind,” directed by Leo Pfeifer, tells the story of Justin Bishop, a lifelong skateboarder who went blind at the age of twenty-five but refused to abandon the sport he loved.

New Yorker Article Blind Skateboarder’s Return to the Ramp

Play again?

#playagain

Life since watching Queen’s Gambit has been colorful, swirling and bright.

For once, there is a Netflix miniseries about me. And girls like me. And he’s, them’s, it’s like me.

Granted, I don’t play chess.

And I don’t have issues with drugs and alcohol.

And I don’t have a history of extreme loss and abandonment.

But other than those small details, the miniseries is literally about me.

At least that’s what I took from it. Along with a bunch of other obvious and some less-than-obvious themes (i.e., feminism, gender roles, mother figures).

It’s about isolation. And about finding a language that enables you to express yourself and communicate in a way that’s understood by others.

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My first impeachment.

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I come from a family of news junkies.  I remember my mother’s father sitting in our living room devouring the daily papers. And my father’s mother lived long enough to become addicted to CNN and the 24-hour news cycle.  She was a 24-hour news devotee debating local and global politics with anyone who enjoyed a lively discussion.

I became a news junkie too. Mostly, I love tragedies and legal procedure. Tragedies provided me an outlet for all of the sadness depression dumped on me.  Legal procedure appealed to the other parts of my brain, eventually leading me to law school and then litigation.

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The Importance of Hope

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I try not to think about how much of my life has been focused on my brain trying to kill me.

It’s depressing to think about the waste of years.

It’s been decades of my brain urging me to do destructive things to myself and me trying to hang in there because hanging in there is what we’re supposed to do.

The problem with hanging in is that it becomes more and more exhausting as time goes on.  The strength you relied on in your early years just isn’t reliable decades later.

It gets harder to hang in and even harder to want to.

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Reach In.

Don’t expect the person who is suffering to reach out for help. Swoop in to check up on the person who is suffering.

Be mindful of their privacy and respectful of their boundaries, but make your availability known to them.

Offer your shoulder, your time, your attention, your company, your dog, your blanket, your sofa, your snacks.

By the time a person in pain is too desperate to reach out, don’t stand on ceremony, manners or what if’s.

Reach in.

xoxo, d

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The Problem with Depression: Again. And again.

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I was on Amtrak’s Northeast Regional from DC  to Baltimore when I got the alert that Kate Spade had ended her life.  I couldn’t believe it and I desperately searched the internet for posts that proved the news a hoax.

But it wasn’t a hoax and the horrible news was confirmed immediately by credible sources.

I texted my sister-in-law.

“Kate Spade killed herself.”

Knowing she would be pressed for the best way to respond, I added “I can’t un-know that.”

Kakki, the sister I had always wanted, texted back.

“oh no,” she said.

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Something borrowed, something blue.

LI RAL 2016 0420

I’ve been considering loose structures for a regular blog.  I feel like having a loose structure would be easier to maintain than the current ‘when I’ve got something to say‘ approach.

Even if I don’t have much to say, a loose structure would provide me a nudge toward something, right?

But none of the loose structures I’ve imagined have inspired me.  For some reason, I keep coming back to “tell me your peach and pit” or “what are your top ten whatevers?”

The problems with a top ten list are obvious.

What if you can’t come up with ten items?

Sure, I know. You can change the number.  You can make the top ten list into a top three list. Or a top seven list.

Whatever.

But what if you can’t decide on the theme of the list?

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Fa la la la la ly2…

Falalalala

I’m a big fan of leaving the house.

I don’t do it often, but I enthusiastically support the practice.

One of the great things about leaving the house is witnessing other humans’ experiences of life.  Other people are a good reminder about how little influence your own perceptions could have if you’d just give them less rope to run around with.

This morning I left the house.  I went to an office I go to now and again.

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Anything But Quiet

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I don’t think I need to say that it’s been anything but quiet around here.  My little corner of here and the greater world of here have been loud and chaotic, demanding attention.

But you knew that.

And I said it anyway.

Because it helps me to process the noise if I first acknowledge that THERE IS NOISE.

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#metoo #notyou

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This week I lent my support to the #metoo campaign of women and men helping to make more women and men aware of what we all supposedly already know, but apparently also don’t know.

Really? We still don’t know?

I’m sorry. I guess I thought we all knew.

And honestly, I thought one of the reasons we all knew was because it had happened to most, if not all of us.

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What took you so long?

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There’s a great scene in one of my favorite movies that’s been playing in my head.

The movie is Singles and it’s the part of the movie where Campbell Scott‘s character has been holed up in his bachelor apartment due to a broken heart (and some rejection of his big project at work).

Campbell Scott plays a traffic and transportation expert.  Kyra Sedgwick plays his love interest, an environmental something or other – maybe a marine biologist?

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Tell Me Where It Hurts

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Time flies between suicides.

Or at least that’s how it feels these days.

When I heard today that Chester Bennington had ended his life, I immediately thought of Chris Cornell.  And it feels like Chris Cornell took his life last week.

But it was May.

Chris Cornell has been gone since May.

And then in June, Chester Bennington dedicated Linkin Park’s ‘One More Light’ to Chris Cornell during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel.

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Flash Cards for a Functional Year

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I’m sorry the title of today’s offering isn’t better.

I should have written something about a happy or joyous year, right?

But seriously, happy and joyous aren’t my goals.

I wouldn’t mind being happy and joyous, mind you.  It’s just that I don’t generally set out to be happy and joyous. Generally, I set out to be functioning and, hopefully, very high functioning.

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The Mother.

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I can never speak for anyone else’s experience.

I don’t know how the deaths of celebrities affect others.

I can see that others are affected by the outpouring of emotions and thoughts on Facebook, obviously. But I’m not sure what experience, if any, is common among any particular groups.

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