ediesundaywrites-blog

[ediesundaywrites-blog]

Here I find myself on an absolutely beautiful Sunday afternoon. The sun is shining and all I see out my window are new flower blooms and people walking their dogs. It’s one of those scenes that feels a bit like a movie because it’s so perfect. I want to first say how much I appreciate that I am even able to observe this. But I also want to express the disappointment that comes with not being able to participate in it. There is nothing tangible preventing me from engaging in my life. And some days I do—I really do. But days like today have me asking questions I don’t really want to try to answer. I know that life is hard for all of us at certain points. We’re human and that’s par for the course. But sometimes I wish I could express, properly, to anyone what it feels like to live inside of my mind. It’s not just depression or anxiety and the like. It’s a constant nagging—something deep down inside of me—begging me to examine whether I am really living or if I’m just existing. Am I missing opportunities to feel my aliveness because I’m too busy running from the pain that we all must feel at some point? I used to be able to tell you what my dilemma was. Now I am certain that my dilemma is just myself. It’s my refusal to accept and appreciate all that I have and all that I am. From the outside looking in, I would envy myself. But being inside of myself—all I am ever trying to do is crawl out. I write these words because I know some of you feel this as well. It’s like floating in space. You’re half here and half not. You cherish the moments when you’re fully here because it feels like some sort of transcendence. You’ve momentarily escaped the patterns of thinking that don’t allow you to connect to your life. I’m 28. I never thought about what it would feel like to be 28—the only thing I did think was that things would make more sense by now. By as I learn and grow and my mind expands, things make less sense. I remember being myself five years ago. I thought I had found solid ground and that the search was over. Little did I know I had only found a rescue boat, and that eventually I would be adrift at sea again.

 Let me say that I don’t write any of this with an intention to be or sound negative. I’m really not. I’m curious. I wonder who I am supposed to be. I wonder how I am to arrive there. It’s the wondering that keeps me from the arriving, though.

 Sometimes I get very self-conscious that I’ve been so vulnerable on the internet. Especially after what happened with someone stalking me/humiliating me etc. I almost stopped entirely because I couldn’t risk that feeling again. But at the end of the day I couldn’t, because I want to contribute something of substance to this digital world that we live in. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t disdain the people who say things like “I’m proof that if you work hard enough you’ll be as happy as me!” (even though they started lightyears ahead of anyone else due to various forms of privilege).  I am genuinely happy for those people. Even the ones who didn’t have to lift a finger. I just don’t think that statements like that add anything to the dialogue or any nuance to what it means to be a human being. I think most (I can’t speak for all) read these “motivational” monologues and just feel like shit afterwards. All that it says is “you aren’t doing it right. If you do it like me then you will be happy like me.” (However, about 90% of the population CANNOT do it like you for reasons I am sure you have never considered). That’s hardly ever someone’s intention (making others feel bad), but it’s almost always the outcome. Most millennials are smart enough to logically call bullshit on this kind of… bullshit. But being able to say something is empty and meaningless on a logical level does not mean you believe it on an emotional level. Knowing and believing are different things. I’ve been playing this internet game for six years (I resisted it for a long time) and I have written manifesto after manifesto on how to avoid these traps but I woke up this morning, I felt less than great, and I got on the internet (huge mistake) and what was waiting for me drove me into a deeper hole.

 I want you all to know that I am not immune to this stuff. It makes me question myself the same way it makes you question yourself. And that’s on TOP of all of the other things going on, like what I wrote about earlier in this post and trying to find my purpose in this world, find a job with my PhD which is contingent upon my finishing my dissertation, etc. I think because of Instagram and what not some of you may look at me as different than you. And I just want to break that myth down. I am not different than you. I am exactly the same. I won’t fool you. I won’t post stories of myself having a fantastic time if inside I really feel like shit. I won’t talk about being sad if I am really just looking for attention. I won’t pretend to care about a cause I know nothing about. I am real, and I will remain real no matter how much my human insecurities beg me to portray a very different version of myself than I am. We are all so desperate to be accepted, and we get confused—we mix up our innate desire to feel accepted (which is so completely normal and okay and part of our development) with a need to be idolized and envied. This has always been a problem, but the age of the internet has made it—I think—one of the most important problems we are facing as people. We lose our authenticity, and without that, we can’t evoke any change in this world.

 It’s the same way with art. I bitched about that dilemma on my old blog (which I had to delete because of the cruel individual who decided to try to ruin everything I have worked towards for ten years). So I won’t repeat that. I have had a horribly difficult time creating during the 8 months I’ve been on my residency. I want to so badly. But it’s just not the right time, and accepting that is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. So that’s another promise—I won’t share work that I don’t believe in. I won’t post a photo because I think it fits the mold of what is popular for the current month. So you might not see me post a lot anymore, not the way I used to, and I know one of the consequences of stepping back is becoming irrelevant. And I think I’m okay with that, because I never made art for validation, I made it to make my experiences real and to share that with people who appreciate it.

 Ah, I could go on and on, but I have plans. I am letting them age like a fine wine, both because they should and because I must prove to myself that the reason I do things is not for selfish validation and the creation of an image, but to make a harsh world a softer, more forgiving place.

 You are all so lovely, continue being lovely, the end.

[ediesundaywrites-blog]

light

The funny thing about depression is you can’t see yourself from the outside in while it’s happening. You are trying so hard just to survive that those other processes—self-reflection, judgement, perspective—are all lost. I’ve dealt with depression more or less since I can remember, and it’s only recently—nearing my 28th year of life—that it took a new form.

 Don’t get me wrong; it has taken many ugly forms before. But this last “episode,” for lack of a better word, was strange and fascinating in retrospect. I say in retrospect because as it was occurring I was barely cognizant of the fact that I existed. Via some third parties, I learned I was noticeably, outwardly, clearly suffering and in need of help. Reports are that I wore the same outfit to work three days in a row, had obviously given up grooming, and all around looked pale and thin with eyes swollen from crying. Most of the time I couldn’t even stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks. I walked around an academic medical center like this—can you believe it? I can’t, because I don’t remember it.

 Out of all of my years dealing with my tainted, Germanic genes, I haven’t ever actually dropped the ball—the façade—in such a loud manner. If I’m really thinking critically about it, I realize one variable that may explain some part of this: Before June of this year, if I was in a really bad place I could find ways to work from home. I may have needed to ask for extensions or other accommodations, but no one saw me in the flesh. Apparently, it’s a pretty alarming sight. I think my boyfriend has gotten used to it—the days and sometimes weeks on end that I stay in the same shirt and pajama pants and stop eating and sleep all of the time and cry when I’m not sleeping. It’s become sort of like the flu. A psychological illness that takes on a physical form so much so that it can be quite easy to ignore the depression itself. Most people, even my parents when I was younger, have tended to just “let me sleep it off”—whatever that means.

 But there was a great deal of humiliation that came with being told even strangers were asking my director if I was okay. None of it was meant to harm me; people were genuinely concerned. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that some 5% of that felt good—to know strangers cared. But the other 95% made me feel very vulnerable, very exposed, and worse—it made me doubt my own ability to see things clearly when I am in this kind of a depression. That’s scary for a person like me who, whenever not being ravaged by my own neurons, is high-achieving, hyper-successful, and in control of nearly everything (emphasis on the “nearly”).

 Put simply, I value my ability to self-reflect—to have insight into what’s occurring within me and to act accordingly. Apparently last month I lost that ability. I lost sight of myself. I can only describe it as living in total darkness—crawling through life like you’re blindfolded, grabbing for whatever may be in front of you (maybe the same outfit you wore the past two days in a row? or a stranger to help you feel alive?). I was fumbling my way through a demanding, high-pressure life and I was completely falling apart at every step. I couldn’t call into work because I didn’t have enough sick days. I had to be here, but being here was not good for me or the people around me. And I got “found out.” After all of my years of careful managing of my condition, it was put on display for all to see. Worse, even, it led to such a painful invasion of my privacy that I know it will take me some time to move past it, and then to being treated like I was not fit to do my work—an actual danger to the people under my care.

 One of the places I saw patients at actually disallowed me from ever coming back. They didn’t even give me the chance to say goodbye to the people I was treating. There’s more, and it’s worse, but all of this because I was depressed. Depressed and unable to disguise it any longer. But I was also unable to properly judge where to draw the line in what I shared on my blog. I wrote two blog posts—some of you may remember them—on two of my absolute darkest days. In all of my time dealing with depression and having access to the internet, I’ve never written things like I wrote on those days. I deleted my blog so I don’t have access to those posts anymore, and my memory is foggy because this depression was akin to having a high fever for weeks or being fed elephant tranquilizers—but from what I remember it was very dark.

 I’m not saying that dark isn’t okay. It’s perfectly okay. But what I wrote probably would have scared the shit out of me, too, if it had been someone else’s blog. I can’t remember my motivations, either. I know I felt deeply alone. I couldn’t confess to anyone how horrible I felt—that I was an inch away from losing all perspective. I tried to tell my friends but I couldn’t really get it out. I tried to tell my boyfriend but it always ended with me acting absolutely nuts and him just having to manage my behavior in those moments. I couldn’t get it through to anyone that I was actually, really, truly sinking into the darkest hole I’d ever come face to face with. God, it was an awful feeling. Not so much the darkness, but the not being able to accurately express it (I am devoted to self-expression as a means of survival). So, I took to my computer one day—I wrote what I felt to the void that is the internet, and in a moment of pure desperation and impulsivity I published it for some 50k people to see.

 I don’t regret what I did because regret is a useless feeling to me. I also don’t regret coming to my place of very-important-employment and looking like I belonged more in the inpatient unit than in my office. This was my first experience of being in the world in such a way that I couldn’t hide my depression—that I actually had to confront it. I realized it’s not okay to suffer for that long and do nothing about it but hope for it to end. I realized that it’s okay to be the hospital’s resident Sylvia Plath because fuck it, that’s who I am and 99% of the time it’s what makes me great at what I do. I understand pain in ways that many in my field never will. Now I walk the halls of this place knowing how many professionals know the intimate details of my despair, and at first it was fucking horrible, but now it simply is what it is. I can own this part of myself just fine. And I can learn when I need to sound the sirens. I can learn that I can’t always deal with it alone, and that I have a deep responsibility to myself and to others to never let it go that far again without asking for some fucking help.

 So, in typical fashion, I encourage any of you who deal with such demons to treat them as the things that they are. Don’t feel ashamed of them. That only creates more demons. Don’t pretend they aren’t there. That only makes them stronger. And don’t think that just because you’ve almost given up that it’s not possible for a day to come where you have hindsight, where you can cope with whatever the fallout of your own shit show is because it really always is okay. Consequences are real, but they don’t stop you from living and learning. I have had many-a-shit-show in my short life, and at this moment in time I consider myself to be a successful, happy, and fortunate person who is well aware that the future holds more of these poignant moments for me… and also more of the dark moments.

 Persist, persist.

[ediesundaywrites-blog]

diet coke

I’ve got a lot to say. Probably too much to say. That so many of you care to read my words encourages me to carry on with my babbling. It’s no surprise that I have been going through some tough times down here in the deep south. I’ve been pretty vocal—what some would call too vocal—about my emotions and experiences. But alas, I don’t give a shit. What I do give a shit about is pulling myself open and being vulnerable despite how it may be taken, because I know—through all of your emails and messages and comments—that what I say has made people feel less alone. That’s all I ever wanted when I was younger—to feel like someone else experienced what I experienced, that I wasn’t broken or wrong or worthy of shame but rather that I was a human being going through her own unique coming-of-age. Unique in this sense is a synonym for “messy as fuck,” by the way. I won’t tell you my life story. Not just yet. I’m saving that for the book I’ve always known I’ll write.

 Thoughts floating around in my head right now are these:

I’m going to write all the time. I have written my entire life and I only stopped when visual art became my primary focus. Since I have been “creatively stunted” since I’ve been in the hell hole that is Tennessee, I’ve started writing more and more. I didn’t realize it until my blog got reported to the place I have been finishing my training at. But in that moment, when it felt like I would have to choose, I realized how much writing means to me. I was not and am not willing to give it up. So while I take this much needed break from making visual art, I hope you will all follow along this other journey—one that started many years ago and through so much pain has finally been reborn.

 Also, I am probably too sensitive for this world. Maybe not, I don’t know. But a well-kept secret of mine is that my feelings are hurt allofthefuckingtime. By my friends, my family, people who would never mean to hurt me. Absolute strangers! Yet they do, and I usually don’t say a thing about it. I’m very avoidant when it comes to relationships. It doesn’t make a terrible amount of sense because when I love someone (lover, friend, stranger, whatever) I love so deeply—so deeply that I do not know how to say it. I can’t tell you that I need you. Why? That is weakness; that leaves room for rejection. Instead I isolate myself, ruminate on all of the reasons said person is not responding to me in the way that I need them to—the reasons are usually centered around my own unworthiness/undesirability and rarely do I get to the point where I can say the other person is just a selfish asshole. But it happens. It’s happened a lot recently.

 I’m working on this part of myself—this whole being vulnerable in my interpersonal relationships and not just in my art, but it’s horrifying. Why? Because you don’t know who is safe to trust. I don’t know who is safe to trust. I have been treated like a disposable, shameful thing so many times that I’d rather just protect myself and stay the fuck away from anyone I could have an emotional connection to. Anyone who could hurt me. But sometimes it happens without your knowing or expecting. Sometimes you convince yourself that you are impenetrable. That the mask is on so tightly, the façade is impeccable, and you are a chameleon who can be a different person in the blink of an eye. But sometimes someone smiles at you a certain way and you believe in their innocence and you let them in without ever really deciding to, and then comes the shame. I’ve had relationships (friendships and romantic things) like this where the torment lasted months, even years. Mostly it’s just weeks, though, because after what the last person did to me (circa 2011) I have had a very precise radar for tortured souls who care nothing about me as a person and only want to use me momentarily to fulfill some kind of deviant desire, some void, or worse, to stand on top of me and dig their heels in as they silence me and take me for everything I have, claiming it as their own. There are a lot of different ways to be fucked up in this world. I truly hope I have experienced enough of a variety of fucked up-ness to know when to stay away from someone but I know I haven’t. I will still be blinded. I will still mistakenly let people into my life who are absolutely toxic. I just hope that each time it happens, I can bounce back quicker and quicker. And more than anything I hope I can let go of this resentment. Resentment is a gross emotion. It feels gross, it makes you do and say and think gross things, and it’s just poisonous.

 I don’t know how else to release it but to write about it. I wish I had some kind of spiritual connection that a lot of you have, but I just don’t. No religion, no astrology, no whatever is popular at the moment to help people make sense of their lives. I think, quite simply, that nothing makes sense and it’s not supposed to make sense. Our purpose as human beings, in my very humble opinion, is to make our own sense of who we are and how we want to live. I want to live without resentment because I spent the first 21 years of my life bathing in it. Blaming others for my pain and sorrow and never for a second thinking about someone but myself. I didn’t consider that maybe other people felt pain and they didn’t know how to love without stinging me, too. I read about something called “Hedgehog’s Dilemma” when I was still in high school and it may have been the very beginning of my understanding that I was not the only sentient being alive on earth. I won’t explain it in depth, but the message is this: “Despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm.”

 I always go back to this when someone fucks my emotional world up. Did I cause them pain as well? In some cases, I have learned that I have. Completely unknowingly! (Thus it’s possible that the other individual did not mean to hurt me, either). Other situations are ambiguous and the angry child in me wants to say IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT YOU TREATED ME LIKE DIRT but the adult in me knows it’s more nuanced than that. We all want something from each other at the end of the day, maybe something as genuine as friendship and partnership or something as empty as sex or artistic identity theft. We don’t know what we want from each other until we are face to face, and there is no way to tell what kind of pain (or beauty) will be caused from the meeting of two souls. As much as I want to hide, to protect myself, I know that I don’t thrive that way. My process is going to be a long one of readjusting my expectations of people. I can’t keep expecting something genuine, but I also don’t want to become a reclusive pessimist that trusts no one. But I also don’t want to keep setting myself up to break. I’m tired. It’s a whirlwind. I’ve broken too many times, and there are no benefits to reap from letting yourself be used or tossed around or worse, to serve as someone’s object through which to channel all of their own shame and brokenness.

 I have no idea where I will start with this. I write to figure it out. When I started writing, I had no idea I would come to this conclusion about my process. This lowering my expectations to match what I know to be reality. But I’ve arrived, and now I’ll go back to drinking my diet coke and listening to music that reminds me that I am okay—maybe even better than okay.