giftfromblythe - Tumblr blog

[giftfromblythe]

Live

Walk beneath the stars Taste the awe within Tell them who you are And all you seek to win Press into your shoulders The weight of all the world Lift it from your brothers And watch as they’re unfurled Give the storm inside you An unfamiliar name Let it transform into A complete lack of shame Dance under the moonlight Sing in the bright sun Pray you’ve won your hardest fight When all is said and done

Ten years ago as of tomorrow afternoon, I was in the ER following my averted suicide attempt.  A lot has changed since then; it was, in all respects, a life-changing event: simultaneously the most traumatic and most triumphant moment of my life.  In many ways, I feel as if I have only started to live after that moment, as if all of my life before it (though it was two thirds of my life) was just a sort of holding pattern and it took that horrifically beautiful instant of choosing to live to free myself from a self-inflicted prison.  Getting help that day did not automatically end my suffering, but it gave me the tools I needed to be genuinely happy.

At the time that I wrote this poem, during one of my subsequent depressive episodes, it was a reminder to myself—a reminder that there is so much to live for, that there is a precious sort of defiance in happiness that has endured through pain.  Now, it’s a celebration.  I have done exactly what I hoped for in this poem: I’ve lived to the absolute fullest of my capacity at each moment—a capacity that continues to grow with everything I learn about myself and the world.  I will continue to live in that beautiful, intense way.  It will only get better.

This joy I have now is something I would not have had if I had made a different choice that day ten years ago.  I wouldn’t have had the sorrow either…because I wouldn’t have had anything.  I would much rather have all these memories and experiences I have now than have gone to my death without ever having been happy.  There’s a fierceness to the moments of beauty in the last ten years that I wouldn’t trade for the world.  As far as I’m concerned, they’re more precious for the fact that I had to fight my own brain for them.

It’s a fight that might have to continue, but it has gotten easier over these past ten years.  It’s a comfortable habit now, instead of a vicious struggle every time.

Ultimately, these days, I’m happy, I’m living, and even the most challenging moments aren’t dimming my joy.

What else can a person ask for?  I have the most important part of my life: my life.

All of this came about because I chose to get help in the most terrifying moment I have ever experienced…and turned it into the moment that changed everything for the better.

I hope my story has given you a reason to fight on too.  As always, thank you for reading.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Brief Hiatus

Hi everyone.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't posted in a while due to some minor but persistent health issues that I'm working on getting under control. Hopefully I'll be able to resume posting in the next three weeks.

[giftfromblythe]

Finite Fatality

I celebrate here and now, sincere in jubilation, the finite fatality of trials and tribulations; it meets no end by tooth or claw, no great mystery nor man’s machination, but rather by the simple labor of humanity’s hope and the gift of determination. Time has its way, perhaps, but within its ever-onward course one finds there is no room for remorse or burdening shame; the self-hatred of yesterday passes now to patience without guise or deceit, whose compassion we reinforce.

One of the things my anxiety latches onto most is the finite nature of life—that everything ends, nothing lasts forever, and no one can know what will come next.  As you might imagine, anxiety has plenty to work with there: all sorts of “what ifs” rise in my head—what if a car comes too fast around that curve?  What if something happens to the people I love?  What if my ambitions go unfulfilled, my dreams unrealized?  What if I die?  Sometimes, those thoughts even happen all at once, falling from one to the next like a line of dominoes.  It’s painful, scary, and something I still struggle with from time to time.

But sometimes the fact that things end is a comfort.  When I’m the most miserable, I can remember that it won’t last forever—that, in fact, there’s things I can do to make sure it doesn’t go on and on.  I can remind my anxiety and depression that because the future is uncertain…I’m not stuck feeling the way that it makes me feel.  I can make a better life, mood, and future for myself.  I can’t control what happens, but I can control the quality of what results from it.

I’m not doomed to misery, simply because not even that lasts forever.

This poem is about that very phenomenon.  It’s a celebration of how pain ends, how despair doesn’t last.  It’s the culmination of learning to hang onto hope even in my darkest moments.  It’s a reinforcement of a lesson I only learned relatively recently: when I have compassion for myself and choose to act accordingly, I will bring an end to my pain and replace it with contentment and healing.

In the end, even the looming uncertainty of life’s finiteness is turned into a positive.  The things I fear, even when they do happen, won’t last.  I can even laugh about the things my anxiety tells me will happen—because just like I can’t tell what the future will bring, neither can the anxiety that shares my brain.  It’s kind of ridiculous that it thinks it can.

And when I laugh—anxiety can’t win.

That’s the goal, really: I win the game my anxiety insists on playing.  Who can stay miserable in the face of that?

I triumph over my dramatically pessimistic thoughts, and I’m much happier for it.

I hope this poem and the ideas behind it help you be a bit happier too.

As always, thanks for reading.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Homecoming

This earth doesn’t ground me like it used to. Did it ever? The moon shines still outside my bedroom window; The birds still wake me in the morning. It’s easier here, Where my blood once stained the gravel as I tripped and fell, But not easy. I thought I was homesick. I thought I was longing for a place that is no longer the same, For a time gilded in remembrance that never quite happened. I was wrong. I’m not looking for an ever-changing beauty that I thought lost. I’m not searching for a place to lay my bones. I’m yearning for a self that I’d forgotten, A person I had pretended I wasn’t. They’re closer to the surface here, In this place where my tears soaked the grass The first time I learned loss. They live in the corner of my mind, Summoned by joy and sorrow both; I gave them all the pieces I fought to hide So I could smile as I looked in the eyes of someone I despised— Or thought I did. These days the hate of a child seems so petty. There on that playground—look away! The ghost of me is on that swing. The ghost of me has no words yet for the truth of themself. The truth I could not name has risen up inside, And while I no longer fear it, I fear for my life. There’s a ballot cast, sealing doom Until the next voice calls out for justice; Are we with the tide or against it? It feels like fate. And here I am, returned to this place— Older, broken and remade— Watching the shade of myself wonder why I cannot change, Unknowing that my fate is to shift With the intent of my mind. Every time I return, I craft myself anew. This time, it’s not reaction. This time I do not wait for the wind to blow into my lungs— This time I breathe.

I wrote this poem two weeks ago to express a realization I had recently.  For a long time, I considered my mental illness inevitable.  I thought that it was something I would always have to deal with in some fashion.  I thought that the seeds were sown in my childhood and what sprouted would continue to grow all my life, no matter how much I pruned it back.  I thought I always had to be on my guard against it.

I don’t.

I don’t have to constantly assess and reassess my state of mind.  I don’t have to always be wary of what my mind will wield against me.

The first step was coming home—initially that meant physically returning to the house where I grew up, to recover during all the many times I required healing.  It helped to be in a familiar place where there were people to support me.  For me, that meant going home.  It might not be the same place for other people, but the principle is the same: returning to a place of comfort.  I often needed to leave again as soon as I was well, to escape the baggage that lingered there, but those times gave me a needed sanctuary.

The next step was realizing that something was still missing.  That baggage wasn’t going away, no matter how far I fled from it.  Ultimately, I realized, I couldn’t get away from it because I was still carrying it with me.  I was letting it keep its power over me.

The way we view our homes changes as we change.  When I first left home, I was relieved to be away, but homesick for certain little things: the dogwoods and redbuds blooming in spring, the quiet in the woods, eating meals almost entirely homegrown.  Then I would come home to visit and feel restless to leave—nothing was quite how I remembered, and that was as dissatisfying as it was a relief.  When I became ill and had to return, it was a comfort and a prison—I could cling to the familiar even as I felt trapped by the limits my mind was imposing on me.  Then I spent one of those times of illness unable to return home; Covid had begun, the isolation triggered my depression, and it wasn’t safe for an immunocompromised person to travel.

That’s when I became fiercely, desperately homesick.  The little problems of living in an apartment that I had grown accustomed to over time suddenly grated on every nerve I had.  I found myself longing even for the difficult parts of returning home; at least there, I would have someone to turn to when things were hardest.

Then I did return home.  Something was still missing.  I was happier, for sure, and working hard to maintain that, but I was still restless and unable to pinpoint why.

It has only been in the past month that I realized what was missing—and that’s because it’s not missing anymore.  I wasn’t homesick for a place.  I was homesick for myself.

When we live with mental illness, there’s a lot we do to protect ourselves that ends up hurting us in the long run.  This is one of them: we hide away the parts of ourselves that we fear others will harm us over.  We bury them so deep that they become ghosts to haunt us.  We miss them and fear them in equal measure.

But we don’t have to fear ourselves.  If we let those pieces we hid come back, we might initially feel more vulnerable…but we’re actually less so.  We’re taking away one of the weapons our illness wields against us.  When we’re fully ourselves, we have more of the tools we need to fight back against what hurts us.

When we’re ourselves, we can act instead of react.  We can choose our own course instead of letting the current take us.

That’s what I’m learning to do.  I hope you can learn it too.

Thanks for reading.  As always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Storm

Distant lightning heeds the call Of your fading countenance And so we all endure the fall Of our unyielding innocence Hidden within grief’s dark pall The legends of youthful ignorance Give no succor for the gall Of memory’s impotence And still the fear of wind and squall Breaks the bonds of common sense In the longing for some wall To hold firm in our defense So we tie our hope to forestall The onslaught of mourning’s offense To the sheltering hall Of childhood’s reminiscence But it is a haven too small For double-edged remembrance And so we turn toward recall Only to find it’s too immense To hold all that may befall Our unpredictable cognizance But if we hold ourselves in thrall To bitter thoughts of recompense We cannot withstand the sprawl Of our own penitence So turn now your thoughts to trawl Through nature’s wondrous expanse And allow its swelling joy to haul You out of the depths of self-pretense

In the broad sense, this poem is about grief.  More specifically, it’s about how all grief, no matter what kind—for others who’ve died, for others who are simply out of reach, for your own happiness and innocence—prompts a lot of coping responses that simply…aren’t enough.

Mostly, that involves pretending.

Or lying, if that makes more sense to you.  I prefer to call it pretending because most of the time it’s deeper than a lie: it’s a whole performance you put on to fool yourself as much as others.  And, unfortunately, this is what mental illness makes us do, consciously or unconsciously.  We pretend we’re okay to not burden others.  We pretend we’re fine to get ourselves to do what we need to do—everything from basic hygiene and nourishment to going to work everyday to taking care of the people who depend on us.  We pretend our pasts were better than they were, so we can function.  Or, sometimes, we pretend things were worse, to explain a pain that otherwise seems incomprehensible.  Or maybe that someone else was responsible for pain we caused ourselves.  Sometimes we even pretend that there was something we could have done to avert a terrible thing of the past—because it’s easier for us to blame ourselves than someone we love.

That’s okay, to an extent.  We need the shield while our hearts are still tender.  Eventually, though, there comes a point when it stops working, when our minds need to put in the work to heal.  That’s what this poem is about: that point, and the pain and fear it causes.

Often, that’s a crisis point.  A storm.  But it doesn’t have to be.

I’ve covered in other posts what sort of work I put in to heal properly, so today I’m just going to talk about why most recently it’s involved nature.

I wrote this poem early in the year, when I was working through my lingering fear of literal storms—I was right in the path of a tornado-producing superstorm that lasted three days when I was seventeen, and the aftermath significantly contributed to my PTSD diagnosis.  There are vivid memories from that event that haunt me in the sense that even though I no longer experience flashbacks to them, I still have a lot of the associated fear and grief.

One of the things that helped me through that fear and grief was learning to see beauty in the storms.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m still working on it.  But the beauty part—that is something I no longer have to remind myself of.  It’s something I simply see.

Storms are beautiful because they’re raw, untamed, and honest.  There’s nothing hidden or deceitful about them.  They are what they are.

A lot of nature is like that.  Its beauty is just there, as it is.  I can get a lot of joy out of that because there’s no expectations.  It is what it is.  I am what I am.

And that’s what reminds me that I don’t have to pretend.  That my pain and fear doesn’t need an excuse, validation, or glossing over.  It simply is.  It grows and shrinks; it changes.  It sticks around for a while.  It even leaves.

My feelings exist because of my experiences.  It’s as simple as that.  When I make new experiences, I make new feelings.  The old ones take a while to heal, but eventually they get blanketed over by the new, softened by time and the hard work of healing.

And that’s beautiful.

I hope that this explanation helps you with your own healing.  Thanks for reading.  As always: take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Maturity

I thought maturity Meant handling my emotions Keeping them leashed Bound to my command But in this agony I know That all I’ve done Is ball them up inside my chest Until they become an iron band Tightening and squeezing My heart and guts Until they protest Under that heavy hand So I write out my emotions Begging for relief Always pledging never again Until the next time I misunderstand

I get a lot of physical symptoms from anxiety, depression, and PTSD—which isn’t something most people think about when they hear the words ‘mental illness’, but it happens.  Our thoughts are neurological signals; those signals prompt the release of neurotransmitters and hormones, which in turn have effects on our muscles and organs.  Anxious?  Your heart’s going to race in preparation for action, because our nervous system doesn’t differentiate between threats; they all get the same response, regardless of scale.  And there’s other effects too.  Your digestion slows, that energy redirected to muscles and lungs in case you need to run.  That’s great in the short term, if the threat is an immediate one that you need to act on, but in the long term it can cause a lot of health problems.  In my case, it involves a lot of pain if I can’t release the emotion before it lingers too long.

There’s a blurred line between chronic illness and mental illness.  It’s frustrating when you need to be treated for both and doctors dismiss one or the other—but that’s a different rant.

This poem is about the experience of becoming ill because of the long term effects of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, and especially about how my past ideas about maturity played into that.  For a lot of my life, I believed that growing up meant I had to be perfectly in control.  I thought I couldn’t express what I was feeling because it was childish, immature, selfish…irrational.  I was listening to ideas from my culture in order to fit in, but failing to realize that I couldn’t—because I had no healthy outlet for those emotions and they lingered.  Eventually, I started having mysterious sicknesses and pain as the constant input of cortisol and adrenaline kept my organs in crisis mode—putting them under stress and limiting their ability to function.  In short, I became ill because I didn’t have the tools to let my emotions go when they were no longer needed.  This resulted in needing the hospital many times over the course of a year—two years ago, I was in and out of the ER with dehydration and severe abdominal pain because of how my digestive system was strained.

I’m doing a lot better now because I started using breathing, music, dance, writing, and meditation to ease myself out of fight-or-flight.  With less cortisol in my system, my organs are resuming normal functioning.  It didn’t cure me, but it gave me tools to manage the damage that had been done.

It has also required unlearning those ideas I had about maturity and emotions.  I had to learn that my emotions themselves were valuable—it was how I expressed them that needed to change.  That’s something I’ll write about more at another time, when I can go into more detail, but in short: my emotions are valid, but I can’t let them consume me, for my own sake.

It’s still a work in progress.  This poem was written about a year ago, when I still had occasional episodes severe enough to land me in the ER.  Even though it’s much better now, I still have the pain sometimes, but I can take steps to prevent it from getting that bad.

Ultimately, treating mental illness requires also being aware of what’s going on physically; each impacts the other.  Don’t let either fall by the wayside.  When you are doing well both mentally and physically…it’s a truly wonderful experience because nothing’s holding you back.

I hope this poem and what I’ve shared about the experiences that inspired it give you tools to help yourself with the symptoms you’re having too.  Thanks for reading.

As always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Courage Beyond All Measure

A price, a gift, a call not mine Has broken my old innocence Into the bloody pieces of A faith that remains unmet. I had a friend whose heart gave me My first bitter taste of regret; Her truth could not become my truth, Her love was never granted. What shall become of that lost love I gave to her without reserve? The price was always mine to pay, But I never gave consent. I do not think she now recalls The pain she sowed inside my soul, But still I wonder if she thought Of what she has wrought in me. My trust betrayed, my belief warped; These are the true consequences She brought to bear without regard For the lies that have festered. The call of her vitality Was dazzling to the ear I lent To her constructed wondrous tales I knew not how to resist. Perhaps the gift she gave in turn Lies deep within nightmarish dreams Of all who’ve turned their backs on me, When I could do naught but scream. The trust that I once freely gave Has transformed into crippling fear Of those who only seek to share The gift I used to treasure. So when I offer you my heart, Oh you, my friend beyond compare, Know that the act of offering Took courage beyond all measure.

I’ve written previously about how one of the most important parts of mental health recovery is reaching out to others, but I haven’t gone into much detail about what that was like for me.

A bit of background: as you can probably tell from this poem, I, like many young people with mental illness, experienced a lot of bullying and social rejection as a child and teen.  I also had a lot of friends who could be best described as two-faced, which frankly was even worse for my ability to trust.  For a long time, those memories of rejection and betrayal kept me from forming meaningful connections.  Those few who had the patience and compassion to make it past my defenses tended to be extraordinary people.  Those were the people who began to restore my ability to trust.

That is not to say that I was passive in those friendships.  Quite the opposite: returning their affection required the second-most courageous act of my life.

If I had been passive, I couldn’t have formed those connections.  I would have been too afraid to accept what they were offering.  I wouldn’t have allowed myself to confide in them or experience anything beyond sharing the most superficial conversations and activities.

And I would have missed out on some of the most fulfilling friendships of my life.  I would have been unbelievably lonely.  Honestly, my mental health might have spiraled again—certainly, it did when I was living alone and had only one friend I could see in person for five years.

One of the turning points for me was when I was in the middle of the second of my two extremely severe depressive episodes.  I had made two close friends prior to the moment I’m about to describe, but I had been subconsciously viewing them as exceptions; this event showed me that there were far more trustworthy people out in the world than I had ever expected.

I was in college at the time, my senior year.  I was really struggling, both physically unwell and borderline suicidal.  I had actually entrusted my medication to my college’s mental health services for a few days several weeks before this occurred, so that I wouldn’t be able to intentionally overdose.  I needed to go get a refill of those meds and a few other things to improve my mental health, but I was too anxious to make the walk downtown to the pharmacy.  In a vague attempt to do something about it, but not expecting much, I mentioned in the group chat for the seniors in my dorm that I needed to run errands and didn’t think I was up to going alone, and next thing I knew…one of the other seniors had organized an outing of every senior in the dorm to go run errands and have a meal together.

I made some friends that day, but most importantly: I learned that there are a lot of people who really, truly do want the best for each other.  It was one of the most incredible acts of kindness I’d experienced from another person, and the young woman who did it…didn’t have a clue how much it meant until I thanked her.  To her, it was simply a way to help me out and hang out with friends.  She didn’t realize she probably saved my health.

It never would have happened if I hadn’t made that first, tentative step of asking for help.

That moment took a lot of courage.  It was difficult and I expected it to fail, but I did it anyway, and something beautiful came out of it.

My current friendships were made possible because of that single act of courage—and every act of courage since.

That moment didn’t magically flip a switch in my head to allow me to trust again.  It simply was a major step on the path of relearning how to trust.

I wrote the poem in this post because it’s something I’m still learning—it dates to almost two months ago—and I still have a ways to go, but I’ve reached a point where the future connections I could make are no longer a source of fear.  Instead, they’re a culmination of all the moments I’ve chosen to be brave.

I think that’s beautiful.

I hope this poem and the story behind it help give you the courage to reach out too.  Thanks for reading.  As always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Alone

I gave myself up  to a world that was never my own Because I thought  the alternative was walking alone But everything I’ve ever wished I’d known Is just fool’s gold polished until it shone So now I see in all the ways I’ve grown The simple reality that had so long gone unknown That of all I am and all I’ve shown All I wish now to condone Is the truth: I’ve never really been alone

Mental illness is isolating, and it also gets worse in isolation.  You feel alienated from other people—either because you are suffering and they don’t seem to understand it, or because you never felt as if you belonged in the first place.  Mental illness lies to us when it tells us we have to choose between suffering for our honesty with ourselves or wearing a façade that only covers the pain, but it is difficult to do anything but believe those lies.  They are lies, though, self-perpetuating ones.  Of course you’re in pain if you’re alone.  But the way we ease that pain isn’t shutting ourselves away; it’s finding people to connect to.

Sometimes that just means in shared experiences, seeing ourselves echoed in someone else, but it is often true that there are people in our lives who want to reach out to us but can’t quite get through the defenses we’ve thrown up.  Those are usually the people who care the most—the ones who’d accept us entirely if we gave them the opportunity.

It is difficult to trust enough to let them in, but it’s worth everything when we do.

I wrote this poem to express that experience of realizing that I’d been isolating myself rather than having isolation imposed on me.  I had been tricking myself into believing I was alone and always would be, all while there were people trying to convince me to allow myself to be cared for.  There’s nearly always someone reaching out, even if we can’t see it.  It doesn’t even necessarily have to be someone we know.  Some of the most healing moments of my recovery happened when a stranger helped me through a panic attack.

Why was it so healing?  Because it proved all my thoughts about my unworthiness and alienation wrong.  Because it reminded me that basic compassion is something people are capable of, that it doesn’t require understanding someone or even knowing them to be kind.

That’s a large part of my mission for this blog, actually: reminding people that you don’t have to know someone to connect with them in a way that really means something.

I hope this has helped you feel less alone today.  As always, thanks for reading.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Circle of Life

There’s something in the gaze Of every picture on the wall And as I walk on by I’m sure they’re waiting for me to fall There’s nothing left within me Of the girl I once was Only bitter remnants Of a pain without a cause And these captured memories Only remind me to press on To leave long behind me All I thought I should have won These days I only ever Do what I must The seeds of ambition Left there in the dust Yet somehow I know That if I walk on ahead The flower I abandoned Will be growing there instead I walk and walk in circles Only seeing the return But in each repetition There’s something I will learn

Something that becomes relevant to me every few years is the cyclical nature of life and how that plays into mental illness.  My depressive episodes seem to operate on a 2-3 year cycle—thankfully they’re not always severe, but they do impact my daily life in a lot of ways.  I lose interest in things I enjoy.  My projects get put aside because I lose motivation.  I have difficulty envisioning the future in a positive sense.  I react to perceived obstacles and inconveniences more strongly than usual and get stuck mentally on the most challenging part and assume everything hinges on dealing with it first.  That’s probably also anxiety, but it’s not exactly easy to separate out what symptom or habit belongs to which diagnosis.  My point is, I fall into patterns that I’ve established over countless repetitions and the nature of my mental illness makes it hard to see how I can get out of them.

So I often end up relearning a lot of the methods I use to maintain a good quality of life in these episodes.  Things like daily exercise, keeping my freezer stocked with precooked meals for when cooking feels overwhelming, and monitoring my energy levels are included in that, yes, but I mostly mean relearning how to experience joy, how to plan for the future, how to allow myself the care I give others.

It’s a little different every time.  Sometimes it’s harder than others.  Often, it requires acknowledging that I haven’t truly lost those things—my brain’s just hiding them from me.  I can and will find it again.  I just have to take small steps to rekindle those embers of joy smoldering in the back of my head: going for walks not for exercise but just to see something beautiful, picking up old skills or hobbies I haven’t done in a while, dancing for two minutes while my dinner’s reheating, or rereading a book that makes me laugh.  It’ll all come back to me if I remind myself of why I love these things.

That’s what this poem is about: how even though I end up depressed again, I don’t stay that way, and I ultimately get something special out of the process of recovery—I get to learn how to thrive.  Every time an episode comes around, I come out of it with a better understanding of what makes me happy, and a deeper appreciation for those things and people in my life.

So even when the wheel turns again, I know I have something to look forward to.

I hope this reminds you of what makes you happy and inspires you to look for it in your own lives.  Thanks for reading and as always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Update

Hi everyone!  I’ve been out of the country for the past two weeks and haven’t had the time or energy to post anything.  I aim to start posting again in the next few days and then get back on the regular schedule after that.

[giftfromblythe]

Time and Space

In some other place

In some other time

There is a me

That knew you

When you still remembered

How to be kind

In some other world

In some other era

There was a me

That never knew you

When you only remembered

How to be cruel

In some other dimension

In some other epoch

There will be a me

That forgives you

When you finally remember

How to be gentle

One of the most difficult things to endure in mental illness is the role our relationships with others play in how, when, and why it expresses itself the way it does.  These are the people who should be the support we fall back on when we can’t do it on our own; and oftentimes, they step up to be that helping hand.  Sometimes, however, they don’t.  Sometimes their lack of understanding, their panic, their own extremes of emotion, simply cause more pain.  Sometimes they may even be the source of the pain in the first place.  That latter group is what this poem is about.

I’ve written before about boundaries and why setting them in a measured, healthy way has been important in my recovery.  Today I’m going to talk about how I knew what boundaries to set and why.

I’m going to come out and say it: I had some relationships in my life that were toxic up to and including being abusive towards me.  Emotional and verbal, primarily.  Note that I did not say the people involved in them were abusers.  It’s a distinction I’ve learned to make—abusers exist, but not everyone who behaves in a toxic or abusive manner is, themselves, an abuser.

It’s taken a very long time for me to be able to make that distinction.  This is a poem I wrote within the last six months; I turn thirty this year and I’ve spent most of my life believing myself a victim…which in some instances was true, but it wasn’t helping me to think about it that way.

So here’s the distinction, so maybe you can learn it earlier than I did: people do things out of their own fears, angst, and feelings of helplessness, and we often see others as the source of those feelings and the sometimes cruel things we do when overwhelmed by them, when ultimately it’s our own responsibility how we act.  Anyone can behave toxically towards anyone else; frequently we do.   Sometimes it’s just us lashing out on rare occasions, sometimes it’s a pattern, sometimes it’s an attempt to undermine or control others so we can feel better about ourselves, causing them harm in the process—that last one is what we call abuse.

That’s the behavior.  It’s a pattern, and a lot of the time the person who’s doing it either doesn’t realize it’s abusive or knows it’s wrong but doesn’t know how to stop.  In those cases, it’s the behavior that’s the problem, not the person.  That’s a pattern that can be broken, if the person is willing to put in the time and effort to make the change and you are willing to point it out to them when they don’t see it themselves—in a calm, rational, gentle manner, which is the hard part when it hurts that damn much.  

When they do know it’s wrong, and actively continue it, maybe try to convince you that’s not what it really is and you’re overreacting every single time…that’s when it goes beyond behavior and into some major warning signs.  That’s when you get the hell out.

So in my case, I had a number of people in my life who behaved toxically or abusively but didn’t recognize the behavior for what it was.  Fair enough, it can be hard to identify.  As I’ve mentioned before, cutting everyone who ever behaved that way out of my life entirely would have left me very, very alone.  I had to set boundaries for what I was willing to give, but also what I was willing to accept.

I can accept an occasional snappish comment when someone is stressed.  It doesn’t bother me because I know it isn’t about me.

I can accept someone dropping off my radar for a bit and then coming back.  That’s really just about them needing time and space to deal with what’s in their own heads; believe me, I’ve done the same.

I can accept disagreement on matters both large and small.  I don’t expect everyone to have the same opinions and beliefs as I do, that’d be unrealistic.  I simply say, “I see we don’t agree about this, and that’s fine.  Let’s talk about something we both enjoy,” and move on.

I can accept comments made out of ignorance.  I know that I have information about the situation they do not—often they don’t have it because I haven’t told them.  Probably because they’ve made similar comments before and previous attempts just resulted in disagreement.  So I let myself think only of what I know to be true and let the rest slide away.  I choose what to trust people with, and what I will not trust them with.

What I can’t accept is when personal information or old wounds are used to hurt me or someone else, deliberately.  That is the line I draw.  That is when I say: “That was out of line.  I think we need to give each other space and then try to reconnect when we’re all calmer.”  If it’s part of a pattern, that is when I remind someone of why that particular thing they said or did is hurtful and ask them to think about what they want out of a relationship with me, because harming each other is not something I’m willing to preserve in a relationship.  In the most extreme cases of it continuing despite that question, that is when I would cut someone out of my life.

It is hard.  It is so freaking hard.

But I don’t want to live my life fearing the people around me.  So I do what I have to, to make a life without that fear possible.

This poem is a reflection of the evolution of thought that led me to this approach.  It is born from my yearning for a time when a particularly painful family relationship wasn’t complicated by the other person’s fear, helplessness, and misery being expressed in harmful ways.  It is also, at the end, something I’m beginning to see in my current life: a chance for a better relationship, no dimensional travel required.

I hope talking about this with y’all has given you a bit of perspective on what boundaries you might set.  As always, thanks for reading.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Open Heart

The door to my heart has long stood open,

Rusted hinges forcing it wide.

And if I press my words unspoken

Into my tender, wounded side,

Would it salve the bitter bite

Of my unguarded heart’s end,

Or would it merely be the site

Of a break that starts to mend?

If I should close that weathered door,

Secure my heart against the storm,

Would it ease the burden I bore,

Or would it force me to conform?

The tender places of my soul

Tell me that I cannot know

How much of my heart they stole

And where all that grace shall go.

It may not be that before I fall

To age or illness or fatal chance,

I will ever learn the truth at all,

But still I’d prefer the joyful dance

Over the bitter dregs of loneliness

And the aftertaste of self-violence.

I wrote this poem during a time in my life when I was very lonely because I had closed myself off from others for fear of being hurt, and didn’t know how to reconnect.  It’s unfortunately a common pattern in PTSD.  I was stuck in a cycle of withdrawing, worsening my mental health due to loneliness, opening up just enough to accept help, and then closing off again because I’d encounter one of my triggers.  The hyper vigilance I experienced made it hard to trust people enough to be vulnerable, and, conversely, when I did open up, I was unpracticed at it and didn’t maintain the boundaries I need.  I’ve always been extremely aware of other people���s emotions, and it’s very hard for me to see someone’s distress and not try to help—even when the help they needed put me in a position of endangering my health.  I caught myself in a trap of only finding validation when I was helping or pleasing someone, and pursuing that to my own detriment.

This poem expresses the emotional toll that took on me throughout the first two decades of my life, and then how I overcorrected and tried to cut people out of my life…not just some people: everyone.  Ultimately, I couldn’t and shouldn’t shut out everyone, both because those bonds are what helps keep me stable and because even the weakest bond can be meaningful.  There are people still in my life who have hurt me, and although I keep some emotional distance to prevent their toxic behaviors from affecting me again, I still love and care about them—I just trust them only with what I know they will respect, and keep the most vulnerable parts of me to myself.  Just as I came full circle with being open, choosing to be open in the ways and with the people that are wisest for me, the poem circles back to the joy that can be found in connection (even with the pain it can sometimes cause) and how I prefer that to the constant pain of loneliness.

This is one of the more difficult things I’ve had to learn in my recovery, and it’s one I’m still working on.  It is, however, the key to long-term stability when you have a mental illness; it is very much worth the effort of learning.

I hope this poem and the story behind it has given you some perspective and hope for your own recovery.  As always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Magic

There’s something in these moments

That makes me feel alive

A nameless emotion

That fear cannot survive

Within the synergy of motion

And light’s gentle touch

The silence before the torrent

The breath before the plunge

And if I were to name it,

Would that tear away the veil,

Or would it rob the magic

From this beloved tale?

This poem is particularly special to me because it is about mental illness even though it might not seem like it is initially.

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the times I used hope to pull myself through some very difficult experiences, but I haven’t talked as much about where that hope comes from.

Most often?  I find it comes from single, simple moments.  The sort of thing that makes you gasp in awe or cry in joy—something so beautiful or so personal to you that it makes you feel completely and utterly whole in ways you never feel otherwise.  I live for those moments.

Now wait, Blythe, you might say, isn’t that a bit cliché?  How could something so simple, so comparatively small, outweigh all the absolutely terrible stuff your head dumps on you like clockwork?  Isn’t it inauthentic to claim it could make such a big difference?  Doesn’t it sound too much like the load of nonsense that some well-meaning but especially clueless people who have no idea what mental illness is actually like try to tell you will cure you?

Well, you wouldn’t be saying anything my brain hasn’t tried before (and probably will again, it’s stubborn that way), and I’ll tell you what I tell it then:

It absolutely does make that big a difference.  Just…not in the way those people who tout positive thinking as a panacea for all woes seem to think it does.  It’s not a matter of willpower or forcing ourselves to think a particular way right this instant and then never having a panic attack or a bout of suicidal ideation ever again.  It’s much subtler and requires just…remembering how those moments make you feel.  That feeling of magic and overwhelming wonder—you don’t even have to know what it is specifically, it just has to be something special to you.  Nothing elaborate, just something you can call to mind in an instant, that’s how memorable it was.

What it does is remind your brain that it can feel happy.  That this pit you’re in isn’t how it’s always been, and therefore not how it’s always going to be.

It doesn’t take the pain away or the challenge of working through that pain until you’ve reached a point where you don’t have to simply endure it anymore, but it does make it easier to hope.

And really, that’s the main thing that keeps you going: hope.

This poem is an attempt to put those moments of, well, magic in perspective: that your fear and pain don’t survive in the face of something that is ultimately beyond those things, something so pure and good and nigh-on incomprehensible that your mental illness can’t rationalize it away as something less than it is.  For me, I often find those moments in nature.  I’ll tear up from watching a hummingbird (so tiny, how can it exist and be so fast) going from flower to flower.  I’ll be breathless looking out over a bluff as the sun sets.  I’ll stop and stare at the moon coming up over the horizon.  Sometimes it comes from people or man-made places too—back before my crisis of faith, when I went to church, there was a moment where everyone was singing and I felt like I could fly with how beautiful it was.  Even though the context means something very different to me now, the beauty of the moment has stuck with me.  It’s these sort of inexplicably moving events that I call back on when I need to remind myself of the good that is still in the world, and that’s what I tried to capture in the poem.

Thanks for reading and I hope you got something out of this post that you can use when you’re struggling.  As always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Construct

There’s a papier-mâché girl 

unfolding in your head

She lives in your mirror, 

she sleeps in your bed

And somehow you know

If you press just right

The whole thing will crumble

You’ll be alone in the night

She’s oh-so fragile

See how she bends

But her beauty’s the sort

You hope never ends

So you coddle and guard her

As slowly she grows

Until at last she’s complete

And oh how she glows

Suddenly you’re seized

By a terrible need

To tear into her

And see if she’d bleed

But if you hold back

From leaving a scar

Someday you’ll find

That she’s who you are

This is a more recent poem, written about a year and a half ago.  It’s a celebration of how far I’ve come in my recovery.

I used to…not exactly struggle with self-harm.  It didn’t manifest as a long term, consistent urge, but rather as occasional impulses to injure myself in some small way.  Usually when I was feeling trapped or fake—I’d wish for some physical sign of what I was going through because it didn’t seem real otherwise.  There were days when I’d wake up with bruises on my arms from where I’d bitten myself.  I know now that my brain was lying to me about my suffering not being real or worthy of help just because it wasn’t physical (in fact, in a lot of ways it was physical, but I didn’t have the context to know that yet), but at the time it seemed true.  I scared myself with it sometimes, with how intense it was and how it seemed to be escalating.  During one of those times, I called one of the therapists at my college’s counseling services and they were able to talk me down from the urge.  I called again the next time it happened, and every time after, increasing my therapy sessions so there was less time between people checking on me or asking a friend to check in if I couldn’t go to therapy that week.  I was surprised by how much having people supporting me helped.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised—support was what I felt I lacked in the first place, when I felt trapped because I thought I had to go it alone.

I gradually managed to grow past those self-harm urges by working on both my self-esteem and my anxiety in therapy; I felt trapped less frequently, so I got the urges less often, initially, and then my self-worth grew enough that even when I did feel trapped or fake, I could remind myself of the things about me that are real and beautiful, of the people that see those things in me and will offer help if I ask.

Sometimes I still get the urge to self-sabotage if not self-harm, but even that is growing less and less frequent.

This poem uses the imagery of building a girl—a self—out of papier-mâché to describe how (re)building my self-esteem has felt throughout my recovery.  It was slow going and felt as if it could fall apart at any moment, messy and frustrating but with a beautiful result.  Sometimes I wanted to stop, wanted to tear it all apart because it was something new and that scared me, but in the end it was something I wanted too badly to give up.  And now I’ve found that the promise at the end of the poem is true: I am that beautiful self I reconstructed.  Perhaps I was all along and just couldn’t see it.

As always, thanks for reading.  I hope this story gives you the impetus to get help if you need it, just like I did all those years ago.

Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

Choices

This is the beginning

Of every end I see

Though I find it daunting

They’ve taken root in me

Every seed I nurture

I yearn to see full-grown

Yet in all these futures

Somehow I’ve never known

Which will grant me the purpose

For which I still long:

Something fair and perilous

Or simple, quiet, and strong?

As an apology for posting a day late and as a pick-me-up after the heavy topic of the last poem I posted, I thought I would post something a bit lighter this time.

This is the poem I could call my “Overcoming Anxiety” saga: it is an expression of how my perspective on making decisions—choices—has changed.

I used to be paralyzed with fear and uncertainty over every decision placed before me, even sometimes the smallest of them.  I would stare into the fridge wondering what to eat and unable to choose; I would lay around in bed all day fearing what the day would bring until the day was gone, only to start again the next morning.  Anything larger?  Forget it.  My mind would conjure visions of ways I could die or fail or lose all I hold dear.  I was unable to even consider what success might look like.

It took a lot of work to convince myself that the possibilities my mind presented to me were lies created by fear—sure, they could happen, but my mind offered them as certainties, certainties that were not in truth certain.  If I don’t know the future, how could my anxiety?  We use the same brain.

I learned in therapy (and later life-coaching) to recognize those thoughts for what they were, and then to break the cycle before I could spiral into panic.  I found, built, a purpose that I desire more than I fear what could happen as a result of the decisions I make to achieve it.

So this poem is the result of finally learning to see the good that could come of the choices I make rather than solely what could go wrong.  I hope reading this can help you take a step on that journey too.

As always, thanks for reading.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

[giftfromblythe]

In Memory of the Girl I Was

Once upon a time, I almost died,

for I was drowned in shadow;

in every silence was a tragic solace

that could not grant me peace,

and in every sound 

the ghosts of things best forgotten

burned my aching soul.

So I sought eternal rest

to forget a past that should never have been;

but sleep is a double-edged sword

and dreams are more than deadly.

On that day

I shattered,

a thousand thousand pieces

strewn across my dorm room floor;

in the aftermath,

I fit the shards into some semblance of sanity

and was left with glass dust 

where my innocence once could be found.

Kill the girl,

and the being I am arises

—does a phoenix feel its flesh

consumed by ravening fire

with every rebirth,

or is it just I?

I live by choice and by fear,

and so I poison myself nightly

in the hopes of staving off death just a little longer,

and I pray each time a pill passes my lips

that my mind will heal before my body fails.

When I was twenty, I almost killed myself.  I had barely left my bed in weeks, so nauseous from antidepressant side effects that I couldn’t keep anything solid down, and weak and shaky from only consuming protein shakes.  I slept during the day, skipping classes so I wouldn’t face the terrors of the dark unrested—and they were genuinely terrors, because they were PTSD flashbacks and hypervigiliance triggered by the similarity of the night to the darkness caused by the tornado-producing superstorm I’d survived two and a half years prior.  I had reached a point of such despair and misery, I felt as if I were backed into a corner with death being the only way out.  I very nearly followed through with that thought—I reached for my anti-anxiety meds, intending to overdose.

But in the next moment, I turned my entire life around.

I thought of my parents, who would be so horrified if I truly did die; I thought of my younger brother, who would be left with the grief, shock, and horror of knowing what I had done.  I even thought of how much I feared death—Hamlet’s line of “but in that sleep of death, what dreams may come must give us pause,” ran through my head.

So I reached for my phone instead, calling my mom.

I spent four days in a psychiatric ward, changing medications under the nurses’ supervision and improving so rapidly we knew the first antidepressant had been worsening my symptoms.  I spent a year at home, taking medical leave from college and taking two classes during the second half of the year to ease back into the workload.  I spent five years rediscovering who I am under the illness that has defined my life since I was a very small child.

It took nine years to recover, nine years of ups and downs, of relapse and recovery.  But I did it, and you can too.

I wrote this poem during the second year of that recovery, not long after learning that the new antidepressant was working well to keep my serotonin up but was putting strain on my liver.  It was meant as a reflection on everything I had gone through to reach that point—the agony and fear that led me to suicidal ideation, the moment I could have chosen to die but did not, the transformation that followed that choice, and the consequences of doing what I must to keep myself alive.  It wasn’t easy, but the wish I expressed at the end of the poem did come true: my mind did heal, and careful management of my health kept me on the path to recovery.  I’m currently off the medication, because I reached a point where it was no longer necessary and my doctors agreed I could wean myself off of it.  I may need to go back on it again at some point, but that’s no big deal.  I know I can recover again if I need to.

As always, thank you for reading.  I hope my story can give you a little hope that things will get better, and that you seek out the help you need when you need it.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[giftfromblythe]

On Fear and Memory

"It's okay to be afraid,"

I say,

half-pretending

to wisdom hard-won.

"To fear is a reminder,"

I tell myself,

wondering

if ever I will believe.

"There is no shame in fear,"

I declare,

concealing

the memories I despise.

"One day, I will not fear every comer,"

I whisper,

daring

to hope at last.

I wrote this a couple years ago as a reflection on the course of my anxiety and PTSD recovery.  Right when I had gotten past the worst of the flashbacks and panic attacks, my coping methods were kind of ineffective and involved pretending that everything was okay—to myself as well—but eventually the lessons I told myself I had learned became something I actually learned.  I started to give myself room to not be okay, and that allowed me to address the underlying issues that had caused me to be so afraid all the time: I set boundaries, I learned what triggered me and what did not (and how those changed over time), and I began to slowly, very slowly, push the limits on what I was comfortable with.  Some things took longer than others—I’m still working through my fear of storms, for example, but I’m now less wary of people walking past me on the street.  This poem became a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way, because when I wrote it I was in a bit of a rut in terms of my recovery and the final four lines were my wish for the future; that wish gave me the motivation to take the next step I needed to be well.

As always, thank you for allowing me to share my stories with you.  I hope you’ve gotten a bit of comfort out of it today.  Take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe