Speak Your Truth

What Takes Courage?

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Today riding home in Uber I was doing what I always do and yapping away about my day, group therapy and mental health treatment in general.

He asks something along the lines of

“Do you think focusing on your problems helps?”

I explain about getting at the underlying emotions and figuring out what’s hiding in there.  About coping skills and how to distract yourself and that sometimes the focus is on living in the moment and not just in the future with upcoming worries or the past with the problems from then.

I mention that mental illness is just an illness like heart disease and that it takes medication and also symptom management and eating right, exercising, lots of different things to try and manage the illness.

And eventually the topic moves to suicide.

“That’s the cowards way out, if someone believes in a higher power, with enough faith . . . ”  etc, etc.

Well, my late wife was a Christian woman, she loved God, she also managed her illness to the best of her ability, and she still died by suicide.

“Your what . . Oh, I’m so so sorry, I wasn’t saying . . . ”

And the conversation continues.

“You know, it dawned on me, it takes a type of courage to complete that act.  Someone must be in a lot of pain to follow through with that.”

Eventually he asks how long she battled that illness.  I told him, I didn’t know exactly, I knew she had been a teen when it all started for her, but that I’ve been fighting them for at least 22 years, spending the greater part of most of those years fighting against my own brain to stay alive.

And he says . .

“Now, THAT takes courage, battling your own brain for years and years just to stay alive.”

When we got to my house he said.

“You know, you educated me today.  You’re just talking but you changed my mind about this, you educated me.”

When Parker died two years ago I remember sobbing as I typed out “her suicide will never be in vain” and it’s not.  She’s changing lives and changing minds as I speak up and speak out.  It’s hard for people to hear, I see the cringes when I drop the suicide widow bomb, but I also see the people I educate.

Speak your truth.  Let it educate people.

courage

Birthday Cake

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I heard a thing today that had me bawling.

Not that I haven’t cried at PHP. Those who know me know that crying is not an issue for me.

I can drop the most traumatizing story like it’s a piece of birthday cake but cry when someone blows out the candles.

Because I want to carefully walk the line between sharing my personal journey and not stepping over the line into trampling on others rights to own their own stories, I’m not gonna quote or bring up specifics but damn….

Grief comes in so many different forms. Grief isn’t only about the loss of people or animals or being left. Grief and identity are so so closely linked.

And the link between grief and mental health and drugs and alcohol is profound.

We need to do better as a society. The conversation I’m having needs to be had.

Grieving is important for so many reasons.

And getting rid of the fucking stigma behind all of this shit is so so fucking important.

Power

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After an amazing weekend away, I’ve realized that my anxiety in public has virtually vanished. There were multiple times that I went off completely alone in NYC in crowds, without a thought.

I went and retrieved a pizza when they suddenly couldn’t deliver it and throughout the weekend I had no issue figuring out the subway and actually enjoyed getting lost and missing stops and backtracking. It was a puzzle, a game.

I survived one of my worst fears a year ago, and so those people in that giant city have no power over me anymore.

But now those close to me have 100 times more power than they can ever imagine. And it’s power they don’t want, and power I don’t want to give them and it’s become a whole different kind of anxiety that I’m now battling. These trains are just as loud as the trains that used to tell me I couldn’t leave the house.

I know loss, and not in the “we can’t be friends anymore” kind of way, and not even in the “this isn’t working out” kind of way. We had a fight, a stupid fight over stupid shit and she went to bed and did not wake up. And while I know I had nothing to do with Parker’s death, I cannot quiet that voice that tells me I did . . . . it’s part of the process . . .

Because of that, the social anxiety that was always there is now 100 times louder. The fear that everyone else is going to leave gets louder and louder.

Every time someone is angry with me not only do I feel that tension and need to run from it, but I’m internally petrified . . what if I don’t have a chance to make amends. What if there is no tomorrow to say “I’m sorry, this was stupid” after they calm down.

Because of it I end up sometimes becoming incredibly irratic and overbearing and talking over them and even over myself to try and fix problems that aren’t even there because in my mind . .

If I don’t put out those fires I’m going to lose more people.

And i LOVE my people. I love my tribe. With every bit of my being.

I am both thankful for, and sorry to those who have been so close to me this past year. I know I am a lot. And I know that by now, you thought it would not be so much to be so close to someone who you have given so much to. And I do appreciate you, more than you could ever know. I wasn’t on even ground to begin with, and a year ago that ground disappeared. I’m quite thankful that I realized I could fly, but you guys have done more than your fair share of carrying.

I am intense . . and I am trying to get better. All month I have been trying to figure out how things feel so right in some ways, and so wrong in other ways.

What Doesn’t Kill

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So, here’s the deal. I’m not going to be one of those people that say God doesn’t give you what you can’t handle. Because, seriously . . look at my life.

However, I was one that said this phrase, a lot. But, each one of these things that kept hitting me, kept making me more of the me I was meant to be. And then, after I recovered from each major thing I would look back and say I wouldn’t change a thing because it put me where I am today, and I’m right where I am meant to be.

Now, before I say this next phrase, please realize.

I Want Parker Back. I want my wife back. There is NO denying that.

However. That situation made me who I am and put me where I am right this second. So no, a year ago, I wasn’t already strong enough, because I wasn’t who I was meant to be yet. If everything would not have happened I would not be where I am this second.

And I’m right where I am meant to be.

And I love me. And that, is an amazing feeling.