The Final Frontier(s)

It had previously been my intention to break up the posts about my depression (because depressing!) with something unrelated and opinionated. It was, spoiler alert, going to be a post about the degradation of the media with specific emphasis on sensationalism and the slangifying of language. That post will come, I don't doubt. Probably over Christmas when I'm feeling better.

But I'm not feeling better these days. I'm actually feeling much, much worse.

Allow me another metaphor about water.

As I mentioned in a previous post, depression lies. I know this. And when I'm more of a functioning human being, when I'm winning and not depression, I can shake it off. "That isn't true," I say to depression's ugly, stupid face. "That, in fact, is a downright lie." And depression, caught red-handed, shuts up for a while.

Consider, gentle reader, the ocean and space.

Uh-oh. I already have two different ways this metaphor can go. Let's do them one at a time, shall we?

The Ocean and Space: Option 1.

In this option, we find my original metaphor about the ocean in which I have added in space to make a point about the distance between where I am and happiness. I guess. Now I'm thinking this isn't the metaphor I wanted it to be. Whatever. Here we go.

This picks up where the drowning metaphor left off. I am sinking. Down, down, down I go, head not really even above water any more. But I'm still alive. And I'm dropping fast. Sinking like a diver with lead in her belt.

The ocean is a seemingly endless abyss. I know through my schooling that there is, at some point, a rock bottom. It's down there. In the blacker-than-blackness. And there there be monsters. I am headed straight for it, but I'm still swimming desperately for the surface when I can find the strength and energy.

The ocean. The further I go down, the darker it gets and I can't breathe. The air I'm holding in my lungs is burning to be exchanged. And the pressure is building all around me. In this world, depression is king. An opportunistic shark in a feeding frenzy. The thrashing has him circling me, waiting for my will to ebb, and then he strikes, leaving me bloody and a little less than I was before.

In this world, it is easy to believe depression's lies. Depression knows this and depression insidiously expounds.

(I'm very dramatic when I write. But this is also the truth.)

"You're not as good as that person. You shouldn't even bother to try to do that thing."
"You're never going to get anywhere with this. You're mediocre at best."
"Hear these good things they're saying about this person? Nobody's ever said those things about you. Nobody's going to."
"You're never going to be happy or functioning."
"Nobody is ever going to love you. You're never going to be in a relationship."
"Nobody cares about you."
"You will always feel like this. You will always be this girl."

And I can't breathe and the world is pressing in with more and more force and I panic. And I cry.

This is where I am, headed toward the center of the Earth unstoppably while most people are in the normal pressure of the world we know, in the sunlight, cooking, making love, experiencing life. Some lucky people are even further than that, up in the atmosphere where the pressure is less: happy.


That's option 1. This was my original intent.


Yesterday, I met my new therapist for the first time after a month-long ordeal of being screwed over repeatedly by the guy who did my intake (not my therapist). It's a start. I have an appointment to get medication before I go home for Christmas. I've been joking that by the time I get back from Texas in January, I'll be on dry land again. Well. Probably I'll be a castaway, washed up on the beach, coughing up salt water.

But that's better than pulling a Jack Dawson.


The Ocean and Space: Option 2.

My therapist, as I was informed yesterday, is not an all-talk therapist like I've had previously. My therapist is specifically a trauma therapist which is probably the best thing that could have been assigned to me, I think.

Yesterday being our initial meeting, we had a discussion (among other things) about her approach.

First, she solidified our relationship with this quote:

"I'm a trauma therapist, so we're going to be talking a lot about the nervous system and neuroscience. I can tell you're an academic."

SOLD. Guys, I didn't even have to tell her (like I normally do) about how smart I am, look at all my smarts, these are my smarts, did I mention I'm smart? She just knew. Ten points to Gryffindor.

Also: science. I love science.

Then she said what was more important. She described what is called the "window of tolerance" (LAND, GUYS) in which I would find the equilibrium of being a healthy, functioning human being that I so desperately seek. Then she explained how above this is a state of hyperstimulation (SPACE, GUYS), which is where we feel like there's too much going on and we can't deal with it and we start to panic. That's anxiety. Then she explained that below the window is hypostimulation (THE OCEAN, GUYS), which is depression and lethargy and, if we were in The Phantom Tollbooth, The Doldrums.

What we're going to be working on, according to my therapist, is my ability to successfully modulate my nervous system into the window of tolerance on my own whenever I feel that I am headed in either extreme direction.

"How does that sound?" she asked.

"Um, amazing."


In science and exploration, the ocean and space have both been described as The Final Frontier. I've lived in both for years. I can't wait to boldly go...where almost everyone else has gone before. That is my continuing mission. That is my greatest adventure.

Wet Metaphors

I've been treading water for almost two years now.

And I'm sinking. My head's still above water, but my limbs are so tired they're just about numb, no longer even burning with the effort.

But it isn't my physical exhaustion that's making me sink. My soul is tired. My heart and my soul just can't do it anymore. They're so heavy and they're weighing my body down and now I'm swallowing saltwater with every wave that passes over my head.

So now before I start to drown, I'm once again going to ask for help.

I'm a very proud person. I am a person who always expected to be able to swim because I've weathered so many storms, but the storms have passed and there's an eerie calm and it's this that I was not made to sail.

I've switched sea analogies midway through. I do that sometimes. Ken once told me I'm like a Tamarian. I think that's probably true.

I cannot sail with no wind. The waves are tiny and gentle, but I am succumbing to each one like a tidal wave.

I have capsized. I am clinging to the wreckage.

So it's time to ask for help to build a new boat, or at least a viable raft, before I really need it.

Analogies. Am I right? Analogies.

What I mean to say is, it's high time I started therapy again. So I suppose that is what I'll do. The past two weeks have gone from signals of potential danger right into the danger itself far more rapidly than I had anticipated and now here I am.

Again.

I hate asking for help.

I think maybe Chad's metaphor* wasn't perfect. I think I have bootstraps. I know I have bootstraps. But the depression tells me I don't. And I believe it. I can't see them and I can't feel them and I can't find them. But I know they exist because, dammit, I've used them before and I know I can use them again if I can just find them!

Well, I'm going to enlist a therapist to help me locate them. To help me get a grip on them. To help me build the muscle to pull myself up.

I was pretty adamant previously about returning to my old therapist because I liked her a lot, but also because I wouldn't have to explain my extremely complicated history of trauma, which takes about three therapy sessions just to cover the timeline. But she's up at Lincoln Center and that's a long way from Brooklyn. It was very convenient when I was attending Circle, but it's about an hour of travel from my apartment. And I also feel anxiety about even just calling her back up because of the way I kind of flaked out (although it was a big scheduling issue) and disappeared. Which I have a habit of doing.

So I think I'm gonna start new and hope they're not terrible. And just deal with the time it's going to take to catch them up on the Series of Unfortunate Events that has been my life so far. It also helps that the place recommended to me is supposed to be pretty low-cost. That helps massively with the guilt.

Thank you to everyone who talked to me after my last blog post and offered me their phone numbers and shoulders for crying on. I considered calling each and every one of you today, but the fact is that I don't feel right taking your valuable time with my totally preventable dip into depression. So I'm gonna pay a stranger to do it. I think it's better for everyone this way.

Don't worry; if I really need to talk, I won't hesitate to call.

But I'm mostly fine. And for everything else, there are whole professions of people out there who specialize in this sort of thing.

In other news, the place that was recommended to me is acronym'd ICP. When you Google it?

Insane Clown Posse.

* "People who have boot straps probably like to hear about boot straps. Depressed people don't have boot straps. That's what depression is. Not having boot straps."


* Addendum: As it turns out, this new place is at Columbus Circle, so that's hardly better, but at least I can take the B all the way there.

* Addendumum: Isn't it strange that this is almost the exact date in 2009 at which I made this decision last time? I wonder what it is about October/November.

The Questing Beast

This is a depression post. Sorry. Except not really sorry. My blog. You deal.

The problem is that I can't deal. Somehow in the process of my life experience, I never learned how to deal with the living of life itself. I can handle the big stuff. Death. Trauma. Crisis. But I must have missed the lesssons about motivation and will power. About how to get out of bed in the morning and face the day and work a job to make ends meet even if it's not what you want out of your life. I must have been absent that day.

Of course, the truth is, I've been absent from a lot of my life. Dissociation has been key to my survival as a functioning human being. Dissociation and fantasy. So for at least ten years of my life (formative years, too -- we're talking all through adolescence and into young adulthood) I lived in alternate realities for large portions of the day. This is how I deal, Mandy Moore. Or rather, this is how I don't deal.

When I quit that cold turkey on November 1st, 2009, I vowed that I would actually live my life.

Except that here I am, October 16, 2012, sitting on my couch marathoning Star Trek because the reality of my current position is bleak and my depression is making it worse. Because I don't know how to get a job or go out and meet people and I've had one actual honest-to-God boyfriend in my entire life and that was when I was 18 - 20 and now I'm twenty-six and sometimes I think something horrible must be wrong with me.

But the only thing actually wrong with me, the only thing that really probably keeps me from dealing? Depression.

Fuckin' depression.

Some days I feel great. And then there are days like today where I feel like I can't breathe and I'm crying by myself on the couch with my hands pressed to my forehead and trying desperately to think of someone I can call who's actually gonna give a shit and understand.

Please don't misunderstand. I know I have friends. I have great friends. I have a family that loves me and would be perfectly willing to have me call them sobbing, mid-panic attack for the millionth time.

Part of it is that I don't want to be that girl to anyone. Because once upon a time I was that girl to people and they dropped me like an AT&T call in New York City (topical humor!). And because I am fairly proud and I do like to maintain a little bit of dignity. What little bit of dignity I have left.

Do I have dignity left? I hope so.

The difference between this swing of depression and most of my previous swings of depression is very important: AWARENESS.

Oh my God, awareness is a wonderful thing. Depression lies. And now I know that. So when a thought pops into my mind saying that I can't do something, I usually can say, "That's not true. I can absolutely do that. And it's going to be fine."

And I have some really incredible people in my life, so I (almost) never feel isolated and ostracized. I mean, I feel self-isolated and self-ostracized at times, but for the most part, there's always someone who wants to have me around. For that I am grateful.

I'm not really sure where this post is going. It was, originally, a way to stop myself from crying (and to do something that feels even mildly productive) and to talk about money.

But not a lot about money because, in fact, that's a very tricky and complicated subject.

But to talk about the fact that I'm getting into what I just now decided to call The Danger Zone with depression. I've been walking a fine line for some time now, dipping a toe on one side or the other, but never really losing my balance. Just a-wobblin'.

Well, it's getting worse. There are signs: panic attacks that include difficulty breathing, a burning sensation in my chest, a crushing pressure on my sternum, occasionally dizziness; bouts of crying for no reason in particular or for a very deep reason that a healthy person might not delve into with that magical dwelling ability that depression gives me (many's the time lately I've cried over things that are long since past or things that have yet to happen...I'm like Mr. Scrooge with tears); jealousy; an inability to leave my apartment most of the time; insomnia; etc.

These signs? They're all there right now. Now I know very well that if I can get my exercise regimen back to where it was before Labor Day and before I lost my gym membership, that will fix a lot of things. The insomnia, for instance, and the sitting around my apartment. It'll help with the stress and cut down my dwelling and crying alone time. And I actually feel totally capable of making myself go work out, so that's good. Therefore I am not so long gone as I have been previously.

You wanna know something ridiculous? I remembered today that one of the big reasons I stopped taking my medication at the beginning of second year was because I was feeling very complacent with myself as an actor instead of taking big risks all the time just to see if I could take them. In retrospect, maybe I had just reached a place of confidence and I should have stayed the medicated course. Whoops.

I like to think I'm an exceptionally intelligent human being, but then sometimes I cannot believe the dumb shit I do.

Anyway, the point of talking about money was this:

There are two things I want right now, health-wise. Okay, three. The first is that I want my birth control to not cost me $80 a month because that is fucking ridiculous. And Republicans can take it right up the damn ass on that one because screw you guys. I haven't had sex in going on seven years, so these pills are solely to keep my body in its healthy rhythm and for, you know, in case I get raped. Because I would rather not get pregnant with the child of an assault. Just a personal preference. ANYWAY. The second thing is that I really need to go in to a TMJD specialist in NYC so that I can get a new mouth guard and reduce the life-interrupting tension and pain that comes from having a way messed up jaw. The third and perhaps most important thing, though, is that I probably need to go back into therapy. I think even if I were not as depressed as I am, it would be a good idea because I have some major sexual issues I need to work through and probably some serious abandonment issues as well before I think I can actually be a socially normal adult.

The problem is that I'm twenty-six and still living off my parents. Because I'm a depressive loser. Okay, maybe I'm not a loser. I'm a depressive child. And I cannot ask them for the money for something like that when they're already paying for everything else.

"Why don't you just get a job waiting tables?" you ask.

Fuck you. Haven't you read anything I've written so far? Depression is hard. And my depression makes things like regular full-time jobs terrifying. Terrifying to the point where I fall even deeper into depression and keep calling in sick and then I get fired. Welcome to my life, all you people with actual work ethics and sadnesses that manifest in ways that don't completely debilitate you. (Although if things don't start working out the way I'd like them to work out, I may have to just suck it up and deal and hope that I don't fall apart like wet toilet paper.)

And also don't think that I don't ever do anything with my time. I'm actually very busy, considering how often I end up useless and miserable, trapped inside my apartment walls.

When I didn't realize I was depressed -- or when my depression was latent and held back by a nuclear bunker wall of Ignoring My Feelings -- I used to read the posts of people with depression and be like, "Get over it. My life is shitty and I'm not complaining all the time about my feelings. Your life is totally normal for a suburban teenager. What are you crying about?" People would post something dramatic (this is all back on LiveJournal, mind) about how they should just kill themselves and then everybody would be like, "Oh, no, don't do that! You're so great!" And I'd be like, "Seriously? They're just trying to get attention." (But, obviously, I never actually said that out loud or posted it as a comment.) And to be fair, they were. But that doesn't make it any less serious or painful for them.

It wasn't until someone I love very much attempted suicide that I finally got it. Got what depression can make a person think. Got how far it can take them away from who they really are. And it wasn't until I went to college for the first time that my depression (good ol' late bloomer that it is) finally completely took over and ransacked my life that I figured out what it's all about.

Guys, depression is super fuckin' hard.

I consider myself a very brave person. I've dealt with a lot, I've survived a lot, I take a lot of emotional risks in my acting work, and these days when I notice I'm very afraid of something, I find the most extreme thing I can do within that fear...and I do it. Just to prove I can. I do a lot of things just to prove I can.

But in reality, in my life as a whole, I'm a coward. I'm a little kid curled up in a corner, afraid of the dark. There's a light on in the hallway if I would just open my eyes, run screaming across the room, and throw open the door. But mostly I sit in the corner and I tremble and I wonder why my room has to be so dark and when did the lights get turned off anyway?

My life is ruled by fear. Fear of failure. Fear of abandonment. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of losing something or someone I love. Fear of being judged negatively for who I am. Fear of not being good enough.

Of never being good enough or worthy enough for the things that I want. Even the things that seem to be the right of every human being. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness.

But then, the unalienable right isn't "happiness," is it. Just the pursuit of it.

Each human being is on a life-long quest for happiness, like Pellinore in The Once and Future King. They chase the Questing Beast of Happiness their whole long lives and maybe they catch it sometimes and maybe they keep it for a while, but ultimately it will always get away and they'll have to chase it again.

Depression is a peat bog on the Quest. You stumble into it without even really realizing it's there and you struggle on because that's life and there's the Questing Beast ahead of you, just out of reach. By the time you notice that you're no longer moving ahead, it's too late. You look down and realize you're waist-deep or chest-deep or chin-deep in muck and the more you fight, the more you sink. You feel like someone else will have to come along and pull you out, but no one can. You're too deep in and they'll risk themselves if they get in it with you (and anyway, they probably don't understand how you even got that deep in the first place) and Happiness has long since gone loping out of sight and it's been so long since you've seen it, you start to doubt that it ever existed in the first place. You don't remember what it looks like or what sound it makes. And you sit, barely holding your head above the sludge, watching other people go racing by after the Beast and hating them because they somehow missed the bog entirely.

I think there are very few people who will read this that knew me before I fell into the bog. I wonder what kind of adult I would have been if I'd run right past it. I wonder what kind of adult I'll be if I can just climb to my freedom.

What must it be like to have healthy sadness. I imagine it must be beautiful.

The Born Identity

Brace yourselves, equal people of the world: this one's about sexism and marriage in English-speaking culture.

Women. Am I right? Women.

When once I was a little girl, I had fairly normal little girl tendencies. Sure, I played a good deal with dogs and went hiking in my backyard and wanted to do the things my brothers did and played soccer and climbed trees and preferred 101 Dalmatians to The Little Mermaid and spent a longer period of time with Legos and TMNT action figures than I did with Barbie, but I also have a picture somewhere of two-year-old Vanessa (or Nessie Boo, as she was then known) proudly wearing her little dress-up costume that was a wedding dress and veil with a toy bouquet.

I spoke of getting married as a given. One time, in fact, I told my parents that I was going to marry a black man -- but a real one, not like Michael Jackson (dubious racial progress!). I have (and still do) planned my wedding and the names of my children and thought about who my husband will be for as long as I can remember. My parents love each other very much even now after forty years of being together and thirty-eight years of marriage, through nearly every possible kind of horrific catastrophe a marriage can sustain from the outside of itself, so I have high standards and high hopes for what I still strive to eventually attain in a partner and a spouse (assuming I ever get a boyfriend). I am, on the whole, pro-marriage and pro-not-too-extravagant-wedding.

When my mother married, she went from being Donna Kay Tanner to Donna Tanner Bellew (which I've always considered an upgrade because...wouldn't you rather be the bear in the Jungle Book than someone who tans leather for a living?), so as a child I grew up expecting that one day I'd meet someone and we'd get married and then I'd stop being Vanessa Lauren Bellew and start being Vanessa Bellew Hislastname and I did at one time consider it a charming prospect. I remember, however, always feeling a little grumpy about the fact that I was expected to lose my middle name (even though I've never really liked it). I also was jealous that my brothers would always get to be Bellews. And I had a very strong sense as a child that because there were no famous Bellews that I was aware, when I was famous (be it from writing or acting or both), I wouldn't pull a Natalie Portman and change my last name for privacy. Oh, no. I would be Vanessa Bellew come Hell or high water so that some other little Bellew girl out there could look at me and go, "Yes! She's a Bellew and so am I and I can be like her!"

So began my long-time decision that I would be Vanessa Bellew in public, but probably I would take my husband's last name in our personal lives (especially assuming that he had an awesome last name like 'Moriarty' or 'Picard' or 'Zombieapocalypse'). This, I felt, was a good compromise because I wouldn't want him to feel emasculated by my powerful famous woman-ness. Because apparently being a strong, independent woman makes your husband less of a man in the eyes of society, or so I understood to be true at one point in my life.

This summer my very best friend in all of the world ever ever ever, the beautiful and clever Danielle Boss of the Texas Bosses, tied the knot with her long-time paramour Daniel McDonald. I believe our conversations about what she'd do about her last name have led to this post (or perhaps a natural progression of awareness about my identity versus my identity as a woman). Danielle decided on hyphenation: Boss-McDonald, which is understandable, socially accepted these days, and a credible feminist stance to take.

Danielle and I have also been friends since we were in sixth grade. We went through middle school and high school together and then went to different colleges, but have stayed very much in touch. At this point in our lives, nearly ten years after graduation from twelfth grade, we speak just about every day. So we've been discussing the engagements and marriages and children of our friends and acquaintances throughout the years, usually in baffled, incredulous terms. An average conversation would maybe go like this:

Danielle: um, did you see that so-and-so got married?
Vanessa: Oh my God, yes. What was she thinking? She's nineteen! She hasn't even finished college!
Danielle: seriously. too young.
Vanessa: I don't even know how to take care of myself, much less be married!
Danielle: same here.

Fast forward to age twenty-six and Danielle, who is completely capable of taking care of herself even if she occasionally admits to not really feeling like an adult, is now a married woman who shares her life with another human being. I still, closer to thirty than to eighteen, am completely at sea when it comes to being a functioning grown up. I can't imagine I'd be very good in my current condition at being married.

As time has passed and I've seen more and more of my peers become happily domestic (usually aided by Pinterest), I've noticed a disturbing trend of what I shall henceforth refer to as Housewife Mentality*. Please do not misunderstand: my mother was a housewife for most of my life and she is bitchin' at it, so I am not disparaging housewife as a life choice. It's just a shorthand way of saying that they are following the preprogrammed societal expectation that a woman is absorbed into the man in marriage like a too-small twin in the womb. It would be one thing if these millennial young women were making this choice fully aware of themselves and how culture has shaped them and told them what to do and what to be, but for the most part I'm pretty sure the girls I've been watching checking things off their List of Life Steps (high school, college, boyfriend, fiance, husband, dog, house, baby, etc.) are particularly proud of their old-fashioned roles, almost as a reaction to the modern have-it-all woman.

Yesterday a friend of mine who at one time in her early adulthood said repeatedly that she would never get married...got married. She seems perfectly happy and for that I am glad. What struck me, however, was that immediately on Facebook, she changed her last name to his and then posted how pleased she was to be Mrs. Hislastname. And that is what started my brain train down these sexism and marriage tracks.

Danielle, on Facebook, is still Danielle Boss. And as always, I turned to her to air my grievances with this new development. I said I found it repugnant. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me that women have been societally expected to completely give up their Born Identity (get it?) when they get married. All this time, all these changes in the perception of what women can and can't do, and here we still are, traded off to someone else in marriage because of traditions of property that somehow we've turned into 'cute' and 'quaint' and 'sweet'.

Having said that, I still have every intention of having my father walk me down the aisle and give me away. So these traditions have their hooks in me as well.

This also got me started thinking about how sexist our prefixes are. A boy is born a "sir" and a "mister" and remains a "sir" and a "mister" his entire life. A girl is born a "miss", grows into a "Ms." and a "ma'am" if she isn't married by a certain time, and, upon her marriage, becomes a "misses". First of all, I can't ever imagine anyone calling me "misses" and I have no warm feelings whatsoever for the word itself. I think it's dumb. I much prefer being a "miss" and I don't think I will ever refer to myself as "Ms." even on an envelope. I am not a piece of fruit. I do not lose worth with age. And I am not a stray cat, to be given a new name with each new owner (sorry, Nietzsche).

So I think today I have made a new life decision. When and if I am married, I will remain forever the person I was born: Vanessa Lauren Bellew**. I will never be Mrs. Anything, but will prefer to be called "Miss" for the rest of my life. And I suppose in the next few years, I'll have to spend some time thinking about the naming tradition for children in which they only inherit their father's last name, as if half of their DNA were not important.

I am woman. Hear me roar my given name.



* Did you notice that I set up that terminology and then never used it again? Me too.

** Exceptions will be considered in cases of extremely awesome last names as previously mentioned. How could I pass up being Vanessa Picard? I don't think I could.

Girl Nerd Manifesto

This post has been removed for use on another site.

Standard Christian Condolences

Death, I have discovered, makes me violently angry.

It isn't that the death itself makes me angry, although often times this is so. Certainly I am still particularly livid about the death of my twenty-one-year-old brother, and, despite the fact that she was in her 70s at the time, I'm pretty pissed off that my paternal grandmother died. I think if she'd been around when I was in high school, a lot of things would have gone differently for myself and my family. But death is death is death and what are you gonna do? Death is like that game they play in The Secret Garden where they spin you around in circles with a blindfold on and then you have to grope around the designated area until you find someone, at which point you have to feel their face and guess who it is. In this analogy, ladies and gentlemen, the part of the blindfolded person will be played by Death.

No, what makes me really furious about death is people's responses to it.

And I know, I get it, everybody deals with death differently. I know that better than most, certainly, because my mother always wanted to talk about it with me and all I wanted was to run yelling from the room any time she brought the subject up. Don't worry; I am no longer living inside an emotional fall-out shelter.

"Incoming emotions! Incoming! Hit the deck! Take cover! Save yourselves!"

I bring this up mostly because my step-cousin has, for the past couple of weeks now, been constantly updating Twitter and occasionally Facebook with posts about two deaths at her high school. My step-cousin, who lives in the Bible Belt. Who is very strongly entrenched in a local religious community.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

But when she makes these posts, there is a massive outpouring of responses from this religious community with things that say that God has a plan and have faith in God and blah blah blah Jesus is the only path to Salvation, so make sure that while you're trying to figure out this senseless death of a teenager, you sing some new poppy Christian music and hold your hands in the air to show you're really feeling the fucking Holy Spirit.

Because let me fucking tell you, there is very little more infuriating to me than someone's response to death being that it is God's fucking plan. God works in mysterious fucking ways. God will see you through this tough fucking time. FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

And, I swear, if you tell me you're praying for me and my family during this difficult time, I will punch you in the motherfucking face.

As you can see, I feel strongly about this subject.

This is probably not universally true*, but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that if you respond to the news of death with something about God's plan and your prayers for that family, you have never actually experienced what it's like to lose someone who has not lived a long, full life.

And when I say "lose someone" I mean that someone who is in your immediate family or very intimate with you -- a parent before they were old enough to be a grandparent, a brother, a sister, a child, a best friend, a lover, in some cases a grandchild or a niece or nephew or cousin (although you have to be really fucking close to that niece or nephew or grandchild or cousin to qualify) -- perished. Died. Shuffled off the mortal fucking coil.

(I'm saying fuck a lot in this post. This is uncommon for me.)

Because when you actually get bitchslapped in the face by that kind of death, you suddenly realize how completely useless and inadequate all forms of consolation are. There is no consolation for that kind of loss. There will never be a consolation for that kind of loss.

"I'm so sorry your teenaged son just committed suicide. God has a plan. I'm praying for you."

HOW. FUCKING. PRESUMPTUOUS.

I say this, mind you, as a Christian myself. I don't believe in organized religion in general, but I do believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I do, in fact, think that God has a plan and sometimes I do pray for people (but only ever things like 'keep them safe' or 'help them through this' and I would never ever tell them that).

But you don't know how that person's feeling about God or a plan or anything in that moment and how dare  you make yourself feel better by shoving your own puny sense of stability and order in the universe in their face.

I don't even feel that I can properly articulate how absolutely wrong that is.

And maybe that's just me. I do notice that because of my own particular experiences with death and trauma, I have a tendency to feel almost an ownership, a possessiveness towards the traumatic events themselves.

But I do think that it is impossible to truly understand what it's like to lose someone that close to you until you've lost them. And I think people whose lives have been more or less trauma-free cannot, to a certain extent, truly empathize with the utter chaos or complete devastation of trauma.

Sure, acting-wise, we can say, "If you have killed a mosquito, you know what it is to be a killer." And to some extent that's true. A fucked-up life is not a prerequisite to being a great actor. But I think some life experiences are almost like very exclusive clubs. I am a member of several such clubs. And I am very elitist.

I do want to say that Standard Christian Condolences are not my only death-related pet peeves, just, I think, probably the ones I hate the most.

"You'll see them again in Heaven. They're in a better place."

Fuck you. I want to see them now and I want them to be here in this shitty place with me.

No, just about every response to death bothers me. People who pretend it's effecting them more than it actually is for attention (because, in my experience, the people really suffering tend to be quiet about the pain to most of the world) or some kind of award that says 'Guys, I'm Hurting The Most!' (people who are experiencing their first peripheral brush with death tend to do this -- they play the role of the grieving like it's a game). People who tell me they're sorry for my loss. People who send me 'positive vibes'. INTERNET HUGS. THEY ARE AWFUL.

One of the absolute worst is when people find out you've experienced something like, say, your big brother dying, and their response is to say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry. My best friend's dad died a couple years ago."

THAT IS NOT THE SAME, DUMBASS.

And while I do think there is a certain club-like something to this kind of loss, that does not give anyone the right to say, "Oh, you just got your membership card? Here's my membership card!"

I would never ever tell someone whose brother just died, "Oh, I'm sorry. My brother died too."

I'd bring it into the conversation eventually, but I'd do it to make it about the person feeling the pain and not about me. In that moment, the point of bringing up my own loss would be to let them know that I understand what it feels like and that they're welcome to talk to me about it if they need someone who knows.

Because nobody knows. Nobody fucking knows.

But you know what I think is bothering me the most about this outpouring of messages of love and support and God-plan for these two dead kids in this high school, regardless of how disingenuous or ignorant these responses are?

When my big brother died, there was practically none of it.

And that makes me want to gut the entire fucking world in a hysterical rage.



* I do recognize that there are people in the world who, when faced with death of that magnitude, hold closer to their religious and/or spiritual beliefs and are not shaken and do not question. They stare at the urn with the ashes of their dead loved one and they think, "This is God's plan. God is great. I am blessed." And good for them. I mean, seriously, it must be an amazingly reassuring feeling. Personally, when I'm confronted by this kind of loss, my response tends to be three-fold: 1) "FUCK YOU, GOD!", 2) "GOD, WHAT THE FUCK?! THIS IS BULLSHIT!", and 3) "ARE YOU EVEN UP THERE?!" I don't usually get back around to the "maybe this is God's plan" idea until much, much later in my grieving process.

Midnight Thoughts On Bitterness

Nobody wants to hear a twenty-six year old complain about high school. Right? That's a thing. It's almost ten years in the past (holy shit) and there is not a single adult person having a conversation with me that wants to hear me bitch about my public high school experience. Because it's over. It's in the past. What purpose does being bitter about the football culture serve? The only people that win when I whinge about the abusive teachers in a non-activist way is the abusive teachers. Because that is their abuse still having power over me all these years later.

I'm bitter to some degree about practically every aspect of my life so far. Twenty-six years of bitterness or thereabouts. Less, maybe. When did things start getting worthy of bitterness? First grade, when Ms. Peterson accused me of plagiarizing my Valentine's Day story? The day my mother told the principal not to move me into the gifted and talented class just yet because we'd moved from Colorado and that was a lot of change in a short period of time?

On the other hand, what's wrong with being bitter? If shit was unfair and I was wronged, why not retain that sense of pain and injustice? Is it really holding me back? What does it hurt that I don't look entirely favorably on my high school experience? Some of it was great, but a lot of it was complete and utter bullshit.

At what point do I lose the right to be bitter and angry about something that happened in the past? And what does that part of my life become if I do decide to no longer feel that way about it? How do I even go about not feeling that way? Forgiveness?

I understand that Miss Howell and Ms. Vernon and Mrs. Hitt and Mrs. Flynn and all the other horrific teachers that abused me in some way, shape, or form in high school had problems of their own. It was never actually about me. But the fact that it was allowed to happen, that they allowed it to happen, I find it upsetting. I don't want anyone else to go through that. But I'm not actively doing anything to stop that. I'm just still angry at them.

It isn't as though I am only angry. My life is a lot of things. It is not only bitterness. Must I let the bitterness go? Why does it have to be bad or unhealthy? Is it actually bad or unhealthy?

I can't imagine how I'd feel about those parts of my life if the bitterness and anger were no longer there.

I've heard it said that depression is a person dwelling in the past and anxiety is a person worrying about the future. (However, if you're depressive and you have anxiety, that does not mean you live in the present, strangely enough. And I should know.) So probably the fact is that I am depressed because I haven't dealt with the bitterness and anger toward my past. Or is it that my depression makes me be bitter and angry toward my past? Maybe it's both.

And to be honest, it kind of makes me bitter and angry that not everyone else is bitter and angry about their pasts.

If I somehow managed to deal with the bitterness and heal it, would I be a better me? I like the dark, dry humor my bitterness and anger afford me. Will I be less funny if I have an emotionally healthy regard for the past? Okay, probably not.

Part of me clings to it protectively. My self imagines a world without bitterness and anger to be a scary, unsettling, unfamiliar one.

Well, I'm no closer to an answer to any of these questions than I was when I started typing.

At least I don't feel bitter or angry about that.

Bellew Revisited

As I walked home tonight from the train, I passed the church as I always do, and I looked up hopefully through the doors as I always do. I feel a pull when I pass a church, like God tugging on my heart's sleeve and saying, "I am. I am. I am."

Usually when I pass the church, there are people milling around or there's no one there. Tonight, I passed the church and the doors were open and they were singing.

Hymns. The sound of all sorts of voices raised in praise to Heaven, a kind of non-existent harmony created simply by the very different people joined together. My heart leapt. It leapt like I do in dreams where I can fly. It jumps, juuuumps, juuuuuumps! And then it takes flight.

My heart leapt. And right as it was about to take flight, a car drove by with the windows down, blasting rap music. The church music was completely drowned out and remained overpowered as I passed out of hearing.

It made me want to cry.

It occurred to me that it's a metaphor for my depression. Now, don't get me wrong. My depression now is not nearly as terrible as it was when I started this blog. The story in between posts goes like this: I took medicine over the summer. I did more therapy. Things were very good. The sun came out. And then second year made it impossible for me to go to therapy and I stopped taking my medicine because I thought that it might interfere with my acting (stupid). Second year passed by and I was no longer in school and I sank hard back into my depression, but never so deeply as when I first started this. So I never went back to therapy and I never got back on the medication. And sometimes I'm great and sometimes I'm awful, but it's never all the time. It's like the tide. Sometimes the beach is exposed and sometimes it's under water.

Tonight, my thought was that this experience, this craning to hear the hymns only to have it overtaken by the rap, that's the story of my depression. My natural state is to enjoy those things in life. Breathing in the quiet magic of reading a book in a park. Imagining characters and stories based on people on the subway. Feeling the age of the cobblestone streets of downtown. These are the hymns of the world and I am meant to hear them. But sometimes I can't. Sometimes the rap is too loud.

In a recent blog, Wil Wheaton likened his depression to always being in a very loud room but never realizing how loud it is because you can't remember anything else. He said when he went on medication and finally left that room, he was amazed at how quiet and enjoyable everything became.

Tonight, I am not depressed. At least, I am not more depressed than I am at peace. The rap is a little quieter at the moment and I can hear some of the singing. But it's still there. I can't remember a time when it wasn't, though I know there must have been one.

I wonder what that's like. One day I'd love to give it a try.