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being real

Reaching Out 101

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How many of us desperately want to connect, want to have a sit-down serious conversation with someone, want to talk about our fears and hopes and worries and secrets and stories, but we just don’t know how?

Once we’re in the environment, our mouth and our hearts open and we talk. But initiating can make us feel anxious, unworthy, shy, tongue-tied, or all other things.

So, if you are sitting there thinking, “I would love to talk to this person about issues in my relationship” or “It would help so much to tell someone about my struggle with alcohol” or “My anxiety is through the roof and I want to vent”, but you’re stuck or obsessing over how to get the ball rolling, here is what I suggest:

Simple is best. If you are like me (well, more like how I was – I have improved significantly in this domain), you might be stumbling over the perfect words, rehearsing them over and over, not wanting to sound too needy, not wanting to bother anyone, and so and on so forth. And before you know it, it’s a month later and you still haven’t said anything.

So, keep it simple.

“Hey – I’d love to chat for a few at some point. Could we find a time?”

See? No obsessive apologizing, no worrying about how much info you’re giving, just straight and to the point.

You don’t have to put disclaimers, you don’t have to apologize, you don’t have to self-deprecate (“I know I’m a mess” or “Sorry I always bother you”). Also, let me remind you: it is not your job to worry about burdening or overtaxing the other person. Your job is to ask for what you need. Their job is to be honest about what they are able to do. If someone isn’t free and can’t talk, it’s on them to set a boundary and say so.

Keep it simple. Take a breath. And press “send”.

Daily Babbles: 9/20

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Thoughts that floated through my brain today:

  • I no longer habitually put people on a pedestal; but sometimes I’ll get butterflies in my stomach before I meet with someone, or read and re-read an email I’m about to send to someone, and I realize it’s happening without me even realizing it.
  • There is so much I learned in high school or college classes that I don’t know anymore and that’s so sad.
  • I look at the old newborn diaper I keep as a reminder and can’t even believe that at the scary beginning of Maggie’s life, it was too big on her.
  • One of my secret dreams that I don’t think I’ll ever do but dream of doing, is publishing a memoir or anthology of little posts or essays.
  • I miss moments of newborn snuggles but I don’t miss the fact that newborn snuggles were in lieu of showering, eating, exercising, changing clothes, brushing teeth, sleeping.
  • I have a (short) post in the works about the mental load that mothers carry.
  • I have visual-spatial synesthesia which has always been part of me but also I think is why I am so sensitive to the passing of time, growing up, aging, seasons changing, etc., because rather than solely experiencing it, I can SEE it.

Daily babbles: 9/18

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Sometimes I think if I don’t write I’m going to explode. Or implode.

I’ve felt like that for a while.

I don’t have time to write anything, let alone profoundly string together carefully-edited words with the intention of reaching and moving many people.

So I haven’t written.

But I just….times are hard. Everything is hard. And when I write I feel the black tar crap stuck inside of me shaking loose and I can breathe a bit easier.

I need to breathe.

So I thought maybe I’d just write a few thoughts. Nothing big, nothing profound. Just a few daily thoughts in my babbling way, and see where it takes me.

Read it, or don’t. It doesn’t matter.

Today:

  • I stepped outside at 6:16pm because I hadn’t had a single second to myself where I could just breathe and not be thinking working helping mothering cleaning. I could’ve stayed outside forever.
  • The thought of the cold weather coming makes me want to cry. This fall brings up so many traumatic memories of being sick and Maggie’s birth. Not to mention the lack of light and I hate hate hate being cold because it reminds me of years when I was always cold and couldn’t warm up. And don’t get me started on the darkness.
  • I’m so sick of people using gratitude to dismiss others’ feelings. People can be exhausted at work or with parenting and still love work or parenting. That’s so dumb to say otherwise.
  • I never really thought that gender roles were so ingrained in people but they actually are.
  • The only way I could be exercising is to sacrifice sleep which I’m already depleted of. I need more time.

What are some of the thoughts/experiences from your day?

On healing.

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You know when you’ve wrapped up a project or assignment and you’re psyched it’s all done until all of a sudden you realize you forgot to do a part of it and you freak out?

That’s how I’ve been feeling.

Glennon Doyle and Nadia Bolz-Weber talk about sharing from the scar, not the wound. This is something that took me many, many years to learn, but during the adulthood phase of my life, I’ve gotten good at it. I’ve learned to not write and share until something has passed, so that it’s not alarming, but more just facts that other people can read and relate to and feel less alone from.

Now, there is a time and place for sharing from the wound and I firmly believe that. Especially if you have a person or two you can talk to and unload to and be real with. That’s healing.  And, I think sometimes it’s okay to write from the wound, when it’s real and honest and not scary and would not make someone panic but might make them think, “Oh! It’s not just me. I’m not the only one who struggles/is still healing/has these experiences.”

So that’s what I was thinking could come from writing this. Just a little dose of being real, for the sake of being real, for the hope of connecting a thread from my heart to someone else’s.

I’m just going to tell it like it is:

I am well aware that healing is not linear and can take a long time. It’s just….it took a long time. A very long time. And I did so much work on so many things, and finally felt very healed. But I think I naively equated “healed” to “never struggling ever again.” And so when I started struggling again, it wasn’t just that it was intense feelings and thoughts, but the extreme layer of shock and self-judgment: How could this possibly be happening? I never once in my mind foresaw this as a possibility. Which is stupid. Idiot. Yes, I preach self-love and acceptance and all of that, and yet all I can feel for myself is embarrassment and shame. And that’s just the real truth.

I am having an intense influx of food and body thoughts for the first time in many, many years. I am very aware of why. But that doesn’t make it easier. It is distressing to me when every time I eat, a voice in my head that I haven’t heard in a decade whispers things that my brain latches onto. It’s not about acting on the thoughts – I am not. It’s that their mere presence takes up valuable real estate that I had back, and want back, and lead me to wonder, Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. Is it possible this could be a thing again? I never thought that could ever happen. It feels out of my control and it’s scary.

With bad luck around timing, I have additionally been on edge with some trauma-related things coming up for me. There is also a clear reason for this, but it is also not making it easier. You can cognitively know things and talk yourself down from them and rationalize in your brain all day long – but if it’s stuck in your brain and your body, it’s harder to shake. I again had that second layer of judgment and worry here – I thought I was past this. I did the work. It never occurred to me I could struggle with this again. I thought I was healed. Again. Out of control and scary.

I did a very nice job ignoring it all and pushing it aside for a little while, but we know how well that  goes, right? So, unsurprisingly, it all took up residence in my body. And it wasn’t until I was having the start of panic attacks again for the first time in a long time, until I was feeling my skin crawling, until I was getting nauseous for no reason, until headaches were starting, that I realized/decided, Oh, right. The body always tries to tell us something. I guess ignoring it isn’t really an option.

It will all straighten out, I know that. I worry it won’t, but I also know it will. Blips and valleys are not the same as backslides, and you can never really be back where you were because you’re always healing and moving forward.

So what is the point of all of this, there is should always be a point, right?

Well, I guess it’s to remind you (and me) that blips happen and once things get easier they aren’t always easy every single day forever and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed, it just means that’s how it goes. And that ignoring and stuffing things away rarely (never) works. And that you have to try really hard to not judge and not panic and not despair, because that just adds to an already difficult situation. And that you are not alone, and you are not crazy.

The glitz and glamour of sexual assault

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[I wrote this last winter, shortly after the second debate. I don’t remember why I never published it. I also don’t know why I’m publishing it today. Maybe because I can’t seem to write anything else coherent and this is an easy way out – posting something I already wrote. Maybe because this topic is always worth addressing. I suppose the why doesn’t even matter, anyway.]

I posted this on Facebook, following the debate a few weeks ago:

Just a friendly PSA: women don’t come forward for fame. Women come forward to bravely speak their truth so they can survive and be free.

A friend commented [sarcastically], “Nothing like the glitz and glamour of sexual assault.”

Yup – I know that’s what I always wanted. You too, right?

It is infuriating and terrifying to think that people out there still believe that the only reason a woman would share a story is because she made it up while trying to get in the spotlight.

Absent a serious mental condition, women don’t go around making up stories to ruin someone’s life in the interest of fame.

Newsflash: the reason so many of us don’t tell, or didn’t tell for so many years, is because we didn’t want to be in a spotlight.

It’s not a club that anybody wants to be in. But we find ourselves there – and so we find a way to survive. And that often happens by sharing our stories. Not because, “Ooh! This would be so cool to talk about, and maybe I’ll become rich and famous!”

There was nothing exhilarating or glamorous about anxiously sitting on a couch in front of a friend, trying not to throw up or panic, trying to look her in the eye, drenched in the shame I thought was mine, as I spoke the words and told her my stories. There was nothing fun and exciting about sitting in therapy and working through the years and the memories.

It was freeing. Liberating. Relieving. Terrifying. Worth it.

But not glitzy. Not glamorous.

That’s not how this works.

Sometimes, a survivor does become famous. But when that happens, they’re not famous because of what happened to them, or because of who hurt them. They’re famous because of their bravery in speaking their truth. Because of the hope and courage they give others. Because of the freedom they then feel, and inspire in others.

The problem is, the people who are going to read this are the ones who agree. The ones who have the same thoughts. The ones who don’t get it, who are still so ignorant, those are the ones who will never see these words. But we write, and we talk, on the off chance that someone reads something, and talks to someone who talks to someone who talks to someone who had a different opinion, and through the grapevine, they are educated and enlightened. 

Lessons learned. Again.

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You know how when there’s a leak in your house you usually fix it right away, but sometimes you just ignore it? Because it’s really not doing that much damage and it’s probably only leaking because it’s raining and it’s going to stop raining eventually.

Right. Except.

The thing is, you don’t know when it’s going to stop raining. Or when it’s going to start raining again. And how hard. Because despite your best efforts, and the best predictions and forecasts, sometimes storms just come. And sometimes they come out of nowhere, and you haven’t fixed the leak, and it makes an even bigger mess.

And then you have to figure out how to fix the damage from the leak. There’s no point in wasting time wishing you had fixed it earlier. Hindsight is 20-20 and all you can do is deal with what you have in front of you.

So you get mad at yourself, and you complain, and maybe you cry, but then you do the Next Right Thing. You call the repairman, and tell them that even if their schedule is crazy, you need to be fit in. And you don’t, you can’t, feel bad about it, because that’s their job. And you have to fix the damage to your house. No amount of avoidance or wishing is going to make it go away.

And you remind yourself: next time, for the love of all things holy, don’t ignore the leak. No matter how tempting avoidance is, remember that the likelihood of the leak just stopping is slim to none. Patch it. Fix it. Face it. Call the repairman. Well before the damage occurs.

The intimacy of a panic attack

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There was a recent episode of “This is Us” that had people talking (this is not a spoiler, not to worry). It involved Randall coping with anxiety that quickly increased in severity, and eventually showed him in the midst of a full-blown panic/anxiety attack.

It hurt my heart. It was gut-wrenching and painful and beautiful, too, because during his panic attack, his brother came and sat on the floor with him and just held him.

There are few things so vulnerable, so intimate.

I can count on one hand the number of people who I have wanted to see me in the middle of a panic attack. Some people have witnessed it just because it happened when they were around. But usually? I prefer to ride it out on my own, touching base after the wave has passed.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do it. You get through the hard times however you get through them. Some people want to be physically hugged through a panic attack – others push loved ones away. You do what you need to do.

There have been very, VERY few times in my life that during a panic attack that I have actively sought out someone. It is hard to be that vulnerable. It’s hard to be that intimate. It’s hard to let someone bear witness to your struggle.

What I CAN tell you, is that the times I have sat in front of someone, allowing them to see me at my most vulnerable, as I shook and sweat and gasped and hyperventilated and felt the color draining from my face – those times ended, interestingly, with me feeling more empowered after. I think it’s similar to how being upfront and telling it like it is in a medical setting has a positive result. There’s something very empowering about thinking, I could not be more vulnerable right now – and yet I’m going to let someone bear witness to my struggle. I’m going to trust them to love me through it and I’m not going to tell them what to do or what to say. I’m going to ride out what’s happening right now, and they will figure out how to help or what to do. It’s empowering because it’s allowing me to be me, and not feeling shame or embarrassment about it.

Like I said – it’s rare. I much prefer to handle it on my own. But from time to time, there’s something special about it. There’s something beautifully intimate about experiencing a hard time with someone else, and something powerful about embracing the struggle, and letting it float out there freely, letting it move through you, and not feeling like you need to hide.

You be you. You do you. You embrace you. And the right ones, the loved ones, those special ones that are in your tribe for a reason, will love you for it, and love you through it.