I have not been okay, but, like, I’m okay.

c/w suicidal ideations, alcohol/drug use, grief/loss

Hello, my loves. It has been a minute, hasn’t it? My instinct is to apologize for the long, procrastinated post; however, I am working on apologizing less for me just being me. Therefore, I am not sorry, but I would like to provide you with an explanation of my recent absence. I realize that writing a personal blog about my journey with mental health is both apparent when there is a post and when there is not a post.

Over the last month or so I hit a low… again. This time was different because I didn’t really see it coming. I was riding a high for so long, that even though I knew I would hit a downward slope again, I was hoping that just maybe I was wrong. Just maybe with my therapy and medication and stable partner I could just be “normal”, whatever that is. In my head “normal” is being able to live everyday without this overwhelming pain of the past and fear of the future grabbing ahold of you at different times in your life. I suppose after 2020 though, nobody is truly normal. Everyone I have talked to has struggled with their mental health is some way, shape, or form. Is this the new normal then? AM I NORMAL? I could never.

Anyways… While I used to think that my lows bloomed out of random acts of the universe, I now understand the many triggers that send me into a downward spiral. These last few weeks it was a culmination of so many things. The change in weather, in sunlight, election anxiety, work stress, the ins and outs of a new relationship, the coping skills from my eating disorder that I still lean into, the upcoming anniversary of the loss of a dear friend (re: Alex Wolf), the lack of continued contact to so many loved ones, the never ending news of millions upon millions of deaths from a virus that has been mishandled, the nightmares of people that have hurt me that wake me up in the middle of the night, my upcoming 30th birthday… need I go on? It wasn’t out of nowhere these feelings formed. My depression and how it responds to all of these life stressors is valid. Life is hard, having a mental illness is hard, writing this blog post is hard.

In fact, my roommate just walked into the room and said “are you crying? Is writing that hard?” And I just came to the realization that part of the reason I haven’t written anything in over a month is because I knew it was going to bring up a lot of feelings in me. These feelings are honestly a bit overwhelming. They sometimes show up as tears, or debilitation, or over activeness, or cold sores, or all of the above; it’s all a fine line. I must say this most recent slump has been much more manageable than my past experiences. I’ve only though about dying once, and it was so fleeting I wondered if it even counted- that is a major improvement for me. Hip hip hurray!

As I prepare to enter my 30th year of life, I can’t help but look back at the last 30 years and reflect on all the different ways my life has twisted and turned. Did I think I would ever be able to say I barely think of dying? When I was little, did I ever imagine the life that I am living right now? Not even a little bit. If my life had turned out the way I dreamed of as a kid, I would be famous, married, and have many adopted children, and probably live somewhere else like London or Australia. If my life had turned out the way I dreamed of when I was a teenager, I wouldn’t exist. And if my life had turned out the way I dreamed of as a young college student, I would be lawyer with a drinking problem.

Through these reflective moments, I am also reminded of how my depression has transformed over the years. How my low days are primarily a lack of motivation and much less suicidal ideations. How I am able to recognize it and provide myself with comfort instead of searching for it from strangers on the internet. The way that I reach out to those who truly love me, instead of pulling away from everyone that I love. Even just the way that I know that I am loved instead of feeling like the world would prefer that I not be here. I spent the last month in a depressive state and it didn’t scare me. I listened to the things that I needed in moments that felt the hardest and stopped shaming myself into feeling that it was wrong. It is hard enough being depressed and then also have my brain reprimand me for the way I was dealing with that depression.

I frequently ask my patients what their coping skills are and 9 times out of 10 they slink down into their chair and they begin to mumble that they smoke weed, or drink alcohol, or watch hours upon hours of TV. I try to reposition their mind set, the shame that lives within their slouched backs and mumbled tones. We are, at the core, humans trying to survive. Is drinking wine because I am sad the healthiest coping skill? Nah. Does it make me feel good in the moment, you can bet your bottom dollar. And I tell my clients just that. We do these things because we want to feel better and we shouldn’t shame ourselves into feeling bad for that. We can recognize that these are not long term solutions and that without getting real care and proper help these coping skills could create more harm than good; we can also recognize that sometimes getting stoned feels good. There is no healing when shame is masking all that we do, no matter what we are trying to heal from.

As I mentioned earlier, the anniversary of the loss of Alex Wolf is coming up on November 20th. Grief is not linear and there is no right way to heal. Many of us this year are experiencing that feeling. I can promise you that on Friday, I will be crying and I will have wine and I will call my best friend, his sister, and we will probably cry together and that might happen every year on November 20th and there is healing in that. I’m over feeling shame. Shame for what I put in my body, shame for how I heal, shame for how I look, shame for any of it.

Alex Wolf is one of the best people I’ve had in my life and when he passed I made a promise to live life like Alex. Alex was like the antidote for feeling shame. He made the people around him feel proud to be who they were because he was proud of himself and proud of his friends. In fact, I am smiling while I write this thinking about the time I was capturing images of my friends and asking them to give me their essence. [Image posted below.] Alex ran to put on his homemade corduroy shorts and take a picture with his best friend and I’ve never seen anyone more proud, even while me, his sister, and best friend mocked the shorts.

(Pictured: Stephanie B. and Alex W.)

So, all of this is to say 1. I haven’t been okay, but, like, I’m okay, 2. I still have depression and that is very real and I am still working to heal and cope, 3. thank goodness my life has taken twists and turns 4. There is no right way to cope, 5. Let’s stop shame altogether, 6. I miss you, Alex, 7. I am still trying to live my life like Alex, 8. Best friend, call me on Friday.

A[wo]men

when i let shame take ahold of me

i let go of knowing

i am exactly

where i need to be

-reasons to get rid of shame

Stability on the Water;

Hi, Friends! I apologize if you missed me last week, because I sure missed y’all. It is funny how off my week can feel when I skip a post (or 2, or 3). Don’t get me wrong I don’t regret taking the time off. I mean if you had the opportunity to go to the beach, wouldn’t you? Especially as summer fades away into fall I figured I should take advantage of any opportunities I can get in the sun and water.

I know I’ve talked a lot about baby Sarah, mostly in the context of hardships, but baby Sarah comes soaring out in all her greatness when I am in the water. As soon as I dip my big toe in I am transported back to that little girl that felt free in the water. There is no pain there, no fear. I am weightless! And for someone that always felt like she was too big, the peace that came with such an escape was indescribable. In fact, I think I could say the water saved my life.

I spent a lot of my childhood hoping to die. Yet, I never felt that way if I was in the water. I found solace lying on my back looking up at the sky or ceiling, the water filling my ears so all that was detectable was faint sounds that didn’t translate. We had a pool in our back yard. I would float or be a mermaid or a shark or a minnow or Marco or Polo and real world problems simply didn’t exist.

This month is Suicide Prevention Month. I’ve spent a lot of my writing talking about moments in time when I felt suicidal. It is not something I am shameful about and, in all honesty, I believe those thoughts are as natural world itself. Some of us feel them stronger than others and some of us believe there is no escape. For a long while, I only believed in escape in the water. However, when my feet would touch solid ground again, I slipped right back into my reality- the reality that I didn’t want to be here.

I am not here to talk about that reality today though. Today, I want to talk about my reality of this moment. In this moment, I doing really well. Well like I could skip down the sidewalk and sing in the store. Well like my heart might burst through my chest. What has caused me to feel so well? Mostly, there is stability in my life, like real stability. I’m not sure if you recall, but that was my news years resolution this year. I have money in my savings account, my credit card balances are finally going down, I have medication that has quite literally stabilized my mood, there is a cute boy I like. And if I am being totally real with y’all.. it’s freaking me out.

Why is it freaking me out? It is a new feeling. New anythings scare the sh*t out of me. New hairstyles, new apartments, new friends, new bedding. It’s unknown and what is scarier than the unknown? My anxious brain loves to think about the unknowns. The current obsession on repeat is “do I deserve to feel this good?” feat. trauma. It’s a classic hit that I’ve heard before. Real catchy, almost like an annoying jingle. Part of it spins out of that depressed girl, that didn’t think she should be alive. The girl that believed nothing could ever feel this good.

When this greatest hit get’s played, I want to rush to turn it off. As I have learned though, that’s not the way intrusive thoughts get shut down. They get shut down by letting them in, understanding them, respecting them. I’ve mulled over the question the last few nights, trying to understand my brain a little more. I have never questioned when hurtful things happen. Without skipping a beat “I deserve this” also feat. trauma, oddly enough, shoots to the top of the list. So, why, when something good happens, does it become the opposite? Could it be that old central message I worked so hard to get rid of rearing it’s head?

DING. DING. DING. Up until this past year I always thought that I wasn’t good enough. Messages that could validate such a statement were snuggled up under the covers with me and messages that didn’t rolled off my back like water. Now, my new message is that I am good enough, but it’s a new message… and you know how I feel about new things. I know though that it is all about practice. New things don’t always stay new. I thought again about my current #1 hit and how I could get it to fit my new message.

Why do I deserve to feel this good? Because feeling good is what everyone deserves. I am not special in that. If I want my friends and family and patients and strangers to feel that way, and I hope and pray for them to feel that way, I should hope and pray the same for myself. I am a human being with a million different parts and I want to experience all of those parts. We are all worthy of such a life.

Your central message right now might be telling you that you are not worthy. I sat with that message for along time, so I know how that feels. If you are hearing that as you read this, that is totally okay. You don’t have to rush into new feelings. Perhaps though you could think of what you would want your central message to say, or what you would want your best friends central message to say. Close your eyes and think of all the words that could make that statement come true, like a vision board. Now, try to trust that new things, although scary, can be the best things that happen to us. Try taking one little step to flip this unworthy message on its head. Maybe that means brushing your teeth, or getting a therapist, or literally just breathing.

And if all of that sounds like a bunch of bullsh*t, maybe go float in some water and drown it all out. That may be all you need for now.

A[wo]men

**Also, I would be remissed not to note that suicide prevention is not just reaching out. Suicide prevention is loving/supporting the LGBTQ+ community, it’s supportive housing, it’s having enough food, it’s being able to afford medication, it’s undoing racism. It’s a million things that are systemic and need to be fixed. Need resources? Contact me.

from the tears of those before you

fill your ears with their

salt and water

float

-you’re not alone;

And as always, if you are feeling in need of support, whether that be because you are suicidal, sad, happy, want to tell me a funny joke, etc. please reach out to me on my contact page. Love you all ❤

Diving into Love

C/W suicidal ideations

Welcome back, loves. Glad to be here, even if only 5 days ago I would not have said that. Went through a small spout of depression this week. The bad kind. The kind where I could barely get out of bed, brushing my teeth was considered a victory, and the idea of disappearing sounded more ideal than anything else. Haven’t felt that down in a long time. Luckily, the feeling didn’t stick around too long and I am out on the other side.

While it was hard to be in that state, I did get to reflect on some pretty cool self improvements. First, I recognized what was happening. I didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t there or act like I couldn’t explain it. It was a feeling I knew well and I jumped in. I thrust my body off of the diving board, gracefully crashing to the bottom of the pool. Second, when I hit the water and was gasping for air, I listened to that. My body told me to breathe and I took long, deep breaths. It said rest, so I laid on the couch all day on Sunday. It said eat, so I ate. It said don’t eat, so I didn’t eat. It said take a walk, and I took a walk. That is a huge improvement. In the past, I felt as though I couldn’t trust my body; my body was the enemy. If my body said eat, I would say “why are you trying to make me fat?” A gross statement in and of itself. Now, when my body says eat, I say “what are we craving? What type of fuel do we need?” What a relief to find trust in my body. Finally, I didn’t let it hang around too long. I had previously wrote a post about needing to fight. That we need to fight when things don’t feel worth fighting for anymore. This is where listening to your body can get a little complicated, because if I let it my body could stay under water for a very long time. It’s easier to not kick and just stare up at the surface through the water seeing a blur of what life used to look like. It’s safe down there. But see, I had to kick because my body also screamed for air. That line is understanding desire vs need. I spent a few days below the surface before breaking through- pushing my legs and arms as hard as I could to in order to reach the surface. What did that look like in reality as opposed to this diving metaphor?

It was crying and telling myself that all things change. It was saying that this feeling, as hard as it is to feel, will indeed change. It was saying that this is not how I want to live. It was hiding under that covers and then coming out from under the covers. It was going to work, after 1100 ‘snoozes’ of the alarm.  It was doing things one step at a time. It was everything I could muster. It was reaching out for help; it was me telling my friends I’m drowning. (Can’t seem to escape the swim metaphors *shoulder shrug emoji*.)

At one point, I started to feel like a burden. That is a sign for me that I am reaching the lowest place, the place that is hard to come back from. The place with suicidal ideations. I had to repeat to myself that I am not a burden and that people love me. I was sitting in the dark, my arms wrapped around myself, fighting that feeling when all of the sudden there was a bright light in my face. My best friend was calling me. I picked up sobbing into the phone. She said her “best friend spidey senses were tingling”. She knew I need her more than I realized I needed her. We talked on the phone for a couple of hours. When I first answered I was crying, barely able to breathe, feeling like I couldn’t go on. By the end of the conversation I couldn’t remember why I was upset to begin with. It was like my soul had been restored. A simple conversation from a friend who sat there with me and said “I wish I could do or say something, but all I can say is I love you.” The thing is… that was all I needed. I needed to be reminded that I am loved, I am loving, and I am lovable.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I know, it was a really lengthy way of getting here, but I am dramatic and had to build it up. But seriously, it’s that time of the year. If you’re sitting there confused, I’ll fill you in. LOVE TIME aka Valentines Day aka hallmarks holiday. This Friday is that day that romance gets shoved into our faces and us single folx are reminded that we are not in a relationship. Okay, that may have sounded a little bitter, but honestly I am not bitter about it. I love Valentines Day.  When people ask me why (which is just rude, tbh) I always respond with “why would anyone hate a holiday that celebrates love!” I mean I know why, but I LOVE love. Yeah, I’m annoying like that. Every year I make a point to celebrate the love I have for myself. This year I am treating myself to some takeout and a bikini wax! I also believe I owe myself extra because last year I spent the day crying into my pillow because I ran into my ex with another girl. Gotta make up for that disaster. I think I see a massage in my near future.

This year though, I want to make it a point to celebrate even more love. This year, I want to remind the people that I love that I love them, because Valentines day isn’t just about your romantic partners- it’s about having a day dedicated to reminding the important people in your life that you care. My friends, as is evident from the story above, are life saving humans. My family lifts me up and gives me so much support. This type of love, well, its unlike any other. It gives me power to get through feelings of suicide that can lead to me forgetting I was even having those feelings in the matter of two hours.

I refuse to be bitter on a day about love because I am luckily enough to be surrounded by it. That is a gift I will never take for granted. When I was sitting in the dark, crying, asking someone to make the pain stop I got that prayer answered. I am pleading with you this year, for Valentines day, celebrate all the people you love. Pick up the phone and call your friends, family, dog, neighbor. Spread it around like it is bursting out of you. You may just answer someones prayer.

And I know one day isn’t enough, we must say it continually. So, staying on theme, I am just going to dive right in: I love you, my dear reader.

A[wo]men

Black History Month’s featured Black Artist:

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Published in 1982, The Color Purple focuses on the life of a black women in America the 1930’s. Alice Walkers way of writing is done in a way that nothing else matters while I am reading her material. The book was also adapted into film and a broadway show. I saw the broadway show and it was hands down the best performance I have seen thus far. I cried… hard. Alice Walker herself is a brilliant mind that graduated valedictorian from her high school. She grew up struggling with personal difficulties and would find comfort in writing poetry and reading. The Color Purple was one of the first books I read when I started reading for pleasure (I was a late bloomer in that aspect). It will always hold a special place in my heart.

Dream a big dream of me.

Hello fellow readers! Did you miss me? Because I sure missed you. Can hardly believe it’s been a month since we last connected. It was a much needed break with time for reflection and connecting to the real world. I laughed, cried, and watched a lot of Gossip Girl. There was also a lot of ‘oh perhaps I will blog about that’ moments. So many in-fact, that I have several pieces of paper floating around that say things like “7 hours in the airport” and “girl skipping”.  Today though, I don’t want to discuss my travel woahs or how sometimes simple things give me the most joy; today I want to write about dreams. I’ve been having a lot of them lately. Some while I sleep and some while I am awake. There is a thread to them all though, the future.

My last blog post was about my goals for the new year and we are officially in it. 2020 has begun and just as any new year, I have started out strong. THE FUTURE IS NOW. This topic of the future though is a big deal to me. In a previous blog post  I discussed this new possibility of living without suicidal ideations. Since that post, I have absolutely had suicidal thoughts, but not in the same way. They are more fleeting and I am able to breeze past them like I am on a boat just passing by a sea creature and waving goodbye instead of it swallowing me whole. Which, of course, makes the future so much more exciting. I have all of these ideas constantly swirling around my brain. Making plans to travel the world. To turn 30, 40, 50, 60. Thinking about how and when I will get published one day.

When you feel suicidal for most of your life the future is this vague idea that, in all honesty, you don’t think will ever really come. I would speak of the future because I had to not because I believed it was real thing. It just seems to be a common topic amongst humans. What do you think your future partner looks like? What do you think you’ll be doing in the future? What kind of house are you going to live in? My head would yell IT’S BLANK and then I would spit out things I had seen in movies. Now, I want to tell everyone my plans. My partner will be kind, I will be a social worker and/or politician, I’ll have an apartment in Brooklyn with exposed brick! Ask me more!

And you know what else, feeling less suicidal has also allowed me to live more in the present. I have all this free’d up space to really witness the hustle and bustle around me. Instead of spending all of this time trying not to feel like I dying, I can now sit in an airport for several hours and observe the beautifully mundane world around me. Airport people are fascinating, btw. The bar was FULL at 6am and there were several kids on leashes. It is just a whole different place, almost felt like I was dreaming.

Speaking of dreams, I would also like to share changes my asleep dreams. Some of them have been seriously mundane. For example, I had one where I just went and got coffee and then walked to the park and sat in the sun and I met this super cute dog. It was simple and beautiful. I rarely dreamt before and if I did it was always a nightmare. I would wake up in panic with visions of me nearing death, often by way of murder. There are a lot of different theories on dreams. Who knows if any are correct or not, but I do know that something within me has changed. It can’t be a coincidence that when my mental health starts to feel more stable I stop dreaming of my imminent death. I must say, it has been one of the many perks of getting valuable help and really diving deep into my own psyche.

I know it’s cliche, but I am writing all of this because it can get better. Maybe right now you are reading this and thinking about wanting to die. Maybe for the last 10 years you have spent most of your days thinking the future isn’t possible. I see you. You’ve been through things and you have extremely valid pain in your life. If your dreams are more nightmares right now, it’s okay. It’s human and it happens. Please, be gentle with yourself. Give yourself the space to unpack the nightmares because they are there for a reason.

If you aren’t sure where to start, try reaching out to someone to talk to- whether that be me, a friend, a family member, a stranger on the subway, or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline (800-273-8255).

I see you and I love you and part of my dreams includes healing for you.

A[wo]men

my thoughts are silent films

the meanings my own-

to create

& feel

& hold

to rewind

& rewatch

& rewrite

-how i see my suicidal ideations

 

300 Feet, Please

I have written several things at this point and erased them all. I wrote a poem about nightmares and decided it was shit. I wrote about my evening and thought it was boring. The reason I am hating everything right now is because none of it is honest.

If I am going to be honest, I want to lay down some ground rules:

1. I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Yeezy.

Okay that was it. That’s my only ground rule when it comes to telling the truth. And even though we are not in a court of law and could totally be lying to you, I hope you believe that I have my right hand on The Life of Pablo(2016) and my left hand raised.

Okay, I am just putting off the inevitable at this point. The cold hard facts that y’all are dying to hear. Well, here it is.

I don’t want to do this today.

I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to write. I don’t want to get dressed. I sure as hell don’t want to go outside (it’s rain snowing..).

“Why?” you might ask. For starters, it is Sunday, Yeezy’s day of rest. Aside from that, it’s this little thing I like to call depression. As someone who works in the mental health field I don’t use that term lightly. I don’t mean today I am feeling sad; I mean today I feel like every breath I take, every move I make my depression is watching me. Is this what the Police intended for this song? It makes it feel much less creepy this way. I suppose though, depression is a creepy man watching your every move, ensuring that nothing gets in his way from keeping you down. Jokes on you depression, because after what feels like 200 years of this, I know how to handle you.

I pull out my restraining order and remember that you are supposed to stay at least 300 feet away from me at all times. Time to call in some back up. My back up in this scenario is ten fold. First I take every negative little thing he says to me and I twist back at him. “I don’t want to wake up today” he mumbles. In turn, I scream “I am waking up! Here we go!” He tells me that “I shouldn’t write today,” so I say “I AM GOING TO WRITE ABOUT YOU! HA!” Next form of back up is coffee, aka sweet beautiful nectar of life. Some may say this seems counterproductive, but without my coffee returning to my bed is an extreme possibility. After coffee comes the phone calls. I call my friends, I call my family, I call student loans, I call the phone company. I talk and talk and talk. I can’t afford therapy right now, so I utilize these free listeners. (And of course this blog is an outlet where I gather even more listeners!) I just like to be heard. Some days I exercise. This one is particularly difficult to fight him on because it never has been my comfort zone. I try to at least argue though.

Eventually, with all these forces combined he backs off to 300 feet. See my depression, I find, doesn’t fit the DSM definition. It comes and goes in waves, and it’s not cyclical in nature. I can’t predict it like my period. It’s not like “Oh, it’s that time of the month again! Here comes the depression. Break out of the ice cream ladies!” Sometimes it last for a day, sometimes it last for a week. I don’t experience mania when I don’t have it. I don’t all of the sudden have this overwhelming boost of energy. It is just subtly different. One day things feel really hard and one day they don’t. I’ve tried medicine, but it didn’t work for me. I assume this is because there doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason to it and medication is all about rhyme and reason. I do feel obliged to say that I think that medicine can be a great tool for depression!

Of course my number one backup, the keeper of the keys if you will, is comedy. By this I don’t mean watching comedy, although Friends makes me laugh every yeezy-damn time. What I really love, love, love is making others laugh. Sometimes I think it makes people uncomfortable when I joke about my depression because in people’s head depression is some dark, shamed disease that should never be laughed at! But that’s just it, I am not laughing at it, I am laughing with it. There is a podcast called “The Hilarious World of Depression” (which I highly recommend) that talks about just this. It gets into the depths of not just depression, but a whole host of mental health diagnoses and guess what? People laugh.

The number one way depression likes to win is isolation. So, I blog about it. I listen to the podcasts. I spent a billion dollars on social work school to work with it. I surround myself in the hilarious world of depression. Every day that I avoid working with him, he wins.

For me its about working through it, not around it. I get through difficult times with community and laughter. Some people have different ways of getting through. Some people haven’t figured it out yet. This is why I decided to write about it today (& because I need to step up my poetry game before I go posting that shit online). Because maybe, somewhere out there, someone is having the same experience as me. And maybe this post helps someone. And maybe, just maybe, this post helped me.

Definitely, maybe it did help me.

Now depression, please back the eff up. 

**I would also like to say that if you are feeling isolated and it feels like the depression is winning and you don’t know where to start, reach out: 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) **