Learning through pain, learning through love

Well,

Unfortunately I believe that when you mess up in public you have to apologize in public. The last thing I wrote on this blog was driven by hurt and anger and, like, a desire to make someone feel as bad as I did.

It did not help me heal, it certainly didn’t help her heal, and I’m pretty sure I caused a lot of hurt to someone who is doing the best they can with the tools and experiences and resources they possess–like everyone else in the world, including me. And including my parents.

I’m sorry, mom. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you for staying.

I’ve been cocooning lately because the last couple years have been a time of tremendous growth for me. In that time, I lost a parent, which fundamentally altered me and forced me to grow up immediately.

And I changed.

And I know to some, that sudden and complete change was bewildering because on October 9, 2022, I went to bed with a childish mind and heart. But on October 10, 2022, when I got the news that my dad had passed,

I put childish things behind me.

There is a level of seriousness that can’t be undone when you feel and know in your heart and soul and gut that the people who made you will leave eventually–if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, or they’re unlucky, you’ll leave them.

As a part of my cocooning, I’ve been deep diving into Dolores Cannon. She’s something of a metaphysical researcher, if your world paradigm allows for that concept. Mine does.

Tonight,

The chapter talked about pain, the purpose of pain as a teaching tool, and jumping from a space of “learning through pain” versus “learning through love.”

I mean, think about it. No pain, no gain. Ours is a time where the vibe of learning and growing yourself is very much shaped around pain. We do some things to avoid pain, and we do others to create pain because we believe that we have to have that pain to drive us toward the outcome we think we want.

I always, always felt like I felt things too deeply. I always felt like I was in so much pain. I felt mental anguish from a highly active but undisciplined mind. I felt emotional pain from allll of my internal experiences being so different from the external expectations. I felt physical pain, because something about my body just be hurting man, ever since I was a little kid. When I was 10, it was daily stomach aches–real sharp pains. When I was a teenager, it was daily headaches. As a younger woman, it was pain in my throat, my back, my abdomen, my feet, plus the fatigue. And so on and so forth.

I felt spiritual pain because who doesn’t here, separated from each other, cut off from our true nature, unaware of our history or capabilities? Trapped in these paradigms that we made up? It hurts.

I’ve also had some key moments in my life where people would approach me, out of the blue, and just tell me things like I have a calling on my life, and that I have a tremendous amount of strength available to me–so much more than I could even begin to conceive.

When I lived in Qatar and went through my terrible breakup where I lost like 30 pounds and nearly left my body and this earthly plane for real, my yoga teacher started to (gently) tease me and call me the Queen of Pain, lmao.

I wanted to quit and leave this lonely, slow, painful human experience so badly that I never, ever, not in my wildest dreams, ever saw any version of the “future” where I was in it.

But when your heart is broken, it’s open by the nature of it being broken, and during that time I completed my yoga teacher training course, where I learned that if you tap out of life before you finish your mission you have to come back and start allllllllll over again as a baby, with all of the lessons you learned in this life hidden from your conscious mind.

I said oh hell nah, only thing that sounds worse to me than sticking things out here is coming back and starting over, so if I gotta grow I gotta grow.

Tonight, the book I was listening to–yes, I love audiobooks, I get to both learn and rest my eyes–explained the purpose of that pain.

I was given this pain so I could learn how to transmute it and arrive at a higher truth, which is that I can live the rest of my life, make my mistakes, and learn my lessons from a space of love. To show it could be done.

And now I get to put that pain behind me and live the rest of my life standing on the business of love, because I earned it. Because as badly as it hurt, not only did I stick it out, but I freaking expanded. And now I know that there is no limit to my expansion–my ability to love, to grow, to develop, to know, is only limited by the limits I impose on myself.

Yours, too.

See the thing is: We are all the same. We’re made of the same stuff, we contain the same divine spark. We’re at different parts of our journey, but we’re all on the same journey, which is to gather experiences and information and then ride the divine spiral up to the light and oneness and reemerge with that from whence we came.

You can do that from a place of pain, or you can do it from a place of love. I did it from a place of pain, and I earned my reward. Now I’m doing it from a place of knowing. Of love.

A Tough Week

It’s been a tough week, huh? I mean….I know it sounds irrational to some, but us in North America and Central America had an eclipse this week, and it nearly took me and the other astro girlies OWT. This has been a tough week…for me, I’ve felt more self-doubt this week than I have in a long time (like 7 months? Pretty good run).

But I have recently found this book–or maybe it found me– called “A Course in Miracles.” I’ve been reading this book like it’s Harry Potter and I’m in 10th grade. (Whew, aged myself there.) But seriously, y’all ever loved a book so much that you’re happy it’s long as hell because it means you get to spend more time with it? When I say I love this book.

This book is why I’ve been studying my whole life on linguistics, mental health, self-healing, religions/spirituality, and metaphysics. It’s so I could comprehend this book and find a way to share it.

A Course in Miracles says that we are God’s creation. (Here, the term “God” represents the creator and source of eternity, wholeness, and love in whichever religion/spirituality/philosophy resonates with you.)

We are all God’s creation. God, in their perfection, cannot create imperfection. God created us, and God created everything around us, and they infused all of their creations with their perfection. (Note: To me it doesn’t make sense to assign God/the universe/the ultimate source of light and love and eternity, a biological sex, which is a trait of a physical body).

So if we’re so dang perfect, why all the imperfection?

Because peace does not attack.

See the thing is that, like, waaaaaaay back in the day, humankind got it in our own heads that we are separate from God. If you’re Abrahamic, then what Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, introduced the idea that we are separate from God and each other and everything and everyone. AKA the ego.

In reality, we are like fingers on the hand of God, or more like one cell on one finger on one hand of God. We’re there, we’re part of everything, and we all have a necessary and equally important role to play in the totality of All.

But we are God’s creations, and God’s creations can create, of course. We can create in perfection and love or we can “make” from the ego and fear, but we cannot do both.

The idea comes down to time versus eternity and the battle plays out in our brilliant, creative thoughts. See, here’s the most rational, non-metaphysical way I can explain it:

Your thoughts influence your emotions. Your emotions become your mood. Your mood influences your behavior and habits. Your habits and behavior have consequences. It’s not punishment. What goes up must come down. Or, say, if you spend all your money of travel and designer shit you don’t even wear while teaching English abroad then you might have to work a stressful ass job to make up for a decade of frivolity. (Super relatable I know lol) Consequences. Not punishment.

So we have God, who is love and the source and eternity. And we have the ego who is fear and finite and time-bound. So the ego fights for itself in our mind. It knows it’s finite. It knows that it is a fractured idea of separation and fear rather than of light and love.

The ego know’s it’s ultimately not necessary, and that is why it’s out here fighting for its life yall. Putting all these “what ifs” and “worst case scenarios” to block us from the wholeness and love and eternity that is who we as the creations of God are. Fundamentally. All of us. Every single one. Even you. Even your parents. Even my childhood bully who told everyone I was gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) in 5th grade who added me on facebook the other day. IDC that it’s been 27 years. <–But see there? See how quickly the ego gets in there? She’s another mitochondria in God’s perfect cell, same as I and all of God’s creations are.

The idea is that ideas spread, and when they spread far and wide enough they show up in the physical world. Hence money, the patriarchy, racism, houses, capitalism, clothing, all of it. All of the things we humans make to fill a gap that our egos created, not God.

Maybe this sounds a little absurd. How can everything be due to the spread of ideas? How can we be surrounded by eternity and perfection, especially when we account for the suffering of humans, animals, plants, bodies of water, etc.? How is that not real?

It’s real because we made it real. Us, in perceived abandonment, thinking we were created by noone and are entirely separate, have brought these shitty ideas into life.

The solution? The first step at least?

Dream a new dream. It’s a tough time right now on this earth, but there is peace and love and wholeness available to us all of the time. It’s a matter of unlearning the habit of fear, of letting the ego die, and of training the mind to think friendly, creative thoughts.

Because peace does not attack. The love and wholeness and perfection that surrounds us is incapable by nature of bonking us on the head or forcing us to see things its way. Peace does not attack. All these ego-based and fear-based guardrails that we used to build these enormous walls around ourselves have to be dismantled so that we can see what’s already there.

Life is hard at times. We’re in this together. Let’s just try to think nicer thoughts and to let the love in a bit more. And, most importantly, let’s dream a new dream.

Gaslighting Yourself

I’m a more-or-less healthy and strong person, but there are times when I get bouts of extreme fatigue. Like, shaking, weeping, my body and back hurt to even move, fatigue.

Yesterday was one of those days, and I spent the whole day apologizing to my housemate for feeling too weak to work out together and calling myself lazy.

Last night around 9:00 p.m., after spending the entire day feeling bad for feeling bad, I remembered I was born with a blood disorder called Alpha Thalassemia. It’s related to sickle cell, and one of the symptoms is–you guessed it–fatigue.

You’d think that if you’d been born with a blood disorder that causes fatigue, you’d understand that when you have bouts of fatigue it’s related to your blood disorder, right? Not that you’re lazier or weaker or somehow worse than anyone else, but that you literally have a condition that has been with you your entire life that requires care and attention, right?

Unfortunately, although I’ve had this blood disorder since I was literally born, I was never allowed to be ill or fatigued. Instead of being met with that whole “as your parent and the adult in the room when you were born I remember when the doctor diagnosed you with this blood disorder and can understand why you’re tired right now,” I was met with “I should have aborted you. You’re lazy.”

Which is why now, as an adult, I am so prone to gaslighting myself.

And I know I’m 36 and it’s lame to be blaming things on your childhood, but as y’all well know, I have spent most of my life feeling like I don’t deserve to be alive and wanting to be dead, and I’m starting to realize that it’s a direct reflection of how I was raised.

I was raised by a mother who, despite having the choice of whether or not to abort me, chose not to abort me and then blamed my dad for tricking her into not aborting me. And before you tell me that’s not how she felt, it’s what she told me out of her mouth.

Unfortunately, the person I love most in the world–the star and light of my life, the one who shaped my psychology and taught me how to see and feel about myself–spends most of her time either pretending I don’t exist or openly resenting me. Still.

The only time she has acknowledged me as a person this entire year (2022) was to 1) yell at me after I got Covid and her family turned against me (with her at the front) and 2) to send me a happy birthday text 9 months later.

When you’re a kid and your mom obviously wishes you weren’t born, that becomes the basis for how you think and feel about yourself forever. When you’re an adult taking advantage of all the mental health resources that are available to you to heal those wounds and your mom doubles down every time you’ve displeased her–well you try not to be suicidal when it’s clear your mom wishes you weren’t here.

My mom will hate that I wrote this because it makes her look bad, but she will not hate that she taught her daughter to hate herself. My mom won’t feel bad that even now, after coping with a blood disorder my entire life, I can’t take the time I need to rest and recoup without hearing her voice in my head calling me lazy and ungrateful. But she will hate that I told y’all.

And that’s why I’m writing it.

What I know from being a teacher and a human is that children want to help. If as their mother you spend 18…26…36 years telling them that everything they do for you is just a drop in the bucket for what they owe you for being stuck with you….you are crushing the spirit of the person of the person who loves you the absolute most in this world and teaching them they have nothing to offer anyone in this world. How isolating.

I used to assume I would die by suicide. I’ve wanted to kill myself since I was a little child. My mom won’t hate that I felt this way, only that I told yall. Because it will embarrass her.

I used to think that maybe if my mom realized that I also hate me, that I also wished I was never born….idk. That she would feel sorry for me and stop openly resenting me. Maybe even love me beyond the “my biology loves you and I hate every second of it” brand of love she raised me with.

That if I did what she told me to do…got independent and got the fuck away from her and never bothered her for anything…she’d like me. And she does like me like that. Only. The moment I need her to be a mom, I’m on my own being ignored and wishing I was dead.

No wonder I’m single lmao.

Now I’ve realized that nothing will ever make my mom love me the way I need to be loved (as a whole person even when I’m down). So I’ve decided that I might as well try to be happy. Try to honor my own physical and mental limits. And to try to stop showing my mom that even though I forced my birth upon her and plunged her into 36 years of miserable motherhood, I love her enough to punish myself eternally for this sin.

Time to stop gaslighting myself.

Rejection as Protection

So recently my cousin told me a story about two people. One, who we call El Toxico, is into her and has been pulling out all the stops trying to get her attention. The other is her bestie, who we will call Bestie. Bestie and El Toxico messed around for a long time, but they both denied it. Only when Cousin told Bestie that El Toxico took her on a date did the truth come out–that they’d messed for years, that she fell for him, that in all that time he’d never once taken her on a proper date. That he broke her heart and Bestie was like OK just don’t try to get with my friends because that would be too much.

Cousin told me this story and it hit me over the head like a ton of bricks: damn, this is why we shouldn’t mess with people who DGAF about us. Not because of random moral stuff that other people assign, but because they will hurt you and then go after your friend because they genuinely don’t give a fuck about you.

It got me thinking about my last situationship–I was 25, recently annulled, and there was this emotionally unavailable hottie. We only dated a few months because my feelings are way too strong to hold inside for years, and I was so devastated when I realized it was never gonna be more than it was.

Fast-forward like 5 years, no lie, and me and this guy end up spending the day together in LA bc he moved there and I have family in that area. This time, he did take me on a proper date–I think our only one, but it’s been like 10 years now so IDK.

What I can tell you is I left that date knowing that man did me a favor. The most loving thing he could have done for me was leave me tf alone. He told me he cheated on his next girlfriend, and that he had a baby on the way, but in the grand tradition of all exes w a baby on the way, they weren’t together (last we spoke they had 3 babies and were still ‘not together’). Mans knew he was a life ruiner and decided not to ruin my life.

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have told you I have the worst luck with men, but looking back, that couldn’t be more untrue. My fatal flaw is that I like guys who are the worst (probably at least partly due to being raised by one parent who would disappear for years and one who openly wished they’d aborted me, but that’s water off a duck’s back now). The problem with people who are the worst is they’re the worst–they’ll ruin your self esteem and your life and then fuck your bestie if they can.

I love me a good unavailable man, but I almost never meet one who is willing to drag me down. They almost always tell me immediately that they can’t treat me well or love me properly, and then they be cool as hell to me. And the whole time I’m wailing to my friends that I’m terrible at dating and have the worst luck with men.

I don’t have the worst luck with men–I have great luck with men and terrible taste, which is a combination that keeps me single. But un-ruined.

I guess now that I’ve been an adult so long, it’s got me looking back at a lot of situations where I didn’t necessarily “get what I wanted” from the person I was dating at the time,and stg I nearly always arrive at the conclusion that I didn’t get what I wanted from them but I did get what the fuck I needed.

Young B went out into the dating world without much of that “self esteem” or “emotional regulation” stuff. What I wanted was a romantic relationship to fix my childhood, but what I needed was protection and safety so I could heal myself.

Yall, don’t mess w people who DGAF about you. Let them ruin someone else. Accept that temporary rejection as the protection it really is, and watch them circle back and tell you exactly why you got fucking lucky they left you the hell alone.

36

Well,

I’d say that this last year (AY 2021-2022) was one of my lowest. But, the good thing about being at your lowest is there’s nowhere to go but up.

Whew, 35 was such a hard age for me! IDK why, but that year demanded every lesson and survival skill and shred of resilience I have learned in my life.

I’m so grateful.

I’m grateful that I was shocked by how hard it is to build a life in the U.S. because it means that I was shielded from a lot of the bad that goes down here every second of every moment of every day.

I’m grateful I never found a job as a full-time copywriter because if I had, I wouldn’t have found technical writing and UX writing.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be free. It was my heart’s highest calling and its purest song. As a kid, I didn’t think about the implications of being free–having few possessions, having no dependants. As an adult, I think about my ancestors.

I wonder if the slave learning to read by candlelight in massa’s cabin ever dreamed that one of her descendents would be a woman who was allowed to be childfree and unmarried at 36. A woman who goes to bed at night when she’s tired and wakes up when she’s finished sleeping. A woman who reads and writes and drives and has a bank account and who has credit which yes she fucked up on frivolous girly stuff, but my god, a woman who has the freedom to fuck up her credit and the luxury to make mistakes.

I tell myself I’m my ancestors’ wildest dreams, but even in their wildest dreams–or worst nightmares–I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have known enough to conceive of me.

I only learned about the State of Qatar when I applied to work there. 15-year-old me didn’t know what the TESOL profession was, and she didn’t know dick about the Middle East to picture herself living there.

I am–

we all are–

limited by our perceptions and schema and educations in what good we can even ask for ourselves and our loved ones.

I want control of something, anything, so badly omg. Life and time and space do not bend themselves to my will and I am honestly flabbergasted at their audacity. But I’m learning to cope.

I’m learning that things change. Circumstances change. Relationships change. I’m learning that the enlightened sage doesn’t avoid tough times, she faces them with a calm mind, a dirty joke, and a hint of smile.

Show me how good it gets from here. I had my childhood and my young adulthood, and my god I did the absolute most I or anyone around me could think to do with my young adulthood. Now I’m ready to work. I’m ready to pour my time and energy into building a better future for the younguns. Let’s see what happens.

Amen / Ameen

Singles Awareness Day

Happy Valentine’s Day, all. It seems I’ve bluffed my way into a date. I matched with someone on Tinder (rolls eyes in millennial) last month. He asked me out, but I was out of town that week. I told him I’d be back February 12th (with the assumption that no one will want to go on a first date during the minefield that is Single’s Awareness Day week / weekend).

Long story short, I have a date tonight, and I think it will be nice. But, I was just sitting around the house eating fruit and drawing and listening to YouTube videos about the stock market and vibing. And I reminded myself to be mindful of the time because of le date, which made me feel kind of ugh about the whole thing. Anyone who knows me knows I vibe hardest when I’m doing my own thing, and I like my “me time” like I like my Snap streak: unbroken.

It made me laugh inside when I caught myself, because (according to pop culture) if anyone should be on her knees thanking God to have secured a V-Day date by the skin of her teeth, it’s this walking late 90s Cathy Comic, Sex and The City cat lady right here.

And yet.

If you’d told 17-year-old me that 17 years later we would be neither someone’s mother nor wife (nor a bestselling author, or famous actress), I probably would have lay down and died on the spot. Because in that time and at that age, I had it fixed in my mind that my life as a woman, motherhood and being validated by a man were the only ways to have a meaningful life (puke).

And yet.

The life that I’ve led from 17 to 35, one where I was single on way more Valentine’s Days than I was not, has been one so rich and impactful in ways I couldn’t have dreamed of. When I was 17, I did not know that there was a country named Qatar that I could go and teach in, to even have that dream. I have met and learned and loved art and people and languages and customs and cultures. I have shared insight and built bridges on four continents (and counting). I have learned myself, I’ve spoken my truth, and in many cases my truth has coincided and resonated with elements of the larger truths that surround us all the time.

I think of my little sister and nieces and I feel honored to show them that they belong to themselves alone. When I was younger, I feel like our culture really painted a single woman in her mid-thirties as a shrew; someone to pity and dismiss. I might be a bit of a shrew, but I’m proud to be show our daughters that there’s nothing to pity, and I will not be dismissed.

And that the greatest love they will experience in their lives is self love.

Atlantic City (and Anger)

This week, I’ve been in New Jersey visiting some friends I made in Qatar, and we went to Atlantic City overnight. It was actually my first time ever going to Atlantic City, and I liked it. I had nothing but lovely interactions with people. I even won a few bucks at roulette (fuck the slots though).

One of the most remarkable things about Atlantic City was the way the people treated me. While at the (indoor) pool of our hotel, a member of what I think was someone’s bridal party invited me to join them for some wine (I turned them down, but I appreciated the gesture). The next morning, while my friends and I were finishing up our breakfast, an older lady in a white sweater came up to me and told me it was a shame I was so sad since I had such a nice laugh. I was blown away. For someone as depressed as I am, I laugh a lot, so I have no idea how a lady from across the room gauged my sadness.

Later that afternoon, my friends and I went to Tanger Outlets and I saw a psychic shop. I love getting my palm read or my tarot done, so I went in. The reader, Noelle, told me that although I use laughter and humor to heal myself, internally I’m so angry and so sad.

And it got me thinking. Because I know that the level of depression and hopelessness I can experience is disproportionate to the actual status of my life. Everyone has problems, but on any given day I’m safe, comfortable, with people I love, well fed, well rested and even well dressed. But I also know that I am fucking raging inside, and I don’t know how to let it go.

For one thing, it is some motherfucking bullshit that I as a black woman in the USA live in the only possible period in time where I could be so educated and outspoken and free, but it also happens to be the period in time when climate change is bout to drastically alter our quality of life for the worse. I am boiling inside that for all the years when Earth’s habitability wasn’t even a factor, if I’d existed as I am today I probably would have been executed for being interested in nature, well read, sexual, opinionated, ambitious, outspoken, I mean you name it. I wouldn’t have made it to 20; they would have breeded me and left me to die.

Now though, nearly every door in the world is open to me……..for the next ten years or so. I would have loved to be a biological mother in this life (I think), but I don’t think it’s responsible for me to make a new human given the way things with climate change are going. I’m furious for all the opportunities I’ve been robbed by living in this time and in this place and in this skin.

I’m furious at the myriad problems with everything that are simply beyond my control. I’m furious that I live in a time when so much information is available, but so many people don’t know how to think or empathize anymore because people who I never chose gutted the public school system of arts and civics. I’m fucking raging that the guy who made it impossible to declare bankruptcy on student loans ran for president with a campaign promise of reducing student debt then got into office and said you know what, I just really fucking hate poor students. Ol let them eat cake ass Uncle Joe.

I’m furious that Trump will be reelected in 2024 because Biden will absolutely NOT be reelected and that this is more-or-less a foregone conclusion. I cannot believe that we debate the truth and argue against (certain) people’s rights to survive an encounter with the police yet defend a “right” to carry assault rifles even when they’re used to massacare young children in their classrooms. I’m absolutely boiling inside that people consider their “right” to go unmasked as an issue of freedom, but not their children’s rights to safety in schools, malls, movie theaters, and places of worship. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I’m utterly furious that the darkest part of our incredibly dark timeline is the only one where people like me (brown, women, queer) are allowed to live with a modicum of freedom and dignity in this country. I fucking hate it here.

And I’m so fucking angry that I’ve had to do so much of my life alone. I have had to scrape and crawl over blood and broken glass and intergenerational trauma to teach myself how to be a kind and emotionally intelligent person. I’ve been blamed and gaslit time and time again. I’ve had to handle so many big situations since I was probably six years old, and I was never taught how to do it, only punished when I did it wrong.

And I’m absolutely boiling inside that after surviving everything I’ve survived, I still have had to live most of my 35 years devoid of safe intimate touch. It is so unfair.

When I was younger, I would berate myself nonstop for not being woman enough to keep a man. And to have him pay my bills and send me flowers and whatever other misogynistic, patriarchal nonsense I’d internalized. I always knew that I was too smart to be attractive. And that I was too emotional, and too “crazy.” I thought I was pretty, so the only reason my dad left and my mom resented me and the boys rejected me had to be my personality and spirit. I never knew what exactly was wrong with me, just that it was something real bad.

I chased guys who couldn’t give anyone a safe intimate relationship, talk less of me, and then I used those failed intimate relationships as confirmation of bias. And I would get so depressed, and then I would turn on myself for getting depressed because I was too smart and talented to need the validation of men so badly.

I wished I was dead nearly all of the time, probably starting from when I was 15 to when I left the States at 26 and that makes me fucking seethe. And don’t even get me started on men and religion. When I wasn’t begging god to save me, I was apoplectic at him for abandoning me at the hands of wolves.

And I’m utterly livid that the ones I wanted so desperately to save me (men) were the same ones who perpetuated so much violence toward the women I love and depended on in front of me. It’s. Not. Fucking. Fair.

I have definitely developed my sense of humor as a kind of armor that I wear through the world. My life experience has taught me that you want to tell someone the truth, make them laugh while you do it. But if you believe in reincarnation, then I’ve been reincarnated a lot already and I’m tired. I’m an old soul and I feel like I’ve been at this work of trying to clean up people’s internal messes/the messes of the world/my own internal world for a very long time and getting nowhere. You would not believe how lonely this work is, especially when you have literally no one in your life to lie down with, or to give you a back rub.

Life is hard for everyone, I know. And I know that there are some hardships that we must endure to cultivate our souls. But those aren’t the ones I can’t make my peace with. The things I can’t let go of are the plethora of utterly horrendous problems in this world with solutions that do exist that people just stand around wringing their hands about. And the disproportionate mental and emotional anguish that I’ve had to carry alone in this life.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Suicidal Ideations

TW: Self harm and suicide

I think I was 15 the first time I started to seriously think about suicide, and for the last 20 years I’ve dealt with suicidal ideations.

These ideations are a form of intrusive thoughts–you know, like when you’re walking past some random old person and you just kind of suddenly think “What if I punched this old lady?” And the rest of you is like wtf why am I thinking this? Those are intrusive thoughts.

Suicidal ideations are a form of this, and I’ve dealt with them for the last twenty years. Depression is something that you can’t really share with your family because they take it personally–people feel I’m being depressed at them, to punish and manipulate them. They don’t understand that even though I take the fucking pills and eat the fucking vegetables and sleep and take walks and do yoga, I can’t fix it. I just can’t.

So of course, no one is going to understand suicidal ideations.

When I was in college, I used to think I would slit my wrists in the bathtub so that whoever found me would have less cleanup.

When I lived in Korea I made sure my building had roof access in case I ever needed to jump off it. It’s how I motivated myself to keep going one more day, because as long as I had an “exit plan,” I could give it another day.

Now I’m back in the states and I’m in a household with guns, and I know in the bottom of my heart that I can never own a gun. I would fixate on using it on myself, much like I’m doing now, except that if it were my gun I’d know the combination to the safe.

You can’t talk to anyone about this stuff. It’s so lonely. You’re not believed. You’re dramatic. It’s a cry for attention.

Or you are believed, and people are afraid of you now. They want to end the conversation. They tell you that if it’s serious, you need to call a suicide hotline or go to a hospital and they don’t realize how alienating that is if you’re simply not going to do either of those two things.

It’s 1:30 a.m. and I can’t fall asleep because I am in a nonstop loop where I just keep imagining self harm. In my mind’s eye, I’m literally punching myself in the head over and over. I want to move from my thoughts to reality, but I won’t.

I try to “make it funny” by just cracking dark jokes, but no one laughs and no one wants to hear that shit anyway. I can stop myself from saying things that make people uncomfortable, but I can’t stop myself from thinking these things or wishing for a way out.

I feel like a burden. I wish my mom would have aborted me and saved us both the trouble. I don’t see the point of my existence, and the ideations have started to bring counter-arguments with them. “Kill yourself.” “Nah, that would hurt a lot of people.” “What do you care, you’d be dead.” Can’t really argue with that.

I’m not actually suicidal. I’m not actually going to do anything to harm myself. I’m going to lie in bed and look for depressed TikToks and Instagram reels so that I feel less alone, and I’m going to wait to “feel better.”

And then I’ll feel better for a bit, and then I’ll be right back where I started because you could set your fucking watch to my depressive episodes–one in the spring, one in the fall.

FFS

I’m frustrated.

Four years ago, I had the absolute worst breakup in my life: my ex left me in Paris four days before my birthday. The me who looks back at this story thinks that’s not such an earth-shattering event. But the me who lived it cracked. And blamed herself entirely. And went into her own dark night of the soul.

Before that happened, I had a terror of abandonment that was so powerful that I couldn’t even put it into words. I was deeply ashamed of this fear because I thought it was just one more thing that made me weak and undeserving of love.

When this guy left me in Paris, I sided with him. I wanted to leave my ass too. I’d been trying to leave myself for like a decade at that point–hence all the booze, travel and spending.

I told him and myself that he was right, no, I understood, I was terrible.

Looking back now, I’m pissed. That was a dick move, and my sense of self was so weak that I apologized to him. I often apologized to people who made me feel rejected back then–it was my tactic to avoid confrontation, and to manipulate other people’s emotions by pleasing them. If I pleased them, they wouldn’t leave me.

Why am I thinking about this guy?

Because I realized that I’ve been dating for like 20 years and all I’ve done in that time is be traumatized and heal from trauma. It makes me so angry.

I know that everyone struggles to connect with people at times, but there are definitely people who are fucking better at it than I am.

I feel like I have been eating fruit from a tainted garden, so I had to set the entire thing on fire then wait for the ecosystem to recover enough to begin tilling the soil so that I could plant my fucking seeds.

I’m angry because somewhere during my healing journey, I decided that the only way to be “safe” from retraumatizing myself via a romantic relationship was to choose people I couldn’t be with. My favorite kind of men are the ones who are geographically far and emotionally unavailable. Those men can’t traumatize me because they will never be close enough to me to do so.

I’m frustrated because I’ve healed enough to recognize and talk about my patterns, but without actually changing the fucking pattern. Even the slightest whiff of rejection turns me into fucking Cinderella and I’m over here cooking and singing to birds and shit–anything to win his approval.

Ten years ago, this would have been true in both thought and deed. Ten years ago, I had a compulsion to conquer emotionally unavailable men that I knew was destructive, but couldn’t escape. It’s not that I wanted a romantic life full of chaos, just that I was unable to prevent the chaos from unfolding around me.

And I worked so back breakingly hard to become a person who cultivates peace. I fought for this little core of acceptance inside of me. Many, many versions of me died and were reborn, only to die again. There are lifetimes inside of me, and generations of selves who have had to learn how to work together.

But here I am: a human who is ever-more peaceful inside from doing the work to heal. As my soul has grown and started to “drive” the wheel of my consciousness, I feel ever-more compassionate to the younger versions of me who felt that the only way to survive was to take the sides of the people who were leaving me over my own. Those versions of me were so apologetic for even existing: all they asked out of love was that it stay (and I guess it did stay as I was usually the one doing the leaving).

It’s like…..I expected that when I “healed,” I would get on with things: Be normal. Do stuff that normal people do every day like shower and run errands.

And date.

And instead, there are these echoes of pain/trauma inside me, and healing has involved becoming ever-more aware of them. And ever more gentle. To receive them with grace. And to resist falling into old patterns when they call, because whew child, they will call.

Healing has also involved making different decisions in order to break these unhealthy patterns externally (even if the internal battle continues). For me, it also involves staying on my own side. For so long, I believed that if I didn’t win the approval of whomever was making me feel rejected, it made me unworthy to exist. I felt like I was nothing, and that the only me that existed was the bits of myself I could steal from other people’s perceptions of me.

Or more precisely, my perceptions of their perceptions of me, because we never 100% know the thoughts and feelings and intentions of other people, do we? I remind myself of this thought daily, whenever I start to lose my stance within myself.

As always, healing is excruciatingly slow, as are all other things in my life: I’m not a millionaire yet (hmph!), I’m not writing remotely for some wildly successful yet socially responsible organization, I haven’t won the stock market, I still don’t own two apartments: one in Berlin and one in the DC area, and true love hasn’t idly crossed my path whilst I wandered through this life, blissfully satisfied and secure within myself.

I mean, really. FFS.

Living with yourself

I have spent the last few years of my life living with married couples, and it’s given me a lot of opportunity to observe and reflect on the idea of marriage.

I know that I am single, but firmly believe that I am already married–to myself. If there is one person out there whom you do take, in sickness and health, for richer or for poorer, as long as you both shall live, it’s you buddy. Try divorcing yourself–it can’t be done. And I believe living with yourself is more difficult than it sounds.

I believe we are comprised of many selves. I think there’s a tendency for us to view “the self” as singular–one cohesive entity that singularly evolves as time goes on, but I think that is utterly incorrect. Anyone who has observed any kind of human behavior, especially their own, knows that sometimes we do things that don’t make sense. And anyone who’s ever observed themselves knows that we tend to have mixed feelings in a lot of situations–we can be sad something happened, but happy with the outcome.

To experience mixed emotions or make confusing choices while operating with the idea that an optimal (??) person functions as a single entity can be upsetting. I think it sets us up for a cycle of self blame and self punishment because we think that if we punish ourselves enough, we will push ourselves to follow “the rules” and become a healthy adult.

Since having a bit of time to think about it, I don’t think this is an accurate view. This concept of one “self.” I think instead, we have versions of ourselves who exist and share the same space and life and consciousness. Imagine your favorite food, cartoon, toy, pajamas, whatever as a child. For me it’s the color pink and strawberry ice cream–whenever I encounter either of those two things, I am still delighted by them. To me, that’s because the little 3 year old girl who decided those were her favorite things still lives inside me, and when she sees things that delight her, adult Bryoney feels delighted as well.

Similarly, her fears are also my fears, and that’s why sometimes the emotions that I feel toward a situation can sometimes catch me off guard. This isn’t just true for 3-year-old Bryoney. There are impressions of all my ages and experiences who live inside me, working toward survival in the manner that they’ve practiced.

I think the first step to “unifying” our consciousnesses is to accept that there are different parts of ourselves who have to coexist. The second, for me, was to figure out who was driving and who needed to be driving. Then, I had to accept the wounded parts of me would have wounded ways of ensuring their survival. Then I had to learn how to speak sweetly to the different parts of myself, and to trust my own voice when I hear it. Then came the love–the actively learning how to love every single version of myself no matter what shame or shadow was attached to it.

For me, I know that my life works best when “wise inner parent” Bryoney is at the wheel–she’s the one who always makes “the right” choices for my life. My work is to acknowledge and love on the other parts of myself who want my attention, but without letting them drive.

I think that when I was younger, I thought healing meant getting rid of the parts of myself that I “didn’t like,” and I’d just abuse myself as punishment when they resurfaced time and again. As time goes on, I believe that healing means engaging with these parts of myself in the same loving manner that I engage with the parts of myself that I “like.”

I don’t like to fight with myself because what good does that do? Not beating myself up has proved to be one of the most difficult tasks of my life, but life overall has gotten so much easier. I have my ups and downs like everyone else, but there is a general upward trend. And when things surface that confuse me about myself, I try to engage with whichever Bryoney is speaking to me through that action/emotion/desire. As I said before, things have gotten a lot easier.

I’m finally learning to live with myself.