weight

last june i tried to kill myself. it was not the first time and i don't know if it will be the last time. i'd like to think that it was. i remember most that the weather then was beautiful, my son was starting to talk, i was about to start a new job and i didn't want to live anymore. it is a hard, hard thing to explain to someone who has never felt that way. i know when i've talked with others about it sometimes they will say they have felt something like that-- the desire to just rest or the urge to maybe drive off the road. i have felt those things. mostly, though, there is just the feeling of being very, very tired of being and seeing no comfort or relief whatsoever. it gets to the point where- no matter the people around you- something in your head tells you that everyone you have ever met-- especially those closest to you- will be far better off without the cloud of your existence. i am going to rip off sylvia plath here and say that you do feel like you're in a bell jar. you can see all around you, and all those around you can see you there, but you are impenetrably closes off, isolated and stifled. death is not feared, then. it is welcome and it becomes the only friend that makes any sense and touches you through the glass.


i had been crying for days and not telling anyone, and even then i should have recognized that ghost, but i didn't. i think that kind of clinical depression is most dangerous because it comes from nothing externally. it is your mind clicking into this mode of despair so quietly and quickly that you are there before you know it. i dropped my son off at daycare in the morning, drove to a church parking lot and tried to call their crisis line but no one was available at the time. i don't know how or when i decided, but i immediately drove to the park up the street, parked the car and took a bunch of pills from a bottle of pain killers i had left in my car weeks before. and it was almost like watching a movie of yourself. a part of me- the weaker part- was looking at myself and saying, You know what you are doing, right? You may die. The stronger parts of myself were fine with that. i just wanted to watch the ducks at the park and be done. i was tired.


it was a phone call from a girl i barely knew that "saved" me. the only reason i answered the phone then was because i had only spoken to this girl once before and we had plans to meet up but she was supposed to go see her doctor that morning. if any other old friend would have called, i know i wouldn't have picked up. but something about this new person calling made me think that she probably needed something- why else would she call? as it turned out, her car had broken down that morning and she needed a ride to the doctor. she felt horrible, she said, to interrupt my day, but could i please take her? so i said sure, went home and made myself throw up, drank some water and took her to the doctor. we hung out for a bit, i didn't mention what had happened earlier and then i picked my son up from daycare. . . .


it took a few days and a few conversations with my family and some friends, but i eventually decided to start taking a mild anti-depressant and in 3 weeks time i remember waking up one morning just feeling okay. i don't have another word for it. when you live most of your life with this ghost in your mind, you get used to feeling horrible about yourself. it's like breathing. i woke up and felt okay. i was okay. my daily mistakes, my slip-ups and hang-ups were okay. i wasn't the worst person in the world, i didn't deserve to die. i was okay.


the day after i tried to kill myself i was still feeling horrible and was rifling through our medicine cabinet looking for something else to take. i sat on our floor crying hard and physically holding my own body back from reaching for pills. i went to nathan's grandma's house-- we call her gg. toby was still in daycare for the day and i knew i needed to get out. when gg opened the door i just started crying and couldn't stop. she kept asking what was wrong and all i could say was, "i want to kill myself." it was amazingly confusing what she did next. she held me for a minute and went to her basement. she placed an enormous jar of buttons and beads on the table in front of me and told me to sort through them all and find the ones i liked. i know i thought she was crazy and insensitive and bizarre to have me do this, but you don't say that to someone who's survived the entire past century, so i did. . . . i sat at her little kitchen table and sorted through button after button and bead after bead for almost 2 hours. i had never felt so calm in my entire life. i had this huge mess to sort through and she sat there with me the whole time and helped me do it. after i left her place with my collection of buttons and beads and began the process of doctor's visits, honest talking and medication. . . .


while my son slept yesterday afternoon, i brought out all the buttons and beads gg and i had sorted through last year. there weren't nearly as many as i remembered, but still more than i thought there would be. i sat for two hours and strung them all on a thread to make the most beautifully cacophonous necklace. it is my prize to myself, i guess. it is my "thank you" to gg. it is the evidence of having sorted through the mess of things and making something of it. i don't care if anyone else ever looks at it and says that it's awesome or beautiful, but i will have it with me always. and if the jar drops again, i will know my own strength and the weight of my survival will be strong enough to smash it to a million pieces.

home

the first time i went back to new york after years of not living there, i was unpleasantly surprised at one thing: it felt so HUGE. i realize this is new york i'm talking about, but the crazy thing is, my memories of growing up there- taking buses, riding subways, hanging out in central park, shuffling down street after street- were all saturated with this smallness. i never felt like it was this enormous place, no matter how many people i passed in a day or the amount of blocks we'd have to walk to get to the store. the city was home and home was this small, small world. i believe now that the city seemed so small because my view of it was based entirely in my own mind. i saw what was important to me- my school, my favorite corner store, the park, my favorite ferry, whatever it was. my childhood vision was myopic and it took many years and time away for me to see the truth of the matter- that my childhood home is a big place with thousands of other schools, parks and stores that i never thought to pay attention to before. being back there i felt more disoriented than at home, more aware and, oddly enough, more on the outside looking in. i was a tourist.
the same feeling struck me in the most unexpected of places yesterday-- at a coffeehouse in grove city. a friend's parents invited us to a little gathering with music, art and spoken word and worship or, as my husband so delicately called it, "the Jesus show." i went because i figured, at the very least, i'd be able to hang out with a few people i really enjoy and maybe partake of a delicious baked good. perhaps i should have known when we got there and the baked goods were gone for the night that this would prove to be another experience in feeling disoriented, but i was still game. and then the strangest thing started to happen.
i had been the all star super christian born-again girl in college. i attended every conference, weekly meetings, bible studies, small groups, spring break missions trips, the works. i was not a stranger to groups of people worshiping with music and dancing and singing. but, like coming back home after years of being away, i was a tourist in this strange land. and where i used to feel this compact, neat little warmth of feeling in a worship setting, i just felt overwhelmed and unfamiliar. and i didn't know what to do with this kind of feeling. i stepped outside for a bit, but couldn't really get time alone and, so , when i went back inside i tried again to make myself at home there, to sing something, to even sway a little bit. and i couldn't. i felt like a fraud even trying. all i could think about was the fact that all of these perfectly nice people were engaged in this apparently sincere experience, talking and singing and worshiping a god-- the same one i used to sing to-- and i just couldn't do it. my brain wouldn't stop wondering what was wrong with me, if anything was wrong with me.
i wondered at this all night and even most of today. i'm not sure, but i think this was the problem: i couldn't worship something i didn't know. i couldn't sing and pray to something or someone that i couldn't identify in some way. at least not in that manner. i realized later that i still talk to god and i still pray. i mostly do those things at random points during the day and, perhaps the most worshipful time of any day is the 15 minutes i do some yoga. i try to worship the truth of a loving god in my daily interactions with people-- which i also fail miserably at on a daily basis. and i try, no matter what, to remember that because there is so much evil in our hearts and, therefore, in this world, the antidote is also out there and, therefore, in our hearts as well if we allow it.
i guess god has been a city for me that started small and familiar and a bit self-made. i was very comfortable and secure in my own world of moral rights and wrongs, limited understanding and spiritual obligation. it seems it has taken years away for me to see the truth of the matter. God is HUGE. for all i know, there are thousands of other ways to see God, to know God, to pursue God, to touch God, to feel God. i love that the people at that little coffeehouse dancing and singing had found their way to do that. i pray that, for those of you who wish it so, you keep finding your way as well. God bless you.