The Second List

Day Three - Delicate

In bed last night I asked myself, What are you trying to do? What are you trying to say here?

This morning, after discovering  this , I asked myself how my new-ish effort stands up in the face of such grief.

I read so many words written by women who are making such a sharp and generous effort to be honest and to talk about what they feel. Am I trying to say don't feel? No, I don't think that's it.

I guess what I am attempting here is to feel everything but to remember that I'm choosing how I feel about everything. If I am sad or in pain or curled in a ball in grief, I am doing the choosing. Nobody, nobody, nobody is making me experience the experience in the way I am experiencing it but me. When I remember this, it is easier to move through it instead of getting stuck in it. And while there may be times when I choose to stay stuck, I find myself not wanting to do that anymore in general.

I keep the power this way, I guess, and keeping the power means something to me, after having given it away for so, so long.

Let me define power as I see it:

Power is choosing for myself. Power is in the laughter, beauty, grief, pain, falling, standing up, facing the scariest places.

Power is this: I speak with my dear sweet friend on the phone. I find out she almost died recently and I didn't even know. I find out exactly how much fear and pain she was in and I take that in. I think about the world without her and I weep in a way I have not weeped since I lost my grandmother when I was seven. It's the kind of weeping that is accompanied by a ripping inside. And I feel myself, through this experience, learning. Learning and learning. And I feel myself growing. And this is what I LOVE about having every experience I have ever had - the potential growth that comes sometimes quickly, sometimes years later.

I stay with what I'm feeling. When I begin to freak out and want to call my friend over and over to reassure myself that she is here, I do that for a minute and then I choose not to. Over and over again I feel and I experience. The difference in this event compared to 99% of the things I have experienced in my lifetime is that I was aware that I was choosing, and I was aware that there was no right or wrong in the choosing. I chose to be sad, I chose to freak out, I chose to be afraid, and I chose not to freak out or be afraid. What mattered was being conscious about it all.

That's what I'm trying to do. It seems, so far, to help more than allowing myself to believe that I am powerless in what happens in my life. That means a lot to me.

Day Two (Part One) - Suicide

* Please forgive the font and paragraph problems!

I've decided to include, when I'm up to it, pieces I've written in the past and to approach the content in a way I have not approached it before. Today's topic will center on suicide.

Last August I wrote some letters to God. I do not consider myself religious, but I do believe in God. I think the letters came from a place of not knowing what else to do.

Friday August 3, 2007

Dear God,

I am sorry I almost killed myself.
I feel so ashamed.
I am sorry I haven't prayed more honestly about how I feel, how I have felt.
I guess I wanted to hide it, even from you.
I am sorry I am a failure.
I am sorry I feel like a failure.

J.

It was a Thursday. I had increased my dose of Effexor as instructed by my psychiatrist and was having side effects. We knew that I was very sensitive to anti-depressants. I had recently decided that it was time to stop experimenting with drugs and to try dealing with depression through other methods. I had, however, agreed to try one last medication. It was my second week.

I spoke with my psychiatrist in the morning and we decided I would stop taking the Effexor. I felt okay, but not normal. I had contacted her because of increased anxiety and depression. She said I needed to have a plan just in case the side effects became more severe. I was given the numbers to crisis centers and my university counseling center. I felt off, anxious, but not suicidal.

By late afternoon I was pacing and had no intention of contacting anyone. In such a brief amount of time, my mind was slipping. I sat my six year old son on the couch. He watched PBS. I emptied my backpack of books and papers from my doctoral courses. I reasoned with myself. If I stopped there, if I only emptied my backpack, I would be okay. I didn’t stop there. I found my insurance policy information and emailed it to my sister. My email was clear and concise, but not honest. I told her I wanted her to have the information simply because if anything ever happened I was worried my husband wouldn’t be able to locate it. I knew I was planning and planning was past thinking about killing myself. I took every medication I’d been given for anxiety, depression, and pain caused by endometriosis, and put it in my backpack. I found the Patagonia blanket my son had once used for naps and put it in the backpack too.

How can I explain what it is like to find yourself wanting to be dead? I had experienced depression without medication, but had never planned to commit suicide, had never thought or felt the way I felt that Thursday. Prior to the Effexor, I had been planning for a future with me in it. I was a doctoral student preparing for a major exam. I was the mother of a six year old and the partner of someone I’d been with for seven years and recently married. But in my head, to some part of myself, none of this mattered. In my head I wanted out. I wanted to give up on living, on my life.

There was coldness there, too. I made myself walk into the living room and look at my son. I didn’t feel anything for him. The rational part of me ached with this knowledge. There was shame and guilt that still exists. But the other part didn’t care.

When my husband came home I met him outside of our front door. I looked at him. I felt the same coldness I’d felt toward my child. And again, a part of me recognized shame and guilt. “I have to go to campus,” I said. He was surprised. It didn’t matter.

I’d made a deal with myself. It was 4:45 p.m. and the student counseling center closed at 5:00. If I could make it there to a counselor, I’d decided I wouldn’t kill myself that day. In the car, I felt as if I were two people. One person was sane and fighting for my life. One person was unwell, irrational, and happy to almost be free. It was 4:50. I was waiting for a red light to change when the gates came down at the train crossing in front of my car. I clenched the steering wheel. I remember noticing that my knuckles were white. I screamed and screamed. That was the part of me that wanted to live.

At 5:00 I pulled into a parking space in front of the counseling center. As I was signing in the last available counselor was saying good-bye. The front desk staff pulled her aside. A few minutes later, she had taken me back to her office where I told her everything. I then proceeded to call my husband and tell him everything as well. This was new for me and a huge step. I had just learned exactly how bad it can get when I keep everything inside. I had just learned how much I insisted on being voiceless, not letting people love me, not reaching out to love. I thought I'd learned this lesson in my 20's with eating disorders, and before, with an abusive boyfriend. And I did. I did learn it. But I got lazy. I stopped having a voice and I stopped allowing connection to exist between myself and the people I love most. This issue of voice almost killed me at age 21 and 87 pounds. It almost killed me again at 34. How many times, do you think, will it take to be true to myself? How many times do I need to almost die before I remember that I always, always, always have the power to choose to use or not use my words?

Frankly, I hope I don't need anymore reminders. This is why I am here, choosing to do things differently.

*

Depression is something I once thought everyone experienced. To me, it was the norm. It came almost monthly, sometimes brief and mild and sometimes more severe and long lasting. In childhood it was related to specific events. As a teenager, young woman, and 34 year old, it was about a mixture of things. Sometimes an event could set me off. Always, my menstrual cycle would bring depression. And later, when given anti-depressants, depression came around to a degree I had never known before. But what I began to realize after I came so close to taking my life is this: much of my depression came from being untrue to myself. Much of my sadness and stress came from doing the things I thought I should do, but not necessarily what my heart or more than this, the soul–me needed to do. Once I understood this, I had to make a choice. I could continue living my life as I had been living it for years and years, or I could stop and try something different. I knew then that I really couldn’t imagine, having almost lost my life, continuing to live it so in-authentically, but I was terrified. I had no idea where to begin. And so, I began by telling the truth. I began with telling the truth to God. Two days after planning to kill myself, I wrote the following:

Saturday August 4, 2007

Dear God,

I realized yesterday while riding my bike home from campus that if I need to be more forthcoming with A, I need to do the same with you too.

I have prayed to you often, especially when I have been afraid, and I remember thinking that I wasn't being very specific about how things were for me because you would just know. But now I think the truth is I wasn't being specific because I was trying to downplay it, hide it, ignore it, even when I asked for help.

The truth is I don't feel good. I am lonely and I am scared and I am a little tired.

The truth is, I need a hug, and I need a big I love you, and I need both of these to be from you in whatever form you choose to deliver them - via a stranger or a person I love, and I need to have the eyes to see that I am receiving them when they arrive.

This is what I need from you. Because I feel like shit.

And God, if I am at all your daughter as those who believe in the bible would say I am, please be a good father/mother to me. I need you to be here. I do not have the space in my heart anymore for blind faith meaning I need to see the strength or love or whatever you send my way very, very clearly. I just need something I can hold onto. Cut and dry. No mystery. I need to know you're there.

Like with hugs.

And I love you’s.

Sincerely,

J.

After writing this letter, I wrote a letter to myself.

                                                                                                                Saturday, August 4, 2007

Dear J,

I need you to remember these things because as you know, you will push them down and they will get lost.

Thursday while walking home from the grocery store you were crying. Your face was distorted and if anyone would have seen you on the sidewalk they would have noticed that you were in great pain. Do not forget this.

You are and have been for some time in pain. This pain seems to come from self doubt about your worth but also more recently about your safety. You almost killed yourself. You can't even imagine hunting for food. You are not for war because you cannot fathom killing anyone. So the idea that you were, even though it was the fault of medication, capable of killing yourself, is difficult to manage.

You need help with the aftermath of saving your own life and almost taking your own life in the span of 15 minutes.

You walked home and thought of the man on NPR who was being interviewed about his experience of being in the bridge collapse in MN. And how he said it was hard to leave the scene, hard to go home. How do you go home after something like that? He said it was good that when he did get home his wife took him to the hospital because it gave him the time he needed to try and process things. People talked to him about his feelings. People advised him to just keep talking about it.

You felt and you feel that something traumatic happened and you got about four days to process it and then life as usual was expected to go on.

A stopped checking in with you about how you felt.

You felt the usual urge to push past how you were feeling and perform as a wife, mother, and graduate student. It isn't working.

Remember this: On the walk home from the grocery store you thought to yourself - I will not see J's next birthday if I don't stop doing this, hiding how you feel - and you meant it.

You cannot keep this to yourself anymore. Not the way you are feeling about Suicide Day, not the way antidepressants made you feel all year, not the way depression has always and continues to make you feel.

Also, remember this: You do not seem to see things accurately. When you almost kill yourself on Thursday, it's okay not to be able to write a practice preliminary exam on Friday or Saturday. It's okay not to be able to function as normal. Life is not normal. You need to know what to do in those situations, who to tell, what to tell, what to keep to yourself.
You compare yourself too much to others, to your ideas about what other grad students are doing and how they are doing. Stop doing that. It isn't helpful.

I am proud of you for saving your life.
I am proud of you for moving the beginning of your volunteer schedule to yesterday instead of the Friday after Suicide Day because you needed to take care of yourself.
I am proud of you for writing your sister, calling your mom, and writing C about what happened.
I am proud of you for telling A yourself when you called from the counseling center to say I am suicidal and I am at the counseling center with  a crisis counselor and I'm sorry I was being such a bitch on the phone earlier, the Effexor is causing many, many problems. Suicidal thoughts and increased irritability are two of them.

Love,

Me

        That was a good start. I was, truly, miserable and terrified. And I did need to be honest with others about how I felt. I now know that I am someone who cannot take mood stabilizers. I consider myself to have a severe allergic reaction to them. I have also been diagnosed, finally, with PMDD, which directly connects my difficulty with mood/depression to my period. And I have also found a treatment that works for this (YAZ - birth control pill).

        In the past, the horrible event that happened last August would have provided ample new material to go over again and again. The difference between where I have been for much of my life and where I am now is that I wake up in the morning and I start with where I am. I managed to avoid rehashing the August stuff. I start with now and I try to make choices from the Second List. And when I find I'm not, I choose again. But what has also helped more recently is doing an exercise that does involve the past but deals with it briefly and differently.

        I have a long history of sifting through my past, looking for reasons why I am the way I am. This has created a sense of powerlessness. This person and that person and my faults and that drug and this medical problem all equal my personal sense of unhappiness. I tell you this: IT DOESN'T HELP. It just doesn't help. At least, it doesn't help me. It has kept me trapped, kept me going in circles, kept me thinking IF I JUST HEAL FROM THAT EVENT, everything will finally be better. But talking about things hasn't worked. Therapy hasn't worked. New medications haven't worked. Religion hasn't worked.

        In addition to choosing from the Second List and remembering that I am always choosing whether I choose to do it consciously or unconsciously (in other words, I have a great deal of power), here is something that has worked. It is SO simple and comes from  http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/.

Example:

I made a list of the FIVE MOST IMPACTFUL NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE. Here are two:

1. Experience

My mother tried to kill herself when I was a child.

a. What actually happened?

My mother tried to leave her body.

b. The result of what happened

I learned that we each make our own choices and that my mother's choice had nothing to do with me.

2. Experience

I considered killing myself.

a. What actually happened?

I thought about leaving my body.

b. The result of what happened

           I learned that under certain circumstances, I am also capable of making the choice to leave my body, as my mother was, and that this choice had nothing to do with anyone else. I learned that life does go on after and not to judge myself or others.

          I can tell you that after completing this exercise my relationship with my mother improved immediately. I stopped being mean to her. I stopped being mad at her. I also stopped feeling guilty about my own role as a mother and the issue of suicide.

There was a time when I would have completed this exercise like this:

1. My mother tried to kill herself when I was a child and it made me feel very unsafe. I did not feel valuable or like I was enough. I spent my life trying not to be "that kind of mother" and ended up doing exactly what she did, proving that I should never have become a mother.

All of this is okay to have felt. It didn't get me very far, but I don't judge myself for feeling it. But it isn't the truth if you ask my soul about it. If you ask my soul about it, she'll give you the answer from above.

Answering from that place and choosing from that place has become, for me, the answer to everything.

        So I ask you. If you get quiet and take a few minutes, what does your soul choose to be right now? Not your brain, your soul. When I did this, I came up with:

Compassionate

A comfort

Peaceful

Joyful

Powerful

I’ve since added to this list, but those were the first five.

Now what does your life look like if you move from this place? How does choosing to be these things change the way you interact with others, view your past, choose what you want to do?

Day One - Happy

To better understand what I'm talking about below, check out THE EXPERIMENT & THE LIST page.

Part of the reason I want to take on this experiment is because I have grown tired of all of the negative vibes I put into the world and of the negative vibes that float around my home and elsewhere. To me, that kind of energy isn't any different than littering or being cruel to others. Really. Maybe if you are someone who doesn't pick up on the feelings in a room you aren't bothered by the energy created by attitudes, but I am someone who does feel, pretty strongly, what is being sent out by myself and others. I guess I just want to do better. And I can do better than I have been. Much better.

Also, I almost died last August. That was a good wake up call. I knew, after this happened, that I really didn't want to stick around this place continuing to approach life the way I had been approaching it for years and years. I didn't know how to change things at the time, but I knew that change needed to happen for me.  I've been working my way toward today ever since.

My son likes to go around saying "The number of the day is ______" and then he adds something that sounds like ah ha ha ha. Think the Count von Count from Sesame Street.

Today the word I will choose from the Second List is happy. I am choosing to be happy. The word of the day is happy (ah ha ha ha).

What this looks like in real life:

I woke up this morning knowing that it is time to begin studying for the comprehensive exam I am scheduled to take mid-August. The comprehensive exam is a major exam in my doctoral program. Students are given two chances to pass it and then, if they don't, are asked to leave the program.

To prepare, we are given general topics and then must memorize information, authors, and dates that fit each topic or category. Students are also given a reading list to study with over one hundred articles/books. During the week of the exam, one question is given each day for the first three days and participants must write an essay of approximately 10 pages in answer to the question, citing the information they have memorized. The essay is timed. The fourth day is a take home exam.

On my dining room table there are about 300 large index cards with notes from articles. I've been avoiding them.

I have felt many things about this exam and about studying for this exam, such as: anxious, irritated, unhappy, and unmotivated. Sometimes I have felt curious about my ability to understand the field in a more comprehensive way via preparing for the exam, but not curious enough to actually want to prepare for and take it.

But the word of the day is happy.

When studying, I'm starting with the topics I'm most interested in. I am only concerned with today. I am studying from that place in me that is curious and likes to learn. What can it hurt, to learn? I am happy to approach the task from this place.

I choose to be happy. And the way I am working this word into my day and comps is this: Instead of coming from a place where I am resentful and irritated, I choose to study. I choose to study and I choose to maintain a state of happiness while I do it. Nobody is making me do this. Really, I don't have to do this at all. So if I'm going to choose to do it, and for now, I am, I'm going to do it from the position of happy. And this is easier than I thought it would be as soon as remember that I have the power. I really, really do get to choose. I really don't have to do this at all if I choose not to. I really get to choose how I go about it.

I should say here that this is the approach I am taking in general. Shitty things happen. I won't pretend to like things I don't like. I also won't pretend to be okay with things I find unfair or unjust. But I can choose how I go about reacting to these things, and that can look very different, I think, from the way I have chosen to react in the past (thinking about words like angry, judgmental, etc.). I think there is a way to make changes and disagree without spending time in angry and judgmental. It's like taking a big step over the negative stuff and just getting down to business to make changes. If you are like me you may be thinking, "But I have a right to be angry about _________." And if you are like me, you may have found that being angry can sometimes motivate you but also, pulls you down. The challenge for me has become asking myself what the alternative is and how to come from a place that doesn't get me stuck.

I'll come back later and let you know how it goes. What are you choosing today?

AFTER

It's 2:00 p.m. and I am finished studying for comps until this evening.

Overall, things went well.

While I was not doing what I typically associate with the word happy (smiling) I did avoid doing much of what I have done in the past when studying for comps (swearing, scowling, saying "bla,bla, bla" out loud to myself, sighing, getting up and down from my chair, and so on). I maintained a state of ease. I did not choose to go to the items on list one. That makes me feel happy.

We have some things going on around here. I have had a low grade fever for three weeks (lots of tests being done - don't know what's going on). My husband has his second major exam for his doctoral program in a few weeks. He's feeling grumpy. I'm feeling under the weather. We are parents too, so there is everything that brings as always. As for the funk around here, it's important to me to stop contributing to it. I'm trying to carve a little space for some light. I did that today by choosing in a way that helped instead of hurt.

***

I have read recently that sometimes when we choose differently, the opposite will come up. This is to be taken as a good sign. It's an opportunity to practice choosing differently in the midst of difficulty. And if you don't experience upset, for example, how can you know peaceful? I have also read that saying Thank You for the not so fun experience, for the gifts it holds, is a helpful thing to do.

I had the opportunity to do this a few weeks ago when I needed to ask for an extension on a paper due date. I was freaking out inside on a day I'd decided I was going to choose to be peaceful. I said thank you (in a sort of gruff voice) and then wrote an email to my professor. As I wrote the email I felt so calm and also confident. I understood that the situation was in my control in that I could choose to either flip out and write from a place of fear or stay peaceful and ask for what I needed. I stayed peaceful and asked. I didn't ask for a certain number of days but I had hoped for two. He gave me eight!