Tuesday Thoughts (or, My Brain Goes Haywire When I Don't Sleep)

I have a piece of advice to offer to anyone out there that may come across this.  If a person ever, ever, mentions to you that they have ever been suicidal, they've ever doubted their desire to live, or that they've wanted to die to escape their own personal misery, you have no right to tell them that their feelings are unfounded, their panic unreasonable, or their fears exaggerated.  I don't care if the person is young or old, male or female, known to be depressed or just hiding it well.  Even if it comes up 8 years later in conversation and you think that they are better now, you don't tell someone that their panic, fear, and fears about continuing to live are being felt for no reason.  There's always a reason.  Always.

You don't need to understand it.  You don't need to empathize with it, or sympathize with it, or even know the details.  The reason may seem entirely stupid to you, or it may be something that would make you feel the same way if you were in that situation.  It doesn't matter.  You accept that the person is (or was) dealing with something they felt they can't handle, and you support them.  You refer them for help if need be.  Is it your responsibility to keep them alive? No, and you can't feel that pressure on you so that their potential decision becomes a guilt you carry for the next several decades.  But the decent human being thing to do is to at the very least not insult them or what they are going through.  I really don't think that's too much to ask.

Another thing to think about, just from me to you?

Ebbs and Flows

Friday
6 o'clock
After dinner
Blinds closed
Everyone gathering
Knowing we were late
Clothes on the floor
Blankets askew
Flushed skin
Fingertips
Rushing

Monday
3 o'clock
Blinds open
Door unlocked
Visible to everyone
Sweating after practice
Wandering hands
Lazy exploring
Sore muscles
Massaging
Comfort

Blink.

I blinked.  When I opened my eyes, time had flown by.  Life had passed by.  I had missed fights, break ups, and make ups. Tests and games.  Failures and successes.  I had blinked and missed the prime of my youth.

I blinked.  The time I had missed before seemed to rush back.  No, I couldn’t remember the exact moments we spent together, or the days I pushed you away, but the emotion was there.  Raw and just as painful as it was joyful.

I should listen to myself when I say I'm tired.

Here’s the thing. I’ve always been billed as smart. I’ve made good grades, been able to apply recently-acquired skills, explain things to others, juggle multiple things at once, blah blah blah. It’s just who I am… it’s a part of me that I don’t really think about. When people have commented on my intelligence in any way, I’ve shrugged it off, smiled, and said that I really don’t see it. And that’s about as honest as I can be. It’s not false modesty. Or just modesty. I genuinely don’t see it. I’m sure that’s some balance between seeing myself as ‘normal’ because I’m the only me I have to compare to, and having my lack of intelligence constantly reinforced as I grew up. I feel grossly inferior to those around me frequently, and I have little faith in my own abilities.
Yet at the same time, I find myself in grad school, bored out of mind and not learning anything. I’m not reading for class. I’m not prepping for quizzes. I’m waiting til the last minute to write papers. I’m not challenged, and I hate it. I feel like I’m wasting my time. And I realize, as I think about it, that I think I’m being lazy and disengaged because it’s the only way I’ve found to add a slight level of complexity to what I’m doing. I can’t get myself to care other than when I absolutely have to. And then I work simply out of necessity. It’s incredibly frustrating. I hate feeling like I’m not learning. I love learning, but I think I hate school. And somehow my screwed-up brain processes this as my being stupid. Shut up, brain.
I don’t want the people I care about to feel ever that they are inferior to me, and I definitely never want them to think that I think that. Because I don’t. The people I’ve kept in my life are there for a reason, and they all bring something into my life that means a lot to me. I don’t ever see myself as superior to the people I care about. They’re my peers. My friends. Knowing that I’ve ever made someone feel that way hurts me deeply and makes me feel like I’ve failed them. For someone who is supposedly smart, I really am an idiot. Or maybe just a really bad friend.
I know I’ll figure it all out eventually, and as much as I hate where I am right now and want to throw in the towel, I don’t think I’ll actually do it. I’ll just keep skating by and trying not to let it eat away at me, until I reach a point where it doesn’t anymore.
22.2.13 9:50am

Comfortable.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks, full of travel and rest, illness and stress, oscillating between all four in a frantic zig-zag pattern not worth outlining.  I guess that's the holidays for you.  So the holidays were good, family is good, vacation was good.  Back to life and work and school and all that jazz.  Cue Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Happy 2013 y'all.  Now that that's out of the way…

I've achieved a sense of inner peace that I don't think I've felt before.  At least, I haven't felt anything like it in quite a long time.  There's been a lot on my mind the last couple of months (because having a lot on my mind is so rare for me, I know), but it seems to have finally settled down a little bit.

I have had to come to terms with a lot of things about myself lately.  My morality, my sanity, my mortality, and faith.  Not in a religious sense.  We all know where I stand on that.  My faith in others (and my faith in myself).  I've confronted my ability to trust my own judgment, and my ability to keep things to myself.  I've questioned how much people really need to know about me, and whether it's better to save people from pain or let them cope with it on their own.  I've thought long and hard about what I want to do with my time and how I want to spend my hours, days, and years.  I've had to face a lot of questions about how I interact with other people and my inability to trust....anyone.  A lot of this was happening on a partly subconscious level.  I think that's the only way my brain knew how to process it.  If it had all been conscious, my body probably would have shut down.

But yes, a lot of thinking, contemplating, judging, and hypothesizing.  And it feels really good to feel like I know where I stand now…to have made a decision, reached a conclusion, and felt it resonate in my gut as well as my head.  To feel like everything is in sync again and to not feel a disconnect between the signals in my body.  To know what I want and what I have and to be content with it.  Feels good.