We humans are social creatures. We make connections with one another, and maintaining those connections requires communication. We’ve done it through letters (and honestly, I should write more letters), telegrams, telephones, and now the Internet. But throughout all of the iterations of our communication means, one fact has remained the same: it’s a two-way street.
We live in a world where, every day, it becomes more and more apparent that some of us are dealing with head weasels of various shapes and sizes. Some of them say that we’re not worth talking to. Others pull us back from seeking connection, or re-connection, out of fear or guilt or anxiety, be it rooted in reality or a creation of the weasel in question. People get wrapped up in work, studies, real-world concerns, or the static of emotions and thoughts that are no fault of their own, the echoes of trauma and anticipation of fresh wounds. Through this, one of the lines of communication goes silent.
Do we, on the other end, leave our line back to that person open?
For the most part, I say yes, especially if the person is someone we care about. In most cases, I prefer to make myself available. Sure, a person may seize upon that opening to try and cause drama, or express a toxic opinion, or otherwise attempt to undermine whatever progress I have made or am making. In which case, fine, eat my static. I’m not responsible for the pettiness of other people, save for my desire as a human being to bring out the best in other human beings. And, let’s face it, being petty and projecting upon others to avoid our own issues is far less than our best. I’ve learned to do better. I still have a lot to learn, for certain, but at least that’s crystal clear.
Enough about trifles. There are far more important people in my life than those who would trifle. I can’t help but see the potential in others, a strength or fortitude they may not see themselves. Worse, some of the people I see have within them the desire to overcome what impedes them, but don’t necessarily believe that they can. I want to foster that belief. I want to stoke that fire. I’ve had it done for me, by therapists and friends and loved ones, and I want nothing more than to turn around and do the same for those I admire, care about, and love.
I don’t want to put people on the spot, or name names, but… dammit, if you’re reading this, and it resonates, feel free to reach out to me. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I will hold space for you and try to hear you out, because that’s what I’d want you to do for me.
Maybe I’m wasting my time in writing this, or this will go unread, or…
That’s my own head weasels talking.
And you, and I, can always talk louder than they ever could.
I have a confession to make. I don’t always fully disclose what I’m thinking or how I’m feeling. It’s not that I intend to engage in deception, obfuscation, or lies of omission. In my mind, I consider other issues far more important than something that occupies the entirety of a single head weasel’s diatribe. When it comes to therapy, I drill down below the layer of the feelings to general, foundational matters that could be holding them up. With others, I take the opportunity to shift my focus from something that refuses to change to something I feel I can change, and ask for help with it.
The fact is, the more I tread this road of getting better, the more I realize how lonely it is.
This is ongoing work, and precision work at that. When it comes to my own heart and mind, who is more qualified than myself to hold the metaphorical scalpel? Time and again, I’ve probed into the dark corners of my shadow, finding behaviors that have impeded me, or that even have informed toxic behaviors. I’ve cut them out like cancers. I try not to feel diminished by this, but liberated, because just like not every child is special, not every part of the self is good or valuable. Certainly, these aspects of ourselves have things to teach us; unfortunately, some of those lessons are learned in very hard ways.
Especially when we’re called on those problematic aspects by others. Or, worse, when aspects that need to be lovingly touched upon for healthy healing are instead exploited for the gain of others through shaming and emotional violence. But that is a discussion for another time.
No matter how we are made aware of what is required for us to get better, the realization can trip us up, perhaps even cripple us for a time. Anxiety over the past and present overwhelm us, attack us. Grief and self-recrimination join forces, twisting knives in our hearts and tying our innards in nauseating knots. We retreat, we hide ourselves away, we grief and we shudder and we cry.
We are not okay. And that, in and of itself, is okay.
I wouldn’t be where I am, able to articulate this, if I hadn’t spend a good amount of time not being okay. I’d visited that place repeatedly, falling almost immediately into suicidal despair, only arresting myself and getting the most direct and scorched-earth type of help I could. Doing this got me accused of “attention seeking”; all I wanted was some fucking help, right the fuck now. I wasn’t okay. I wanted to be okay. I wanted to get better.
I didn’t want attention for it. I had to do it alone. And I expected to. I didn’t want to. But, on some level, I knew I had to.
At one crucial point, it became clear that the lonely road, and hard days of walking it, were my only real option. To say nothing to the outside world, to share nothing of the walk along that road, to make my focus getting better. I was alone in my grief, isolated in my anxiety. I could, and did, get help when and where I could, in person and from professionals, out of public view. I wanted to get better for myself, not for the sake of any public perception.
When, in a recent discussion, the subject of ‘being on my side’ came up, I said this:
I’m not going to say anything calculated to get you on my side. All I care about is showing up, in this moment, in the best possible way I can. People can make their own judgments.
It’s taken me a long time to figure out that I don’t have to live up to anybody else’s standards. Sure, in a working environment, standards must be met if I wish to remain employed. But in my personal life, on personal projects, the only required standards are my own. To be honest, I think a lot of the blame that’s been placed on my shoulders for things past came from my personal standards being so low and secondary to the standards of others. When others became aware of the fact that I prioritized their standards over my own, it became easier for them to shirk personal responsibility and push the causes for discord solely onto my shoulders. This isn’t to say I had no part in the course of events; indeed, I’ve had to look back critically to find which of my former behaviors pushed events in one direction or another. I’ve accepted that it’s what happened, I own the things I did wrong, and I’m working, constantly, to get better in that and many other regards.
I’ve had to let go of how others see me, of wanting so badly to be accepted, welcomed, loved by others. I’ve had to learn how to love myself, to care enough about myself to want to correct myself, shape myself into a version that meets higher standards that I alone set, to be a better self. It’s been difficult. It’s been heartbreaking.
It’s been lonely.
I’ve worked to get past the public shame. I’ve worked to define myself, by myself, for myself. I’ve worked to get fucking better.
And I’m not done yet.
I’ll still get anxious. I’ll still get nauseous. I’ll still be haunted by memories, sidelined by grief, temporarily crippled by heartbreak. Some things, some people, we simply do not get over.
I am not going to let that stop me.
Neither should you.
There’s an aspect of each of our selves that we’ve picked up along the way, through informed behaviors of others or the endemic troubles of society around us. It’s up to us to push those aspects away, put them down, walk away from them, let them wither and die. That is how we move forward. That is how we meet higher standards for ourselves. That is how we get better.
It’s not selfish for us to do this for ourselves. It’s necessary if we want to survive.
And we shouldn’t, for a single instant, feel guilty that we’ve torn ourselves apart, thrown away and destroyed that which has held us back, and put ourselves back together.
It’s a hard road. A lonely road.
For my part, it’s the only one worth walking.
And when it comes to those parts that were in the way of me finally getting better, when I give them a face and a name, and I cut them free of who I was, away from who I want to be…
I lie. Not all 500 of these words come to you from the pen of Robert A. Heinlein. But most of them will. Mostly because, after several years, I once again picked up (or, in this case, began listening to) The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, a seminal book of my early teen years and the one that pushed me towards this writing business in which I engage.
… I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write …
At the moment, writing is not my primary profession. But it’s always there. In the back of my mind, a prodding need persists. I’m a storyteller. I have to tell stories. It’s a basic imperative, like my need to eat and breathe and gallivant as urbanely, responsibly, and respectfully as possible. Those things cost, and writing, at least in the stage I linger at, does not pay.
… writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn’t take any talent or training.
I’m in a perpetual state of “I’m working on it,” with a few projects. I am, hopefully, in a place where I can carve out more time to do it. And none too soon, because it’s really started to bug me.
… writing is antisocial. It’s as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone … and not even know that he’s doing it. As writers’ wives and husbands often learn to their horror …
I of course am not so ignorant as to blame my writing for the skeletons hanging in my closet. My mental illness and prior emotional instability were the impetus for several bad decisions, but as any storyteller would tell you, a good character becomes aware of their shortcomings, and seeks to overcome them. So it is with me. And yet, if writing is a shortcoming, I do not seek to overcome it.
In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears …
If nothing else, writing is a way for me to express my emotions in a safe environment. The lines of journals become a padded room. And as plotlines and characters take shape and grow over the course of my writing, parts of myself and my experiences and emotions flow into them. I have professional therapists — and a battery of medications and vitamins — but my pen, perhaps, is the best tool for how I continue to get better.
Besides…
There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary … because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.
Not all bipolar swings are inherently negative. A downward swing towards depression, if examined from an objective standpoint, can be a time for reflection and constructive introversion. Sometimes, one has to distance or disconnect oneself from the usual stimuli of the outside world to take stock, recover strength, and realign thoughts and goals. By the same coin, a upward swing — not necessarily into full hypomania — can be a boom time of great creativity, channeling energy into endeavors that suit one’s goals.
This takes time, practice, the help of a therapist and loved ones, and a good amount of hammering out new pathways in one’s thought processes and emotional self-examination. It isn’t easy. But it’s worth it.
It also eats up a bunch of spoons.
If you’re not familiar with the Spoon Theory, I expound upon it (and reference its source) here. Most spoonies deal with a purely physical ailment — fibromyalgia, endometriosis, auto-immune diseases, etc. Mental illness can qualify as well — bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety, and so on. If you get a flashback, a sting of anxiety, or enter a mixed state, you have to spend time and energy dealing with that state of being before you can move on to something like sleeping, or eating. You spend spoons you’d otherwise spend elsewhere.
It can be easy to realize, in retrospect, that we haven’t taken steps towards reaching our long-term goals. We might even look around us and see all sorts of things that could be addressed, in terms of chores or self-care. I feel that it’s important to keep focus on the fact that our worth is not tied to our productivity, no matter what this modern capitalist dystopia in which we find ourselves might say. We can, and should, find self-worth in who we are and what we cultivate in ourselves and the world around us.
There are two factors that inform the ways in which we contribute to the world around us: willingness and ability. If we have the willingness to contribute, but not the ability — be it because of spoons, money, skills, or other resources — that has worth, in and of itself, and in my opinion, does not get recognized as much as it should. On the flip side, if one has the ability to contribute, but not the willingness… well, that’s a completely different kettle of fish.
In the aftermath of those moments of introspection and personal re-alignment, the next step is to examine what is worthy of focus, and what can be set aside, at least for now. For example: I haven’t spent as much time writing as I have in gaming. I even tried my hand at streaming Hearthstone again over a couple of weekends. The thing is, there are only so many hours in the day and I only have so many spoons. And, let’s be honest, I’m a better writer than I am a gamer. I may get myself to Legend rank in Hearthstone, but I doubt I have the time and bandwidth to both cultivate tournament-level skills in that game and finish the writing projects that may actually achieve my long-term goal of writing novels as my primary means of income.
So it’s time to focus on that, and get the words out, and get this shit done.
For whatever it’s worth, May is Mental Health Month, and as we go through it, I’m going to also take time to reflect on how I’ve been improving over the last few months, what I can bring up in therapy, and how I can continue carving new and healthier neural pathways. I hope these experiences, and my words, prove helpful to you. It can be difficult for me to remember that focusing on myself and the way forward is not selfish, in and of itself; rather, if I do not build myself up, and celebrate myself, the world will be all to happy to tear me down and strip-mine me for useful material the way they have our planet.
It’s a statement I’ve said many, many times, especially in the last year or so. I said it several times when I wrote this post back in January. Even in these last few months, I’ve changed, I’ve moved forward — even away from that very post! — and come more to terms with who I used to be and how I’m not the same. Those around me can see the change, and they’ve celebrated, even as the change has continued on a daily basis.
I want to believe other people can change, too.
People who love me, who have been there for me, and seen these changes, have said that not everybody can do what I’ve done. That there’s something special or singular about how I’ve seized myself, pulled myself apart, and discerned what about me was toxic and needed to be discarded — and, to be clear, there were indeed ugly parts of me that spread toxicity and had to be destroyed — and while I deeply appreciate that, the way I’ve moved forward has come down to belief in myself. And I believe, if I may talk circularly for a moment, that anyone can believe in themselves, and foster their better natures.
It has been hard for me, there’s no mistaking that. For years, I relied more on the opinions and support of others, even going so far as to turn down my own feelings to make room for those of others. Among other learned behaviors, I’ve had to face that one down, and shake it off to the best of my ability. This one in particular is weird and sort of sticky, and it still comes up now and again. But I’m still doing the work to get myself free of it, once and for all.
As hard as it’s been for me to find the ways and means within myself to believe in myself, I know that part of it, at least, has come from others believing in me, even when it hasn’t been convenient, or when others might have told them that I’m not worth it. And what was said was not entirely without cause.
I’ve shed so many useless and toxic and ugly parts of who I used to be. Even now, I look out for them and put them down whenever I can. Because the world deserves better than that. And, given the chance, I show who I have become, in contrast to who I was and the thing I was reported to be. I grab hold of my light and push it upwards as a beacon, throwing back darkness that I might myself have perpetuated at one point. I stare into that darkness, seek to banish it, to drive it away from myself and those I love.
I ask that toxic ghost, straight up, who the hell it thinks I am.
In the midst of the darkness I once threw over myself, some people still held on to the belief that I was worth it, and their belief in me. It protected and kindled that spark of light within me; it fostered in me this belief I now have in myself. It’s helped me get and be and do better. I might have arrived here completely on my own, and there’s a lot of work I had to do for and by myself, but knowing that someone, somewhere, believed in me, even in spite of my failures and ugliest moments — that made things easier, made my goals clearer, motivated me to work twice as hard.
That’s what I’d want people to do for me, even — or especially — when I’m at my worst.
And that’s what I want to do for the people I care about, even — especially — when they’re at their worst.
Maybe it’s a waste of my time. Maybe it won’t be worth it in the long run.
But it’s something about me that hasn’t changed.
And I don’t know if it will. Or if it should.
People out in the world chose to believe in me, because they wanted to believe I could be better.
And they were right.
I want to believe in others. In the world. In you.
And I really, really, want to be right.
So here I stand. Holding up this light. Hoping. Believing.
Because I want to believe.
I challenge you to believe, too. And if you can’t believe in yourself, believe in me.
