Deep Thoughts Inspired by the Lunar Eclipse

I got up this morning to watch one of the most awe-inspiring sights I have waited my whole life to see. Watching the moon slide into the shadow of the Earth as it sets, while the sun struggles to break into view in the east, has, I guess, done nothing more but make me appreciate just that much more how small we are in relation to the cosmos, the endless beauty of God's creation.

Man is finite. Our planet is finite in years. Our solar system is finite in its. In this, we share a common thread, and characteristics within the universe's laws themselves. The universe will not let us go unnoticed though, and will use our dusty remains to create new suns and planets, stars and galaxies. In some small way, it is the epitome of immortality.

This is the crux of my inner peace; this is why I don't fear death, for how can I? When I know I have been crafted out of stardust and love, and given the breath of life out of that stardust, nay, even that love. I have been given the gift of the written word; I have been given love, and far more than I deserve; I have been given the ability to appreciate the wonders of creation; I have been given the eyes to see (though blurry) just how wonderfully breathtaking all this is.

This is also why I wonder at human nature throughout history. Are we really so grossly naive as to believe that immortality should be best experienced within our bodies, our oh-so-fragile bodies, when our souls and our experience of life is what matters most? Who we love and how deeply we love them, how deeply we etch ourselves on each others' experience, how kind we are to others... How understanding we are of the fact that we're only here for such a short time, and to treat others as well as we can, and try to understand them and their struggles? This is our charge and our gift, though it seems more a burden sometimes. It isn't an easy task, but it's one I take to heart.

I saw a meteor shoot across the moon as it was eclipsed, and I wondered who it was a sign for; whether it was a sign for anyone. I'm so lucky to be alive, so lucky to have the people in my life that I do, and I think I'm even lucky to appreciate just how insignificant I am in the larger scheme of it all. The universe is more vast than I can truly appreciate, but I can truly appreciate that I don't have to know all about it to know that much.

Stop... Drop... and RUN!

The power of love is what drives me to be a better person. It makes my heart beat, it makes my life feel complete, and it makes me stronger in my conviction to leap the hurdles I do every single day. I don't use the word "love" lightly (who really does, come to think of it?), especially in the sense where I say "I love you."

This morning, I woke up to a friend's message that she had something absolutely terrifying happen, and she wanted to thank me for being a huge influence in her life "before it was too late." I'm just now rereading what she said about that, but I was more concerned about what had started her thinking about the "before it's too late" part.

My immediate gut reaction was to sprout wings and to fly to her side as fast as I could; never mind that she was being well taken care of by her wife. If she needed me to be there, I would get there as fast as humanly possible. I was so scared I was going to lose her.

After the adrenaline rush abated, I started thinking about how to write down what drove me to that kind of extreme reaction, because I don't second-guess myself in situations like that. I don't question whether it is something that I can control, because of course I can't. But what I can do and can be is someone who is there no matter what.

I'm in love with my best friends. That sounds really cheesy, but it's true. Too bad we don't have Valentine's cards that express that kind of love. I challenge you to think about how much you love your best friends.

Wouldn't you do the impossible if they asked you to try? Wouldn't you drop everything and run to them as soon as they said they needed you? Aren't you with them through thick and thin? That's what I'm talking about — because you don't do that for everyone. You do it for family, you do it for your significant other. Why not say that your love for your best friends is just as deep and just as abiding?

To my best friends, I want to say: I love you. I care more than words can ever say about you and your well-being. You hang the moon and the stars and the sun in the heavens. You save my life by being in it, by being there for me when I need it most, by truly meaning it when you ask how I'm doing (because I'm too weak to ask you to listen) and being there when I'm breaking down. You're there to support me in the way only best friends can — which is not the same as family support, though it is similar — and you believe in me as only best friends do. I am so very lucky to have you. I love you.

How to Accomplish Great Things in Life

OK, first off... the headline is a misrepresentation of what I'm actually going to write about. See, success is differently defined by each individual depending on what their particular goals are in life. Some of us have particularly defined goals, some of us are still wandering through life trying to figure out what those goals should be, and some of us don't even realize that we have goals.

I'm one of those people who is horrible at setting and keeping goals, because my goals depend so much on what I think I should have accomplished rather than what I have accomplished. It makes me confused about the path my life is taking (note the present tense) because so much of what I think defines me is the decisions I've made in my past instead of the ones I will make in my future. I'm confronting that idea head-on, because I think I'm trying to convince myself that's not the case.

One common complaint I hear from my single friends, and get asked about by absolute strangers (living in the South, y'all) is that as relatively young persons, we are expected to settle down and have children. That's a milestone that all "youngsters," but especially women, seem to be expected to have accomplished by the time they are... what, 30? It's a social pressure that is frankly demeaning for all sorts of reasons.

Some women and men are superbly picky about whom they choose to marry, and thus be the other half of their children's lives; this is me, if I even decide to become a mother. Some women and men have fertility issues that they can't address for a myriad of reasons I won't list on here. Some women and men just don't want to have children, and that is their choice. The Oatmeal puts that best into perspective, because this is also me. I'll babysit, but the thought of being responsible for the upbringing of another human being and helping them to understand the world around them is terrifying. That may change depending on lots of factors, but I very definitely don't have a biological clock ticking away at me.

That doesn't mean that we're any less accomplished. We're supposed to pick our battles carefully, but this is a battle against social norms that are reinforced by nearly every holy book or path to enlightenment I have ever studied, and further reinforced by those people who expect it from us, even strangers. Even more confounding is when society expects us to be accomplished at other things if we're not parents, much less if we are.

I thought I wanted to be a big-shot when I was a kid, even when I was very small. I expected to take over my mother's marketing/public relations/community relations firm when I came of age and continue to build it up. Long before we ever moved across the state and she dissolved the company, I realized I didn't really have that goal in mind. It was a pipe dream built on expectations that I couldn't yet understand. I enjoyed sitting in the receptionist's chair and handling the front desk, proofreading and editing what she and her staff produced, and assisting in getting marketing materials and mass mailings out the door, but being solely responsible for others' work and making sure it all got done when I wasn't even sure that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was just too much. That doesn't mean I'm not entrepreneurial in spirit — just that taking over mom's business is goal that's not important to me anymore. Having my own business that will lift or fall based on my own failings, and I don't have the pressure of ruining my mother's good name in the process? Yep, that's about my speed. Independence should have been my middle name.

Have I been successful in the working world? Umm... that is a double-edged sword. I believe that I have been perceived as a threat by a lot of my employers. I'm perceptive to a degree, but I think I'm really sensitive to clues to a larger picture, even if I'm not in on the plan. I challenge the status quo because I live to one of my father's mottos, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." I care deeply about my coworkers and will find a way to encourage and inspire them, which managers think are a threat to their leadership skills. See my above statement about "independence" — that's a scary term to certain managerial types, but if channeled in the right way should be absolutely liberating to have in an employee.

So, my accomplishments are nil according to those two criteria, but I want to share what I do think are my biggest accomplishments, so far, as I define success.

• I survived a string of abusive relationships and came out stronger on the other side, and with better definitions for what I want from a life-mate.
• I graduated with a bachelor's degree from a really awesome school where I learned a lot about human interaction more than I learned about anything else.
• I held to my moral and ethical code, both the professional and my personal definition, despite some employers' insistence that I compromise my integrity.
• I have never stopped wondering about the larger universe around me and learning about it, and strive every day to look at it through the eyes of a child — it keeps your perspective small and your sense of wonder large.
• I have never stopped laughing and smiling and HOPING. Even in my deepest depths, when my heart was hardened and walled up, when my belief in myself flagged and waned and almost gave up, when I felt I couldn't go on — hope is such a powerful driver in my life. I practice hope every day.
• I've learned how my weaknesses are my strengths, because they make me who I am. They are the things that I will continue to work on throughout the rest of my life, for they are what keep me humble.
• I've accepted that I will never stop misunderstanding myself and questioning myself, and really examining the concept of "reality." I'm a multi-faceted individual, as we all are, and I love really understanding that about myself.

Define success by your rules and your rules alone. When you're on your deathbed, will you be saying "I did great things at my job; I hope I'm remembered for all the work I did!" or will you be saying "I lived a great life full of twists and turns, and I know people will remember me for that!" 

Robin Williams' Death Is A Reminder — My Reaction

I didn't want to confront this demon now, but now that Robin Williams has passed away, I guess I must try to express my reaction to how he died. I didn't want to ride the coattails of those who have somehow mustered up the emotional fortitude to write about his death, but... well, I am doing so now, aren't I?

I know the pain of depression very well, and the wish to just end it all because it hurts too much to go on. I feel like a drain on my family and friends, so I isolate myself from those who are, and hole myself up, which just feeds the depression even more because I feel like I've done something to wrong them.

In the past year, I have thought many times about ending it all. I drew up a pro and con list of reasons why I should go ahead and do it, and there were plenty of reasons in the pro column and not enough in the con column. That's not typical of most depressives, but I was trying to be logical about it. I wrote a note to each loved one, telling them how much I loved them and explaining myself as best I could. I guess I was stalling what I thought was the inevitable conclusion to my existence.

It is called a selfish act by many who don't understand why anyone would choose to end their life, and even though I am no longer so deep in that dark abyss I couldn't see any light, I still don't understand why someone would make such a hurtful accusation.

One could make the argument that it is making a choice about the way you go, and that's selfish — many people who have terminal illnesses do the same. I've watched many family members make those choices even when recovery was hopeless. I tried to talk my father out of his last surgery, but he was convinced that it would make him whole again.

One could make the argument that so many people attempt it for the attention, so of course that's selfish to do — I hate to burst your bubble here buddy, but the lack of attention to what they were trying to say has led those individuals to make that attempt, and it was unsuccessful for one reason or another. At least someone is listening to them now, and hopefully is getting them the help they desperately need.

One could invalidate the decision simply because obviously there's someone who cares about you even if you don't, so it's selfish to remove yourself from their life because you care about them so much — let me make one thing clear right now. You don't really believe that anyone cares about you. I can't emphasize that statement enough; you don't believe in your heart that anyone truly cares about you.

The young man I went to senior prom with died three years ago. He reached out to me through Facebook even though we were never close friends, and we talked about how important he was to his friends, his family, even the wife who left him. He pushed her away, he pushed his family away, he pushed everyone away, and yet he reached out to me. And he still did something to end his life; I never learned how, and I don't think I want to know. I know how I thought about doing it.

My friends and family made their love and care known nearly every day when I was in the deepest darkness. That did NOT mitigate the thoughts I was having. I honestly believed that they were doing it because they were wanting to use my darkness against me. I honestly believed that they were trying to control me or manipulate me in some way. It felt suffocating rather than liberating, and that was the depression whispering in my ear that they were just trying to stop what I was going to do anyway; that they were unfairly judging my innermost thoughts and invalidating my hurt and pain.

That sounds illogical, doesn't it? That's because there is no logic behind depression. If you just so happen to also have anxiety disorders, those paranoid thoughts feed the suicidal thoughts. The following thought scared the ever-loving crap out of me when it emerged. "If someone's going to rape me and kill me, or just kill me anyway, I might as well just cut out the middle man and get straight to it. Look at him... he wants to do awful things to me. Just look at that look in his eyes. He'll find you and hurt you worse if you don't kill yourself so he can't get to you." I wound up completely removing myself from even grocery shopping just because I felt like I was an easy target for someone so inclined.

Seriously?

Anxiety loves to feed the suicidal thoughts and magnify everything so that you're examining it all in excruciating detail, twisting it into all sorts of strange perceptions, and pours it all into the swirling maelstrom, making it larger and larger until you're swept up in this black twisting form that eats at you when you're awake and when you're asleep, when you're with friends and when you're alone. And you feel all alone in this torrent even when you're with those who love you. You feel utterly and helplessly alone.

So this is where I am now. From the depths of the rubble the maelstrom left behind, from my personal Hell, I'm climbing back out. The thing is, it's a comfortable and familiar pain in there and climbing back out is painful in a different way, and in some ways hurts far more. You have to pick those rocks that rubble is made out of up, examine them, and invalidate them somehow. You have to force yourself to look at what led you to the conclusions you made, and convince yourself that they are not what you thought they were. It's easier with therapy, because you have someone holding you somewhat steady while you do it, but it is still such a struggle. I still spin out of control from time to time, and it's no one's fault, not even mine. That's the nature of the beast. I have to remind myself that I am in control of this, and it isn't in control of me. That may not be the truth for everyone, maybe even not for me, but I still cling to it.

My message through all of this is please don't give up on your friends or family members that push you away no matter how hard you try to get through to them. They need you to remind them, even if they don't believe it, that they are important to you. Visit them as frequently as you can, hug them close, and listen to them even if it brings you down. Let them know that you're there, and don't let go, don't give up hope on reaching them somehow. Don't feed the storm; the worst thing anyone ever said to me when I was considering taking my own life was "You're going to Hell if you do it." It didn't matter to me, because I was already in Hell. I just hadn't made it official yet. And I hope to never make it back there.

What Makes You Tick? I Hope.

Last night, Mom and I watched a movie called "Noah." I had wanted to see this movie for some time. I study religions as a hobby, both ancient and modern, and I had heard a lot of controversy around this movie from Christians and Muslims alike (funny how that works...). I study religions because I am fascinated by what makes us human beings tick. Religion seemed like a good place to start, and I was right.

By the way, if you haven't seen the film: SPOILERS. There. Go watch it, then come back to read this.

This movie disturbed me greatly. 

Not because the story wasn't Biblically accurate; the story of a world flood has been documented in a lot of ancient philosophical or religious records, so the writers had to kind of blend all of them together and see what it looked like. I saw a lot of them used in this movie.

Not because the Sons of Cain were basically living as if the world were already a post-apocalyptic wasteland; I imagine that the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and trying to make a life in a virgin world would have its challenges. Especially if the culture surrounding you were built on the belief that you were cursed beyond all hope.

Not that Noah was solely focused and dedicated to what he thought he was being told to do by God, even if it meant sacrificing his own grandchildren; wasn't Abraham told to sacrifice his own son, Jacob, to test his devotion to God? Though I will admit, that's always struck me as not quite the God of the New Testament. I'll not go into much of a theological discussion about that here.

No — what disturbed me was the overarching message, over the environmental message, over the holy message, and the jumble of accounts of the flood. The message that there is always going to be evil in the world, and human beings will always take advantage of one another, and other creatures great and small, however and whenever they can.

Time and again I have read this theme in my favorite stories and watched it in my favorite programs and films. Time and again has this been proven true in historical records of the human race — most of the time, simply because the belief systems were different enough to make a difference to each party.

I know there is evil and danger in this world. My anxiety is rooted and confirmed in the knowledge that I have more to fear from my fellow man than I do from any beast, because some human beings will take any strides necessary to get what they want, use others as tools to get that want, and then discard them as trash when they're done. We call it greed and pride and lust; we call it by many names, and we call others infidel while we call ourselves righteous when we practice it.

But I can't believe that callousness and greediness blinds us to the plight of others and makes us think that we must take advantage of whatever comes our way that facilitates our own selfish goals. I can't believe that anyone could subjugate another living being, knowing that they were using that being for their own aims. I can't believe that people hurt other people in horrific ways just because they feel that they are in the right and therefore the others are not-quite-human because they disagree.

I've been thrown around like a rag doll. I've had the barrel of a gun shoved between my eyebrows while being interrogated about which I knew nothing. I've been pinned down and forced to do detestable things against my will. I've experienced that evil, that subjugation, that greed, that callous behavior.

I have also removed myself from that which oppressed me, with the help of my family and my friends, and repeated the process once or twice, because I might just have had a complex about it. I might still have bleeding emotional wounds from those experiences that have taken their own toll on me. I was strong enough to call for help and to physically remove myself from those who wronged me and hurt me and make me feel shame to this day, and I forgive them. 

I'm not naive to the ways of the world. Eh, I might be idealistic and I don't care that I am. But I can't believe that in the depths of my soul, because I'm also a human being, I'm depraved and tortured enough to use others, to hurt others, to... I just can't. I can't believe that there are more people out there who will take advantage of others, just because they can, than there are gentle and kind souls who will do to others what they would have done to them.

That's what kept me up last night. Those thoughts for all those who are more unfortunate than I break my heart every single day and the only thing I can do to stop myself is to shut out the world, and those thoughts, they still break me. They still stab me in the chest with something sharper than steel. My experiences with horrible treatment has honed the blade. All those feelings, and I still smile, and laugh, and do my very best to make others' days better, strangers and friends alike.

I watch children's movies, like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Hugo," and I read fairy tales and historical fiction and science fiction, and I watch programs like "Doctor Who" and "Sherlock," and I do all of that because those stories, strange as it seems, they give me hope. They make me smile and laugh and believe that the world truly is a magical place where good deeds are rewarded. So I lift my broken and bleeding heart up and say this: I still believe that the world is good, and full of good people, and so what that I might reserve trust, but I will never reserve love. I will never reserve hope that we can all be better than we are right now, and even better in the tomorrows to come. 

I leave you with one final thought in a post full of heavy thoughts. I try to practice what I call "The Platinum Rule," which goes something like this: Treat others better than you would have them treat you in return. I fail and I falter in practice, but that just kicks me into trying harder the next time. Isn't that hopeful?

Unexpected Reactions

The thing with being proactive about your depression and anxiety disorders is that you don't realize that you're doing things that treat your triggers after a while. This is one thing I've noticed about mine.

My aunt started a conversation with me the other day about her particular form of anxiety. She told me that she tended to be anxious about threats to herself — which is part of what my reactions are like, but they are also about threats to others. This includes people I don't even know, or should really care about, when it comes right down to it.

I realized that I have stopped reading or watching the news. I knew that watching bad news made me hurt, sometimes physically, but most of the time it just broke my heart. In the back of my mind, before I started being proactive about my treatments, I knew that I needed to stop but it's very hard to do so when you're a former newshound!

During my summer internship with a local newspaper, I was encouraged to learn from other reporters by reading their work. My mother encouraged me to read and watch the news from a very early age. I consumed news like it was air at times. And with every plane crash, every politician not keeping their promises, every town and city that crashed with the economy (here's looking at you Detroit), every tsunami, earthquake, and tornado, my heart broke a little bit more.

Some people call it empathy or compassion. Some people call it a blessing to be so concerned with others. Some people call it a soft touch or a soft heart. Whatever you call it, I was born with the weight of the world on my shoulders, and it doesn't feel like it should be a good thing. It's almost selfish to do this to myself, and that's where I feel some confusion. Is it selfish? Is it compassionate? Or is it projecting my internal feelings on the world?

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. My first reaction was to load the trunk of my car with bottled water and point my car in that direction. I wanted to give more than I had just to help out. I just didn't realize how idiotic that sounded at the time. The governor, FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers had shut down inbound and outbound traffic. There was no way I was going to get past that without being a part of the Red Cross or another emergency response group.

One of the best pieces of dating advice (not that I'm dating right now, but I'm considering it...) I have ever received is that you should be up on the latest events, because when conversation comes to a lull, it's a great way to restart the conversation. Well, that's out the window for now. However, I do know that if there is chemistry, then there won't be an awkward silence; at least not on the first date.

Passively accepting that I've started "ignoring" the world is one thing. Actively, what I've done is culled my "Friends" list on Facebook, but I didn't announce it. Anyone who did not contribute positive things to my life's path were either de-friended or un-followed, and I removed the apps that did the same. I realized that I was caring too much, loving too much, hurting too much.

That may not have been the smartest thing to do, but it was a way to save my sanity. I can't be responsible for the world anymore. I can't feel responsible for others and take care of myself. I CAN turn all that energy towards moving forward, toward healing, and toward myself. I think that's the most compassionate thing I can do right now — pay attention to myself for once, instead of others.

Roots Become Trees

Winding through the Blue Ridge Mountains, over Asheville and into Knoxville, my mother desperately tried to pretend like she wasn't scared to bleeding death that I was going to lose my grip on the car and careen us down the face of a mountain and into a valley below. I just grinned like the madcap fool that I am and kept on "mountain surfing"... knowing that we were heading into an area of the country I really didn't know how to love, and neither has she for all of my life.

My mother grew up on a very small farm in Kentucky near the Ohio River. If you look over the bend, looking to the north is Indiana, looking to the east is Ohio. It felt like I was looking at heaven the first time I looked outside our room in the lodge, because there's that river I always wanted in my back yard, there's the mountains all around me, there's all those wildflowers growing...

The last time I was here I was nine, and my grandmother had died at the age of 63 from complications from breast cancer treatment. Her death was my first experience with the passing of a loved one, and it was the hardest lesson to learn. Not the hardest that I've learnt since, but I was nine and very alone in my life. Grandma Liz was my best friend, my confidant, the person who encouraged me most to question my very existence and yet kept me tethered to the world beneath my feet. I still question everything just a tad bit more than I should, come to think of it.

Liz had seven brothers and a sister, so nine siblings all told. Every one of those siblings had at least two children, so my mother and her brothers had a lot of cousins. Back when the cousins were all young, they decided to start an annual family reunion. Some years, hardly anyone came; some years, everyone came. The last time I was at a reunion, I was four years old and very very scared. I hid behind Liz.

I didn't know what to expect, honestly. Mom told stories a lot about the farm, the cousins, her grandparents on both sides; as I got older those stories got a little more jaded, a little more real, a little more tainted by real-world troubles. I knew that this side of the family was composed of some of the gentlest people you ever would meet, but beyond that, I was clueless. I knew names but not faces; I knew stories about people I had no memory of meeting (well, you try remembering 100 people by name who you had never met before when you're a shy nine-year-old and grieving!).

It was one of those surreal times of my life when everyone came up to me and gave me a hug, and I didn't mind it one bit. The brothers who were left told me how much I look like Liz, and that made me feel special. There wasn't one fight, not one gut-check, but everyone was laughing and having fun sharing stories and talking about how much they missed one another. I guess you would call it the anti-streotypical family reunion.

Sometimes, you just get this feeling in your gut about the people you dearly love who have passed on. I felt like Grandma wanted me to come see her in the graveyard, like someone was tugging at my heartstrings just a little too hard. I dreamt about her, and about lying on top of her grave, and it hurt so bad I'd cry in my sleep and wake myself up. After the reunion, Mom drove me over to see her.

Fallen over and weathered granite next to brightly polished stones filled this little cemetery that could have been the inspiration for many a story. I felt her before I saw hers and her husband's stone, no different from many other tombstones in many other cemeteries around the country. I knew her stone immediately, even though I could only see the back of it.

I broke down into tears immediately. The pain was back, the pain of losing her, the pain of guilt that there had to have been something I could have done... but there was nothing, and never would be anything. The pain and sorrow of death, even though you know that it's just another stage of life.

There's something to be said for getting back to your roots. To hearing the stories of those who have gone farther in life than you have. To crying over the grave of those you love the most and just letting your heart pour it out into the universe surrounding you. Because then, maybe, just maybe, you start feeling something start to knit itself together so you can start growing again.