“It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” -David Foster Wallace

Tags

emotions, faith, Ghandi, Intensity, panicjoy, suicide, voice, vulnerability, war, words

Alert: this post may contain material that is triggering for some. If you find yourself in crisis, you can call 1-800-273-8255, or visit www.crisischat.org for support.

What I know to be true in this moment is that mental illness is like faith.

Some people say they believe absolutely in whatever they believe in, do it blindly and without doubt even if it is something they can’t experience through their 5 senses.  They call this Faith.  To me, Faith is believing absolutely, except when you are doubting absolutely, or when you are somewhere in between. It is having Faith that the only constant is change.  It is absolutely believing it is okay to doubt, and okay to believe, and okay to be in the middle.  Faith is believing, absolutely, that it is okay to come as you are, that you can show up as your True Self, even if you are punished for it.  Joan of Arc was punished for it.  Ghandi was, too.

Mental illness is scary, and full of suffering and pain and panicjoy.  Pain and suffering, both physical and emotional, are subjective; there are pictoral spectrums for people in hospitals to help their doctors and nurses understand the amount of pain they are experiencing, because Words are of little help in accurately describing an internal experience (though for me they are the closest I can get).

Joy is subjective, too, though we don’t like to think about that, because it is a shiny, sparkly emotion that we like to think we can share.  And we can share it, just as we can share pain-but my Sarah experience of Joy will never be experienced by anyone who doesn’t have my Brain.  And the same is true for my Sarah experience of Pain.

And so I believe that Faith is subjective.  My definition of Faith, as described above, is true only for Me in this moment.  It might be true for others, in the moment that they read it, too.  I can only hope, because that would mean that I’m not quite so alone.  And it would mean that they aren’t quite so alone, too.  Because even though my Sarah experiences will only ever be my own, they might resonate with the experiences of others who are Living, or trying to Live.

People start wars because of Faith.  They always have.  People start wars because of mental illness, too-it just isn’t spoken out loud.  And I don’t mean that the people that start them do so because they are crazy.  I mean that wars begin because of fear and lack of understanding, and the fierce desire to stand in Your Truth, even if it means killing someone else who is trying to stand in Theirs.  Mental illness is biological, chemical, Real things happening in your Brain.  And it is, for me, being surrounded by fear and lack of understanding when I am Living My Truth, and being punished, sometimes, for Living In It.

Mental illness is scary to talk about, because when you are experiencing depression, or mania, or anxiety, or suicidal ideation, It is a uniquely You experience.  There are common threads, there are links, there are helpful and unhelpful things to say that are true for most humans when they are in It.  And what I, Sarah, look like when I am in It, and how I feel when I’m in It, only I will ever know.  That’s terrifying.  And that’s where Faith comes in.

My Faith is that, as I continue to show up as My True Self, in my Sarahness, it might allow others to do the same.  That in giving Words to this subjective experience, it might shine the light on the fact that it is subjective, but not unique.  That because I have personally been trapped, I have personally felt the flames, that I can truly “understand a terror way beyond falling.”  I’m on the sidewalk, now, and I’ve done the jumping.

David Foster Wallace understood the flames, too; he wouldn’t have been able to write those Words otherwise.  I wish that he had known, in the moment before he hung himself, that his Words would help someone else, like me, be a little more brave, a little more willing to use my wild trembling Voice.  Perhaps he would still be alive.  Not because I have any delusions about my power or impact, but because what saves me, daily, is people around me modeling bravery through vulnerability so I that I can imperfectly attempt the same.

And so,  as Intensely Intense as I am, today, I am so very grateful that I am Alive, and so very saddened that he, and many others, are not.  And all I can do in this moment, despite the very real risks, is continue to stand in my Truth, to say the Scary things, and to hold on tightly to My imperfectly perfect Faith as I press the “Update” button on my blog.

“The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tags

change, Intensity, labels, mindfulness, ocean, panicjoy, storytelling, suicide, thesamedifferent, voice, war, words

Alert: this post may contain material that is triggering for some. If you find yourself in crisis, you can call 1-800-273-8255, or visit www.crisischat.org for support.

The “turning of the tide” is an idiom that has threaded itself through my journey; I give the Words themselves ownership because it is only today that I’m beginning to remember, and connect, the ways the phrase has surfaced and dove, dolphin-like, over the course of my Story.  It brings the Words War, and Ocean, and Change to my mind, allows them to shake off salt water drips and float in the air so I can look at them in new ways, brings up memories that my Brain has stored for, perhaps, just these moments.

I remember reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin in high school English and discussing Stigma and Sterotypes and slavery, writhing in my new attempt to understanding the suffering of others, of our country, of a people who were dehumanized in the most horrifying of ways and yet refused to be, who rose above their Labels through Song and Words and Community.

The author of the novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe, is an imperfect (thank goodness, for aren’t we all??) model of a female writer who used Words to turn the tide, to impact and in some ways reverse public opinion, raised her Voice to shine a light on something inhumane, something difficult and scary to talk about.  It is a complicated, flawed, many-layered Story to think of a white woman writer telling the tale of black slavery, and the Messiness of it is the Beauty.

Looking back, reading that Story I was also peeling back some layers of my own, uncovering some Light and Resiliency and Hope.  Now I’m able to connect my story to theirs in some ways, for Stories are all thesamedifferent.  It is one small instance when my tide began to turn.  It is self-empowerment, as I start to stick my toes back in, shock my Brain Cells by dipping into my Memory Ocean, and dive in to the ways I have been answering my own Big Questions all along.

I also remember watching war documentaries with my father-Ken Burns’ Civil War series with the hauntingly Alive Ashokan Farewell (I had to stop and find this song in my iTunes library before I could continue typing-I’m listening to it as I write these Words-and in the spirit of imperfection, I found I had Labeled it “Alaskan Farewell.”), and a show telling some of the story of the Vietnam War protests that I remember only through memory flashes of tear gas and police barricades.  While I’m not certain that the exact phrase “turning of the tide” was used in either of these, I am confidant that, even as a small girl, the notion that the smallest of events can alter the course of history resonated in a deep, mysterious, rumbling way.

Because my Story, all along, has been about warfare, messy and thick with blood and bile.  Battles large and small have been lost and won.  Until very recently, the casualties were Voice and Trust, relationships and freedoms and jobs and Growth.  The fight was raging internally, showing up externally only though razor-clean cuts or bones visible through pale skin, crumpled candy wrappers in the bathroom garbage can, a bottle in a drawer.  These were all evidence of daily carnage, the wake left behind as I struggled against myself to save myself.  And though I couldn’t see it at the time, each was a separate turning of the tide, a “low ebb” that, when rolled up together, culminated in the motion of Change and Growth that is happening as I type these Words.

For now that I’m writing again, and Memory Diving, the tide is turning in Big, Beautiful, Terrifying ways.  And when I say Big, I mean large for me, grand in the sense of my own Story.  Because I’ve found a way to turn the internal battle outwards, to shine a little light on ways it is challenging for me to be me in this world.  The warfare is different now.  I’m speaking my Truth instead of smothering myself in shame.  I can bleed safely, release some of my Intense Intensity in ways that free me rather than harm me, ways that are less scary and confusing for those around me.

I’m wildly in awe with it all, in this moment, filled to the brim with panicjoy.  Panicjoy is a full-body physical response to Emotions.  It is tearful, nauseating, and trembling even as it is grinning straight from the eyes.  It is realizing that I’m Alive on this morning, drinking black coffee and in need of a shower, to write these Words.  It is an awareness that I get to continue this warfare of Words, that I am Blessed, by Whomever or Whatever does the Blessing, to be in this world, Living and starting to notice when my tide ebbs and flows.