What is my motivation? Writing lists and making schedules for myself is what I keep coming back to every time I get determined to make something of myself, to do something with my life. It never works, not for very long anyway. This time has to be different. I have to really mean it. What makes it different for me this time is having the accountability of other people. I am not able to do life on my own. I need encouragement. I need appreciation. I need connection with other people. I need to feel like what I do matters, like I’m contributing something to the world, like I’m making a difference. It’s so easy for me to fall into isolation. I can be invisible. I can spend my days curled up on the couch eating protein bars and not exercising or showering for days or even weeks on end, and no one else would care or even notice. If I want other people to notice and care about what I do, where I go, how I spend my days, then I need to reach out and care about them. I need to ask how they’re doing. I need to pay attention to whether they leave the house, exercise, or shower. Caring about other people is my motivation; that’s what makes all the difference.

Where am I? It’s not as simple and straight-forward of a question as it may seem. I know where I am geographically, more or less, and when there’s doubt, my phone can tell me. But my phone doesn’t know where I am mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Maybe there’s an app for that, but if there is, I don’t want to know about it. I want to be able to decide for myself where I am, where I’m going, and where I want to be. I realized a long time ago that I don’t usually get to go where I want to go geographically. I go wherever my life happens to take me. But on the inside. I always get to decide where I’m going to go on the inside. On the inside, my heart has been lost at sea. I first lost my bearings when my father chose to leave our family. Then, a decade later, I jumped overboard when I was told that I didn’t get to have the life I wanted to have. My dream died and was buried at sea. I chased after it anyway. I’ve been adrift ever since, following the hero’s journey in my personal Odyssey: cyclopes, sirens, lotus land, and all.

Where is my focus? As someone who’s suffered with ADHD her whole life, my mind seems to oscillate between hyper-focus and dissociation, with various levels of distractibility in between. Where the mind goes, the rest of me follows. I journey into the depths of unknotting a necklace chain with a safety pin or fall into the “unspace” of zoning out. The question of where my mind has gone is often answered with the position of my physical body. When I’m frozen like a statue with a blank facial expression, my brain is taking a well-deserved break from its usual hypervigilance. I’m unconsciously tense all of the time, even while I’m deliberately trying to relax. If I’m horizontal or “reading,” I’m also fighting with myself to get on with my life, to make progress, to accomplish something. I need to learn to accept my disability, to quit resisting it so much. The struggle saps my strength, and I already don’t have energy to spare. I can still love and accept myself, even with a frustrating mental illness. I can still love and accept myself, even if I don’t make progress or accomplish anything. I can still love and accept myself and get on with my life.

How do I identify? Freedom sucks. In slavery, you do what you’re told. You don’t have to make any decisions. You go along to get along. One day after the next you follow the path that was decided for you until your rut hits a dead end, the grave. It’s simple. It’s predetermined. What you get stuck with could rock, or it could be a fate worse than death. Either way, it’s out of your hands. You can cling to hope that someday your circumstances will get better, but, ultimately, it’s out of your hands. You don’t have to be responsible for your life because you have no ability to respond otherwise. That’s how the first half of my life played out. I was a victim, a slave to my addiction. When other people in my life were hurt by my behaviors, it wasn’t my fault because I was just trying to survive. You can’t blame a person for trying to survive. But now, I’m free. I’m almost pissed at myself for working so hard to recover my freedom to choose because now I have to take responsibility for how I choose to identify. I’m no longer a slave to filling the role I was given by society, by my first education, by my family or origin. It’s up to me to define my identity now, who I am and who I want to become. And it hurts. It’s so hard because I know there will be people who don’t approve of the choices I make. I know that other people are going to get hurt by my decisions, and I have to own that. I have to take responsibility for the disaster I leave in my wake because I’ve chosen to take responsibility for the decisions that I make. I choose freedom. It sucks, and it hurts, and I’m scared, but it’s still better than the alternative.

What am I running from? I have the right to be angry. Anger is a natural part of the grieving process, and I’m grieving. I’m grieving and angry because I’m a loser. I’ve lost people whom I’ve loved. I’ve lost friendships and communities. I’ve lost places and possessions. And, most of all, I’ve lost my own sense of dignity and self-worth. I’m a poet, a performer, and a perpetual student, none of which are valued in our society unless you’re one of the unfortunate few who get discovered and become famous. I don’t want to be famous. I want to work hard and to play hard. I want to enjoy spending time with friends and family. I want to contribute to the transformation of primary education in this country, and I want to help make the world a better place for the people who are already here as well as for those who will come after us. It shouldn’t have to be such a battle. It’ shouldn’t have to be such a losing battle. Instead of running from all of the grief and loss and anger, I want to run toward mercy, grace, and acceptance. But I’m too tired to run anywhere at the moment. So, I think I’ll just sit here and rest for a while.

How can I not believe that anyone actually cares about me? I have some really great people in my life. It’s not too much to say that I love them. I can relate to their stories, to the struggles they’ve gone through, to the struggles they’re dealing with currently. I understand where they’re coming from, and I choose to believe that they understand how I feel; they understand my struggles and my pain. I’m even able to believe that they care. It’s hard. It’s still really hard for me to believe that another person can actually care about how I feel and what I’m going through. But, if I can care so much about them, then, surely, they can care about me too. They might be sitting at their computers crying and typing about how much they love the few people in their lives who really, truly, honestly care about them. These relationships allow me to witness them and for them to witness me. All that really matters in the end is that these people have seen me, the real me, and I have seen them. They bear witness to my life, and they validate my story. They matter to me, and I matter to them.

What makes me so sure that I don’t deserve to be here? I couldn’t figure out how to use an eyedropper. It’s stupid; I know. You squeeze the bulb at the top to push the air out through the tube to create a vacuum. Then you dip the tip of the tube into a liquid and release pressure on the bulb, which then sucks the liquid into the tube to replace the air that went back into the bulb. You then relocate the tip of the tube to wherever it is you want to release the liquid and squeeze the bulb again so the air inside of it now pushes the liquid out of the tube. I know how it works, and I understand why it works. Nature abhors a vacuum. I get it. I just seem to lack the ability of practical application. As in every area of my life, I choke when the pressure’s on. I go blank. I try to think of what I’m doing, and my brain obstinately disconnects. So, I fake it, I lie, or I run away crying. I feel like a fraud if I receive any kind of a reward because I know I wasn’t honest or because I know I bent the rules. Or worse, I try and I fail; I make a mess or look like an idiot or I miss the mark and get flooded with shame. It’s super painful. Most of the time all I really want is for someone to see me with empathy in their eyes instead of judgment or lust. I want someone to offer me a hug and to tell me that everything is going to be okay. But that never happens. So, instead of getting angry at every other person in the world, I’ve decided to be angry only with myself. I’m sure I don’t deserve to be here because it hurts less than failing to prove that I do.

Where did I go, and how do I get back to me? There is no way “back” to my true self. She’s been here with me the whole time. I’ve just turned my back on her because that’s what was modeled for me. Everyone else turned their backs on me, and they turned their backs on themselves. The true self isn’t acceptable. The true self is too vulnerable to pain. I need to pay attention to what everyone else wants from me, who everyone else wants me to be. Then, I pretend to be what everyone else wants. I pretend to be cool. I pretend to be successful. I pretend to be smart, and I pretend to be strong. I just really suck at pretending. I’m not successful, and I’m not cool, not by anyone else’s standards anyway. I’m a weirdo. I’m a loser. The real me isn’t smart or strong or even as sweet and silly as I often think I am. The real me is scared and hiding under the couch while the fake me sits still, faking a smile.

Why is there so much shame associated with suicide? Everyone dies at some point anyway. You’d think that in a culture that is so obsessed with freedom, individuality, and personal power, that choosing when, where, and how you want to die would be hailed as the ultimate option. Maybe the shaming is a preventative measure. If committing suicide were seen as permissible, way more people would be opting out and our entire economy would collapse. Maybe it’s our selfish tendencies that cause us to prevent death at all costs because we don’t want to lose someone we love regardless of how much pain they’re in. It’s not selfish to tire of fighting to stay alive; it’s selfish to expect others to live in order to stall our own grief. As someone who has struggled with depression my entire life, I know how much it hurts. It deeply, painfully, physically hurts. And there’s not always a cure. I’m trying. I’m still doing everything I can to heal my brain as much as possible: medication, supplements, meditation, therapy, diet and exercise, and, most importantly, trying like heck to develop a supportive community. I’ve survived this far only by the grace of God and my strong desire to be there for my kids. My girls need their mom for now, and that’s enough to keep me fighting. But if it ever gets to be too much, if the pain becomes more than I can bare, then I want to be able to die with dignity. I want to choose how, when, and where if death doesn’t come unexpectedly before then. I want to be able to say good-bye without fear and without shame. I don’t want to hide it. My brain is damaged, and it causes me tremendous amounts of pain. It could kill me someday, but I don’t have to live or die alone just because I’m hurting.

If I write a story and no one ever reads it, am I still a writer? Writing really isn’t up to me. I can’t not write. It’s not what I do; it’s who I am. I’ve been writing since before I could ever hold a pencil. Stories play across the pages of my mind, mostly love stories. The world is simply starving for more love. I’m no exception. I’m surrounded by love; it’s like the air I breathe. I couldn’t live without it. Love is in everything, inside of everyone. We often don’t recognize the love we see in our lives, though, because it looks so much like fear. Love never walks alone. Love has many companions: rejection, sorrow, abandonment, humiliation, disappointment. We can’t have light without shadows, and we can’t experience love without an equal amount of pain. Breathe in the sorrow. Rest in the fear. Feel the full force of love in all of her fierceness and glory. When I accept the full reality of life and face the darkness directly, I grasp the hand of suffering with one hand and find love is holding my other hand, leading me into the darkness toward home.