Tonight was a rough night.
I was trying to unwind after the most confusing and scattered first-day-back ever, one that began with a fifteen-mile bike ride (Bike the Drive in Chicago, everyone should do it) and ended with this. After going in my hot tub with a friend of mine, C, I settled in to bed with half a cantaloupe to catch up on my life.
The first thing I did was catch up on the news. There was a shooting in Isla Vista on Friday night, one that left many of my peers shaken (UCSB is still in the UC system, and many students at Berkeley know students at SB, so many people that I know were personally affected by this awful, awful tragedy). I have no words of my own to attempt to process this event, but I will link you to articles here, here, here, and here. For a world where news travels so fast, I was vastly under-prepared for what I was about to read. It's a horrific thing in and of itself, and as a female member of the Greek system at a closely-linked university, it was particularly hard to stomach due to the targeted attack on sorority women in the area. My LITB and Panhellenic love goes out to all women at UCSB; I cannot even imagine having to be in your shoes and am extending love and support your way.
After taking a minute to process one person's devastating lack of value for other human life, I turned to Amazon Prime Instant Video. Wanting to watch a movie that would allow myself to relax, clear my mind, I skipped past all the action movies and settled on a comedy about high school life in the eighties. Made in 1988, this movie was cited as the precursor to Clueless and Mean Girls, among other films, and existed in the same time frame as John Hughes movies, so without any more information on the subject matter or the plotline of the movie, I began watching Heathers.
Forty minutes in, I was horrified. The timing of my processing of the shooting, then watching the movie, could not have been worse. For those of you (like me) that are unaware of what Heathers is about, the plot follows a girl named Veronica who has succeeded in joining the popular clique in her high school called the Heathers: a group of beautiful popular girls all named Heather. After a college party night goes awry and alpha Heather makes fun of Veronica (in a very clever, scathing way), Veronica plays a game of strip croquet with the new-to-the-neighborhood psychopath, JD (whom has jokingly "shot" two people with blanks in the school, already, with no consequence), to whom she gripes about Heather and vocally wishes alpha Heather dead. Now JD takes things literally, so in a well-intentioned prank to make alpha Heather throw up the following morning by having her drink a mixture of orange juice and milk (Veronica's idea), JD decides to ratchet up the stakes and feed alpha Heather drain cleaner instead. She dies, and JD convinces Veronica to help him pass it off as suicide. After killing two more students at the school (this time, misogynistic football players, killed by shooting them) and also passing them off as suicide, Veronica and JD have a relationship reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde.
Without going too much into detail and ruining the movie, let's just say I was appalled. I took to the good ol' interweb to see what the fuss was about Heathers (specifically, if my disgust was shared by the mass populus), and was floored. Reviews of it as a cult classic were overwhelmingly positive, lauding it as an important dark comedy, a necessary piece of cinema, and a gem, even 25 years later. All I saw was a movie glorifying suicide and murder, which left a horrible taste in my mouth. I didn't understand how the movie could have ever been made, let alone celebrated, let alone labeled a "classic", with or without the world "cult" in front of classic. I was shaken, shocked, and appalled.
Then I took my surroundings into account. I don't know that I would ever love Heathers, given its dark subject matter and my reluctance to personally jump on board with the whole murder/suicide thing, but had I seen it on a different night (i.e. not right after hearing about Isla Vista), I would have felt differently. I will say that I appreciated it for it's biting wit and it's cleverness, and it's commentary on social cliques in the high school scene. It's a well-done movie, and though I won't throw the word "important" around, definitely has earned it's place in the history books, in my mind.
Maybe I'll try again to watch it, give it some time, and see what I think. For now, I'm just going to bed. I'm on Pacific time, and even for that, 2/4 am is too late to be awake.
God bless.
EDIT: I did do some reading on Heathers that changed my mindset just a little, or at least put my viewing of Heathers in the correct frame. I'll link ya: here, here, and here.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
This Year
This year was the worst year yet. This school year. It had it's ups, but it had its deep downs as well.
This year:
My depression came back in a really hard-to-deal-with way, and I was luckily able to call someone when I most needed it.
I changed majors. Which is definitely for the better, but the academic courseload got about three times harder, and I got less and less sleep as I progressed through the year and the semester. Which made life hard to deal with.
My baby sister's growing up and that's freaking me out because she's going to college.
I was sexually assaulted by someone that I trusted.
I got a concussion. The week before finals.
A friend that was really close to me was just generally very very shitty and out of left field.
For the first time in my life I've had to come to terms with some things that weren't so pretty, namely that I am human. This means that from time to time, I fuck up. Bad. I make choices that I can't stand behind the next day, and there are times where I look in the mirror and I'm not proud of the person that's looking back at me. I've been trying to learn not to beat myself up about it, but it's taking time. It's a process.
This year:
My depression came back in a really hard-to-deal-with way, and I was luckily able to call someone when I most needed it.
I changed majors. Which is definitely for the better, but the academic courseload got about three times harder, and I got less and less sleep as I progressed through the year and the semester. Which made life hard to deal with.
My baby sister's growing up and that's freaking me out because she's going to college.
I was sexually assaulted by someone that I trusted.
I got a concussion. The week before finals.
A friend that was really close to me was just generally very very shitty and out of left field.
For the first time in my life I've had to come to terms with some things that weren't so pretty, namely that I am human. This means that from time to time, I fuck up. Bad. I make choices that I can't stand behind the next day, and there are times where I look in the mirror and I'm not proud of the person that's looking back at me. I've been trying to learn not to beat myself up about it, but it's taking time. It's a process.
Mistakes
Mistakes suck.
I'm not talking about the simple embarrassing spelling error on a letter to your grandma, or forgetting to write the subject line in an e-mail to your TA which took you two hours to compose because you're in love with your TA. I'm not talking about forgetting to call your sister on her birthday, or not paying your credit card bill one month.
I'm talking about huge huge mistakes, gargantuan fuck-ups, things that you can't, at the end of the day, tell yourself will be okay. Things that society frowns upon, things that make your skin crawl and make you wonder if you'll ever be okay. Mistakes that ruin friendships, mistakes that ruin relationships, mistakes that ruin lives.
Okay, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but I've made a few mistakes. Very recently. That have had serious shockwaves. That weren't able to be brushed off by a simple apology, or justified by the fact that I had good intentions. They're things that I can't go to sleep at night and not think about, and they're things that make me cry one, two, four, seven months in the future. I've had to accept the fact that I'm a human that makes large mistakes from time to time, and that this is a part of learning and living.
And it fucking sucks. Coming to terms with the fact that I'm imperfect is horrible. And not an endearing imperfect, not the fact that I make light of my flaws, really, truly, horribly imperfect.
I'm not talking about the simple embarrassing spelling error on a letter to your grandma, or forgetting to write the subject line in an e-mail to your TA which took you two hours to compose because you're in love with your TA. I'm not talking about forgetting to call your sister on her birthday, or not paying your credit card bill one month.
I'm talking about huge huge mistakes, gargantuan fuck-ups, things that you can't, at the end of the day, tell yourself will be okay. Things that society frowns upon, things that make your skin crawl and make you wonder if you'll ever be okay. Mistakes that ruin friendships, mistakes that ruin relationships, mistakes that ruin lives.
Okay, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but I've made a few mistakes. Very recently. That have had serious shockwaves. That weren't able to be brushed off by a simple apology, or justified by the fact that I had good intentions. They're things that I can't go to sleep at night and not think about, and they're things that make me cry one, two, four, seven months in the future. I've had to accept the fact that I'm a human that makes large mistakes from time to time, and that this is a part of learning and living.
And it fucking sucks. Coming to terms with the fact that I'm imperfect is horrible. And not an endearing imperfect, not the fact that I make light of my flaws, really, truly, horribly imperfect.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
E, J, and how I learned my life was a joke.
A year ago, I did not know myself.
A year ago, someone else wanted to know me. His name was J.
A year ago, I don't remember what happened, but J stopped talking to me, out of the blue, showed up with another girlfriend, and we cut contact.
In this year, I've grown closer to E. He knows most of my secrets, supports me when I need it, encourages me, makes me laugh, and best of all, does all of this in a platonic way. He's one of my best friends.
That is, until about four months ago.
Four months ago, E changed. He turned harsh, callous, insulting, and complacent. He stopped answering my texts, both when they were trivial and when they were important. He stopped answering my phone calls when I needed someone to talk to. It seemed like he stopped respecting me as a person, and I have no idea why.
To top it all off, E accused me this weekend of throwing myself at J when I knew he had a girlfriend. Not only is that not his place, that's not who I am, at all, and it felt like shit. This person, who I had trusted, loved platonically, helped, opened up to, and made myself vulnerable in front of betrayed me. It hurt worse than any breakup with any boyfriend, any fight with any other friend, anything else, ever.
It fucking sucked. And it threw me off my rocker completely. I have literally no idea what to do, where to go from here, or what to say. I feel so used and emotionally manipulated, and for someone who prides herself on being strong and able to see through bullshit, this is not a fun place to be in. I feel taken advantage of, both physically and emotionally. I don't know what to say.
This sucks.
A year ago, someone else wanted to know me. His name was J.
A year ago, I don't remember what happened, but J stopped talking to me, out of the blue, showed up with another girlfriend, and we cut contact.
In this year, I've grown closer to E. He knows most of my secrets, supports me when I need it, encourages me, makes me laugh, and best of all, does all of this in a platonic way. He's one of my best friends.
That is, until about four months ago.
Four months ago, E changed. He turned harsh, callous, insulting, and complacent. He stopped answering my texts, both when they were trivial and when they were important. He stopped answering my phone calls when I needed someone to talk to. It seemed like he stopped respecting me as a person, and I have no idea why.
To top it all off, E accused me this weekend of throwing myself at J when I knew he had a girlfriend. Not only is that not his place, that's not who I am, at all, and it felt like shit. This person, who I had trusted, loved platonically, helped, opened up to, and made myself vulnerable in front of betrayed me. It hurt worse than any breakup with any boyfriend, any fight with any other friend, anything else, ever.
It fucking sucked. And it threw me off my rocker completely. I have literally no idea what to do, where to go from here, or what to say. I feel so used and emotionally manipulated, and for someone who prides herself on being strong and able to see through bullshit, this is not a fun place to be in. I feel taken advantage of, both physically and emotionally. I don't know what to say.
This sucks.
Monday, November 25, 2013
I'm Emotionally Unavaliable
That thought terrifies me, absolutely. And I never thought that it was true, until about five minutes ago.
I spent high school bouncing between boyfriends, never spending more than around seven months single before I got a new boyfriend. Which was fine by me, it was a casual way to spend the time, I learned an awful lot about myself, and I had a lot of fun in the process.
Which in my mind is exactly what high school relationships should be like. Fun, relatively non-commital, and positive. My longest relationship ever has lasted eight months. Looking back on all of them, I realize I was always the one to break it off (read: run away first). In more than one instance, I pulled away because things were getting too serious. Other times I would convince myself that I "got bored", or "lost interest", both of which were absolutely true for all but two of my relationships. But I think what that ended up meaning is that I was terrified of making a commitment that was lasting and real and profound.
I like to believe that at 18 I was in no shape to start committing myself to another person. I didn't know shit about who I was, who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do with my life. I still don't have answers to two of those questions. But since I've been single (it's been almost fifteen months), I've learned so much about myself.
One of these things is that I'm emotionally unavailable.
I'm not sure why I didn't figure this out sooner, because it's so obvious. I broke up with my summer fling when I got to college because I didn't want to do the long distance thing with him. While at school, I would meet guys and then just never follow up with them. In the first example I had of college "dating", I'm pretty sure the guy is gay and just doesn't know it, and I'm 100% sure that I was friend-zoned on the second date when he offered me a bro handshake instead of a hug at the end. In the second example, I ran away because he was looking to make me his girlfriend and I just didn't feel the same way.
Has college turned me into an emotionally unavailable person, or was that how I always was?
I can tell you that college has caused me to get a thicker skin, to decide things for myself, and to become a lot more self-aware and self-sufficient. I don't have anyone to lean on here, so I have to do a lot of things by myself, which is super hard and frustrating at times, but also is so good for me. Throughout all of this, I see my friends with long-term boyfriends, and the majority of me just kinda cringes a little bit. The sentence "we've been together for three years!" is more terrifying to me than the sentence "holy shit look at that huge spider over there I think it's going to eat us." The thought of knowing who I'm going to marry already is absolutely terrifying. At face value, I define this thought something like "well, I'm so amazing and I know I deserve so much out of a potential life partner, and there really isn't anyone I've met that can give me everything I need and/or is compatible enough with me to last a year or more, so it's fine if I just keep brushing things off." The problem with this logic is in the sense that I haven't really gotten to know any guys very well since I've been here.
The "dating scene" here is very much one of "let's hang out at a few parties, start making out on the reg, eventually have sex, then we can start hanging out sober and doing things like watching movies together, but not in public and we can't put a label on it until way way later when people won't find it weird." That's so not even close to how I approach things it's not even funny.
I keep my feelings close, because I don't like having them hurt. Nobody does. But instead of advancing me into this new realm of being amazingly self-aware, it's hindered me in a lot of ways. I'm very straightforward when it comes to guys here. I hate playing games, I won't take it as a marriage proposal if you say you want to see me again, and the fact my most recent flirtation took offense to the pronoun "us" is incredibly out-of-line (I referred to the two of us in the sense that I told him I showed my mom a picture of us and she showed her college class. His response to that was ...."us"?? I then had to spend an incredible amount of time convincing him that we weren't an "us" and it was just a weird scenario. My mom is also super embarrassing, which doesn't help anything). But I don't open up and get emotionally close to people, especially guys, very easily. And in an environment such as the one I'm in, there isn't really much merit to getting to know girls well if you can just make out with random drunk girls at your party the next weekend.
But there's a guy right now that I really really like. We get along really well, and I want to see him again. He feels the same way (or so he told me). I trust him, he's funny, we talk, and although I'm not trying to make him my boyfriend this second, I can see the potential in the relationship in the long term.
This sounds completely contrary behavior to everything I just described, and it is, but there's a reason: four weeks ago, this guy got out of a long term relationship with a psycho girlfriend and is so freaked out by the thought of a relationship that he pretty much stopped talking to me over my use of the pronoun "us". He's completely and utterly emotionally unavailable, in every sense of the world.
You wanna know what type of people fall in "like" with emotionally unavailable people? Emotionally unavailable people.
This means that when things eventually don't turn into anything and I have to deal with the boo-boo on my heart and in my life, it'll, again, be my own damn fault. But it will also mean that there's a scapegoat for my hurt: he wasn't in the wrong, and neither was I, but he was just really emotionally unavailable! Nothing anyone can do about that, right? Which means that I'm not left with the confusing tangle of feelings associated with a break-up. I still win. I still protect my emotions, my feelings, my head, and my heart from getting hurt by another person.
I don't know that I've ever been in love. But I'm in love with the idea of being in love. And I really want to be in a relationship now (on the surface). But deep down, I'm still the same emotionally unavailable person that I've always been, and I don't know how to change that.
I spent high school bouncing between boyfriends, never spending more than around seven months single before I got a new boyfriend. Which was fine by me, it was a casual way to spend the time, I learned an awful lot about myself, and I had a lot of fun in the process.
Which in my mind is exactly what high school relationships should be like. Fun, relatively non-commital, and positive. My longest relationship ever has lasted eight months. Looking back on all of them, I realize I was always the one to break it off (read: run away first). In more than one instance, I pulled away because things were getting too serious. Other times I would convince myself that I "got bored", or "lost interest", both of which were absolutely true for all but two of my relationships. But I think what that ended up meaning is that I was terrified of making a commitment that was lasting and real and profound.
I like to believe that at 18 I was in no shape to start committing myself to another person. I didn't know shit about who I was, who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do with my life. I still don't have answers to two of those questions. But since I've been single (it's been almost fifteen months), I've learned so much about myself.
One of these things is that I'm emotionally unavailable.
I'm not sure why I didn't figure this out sooner, because it's so obvious. I broke up with my summer fling when I got to college because I didn't want to do the long distance thing with him. While at school, I would meet guys and then just never follow up with them. In the first example I had of college "dating", I'm pretty sure the guy is gay and just doesn't know it, and I'm 100% sure that I was friend-zoned on the second date when he offered me a bro handshake instead of a hug at the end. In the second example, I ran away because he was looking to make me his girlfriend and I just didn't feel the same way.
Has college turned me into an emotionally unavailable person, or was that how I always was?
I can tell you that college has caused me to get a thicker skin, to decide things for myself, and to become a lot more self-aware and self-sufficient. I don't have anyone to lean on here, so I have to do a lot of things by myself, which is super hard and frustrating at times, but also is so good for me. Throughout all of this, I see my friends with long-term boyfriends, and the majority of me just kinda cringes a little bit. The sentence "we've been together for three years!" is more terrifying to me than the sentence "holy shit look at that huge spider over there I think it's going to eat us." The thought of knowing who I'm going to marry already is absolutely terrifying. At face value, I define this thought something like "well, I'm so amazing and I know I deserve so much out of a potential life partner, and there really isn't anyone I've met that can give me everything I need and/or is compatible enough with me to last a year or more, so it's fine if I just keep brushing things off." The problem with this logic is in the sense that I haven't really gotten to know any guys very well since I've been here.
The "dating scene" here is very much one of "let's hang out at a few parties, start making out on the reg, eventually have sex, then we can start hanging out sober and doing things like watching movies together, but not in public and we can't put a label on it until way way later when people won't find it weird." That's so not even close to how I approach things it's not even funny.
I keep my feelings close, because I don't like having them hurt. Nobody does. But instead of advancing me into this new realm of being amazingly self-aware, it's hindered me in a lot of ways. I'm very straightforward when it comes to guys here. I hate playing games, I won't take it as a marriage proposal if you say you want to see me again, and the fact my most recent flirtation took offense to the pronoun "us" is incredibly out-of-line (I referred to the two of us in the sense that I told him I showed my mom a picture of us and she showed her college class. His response to that was ...."us"?? I then had to spend an incredible amount of time convincing him that we weren't an "us" and it was just a weird scenario. My mom is also super embarrassing, which doesn't help anything). But I don't open up and get emotionally close to people, especially guys, very easily. And in an environment such as the one I'm in, there isn't really much merit to getting to know girls well if you can just make out with random drunk girls at your party the next weekend.
But there's a guy right now that I really really like. We get along really well, and I want to see him again. He feels the same way (or so he told me). I trust him, he's funny, we talk, and although I'm not trying to make him my boyfriend this second, I can see the potential in the relationship in the long term.
This sounds completely contrary behavior to everything I just described, and it is, but there's a reason: four weeks ago, this guy got out of a long term relationship with a psycho girlfriend and is so freaked out by the thought of a relationship that he pretty much stopped talking to me over my use of the pronoun "us". He's completely and utterly emotionally unavailable, in every sense of the world.
You wanna know what type of people fall in "like" with emotionally unavailable people? Emotionally unavailable people.
This means that when things eventually don't turn into anything and I have to deal with the boo-boo on my heart and in my life, it'll, again, be my own damn fault. But it will also mean that there's a scapegoat for my hurt: he wasn't in the wrong, and neither was I, but he was just really emotionally unavailable! Nothing anyone can do about that, right? Which means that I'm not left with the confusing tangle of feelings associated with a break-up. I still win. I still protect my emotions, my feelings, my head, and my heart from getting hurt by another person.
I don't know that I've ever been in love. But I'm in love with the idea of being in love. And I really want to be in a relationship now (on the surface). But deep down, I'm still the same emotionally unavailable person that I've always been, and I don't know how to change that.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Perfection.... Or Something Close
Earlier today, I read an article about the pressure put on teenaged girls to succeed in high school, both in their studies and their social lives.
Earlier this semester, I wrote about my own struggles with depression/mental health, some of which has most likely been brought upon me by the society that we live in: the incessant pressure that I faced (and still do face) to be a high-achieving, personable, athletic, empathetic, involved individual (read: perfect).
Do I agree that teenagers live under an immense amount of academic and mental pressure? Yes, especially where I'm from, but these pressures are not the only ones that I faced in high school. My younger sister is currently a senior in high school, and most of her friends are on our school's cross country team, a team which has a reputation for excellence, whether that be winning cross-town meets, dominating state championships, or having the largest team in the district. Out of the group of maybe six of them, four of them have gotten knee or hip surgery in the last two years, and the orthopedic surgeons consistently tell them that their joints have deteriorated because of overuse, overtraining, and not allowing their bodies to recover enough between workouts. The girls are unfazed. As I was talking to one of them, two weeks after her surgery, her biggest concern was that she wasn't swimming. She's on a club swim team during the cross country off-season, and she was fearful that both of her coaches (cross country and swimming) would be unhappy that she couldn't train during the time that she was recovering from her surgery. She also is a soccer player. She pointed out that six to eight weeks is a long time to take off from sports, and she couldn't wait to get back into everything.
My sister has undergone extensive injuries (broken bones, torn MCL, concussions) with her ice skating career, to the point where the receptionist at the orthopedics office knows her face. She's been yelled at by her coaches for getting injured, and frequently throws herself back onto the ice before she's ready to, because she can't afford to miss a practice.
Excuse me, what? The coaches of the sports teams of these injured girls are getting upset that they can't participate in the same sports that injured them in the first place? And the girls are thinking that this is normal? In my experience, knee surgery was not a normal event in my circle of friends, and to have it be such a standard thing in my sister's close group of friends? Because these sports coaches are overworking their athletes, and training them to an unhealthy degree?
That's not even mentioning the hours that are required of cheerleaders, dancers, the rest of the athletes, the theater department, the show choir, and all other activities. My senior year, it was not uncommon for me to get to school before the sun came up, for a pickup choir rehearsal before school, and leave after the sun went down, as drama/show choir practices frequently kept me at school until nine or ten at night. One week, my choir director pulled us out of class for three days to do extra practices, and I brought my laptop so that when I wasn't on stage, I was writing my three papers that I had due in my academic classes. Not once, but twice I fell asleep on the floor of the dressing room during our lunch break, because it was the only time that I could take a break. I was spending 15 hour days at school, going home to a pile of homework, and getting four hours of sleep a night, if I could even manage that.
Need I remind you that all the events I'm speaking of are happening to students 18 and younger.
This needs to stop. The culture of perfection in high school so badly tarnishes people into college that I've seen people break down, emotionally, if they got a B on a test. I watched a floormate of mine relapse into her anorexia because it was the only form of control that she felt she had over her life. I live alongside girls that average 3 hours of sleep a night, every night. Girls are killing themselves to pad their resume, and to what end? We continue to derive our self-worth from external numbers, such as our weight, race times, GPAs, SAT/ACT scores, ratio of college acceptances to the number of applications, number of positions held, amount of money we're making, and more.
This is such an unhealthy habit. Society, there's something wrong about turning a blind eye to those that are drowning in the pressure to succeed. And sadly, I don't have a solution.
Earlier this semester, I wrote about my own struggles with depression/mental health, some of which has most likely been brought upon me by the society that we live in: the incessant pressure that I faced (and still do face) to be a high-achieving, personable, athletic, empathetic, involved individual (read: perfect).
Do I agree that teenagers live under an immense amount of academic and mental pressure? Yes, especially where I'm from, but these pressures are not the only ones that I faced in high school. My younger sister is currently a senior in high school, and most of her friends are on our school's cross country team, a team which has a reputation for excellence, whether that be winning cross-town meets, dominating state championships, or having the largest team in the district. Out of the group of maybe six of them, four of them have gotten knee or hip surgery in the last two years, and the orthopedic surgeons consistently tell them that their joints have deteriorated because of overuse, overtraining, and not allowing their bodies to recover enough between workouts. The girls are unfazed. As I was talking to one of them, two weeks after her surgery, her biggest concern was that she wasn't swimming. She's on a club swim team during the cross country off-season, and she was fearful that both of her coaches (cross country and swimming) would be unhappy that she couldn't train during the time that she was recovering from her surgery. She also is a soccer player. She pointed out that six to eight weeks is a long time to take off from sports, and she couldn't wait to get back into everything.
My sister has undergone extensive injuries (broken bones, torn MCL, concussions) with her ice skating career, to the point where the receptionist at the orthopedics office knows her face. She's been yelled at by her coaches for getting injured, and frequently throws herself back onto the ice before she's ready to, because she can't afford to miss a practice.
Excuse me, what? The coaches of the sports teams of these injured girls are getting upset that they can't participate in the same sports that injured them in the first place? And the girls are thinking that this is normal? In my experience, knee surgery was not a normal event in my circle of friends, and to have it be such a standard thing in my sister's close group of friends? Because these sports coaches are overworking their athletes, and training them to an unhealthy degree?
That's not even mentioning the hours that are required of cheerleaders, dancers, the rest of the athletes, the theater department, the show choir, and all other activities. My senior year, it was not uncommon for me to get to school before the sun came up, for a pickup choir rehearsal before school, and leave after the sun went down, as drama/show choir practices frequently kept me at school until nine or ten at night. One week, my choir director pulled us out of class for three days to do extra practices, and I brought my laptop so that when I wasn't on stage, I was writing my three papers that I had due in my academic classes. Not once, but twice I fell asleep on the floor of the dressing room during our lunch break, because it was the only time that I could take a break. I was spending 15 hour days at school, going home to a pile of homework, and getting four hours of sleep a night, if I could even manage that.
Need I remind you that all the events I'm speaking of are happening to students 18 and younger.
This needs to stop. The culture of perfection in high school so badly tarnishes people into college that I've seen people break down, emotionally, if they got a B on a test. I watched a floormate of mine relapse into her anorexia because it was the only form of control that she felt she had over her life. I live alongside girls that average 3 hours of sleep a night, every night. Girls are killing themselves to pad their resume, and to what end? We continue to derive our self-worth from external numbers, such as our weight, race times, GPAs, SAT/ACT scores, ratio of college acceptances to the number of applications, number of positions held, amount of money we're making, and more.
This is such an unhealthy habit. Society, there's something wrong about turning a blind eye to those that are drowning in the pressure to succeed. And sadly, I don't have a solution.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Depression
I suffer from depression.
http://www.upworthy.com/this-kid-thinks-we-could-save-so-many-lives-if-only-it-was-okay-to-say-4-words
I strongly encourage you to watch the above video, because what I write here is both inspired by and sub-par to this speech.
For the last five years of my life, maybe longer (my mom would argue for the last nine), I've been sick. And this isn't a visible sickness that I can easily medicate, nor is it something that I'm comfortable talking about or admitting I have. Because sicknesses have a cure. That, or they have sympathy. If I were to tell everyone tomorrow that I have cancer, I would get incredible sympathy and support from 100% of the people in my life, of that I have no doubt. But if I were to tell everyone tomorrow that I have depression, some would support me, but many would be confused, and conflicted, and uncomfortable because they're unsure of what I mean when I say it.
Whenever I openly talk about my struggles, I get a slough of positive feedback from others saying that I'm strong, and that they look up to me, and that I inspire them. But I never share my story to be an inspiration, and every articulation of my struggles is less of a motivational speech and more of a plea for help. I want to be understood, and I want others to see beyond the stigmatized lens through which depression is viewed. I don't want to be treated any differently because of what I suffer from. And you may be thinking to yourself that I have a very clear identification of my problem, and you'd be correct. What's more, I know that I should be seeking help and accepting this aspect of my personality. But I'm not, which is sad. It's sad to me because I think of all the people that have told me that I inspire them, and I know deep down that saying that I have a problem and believing it are two completely independent things. I don't want to admit to myself that I have this problem, because I don't want to view myself as a broken person. What's more, I don't want others to view me as a broken person either. I don't want my teachers, friends, potential employers, and peers to know that I suffer from a sickness that is not yet embraced and understood by society. I don't want my medical history to include antidepressants, because I don't want the information shared with those that have access to my medical records. I don't want my depression to be included in a list of facts that others know about me before they know me. I don't want others to think that I'm mentally unfit to hold certain jobs or positions simply because I have depression. And I know that by hiding it, I'm making it worse.
By hiding it, I'm not getting the help that I need to become a more balanced and stable person. By hiding it, I'm not combating the stigma that surrounds it. By hiding it, I'm contributing to the stigma.
I would like to say that my depression is not something that embarrasses me, but I would again be lying. There is obviously something about my depression that I feel is shameful, unfit for society to know. In all aspects of my life, I'm an open book. All aspects that is, except this one. I only share this side of me to those that I'm close with situationally, but not necessarily personally. Of my close friends, I can count on one hand the ones that know I suffer from this. Neither of my roommates know, nor do 12 of my best 14 friends at school. This means that instead of seeking help in my times of need, I retract myself from my life and I hide from those who could help me most.
I try to justify my feelings of depression in every way possible. It's hard, because there are days, weeks, and months that I'm completely fine, and I don't feel this way at all. But there are also days, weeks, and months that I feel so consumed by my sickness and my attempts to hide it that I start cracking at the seams. I blame my feelings on stress, on my lack of a good diet, my changing exercise patterns, the hormones in my birth control, my workload, my body image issues (which aren't even something I really struggle with anymore), the fact I'm so far away from home, and every other conceivable excuse. But the truth is, regardless of how my life looks on paper, there's no telling what my mental and emotional state is.
Depression is not sadness. Being sad when things aren't going okay is a completely natural thing. I know that there's a difference between when I'm feeling sad and when I'm feeling depressed. Depression is being miserable even when things are going fantastically in your life. About five months ago, everything was going right for me on paper. I was close to finishing my year out at school, and although I was stressed with classes, I had just been on spring break and so was refreshed. I had been to see my close friends the weekend before, and my mother, sister, and friend from high school were all up to see me this particular weekend. I had just closed a show, where acting is one of my favorite things to do. My friends were present and supportive. My birthday was the following morning. My sorority life was going well, I wasn't dealing with any rough friendships, and I should have been content, happy even.
But I was miserable. And "sadness" does not explain why, two hours before my nineteenth birthday, I was sobbing in the shower, so people wouldn't see me cry, with a razor to my wrist, looking for something to numb the pain. "Sadness" doesn't justify my desire to physically hide from everyone close to me, as I knew they would find me at midnight to wish me a happy birthday. "Sadness" doesn't quite explain why I almost asked my floormate to hide my bottle of Advil from me because I didn't trust myself with it that evening. Because I don't suffer from "sadness", I suffer from depression. Which is so much scarier, and so much more misunderstood.
I don't want to scare those around me, because I don't want them to worry. And as sad as it is, dealing with depression alone scares me a lot less than trying to explain my irrational feelings to those around me. Because for the last 5-9 years, I've been coping with it alone. It has become routine, normal for me to deal with mild to moderate amounts of depression to the extent that I barely notice it anymore. And aside from a few concrete instances of severe flares, I don't even tend to consider myself depressed because I don't know what it is to be normal. Depression is my normal.
And despite the stigma, despite whatever preconceived notions you have, and despite my refusal to admit to my problem, I'm incredibly secure with who I am. I know that I'm an incredible person who is empathetic to a fault, who works hard in school, who knows what she wants in her personal and professional life, and who is incredibly motivated and driven to achieve goals. I consider it awesome that I joined a boxing gym this summer, that I rock climb and mountain climb, and that I'm a certified SCUBA diver. I don't dwell on failed personal relationships because I know objectively that I don't need other people in order to feel secure in myself. And I know that my leadership and passion and drive inspire those around me.
You may be thinking I'm going to finish with a "but". There is no "but". I'm an incredible person and I suffer from depression. It's part of me, regardless of whether or not I choose to include it in my idea of self or not. It is as much a part of me as my talents, my desires, my dreams, my insecurities, and my flaws. It is part of what makes me who I am. It has taught me a lot about adversity and about the value of talking about subjects that are societally "taboo". It has taught me that I am my own worst enemy, and that I can use this knowledge to my advantage. It has made me more secure in myself. It has made me stronger, bolder, wiser, and has made me a fighter. It has also made me a survivor. Every day I win against my depression is a day of wisdom I gain about the battle I fight, and is another day that I'm strong enough to say that I'm winning. Being here today means that I've beat two suicidal periods in my life. It means I'm empowering myself to speak about my struggles. And it means that I'm continuing to live an incredibly full and fulfilling life, which happens to include depression.
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