Surprises, Past and Future

I think I underestimated the effect of leaving my therapist and most of my friends in one fell swoop. I thought, you know, that the land could be my therapist this summer. And my friend. I always think that, and it's a giant mistake. I mean, it works to an extent...but it doesn't work all the way. It would work had I been created an introvert, but alas, I am an Extrovert with a capital E and the land does not talk back to me. 

I've been having lots flashbacks, lately. Fortunately and a little bit surprisingly, they've been good ones! Lots of fond memories that I hadn't thought about for quite some time. Like the time my parents dressed me up as a fire fighter for Halloween in Kindergarten. All things considered, for small-town mid-Michigan in 1995, that was pleasantly progressive. Props to you, mom. Props to you.

And then that time when I was 20, the last stop on one of my many solo road trips; sipping champagne on a rooftop with new friends and old, basking in the yellow glow of a Chicago skyline. I didn't have a whole lot of fucks to give, then. I'll bet you anything, though, that I thought I did. And that got me thinking: when I'm 26 and stressed out about life like I am right now, how will I remember this season? Will I shake my head at the moments that I am, right now, currently wasting away with worry? Will I wish I were back here?

Probably.

For brief volcanic moments this past week, I have become very angry. Angry, and sad, and anxious. I am stressed out and restless, unable to sleep well and in a daytime daze. I am out in the middle of beautiful, and I'm absolutely incapable of escaping into the beautiful because I can't figure out how to forget that I have to go back to Clemson in the end...and for some reason, it's killing me.

I hate that I have to go back, but I will make myself go. I will earn a lousy, meaningless piece of paper at the end of this go around. I will not mess it up. I will not sever all of the ties. I will smile, and be nice, and be submissive, and try to make myself care because deep down under the burnout, I used to love this. And I'll figure it out.

But I'm finished with jumping through hoops. Finished. I do not "hate my life," as so many of my colleagues seem to wish to project; I hate that we're in an environment that is so terribly dehumanizing. I ironically and affectionately call our building "my own personal hell," but let's be real. I'd readily prefer my imagined (albeit diluted) interpretation of hell. In hell, the rules don't change overnight, every night. Things are pretty goddamn absolute. I'm tired of people who only value things that are valid in academia, as if it is the be-all end-all of society. It's certainly a highly important institution, but it's not at all an accurate representation of how the real world functions. One has to, you know, do basic things like communicate in the real world. And seriously? I'm very over being judged by my superiors for taking a few spare weekends to spend time with my family, when they have the opportunity to go home to family every single night. Your high horse is dead. Get off.

Being the anti-miserable person that I truly am, it seems like the ultimate betrayal of self to go back. And to think, a year ago I was excited for this! It's because, of course, I expected difficult; not impossible. Not unreasonable. Not nonsensical. Not wishy-washy. Not disastrous. And I have to drag myself, kicking and screaming, back there in 2 months.

Truth be told, I will be so happy to be back. Things will probably get better, and by the grace of everything, I'll remember why I wanted this. But I am so unsure of myself. I feel so unqualified and unprepared, awkwardly stumbling my way through my "life plans" whenever visitors ask. I have less of my life figured out than ever before. So, whatever happens...will be a surprise.

I hope it's awesome.

The Anxious Girl's Prayer, Or Incoherent Rant

I think that I have about six hours left before these meds finally wear off. Or is it ware off? What is ware even used for? Or, for what is ware even used? Grammar.

I can't even spell. Or use proper grammar. Or stop thinking. I'm so tired, and I'm wide awake. My bed right now feels like Christmas. A few minutes ago, a moth fell onto my keyboard because it wanted the light. It startled me, but I wanted to watch it anyway. 

By grace though, even when I'm stoned out of my mind on Alprazolam, I can still do my job. I can help you plan your trip through the Badlands. I can show you Saturn, and tell you about the ice geysers on its moon Enceladus. When my mind is preoccupied with those things, it forgets that it's dizzy. I have to breathe because I have to speak. If I don't have to sit still, I can forget that my tee shirt collar feels like a noose.

And it had been almost two and a half months, so I'd forgotten how bad anxiety days felt. No trigger, just a bad day to drink coffee. I'm okay with it, though. I told myself that I wouldn't hate myself for taking medicine if I needed it. That's what it's for.

I am in, possibly, one of my favorite places in the universe. Badlands National Park is a saving grace and a graceful savior. And I'll say that it's beautiful right to its face, but as the poem in the Visitor Center says, the land will not flatter me back. It's too harsh and it's too real...but what if those things are exactly the things for which I'm searching? In that sense, I am flattered. I'm flattered that I can sit atop the most uncomfortable formations and feel rightly at home. Tough recognizing tough. Survivor acknowledging survivor. A land and a girl who both know that nothing is guaranteed and few worthy things are easy. Both being shaped by literal and figurative tempests; wind and rain and hailstones to end all windshields. In their seemingly woeful tales of erosion, though, both still wide open to the elements and willing to transform. Both knowing that change requires growing pains.

Both enduring, as long as the process allows. 

Lovely

Brace yourselves; I'm about to get all mid-2000's on you.

It's for a good reason, though. Off and on throughout my adolescent and adult life, I've visited and revisited the brilliant works written by Alice Sebold. For those of you who don't recognize the name, she is the author of the best selling novel The Lovely Bones. I read the book for the first time about ten years ago, and honestly haven't really had the courage to give it a thorough re-read; but I refer back to that and to her memoir, Lucky, whenever I need some careful encouragement. 

I say careful because she has a brilliant gift for addressing the layers and the seasons of traumatic stress in wonderfully delicate yet brutally honest ways. She wants to walk with you through every single beautiful terrible step of this healing process. She understands the ins and outs, the dynamics, the pieces, the scope of trauma. In The Lovely Bones, we meet fourteen year old Susie Salmon just before she is raped and dismembered by her neighbor, George Harvey. She remains alive for the reader in her heaven, though, watching her bereaved family attempt to realign their lives as best as each of them can...and learning how to let go herself. 

Peter Jackson's adaptation of the book for the cinema was...just so extremely well done. Although the gruesome details of Susie's rape aren't quite as in-your-face as in the novel, and there is really no mention of sexual violence until Susie encounters Mr. Harvey's other victims in her heaven, Jackson's interpretation doesn't negate or minimize the trauma that she suffered. Each frame seamlessly weaves together the ways by which people deal with tragedy; the ways by which we learn how to survive. It is as delicate and honest as Sebold's novel. It is so much more than just a story; it is a masterpiece that respectfully exploits the emotions for which we don't particularly have the language.

I'm not writing this simply as a review; I don't really care about that. The reason I felt like writing about this film is because every time I watch it, it does something to me. The first time was in the cinema with friends, and I left feeling so happy to gently hold the life that I have, and the people in it. The next few times were in my home, by myself, sometimes feeling the need to distract myself from really watching the screen because I don't want all of the feelings all of the time. Because miraculously enough, this movie feels exactly the way that trauma feels. Exactly. It doesn't miss a single step. Everything. Anxiety, fear, grief, loss, paranoia, nightmares, self-hatred, flashbacks, anger...all the way to community, healing, closure, some nuance of justice. 

This is why the film is so important to me. I encounter lots of people who have survived sexual violence, but I also encounter lots of people who are co-survivors; people who are vicariously impacted by someone else's experience with sexual trauma. For co-survivors who haven't directly experienced this kind of trauma first hand, it's often difficult to empathize because the burden can be enormous. 

There are so many things that can cloud a person's perception of somebody working through this healing process; sometimes, survivors don't particularly want to talk about the way they're feeling, or can't quite put it into words. We can be confusing, because we're confused ourselves. We can be flighty, forgetful, irrational, emotional, frightened by the smallest, triggered by the slightest. We can get very, very angry. We can lash out at people who are only trying to help us. We can also lash inwardly at ourselves. We can cry for hours, we can shake for days, we can be hazy for weeks, we can lose entire months. We can go numb sometimes, and other times, we feel as intensely as a person can feel. 

But with this depth of emotion comes the ability to see the contrasting beauty in the world. Because we have felt so deeply, we have developed a better idea of how to feel deeply. We know how to recognize community. We care excessively, obsessively for one another. We try to learn how to care as well for ourselves.

So if you are a survivor looking for validation of your journey, one small step towards self-care might be simply taking an evening off to watch this film. If you are a co-survivor searching for ways to understand the complexity of the traumatic stress being experienced by somebody you love, I encourage you to watch this film. It is a tiny glimpse into a healing process that takes many, many years. It is, not at all intending to be reductive, a PTSD sampler. You will feel such a rich variety of things, and you may become so tense that you need a massage by the end (I actually have one scheduled for next Tuesday, and can hardly wait!) but if the intent is to begin understanding the journey of a friend or even to find solidarity during your own journey, then by all means, you will find these things in The Lovely Bones.

Decompression, etc.

I'm irritated, and I am not easily irritated. 

However, it isn't just another bad semester coming to a head; this semester wasn't bad. In fact, it began as a vortex of high-anxiety and no direction and panic attacks and shaking and nausea and confusion; it ended in a much clearer headspace. 

I needed direction, accountability, and affirmation. I have myself, my friends, and my therapist to thank for my recently acquired ownership of those things. 

But now, to attempt some flighty form of self-care, I'm going to list the things that are making me irritated.

Irritating Things:
1. Obligatory and likely relevant biochemical data point: it's pretty much just about that time of the month. 
2. I'm hungry. For cookie dough.
3. Somebody tried to break into our house, and I'm not there to fuck them up.
4. I'm sitting in a conference with collaborators from the University of Illinois, and for the first time in my life, I'm realizing that I can't make myself care about my research project.
5. I don't care about this research project.
6. Remember that time when I told my research adviser that I wanted to learn more hands-on experimental skills in the rocket lab, and instead he gave me a giant radar data set to analyze and cry over?
7. I can't even with programming right now. And I never have.
8. I can't handle another 11 hours in the car with my adviser. Dear sweet baby Jesus. This is why I travel alone.
9. I need my tax return. I need it in order to survive. Help.
10. Again: somebody tried to BREAK INTO OUR HOUSE, and I'm not there to FUCK THEM UP.

So until further notice, I am opening my mouth only when necessary and constantly checking my resting bitch face. I need to be fed and watered, and I need some me time. I need to prioritize. Most of these things can absolutely be fixed, and I believe that they will be, soon. It's frustrating, though, that I have to write this sham of a Master's thesis before I can revise my life to align with what I really want. Everything will be alright. I know this. I know this. I know this.

And in general, my loves, things are bright and getting brighter. Back to the Badlands soon, and fresh air, and wide open spaces to diffuse my infinitely condensed matter. Driving by my goddamn self, forever it seems. Riding this out. Loving it, probably, in my own strange and beautiful way.

Soon enough.