On Mental Illness, Grief, and The Way Forward

I post a lot of stuff about self-care on Facebook. I want to share it to help other people take better care of themselves. To be totally honest I am probably the actual worst at self-care in the whole world. I'm working to get better but it's a long slow process during which Gordon and Andrea have quadruple-handedly been keeping me alive. Seriously, they are basically the only reason I haven't been eating nothing but ice cream for four months. Why I sometimes get to work. Why I drink any amount of water. Gordon has been carrying me. Andrea too. For the most part I have acted less grateful and more like the gravely wounded guy in a war movie, all "I'm done for, just leave me, go on and live your own lives and let me die in the mud."

Because you know what? Feeling bad feels good. It feels warm and comfortable and safe. It feels just and righteous to spend all my time going over how everything could have been different and feeling blame and shame. I don't know how being raised by agnostics got me this crazy intense Catholic guilt but it snuck in there somehow and it stuck hard. It's like scratching a mosquito bite for ten minutes. It feels so good while you're doing it and you know as soon as you stop you'll feel terrible and realize how much you've hurt yourself but in the meantime it feels like sweet release so you do it for as long as you can before the "Ow ow ow I wish I hadn't done that" sets in.

These are obviously all deep-seated problems I've had for a very long time but I was getting (slowly, a little bit) better at them. Then I lost my brother and with him any feeling that I had any control over anything in the world and honestly a huge sense of self. So much of my identity and feeling of safety in this world - way more than I'd ever realized before - hinged on the knowledge that I would always be Jason's little sister. I mean, I always will. But he was supposed to be here for it. I've panicked and agonized over what would happen if any number of people I love died but Jason was not on that list. It was taken as a given that he just...wouldn't. It seemed impossible to the extent that I never even considered the option.

I had a dream last night - among a huge number of anxiety dreams - that the car accident was just a cover-up. That Jason had been killed by the government because he'd invented a software that would revolutionize virtual reality as we know it and [dreamlogic dreamlogic] the government couldn't let that happen. I was finding out about this from crazy news stories, no one had told me, but now there was a huge investigation being launched. And while it was terrifying and gut-wrenching I woke up feeling a little sad that I was back to a reality where there was no reason. Not even dreamlogic. Just garbage people driving like garbage and a split second of time in the exact wrong place.

 There are supposed to be reasons for things. If there's no reason then feeling like it's my fault, no matter how nonsensical that is, is better than confronting the idea that there is almost nothing in this life that we can really control. And I mean, of course, this is the response to a traumatic event - falling back on comfort and old habits and things that feel safe. But I've been kind of shitty to everyone in my life during this time. Especially Gordon. I rely on him and a few friends, then I get scared to rely on anyone and I push them away. Rinse, repeat.

It's time to be done. I've been so jealous of the beautiful and wonderful community that Jason and Gaea built for themselves, together and separately. I want it. But I don't think you can build a community without letting yourself/admitting that you need to rely on other people. As both Gordon and Gaea have said separately and in different ways, "This is not the way forward." The 100 Days...Celebration? Ceremony? Thing? The 100 Days Thing was about welcoming the family back into society. It took me about a week longer and some really poor treatment of my partner to understand what that means. I don't have to stop being sad. This will hurt forever. I don't have to stop processing, it's important to keep doing that. But it's time to stop consuming my entire life with grief and pain and self-hate. I recognize that I didn't come to this decision on my own but I have made it mine now.

I hate it when people say what dead people would or wouldn't have wanted. It usually seems disingenuous and presumptive to me. But I do know that my brother wouldn't want me to use his death to fuel my own self-hate or self-pity. Anyone who knew anything about Jason would know that. I do know that he wouldn't want me to dwell on the parts of our lifetime together where we disagreed, where we hurt each other, where we took things too personally. Even though it isn't fair, I am still alive. He would want me to act like it.

"Everyone knows you're going to live
So you might as well start trying"
-Regina Spektor

So I am actually self-caring: paying attention to what I eat and drink, resting, meditating, finding outlets, staying off Facebook (hopefully not forever but long enough to break my obsession that makes me think more about how to post about what I'm doing (and what people will say about what I'm doing) than what I'm actually doing and that keeps me scrolling and feeling jealous of my friends doing amazing things in California, Australia, Alaska, wherever, instead of paying attention to what I actually get to do). And I'm trying to remember that I am excited about graduate school, that I've wanted this for most of my life and I have it right now and I'm up for the challenge. That I have a fantastic partner and some great friends and that I will make more. That I can dance and move my body and fight for social justice and the fact that Jason can't anymore should not make me feel so guilty that I don't do what I can do.

My eternal gratitude to Gordon, for giving me way more strength than he had to give. To Andrea for keeping me fed and keeping me company, to Maggie and Jenny and Emmy and Gaea and my Mom and my Dad and Lizzie and Lizzi and Madie and everyone from my extended community who reached out and to Nell and everyone in Jason's extended community that reached out to me, too. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm going to start finding the way forward now. But I'm also still going to need you all.

My Non-Instagram, Non-Facebook-Worthy Emotions

I am not okay. I'm pretty good at hiding it, I'm really good at obfuscating or omitting details or denying it even to myself but I am just not okay. I haven't been okay for a really long time. About a year ago I was diagnosed with a long-untreated mental illness and have been trying to deal with it (I'm not comfortable talking about it much yet). I confided in Jason. We were trying to let it bring us closer together, but there were a lot of ups and downs and a lot of painful hashing out that had to happen first. And then 84 days ago my brother died and I have just fucking disintegrated.

I am hurting the people I love the most. I am feeling disconnected and far away from everyone I love. I am awful to be around. I am barely working. I am numb or having panic attacks, with no middle ground. I don't want to live in this world. I don't want to be me. I have gotten it into my head that the way to fix all of the problems would be for me to go back in time and surreptitiously unbuckle my seatbelt just before my car accident two years ago. If I could be 100% positive that me flying through my windshield at 70 miles an hour would prevent Jason and Gaea from being hit by those fucking psychotic drivers, I would do it in a heartbeat. If you're reading this and you love me, I'm sure that hurts to hear. I'm sorry. It hurts to think. It hurts to say. It sure as fuck hurts my partner. It hurts like hell not to be able to stop thinking.

I have people I love. I have a partner, I have friends, I have family.  I have a snake. I have a lovely house and I get to garden and do things I love. I can make more friends. I live in a city with my fambly. I am getting my master's degree at a fantastic school in a fantastic program with a fantastic project, which is a dream at least 6+ years in the making. I have a hard time feeling any of it.

I don't want to be here. I don't want to stop feeling devastated. I don't want the pain to stop. I don't want to admit this is real and can't be changed. I don't want to heal or move forward. I want to want all those things. I want to want them so badly. But honestly, I don't want anything. I want to take other people's pain away but I can't.

I'm not suicidal. This is not a cry for help. I'm in therapy and I'm going to a Coping Skills group and I'm meditating and I'm on medication. It just all fucking sucks and as a culture we don't talk about mental health and as a person I have been posting nothing but happy nonsense and political reposts and I didn't want to be lying like that anymore.

Good Advice

Mock me for having 10,000+ emails in my inbox all the time if you want, but I'm telling you you're missing out.

I was searching for something unrelated and found the sweetest email from my big brother while he was in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu to his terrified little sister who had recently graduated college and was feeling lost. I turned to a book on Buddhism he'd given me before he left ("lent", "gave"...what is the difference, really?), something I keep telling myself I'm going to do again any day now and haven't yet. There was a lot and it was all great but my favorite passage was this one:

"We get so wrapped up in our delusions, desires, attachments, plans, fears, expectations, etc. that we forget to actually live our life.  Yes, we need to do things like plan and save for retirement.  We don't, however, need to save every penny we can so that our life sucks today but will be full of comforts in 20 years.  What if you get hit by a bus in 19?  The practice is about finding the balance of living like you'll die tomorrow and planning like you'll live forever.  Of course you need to make plans, improve yourself, build relationships, get an education, and save for the future.  You also need to live your life.  There is so much in our experience every day that we ignore.  So much beauty we miss when we are stuck in our heads.  I will find myself striding down the road to Melsisi, thinking about my lesson for the day or what I'm going to eat for dinner, or what witty comeback I should have made hours earlier.  Then something will catch my attention and I'll realize that I've been completely ignoring this beautiful place in which I live."

It's good advice. Advice I've heard from everyone, advice that is easy to think about and (at least in my case) almost impossible to follow. But it felt so good, hearing it from him. Hearing that your self is just a story that you cling to even though it's always changing and that "Suffering is caused by our desire for the world to be other than as it is." 

My last post is an example of me 100% rebelling against all of this advice. Dwelling on the story that we weren't where we wanted to be as siblings and now we don't get to get there. Clinging to the idea that he isn't really dead, that it's my job to save him and also everyone. I am not good at following this advice no matter how many times I hear it or who I hear it from. I will not get better at it just because I read the words he wrote to me five years ago.

But just for a minute, while I was reading them, I got to feel pure, unattached grief without shame or blame or clinging or terror or anxiety. Just love with no place to go.

Grief is a Form of Love but Maybe Also a Form of Insanity

I've been having a lot of trouble with tenses lately. When I talk about Jason do I have to use past-tense? I hate it and sometimes refuse. I still say "I love Jason" because that is firmly in the present and doesn't stop, but I also sometimes say things like "Jason once told me that he thinks..." which is past and present at the same time. When I refer to what is now just Gaea's house I find myself unable not to say "they're fixing it up".

I am in this very weird stage of denial, and have been for a while, where I know and believe that Jason died but do not believe that he is dead. This can't possibly be forever. No way. A thing happened and it was terrible and it is terrible still but like, nothing this bad could be true forever. Even Trump has term limits. It cannot keep being this way indefinitely. I find myself thinking about things I wish I could do with my brother, like taking him out to my field site the way I took my mom this week, as things I will do with him, you know, when this whole death thing is over.

Usually I feel like it is my job to make it stop. Like, if I could go back and change some of the things we said to each other in the months before he died. If I could take back some of the words and some of the feelings it could end this extended Scrooge scenario where I'm supposed to learn some lessons and fix how I act and then go back and avert the Darkest Timeline. Or like maybe I can't go back but if I treat everyone in my life perfectly now and make them all feel good all the time and be a better more open person then this whole "death" thing will end and I get my brother back.

I can't tell if this is normal grief or me going insane. Maybe feeling like you're going insane is a part of normal grief. Or "normal" grief for someone who also has unresolved mental disorders.

I suppose it is interesting and also pertinent that Christians and people of many other religions do think that they have to be very very good the rest of their lives to see their loved ones in the next life. I get why that is comforting. If I believed in that kind of afterlife I would throw myself into volunteering and do everything I could to make sure I got to see my brother again. It would be nice to have a concrete thing I could do to work towards it.

But I don't. I'm not Christian. I'm not religious. I don't believe that when I die I'll meet Jason on a cloud and we'll wear Birkenstocks and fly around. I don't know precisely what I believe but it's not that and that's a different blog post.

Instead I feel stuck. I feel helpless. Call me a classic younger sibling but I feel like there must be something I can do to get what I want, to get my brother back. I don't want to heal. I don't want to move on. I don't want to stop obsessing over what I could have/should have/done/said/if only...because that's giving up on the idea that I can fix it. That I can get to the Underworld level and drag him back like a video game. If I start to heal I might start to forget him. If I start to move forward I might leave him behind. Assuming I live five more years I'll be older than my older brother. That's unacceptable. I refuse to do that. I don't want to wallow for the rest of my life, either, but there has to, HAS TO be something productive I can do for Jason, for my parents, for Gaea, for his friends, for my friends and family, for anyone else who is hurting. I need to make it up to him, make it up to them. But how could I?

Did you know that the more often you remember things the less accurately you remember them? Because every time you call up the memory small things change and then you call up the slightly changed memory and it slightly changes again and again and so on. I want to remember everything. I want to build a perfect memory castle in my mind, but the more I try the more likely the memories are to slip.

Then there's the whole part where we are siblings. We fought. A lot. Mostly when we were kids, but also more recently. We've been arguing lately. I was still feeling pretty freshly hurt on April 30th. I was only feeling hurt because I love him so incredibly much, but still, I was hurt and angry. Do those feelings no longer count? Sometimes we didn't talk for long periods of time. Not that big of a deal when you're going to have each other for the next fifty years at least. How do I stop beating myself up for not calling him monthly or weekly or daily knowing what I know now? Do I focus on remembering the things I wish were different just as much as the good times?

When I was at my grandfather's funeral in Virginia I had a dream that Jason was there with me only it wasn't an idealized vision of sibling love, it was what would actually probably happen which is that there would be some awkward silences. We would argue about something and I would feel like he wasn't listening to me fully and he would not understand why I wouldn't just let it go. Do I let him become a more perfect but less interesting person in my head? Is that kind or a disservice and to whom?

Shouldn't I wallow and feel terrible all the time? After all, there is no good reason why he should have died and I shouldn't. It probably should have been me. Shouldn't I never ever feel better? But also, do I now owe how I live my life in part to my brother? Should I be happy sparkly rainbows all the time? How can I learn to take up more space in other peoples' lives when I know that A) I am a shambling wreck right now and hurting the people I love, especially because I'm not even ready to try to do anything but grieve and B) by loving other humans I am opening myself up to the possibility of another beloved life that might just be lost too soon.

Is there a way to grieve healthily? If you grieve healthily does it mean you didn't really love the person who died? Is worrying about how I'm grieving super self-involved? Should this whole blog post be about other people and not about how I feel? Is it okay for me to decide it's okay for me to feel okay sometimes?

All this, to say: I've got therapy on Monday.

Grief Realtalk Part Deux

I've had a couple of good days in a row. Or at least, I haven't been sobbing much. It's hard to tell if I'm feeling better or just numb. And if I am feeling numb, that's bad and I should stop. And if I am feeling better, isn't that just awful? It's been less than a month! I should still be a completely wrecked shell! What does it mean about me as a person, as a sister if I'm starting to get over it?

I did some good self-care stuff this morning. I even got dressed and wandered the farmer's market downtown with Gordon. I was having a lovely time looking at sparkly sparkly jewelry I would never buy when a young mother behind me admonished her child, "Be careful, Jason!"

Then I started crying and hyperventilating in the middle of the farmer's market.

I'm not over anything. Of course I'm not.

Now I just need to convince myself that it's okay to not feel devastated constantly; that even enjoying myself on occasion or having a couple good days in a row are not things I should feel incredibly guilty about forever. Also numbness is probably occasionally necessary and okay in small doses. Just believing those things are okay is going to be hard. Grief is a lot of work.

Grief Realtalk

The stages of grief are bullshit. Like, I have definitely felt most of them: bargaining, wishing I could somehow trade my walking away from a car accident two years ago for Jason walking away from this one; depression, for sure; denial, comes and goes; but they're interspersed with lots of other feelings and they appear and disappear in a random order.

For a few days now I've been mostly solidly stuck in Anger. I am angry at the people who offer comfort of the "You'll see him again" or "Your dog is comforting your brother" variety. So far no one has said to me that everything happens for a reason which is good because I would break their nose. I am angry at you for having siblings. Not that I want anyone else to feel these feelings, I don't wish that or harm on anyone, but fuck you for still having yours when I'm alone in a way I was never supposed to be.

I am angry at the assholes who ran that fucking red light. I am angry at everyone I see driving even a little erratically. I'm angry at all the Gods and gods I don't even believe in. I'm angry at myself for things I said and didn't say, things I did and didn't do. I'm angry at time. I am so, so angry. And I have no idea what to do with it.

It is Not My Job to be Pretty

I'd like to first start off by saying that I IN NO WAY look down on or seek to change people who love makeup, who take pride in their artistry with it, who love high heels or fancy suits or dress to impress or any other way they want. If that makes you happy, more power to you! This is not about "that shouldn't make you happy". This is about slowly realizing that it doesn't make me happy, and that I don't have to do it anyway.

Until very recently I had rules about how I could dress. There were fewer and fewer of them as I grew older (I learned to love my legs and not feel like I needed to hide them in order to shield the eyes of the masses, I even learned that it's totally fine if I don't shave them all the time AND that sometimes I really do want to shave them and BOTH of those are okay). I bought huge silly glasses because I wanted them, without trying them on first, and then I bought giant BLUE glasses which I have always wanted and never thought I was allowed to have because they make me look silly not pretty. I shaved my head and I didn't look as pretty without my curls but I looked like a badass which is just as good, maybe better. I learned that leggings totally, totally are pants and that "my stomach isn't perfect so I can't wear crop tops" is stupid.

The titular realization really started with shaving my head. I wanted to be cool. Like, literally. I was working outside for ten hours a day in hot, humid, Florida and any hair was too much. I wavered about it for a while but the decision to do it came from that realization. "It is not my job to be pretty." My job is to be a field biologist and to love and enjoy my body and do what makes me feel good and shaving my head helped me do all of those things. I had to haggle with the barber, who did not feel comfortable shaving my head and at the end told me I was "lucky to be pretty enough to pull it off" which made me super uncomfortable, but it felt awesome and it looked super cool. I started posting pictures of me making silly faces instead of always smiling perfectly. I started barely looking in the mirror or at pictures before I posted them because my hair always looked the same, and that has continued since my hair has grown in. I don't know what it's doing up there, it's just kind of crazy curly and doing it's thing. It does its job, I'll do mine.

I've barely worn makeup in years but I've recently decided that even for big events there is no rule that says that I have to try. Sometimes I want to and it's kind of fun if I can make it look nice but I really don't like how it feels on my face and how hard it is to get off and how stressful I find trying to put it on. So. Why do it, unless I want to? It is not my job.

Similarly, I've very recently started Accepting my Eyebrows. I have Some Eyebrows. I kind of wish they were less bushy and shaped more nicely. But you know what? I really don't wish that enough to painfully pluck them all the time or pay someone to rip the hairs out or learn how to do whatever other methods of hair-removal there are. I used to shame myself when I didn't remember to pluck regularly. Which was always. Because I hated doing it and it was a chore and it is NOT MY JOB. So instead I have embraced my weird bushy eyebrows. And if I feel compelled to pluck them, I will, it's not a hard and fast "plucking your eyebrows is giving into misogyny" kind of rule, it's just...if I want to I will, if I don't, I won't.

Some Eyebrows

The rule I haven't stopped to consider changing (until now) is my No Warm Colors rule. Back in middle school I went to one of those Makeup Parties where they try to sell you makeup and tell you things look good on you so you'll buy them, etc. They did this thing where they lay two fabric swatches across your chest and had everyone look at your face. One side was Cool Colors and one side was Warm. They went around and did this to every girl in the room. Most of them looked basically the same on both sides but they got to me and everyone in the room went "Oh my god, you look SO bad in warm colors." So from that day on it became a Rule. More than a rule, it became almost a disability. "Oh man, I love that shirt but I can't wear warm colors", etc. I never questioned it. They had told me it made me look bad. I could not knowingly do something that makes me look bad. It's against The Rules.

A few months ago I bought a bright pink shirt at Goodwill because I was going to some Breast Cancer Awareness night at a club with a friend and everyone was supposed to wear pink. It was only a few bucks and the cut looked pretty good on me but it was definitely a Warm Pink and so I would only wear it for this one occasion in which I was forced to and then I would donate it back or give it to someone or only wear it for fieldwork or exercise or something where no one would see me.

But it stayed in my drawer. And I liked it. It stood out among my sea of blues and greens. I wore it to yoga a couple of times. I wore it when I was just lounging around the house. I would never want anyone in the outside world to see me in it, but I could wear it with my dark green pants on days when I felt shitty and feel like an adorable watermelon instead.

And today I was digging through my shirts for something to wear and I looked at my bright pink shirt and thought "Oh, but I was planning on going out today so I probably shouldn't..." and then I thought "OH MY GOD IT IS NOT MY JOB TO LOOK PRETTY" and I put it on. And you know what? I really don't think it looks bad. Maybe I will buy more pink things. Or yellow. Or orange! Maybe I am ALLOWED TO WEAR ALL OF THE COLORS!! What a crazy world that would be!

Pink shirt, hair going everywhere, silly face, bushy eyebrows. This is the first picture I took and it is fine. I don't have to take 8 more and pick the VERY BEST ONE. This is so fucking freeing, you guys!