Category: Mental Health

Mental Health · Personal Development

Spark

Ruby Pipes12 Comments

"Wildfire" © NPS Climate Change Response, 2013. CC BY 2.0.
“Wildfire” © NPS Climate Change Response, 2013. CC BY 2.0.
Sunday morning I stood waiting for the elevator. How funny. Waiting for an elevator to go down seven floors, so that I can go run three miles. “People are so weird,” I said aloud. Then realized I was talking to myself at 5:30 AM in an empty hallway and laughed. Point proven.

Dawn had just begun to sketch the outline of day on the sky as I made my way to the street. I walked past the church they built on the corner, towering. Sprinklers on, red flowers blooming. Light crept in around the corners of the skyline and I paid close attention. Listened to my footsteps. Fell into rhythm with my breath.

Every few minutes I turned up the volume on my iPod. Drowned out any specific thought that was trying to keep my attention. Changed the display on my watch so I’d stop checking my pace, my heart rate. Did everything I could to just run.

The world started to wake up. Gentle light coaxing pigeons, squirrels, people out onto the street. Everything dark red. The west is on fire, and the smoke hung thick in the air, cushioning me from the world. Haze. That’s how it’s all felt lately, anyway.

I climbed the hill back up toward our apartment, lungs heavy. Started listing things I should try if I want to get better. Run more. Meditate longer. Lift heavier. Go to more therapy. Change my doses. Stop calling my brain defective. Just deal with it.

I told myself, “I don’t know what, but I have to do something different. I have to make this different.”

But I neglected to realize it always already is.

Mental Health · Personal Development

Shed

Ruby Pipes25 Comments

“dawn – a modification of darkness” © Jenny Downing, 2012. CC BY 2.0.
Hopeful and angry. Desperate and begging. Shedding our skins. Bursting forth all raw and tender.

We’re furious. We’re terrified. We dissolve into tears on a daily basis. Every time we walk over a bridge we hold our breath and stare at our feet. We can’t look at the skyline without wondering about how to get to the balconies. Everything hurts and life is completely overwhelming.

But we’re not staying quiet about it anymore. We’re making the phone calls. Asking for medical leave. Requesting new appointments with psychiatrists. Keeping all our therapy sessions. And when they ask if we are dangerous, we look them right in the eye and say, “Yes.”

This is progress. This is forward motion. This is the cusp of settling.

A calmness is climbing in. Filling up the spaces between our ventricles. Wrapping tight around our spines and holding us up tall. Refusing to let us suffer in silence.

We will not sit idly. We will move and we will not go back. So we strip down to the bare minimum. We focus in. We put all our fight into this.

It begins to feel less like the end. More like the moment in the morning when the birds don’t even sing. The whole world holding its breath, waiting for the sun to signal another new beginning.

Mental Health

Rev

Ruby Pipes13 Comments

“window” © Patrick Marioné, 2013. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
It’s hopeless. Empty. You turn the key over again and again, but the car still doesn’t start.

You’ve tried everything. The things that used to work don’t work anymore. Frayed rope wrapped around your knuckles. Hang on to it.

At the end of the day I stand in the kitchen and stare at a counter full of dirty dishes. Knees weaken, my throat catches. It’s just too much. Like everything. Paralysis. And I catch myself wondering if any of it matters anyway.

The medication, the therapy, the long walks around the lake. The exercise, the diet. The writing, the communication, the skill-building. The revised work schedule, the closed windows. Firing on all cylinders, but still feeling nothing.

I put my hands on Mason’s shoulders and look up at him. “I can do this, right? Tell me things will be different.” He does. Pulls me tight into him again. Kisses the top of my head and rocks me softly.

Alyssa texts me reminders of the things I love. Tells me about the passionate and beautiful parts of myself that are just tired and quiet, not gone forever. Promises this isn’t my new permanent.

So I take a deep breath. I pick up a dirty spoon, a fork, a knife. I take the plates and put them in the dishwasher. The glasses, too. I wipe the counter and spray out the sink. Everything is monumental and I’m just not big enough. But one piece at a time, I do it anyway.