Category: Personal Development

Autobiography · Personal Development

Fire

Ruby Pipes30 Comments
“Wildfire Forest fires BW 1” © Reidar Murken, 2015. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

While getting ready I realize it’s another day I can’t wear mascara. “You’ll be sobbing later. I guarantee it.” I dry my hair and powder my face and leave without the coats of black I like the most. Looking just a bit off. Just a bit less put together than I like to be. Just a little bit different.

Maybe I think the dresses and the make up and the hair will make me feel like no one can tell I’m falling apart at the seams. Barely holding it together. Maybe I’m not actually as fucked up as I feel I am, and when I get ready in the morning I remember.

Remember. Remember that I know what it’s like to be okay. That I know what it’s like to not be hurting.

And Becka told me that your best looks different every day. And my guided mediation told me everything looks different every day. And Alyssa told me there is nothing wrong with me anyway.

There are no voids that need filling. That thing you think is emptiness is only there because you named it and you keep talking to it. You keep trying to change something that doesn’t exist, so of course it doesn’t seem to be working.

Every time you try, you draw more attention to it. It’s just like meditation in that way, isn’t it? How when you try to think about not thinking you just think more. When you get upset about getting upset you just get more upset.

All your feelings are compounding. They snowball. Pile up and drag us down. And you know that. So you start to feel like you ought to do better, be better.

But what if you could learn that you’re fine the way you are? That you don’t have anything you need to prove. That you’re lovable and worthy. That you don’t have to fix anything. That you’re okay.

That you are not a hollow shell. That you are ferocious and vibrant. That you are unbreakable.

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.