Tag: belief

Autobiography · Mental Health · Personal Development · Relationships

Revival

Ruby Pipes8 Comments

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“tide” © snarl , 2005. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Strangers. Our eyes met and I flashed a smile. The earth was magnetic, chest light and fluttering. He was at once my roots and wings. The world melted and there he stood. Alone. Spotlit. Deafening.

And I find myself having trouble writing about him. About the angles of his body complimenting my curves perfectly. The way we dissolve into giggle fits just by exchanging glances. How his hand regularly reaches for mine, like he needs to be touching me to be sure I’m there. That this is real. That we exist. Here. Together. Finally.

I catch myself wondering if I ought to be jaded. How the broken promise of forever-love should leave me unbelieving. Instead I let him put his hands on either side of my face and kiss me deeply upon greeting. I let my knees get weak and my face to ache from smiling.

There is nothing wrong with inviting love back in.

In the morning he gets up for work and leaves me sleeping. Twisting in the sheets that belong to him. Hours later I climb into the shower. The smell of his shampoo engulfing me in the steam. I breathe deep and boggle at my good fortune of just existing.

He is the first one from the new time. From the beginning years. The first one to meet me after the medication is settled. After I rediscover my own spine and plant my own feet. He is the first one to only see the scars and hear the stories. To not have the memory of the woman I used to be. To not remember how empty I seemed.

We recreate ourselves through others, don’t we? And this time I know how I want to do things differently. So when we’re scared we tell each other, just like when we’re pleased. I stand firm on what’s important to me. I make time to see my friends. I keep writing. I talk to my family. I remember to believe there is nothing wrong with me.

Really believe.

This man does not know the way I pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed about living. He does not know the suffering. And I can see it in the way he looks at me. I am not broken or fragile. I am not a time bomb, a loose cannon. I am not the person I used to be. I’m… Happy. Grateful. Ecstatic and thriving.

Autobiography · Mental Health

Lights

Ruby Pipes14 Comments
“Weißt du, der Raum ist unendlich…” © Daniel Grünfeld, 2013. CC BY-NC 2.0.

The morning after I got my glasses I went for a run. Still dark out, street lamps glowed gentle instead of starring across my field of vision. I listened to my music loud and ran hard, completely lost in my own rhythm. Flow state. Breath fogging up the corners of my glasses every so often and sweat forming behind my ears. Zedd’s vocalist crooned at me, “Something tells me I know nothing at all,” and I believed her.

I climbed the next hill and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the first tree. Drops of water clinging to the tips of every branch, illuminated by the traffic lights. Each twig sparkling. Vibrant. Magical. As close to a religious experience as I’ve ever had. A cross between being high on drugs and being completely in love. Enamored with beauty.

It occurred to me that my blurred vision looked a lot how depression feels. All soft around the edges, out of focus, detached. Like I was never really looking at anything, just the general shape of it. How lucky that vision is something that can be helped with two pieces of plastic and frames. How all I had to do was put them on and see everything different.

But maybe everything doesn’t have to be so simple. Maybe we wouldn’t appreciate it if it were. Maybe other things need to take a little bit more work. Glasses are really just a Band-Aid solution for something broken, aren’t they? And that’s not what I’m looking for out of life.

So I find ways to keep building up my foundation. To keep finding little hints of beauty outside of things that I see. That feeling I get when I realize I haven’t curled up on the floor sobbing in days, maybe weeks. The moments when I’m able to say, “Isn’t it interesting I think that?” when I’m anxious instead of following the thought down its rabbit hole of panic.

Over the phone an old friend asks me hesitantly how I’ve been. That tone people get then they think they’ve just asked a really stupid question. I laugh and tell him, “You know. Not bad. I started taking Prozac a few weeks back and… You know, it’s not like I’m happy, but I don’t want to not exist. And that’s pretty awesome.”

On my run I think about that question. Think about that answer. Think about liking the idea of existing in the world. Staring at that tree, watching sparkle and light dance on what used to look like one flat, unremarkable thing.

Addiction · Autobiography · Mental Health

Capture

Ruby Pipes23 Comments
“23” © Mary Jo Boughton, 2015. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

It was my mom who told me I’d been sober for twenty-one months this Tuesday. Because I don’t celebrate small victories. Anything less than a year doesn’t mean anything. They tell us “one day at a time”, but I have trouble giving praise between the markers. Only get credit for the grand achievements, for the fireworks, for the things that take breath away.

Exhausted. The lack of worthy accomplishment leaves me feeling like a constant disappointment. And failing every day just makes you want to quit. That’s why people like me relapse. That’s why we don’t reach our goals. That’s why we stop trying.

In therapy I told Leif, “I come up to the edge of my natural abilities and I just… I quit. I get terrified of failure and I just walk away. I don’t know how to push.”

He looked at me like he didn’t believe an ounce of it. An explanation drenched in feelings of inadequacy. My words refusing to give me any credit. He said, “You know how. You’ve never had to push this hard before, but you know how to.”

I just shook my head.

In the morning I went running. I left my GPS watch. I left my heart rate monitor. I brought my headphones. Bright red shoes pounded pavement in the dark. Bob Dylan wailed in my ears, “It’s-a hard, it’s-a hard, it’s-a hard rain’s a-gonna fall…”

I ran and I tried to forget that I should be running faster. That I should be able to run further. That this hill shouldn’t be so challenging. And at some point in the second mile I did.

For just a few moments toward the end of my run my brain got quiet. The only time during the day when I didn’t think about how disappointed I am in myself. Didn’t think that I’m completely incapable of any of this.

I’m not even sure how I think I can do this wrong. All this. I just get the idea in my head that there is a way I am supposed to be living. Because I think I’m broken. Because I think I am somehow uniquely fucked up.

Or maybe I want to be. Maybe I need to be because I recognize that person. I know the version of myself that needs fixing. And that’s what this is all about really, isn’t it? The great realization that if I do the things I say I want to do I will become a person I don’t recognize. That if I get healthy and safe I will have no idea who I am.

Not knowing who you are is way more terrifying than being a junkie, a drunk, a basket case, a slut. Not knowing what labels to put on yourself feels aimless, like floating, a sheet blowing in the wind. You start to wonder if maybe you don’t mean anything at all.