May 2005

5-26
Today was another day to remember why I lived. And I just have to say...thank you Bobb. Because she had the courage to see me through my healing...I am seeing others through their healing. And because I lived, I am giving these kids a life. Today was a little harder...one of my little guys was crying a lot today because he was calling a banana an apple, and i was making him say it correctly, and he did eventually, but only after a good fight heh. But lucky for him, I'm stubborn ;-)

But Bailey- totally freakin rocked. He will say "mmm" for "more" on command if he wants more of something. For a child that was mute just two years ago...I think that is pretty freakin good. So I end my day on a good note. I just keep thinking...there was a time when this child uttered nothing. He didn't even smile or laugh. But I was there for the first smile, the first laugh (that was sooo cute)...his first kiss heh...his first meaningful sounds. I taught him how to feed himself and that has made a huge difference. In this child's life- I am the key to all of these doors he is opening. I am his maglite through the darkness.

And I always believed in him. I don't know what it was- his eyes talked to me. Even when he made no sound, I remember telling his mom that he would talk. I believed he would- it was something that I just "knew." Though people said I was crazy, and that I shouldn't promise such things...I knew.

And now, I have carried on in that belief. I think about how strongly Bobb believed in me, to the point that I had to heal...because of her strong belief. The same for Bailey- how could he not talk. The intelligence is there...he is sarcastic ;-) and his eyes convey so much...it was just a matter of time. And that time is now.

That time is now! I love saying that. Time for bed...and I do it with a smile...and can't wait to work with him again tomorrow and see what happens. Life is sweet...and so much more.

5-24
If I ever again needed a reason to live...or if I question now why I lived...I have the answer.

It's in the kids. There is this quote I love, "A hundred years from now...it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child."

Bobb healed me so that I may heal others and lately...the kids I work with have been doing incredible, it's absolutely amazing to watch.

The child (Bailey) whom two years ago was mute and staring at a wall all day...learned to feed himself last week...and he constantly babbles, plays with toys- and is happy. Tonight...he finally did some vocal imitation- meaning he would imitate what we were saying. For his mom to hear him say "mamamamama" over and over again was heart warming and I want to cry now. He's finally doing it...he is so close to talking now I can feel it in ever inch of my heart- this is the summer he will talk. It is a miracle...and to know that I had some part in it...makes me damn glad I stayed on this Earth.

Then of course Julia...that child I swear- she just rocks. This will be the summer that she will catch up to her peers and I'll be just a tutor next year.

Then another kid (no permission for names yet), he is two and a half and I just got him. A few months ago he couldn't talk, but now he is talking quite a bit. I never taught him my name however, people just call me that etc...well he drops my keys over the gate and he looks at me and goes, "Erin, keys"...like holy shit. Then when I got to leave he was with his Dad and he goes "Bye bye Erin," his dad was sooo shocked. I began to teach him his name ("what's your name") and I did teach him his age already. His mom is in heaven. He's at the beginning stages of putting sentences together now too. It's sweet!

And then another sweetie...I got him about a month ago now and I knew he was pretty damn smart (5 years old- can read anything, and use an index!)...but no one knew for sure. Then I tested out his writing and drawing skills- the kid writes like a third grader or better. Then his drawing- he drew a better bird than me!!! And he's FIVE. His mom was shocked and is like...in heaven. So am I. To see this kid do something no one thought was possible.

But it is Bailey on my mind tonight. That kid was awesome tonight- so happy. I still remember the first time he laughed. Yep, for three years of his life he never laughed. But with some therapy and me tickling...he finally erupted into laughter and hasn't stopped. And when he finally looks at something, says a sound to get it...I will be in heaven- there is nothing better on this Earth...than to know that I helped a child speak.

My reasons for living? I just wrote them. If I had checked out of this place so many years ago...there would be a child still struggling to find his place in the world...a girl missing out on sarcasm and being held back by her disorder. But they, like me, have transcended their disorders and their potential. And these kids have taught me what living is all about. Bailey's smiles tonight will forever be etched into my mind, I'm tearing up just thinking about it, how happy he was tonight and how much noise he was making. He will talk, that much I am sure of.

Okay, just had to share, what an incredible journey all of us have gone on.

P.S. For those that do not know, I am an ABA therapist for children with autism.

5-23
So, even after all this time and being so stable...I am still learning "the" lesson. That is...the lesson of staying on your meds. It never fails that at some point I forget to take my meds, then I forget again...and again and again. Until it becomes habit to forget.

Then one day...I realize that I am not myself...and I realize what I have done, and what that oversight has cost. For about a month I forgot pretty badly about meds and I was in a hazy fog, just trying to keep it together but not doing a very good job.

So now I have piles of unanswered emails, friendships and relationships in need of repair, a room that needs attention and piles of papers needing sorting. And I am back to being very anal about taking meds and keeping things together.

It's funny how even after being so damn stable, and really keeping things together...if my focus shifts for an instant it can slide back down.

The good news however- is look where I caught it- when things are barely out of whack...just this side of normal...enough to send warning bells off in my head. That is what therapy taught me, that is what being stable has taught me. To catch me even before I really start my slide down- but catch me on the walk up the stairs. So, here I am, working on taking meds regularly again and getting my life back on a strict schedule. And I know I'll do it, and life will be good again. I'm used to picking up the pieces, they are not so broken this time around.

So here's to learning the lesson...again.

And I am reminded of a poem:

Back

We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

life a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas.

I remember the house and the barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates,
the Russian novels I loved so much,

and the black silk nightgown
that he once thrust
into the toe of my Christmas stocking.
- Jane Kenyon

Just reminds me...of what its like when I'm back on meds. I described it to a friend the other day- its like my whole world opens up. Like it was hazy for a while...then all of the sudden it all made sense.

But yeah...I'm not normal by any means...but I'm stable...and at one time in my life I would have given my life for that. Instead...I'm living that life. And that is wonderful :-)

5-17
"My life is perfect, but I'm fucked up." That was the essence of what I believed in before therapy began. Now I'm sitting on a bright sunny day at my favorite coffee shop thinking about life.

Here I am...right where I always knew I could be, or rather where Bobb always knew I'd make it to. My favorite music rings through my ears and my favorite books are keeping me company. My thoughts remain my friend instead of my foe. And so I think about my healing in the last few years. How did I get here? How did I possible survive a mind out to kill me. And I realize it was never my mind that helped me, but this heart of mine. This heart that forced me into action.

You see...healing was never about just thinking about my illness, or my symptoms or my past. It was in the "doing." I had to do more than just think about what to do- I had to go out and do it. My life did not begin until I let go of the notion that my life would heal on its own. I began to heal when I took control, when I took the reigns of my own healing. And I learned above all else: this, all of this, was not worth my death. I figured, why let my abusers win? They took so much from me, my illness took so much from me- I would not let it take my life. I did a lot of talking over the years and even more writing- but nothing changed until I learned to act as well.

I look back over my journal entries and see so much pain and suffering. And the realization that in my sickest moments I believed anything was worth dying for:

A "D" in math? Where are the pills?
Suzie no longer likes me. Where is the blade?
I'm not perfect. Where is the noose?
Johnny broke up with me, where are the drugs?

Yet faced with an undistorted view now, and a life out of crisis I see my flawed logic. I am 21 years old- my whole life is in front of me and my worth is not based on the external events crumbling around me. I have a whole life in front of me- I just have to learn to navigate the rough patches- that's all.

All our lives we are told how worthless we are- either by physical, sexual or emotional abuse. We live our lives wondering what the point is- after all- all we cause others is pain, right? Wrong...so very wrong. Who is to say that I am not worthy? What is a "D" but either a failure to study or a subject that I am just not good in. If Suzie or Johnny don't like me- then it is their issue- not my own, why should I change to please them? I am my own person and somewhere out there someone does appreciate that- Suzie and Johnny are not the only people in the world. Perfect? I am far from it. Perfect is boring. I enjoy learning from my mistakes, even if it hurts- the hurting reminds me that I am alive. 

The central core of my depression was the belief that I was somehow inherently flawed or worthless. Because all my life people only showed me pain or that they could just walk away. For someone to love me- it meant a great amount of pain. But your mind and body can only take so much. At some point it all becomes too much. And depression or some variation of it settles in. Your parents voice becomes your voice. Your childhood innocence becomes tainted with a need for perfection.

Suddenly you have no idea who you are- only what others expect you to be. And nothing is left but this quiet emptiness in your beating heart. The passion for life slips away and the will to live becomes an illusion.

We ask ourselves then...can this be fixed? Can we find ourselves again? Dar Williams once wrote:

And when I chose to live
I was not lost or found

Perhaps that is the first stage, to be neither lost or found. My advice? Get lost, get found and then keep going. Shed the belief that your worth can be diminished by any one person- that just because your outside world may crumble, that it is a death sentence- it is not.

We are never empty. There is always just a little part of us that survives the abuse, the disorders. Our beating heart is testament to that. I began to live life when I stopped living by other people’s standards. This is MY LIFE...no one else’s. I am NOT responsible for the actions or feelings of others. It is not my job to please them. Ask yourselves- why does it have to be you to please them? Why can't they please themselves? And giving birth to you does not relegate you to a life of pleasing others. Life was given to you for you to live it for you.

Love is not always pain, but I'd be lying if I said it was all roses- it's not. Loving and caring can hurt so much, but it can also be more wonderful than you can ever imagine. And that is why I decided to "do" and not just "think." It's a hell of a lot of work...but the rewards are worth it, that much I know in my heart.

Life is sweet...and so much more.

5-7
A few thoughts after a night of reading and reflecting.

Am I mad for wanting to believe that in my life, joy and despair must co-exist? That I am not me with either one of them gone? Sometimes I wonder if I was sentenced to this mood madness the day I was given my first breath. Then, as a child trying to survive in a world filled with so much pain. Perhaps then is when I should have known what was to come. Even when I was being abused in my darkest moments, I was still this vivacious child, always so curious and ready to try something new. I was the girl that would climb the highest treetop, race first down the steepest hill, ask for the merry go round to be spun faster and claim to beat up anyone who stood in my way. I was the first one done with my class work, and the last child to leave the school, staying late to work on some project. I proclaimed to love my family more than anything to anyone who had a word to say about my family…and cowered in a corner when a parent drew near. I was the epitome of exuberance, or perhaps of sanguine temperament, “It reacts quickly and in lively fashion to every kind of influence, it lights up immediately but excitement dies down equally fast. The individual leads a restless life, and likes extremes. We get a picture of vivacious exuberance or of an irritable, troubled hastiness.”

I am always reminded of a few sentences from A Shining Affliction, when thinking about the complexities of my personality: “I push aside too the impression that although many people feel close to me, no one has a whole picture of me, and this is bound to catch up with me sooner or later.” It took me a long time to realize just exactly who I was, and so I realized, how could anyone ever really get the whole picture…I first had to become whole myself. “Will she ever exist beyond arms reach,” always gets me thinking. I felt like this with so many people…that I was “here” but always just beyond their reach. That no one could ever get to know the real me because I was too ugly and broken inside. Bobb was the first person to teach me otherwise…the first person to reach deep inside my soul and beg for me to show her more. She found the passion I had for life that I had long since hidden in my childhood. I look back at that little girl and often wonder where she went. But I know it was the pain of living a double life that ultimately killed her. Still, I catch glimpses now and then, of riding a big wheel in the courtyard or jumping of cliffs into the sea. The memories play like an old slide show that my grandparents had. I see this smiling, happy, vivacious child…and yet somehow she is not me. But I know now that it isn’t that it’s not me in those memories, it’s that the child itself was killed- forced into an adulthood and responsibility that I should have never been given.

So now I wonder if leading that double life, having the death of my childhood at such an early age…if all of that was the precursor to my struggle with mood and madness. And if I am now mad for considering the possibility that I am a better person for it. I almost always find my answer in the eyes of a little child named Julia. Because I know it is my passion and creativity that has fueled her own healing and that my sleepless nights lamenting upon her progress and my on the spot ideas have spurred her on. I think on a different level when I am with children like Julia and part of me knows this could not happen if I was not so deeply and profoundly affected myself. I have a passion for life that is incredible, and without that, I don’t think I could or would want to live my life in a lesser fashion.

That is just the exuberant part of my life, there also dwells within me this deep sadness and despair. I seldom return to this area of my soul, but I know it is forever there. But because it resides within me, I appreciate every sun rise and sun set that much more. I appreciate the ability to love and be loved on a different level…and I see the beauty in every rain fall. All because there was a time when I never thought I’d experience the beauty in each of those things again. I spent more of my time dying than living, and now that I have chosen life, everything seems so much more intense than it did before. I love more, laugh more, smile more, smirk more, listen more, talk more, and cry more. Everything is more to me, because I have knocked upon deaths door and been denied and instead willed to live. And so I live with ever fiber of my being. Because Bobb is the one that slammed the door and left it up to me to decide to fight to die, or surrender to living. I surrendered with all of my heart and she has taught me how life is sweet and I’ve learned it is so much more than that.

Would I want to live a life without this mood madness? No, and I say that with a hint of uneasiness, but with a strong voice. I have come to love who I am and the passion that I hold for this life…and I know in my heart of hearts that the passion comes from the existence of both great sorrow in my heart and great joy. I have worked extraordinarily hard to harness the power of both and I am successful more days than not…but each second I experience pure happiness is worth all the years of sorrow I faced and will face. I survived my life and the death of the child within, and I realize and acknowledge the fact that I made it. As a result, I will live my life to the fullest and cherish each moment I can stand in the sun or dance in the rain. Life is sweet…and so much more.

5-6
Something that I'll be putting in my Snapshot section soon:

Identity

I think so many of us struggle with the question of identity- who we are inside. People tell us to just be ourselves- but which self do they want? Do they want the college student, the therapist, the patient, the depressed girl, the daughter…or the victim. I think before I began the healing process I fell into the category of victim. Once therapy began, I clung to the identity of survivor. The word survivor emitted a sense of strength to me and hope that I could rise above my past. And so I went from victim to survivor and was all the more strong for it. Then came the time when I ended therapy, when I finally healed and suddenly I became at a loss for an identity again. I was a victim, I was a survivor, but I was so much more than that now. So I settled for woman- strong woman. As much as I am a survivor, the term itself is confining, because it would be a constant reminder of my past and in a sense meant that I would always be searching for a way to rise above it all. But in reality- I had gotten to the point where my past was just that- my past. My life was now centered on the present and future and I no longer suffer through the negative consequences of where I came from. So when someone asks me who I am…I just want to say I’m a woman, a strong woman. Victim, survivor, strong woman. Now that is the transformation of identity that I like to see.

5-3
Well, the day finally came and went. The day I said goodbye to the person I care most about in this world, the person that healed me…that saved me. I envisioned a hundred different ways the very last therapy session could have gone…but in the end I think it ended exactly how it needed to end. We traded our usual sarcastic wit (and hey, I think I finally won our duel) and just talked about life and all the beauty it holds. And my last words to her were “thank you” and hers were “your welcome.” I gave her a goodbye CD with music and today I received a CD from her…and that is just the way we communicate. Words say a lot between us and can touch our hearts…but music speaks to our soul.

But most of all, I received the most beautiful letter I have ever received or had someone write. She said so much in one page and I will treasure it always. I don’t think, at this point, I can express in words what that meant to me. She is a woman who chooses her words so extremely carefully…so it meant the world to me. She means the world to me.

I am pretty sure it has not sunk in yet…as my best friend “Joe” (she has decided she would like her nickname on my site be Joe…why all my female friends or people in my life have chosen male names, I will never know…then again, Bobb didn’t choose her, kinda fell into that one heh), has said- give it time. I haven’t broken down and cried yet, though I’m close after reading her letter now alone and listening to the beautiful CD. I did notice I shut down the rest of the day, when I was with Joe for the first few hours after saying goodbye…I could see myself talking, yet it wasn’t me. Finally when I worked with one of the kids today, I kinda reintegrated myself…and I was myself again the rest of our “girl night.” Now I’m alone with music and anything can happen.

So what does this all mean? I know that this is the first day of the rest of my life…my new life. Joe remarked today how I seem so excited that I am healing…even though that has been in the works for a year. But the way I explained it…a year is such a small time in my life…considering the amount of time I spent it depressed and on the edge of life and death. It still seems so new. And really the most healing happened about December. I made the choice to get off the ledge…to stop flirting the line and knocking at deaths door. I chose life and meant it with all of my heart. And apparently, according to one amazing woman…I have quite the heart. And so I live life with all my heart. And she made me want to live life that badly…I never knew how sweet life could be until I met her. I think part of the reason I was depressed so long and wanted to just give up…is because I never had anyone show me that life was worth living, that life could actually be enjoyable. And then she came into my life and just began to open so many doors…but most of all- she just showed me this life that seemed so wonderful that I was no longer satisfied staying in that unwell world, staying depressed- I wanted to see what all the smiles were for.

Then, with our relationship, she showed me what a little caring could do, and trust- and really, how sweet life could be. Slowly she tore down the illusions that existed within my head, and we broke me all the way down…and then just as carefully, we put me back together…to be me. I wanted to heal, and she showed me the way.

And now I am me with all my being…and now I have been set free to live fully in this well world. Sure I’ve still got the meds and occasionally med doctor appointments, but for the most part I am alive, well and happy. As much as I may have wanted to deny it…Bobb was the last remaining symbol of my broken life…and I needed to say goodbye to that…to her…to fully heal and be free to be who I am and what I will become. Her healing work was done with me and I reached the ultimate goal- to not need therapy anymore. And so I have dealt with saying goodbye by choosing to look at it a little happier than sad- that I accomplished something so difficult…especially for me- a woman on the edge for quite sometime.

I will take all the gifts Bobb has given me and use them to their fullest extent. And I made a promise to her- to heal and continue to live life well and I intend to fulfill that promise. She will forever have a special place in my heart and I am without a doubt a product of her healing ways…and so I can say goodbye…memories will never be forgotten.

So today I said goodbye and I’ll hang on to our final hug, her final look…the scene of her opening a tissue box as I walk in…and the words spoken. And I will live my life…with all my heart and all my soul…because she taught me how and now I’m free to explore this wide…sweet world on my own, with the love and support of my newly put together family…and wonderful friends. Life is sweet…thank you Bobb for teaching me all of that.

“I've been thinking
I've been thinking, I've been thinking too much
I just want to live now for a little while
And cast my dreams to the wind
Don't wanna wonder
Don't wanna wonder what it's all about
I'm just working for a living singing with my friends
As I cast my dreams to the wind”

”I left home when I was seventeen
I just grew tired of falling down
And I'm sure I was told
The allure of the road
Would be all I found

And all the answers that I started with
Turned out questions in the end
So years roll on by
And just like the sky
The road never ends

And the people who love me still ask me
When are you coming back to town
And I answer quite frankly
When they stop building roads
And all God needs is gravity to hold me down”