Babies > Late Nights at Bars or Late Nights at Bars > Babies? Right Now, I'm Going to have to Say the Latter...

Thursday night, I was at the Center for Hope and Healing’s annual holiday dinner. A baby was also in attendance. Towards the end of the evening, the baby left, and people commented on how cute it was. I leaned over to the friend and fellow volunteer sitting next to me. “I don’t like babies," I said, a few glasses of wine in, “but that one really is pretty cute.” “That was too loud," she said. “Go to the bathroom. Now.”

I don’t really like babies.

I feel like on the list of my not necessarily being a naturally good person this ranks just below not liking dogs and not liking Harry Potter, but… I just don’t.

I think they kind of look like monkeys, they cry too much, and they lack interesting personality. (I wish I could show you a picture of myself as a baby; my eyes are all squinty and it's somewhat amusing.) I’m not actually a bad person, I promise, I do like kids (sometimes), just more so if they're teenagers. Maybe it’s blameable on my changing my first diaper around the age of nine or ten and thus realizing the reality of constant child-responsibility, or maybe it just points to the possibility of my not having a soul.

Also, read this. 27 reasons why kids are actually the worst.

Friday I had the best day I've had at work so far, as I spoke to hundreds of teenagers about suicide prevention, one on one and in groups. The question I got passed on a notecard to me multiple times that day caught me off guard, however- instead of the anticipated “I struggle with this, is there hope, etc” notes, I repeatedly received the following question: “Why does it matter? Why do you think suicide is always bad?” Yikes.

I can only speak of loss and hope, of how glad I am to be alive every day, and, philosophy and religion excluded, how valuable they are. When I do this, I always think that if my story gives even one kid hope, the struggles of my job and the struggles of these past months have been totally worth it. This is when I think being bad at math might make me better at my job… I can never understand the idea of measuring lives logically; I could never sacrifice one person for the greater value of a group.

You matter so much. Let me tell you again and again and again, and please fight for yourself. Silly kids. This may be part of the reason teenagers have my heart. They’re so smart, but so dumb.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s actually baby season. So many of my friends my age on facebook, many who were married right when I was also supposed to be married (that’s a whole other story) are now pregnant. I’m happy for them, but to be honest… I’m also a little confused.

That’s not to say that I’m not interested in pushing a child out of my own vagina one day, because I am, but honestly I’m more interested in the pregnancy itself than the actual resulting human- which I think is a bad sign regarding potential motherhood. I’m highly confident in my own fertility (that word always makes women sound like a field to me…), and was very recently told I have “wide hips, good for birthing” by a Harvard medical student, so it does seem like a shame to leave all of that to waste. In my mind, I’ll be totally hardcore, having my child in a birthing center with relaxing music playing in the background and a total absence of pain medication coursing through my body, all deep breaths and calm strength. This may also be a strong indicator that I’m not ready to have children.

In the good ‘ole south, it’s not weird to have children and a family at such a young age, although it would be up here. Subconsciously, I always thought I would be a young wife as well, raising children and settling down. I kind of feel like a rebel, running away to explore and focus on my career and education and planning to hyphenate my last name if I ever do get married. I feel kind of weird not being ready to settle down- maybe I’m still just too selfish at this point in my life, maybe I don’t want to live with any regrets, or maybe I’m just stupid enough to walk away from a good thing when I have it.

I still stay up irresponsibly late at night, I leave my kitchen dirty for days at a time, and as I've mentioned before, I’m trying to manage some basic skills of what I consider adulthood.  It’s healthier for me, admittedly, to do things like avoid being out late at night and do downward dog-type pilates poses  before falling asleep, it just still seems a little boring. I recently did some investigation into why I still have the face of a fifteen year old at almost twenty-three, and the list of natural remedies I found I found was full of things I fail at doing, like eating vegetables and going to bed early. Boo.

I'm getting better at cooking, though- look at what I found on my desk this morning!

I do kind of wonder if I’m missing out, though. Being on your own team is hard. Is it weird that that’s what I miss most about a long-term, committed relationship? Always having someone on your team? While this whole living alone independence thing can be somewhat empowering, I also wish I had someone to tell everything to at the end of the day, to come home to dinner too, to share hopes and dreams and fears with, to love and be loved by unconditionally. Maybe it’s not so black and white, maybe you can have both, but after growing up in a culture where women largely stay home and cook and clean for their families while their husband is the “head of their household”, I’m just like… ewww. No thank you.

The idea of an unfettered, self-reliant, no real binding obligations to others sounds just lovely at this point in my life, but other than the times I was absolutely psychotically crazy, it’s also been the worst period of my life thus far. Living fast and fancy free sounds like the best of a coming of age novel, but after a regular attempt at it in not terribly recent previous months, I’m not sure it’s always that great. It’s all fun and games until you can’t get out of bed, you never feel on top of anything in your life, and you realize how flat-out jerky people can be.

I really don’t want to fall into what I sometimes perceive to be the black vortex of marriage and children yet, however, from which no one ever hears from you again. What’s the right balance of stability, anyway?

I feel like many people in their twenties can be stereotypically and unfairly blanketly placed in two extremist groups. There’s the young hipsters, all about freedom and travel, high on life and who knows what else, living for the day with no future plans. Then there’s the ‘adults”, settling into careers and committed relationships. I want to fit in between, I suppose. To have nights I feel 22 (obligatory Taylor Swift reference) and to also have enough routine to function at my best.

Maybe there’s more people in this category than I think. Those of us still discovering who we are, but also wanting to focus on careers. To have the freedom to travel (although not necessarily the money to do so) and also enough structure day to day to feel well balanced.  

Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me.

I'm going on an Adventure! (And this is how I pack.)

I’m taking a trip tomorrow! My main purpose is to visit a school this weekend, but I’m also going to spend some time just seeing the city and I’m extremely excited. It’s my first real vacation alone, and I’ve never been to New York before. This sounds like an excellent adventure, and is exactly the kind of thing I want to do while I'm young and poor and uninhibited.

I’ve been lucky enough to go on some pretty amazing trips in my life, but unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate most of them until adulthood. Vacations with my family were always An Event. You can’t mobilize 10-12 people, on a normal day or a holiday, without attracting a good deal of attention. Growing up, we were always mistaken for 1) a daycare, 2) a church group, or 3) a posse of estranged children. In our 12 passenger van, often with a full trailer attached, it’s no wonder we were a spectacle. To make our van look even more daycare-oriented, I recently found out that my mother had these custom license plates attached. I. Can’t. Even.

Once, at an airport, someone actually tried to enter our van thinking it was an airport shuttle. My family is wonderful, but as a preteen, I was not amused. I spent most of our vacations behind a constructed wall of blankets in my corner of the van, listening to my walkman and reveling in my teenage angst. Clearly, a lovely, positive child to be around.

My real ability to plan and execute a trip well was developed when Sara and I won a trip through writing an essay for our honors department to Geneva, Switzerland. Yes. That happened. This is the moment we found out:

Our lives might quite possibly have reached their peaks at 21. We paid almost nothing to stay in a fancy hotel, fly to a beautiful country, visit the UN, and explore every detail of Geneva. To do so, however, we had to plan a vacation in a country we had never seen, among people speaking a language (many languages, actually) we didn’t understand, in an unfamiliar culture. We’re best traveling buddies ever for life, so we did it with smashing success. I think what this experience taught me (aside from arguably being the apex of my here-to existence), is that I can travel well independently.

It’s only very recently, however, that I learned that I can enjoy traveling alone. I am not an alone person, but there’s a lot I want to see in the Boston area and not always someone to see it with. A few weeks ago, I visited Bunker Hill, and I realized I can still enjoy myself when seeing things without someone else. So, I’m going to New York. By myself. And I’m expecting traveling alone will only enrich the adventure.

I’m staying in a hostel and taking the bus, so I’m going to be carrying everything I'm bringing around every day. In general, I am a small purse girl. Although many women carry a purse this size around daily, my fragile old lady back, general laziness, and continual efforts to make my life less chaotic inspire me to carry only the essentials with me. Did you know that perusing the contents of other people’s purses is a thing? It's a thing. I think these exhibitions a bit of a lie, because I’d like to know what woman doesn’t have a pile of receipts waiting to be gone through or recycled in her purse, but it can be an interesting sociological display. In honor of carrying a large purse carefully packed for a very specific trip, I have laid out its contents for you. This is what I’m bringing:

In top-ish to bottom-ish order: Tales from a Traveling Couch and A Big-Enough God: A Feminist's Search for a Joyful Theology. My journal, which is the main reason I will be ensuring this bag does not get stolen, because it was handmade in India and I am in love with it. Organic goat's milk oatmeal facial soap. A scarf, because it’s actually winter here in the Northeast. Lip gloss. I recently lost my nice fancy Mary Kay lip glosses, and because I’m a very feminine girl who is also a borderline low-maintenance hippie, I have been without anything other than drag-queen-red lipstick to wear. According to basic lipstick rules for people like me, you’re supposed to go one or two shades darker than your natural lip color, so yesterday I bought a pretty, grown-up color (not super cheap) and a lighter, all the time color (super cheap). Nail polish, because what else are you going to do on a bus for four hours other than paint your nails? I love nail polish, and if you want to buy me something for Christmas, I'm in serious lust with this color. This one is pretty fantastic as well, because it’s like a party on your nails. I decided that in the pursuit of looking like a polished adult, lip color was more important than almost-black purple nail polish, so I’m trying to use black and purple as a somewhat-substitute since I’m too poor to splurge on nail polish. On another note, if you happen to have a desire to learn the most popular nail color by city, you can find that here. Nice taste, Dallas.

My camera and camera charger. Tank tops, because putting clean tank tops under my sweater is going to be my interpretation of wearing clean clothes every day. Razor, toothbrush, deodorant, moisturizer, body wash, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and eye makeup remover, for what should be obvious reasons. Gap bike shorts to sleep in, pressed powder, and snacks squirreled away from the conference I went to yesterday. My wallet with cards and ID (although I’ll actually be carrying that directly on my person, because technically, those are more important than my journal). “Colleges” composition book (Like my father, I make composition books to organize everything, from “Life Plans” to “Boston”). Cucumber lip smackers chapstick, because moisturized, tasty lips are always nice. Cliff bars, which I find disgusting, but they’re high-calorie and filling and I plan on severely limiting the amount of food I buy. I consider the fact that looking at them, writing about them, or thinking about them makes me nauseous to be a perk, because after I eat one I will save money by being unable to eat anything else. Lotion. Every medicine I might possibly need mixed into a cocktail, from vitamins to Excedrin. Underwear, because I’m not that much of a dirty hippy. “Essential” makeup. Cell phone charger. Headphones, although these are a bit superfluous because I apparently have the babiest earholes ever, and normal people headphones won’t stay in my ears unless I balance them very carefully and keep my head very still. They are included in case of an annoying bus buddy. My knitting, which is not only something to do on the bus, but is actually really good for your mind and body as well.

Heck.



Yes. (See that spray bottle? That's what I was squirting Alexander with all night.)



I apologize if going through the contents of my purse is extremely boring to you, but the only other way my purse would ever look when unpacked is like this:

And that’s sad, so that would really be unfair to me, if that’s the only purse I ever got to show-and-tell.

Although Alexander doesn’t know it, he is about to cross a very grown-up milestone of his own by spending three days at home alone. This is our pre-trip picture, which is not a quality photo, as it was taken as he was flailing about, breathing his fishy breath all over me, and making disturbing yodeling sounds like this. Since I was packing, he decided to be in full brat cat mode tonight, so after he gorged himself on all of his food (I bought food of the same brand but of a slightly different nature recently, and he won’t stop being a gluttonous fatty cat about it), he immediately began to repeatedly dig through the trash can and skitter crazily about the apartment. There was a lot of yelling tonight, and I’m having to buy new cat food before I leave tomorrow so I don’t come back to this.

It’s now 5:00 AM, and because I’m too irresponsible to sleep and am too excited to stop drinking coffee and typing, I’m still up. I’m going to go get my two hours of sleep (ugghhhh) and see if any of this post makes sense in the morning or if I’ve just typed out the words “New York, New York” over and over in a fit of hysteria.

Alexander is finally sleeping. My bag is perfect. I’m not going to miss any of my connections tomorrow. And in case I want to be a parking lot groupie, the middle school intern at work has informed me that Taylor Swift is in New York this weekend.

Failure is My Arch-nemesis, and I Have Excellent Taste in Music Unless You're Happy

You know how some people have that notorious falling dream? The one where you just keep falling until you wake up? My reoccurring dream isn't like that, but I've had one since I was a child. As I've gotten older, this dream has more often been replaced by agonizing ones of murders, but no matter the nature, the nightmares I have many times a week always leave me paranoid and shaking after I jolt awake.

In my dream, I’m driving a car, but I can’t control it. I’m pushing frantically on the pedals, turning the steering wheel, but the car is moving of its own volition and nothing I can do will stop it. I know that I can’t protect the people in the car (as a child, most often my family), and it makes me feel like a failure. I’m losing control. (At least my dreams are easy to psychoanalyze, right?)

Of all of the things in my life, I might be most afraid of failure. Perhaps, more tangibly afraid of than I am of serial killers, although that’s debatable.

FOF (I just made up an abbreviation for Fear of Failure)  might be the reason I cried every time I got in the car while learning to drive as a teenager, the reason I can’t check my voicemail to this day (running high number is 93 unread messages), and certainly the reason academic success has had historic jurisdiction over much of my life.

This is what I'm bad at.


My chronic FOF didn't develop slowly over years of pushing too hard, it’s simply innate. During my teen years, many professionals tried the somewhat Freudian approach of blaming my parents for pressuring me into perfection. This never happened. Many times, my mom watched in bewilderment as I cried over low A’s and high B’s. I cannot tell you the number of times a teacher has scrawled on a critique to be less hard on myself, or a friend has calmly told me to stop being irrational in my expectations, but somehow, I've never been able to listen. Failure does exist, it’s real, and it’s simultaneously terrifying and terrible. When I truly did face failure in something, I simply quit. I walked away. And as an adult in a society in which women supposedly aren't supposed to be highly motivated by achievements and career success, I am.

We’re obsessed with numbers in America. We’re all, whatgradedidyoumake-howmuchdoyouweigh-howoldareyou-whatisyourBAC-justwritedownyoursocial-we’llhavetodoacreditcheck. We slap Apgar scores on babies as soon as they’re born. Fast forward to college, and not only are good grades important, but positive feedback and perceived success are as well. As an undergrad, I treated every test not only as an opportunity to make a good grade, but as a race. I illogically felt obligated to finish first in the class, although second was also acceptable. Any later, and I figured I hadn't studied enough. My friend Sara and I often finished our tests within seconds of each other, and as we have the same brain and often studied together, I’m still amazed our basically identical tests never condemned us as suspected cheaters. Or our notes. We were always writing notes and still being the favorite students, because we’re fabulous. 

By far, my worst college class was Honors Statistics. I took it with Sara, who is one of the most intelligent people I know. She is also as bad at math as I am. Our class was divided into two groups: the front three rows, and the back two. The front-row students understood the material and nodded their heads happily over problems containing random numbers and symbols copied from the mysterious board of non-logic. The back two rows of lost souls, of which Sara and I made up two, spent all of the classes giving furtive, terrified, haggard looks at each other or silently weeping. We all were making D’s or F’s, and most of us were in shock at the perpetual string of scrawled on, condemning tests and homework handed back to us. 

The class that is clearest in my memory is one of our final ones, during which I received yet another accusatatingly marked test that I knew was about to destroy my GPA. In the locked classroom (meaning I couldn't enter again if I left), I began crying. This time, my tears were not silent, sad ones, however, they were big, giant, body-shaking sobs as I adopted the fetal position on my chair. Snot was everywhere. Giant, salty, soppy holes were being torn into the test. After the class, I went up to the teacher and expressed my fears and concerns for the third or fourth time. I wasn't just crying, I was SOBBING. Who wouldn't take pity on a sophomore girl crying as she watched her future slip away in a tangle of integers? This man had DAUGHTERS, for crying out loud. He was unsympathetic, and Sara and I attempted to comfort ourselves by dedicating this song to him.

I spent the final days of my statistics career wailing hysterically in the shower as I played Tori Amos’s song “Mondays” on loop. This song is about a school shooting, which I apparently felt was an appropriate choice for my song of mourning. Of course, it should be entirely clear to everyone that Tori Amos writes wonderful tragedy songs, the way Taylor Swift writes great breakup songs, Tegan and Sara articulate angst like no one else in the music industry, Lily Allen writes the loveliest enemy songs, and Regina Spektor's lyrics make me understand the world.

I fail to understand why statistics will be essential to my being a good social worker, but apparently there is a strong correlation. Despite everyone else’s concern in the matter, the only possible common factor I see between my honors statistics math class as an undergrad and my future career as a counselor is a possible abundance of Kleenex. And, in all honesty, if a client ever cries as much in a therapy session as I did over that statistics class, I will probably have to immediately send them to the nearest hospital to obtain a rehydrating IV.

This is what I looked like every time I did my statistics homework.

I recently stood before an information table at a graduate school fair, being that student everyone hates who captures the recruiter’s attention and asks about a million minutely specific questions. The Columbia recruiter was young, blonde, and perky. I’m not sure, but I think she might actually have been hired as a model to staff the table, just so Columbia could be all, not only are our students smart and rich, they’re also really pretty. I highly doubt she was actually a Social Work student, at any rate, because she responded to questions she didn't know the answer to with a vapid smile, instead of a concerned face of assurance. And in my very limited time as a social worker, I've already learned that we L-O-V-E the therapist face. She handed me brochures and flyers as she chirped away about how excellent their program was, although she didn't know, um, all of the details about their internship placement procedure. As I wrapped up my barrage of questions and blockade of the table, I asked, “What are your prerequisites?”

“Oh! We don’t have any. Well, except for one. You have to have made a B or better in a statistics class.”

“Well, what if I didn't?”

“Make a B or better?”

“Yes, what happens then? Will it affect my acceptance?”

The woman’s tone changed to one that was both bemused and condescending, her face reading, why in the world do you think you can apply to an Ivy League school if you can’t even make a B in statistics? Damn you, statistics, I knew you would haunt me and get me eventually. I could sense the recruiter’s long, manicured pink fingernails just aching to snatch those brochures back from my supposed academically incompetent hands.

This is not the only time I've been given this look. I was also given it by my department advisor in college, who did little in my presence other than twitch his mustache, and took productive action towards my future only when I was sitting at his desk and physically watching him do so. The Social Work department loved and gloated over me, as I was apparently their Most Favorite Student Ever. “What is your GPA?” he asked, scrolling through my transcript as I forced him to plan for my future, or at least supplement it with emails and letters of recommendation. “I guarantee you it’s higher than any other student’s in the department," he said, twirling his Ron-Swanson-wanna-be mustache and smiling. “Umm… a 3.8 something? Maybe a high 3.7?” He turned towards me in his rolley chair, suddenly looking more concerned than he ever had when considering the location of my final field placement. “What were those B's and C's in?” he asked, as though being bad at math was a grave disappoint not only to me, but to the entire department. “I got C's in pre-cal. And stats. They brought down my GPA”, I explained. “Oh, and I got a B in earth science, because science is stupid. And in my online classes, because…. well, just because I’m bad at online classes.”

He wished.

I wasted a lot of tears in school, because, at the end of the day (despite Columbia-barbie-girl’s opinion), statistics does not matter. It wasn't that I was stupid or inept or unmotivated, as the permanent indent of my ass in one of the math lab’s tutoring seats from that semester can attest. It was just a bad fit. And, quite suddenly the other day, I had this revelation for the first time: SOMETIMES THINGS ARE JUST A BAD FIT.

Statistics was a bad fit the way ballet sucking away my life was a bad fit, a bad fit the way waitressing was a bad fit (I once literally dropped a steak at my boss’s feet), a bad fit the way maps and me are a bad fit and puzzles are a bad fit and my current job is a bad fit.

I’m about to start crying (that was definitely just a Freudian slip for “applying”) for graduate school for the second time. These applications are so overwhelmingly obnoxious and daunting. Columbia University’s application is all like, FORGET BEING 22, YOU BETTER HAVE DONE ALL OF THE THINGS. The first time I applied, I had just faced some rather future-altering-forever decisions, and missed the deadlines. Whether dates or lack of experience or simple undesirability was the cause, rejection letter after rejection letter flowed in. I've feared a lot of failure in my life, but I never feared getting into grad school…I graduated in the top 5% of my class. I wasn't emotionally prepared for that defeat, and when the rejection letter from my top school finally came, my body shut down. I went to bed and slept for over 24 hours.

Something like this, but in a bed.

The worst part, however, was telling other people I had just plain failed and hadn't made it in. I don’t really want to have to break that news again, but if I have to, I will. I’m only applying to schools I’m really interested in going to. And if I fail at that, then I’ll develop awesome potential back-up plans.

Maybe I’ll get super brave and join the Peace Corps. Maybe I’ll get a degree in something else then go back for my PhD. Maybe I’ll get my TEFL certification and go teach English in another country for a few years. Maybe I’ll just settle into a job I like and work and volunteer and pay off my car. That’s the great thing about being young and single and not-yet-settled. I can do whatever I want.

Sometimes, things are just a bad fit. And this doesn't mean you or I or anyone else is a failure, because most of us just can’t succeed at everything. HOW DID IT TAKE ME ALMOST 23 YEARS TO LEARN THIS?!

No one fails at EVERYTHING, anyway. I’m not good at sitting at a desk and planning, but if you need someone to talk to teenagers and parents about suicide, I’m awesome. I can’t understand math to save my life, but I can write you a kick-ass essay. I’m horrible at directions, but… well, I’m not good at anything vehicle-related, but you get the idea.

So just maybe maybe believing in yourself doesn't mean believing you’ll succeed. Believing in yourself maybe means believing you’ll be okay if you don’t. Because even if I’m having to buy jeans a size up or I get school rejection letters or… I’ll be okay.

BAM.

And finally, I just realized both the best friend and Taylor Swift have been mentioned an inordinate amount of times in my blog. I’m not sure what this says about me.

Being a Grown-Up is Hard

I’ve begun a giant “pull my life together” project, and as a result, I’ve been having trouble completing a blog post. I've been working on a few for weeks, because I know that writing is good for me, but pulling my life together as more activities enter it has been more draining than I realized. I’m having to relearn productivity, as well as attempt to master some basic skills of adulthood. Unfortunately, my body has yet to understand that I don’t actually need ten hours of sleep a night, that I’m still capable of multitasking, and that it’s possible to do more than five things on my to-do list a day. As I relearn that it’s possible to live with anxiety and daily pressures, my body twitches and shakes continually and my thoughts are constantly scattered.

Over the past week I’ve been throwing my brain into working on grad school applications (which make me nauseous), my emotions into listening to trauma stories on the hotline in the middle of the night (which also sometimes make me nauseous), and last night I told some of my story to a group of highschoolers (which I love, but is always draining). I’m also going through the endlessly high stack of unread mail on my table (completed-BAM), dealing with the consequences of not reading said mail (City of Boston, please don't actually issue a warrant for my arrest because I didn't pay a late fee on my parking ticket), and cleaning my apartment thoroughly. I’m both impressed at and incredulous of the speed and level at which I used to function, although having a constant stream of Taylor Swift playing in my head is helping me work on Operation Pull Your Shit Together, as it’s titled in my journal.

For whatever reason, I view adulthood as the ability to manage all of these tasks in my life well and therefore feel like I’m learning to be an adult. Not an over-eighteen-in-college adult, but an I-paid-my- bills-and-did-my-dishes-in-the-same-night adult.



Me, when I only had to worry about embroidered Scotty dog sweaters, not adulthood. (on right)


I failed at this yesterday. I ran out of gas on my way to an important meeting.

Massachusetts is unlike Texas in the fact that access roads do not run parallel to the highway with easily accessible gas stations in sight. Here, access roads twist and wind away from the highway, and when you find a gas station in a random city next to a Dunkin' Donuts (I would hypothesize that Dunkin' Donuts owns Massachusetts, due to its infestation of the entire region), you may be many miles out of your way. I was running late to this meeting, of course, and decided to assure myself that I had enough gas to get at least most of the way there rather than stop before I left.

As I was driving along the highway, my gas light went on. I began looking for a gas station, passed a few on the wrong side of the road, and eventually exited to find one a highway sign alluded to. Of course, once I exited the road, I could not find the mysterious gas station. Back on the highway, I told myself that cars rarely actually run out of gas, and I kept towards my goal, keeping an eye out for more stations. Then event Kathleen Fails at Driving #456 happened. Going seventy miles in the left lane, my car began to wheeze and slow at an alarming rate, and I was forced to suddenly put on my flashers and coast over multiple lanes onto the shoulder. I called triple A, missed my meeting, and mentally chastised myself for not being a responsible adult.

I decided to try to make myself feel better by making a list of “adult things” I do well and "adult things" I don’t. Surely, I thought, this will prove to me that I’m actually more responsible than I think. Here’s the result:

Clearly, this wasn't as reassuring as I had hoped, since the "Horrible at" list is longer than the "Good at" list. I suppose, from now on, I could just burst into Lady Gaga's "Born this Way" when entering a meeting or event late. Or, I could just move to a country where being late is the norm and people don't drive anywhere. Preferably the latter.

Becoming Zen Hasn’t Actually Solved All of My Life Problems, or Why Missing Buses Can Teach You More than Having Friends (maybe-sometimes)

My coworker stopped by my office this morning and asked me how my weekend was (she’s a social worker and reminds me of my mom, so I’m naturally inclined to like her). I responded that it was noncommental and I didn’t do much. She commented that the weather had been beautiful. I know this, but regretfully, I have no firsthand experience of this rare phenomenon of “beautiful” Massachusetts weather. This is because the sun now sets at 4:30 PM, and I was unable, much to my shame and defeat, to rouse myself enough to make it outside this weekend while it was still daylight- although I did crack a window.

I think I’ve already mentioned how zen I’ve become after moving. This is not so much out of desire as necessity. My mind is a slightly obnoxious constant tape of positive affirmations (or, as my friend and I call them thanks to the amazing book, Wintergirls, magic incantations).  I spend a lot of time thinking things like “You don’t need to worry about that [insert issue here] because you will make the right decision when the time comes. You know what is best for yourself. You have made good decisions for yourself in the past and will do so in your future.” This is an often incanted one. Another recent favorite is, “Even though this (feeling or experience) isn’t pleasant, it is an opportunity to reach a greater understanding of the wealth of human experience.” That’s more reframing than affirming, but you get the idea.

I suppose I could also look in the mirror on the mornings/afternoons/evenings I’m barely moving and self-affirm, “You’re resting. Give yourself some time, this rest is for you.” However, this would be a lie, because I don’t rest. Resting is not pleasant. Typical Kathleen Stewart is the embodiment of positive-excitement-energy, always telling everyone that we-must-do-this-one-thing-right-now-because-it-will-be-so-fun-and-possibly-life-changing(!) That’s not to say that I never have slumps. If positive Katy is gung-ho and enthusiastic, negative Katy is waiting around the corner to spend a few days in bed crying because children in the world are starving and there is the teensiest possibly that her thus far non-existent children will go through something awful and bad themselves one day in the far future. The people who love me have learned to live with the extremes, to run with me when I’m elated and to hold me when the world makes me feel broken.

I can handle this about myself. I’ve had the practice. What I haven’t practiced is dealing with a Katy who is wearing a permanent crater in her bed as she channels endless television seasons on Netflix. I logically feel that this isn’t good headspace, but I also don’t exactly feel terrible about it. Until it gets dark at 4:30. Then I hate the world and I feel terrible. It’s like the sky is determined to scream failure at me.



Zen Katy

I’m extremely good, not only well-habituated, at this self-affirming thing thanks to numerous years of forced practice.  I once thought that when I reached this point of positivity in my life everything would just be magically fantastic. Like my ability to deep breathe would just result in a serene essence of being that would envelop my life and result in blessed solitudeandoneness with myself and the earth. This hasn’t happened. I’m all about self-affirmation-so about it-but the reality of life is that sometimes you can be your own best cheerleader until your metaphorical mental pompoms are shredded, but things may still be kind of shitty at the end of the day. Not a lot a bit shitty (right now), just fairly exhausting in the knowledge that things really could be quite a bit better. It’s not the best time in my life.
 

"Whatever" Katy

One contribution to it not being the best time in my life is a situation thrust upon me by some of the few people I’ve met here. I’m being indirectly bullied at worst, misrepresented publically to a group of people who don’t know me at best.

I’ve never been bullied in my life.

I’m just not interesting enough. I’ve always been pretty enough, smart enough, nice enough, to be mostly left alone- even if I did have an unusual amount of bible knowledge I had no problem expressing in youth group as I steadily knitted a giant blanket in high school.

Something like this.


I’m fairly good about standing up for people who are being picked on, but not weird enough to be picked on in turn. Now that I’m in my twenties, I thought that although everyone supposedly goes through the experience of being bullied and gossiped about at some point in life (even Taylor Swift, or so she says), it was an experience I was simply lucky enough to miss having.

Wrong.

When I first moved up here, I almost immediately met a group of people I thought would befriend me right away. They were funny, they were interesting, and I seemed liked in the group.

Then there was this girl.

She’s funny, cute, and engaging. She’s the kind of person people are immediately attracted to. She was one of the first people I talked to and hung out with, and I liked being with her. We disagreed on what we felt the nature and importance of our relationship to each other was, and as she is a flighty person who flits between friends and allegiances, we stopped hanging out. I thought that was basically it, an almost-friendship that just didn’t happen and was meant to be mourned then brushed away.

I later found out that she was blatantly lying about me to her coworkers (the entire group of people I had met), exaggerating the truth of what had happened to save face. People stopped texting me; I stopped being invited to hang out with them as a group. I’m grateful for the few but amazing friends I have made up here, who have spent time with me and gotten to know me anyway, and who were genuine enough to tell me the truth about what’s going on. Zen Katy appreciates this experience as an opportunity to weed out the people not really worth being friends with anyway. “Whatever” Katy is completely and utterly over it. Also, her feelings are hurt.

Albeit, I’ve had a few awkward and perhaps less than classy exchanges with this girl since, but, I mean, I’m 22. We all have our unclassy and less-than-prudent moments. What blows my mind is that this girl has begun to lead what one of my thus far closest friends in lovely MA dubbed “an anti-Katy brigade.” Really? Are we 12? Would that be okay, even if we were 12? No. No it would not. I know that in these people’s minds, I’ve been painted to be slightly psychotic and definitely not worth getting to know, but…but still.

However, self-obsessed as it may sound, I still can’t believe that myself, as someone who has always been enough, is suddenly unnecessarily being actively gossiped and lied about on a fairly long term basis. It makes me lose faith in humanity a little bit. It makes me lose trust in people for failing to see people who treat others poorly as insensitive and dramatic when first getting to know them. I’m tired of being “worth” gossiping over, although I know that really isn’t the situation. I have high doubts the occurrence is terribly personal. I’m simply known well enough for the talk to be interesting, but not well enough for tainting my name to actually matter.

I’m tired of trying to make friends. I expected that as an adult, this would be a matter of simply clicking or not clicking with someone. I know that I’m a good person and a good friend (zen Katy self-talk!), but I’m tired of trying to determine the same about others. Outwardly, I’ve expressed my disdain and unconcern for the entire situation. Inwardly, I’m hurt.

Poor me. I know I know I know my life is just so hard. Not. I’m unable to motivate myself to keep trying to meet people, or do the dishes (every single dish I own is dirty-it’s pathetic), or sometimes wash my hair (I just went a week without washing it-“whatever” Katy would like to remind your judging self how few people see me anyway). However, before you write me off as a lost cause or feel sad about my pathetic shortcomings at normal-Kathleen-functionings these days, let me reassure you that I have found at least a small amount of emancipation in my current state: the difficulties of forming new relationships and living up here in general have helped me to find redemption in the little things.

Random and mundane moments have inexplicably started to bring me joy, sometimes to the point of misty eyes and more zen reflections. Moments like sitting on my porch in cold weather wrapped in a blanket and nestling up to the space heater while holding a vegan chai tea and journaling. Moments like walking out of the local school and being grateful for a country in which I can vote. Moments like 7 hours on the phone with my best friend, one of the few people in the world whom I know loves me totally and unconditionally.

I would probably die without her.

Moments like the first snow of yesterday, when I rushed outside in my pajamas to dance around my yard in the middle of the night and marvel at the fact that I live in a world where something as beautiful as falling snow exists. This morning, when I discovered the buses aren’t running today and I had to walk a mile and a half back to my house to drive the car I can’t afford to put gas in, I actually thought, “I’m glad I have legs to walk home with!” These minor and futuristically hilarious unhappy situations are making me more grateful in general.

In the chaos of loneliness and hibernating dreams and recklessness and impatience and uncertainty, I know that these hope-filled instants are formulating memories and weaving together experiences during this fragile time in my life. One day, I suspect I will look back at this period and remark on it as a great learning experience or something equally as cheesy, as I mumble wise things to my grandchildren with a grey braid over my shoulder. Until then, I hope to crawl out of bed long enough to feel something rather than apathy, whether motivated by snow or work or the promise of sunshine.

I’m eternally grateful for these moments of youth and yearning that are melding together the pieces of my life, one that I sometimes feel is slipping out of my hands as I try to keep it together.

I’m unsure what the summarizing statement or wrapping-up topic of this blog post should be, but I think there are enough life lessons in there for you to garner one for yourself. If you can’t, deep-breathe and practice self-acceptance. Sometimes, that’s all we can do.

Something We Don't Talk About Because Apparently I'm Getting all Serious all of a Sudden

What is the worst thing you did as a teenager?

This question was asked of those of us training to be volunteer rape crisis counselors at our Saturday-long training, as we discussed the mentality of teens. It was one of the few personal questions we had been asked. A few people said things like drunk driving or skipping school to do drugs, and the rest of us awkwardly smiled and ducked our heads over our written answers without sharing. My answer came to me immediately.

I attempted suicide.

Suicide holds a stigma in our society that is difficult to explain. It is hard for those who have lost someone to suicide to say and hard for people to respond to appropriately. The moment after I refrained from answering that question, I realized my silence was doing the exact same thing: perpetuating the stigma around suicide.

It’s hard to know me for a long time without hearing briefly about my mental health struggles as a teenager, as they consumed my life and consequently complete a good deal of my personal history. However, this stark truth has been one of my greatest secrets. It’s always brought shame and guilt with acknowledgement.

That being said, there’s probably something wrong with me for being the kind of person who will post one of her deepest secrets on the internet. Who does that, anyway?  I guess I can only hope that doing things like this will make me rich and famous one day?

When remembering my teenage years, I’m left unable to explain the darkness. That era of my life was filled with an overwhelming depression, occasionally interrupted by a year or two of decent coping. I was always participating in screaming fights with my parents, crying, sleeping, or planning my own destruction. It’s hard to tell someone who hasn't experienced major depression what it’s like to be continually falling into blackness, to walk around feeling like a shadow among the “normal” people around you, to know that you’re losing touch with reality but not how to stop it.

I didn’t think I would live to turn eighteen. I certainly never thought I would work in the field of suicide prevention. When I did turn eighteen and entered college, I didn’t know who I was. I couldn’t have told you my favorite color, what kind of music I liked to listen to, or my political views. I had never taken the time to learn those things about myself, and as I watched my roommate hang pictures commemorating her high school years, I wanted nothing more than to forget them forever.

After my suicide attempt, I thought I was alone. People were angry, people were (understandably) confused, and I was just hurting. I lost a lot of friends, as people didn’t really want their young daughters hanging out with a girl who was using her body as a permanent etch-a-sketch. I once heard someone say that suicide is the most selfish act anyone can ever perform. At the time, I didn’t know how to explain that it’s not intended selfishness when you’re dying on the inside, when you can’t explain the pain but you just want it to stop. At least ninety percent of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental health illness or substance abuse disorder. When people learn about someone who has left a family alone after dying by suicide, they often ask who in their right mind would do such a thing. Well… exactly. They wouldn’t.

In an average high school classroom of 30 students, 3 will attempt suicide in a 12-month period, 2 girls and 1 boy. I was not alone. I wish someone had told me.

My “areas of expertise” thus far in the field of social services are torture, suicide, and rape. These are words that have become a natural part of my vocabulary, and words that few people say. Many times, I’ve been asked why I wantto work with such difficult topics. My heartfelt and natural answer has been, Why not? I’m pained by these things, but I’m not afraid of them. I’m afraid of our not asking about them, our not talking about them. When someone shares a difficult part of their past with me, I rarely respond with a strong emotion. I typically just nod my head. I sometimes worry this is interpreted as my not caring, but that’s not true- it’s simply because I hate sympathy from others when I share parts of my past. Part of this is because I am still angry at myself for some of the mistakes I’ve made. Part of this is because I’m stronger than the things I went through, and I don’t want to be defined by them. I don’t want anyone else to feel that I’m defining them as a person by painful events in their life.

I’m an adult now, and I’ve realized the words of my attempt, my mental health struggles, don’t have to bring me shame. Certain things will always remind me of that part of my past. People will always ask about my scars. I'll never fully forget. But that's okay.

Yesterday, I attended a presentation about suicide my colleagues were presenting at a local college. At the beginning of the lecture, we stood up and introduced ourselves, and explained why we are in this field. My introduction typically goes something like this:

“My name is Katy, I’m a bachelor’s level Social Worker… and part of the reason I’m working in this field is I’m a suicide attempt survivor of ten years.

People’s faces are always surprised. Surprised I said it, perhaps. Surprised it doesn’t upset me to do so.

At one point during the seminar I was coming back from the bathroom (I swear, my impossibly small bladder will turn out to be an advantage to me one day) and passed a student crying in the hallway. I stopped and asked her if she was okay and if there was anything I could do. She told me she was a recent attempt survivor, and some parts of the lecture had understandably upset her.  I know I can never fully understand her pain or her story, but I listened. And when she told me she thought nothing would ever change, I was able to tell her:

It will get better. Maybe not today, or next year, but one day, it will. You’re a strong person. You’re going to be okay. I promise, it will get better.

After the seminar a woman approached the front and told us that her teenage sister had attempted suicide. Then she turned to me and told me that my survival gave her hope that her sister would make it too.

Logically, I understand these reactions to my honesty. However, I don’t know if I’ve ever so clearly realized: my vulnerability in simply saying that sentence enables other people to be vulnerable as well.

And that’s why I need to not be afraid to talk about it. That’s why we need to talk about it.

A few months ago, I heard an esteemed guest lecturer in the field of suicidology (yes, that’s a word) talk about a teen who had thrown himself off the golden gate bridge and lived. This is remarkable, as more than 1,300 people are known to have been killed jumping off the bridge in less than 100 years. Only 26 are known to have survived. The teen said he spent a good deal of time pacing the bridge and crying before jumping. Many people saw him- on the bus on the way there, walking on the bridge, probably even leaning over the rail. But no one asked him if he was okay. In our society, we have a fear of asking those questions, particularly of a stranger. And here is the chilling part: He said that if someone had asked him, he would have told them, and he would not have jumped.

How many times do we refrain from asking questions like that just because it’s awkward?

One of the most deadly places in the world.

When I was a junior in college, the girl who sat next to me every day in one of my classes died by suicide. It was the closest encounter with suicide I had ever had. My favorite teacher stood before us in that class and called it an “accident.” She had had us write anonymous personal eulogies for a reason I can’t remember as an assignment a few weeks before, and on a somewhat dark note, she matched the girl’s handwriting and read to us her eulogy.The entire class attended her funeral. I didn’t understand how shooting yourself in the head could be an accident. I finally emailed the head of the Social Work department and asked her, as I was afraid I had an incorrect understanding of the definition of suicide. She in turn emailed all of the teachers and confronted them on the issue. These denying individuals had doctorate degrees in Social Work. It amazes me that even they, as professionals teaching aspiring Social Workers, couldn’t say the word suicide to us. If they can’t, it’s not terribly surprising that the rest of us struggle to do so.

I recently saw a pinterest post by a 13 year old I used to nanny for about wearing pink to school for suicide prevention day. And I thought, “Good. They’re talking about it. Because if she ever needed help, I would want her to be able to tell someone.” If someone had asked me when I was her age if I was thinking about suicide (and I’m definitely not saying it’s anyone’s fault they didn’t) I would have said yes. I wouldn’t have had my stomach pumped at thirteen. I wouldn’t have put my family through a lot of pain and suffering. I might not have lost so many friends. I might not have spent years and years blaming myself for what happened.

When I was entering the field of Social Work many people close to me expressed their concern that I’m too sensitive, too empathetic, too fragile for this work. But what they may not have understood, and what I could not have even told them then, is that I’m not afraid of it. Those who have attempted suicide have overcome a sense of fear of self-harm that is terrifying. I still have that, and I think it’s an intrinsic trait I will carry for the rest of my life. However, as I told the attempt survivor yesterday, that fearlessness can also be our strength.

It’s no one person’s responsibility to save a life. However, as a society, we have a collective responsibility to speak, to stand with survivors of loss, to support attempt survivors, and to ask.

It’s time to talk about it.

Me, living happy and healthy and all that good stuff.