Tonight, my teacher from ulpan, my Hebrew school, gave us a little bonus assignment. It was a New Year’s card, and we’re meant to write all of the things that happened to us in the past year that we’re grateful for, and what we look forward to in the next. It’s a little optional task, something to add a little brevity to all of the grammar and vocabulary lessons; but it’s something that strikes to the core of how much I went through this past year, and how my future has never been more unknown to me.
For most of this year, in fact up until the last weeks of December, I was in a mental health outpatient clinic. I’ve written about the sessions, the times of clarity, the times of despair, and the nights I’ve spent losing myself to the madness. I would have thought that people would know what I was going through, that they would at least know what’s happened. Maybe I even let myself dream that someone would understand, but time and time again I was proven wrong by the interactions I had with people I was close with. Maybe it’s because they have no point of reference for what I’m talking about; you can read about the state of insanity until the end of your days, but unless you experience what it is like to have your mind unravel, you will only know the symptoms you can relate to your own personal life. Maybe it’s because it’s still just a taboo subject, and people would rather compartmentalize and ignore that aspect of you. Maybe it’s because no one wants to talk about suffering, because everyone else in the world is programmed to avoid pain when they can. Maybe it’s because they just don’t care, because what is my pain to them, or what is it comparison to whatever everyone else in the world goes through.
Maybe I will always be the black sheep, the friend who you worry about, the relative that you don’t know how to talk to, the person you whisper about, the cautionary tale, the one you would rather forget than remember. I am the target of extra care, of well-intentioned-but-ultimately-hurtful suggestions, and the usual measure of mistrust and self-distancing from someone that they don’t know if they are dangerous, or just maybe won’t always be around. It hurts beyond words to have to describe everything I have been through to make someone understand, but it hurts even worse when that flow of information changes nothing. It is not fun to be told what is best for you by people that don’t understand you, and this year has been filled with that. People are always ready to give advice and say that if I need anything to let them know, they are hardly ever ready to call out of the blue just to see if I am ok. It’s funny when the voices that tell you what you should be doing were never there when the voices in your head were telling you much more loudly what to do.
Every day, I wear a bracelet I made in the hospital over a year ago. It’s simple, I mean it was made in the crafts room in a psych ward. It’s eighteen beads on an elastic band, sixteen black and two white placed between each set of eight black beads. I remember thinking to myself when I made that bracelet that the black was all of the darkness in my soul, everything horrible in my mind, everything that I am damned for. The white was there to remind me that I am still on the edge, that I am not yet beyond saving. It’s become my totem, my constant reminder of who I am.
Blackness dominated this year, with only a few points of white breaking up the monotony of being caught in your own mind. I can’t look back and say this was a good year, even though I am in a better place than when it started. I learned some tricks to keep things in check, and I made some adjustments to make life actually livable; but nothing erases the horrible memories from this year that play in my mind when I close my eyes and try to sleep. It’s not even entirely mental. I hate looking in the mirror we have in our bedroom, to see what all of this has done to me physically. The little scars, the stretch marks, the extra weight, and the look in my eyes like I’ve lived much more than a year in 2021. I’m trying to apply the radical acceptance I learned in therapy, but it’s hard when you can’t separate yourself from how much you hate what you’ve become.
Still, I am trying to cling to hope. The voices are still here with me, but I know now how to lower their volume. The intrusive thoughts still come up, but I can put them in their box, or at least most of the time I can. I’m not ashamed of the scars anymore, and I don’t care anymore about the stares and second-looks they bring with them. Leaving my program didn’t end everything, it just meant I was ready to walk with one less crutch. I will live with this for however long I make it in this life, and that’s ok. I have no other life to live, and I don’t think I could see the world in any other way. I don’t think I even want to have a different kind of vision, if I wasn’t different I don’t think I would even be writing in the first place.
I have a job interview tomorrow, and my first appointment with my new psychiatrist. I am taking the steps to make this new year a better one, but I still can’t see as far ahead as I used to, and that’s ok. If I can make it through the day and accomplish something, if I can take it one step at a time, I’m in a lot better position than I was when 2021 first started. This year wasn’t perfect, it honestly really sucked most of the time, but it was necessary. If I hadn’t made the choices I did a year ago, I know I wouldn’t have made it to 2022 to write this. The past is ultimately just the past, and it’s never going to happen again (well, it will in my mind probably); my present doesn’t have to be dictated by it. I can write whatever I want for this life of mine, I don’t need to stay stuck in that place anymore. I can only hope that this year is better than the last, and take the steps to try and make that happen. I still have hope, and that’s more than I had a year ago. If I just have that, I think I’ll make it out ok.
Happy New Year from Houston to Holy Land, I hope you keep reading, I hope I keep writing, and I hope we can share something together. This whole endeavor is about connection, and I hope I can do just that with what comes next.
Much love.