I should tell you now that I’m self-diagnosed. After taking a self-assessment test online, attending online seminars, and living with this hell for over a year and a half, I feel qualified to make that assessment. At its worst, I had close to 200 wounds at once, across both arms, both shoulders, my upper legs, my chest, and my lower back. I know. I counted them.
This year – 2021 – is the year of big milestones for me. In 20 days, I turn 50. And at the end of the year, if I’m fortunate enough to still be here, I’ll be honoring 20 years since my breakdown. 20 years of borrowed time that I never would have experienced had it not been for a suicide plan interrupted. Twenty years of life on a level I could never have imagined. I…
In his inauguration speech, President Biden spoke of our “cascading crises.” He mentions the pandemic, financial inequity, systemic racism, climate change, and the tenuous role of the US in the world in the post-Trump era. He also spoke of “an attack on our democracy and untruth.”
While he never mentions Trump by name, I would argue that we should add “recovering from Trump and his administration” to the list of traumas we have been juggling for far too long at this point.
It’s complicated. This family. This photo taken during the first family reunion, a celebration of Dad’s birthday. One of the very rare times most of his children were in the same room together. His son Gary is missing, having died from complications due to AIDS decades before. And now Junior, the one in the very center of the photo, has passed due to COVID. I hadn’t spoken with Junior since Dad’s funeral 13 years ago…
My father, as fathers often do, taught me many things. He did not teach me how to ride a bicycle or how to swim. He did, however, teach me how to make shoes from banana leaves (in case I was ever a prisoner of war in the jungles of Vietnam and needed to escape). He taught me how to land safely from a great height so that I could jump out of airplanes into enemy territory. He taught me how to kill someone with a plastic straw.
I’m worried about being exposed. About being asked, “why can’t you be normal?”. About being made fun of for having what is perceived as a peculiar interest or hobby. Like reading. Or studying.
If those examples are confusing, let me explain.
Rituals and routines have had the second greatest impact on my life in 2020. The largest impact was therapy (as much as I thought I didn’t still need it). But for a reason that perhaps might be surprising. It was helpful because I heard myself repeatedly say that I was doing really well. That I was coming to appreciate who I am. That I felt like I was whole, rather than broken. And someone who is healing rather than someone who is damaged.
…Like a swimmer no longer struggling to keep from drowning, I become aware of how much the salty seas sting. The temptation to choose happiness (as touted by talk shows, books, magazine and blog articles) is compelling, as are the many distractions of technology and entertainment. Yet there is something about sitting with the sadness, with the disquieting sensation of the imminent crying that is sure to happen if I don’t actively work to avert it…
“Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.” – Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
To be whole is not to be unbroken, is not to be perfect, is not to be well balanced. It does not mean that all my goals have been reached, my desires fulfilled, my expectations met. It does not mean that I have found God, lost my demons, eat vegan/local/paleo/organic. It does not mean that I have my shit together, meditate daily, move for at least 30 minutes 3 times a week…