Being Human and Mental Illness pt 4

Some thoughts that came to me recently on my journey with neurodivergence, masking, needing others, and solitary self acceptance. I had originally thought of posting this to my private FB account, but what the hell. Share and share alike.

Recently my core partner Charlie expressed something quite thought provoking to me, he said:

“I had no idea before living with you that you were so ADD”

He didn’t mean this in a bad way, just in a matter of fact sort of way. For clarity, I struggle with depression, mild to strong bouts of dissociation, HOH, and ADD – the latter of the two I have only come to awareness with in the past five years. Through this process I’ve learned through my own digging, and doctors agreements, that these are things I’ve struggled with for a long time, so why notice them now? Or why recently?

Another thing that came to me after he spoke was a reflection that I got shortly after I started dating Charlie. Basically friends there were closer to me, reflected that they felt for the first time they were really starting to get past my layers, and actually

“Know Mya, as opposed to just AppleCat”

Mya, AppleCat, Fable, ETC these are all names that over the years I’ve taken on, all parts of me I’ve used to amplify, regulate, or hide other parts of me. Masks, not ingenuine ones, but actual masks made of me. Mostly. So masking, is to ‘perform’ social behaviour that is deemed to be more ‘neurotypical’ or hiding behaviour that might be viewed as socially unacceptable. It’s something I originally understood to be an Autistic trait, and am recently learning is not restricted to ASD, but most people that are neurodivergent. Which I am, and that doesn’t make me broken or made wrong as I had previously convinced myself, it just means I am made differently than what is typical.

When Charlie reflected this to me it sent me into a mental rabbit hole.

“How long have I been hiding myself away and why?”

“What did I base these masks from, and why did I see them as more powerful?” “

How can I learn to love, regulate, and make space for all of these aspects of myself? Even the ones I’ve manufactured myself?”

I recall being a silly, playful, chatty, impulsive, intelligent, passionate, energetic child, and even into my early teens I remember being these things. I used to love sharing interests, making friends, making up extravagant stories in my head when I was alone, and collecting things (I always had a thing I was obsessed with collecting, stuffed animals, sailor moon cards, troll dolls, polly pockets, etc – this is one thing about me that continued on into my teens and adult life. I love collecting things, and showing them off proudly to other people). But over the course of time these things became unsavoury, uncool, or just plain weird to others, and at the worst they even made me vulnerable to harm.

I grew up headstrong, and often put myself in unsafe situations, I was often the goofy dorky one, conversing with words “too big” but at the same time kind of naive, I couldn’t focus in school, and once I was pegged as a “bad kid” the public school system just kind of stopped giving much of a shit. I was pushed from alternative school to alternative school, never made close friends, and over time I changed. And when I changed people started to gravitate to me again.

I was cold, cool, brooding, sassy, edgy, intelligent, clever, and always one to have control of my surroundings. All along I figured this was just my natural progression out of being “childish”, because being a grown up meant actually acting like one, being a bad kid meant I could be a bad girl, and people liked bad girls. I felt powerful again. But not fully like myself.

Self stimulating myself with music and prerecorded nature sounds (rain in particular) was my saving grace, and often it was what would bring me back into feeling like myself again. There was a rare occasion you would see me without my headphones, and if I left the house forgetting them, or couldn’t find them, I would panic, or just not leave the house at all. Without music, I couldn’t (can’t) keep up feeling normal enough to even leave the house.

It’s interesting to me, I thought about it a lot last night and I think I may have modelled much of my personality around two of my Mom’s friends. One I always admired, Kathleen, she was witchy, redheaded, scholarly, cold, cheeky, erotic, and career driven. The second was a roommate of Mums, Jules, she was edgy, alternative as all hell, she swore a lot, wore lots of shiny leather, she was sexy, raunchy, and clever in all the right ways. These two women, to me as a little girl, always left me in awe. They came across as shining beacons of feminine strength. At least in my little girl eyes at least, I imagine they were just as fucked up as any of us are.

To be honest I think I had crushes on them both, which adds an extra piece of weirdness to the situation, but I digress.

So, for a long time this worked, in fact I proceeded in some pretty cold and apathetic ways with little regard for the consequences but I was always able to charm my way out of being accountable. I wasn’t a bad person, I just had a hard time caring if my actions impacted others negatively, I had a hard time believing I had impact whatsoever. I understand now that I struggled with periodic mental dissociation from childhood, but it was around the time when I became “bad” and “cool” after having suffered various traumatic instances and personal betrayals, that I really started to emotionally dissociate. The unfortunate part of this was that it felt good to escape my emotions, I was so fucking sensitive, empathic and unable to make boundaries, that just turning things OFF felt like freedom.

It wasn’t, I had literally autonomically locked aspects of myself away bit, by bit, by bit. My masking was such a thick array of edginess, pop culture, apathy, cleverness, and charm that I could barely tell who I was anymore.

And then I gave birth to Bun, and my heart grew 100 sizes, I couldn’t hold back the grief, the joy, the play, the love, the EMPATHY any longer. I was not prepared, I loved her so much, and loving her the way I did, loving her so fucking much, catapulted me from the centre of my own world, taught me I could love others so much as well, shattered my illusions of apathy, and resulted me in a postpartum depressed hell that lasted nearly two years. In that aftermath I was left, a single mother, alone, surrounded by the shrapnel of my faces not knowing who the hell I was, how to be a mom, how to be a human, or what the hell I was going to do with my life, now OUR life.

There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, more heart expanding and grief soaked than being a parent. That isn’t an ache that goes away, its just one that you grow accustomed to.

I stumbled, a lot, and regularly fell back into emotional dissociation and depression. Continuing to make impulsive choices, allowing people in a little more but still being closed off. Lover after lover was enamoured with me (so quirky!), but each lamented that they didn’t actually feel needed by me, I would respond with of course I need you……but really I didn’t believe it.

I had lived such a lonely life, with few close friends, even less adults able to support me, and lovers left, even when they said they wouldn’t, and they often took their friends and family with them. Why should I need that when I had built a ship just big enough just for me and my daughter? Why the fuck should I need anyone when I’ve learned to endure my daily struggle as if it were as normal as brushing my teeth or getting dressed for the day. Because this was typical? This depression, this dissociation, these maniacally focused interests, these night terrors, this incredible difficulty learning things that didn’t interest me; that was normal so why should I burden people with it?

The idea that I had ADD rarely even occurred to me, the last thing I wanted was to admit to another thing that made me broken. Because I felt that way, like I was going through life, held together by rubber bands and masking tape (hah see what I did there?) and somehow people bought it, and as for the people that didn’t buy it, I would just push them away.

Fucking perfect.

My heart kept growing, and over the early years of my 20s I found myself in some of the most beautiful and clumsy ways, I found loves of my life, I found creative sparks, I had my heart beautifully shattered, I found and built community. I found people worth sticking around for, I found people, I allowed them in a little more. I was anxious, and shy, and closed off. I had never even heard of dissociative disorders, but I understood that sometimes I would seem energetically THERE, and other times I just couldn’t be, I was locked away in increments even to myself. And still when my lovers and friends would speak to me they would still lament:

“I feel like you don’t need me, I don’t know how to support you, how can I love you better?”

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

Or sometimes from a near stranger at an event

“You know, you throw great parties but you come across as a real cold bitch.”

I’m not, god damn it I’m just so shy sometimes.

Some more time passed, I found a partner that met me in many ways that I had never been met before, we traveled, built, learned, created, and wondered together. As well I found additional chosen family, or cultivated further deepness with those I already had, and slowly my masking shifted, it didn’t stop, but I just continued to add pieces of myself to it, over time I felt safer and safer stepping into this collage of me.

But still, “you’re so closed off.”

Now, I don’t want to credit Charlie for personally spearheading bringing me out of my shell, as my other partner at the time, and dear chosen family had been working at it for years prior. But, it seems that Charlie had a particular ingredient, he met me in a particular way, one that I needed to feel safe enough so that people started to notice a palpable difference. Perhaps it also was in part having these two primary partners meet me in the ways all my neurodivergent fragments and masks needed to feel met, maybe.

Maybe no one person can actually make ANYONE feel safe enough to fully be themselves, even in a monogamous structure, we need people around us to hold that fucking space and to adhere to the various and multifaceted parts of us.

Anyway people started to comment:

“Mya is being more present, silly, playful, chatty, intelligent, passionate, energetic etc” – As you recall, little girl me was also these things.

Unfortunately this made the contrast when I would dissociate or get depressed so much greater. More noticeable, and the worst of all, a hell of a lot harder for me to hide from people. One day a dear friend of Charlie and I expressed a wondering about me and asked if I had ADD, as I presented a lot of the same mannerisms he did as a ND person. I responded with a fair amount of insult and defensiveness, again my “broken” stigma came up. Thankfully after some time said friend and others offered me constructive and supportive resources and information. It was then that I started to see my own struggles reflected in my daughter and realized this issue was far bigger than myself. Although starting with disentangling myself from my own reluctance was a good place to begin.

My masking didn’t stop here, people just started to accept it as a part of me. I sadly lost some friends because of it, because I would be super present, and then suddenly I could not be present at all. Understandably, that is a difficult character trait to have in a friend. And without a certain amount of understanding around it, a hurtful one to have to endure.

As I started to regulate myself into a more comfortable space I unconsciously allowed myself to express to some that I actually DO need people to not struggle throughout the day.

I would be honest about my memory loss, openly search for the things I would lose track of, sometimes the same item, sometimes several times a day.

Instead of just walking away, I would ask why the hell I was in the kitchen (or whatever room I had just walked into), because I genuinely didn’t know.

I would ask for support in learning a new difficult to me thing, as opposed to just not bothering, even when I would get increasingly frustrated with myself and sometimes the supportive person.

I would be honest in my struggles with depression, and more recently ask for forgiveness and understanding when I would dissociate.

I would be honest about the somatic brain “zaps” and “short circuits” I felt sometimes when struggling with a concept (often with me math, or linear planning)

I would quell my advert need for independence and perfectionism and allow friends to support my offerings.

Honestly, it’s kind of embarrassing. The fact that I felt the need, potentially from childhood, to conceal these things (even from myself) clearly conveying a significant struggle really shows the immense depth of my wounding around needing others, and as well what an utterly stubborn woman I am. Because damn it, people want to support, people want to help, and people want to feel as if they matter in the lives of the people they love. It was, and remains, fucking hard to do be honest sometimes. Without people’s help I can live my life being “FINE”, I can endure my daily ND struggles just ‘fine’. Sometimes “FINE” is a necessary boundary, although most times “fine” isn’t quality of life, instead “fine” is a line drawn in the sand, “fine: is fixed glare and an unwillingness to proceed.

As my now Husband, many times Charlie has and will continue to land on the shadow side of my neurodivergence, and while I understand it is something he accepts about me, it can’t be easy. He doesn’t always accept it with grace, but he supports me as best he can and that means a lot. ADD isn’t strictly a negative, and it isn’t strictly a positive. It just is, it’s a divergent way of being that can butt heads with one’s surroundings, or amplify the beauty of things. That’s what I try to tell myself at least, I would be lying if I didn’t admit I still harbour a shitload of shame around it. I would be lying if I said I didn’t still struggle with the majority of the things I struggled with when I was a kid.

I learned later on that I unknowingly endured hearing impairment, ADD, and dissociation as a kid/teen, and picked up minor to major daily anxiety, depression, somewhere along the way. But just like the masks, these things are a part of me. It’s up to me to learn to dismantle the shame around them, manage, regulate, and love these aspects of myself. But that doesn’t mean that I have to do it alone.

On varying levels throughout life we all need help: love and support from our peers, spiritual guidance of some sort, professional therapeutic and/or medical support. I tell myself this over and fucking over again, needing these things doesn’t make us weak, but the unwillingness to admit that we do does.

Living a life consisting of daily avoidable endurance is stubborn, and in some cases (mine) selfish.

Some harsh truths, perhaps some harsh words, so it goes. What this might mean for me is that I never really feel fully known or seen. As easy as it might seem to folks who don’t struggle with opening up, I do beg for your compassion, even if you can’t relate. What is easy for one person, may be damn near impossible for another.

You can’t judge a fish not being able to climb a mountain, and can’t judge a billygoat for drowning in the deep seas.

It might be so that I have spent my life masking, and that I may never be able to release that about myself, it also could be so that it would foolish to do as such. As I said these aspects are just as much part of me now as any non fabricated trait, and as outdated as some of these mechanisms are, some of them still serve a purpose. I may always struggle with loneliness, and the contrasting need be alone, in fact I may always be a giant fucking contradicting in a lot of ways, but I think thats okay too. As long as I am willing to continuously grow my self awareness, work on my personal growth, and accept help when it is offered/needed.

So yeah,

Hi, I’m Mya, Fable, AppleCat and Ceilidh, I’m neurodivergent, prone to depression and anxiety, hearing impaired, and I struggle with mild to strong dissociation. I’m also a fucking dragon of a woman, a lighthouse, a creative mind, a loyal lover, rebellious in most of the right places, and in my own little way here to serve life and the better world that is wanting to be born. I am bit by bit teaching myself that the former things mentioned don’t make me broken, and I hope that in time, given enough work, learning, and support, I won’t have to convince myself anymore.

Maybe one day I’ll express myself just as well in person as I do in writings. We’ll see.

Being Human and Mental Illness pt 3

Being Human is a constant learning endeavour. One of which the awareness in our culture is damn near instinct. But some remember, and many more are remembering to remember. This piece was written the second week of April, 2018.

“it is in the nature of humans to forget how to be one sometimes” – Stephen Jenkinson

I forget sometimes, it is less and less that I forget as I continue my path; but sometimes it still arises. Sometimes my mental state takes me over and I forget everything about why I go on; I lose myself in “the nowhere place”.

“The Nowhere place” is a place that devours my humanness, a place that tries to convince me I am nothing but food.
This was my experience during the month of March. This past lunar cycle I felt as if I was drowning, and yet everyone around me could breath just fine. I lost my voice, and even if I had it I didn’t know how to communicate what was wrong, or what I needed. I needed something, but I had no idea what.

The nothing place whispered to me:
“Just let yourself die, your weakness is a burden. Do not let them be poisoned by the vacancy where your heart should be” and to this I nearly listened.
I felt myself fading each day, and my face becoming a plasticine mask, a twisted and posed version of myself.
My perception of what “fine” looks like.

I have a mental illness, this will never go away. It is the shadow to my passion, my artistry, my quirkiness, my inspiration, my magic. Sometimes I will go 10 years without a deep depression, sometimes it will be just a few months a part. But this is part of me, and loving me means loving me when I am ill. I’m not saying this for you to hear, I am proclaiming it so I can read it over and over again. I am not broken, I am just a little scribbly sometimes.

Two Fridays ago I hit a rock bottom, I say “A” rock bottom because I am clever enough to know that every rock bottom as a trapdoor where you can fall further. But I had spent a month falling, descending into this particular rock bottom. Alone, and imprisoned by my own thoughts; for the first time in 6 years I felt as if I was watching myself from the ceiling, in shock by whomever had taken the wheel of my body. This was it, the crescendo of my manic breakdown, and I had little to no control over it. Those of you that know me well know that control is my favourite thing to have, and the thing I often need to let go of the most.

That evening for the first time in 6 years I went what I would describe as “crazy”. My conscious voice became the voice in the back of me head, and the voices of disesteem took front and centre. I hurt myself in ways both physical and mental that I am not fully comfortable talking about in detail here. I relapsed into a place of self loathing of which I thought was long gone from my grasp. A desolate place where all that exists is me, and the wolves that I set upon myself. “Everything that is wrong with your life, and those close to you is your fault. You are a disgusting, horrible failure of a person” Those are the kind of words that exist there. Kind of a mixture of narcissism and self destruction. I don’t recommend the visit, although I imagine many of you have frequented there at some point in your life.
My voice of reason finally dug it’s way out of the hole it had fallen into and went from a murmur to a fierce scream. I stopped myself before doing anything too damaging, and while I came out physically a little more broken, mentally I had a clarity that I had not had in at least 6 weeks.

I had been possessed by the ghost of who I used to be, perhaps because I never allow anyone to hear the stories of the things that happened to her. I have buried my stories of trauma and pain from the fear of being burdensome, finally the ghost of past me snapped. She wanted to be heard, to be seen, and she still does. What happened to her was not okay. This mixed with the recent deaths in my chosen family, the impending homelessness, and the chronic pain broke my walls down and allowed her to come crashing through.

“Travel far enough you meet yourself.” – David Mitchell

You know that meme of the cartoon dog drinking tea while his house burns down proclaiming everything is fine? Yeah that has been me as of late.

Although strangely enough once I reached that rock bottom, that dark night of the soul which called forth that clarity, things started to be actually okay externally. A beautiful (but not perfect) housing opportunity presented it’s self, my chronic pain subsided, and I started being able to write and make music again. My fear was this was a mania, that I dropped so hard that I spiked right back up. That suddenly everything was beautiful because it had to be for me to be able to survive it. It seems that is not the case though, I am present in mind and heart, I am aware that I need to speak more to close friends, and very much a counsellor who is well knowledgeable in breaking lose past traumatic events, I need to take better care of myself, and I need to allow myself to be aware that sometimes the shit hits the fan and it’s fucking okay to ask for help, even if I don’t know what that help looks like.

If I could set the words “burden”, “selfish”, and “failure” on fire I would. and I wouldn’t do it alone, I would allow everyone that has ever been hurt by those wounds of mine to also set these mother fuckers aflame. These things are ghosts, they only exist because I allow them to.

This is my underworld, last time I spent a lot of time here I wasn’t much. But now? I am a Queen in my own right. That evening was not my day to be devoured.

So I came out, alive, nearly well, and a hell of a lot more Human. The evening following this breaking I went and I performed at a good friends birthday party. Many of my old mechanisms told me I was too broken to do as such, but funnily enough another mechanism kicked in harder when i realized how horrible I would feel if I let said birthday gathering down. At my core though I wanted to be with them, through them I saw beauty, and through them I saw mirrors of myself that I couldn’t see alone. How could these amazing people love someone that wasn’t worthy of it?

Being Human it is a constant process of trial and error, humanness is an end goal that only comes with the knowing that you’ve lived a fine life and are ready to die well – dying well does not mean alone, in self loathing, and hiding from all the beautiful things that you’re able to achieve in this world. Being Human is it not something we are born with, it is something we are constantly being taught, and should we be so lucky; eventually we be able to teach. I teach on occasion, and more often I learn.
Sometimes I learn from the process of forgetting. Funny thing isn’t it?

“You’ve met me at a very strange time in my life” – Fight Club

I am a scholar of my own and other’s often clumsy humanness. I am dedicated to making mistakes, and getting back up again, I am ready to go on if even I cannot, I am cultivating the worthiness that goes far beyond my lifelines sight, but doesn’t exclude it. I don’t need to be remembered, I just want people to live in our collective wake and to continue remembering.
When we live knowingly in the wake of those that loved us enough to go on, we step into being a conscious rippling wake, or rather we become awake one could say.
Someone loved me enough to go on, and I love myself, my chosen family, my vision, and those that will come after me enough to also go on.

I am not the first, nor am I the last to struggle. But that doesn’t make my story one that shouldn’t be spoken to. So what does Mya need now? I don’t really know. To be heard, I guess that is what I am doing by sending this rock skipping into the digital ether of the internets shores.

What else? I like hugs, I like patience, I thrive on words of affirmation, and creative collaboration. I am moving to an alien to me island in two weeks and I would really like if sometimes people came to visit me, I fear my tendency to fall into my own head. I love it when people poke me to respond to messages and phone calls, but even more so when the pokes come with an understanding that my lack of response is not personal. Patience, diligence, and a love of my shadow. That is what I need. And ironically enough I am pretty sure I already have that on most parts.

I don’t know where I am going from here, but I know it’s going to be fucking harrowing, absolutely gorgeous, gratifyingly difficult, and ever curious. I have shit to do, and external/internal shifts to catalyze, I have a world to change and a me to mend. And I know for sure that I cannot do that alone.
I know that it’s speaking out like this directly after the thing has happened that will bridge the gap of my self exile.
Speaking now of my experience instead of speaking a year from now. A year from now when the story perhaps inspires and benefits you, but really doesn’t really do a whole lot for me in the realms of present me’s vulnerability. Because by then I will have already externalized it and processed it myself, and I’ll tell you holy hell am I good at doing that.
Sure it’s scary exposing your past self, but being open and honest about your present state is even more terrifying.

I am not looking for pity or attention, I am looking to be transparent and cultivate accountability with the people I care about.

I am looking to shatter the stigma that on whatever level this type of rock bottom doesn’t effect absolutely everyone.

This is me speaking, this is actually what I look like when I feel actually fine, taking the space to retrieve the pieces of myself. Kind of like when you have to clean up after a flipped board game. I won’t always be this fine, often I will be much better; and sometimes I’ll tumble as I have this past month. But if anything at all I become more and more human every damn day. With you, my fellow humans in the making.

With Deep Bows,

Being Human and Mental Illness pt 2

My relationship to music is a very intimate one. I have often said that if it wasn’t for the presence of music in my life I would be dead. Perhaps physically, perhaps just emotionally. I cannot say for sure. But I have my guesses.

Throughout life I have been dealt some heavy instances, somethings I am only now understanding where not at all okay for a child to endure. And in my darkest hours music was there for me. From my walkman, to my discman, to my ipod, to my smartphone – it was and is rare that i didn’t/don’t have my comfort blanket on hand. Music, It never hurt me, it never abandoned me, and it held me and those I held dear when no one else would – or could.

Today was a dark morning for me, Dolores O’Riordan the lead singer to The Cranberries was found dead in her hotel room late last night. I’m crushed, and a sea of torrential tears followed. Dolores was not just her music, she was a Female lead in a country that certainly didn’t encourage that, she was fierce Irish Woman battling mental illness, she was an artist and a revolutionary, she was a Mother of three, she was 46, she was a heroine of mine since I was a small girl. She was art, and her art saved my life.

In Dolores I saw my own reflection. She taught me it was okay to be a rebel, to be a poet, to be different. In the end, in her ending, Music couldn’t save her, but it saved me.

Growing up my Mother loved The Cranberries, my mother loved music in general and most of our days were filled with the shared dance that came with knowing that all we had was each other, and our music. The Cranberries, The Stone Temple Pilots, David Bowie, Queen, and SoundGarden were all a staple. Now their front people are elsewhere than in the living realm. Dead, but not really.
When things got hard, as they often did, music would blare out our car window as we drove, just drove anywhere and listened to music. When my Mom and Stepdad’s domestic abuse would reach a crescendo, music would cradle us in our shared strife. Music was a Mother to me when my own Mother couldn’t be there, Music was her Mother too. The Cranberries often took this space. Her heartfelt Celtic wails cascading over our shared sorrowing. It encouraged nourishment, grieving, and going forward – only because of the fodder these sounds provided us.

I found home only in my Mother, but something in Dolores’s songs, in her voice reminded me of a home I had not felt yet. It reminded me that revolution, courage and endurance ran through my veins. That I was put on this earth to be brave, that I was put here to receive and to give back ten fold.

Fast forward to me, age 15 – I’m sad, I’m lost and I have no fucking idea what am doing. I need guidance, I need support, I need something – but I am alone, scared and in that strange place in-between being a child and an adult. I reach a space of breaking, and for the first time in my life I go further than just contemplating suicide. In the Fall of my 15th year I took every pill in my house and waited for death to retrieve me, I was tired – and now looking back I understand that I was more tired than any girl my age should have been. The world was on my shoulders and I didn’t know how to ask for help. So I waited, and I listened to music. I listened to The Cranberries album “No need to argue” on repeat, and I cried whilst clutching my “last slurpee”. Melodramatic, hell yes. I never claimed anything different.

The immense physical pain hit, and the music played on. In my delirium it sounded as if she was singing to me, good gods I just wanted a strong, kind, Woman to sing to me. She sang her sonnets, these songs that effected me in a way I had no capacity to understand at that point. And suddenly my breaking point hit a wall; No. I didn’t want to die, I really didn’t. I just wanted someone to sing to me, hold me, and to empower me to make change in my own way. I just wanted a world where people would sing to each other when things became broken. I called 9-1-1 and they were there within 10 minutes.

I lived, obviously – and while I would like to say I was healed completely, I cannot boast such a thing. There were many other slip ups over the next ten years, the scars on my body only a minor reflection of the scars inside. But I was a little bit healed, and a lot less dead than I had planned. Bonus!
Music, has always been the salve that enabled me to pick myself up again, music has saved my life so many times. My desire was only to return that favour with my own artistic expression.

But Dolores is dead, and while this is shattering news to me I am proud that I do not feel the need to join her. We live in a world that does not know how to tend to the mentally ill, A world that sees it as something to be swept under the rug, as a cultural burden. This is bullshit, as it was the culture it’s self that enabled these woundings.

I woke up this morning and I sobbed for an hour, at first I sobbed for her death, and then I sobbed with terror – if she one of my heroines could not do it, then how the fuck could I? Much like I felt when Michael Stone and Chris Cornel had lost their battle with mental illness. They were so strong, how could I possibly keep fighting a battle they lost? And then I cried for her Children, I cried for her fans, her band, and then the plethora of people in the world that felt weaker knowing she had succumbed to her grief.

And then I cried for my mother, she was my best friend, my sister, my home – and now we are estranged. I cried because I knew somewhere, she was crying too.

I miss my mom, I miss Dolores, and I miss all my dead heroes.

But I still have their music. In addition to that I have my own. and perhaps that is the only respectful form of immortality available to us. One day, I will die, I will feed life with my death and that is proper; but perhaps having lived in such a way that the music and art flowed through me authentically I would be offered the ability to keep giving after my dying. Much like Dolores has.

Her death was too soon, I will not fuck around and say otherwise. She lived in a sad world, one that we all lived in – and she gave until she could not anymore.

I have much to give, far past my young age, far past her age of 46, I have shit to do and a world to fill with art and love. And I promise you I will not do this alone.

There are no lone wolves in the wild, lone wolves die.

Thank you Dolores, thank you so god-damn much for holding me and the others that you did, in the way that you did. Thank you for stirring my ancestral memory as you did, thank you for fighting as you did, thank you for the revolution. We will continue on where you left off.

In my blood there is music, art, magic, power, grief and an infinite amount of love. And god damn it one day I will be in my 90’s telling my great grandchildren all the stories I have been fated to collect. Surrounded by the living, and surrounded by my dead.

This I promise you.

Being Human and Mental Illness – Pt 1

This was first written inspired by Self Harm Awareness day. In the spirit of taking some of my greatest wounds and transmuting them into my greatest gifts. This is my consistent practice, and my ever pushed edge.

TW: Self Harm, Depression, Mental Illness etc

#SelfHarmAwarenessDay – seems kind of trite doesn’t it? But I would put forth a wager that the part of me that believes this triteness, is also the part of me that doesn’t like to talk about these things. Not in regards to myself at least.

Self harm, what a vastly misunderstood subject. I’ve been exploring through my thoughts on the experiences and pain that many of us share – yet seem to continue thinking are completely individual to each other. I’ve come to understand we cling to individualizing pain because we attach ourselves to it, see it as what defines us.
“I am not in pain, I am pain, and as such I am in control.”

I’ve been sifting through on my own ordeals of doing that exact same thing – my previous refusals to release the sovereignty of trauma. As if it was the only that actually made me special.
So if not the individual, where does it come from? Oh gosh thats a pandoras box of a question. Let’s open it just a crack.

The disregard and nonchalance that our society scoffs upon those openly experiencing loneliness, depression and acts of self-harm is abhorrent. The act of pushing away our psychologically injured is an obvious banishing of a bigger cultural mirror, one most would rather not accept. We all feel this ache, some just feel it louder, some feel it for those who can’t. Often it’s those who can’t bring themselves to feel their ache that offer the most apathy around the subject of “mental illness” and self harm.
Self Harm is much more than a cry for help or attention – it’s a deep festering cultural wound that touches us all. Perhaps thats why many are so reluctant to talk about it without triggering an influx of medicinal adhesives and pillow talk of “Shhh it’ll all be okay”.
What has befallen a peoples of whom it has come to this level of toxic concealment?

Let me make something very clear, not all people who inflict self harm upon themselves are suicidal. More often than not they aren’t seeking death; they are seeking release, punishment, and sometimes even sanctification. This isn’t always true, but often it is. Many people who practice self harm feel so fucking much, and they have no idea where to put those feelings – so they bleed them out.

Another note: self harm is a huge umbrella statement, most people think of solely cutting/burning/etc. Self harm is exactly that, an act of escapism that is hurtful to the self. This could be, alcohol/drugs, workaholism, eating disorders, bad relationships, etc. It all comes down to escape, punishment, distraction, pain.

After copious years of self harms prominence in our western world, I see it now as learned behaviour. Passed down through generations. It’s very much developed in to genetic and environmental trauma.This is far too big to be swept under the rug of demanded and addictive positive thought. Addiction to positive thought can too be a form of self harming escapism. Isn’t that a twist?

It’s not a coincidence that in a culture devoid of elders, initiation rites and village that 1 in 12 of youth teeter towards suicidal thoughts and acts of self harm…. of which generally starts around puberty. It isn’t a coincidence that those the least valued in our culture are the most prone to suicide, those two being teens and the elderly.

We all ache. Some of us wear it on the outside, some of us hide it. Hoping to the powers that be

“Please don’t let them find out I am broken, please don’t let them leave me”

That’s the core of it all really, feeling broken, fearing being alone, feeling so fucking much, all of the time. As if feeling made us broken.

This isn’t some ambiguous story I’m speaking about, this is my story.

For over 15 years, starting at age 12 I consciously self harmed. Even today only the brave ask me where all my scars came from, most just look away uncomfortable in their quiet curiosity. And those are just the scars on the outside.
Some call me brave, for speaking of these things. Yet I have barely mentioned anything of my personal story, and at this point this is all I will mention of it. Brave, maybe, tired of seeing my friends suffer? Definitely.
I see when the people who suffer speak up. They are often met with dehumanization, condescending coddling and made to feel like an infectious pariah, like infants, or burdens. The majority at large do not want to be reminded of their own shadow, their perceived life failures, and even more so want nothing to do with that of which reminds them of their mortality; especially death. Our culture is inherently deathphobic. Funny thing considering one way or another it is absolutely going to happen to us all. You would think we would have gotten used to it by now.I made it out of the deepest depths, mostly. Many of my peers are dead now, thats the damn truth of the matter. Many did not make it out, and even more will not. Something has to change – like now, yesterday even. You know it, I know it, and it’s doable; but not in conjunction with the continuous ignorant acts of peremptory blind-sightedness.
Our shadow is screaming to be acknowledged and then respectfully tended to.

We are all here together floating in space, hurting, loving, feeling, longing and creating – If we want to heal ourselves individually it’s time we start to comprehend what it means to truly heal as a collective first. What would it mean to support each other, regardless of the fearfulness that surrounds us, regardless of the mirrors that it provides.
We need to heal this together. No more heroes, no more villians, just humans doing the hard work as a collective.

As a life long advocate of extreme independence and “leave me the fuck alone I can handle my shit” syndrome this is a damn hard thing for me to say

I was wrong, this can not be done alone, I cannot do this alone. No one can, and no one should feel they should have to.

Ponderings from the essential shadows of Humanity

To be continued….