The Orange Ceiling

It's been three weeks since the election results, and I still can't come to grips with what has happened.

I woke up on November 9th feeling lost and grieved. Texts from friends across the world flooded my phone with fear and empathy and horror. Oh God, what have we done?

In my office and in my family, I hear people talk of his policies. That's how they justified casting their vote for the Grabber. At best, I hear the phrase, "lesser of two evils." At worst, I hear actual praise of him. My heart is grieved to its very core that this is who we've become.

They say it's not about who they are as a person; it's about what they will do in policy.

In my job, I am known as the "face" of the university.
I dress, walk, talk, and make myself think as such. No matter where I go, no matter what I do--especially when I am on the job--I am conscious of  that responsibility.
I may be the best at my job, the most thorough and practically compassionate, but if my words and behavior are ugly, then that is what people see and what people will believe the university I stand for is.

In the same way, the principle is true across the globe. They see him first. They hear him first. My God, follow the man on Twitter if you don't understand my point. We are being led by a hissy-fit of a man.

My Hispanic minority friends are afraid.
My LGBTQ minority friends are afraid.
My foreign friends are afraid.
My female friends are afraid.

Just before the election, I was in a Walmart and was sexually harassed. These guys just followed me through the whole store cat-calling and making comments and laughing to themselves because they saw how clearly uncomfortable they were making me.

When I got back in the car, I had myself a long, angry rant. Right now, we have a president who has made decisions I do not always agree with, but I know, at the end of the day, he is a good man who promotes kindness and mutual respect.
The man who is now our president elect has been caught on camera bragging about how he can do whatever he wants to women because he is a powerful man.

Any God-fearing man who can imagine himself explaining what "grabbing [a woman] by the pu**y" to their young daughter means when she asks and can still put himself behind that man is a disgrace.

Adults should know better. They may use a truly awful man to justify their choices, but kids don't know any better. The leaders of our country help shape who they become. We now have chosen a model for behavior that communicates to them that sexual misconduct and disrespect is normal and acceptable in society, just as long as you're in the power seat.

We have a Republican house and senate. They hate Hillary enough that they would have curbed anything nutty. Now, though, we have an absolute whack-job in the hot seat of the same party. A man who got grounded from his Twitter account in the final days of the election because he was making a fool of himself is now in charge of the nuclear codes.

I hope to God I am wrong. I hope his unbelievably horrendous behavior is beaten out of him as the reality of this new position sinks in. Until then, we pray, we seek peace, we choose not to completely lose it in political conversations with our families, and we hope tomorrow will be different.

In Decembers

In Decembers, I miss God.

I recognize that that's an odd sentiment to share (and to have) but it's the closest way I can think to communicate how I feel.

Belfast and I have reconciled. We are good friends now. My second semester there was beautiful in every way, and even the first semester was necessary.

But in Decembers....I get in my own head. Can't shake it.

Decembers taste like unending, UK-attempted green bean casserole, apples, puzzle dust, cold tea, grief, and vomit. It smells like I need to shower. It sounds like "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" and "Dark Horse" and songs I still can't listen to. It feels like darkness crushing into each cell.

Last December, I spent my time with friends at graduation in Belfast, laughing with my housemates, loving and being loved by my handsome boyfriend, holding my family. It was a good time.

This December, I'm so happy at work, at home, in Tulsa. I am so blessed. I am so happy.

and yet.
and yet.

In Decembers...I feel it all. As though nothing present were present.
As though I were still there.

Still alone.
Still dying.

Which, I recognize, seems like an incredibly hyperbolic thing to say. But I never felt as dead-souled as then. In all the other months, I don't think about it, I don't feel about it, I don't write about it. In this month, though, it is around every email, song choice, nap, bend in my drive.

You know when you're sick and all you want is your mom?
No matter your age or situation, your mom is your first instinct to call out for. You want her. You need her.

Even though I'm better--wonderful, in fact--that's how I feel. I feel sick. My mom wasn't there, couldn't be there, the first time it happened. The one who took care of me--geez. the only one in that whole stinking country who cared about me, it seemed at the time--was God.

So now, when I feel sick at heart and soul from feel-backs and uncontrollable sentiments, I miss God. We aren't separated, but we aren't together in the same way.

My mom and I talk all the time. We go shopping, we enjoy one another, but our relationship is very different when I'm ill.

It's the same with God. We spend time together, but it just isn't the same kind of need.

Either way, here I am. Feeling. Sick at heart with no reason to be. Missing God, and thankful for my savior. Thankful to have been saved and loved and have my life and my favorite country redeemed.

Prozac Nation: A Confession of Allegiance

Today, I am starting anti-depressants.

It's a decision I have made willingly but have a history of staunchly refusing for the majority of my life.

No, I'm not depressed, but episodes of depression, headaches, nausea, and a whole host of other symptoms have added up to a long, frustrating history with chronic anxiety.

Whether it's social anxiety or the anxiety disorder I've been struggling to conceal since I was a child, anxiety has dominated most every conversation and interaction and self-reflection I've ever had.

I have long feared making this decision because I feared the consequences of what would happen if I were to go off of the medication. Would I be plunged into an even deeper pit than before I started them?

I think I was also scared of feeling "normal."
I've never felt normal.
My happiest moments in life have all been tinged with anxiety. Happiness in itself scares me. I've always worried that if I'm happy, it just means that unhappiness is about to catapult itself toward me in the subsequent moments.

I've gone to counseling, I've joined support groups, I have an accountability partner from group I don't even know the last name of, I've coped, I've exercised, I've gotten fidget tools, I've taken homeopathic helpers, I've prayed. It. Doesn't. Help. Not long-term, at least.

There's a weird mentality about being Christian that if I am a good enough Christian, if I pray hard enough, if I am prayed over, then this will subside. There's a mentality that this is spiritual warfare, not serotonin.

The truth is, this doesn't have anything to do with my faith:
I love God.
I lack the necessary amounts of serotonin receptors.
It is as uncomplicated as that.

I've never wanted to start them in the midst of a major depressive episode because that would be admitting defeat. If there's one thing anyone knows about me, it's that I'm tenacious. I'm insanely tenacious. If I can fix it, I will fix it.

Another frustration in friends and family pushing pills is that they don't deal with my anxiety. They may deal with the effects of my anxiety, but they have no idea what my disorder feels like. They just want me to chill the heck out.

You aren't taking pills! You don't know!!! Don't sell me on something you know nothing of other than researching them.

A year ago, I joined a support group. It's all online, just enough to troll through responses and whatnot. Through that, I met Lubs. She and I are similar ages, struggle with the same thing at the same level of severity, and get on really well. I never went back to the forums after that; we communicate, commiserate, and collaborate.

Her symptoms temporarily subsided around 6 months or so ago, and we lost touch.
Last week, she reappeared and we started our talks again. She had tried all that I had as well and finally had given in to trying medication for her anxiety.

For me, now, the timing is perfect. I'm still striving against my anxiety, but I'm not debilitated. I have a friend who is starting this process with the same struggles I do. I have camaraderie and I have sensibility. No one is pressuring me. It's finally my choice.

Shocker, I'm worried.
What is life without anxiety? Or rather, what is life with chemical stabilization?

I guess I'll find out.

Reimagined Dragons

Tiny humans are the worst.

Not short people, though I'm sure there are some terrible short people, and I don't appreciate it when two heightless people stand on either side of me and talk. I can't hear a dang thing up here in the troposphere. 

I'm talking about small children. 

Walmart/Aldi/Movie Theaters/Parks/Pools just all the things. They're sticky, they scream (oh Lord they scream), and they decide that your approaching car is the perfect moment to run into the street. 

Sometimes, I think, "Parenthood, that sounds like a thing I want in on someday." 

Then I go to the grocery store and see a mom with four tiny monsters running around shrieking like they're being kidnapped because they can't buy a box of sugar-based breakfast food (because they need more energy reserves) and bless God for my current celibacy. 

After my most recent run-in (run from) involving the small jam-covered ones, I decided to re-brand them. 

You know what I think are cute? Dragons. They're adorable. Have you ever seen "Dragon Tales" or "How to Train Your Dragon"? Just the cutest. Baby dragons are all bumping around, accidentally breathing fire, shrieky, and clumsy. Precious. 

Since then, I've started pretending that horrible little children are just baby dragons, and they have become so much more tolerable to me. 

Sometimes, it takes a change of perspective. 

You'll never catch those grammar errors in your paper, you've been looking too long. Change the font and try again. 

You never noticed the homeless people in your own city before but change the venue and they're everywhere. 

It's easier, I think, to notice and to have compassion for that which we have had little exposure to, like the irony in "The Help" where the white women are raising money for the starving children in Africa but neglect to recognize as barely even human the black folk who serve them. 

It isn't right, and it isn't fair, but you may not even recognize the disparity in your thinking. That doesn't give you an excuse, but it does help give some context to what may appear to others as hypocritical. 

I know my baby dragon theory is fanciful and silly, but occasionally, re-branding the familiar (even to whimsical levels) can help you appreciate or "see" just a little bit more clearly. 

Supposed to be Happy

Three times in the past two months, I have felt shame.

It shouldn't count, I know it shouldn't. I should be able to shake it off, shake off my "image" and embrace the reality of who I am and what I have been.

And when you're in the midst of it, sometimes it's easier to embrace it because you are incapable of fabricating another reality for yourself.

When you're out of the middle, you deaden the memory and try to live as though it didn't happen, try to prevent those around you from knowing the full extent of your darkness.

The worst part is, unlike drugs and alcohol addiction or eating disorders or the like, depression doesn't look good on a Christian testimony resume.

Depression makes people nervous.

They don't know how to respond.

Partly because it's not something that ends; it's something that becomes managed.
The potential for it to rear back up induces anxiety.

When we speak, we are not seeking for your pity, we are not seeking for you to feel bad for us retrospectively or to "hurt" with us. Not usually. And if we do, it's not to make ourselves feel better but to help you get some perspective as a human being.

Don't look at me like I'm a limping puppy on the side of a highway.

We're speaking the reality of who we are.

Belfast.

You have been my friend and enemy alike.

Students who don't know me want to follow my example and follow me to the Emerald Isle.

And for the fourth time this semester, I have been asked for my advice and to speak on my experience.

The first time, I was in the class I'm auditing. The topic of the day was clinical depression, and the professor (who is a friend of mine) asked me to speak on the "Dark Night of the Soul" and my hole of depression. Of course I spoke, but I was shocked, as I was speaking, how clearly I began to re-feel, though I had shut those emotions down for so long. It was like muscle memory. I spent my night wrecked, absolutely wrecked, near to the point of vomiting with grief. Took me completely off-guard.

The second time, a student who had been there with me asked for my advice.
While there, I had been so cloistered and such a whipping girl, that they did not understand me nor what my experience was like as compared to theirs.
I do not speak to those students.
The person who was their RA is not me. It was this weird depressive alter-ego of me that only existed for a year. I can't face them. I am ashamed.

We met and talked for multiple hours, as I explained to her the different levels of thought she needs to consider before making the same move as I did.
She's seriously dating someone. How serious is she about that? Because you can't make half-baked life decisions that take you across the globe without taking them into consideration or hearing out their opinion. It gets messy.
She's prone to depression. That concerned me. Climate is a HUGE aspect of living there.

You can't just think about the academic program and the "adventure" and the story you'll be able to tell people. Life is not a fairy tale. You have to live it day by day, hour by hour, both with those you love and completely alone.

And, while I tried to remain objective in speaking about the different categories she needed to think about, my own life colored behind the facts, and she looked at me with this face...

The third put me on a panel of other graduated and post graduated English majors (JBU graduates) in front of the English faculty and current English students.

We spoke on the process of applying to postgraduate programs and what they are like to be in.
They were specifically interested in me, the international student.

The moderating professor, who knew me well as a fiery student with enormous plans and enormous love, pushed and pushed and pushed with very specific questions, first to the whole group then to me personally, until finally I had to admit my whys.
Why I had had to come back home for a bit in December/January.
Why I was no longer dating Noah.
Why I was back at JBU and not at Denver Seminary.

And the whys are just so messy, and even without admitting any of the specifics, admitting to people I had been viewed by as so strong and passionate, was shameful.

Then it ended.
Then the looks.
Then the gentle hand on my arm.
Then the car ride to Fayetteville to Bible study and the gush of tears and shadows I couldn't help.

Such pieces of me I want to forget.
Such pieces of me, if forgotten, will recur.

I needed to change, and I needed Jesus so badly to wreck into me.
But there are things too sacred even to remember, especially to admit to people who cannot possibly understand the heart of what you are trying to communicate.

God is good.
and maybe also, Think clearly about enormous life choices. 

That is my message.

You hear:
Depression sucks. Feel so bad for me and my misery. 

The fourth is yet to come. I've just received an email from a student, on referral from her history professor. What am I to say?
Her mere email is enough to bring tears to my eyes, in anticipation for the way it will drag my heart through its own muck.

My mother and boyfriend would chastise me with something to the tune of, "People don't need to know everything, Jamie."
Duh. I'm not some kind of self-named martyr with an agenda to broadcast her past wounds, but I am honest. And I answer questions with honesty.

Sometimes, though, that honesty makes me feel very small. Very very small.