On being bipolar, on being a survivor, on just trying to live...

Grit and glamour. I was born for this sort of messy talent. I used to be some sort of messed-up god in my own eyes, so torn down and raw and fresh in every moment. I lived for what destroyed me. I resented the mundane. I came headflung into the mindfuck of my own bipolar: so vibrantly alive in every bit of my decay. I knew I was alive by the amount of pain, I repeat: by the amount of pain I was enduring at the speed I was enduring it. It became so easy - switching addictions, making memories, weaving stories. It never left me. The writing was mine, and my voice mattered. It had to matter - the thick of me broke apart with every moment. It wasn't easy being around me, but it never was - and it only got increasingly more and more difficult. And this - this I need to get off my chest: I wake up every day wondering when I'm going to start loving myself - I wonder when I'm going to be at peace with my life, when I'm going to live without feeling this gap I'm routinely trying to plug up with the stressor of the year. "The Escape Artist," I once entitled a poem, writing stream-of-conscious about some of my most difficult experiences, still burning triumphant at the end of it. I felt alive. And maybe that's what I need to get off my chest: how absurdly this all crept up on me. My own, slow, mundane dying - my own quiet climb into the predictable, into the lifeless, stressful monthly routine of bills, into the shittalking of work, into the "sensible" things where I began working more than I found myself actually enjoying life. Where I was so focused on proving to the world I could provide some sort of verifiable form of success, that I could make it - that I could refute the statistics and my labels, that I could stifle the bipolar, that I could ignore the doctors, that I could put the trauma and the trouble behind me, that I could be just as normal as everyone else.

Well FUCK everyone else. And I say that with all due respect to everyone else, but fuck everyone else. I am only one person. Or rather, I am too many people. As the statistics go, we are the summary of the five people we spend the most time with. And I've grappled with this - in too many senses to count, shouldering the burdens and the responsibility of all my potential. I made too many compromises to fit into my surrounding environment, into the environments that construct themselves around me, until I hit the point that I began writing myself out. Where every voice inside my head was telling me to be someone I'm not and I can't help but think like this:

“There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!”
- Hermann Hesse

And I think of all the labels people give me and the labels I fail to align with, the person that people would so desperately like me to be. The person it could be so easy to be, but so difficult. How flaky I became to everything and everyone that meant something to me the more I became sucked into the internalized lie: I became a walking repellant, the "should"s in life. The irony of the gifted: everyone is a critic. I think some days, most days, that it would be nice to be sane and alive - fulfilled. Rather than stuck feeling like this:

"I should have known right then that it would always be the same - I had to be madly in love or utterly revolted. No happy mediums for me! […] No compromises in life for me - I wouldn’t settle - I’d rather not go out, just live with my dreams."
Lauren Bacall, By Myself and Then Some

And I'm stuck focusing on the dysfunctional - something I used to triumph. I still remember the professor I had an altercation with who said I had the type of presence that commanded a room, that I had a talent of making the traumatic, the heart-breaking, "beautiful." I recall my friend turning to me and saying, "Victoria, every time I hear you read a poem, I want to cry because the subject is so sad, but I want to hear it again, because you write it so beautifully," and how everyone lingers onto the words I have to rip out of me. Xylophone trauma, orgasmic gonzo psychology - living in the terrains of a deliberately suicidal mindset, a guerilla warfare with russian roulette. Will I wake up manic today? Will I be okay? Will I be so severely depressed it takes me an hour to get out of bed? The survivor survives - er, lives.

You begin to hate the term survivor, because you think you survived nothing (I think I have "survived" nothing) - "survivor" implying triumph over the elements. You think, "No, I carry that shit with me everyday." There was no triumph - there was years of chaotic re-integration into "normal" life, there was learning to live with it. There was advocating for it. There was struggling to speak for others when even your own voice shook. There were too many tears - but you are, I am, not a victim either - if only because you wake up everyday to live with the truth, no matter how unbearable it becomes, how restless and uncontrolled you feel.

Either way, it feels as if you're letting some massive crowd down.

"The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees."

I am more than the moments that have made me, you want to tell yourself. This moment is for me, you want to tell yourself. "I am bigger than the sound," you'll believe - half-desperate. But the moments do not escape you - they cling with expectation, even your own expectations, which are at some point, a recognition that society has engrained it in me that no matter who or what I am, I'll never be enough. And there are times, frequently, often, mostly all of the time, when I don't want to tell people who to be, what philosophy to follow - I don't want someone else to feel their extremities need to be fixed, their existential line-swaddling death-defying creation exhibition needs to be stifled. I don't want to politicize my identity - I'm not out to sell my life. I'm not out to be a teacher. These words are not commodifications. My life is not a recipe for a tried and true survivor, a last-ditch flashlight and matches effort towards freedom. It's not to be admired, it's not to be dismissed. It's just meant to be lived, and honored for it's living. It wants its own grace - in the stumbling over air sense, lip-synching disaster sort of way - it wants its own room to fall asleep ablaze, and demands its right to have rights.

Essentially, my life wants to fucking fight and have a fighting chance in its never-ending fight. It wants to know there will be people fighting alongside. My life wants to know it has a voice that's needed and valued and can be left well alone. My life wants to light up and chill out. It wants intellectual discussions and valuable, trustworthy friends. It wants "understandance," as my 10-year-old self wrote in her first poem ever. My life would like your life to live its dreams, as my life would like to live its dreams. My life would like to focus on healing and spreading happiness. My life would like to be bold for you, as it is very entranced with the concept of being boldly and inherently one's self, no matter how times this mission gets thrown overboard. My life would like to get drunk with your life and drunkenly spew translations of Rumi poems, because, trust me, that could really turn out fabulous... I would like to live aesthetically - in the sense that we all remember that beauty is important, and that everything can be beautiful and that we should always always always find beauty. I would like to be beauty - in all my dangerous, unkempt, reckless, moody, raw, confused, nostalgic, fucked-up, half-redeemed, genuinely trying, but still laughing, destructively creative, well-intentioned self. And I would like you to be yourself. I would like all of us to be our beautifully untamed selves: the rarest form of existence that seems to know what to do best.

I wasn't trying to imply that sexual trauma isn't valid if it isn't rape, I was just curious exactly what you've been through. Its the kind of voyeurism this medium panders to, not me trying to judge or belittle your experiences.

Like many survivors of sexual trauma, I'm a repeat survivor. This tends to happen if only because in the basic psychology of things (and with society's reinforcement), sexual assault survivors tend to blame themselves for what has happened to them and thus, they tend to be unaware of when another abusive cycle is beginning, justifying actions that may seem like red flags to everyone else around them. Domestic violence has a similar pattern. But I digress.

WARNING: THIS COULD BE TRIGGERING. PLEASE DO NOT READ ON IF YOU THINK YOU WILL BE TRIGGERED.

For three years of my childhood, I was molested by a family member (same family member who was also physically and emotionally abusive). I blamed myself for years after it happened, internalizing the thought that I was just crazy and what had happened was somehow normal. I justified a lot of the behaviors from this person as "normal" even though some of these behaviors involved beating me, starving me, and threatening suicide in front of me. Safe to say I did not grow up with a very healthy mindset nor a healthy self-esteem. I learned to justify behaviors in perpetrators.

When I entered my first semester of college, a guy friend of my best friend began sexually harassing and assaulting me. I blamed myself again, told myself I was making things up and exaggerating things and that I was crazy. The only thing that finally convinced me that it was legitimate was my best friend basically sitting me down and telling me I was being sexually assaulted: googling different perpetrator personality types and how they act around you to make you think this is acceptable (http://www.sexualharassmentsupport.org/TypesOfHarassers.html), and she pinpointed the behaviors he was using to do so with me. In my case, the perpetrator was a public harasser. He'd talk about me in lewd ways in front of everyone else, such as asking me to take my shirt off (followed up by asking me to be his girlfriend/hookup/date him), talking about my body, etc. despite my being visibly uncomfortable about it. I'd ask him to stop, other people sitting nearby me would ask him to stop, but he wouldn't. He'd also just randomly decide to start touching me wherever he felt because he felt like it - he'd sit down next to me and place his hand immediately so high up my thigh it was basically touching my crotch. If I moved it, he'd put his arm around my shoulder. Etc. Then he began following me around campus. I was a visible nervous wreck. It was horrible.

The last main situation I had to deal with was at a party I went to in Chicago about a week before I moved to Colorado where I was hooking up with a guy, and he immediately decided my making out with him was consent to do anything with my body that he pleased. He asked me for anal and before I even got a chance to respond, he turned me around, pulled down my pants and underwear, and slammed me against a pool table. He was about to enter me when there was a loud crash right outside the OPEN DOOR, and he freaked out. I ran, and had my friends leave the party with me ASAP. The most horrifying part was (and on some level, still is) having to come to terms with the fact that a bunch of people right outside the door saw what was going on, was talking about what was going on, and none of them were going to do anything about what he was doing to me. And nobody asked if I was okay at the end of it - a bunch of people just went "omg I can't believe you hooked up with him." Which was so incredibly the wrong thing to talk about at that time.

And those are my experiences. And the worst part is knowing those experiences don't even compare to some of the things my friends have experienced (in terms of sexual assault/harassment/rape and life in general).

Ask me anything

You talk about having experiences with sexual assault, were you raped?

No. But I'll be as blunt as I possibly can with your follow-up question so that I hopefully don't have to get asked about this/talk about this much more again. Sexual assault in the grand scheme of things > my experiences.

Ask me anything

what's the trauma you talk about having endured?

It comes at you before you know it, being shoved into boxes that feel too tight: you're choking before you're breathing. One calendar day flips into the next and you're fearing fists, you're wondering when you're going to eat next, you replay the words over and over again in your head: "stupid little bitch" because you are 10 and this is your father. You learn that love means fear. You're screaming, you're fighting: he has you pinned down, beaten. Watch him jerk the wheel with you in the front seat, he says: "I could die just like that. Jail is better than this. Death is better than this." He makes you hate yourself, hate your mom - regret every penny that went towards child support. You grow the mentality that your death is good, that it will benefit the world: less resources will be used upon you. You are worthless. A's are not A+s, normal is not perfect: fingers sliding into the grooves between the ribs of childhood. One bagel lasts a whole weekend. Leave the bed and blackout, fall to the floor. Your vision goes for gaps at a time. Stop visiting the other house, stop eating, work harder. Snap awake, ignore fatigue. Internalize. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Palms catch glass. Memories filter themselves, repress themselves for the sake of optimism in a cynical world where hope is necessary to live. Back into the corner as rage overcomes him (another him, always another him, him, him, the cycling): fists pound into your (my) head. Cross your arms across your chest. Fall asleep in the fetal position. Trust no one, not even yourself. Your heart beats to the rhythm of hyperventilation: everything floods. Life is a static rash of screaming that no one hears. Mold, smile, ignore bruises: perfect. Silence yourself. Live in the shadows of everything that nicked you, the angry voices that forced their way into your innocence. Feel every moment by the thick of what isn't being said. Hibernate in your own consciousness, inflict harm upon yourself when you're not already psychologically full of it.

The worst trauma I've ever gone through is the silence, derived from my childhood in its various different veins - I struggled with my brother, I got severely bullied all through elementary school and into high school, my father repeatedly abused and manipulated me, and many adults ignored everything that was going on despite how evident it was. I spent a lot of time struggling with myself and with others due to the effects of these occurrences, becoming severely depressed and garnishing an incredibly low self-esteem. It made me naive and susceptible - I ended up legally homeless at the end of high school due to an alcoholic stepmother. I struggled with drugs. I was stalked and sexually harassed/assaulted my first semester of college. Add in an emotionally abusive relationship, and another stint where I was legitimately seconds away from being date raped at a party (where there were legitimate bystanders who saw what was going on and did nothing). This is all to say: until we recognize the impacts of trauma within us, it is likely to perpetuate itself. It is also important in this conversation, and in any conversation discussing trauma, to recognize that trauma is everywhere and relative to the sensitivities of the person experiencing the occurrence: the violation or exposure to crisis. Trauma is fluid: it will not align to a set of diagnostic criteria. And I hope we all learn to grow and respect each other more, carrying each other’s stories considerately.

Ask me anything

I Can't Regret What I Did For Love

On love, fear, and other things
The right types of sacrifices



It takes awhile to realize how quiet you have to be, how delicate you ought to live – what words you say, what actions you make, who you align yourself with. How you must live in a manner simultaneously very loud, but also very, very quiet. You become aware, eventually, as I have – that politics, hierarchies, are everywhere. You watch the way people treat you – how a slight turn of phrase reveals your standing in this structure is lesser than theirs. You observe; I observe.

I observe friends wrap themselves into unnecessary problems just because they’re too afraid to do anything else than the pattern they’ve been living for years. I’ve been approached by co-workers who agree, “I’ve learned to be very quiet on this job,” another relief staff: “just keep your head down and your mouth shut.” Which is to say: I observe the patterns people deem acceptable, and why they deem them acceptable – how we are bound by love, fear, or ingrained societal belief. I screen every moment of life more than I live it, in an attempt to live more fruitfully in the long run.

I haven’t updated this blog in awhile just as I haven’t written nearly as often as I should be. I have only a few close friends in the area, a few more throughout the country, and then my mother; I learn to invest in myself. I see too many disasters – interpersonal conflicts. I attempt to remind myself everyday, “For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.” – Audrey Hepburn

Perhaps it should be worded: I am too aware, and I have lived through enough in life that I know what I don’t need to live through. Qualifiers.

I’ve begun approaching life on a very reserved love concept. It’s an approach that’s simultaneously hard and easy to execute, simultaneously quiet and loud. The approach demands I try to discover what I need from life, what I want from life, and what it will take me to obtain these things. This requires me to radically alter and screen my environment and the people in it so that all possible toxins are repeatedly fumigated. I mention to a friend that it makes me feel like an elitist, that I occasionally get lonely, because I can’t meet eye to eye with so many people. Because I demand that my environment be intelligent, compassionate, enlightening, aware (socially and politically), respectful, caring, genuine: I demand that my environment give me the same things I know I can give others. I want an environment that creates rather than destroys, that gives rather than survives.

I’ve met people recently, and immediately batted them out of my radar within minutes. I gauge tolerances and flexibilities, and remind myself of all the friends I have had in the past: the ones who will blame everyone else for personal problems they can’t deal with; ones who yell and curse; ones who shirk responsibility for their own life; ones who run towards drugs and bars to escape a life they can’t find a way to bear; ones who give up when life gets complicated; ones who believe everything can be solved by sex, drugs, or parties; ones who look towards you to always always ALWAYS pick them up after they fall. People whose lives gravitate around reacting out of fear rather than love, who do not take on full responsibility and emotional consciousness in regards to their actions and the corresponding responsive reactions of their environments. A lot of people are naturally like this – society breeds it. And to be honest, I have been that person before too. It’s easy in a society that likes to let you believe there is instant gratification possible for almost every problem, for a society that doesn’t like to admit it has problems.

But... I’m not a babysitter. I’m not a pulpit. I’m not a reflection hub. I will not encourage and regurgitate those types of behaviors: the ones that encourage self-ignorance. And so I learn how to love myself first, how to alter my definition of love.

When I experienced an emotionally challenging dating situation the past year, I found myself hunkering down and reading “All about love” by bell hooks and “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm. I was aware I had a lot to work on in myself, and I wanted to understand why my relationships kept failing when I put all of myself into them; I wanted to understand what I was attracting and bringing into my life, and what love really was – how I could obtain it.

While the cliché persists that we must love ourselves first before anyone else will love us, I’ve found that tidbit to be a bit trite – while it may be true, it loses its true meaning when our ideas of love are so skewed. “Love yourself” has been infused with a pop culture definition just as bad as “love” has, wherein “love yourself” becomes spend money on yourself and go out all the time!, treat yourself to comfort items and vacation days! and “love” becomes I will suffer all abuses including bruised limbs and emotional blackmailing because that is true love because true love endures all, even abuse.

It’s a society we live in that glorifies extremes – one that provides hypocritical advice. If you love yourself, wouldn’t you be averse to getting into an abusive relationship – but wait, according to society, true love means ignoring the abuse… Wait… Hold on a second…



Fuck, it’s too complicated – let’s just go to the bars, right?

In my past: I’ve been abused physically, emotionally, and sexually. In my past, I’ve also likely been very emotionally abusive. In my past, I’ve had drug problems; I’ve had escapism problems. I’d go shopping to put things behind me, compensating stress with the societal form of LOVE YOURSELF! I approached life yelling, kicking, and screaming: fighting. I’d run off on one road trip after the next. Everything was a struggle that felt too overwhelming. "She was a lover, baby, and a fighter" and it got to the point I couldn’t really discern what was what anymore. I loved the things I hated and vice versa. It was hard to argue with myself when everyone else was solving their problems the way I was, when society glorified my own decay.

I got tired of it though. I got tired of myself, and I got tired for everyone else who had to deal with me.

So I shut off the flood gates. Learned to be responsible.

I found myself reminding myself and everyone else that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” You’re complaining about your job? Your job may suck, but you are the one working there and you can choose another job. Sucky love life? While the other person may be difficult, you did choose them – so perhaps you should learn to rehabilitate your selection patterns and discover yourself before you pick a person to be in a relationship with. Not feeling like you’re living a fulfilling life? Life is hard and the economy is awful, but you do make your own life at the end of the day and no one is stopping you from changing it.

Many people don’t like these sort of rhetorical responses from me – they frequently involve more effort than people feel comfortable putting in (comfort being quite possibly the most accurate word here).

But I suppose this is a very verbose way to say: I’m learning to carve myself out again. I’ve made myself a canvas once more, and I pick my paints very carefully. I pick the directions I’m taking my paintbrush deliberately. I make myself think, “will this foster the good parts of who I am or bring out the bad parts? Can I love this? Why don’t I love this? Can I handle this? What are my limits? How can I give myself the most natural form of freedom?”

Through mindfulness, I am giving myself more in the long run.

Does this person seem like they’d foster who I am as a person, and expand me? No? Goodbye.

Does this job seem like it’d fit my career goals? No? Adjust it.

Does this situation, this organization, this life path feel right to me? No? Why not?

And if I find myself doing something repeatedly that keeps getting me more stressed and feeling crappy, I sit myself down and then ask myself, Okay, why do I keep doing this thing that ends up making me feel emotionally drained?, so that I can yank that power cord and energy flow from my brain, and create a more sustainable organic alternative.

I have been very quiet lately: honing in, hollowing out. I’ve been very loud lately: attending meditation centers, attempting to let personal time infiltrate into my schedule in any possible way, talking with people that will help make my career goals possible, being around people who seek a creative, mutually beneficial exchange. I learn to love myself. To make every action I commit to one of self-love, love of art, love of relationship: peaceful, creative, fostering love.

And thus, I try to commit myself to a life of love.

I’ve found that most of our society glorifies love as this concept limited to romantic relationship or family relationships. I lack both of those (aside from the relationship with my mother). But I don’t find myself nearly as short-changed as the times I was involved with my chaotic, harmful family and abusive and emotionally immature friends: what society tells me love is or should suffer through.

Love is knowing what mature love isn’t and isn’t, and that if one were in a loving relationship, there would never be a trace of abuse. “When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect, are by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.” – bell hooks

I tread loudly and quietly, constructing my world so that it feeds rather than malnourishes me. I hurt people occasionally, and I have lived a less than admirable past – but I grow compassionate with myself and my errors, I grow responsive and responsible for my own needs and recognize that I must not and cannot regret what I do for the sake of love. And I remain truly sorry to all those I have harmed, and get embarrassed or guilty about my actions occasionally with having ex-communicated some and hung onto others who didn’t want me, grazing a hurtful line of intimate connection. I can recognize the desperation I suffered in trying to come to terms with who I was and what I needed to do.

And I take it all in, and I grow hyperaware of how I have been, who I am now, and who I desire to be. I gain the approach of love, and I move on, thinking:

I can’t regret what I did for love.

For love, true love in the purest sense, is worth all the time and effort you can put into it. And, being aware of bell hooks and Isaac Newtown and trivial shows like Glee that help refresh my mind on the broadness of the word of love (season 2 episode 1), I know that love (in any form) is a very conscious choice that begins with the self and then expands to all others we surround ourselves with. And it’s up to us for it to be fulfilling and wholesome.



Kiss today goodbye
The sweetness and the sorrow
Wish me luck, the same to you
But I can't regret
What I did for love, what I did for love

Look my eyes are dry
The gift was ours to borrow
It's as if we always knew,
And I won't forget what I did for love,
What I did for love

Advocating for Yourself: On Abuse/Disability/Mental Health and THEN SOME!

I believe this is quite possibly the most important subject I will ever write about - and therefore, I will not do it adequate justice in this moment, as it is something I will continually deepen and expand my knowledge upon. Advocating for yourself is a fickle subject - it involves self-love, self-knowledge, and self-respect. It could possibly be confused with selfishness or laziness or pride. But it's none of these.

Someone had once asked me a question on my formspring, which seems to have, by some magical force of technology, gotten mysteriously deleted. The person asked: "What is the best advice you have ever received?" And while that question seemed incredibly overwhelming at first, the answer I came up with seemed incredibly simple: "Take care of yourself."

It probably doesn't seem so astounding - so, I'll provide explanation. I am the type of girl who has gone on stage with fevers; who has walked to class with a box of tissues in hand (to only be thrown out due to looking so miserable); who has gone a whole day so busy she's forgotten to eat; who has taken 44 credits in one year in a determination to graduate a year early - swine flu, insomnia hospitalization, severe weight loss, chronic migraines and body pains be damned! I will crawl to the finish line if I have to! And no one will stop me with their silly little logic that is actually quite logical!

It's actually quite amusing to recap all the times I thought I'd save myself grief by walking around, about to combust or implode, one step away from being covered in caution tape. And then - oh the shock! I always got so shocked when the disaster became even more of a disaster. And my various doctors eyed me with pity and said "What are we going to do with you, Victoria?" Well. Some people are hands-on learners, others are visual, others: auditory, some are written. Me? I'm a "get so blown over by a situation that I'm forced to crawl my way out of it" learner. Throwing myself into the extremes has perhaps been the best (if not most chaotic) way I've ever learned.

How does this relate? My very chaotic path towards self-care began in the midst of my 24 credit semester wherein I worked several jobs and trained to be a hotline advocate (amongst other trainings) for Sexual Assault Services Organization (SASO!). Are you sensing a pattern? Most people would be over-stimulated as is taking my credit load and my work load, but only I could look at both of those things and go "BUT I WANT TO EMOTIONALLY CHALLENGE MYSELF TOO. Let's dig those skeletons out of the closet!" Do it all! Well. Within the first few days of training, I had already emotionally collapsed - I took the obligatory 15 minute break everyone else took... but magically extended it into an hour long break as I began sobbing hysterically in the hallway to only have the therapist (who had been there to present) try to talk me down from the game of Chutes and Ladders: Trauma Version! This sort of thing repeated itself several times more, creating a reaction from the trainers each time: "You don't have to do this now, Victoria - you can finish the training later." But no, I would finish it then - "now is the time to finish it," I had decided. It's how I learn.

Luckily, this behavior thinned out - and as I took future trainings with SASO, the knee-jerk crying abated. However, it manifested into these awful levels of guilt. Even though I was receiving all the trainings, I felt only very passively involved - I wasn't answering hotline calls, I wasn't going to elementary schools and high schools to teach about sexual assault... I didn't feel as if I was doing much of anything, other than being a really awesomely informed bystander. So, I did what felt like were the more menial things - help write the newsletters, speak with some professors on campus, put up flyers, help organize events. No matter how many times a close friend of mine kept trying to remind me that the office work was and is just as important as the groundwork, I still couldn't help but feel like a sell-out.

But there were times, small glimmers that revealed themselves to me in their soft warnings. No matter how many times I heard my supervisors chant their mantra: "Take care of yourself first," it never really hit me until I began to run into other advocates who had been working for SASO for years, listening to them softly say that no, they needed the time off from the hotline. Life, man. Life. And it made it slightly more acceptable for me to be kinder to myself when I saw others be so gentle with themselves. The combination of my body falling apart (a la swine flu, insomnia hospitalization, etc.) and watching others trying so cautiously to preserve their hurt from impacting the services they gave others - it changed something, ever so slightly. But significantly.

I couldn't really tell you how I responded to these incidents immediately, fluidly - I can only remember the past year as a blur of yelling and repeatedly falling and getting back up again. I can, however, tell you what it's like to begin to crawl out of that vast hole. For, when you set yourself up for that intense of a year, you are bound to walk out with something.

The knowledge I have, in general, is something I tend to take for granted. And it becomes increasingly apparent to me everyday. That I have been through so much, and put myself through so much, that I am, in fact, a very good person to have if you need to crawl out of a hole. It's given me a striking amount of confidence - "You see that strife? I can endure that strife. I can crawl my way out of that strife like nobody's business! In fact, I know so much about that strife that I can see the signs and avoid it all together!" I began to live life a bit more courageously, more self-defined, and hyper-aware of other people's motives for my life, and how much they were or were not contributing to my creative energies. Some things will begin to happen and you will realize: "Ah, I see - you want me to be in that hole because you have been in that hole and are still stuck in that hole and you don't like the fact I'm no longer in a hole. Well, I'm not really the type of a person you want to put into a hole."

So, as I've been going through this past year, learning things about myself and my wants and needs and interests, who I genuinely am - I began to shave off the past. I cut loose some bad relationships, and I meditated and read and analyzed and wrote about the experiences I couldn't understand. In my head, I took care of myself the best way I possibly could - I saw my trauma as the biggest barricade I needed to push through in order to get healthy, and so I paraded on into the thickets of war with myself, my relationships with men, my understanding of love, the various definitions of sexual trauma - and in determination to have thought process mirror reality, I tore down everything that lay in my path. I let my anger sound out, my depression slam down, my euphorias tear off the roof. I was painfully honest with everyone (especially my professors who looked perpetually concerned about me) and I wrote repeated letters to people who probably cared less about me. But I was determined to exorcise myself. I crawled to the finish line.

This perhaps sounds like a manifesta for "put yourself through grief! you'll grow stronger!" but it's more along the lines of "realize what you need to do for yourself." Because, shortly after that year of hell, I collapsed into months of not doing anything - I went to work, came home and watched netflix, tried to motivate myself to work out that whole "moving across the country" thing, but generally enjoyed the sound of lack of chaos. I crawled into different truths - putting myself through such a rigorous test made me adamantly recognize what I needed and who I needed and where I needed to be going (something that is always evolving while simultaneously made stable) - and it was after all of that that I began to really see others without projecting my own grief upon them or deluding myself that they would change when they were living a life they wouldn't own up to.

I never answered one hotline call, I began to throw grades to the wind, I stopped reading, I stopped writing, I tried frequently to support myself with positive materials that asserted my own extremities were smart and sound and that I would have a future significantly better than my past if I just followed my passions and intuitions. While I wasn't a very active activist in the field, I became a Knowledge Advocate - learning all the intricacies of myself and how it fits into society, thinking and learning becoming a radical thing in itself. How simple a thing it is to learn your rights and what sort of treatment you deserve - but how powerful the impact.

I have known other types of advocates and activists that strive to take care of themselves though - The Somatics Advocate: seeking foods healthy for their bodies and activities good for the whole of their mind-body connection; The Talk Advocate: the hotline advocates, the emergency call numbers, the weekly therapist visit; The Exercise Advocate: let those positive hormones flow as you go to the gym and work out your stress; The Yoga and Meditation Advocate: let's explore our inner emotions with as much silence of the mind as possible, with movements meant to enhance our strength; The Medication Advocate: you deserve all the help you get, and the medication is out there; The Activist Advocate: get really involved in the causes that impact your life, and seek to change the world through fighting your own dilemmas side by side with like minds.... and etc. I wouldn't limit the list of possible ways to be an advocate to this list, as I'm sure there are many more forms of self-care and advocating for self.

Me? I'm a Knowledge Advocate: let's study the things that trouble us so that we learn to stop the cycling of that problem, so we can inform others on how to stop it. Let's use facts to explore our emotions, philosophy to broaden our minds, psychology to deepen the extent of our self, and sociology to give it all a place. Let's use language to dictate the terms of our freedom, let's use the most powerful creative force out there: learning.

But perhaps it was the combination of a handful of these different types of advocating that really made me. In learning the things that greatly troubled me, in befriending those who struggled similarly, and in actively engaging in my community, I learned how to take care of myself - and by extension, others. It comes in handy to take care of yourself.

In engaging in the trainings SASO had to offer, I not only aided in my own recovery - but I was able to aid in other's. It gave me the foundation on how to prep a friend who needed a restraining order for an abusive ex. It gave me the insight and emotional depth to help provide a handful of people I know with the comfort of my knowledge - how trauma comes in scale, how rape and sexual assault are a range of definitions rather than a sole definitive, how recovery can begin to form despite the jerking of emotions. A close friend approached me, knowing my trainings and where my honed focus lies (sexual assault), and together we acknowledge her rape and what materials to read and how all of these things impact her relationship. Things, she says, she can only talk to me about.

In studying materials about love, I began to redefine my relationships and the relationships others around me held - how so many people filtered their abusive relationships as part of the trials and tribulations of love, claiming that love "Bears All Things, Believes All Things, Hopes All Things, Endures All Things... Love Never Fails." When really, it's as bell hooks states: "When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect, are by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care." And you recognize how very few people understand this, trying to justify the repeated hurts they receive from their partners. (And I'll post a few quotes about love in the comments section).

And lastly, by involving myself with the First Annual Four Corners Pride Festival out of desire to learn more about non-profit outreach engagement and organization, by seeking to embed myself into other layers of feminist concern... I began to liberate myself just a bit more. While I already had friends who actively sought to campaign for gender fluidity and the danger of gender norms, I became more immersed in the statistics and the stories of the LGBTQ community. In fact, I became very engaged with an unfortunately fairly common scenario - where the daughter or son reveals the true extent of their sexuality to their family members, and end up being tossed out and disowned. And it hit the tenderness of my own trauma - feeling cast out by throwing the spotlight on the troubles of my family, which inevitably hit upon my own abuses. How small I felt while struggling to exist as a self-actualized person that was not accepted.

And it triggered something in me - What gives someone the right to disown another person, decide that they are lesser than them, cast them away for who they inherently are, their truths? What gives a parent, a family, the jurisdiction to hurt someone they were supposed to love so dearly? Why do they get the power? And oh - in that moment, I realigned the tiers of power in my head. I laughed out load, I felt the weight of struggling for years with my trauma begin to life off of me - What if I decide to disown them? What if I cast them as the disappointment? What if I stand up with a Fuck You, you're the one with the problems! I ran miles with that thought, deciding that I would change my name when I had the money, noting how much energy is put into a name.

By helping others, I had helped myself, and vice versa.

When you have created this positive environment of self-care and advocacy, it inadvertently recognizes the truths of who you are and begins to give back to you.

And now, the last part of all of this, the final story.

You may notice the title of this post and go "where is the discussion of disability?" Well, I did not plan the chronology of this post, but it fortunately ties into the last story and point I was making. There was one day, fairly recently, that it had come up in discussion that my brother had Aspberger's, a mild form of autism. Noting this, a woman had come up to me afterwards, mentioning that she knew someone recently diagnosed with Aspberger's - but his father refused to accept the diagnosis, despite his training in psychology. She mentioned the person was really struggling in school (college) and they were all trying to figure out what to do. And I realized they did not know his rights - I said to her, "You realize every college is mandated to have some sort of a disability accommodations office? You realize he has a right to demand academic accommodations that suit his disability, and teachers are obliged to recognize this?" She was floored. She had no idea that this amazing resource exists.

"I've used it," I said.
She laughed, "For what?"
"For my PTSD," I replied, to give the most simple response (but it was also very handy for my mood disorder). Both of these things catastrophically affected my academic career, and the relief of having my accommodations and knowing a whole office on campus was going to go to bat for me, was incredibly relieving. Thus, for clarification, the term disabilities here... and by federal law, covers mental, emotional, and physical disability - the whole spectrum.

To give her examples, I explained that my accommodations involved leniency with absences, extended due dates for assignments, and taking tests in a different room should I so choose. But furthermore, these accommodations are something that is decided between the disabilities coordinator and the student - so that the needs are fully recognized and adequately accommodated. And if anyone wants to get a basic run-down of this sort of thing, more can be read here: Q&A on Disability Discrimination in Education Under Federal Law.

And so I conclude.

Knowing is important. It gets you places. It aids in self-care. It liberates. By taking steps to learn about your own truths and needs, you inevitably help the lives of others. It all comes in full circle.

Prepare to love yourself, so that you can love others.

A Mental Health Creedo: Just Breathe

Note: This post was written over a week ago, and I neglected to post it - partially because it was so vividly emotional that I needed to drop it and distance myself from it. The only reason I'm posting this now is for the entry that I'm writing that will come after.

My anger traps me. My impatience stunts me. I frequently forget to breathe. I hold myself up to standards higher than I would give most other people, higher than most other people would hold for themselves. I want to do everything now all at once. I want to understand everything now, be more patient now, be more peaceful and happy now, everything troubling me to go away NOW. Do you see where I get myself into trouble? I can't breathe - I keep myself cluttered. The odd part is in saying that I've actually gotten better. Maybe because at least I'm aware of the ridiculousness of it now. A lot of my behavior can be chalked up to the sociological phenomena known as the Alpha Female - perfectionism. Combine it with a guilt complex, and over-stimulated attention span, and the trait in me that never lets go of everything. I've always argued that while I hold others up to high standards, I hold myself up to them too. I never forget about the people I anger or upset, the things I've said and the actions I've done - I frequently fail to forgive myself for momentary lapses in judgment, for not keeping my cool, for being afraid and lashing out at others because of it, for falling apart and taking it out on everyone else. I never forget. It makes life very hard for me. There's very little room for movement.

I spend most days in some stasis paralysis - torn between wanting to get an honest break I feel I deserve (which, due to my current economic situation, is highly unlikely I'll actually get) and lambasting myself for not working hard enough, for not living up to my own ambitions and doing as much with my potential as I know I could be doing. I see others my age do it, others only a few years older than me - living this highly successful life where they can keep pushing through everything, don't stop.

But I splinter. Can't breathe. Need to remember to breathe.

All of my old arguments wear thin. The only person that's pinning me to these standards is myself. I feel like it aligns closely with a quote I read that essentially states that in order to have great disappointment in something/someone, one must love it deeply. And to quote Paramore, in self-assessment, "For a pessimist, I'm pretty optimistic." In joking with my friend Amelia, I mentioned that I thought one of the things that made me stand out from so many other people was my reflex of "But think of the possibilities!"

I'm an idealist - that's not a shocker with my track record of high-achieving. But I'm also a realist. I've grown too aware of how to approach things. And it's a struggle managing the two. But, more importantly, having been on both sides of things, you begin to see how easy it is for other people to shut out the idealist.

And maybe that's where a lot of my frustration stems from lately - life is full of possibilities! genuinely! .... if you're straight, if you have money, if you're studying something the world places importance on (like business), if you have the right connections, if you grew up around the right influences, if you can fake it.

And I know I can't fake it. And I know many people don't have the resources to change their situations to get the right sort of environment where they can fully access all the possibilities. Or don't know the options they actually have. And I know a lot of people grow disillusioned with life, just as I have, just living and breathing to pay bills and jump through one hoop after the next, to only have the government or insurance companies or academic standards raise the bar once more. To fall flat. And you begin to wonder how much possibility there really is when DADT isn't repealed and oversexualization of younger girls is rampant, and even though "the recession is over" the economy is so awful that everyone would rather stay in school accumulating debt rather than get a job. When all of who you are, your potential, your possibilities, have to take the back burner until further notice - until after you pay the bills, until after the government passes an agenda, until you're done struggling with just keeping your daily rights intact (looking at you CO 62).

And that's when I find this a dangerous time to be living in - when everything is pieced off into what you can afford to do. When you can't afford basic things that you intrinsically need to function as a human being - time off, work breaks, health care, personal interests, academic aid, government assistance - it all of a sudden just seems... dismal. I know there have been several times these past few months that I've stepped back and gone "What am I doing this for? When will I have time to relax and actually breathe?"

You begin to see life as just a series of unfortunate hurdles you have to thrust yourself over to get the next series of unfortunate hurdles. There is no room for water breaks or not-hurdling. Pretending to integrate the core yourself into a system that seems to care very little for you begins to feel like a lie - how does this truly function as an extension of you when really it is just dealing with what you're forced to deal with?

Where's the possibility in that?

I told Amelia recently that I slowly stopped following politics more and more after Obama was elected - how lack of action and doubling back on promises began to disappoint me. Disappointment, rooted in love. There was so much possibility.

While I have been known to be a pessimist, and have been known to struggle with depression, I can't help but think now that it is perhaps because I love life too much, I view it with such wonder, so preciously... that when I find out other people don't want to help each other live as freely, with as much enthusiasm and interest possible, I get crushed. That, rather than fostering an environment that encourages a life worth living, we now live an environment that fosters all the life and possibilities we cannot live or have. Life has become exclusionary.

And I get angry. And impatient. I frequently forget to breathe.

I try to remember to breathe. I think to myself, "Imagine how many people you'd overwhelm by just living fully to the capability of your life force, untamed, fully realized."

Try to mantra:




I think that I'm bigger than the sound.