I SOUND MY BARBARIC YAWP OVER THE ROOFTOPS OF THE WORLD

I have been brain-blogging this entry for weeks.And In the span of seconds my eyes glancing across one headline it has been completely erased and rewritten.

Robin Williams is dead.  Because he took his own life.  Because he was depressed.

Why does this keep happening? When will we have enough strength to look into our own lives and see a sickness that we fight tooth and nail to hide from the rest of the world? I believe it to be especially hard if you are in Hollywood, because - How dare you be depressed? You have money and success and people adore you.  If you are depressed, well then hell, you are just plain ungrateful.

Do you know what depression is?  It's the perfect storm of physical chemicals in your body, blended with genetics of those before you who you have no control over, and your personal experiences.  It's not like having an isolated sickness. It's not strep throat. It's stage four, spreading, destroying, evil cancer.

And depression seldom takes it's victims alone. You are probably depressed with anxiety, with addiction, or maybe multiple personalities.  And you can get treated for one without even making a dent in the other. Maybe you have convinced your body it doesn't need heroin flowing through it's veins anymore, but in the interim your mind has decided it's not worth being a person at all.

I believe someday we will find a cure for cancer, for Ebola, for the common cold. But as long as human beings have hearts and minds, we as a society have an obligation to reevaluate the way we depict and discuss depression.  It's so disconnected from it's actual meaning, it's just as a day to day emotion.

"How are you feeling about that project you are working on?" 

"It's making me totally depressed."

Is it? Is it causing you to feel like someone placed an upside down pick-up truck on top of your chest?

"How are you feeling about that project you are working on?"

"It's giving me cancer."

Think about how ludicrous that sounds. I have depression. I am a functioning, depressed, addict. I see a doctor, I talk about what's going on with me, and I have to spend EVERY day making cognitive decisions to re-frame the way I think and feel about EVERYTHING. Am I capable of doing it all the time?  Oh God no.  There are days I don't leave my bed.  Because sleeping and not having to battle demons is SO much easier than having to be constantly aware that your body, mind, and soul are probably going to make you feel sad, unwanted, hurt, rejected, and fucking miserable for no god damned reason whatsoever.

My soapbox ends here. Depression is real.  The happiest person you know may have the weight of the world on their shoulders and you'd never ever know it. And unless we hold a world conference in which we all go into a room and close our eyes and "everyone that suffers from depression, please raise your hand" happens, we will never truly know who struggles with it and if they need help.

Here is what we can do: be nice. Ask a person how they are, even if they are going to lie to you. If you see someone crying do NOT under any circumstances say "It's okay" or "It's going to get better." Because in that moment, it's fucking not, so shut up.  Let that lady who drove up the entire shoulder of the expressway, even though she knew the lane was ending, cut in front of you. Maybe she was on her way to a funeral and needed a moment of kindness. Hell, maybe she doesn't deserve it at all.

But wouldn't you rather do it in the 1% chance it makes a difference, than not?

Love love love. If anyone EVER needs me, I am here. If anyone ever needs something that is less intimidating than actually talking to another person and being accountable for your sickness - start with a song. Let music make you feel alive. Read a story that makes your heartbeat.  Listen to your heartbeat, and know it deserves good things. And you can live a happy life fighting depression. I truly believe it. 

The Biggest Blackest Elephant in the Room

I want to preface this blog by saying that I know this probably isn't the right forum for this, but I've been in a really dark place the past month or so - and I'm at a loss of what to do with it.  It got bad last night and I am scared I need to get some of this out of me.  So I am coming to the place that has made sense of a lot of bad days for me in the past and hoping that maybe pouring some of this out of my head and my heart will make some room to start healing.

I have suffered from depression my whole life. I'm pretty sure my whole life.  I have no cognoscente memory of it, but I am sure my first thought coming out of the womb was unbearable disappointment that I was a baby.  I was 13 years old when I wrote my first suicide note and was sent to speak to a consular.  I was sent to an outpatient program at a mental heath facility when I was 19 and here we are again at 27 at the cusp of a pretty significant melt-down.

It started about 3 weeks ago, on a Tuesday, when my alarm went off for work.  Unfortunately that morning my blankets decided to weigh about a million pounds and I couldn't move.  The idea of getting up was daunting, showering seemed incredibly difficult, putting food in my mouth and chewing was not an option, so I came to terms pretty quickly with the fact that going to work was just downright impossible. Why this Tuesday, you ask? I have no idea.  I have no idea what triggers my depression, or why some days it feels like there is an anvil sitting on my chest and I can't catch my breath when I am lying still.  I haven't been able to figure it out in 27 years, so I don't have an answer for you now.

So I would miss a day of work, shake it off and go back the next day.  But I didn't.  In fact day two was even harder because day one made me realize how much better lying in bed and not being a person was that I wanted to do that as long as possible.  The only reason I went back to work the following day after that is because I had been lying to my boyfriend about going into work and my guilt was starting to overpower my lack of desire to be a person.

This is the craziest part.  I am in the happiest relationship of my life.  It's stable, and I am supported and loved to no end.  There is nothing I can't tell my boyfriend, and nothing I can do outside of harming myself or someone else that he wouldn't try with all his heart to understand. I have moments of stupid, over-the-top joy in the midst of this haze I've been living in.  When we cook together.  When we cuddle on the couch and laugh for hours.  I think people believe that being depressed and not having any joy are mutually exclusive.  And they aren't.  I am very happy and loved, and love loving him.  But it doesn't make the pain in my chest stop all the time.  Just some of the time.

I managed to carry myself through last week trying to be more positive and having my boyfriend in my corner as I had come clean to him about everything from the week prior.  He encouraged me to set daily goals for myself, and we made sure my appointment with the psychiatrist was close enough to get me by until I can reevaluate how I am going to work on being more chemically balanced.  But every day was still a challenge.  Sometimes just for a little while, sometimes for the whole day.  There were many days of crying in the bathroom at work, for no apparent reason, but I would always go back to my desk and continue trying.

Yesterday was Tuesday again.  Maybe I'm just not good with Tuesdays?  I got through most of work just fine.  At the very tail end of the day I ended up having what started off as a very on the surface discussion of work issues with a manager of mine which ended in me in full-blown tears trying to explain that I'm just not happy.  And I don't know why or how to fix it.  That got heavy fast, sorry boss.

I got home and cleaned, did the dishes, took out the trash and once my boyfriend got home I started cooking dinner.  While I was watching the pot of water boil I started fixating on how stupid it was to break down to my boss.  How unprofessional that was.  And then I started thinking about my mom's car problems, and how I have no money to help her.  And how I shouldn't worry about helping her because that's what my dad is supposed to do.  And then I got mad that my dad wasn't here to help her.  Or me.  And then I thought about a 1200 water bill.  And how now I was going to walk into the living room with these ravioli and be really sad.  And how many days my boyfriend has had to deal with me being sad.

I got about half a bite of ravioli in my mouth before I started sobbing.  Where do you even start in trying to explain to someone how and why you are crying into ravioli?  We talked a while, and I just started to feel more and more guilty that my depression was becoming someone else's problem. So I was spiraling down and fast regardless of what my boyfriend could possibly had said to try and make it better.  All of a sudden I had a thought I've never had before.  It scared the shit out of me and it played over and over again in my head.  I just kept thinking 'I have to go to the hospital'.  I didn't want to kill myself.  I wasn't ill.  I don't know what I thought a hospital would of done for me except maybe create an excuse to not have to function in society for a while.  Because I seem to be failing at it pretty fucking miserably these days.

I didn't go to the hospital.  And I don't feel the need to go to the hospital anymore.  At least not right now.  And I don't know if I will again or if that was just some odd reaction to a new peak of depression for me.  I'm up now.  I showered.  I am going to type a few more words on here, dry my hair and go to work.  And then we'll see how the next few hours go I guess.  I need to get back into therapy.  Therapy costs money and that doesn't grow on trees - but I'm going to find a way to do it.  And in the interim I'll just come back here when things don't make sense and write it down.

I want to live. I want to be happy and I want each day to not be a struggle.  Right now I am just trying to find something to convince myself there is a light at the end of a tunnel I have been staring down for most of my life.  And I will.  I know I will. And I know I'm not alone.  And I know depression is a thing.  And I am no different than anyone else that wakes up and doesn't want to be a person for a while.  So I'll keep trying.  I promise I am trying.

Human Rights and My Forgiveness for Elliot Rodger

I have spent the last few weeks immersed in the Elliot Rodger case. I took the time to read his manifesto and have read every article regarding the "Men's Rights Movement" and everything written in the #YesAllWoman movement in response to not only this heinous crime, but an overwhelming sub-culture of men that share the views of a 22 year old entitled boy that felt that with men being the superior gender they are owed something by women.  The majority of what I have read from people that run the gamut of sharing his views, to those who just "understand where he is coming from with feeling rejected by women".  It has been both eye-opening and incredibly saddening.

My first response was every suppressed feelings I've held onto since my own personal experiences from being victimized by men.  The realization that I took at face value the mandatory meeting my first week in college that informed us of the big blue emergency poles that had been placed around the campus to run to to alert police if we were being attacked, to being told by adults in positions of authority explaining to a group of 18 year old girls that if we were being raped to scream "fire" instead of "rape" because people wouldn't respond or try to interject in a sexual assault.

Of course I was enraged to start looking at society from this perspective.  A society where men spend their time playing video games where the characters are rewarded by attacking or objectifying prostitutes.  The fact that some video game designer somewhere created the ability for a character to go and beat the shit out of woman, and that this hasn't raised any red flags that maybe we are subconsciously condoning this behavior towards woman. I have been told that in said game you can also beat the shit out of other men.  Great.  That really makes me feel like my point is lessened.

If I am going to look at the situation more objectively, and less from the perspective of a woman that has been both verbally and physically abused by men, I have started to evaluate the larger issue that I have been harassed by just as many women as I have men.  Of course I have never been held down and forced to engage in sexual acts by a woman, I have been called a 'slut' 'whore' 'dumb cunt' and other things of that nature by my own gender.  So if this is the way we are treating each other how can we spotlight just the male gender for their actions?

I haven't seen the anti-women sites run by women in which we discuss that some women are prettier, smarter, richer or better than we are.  And that we should inflict pain on them for it in the same way that I have seen in the male community. But it's irrelevant when crime after crime is committed by the way both genders are viewing and treating women in 2014 after all we have done to create equal rights for blacks, gays, and other "sub-class" citizens.  We have all just accepted that women will be mean to each other, and that women will grasp their car key in their hand while walking through a parking garage late at night.  That we are given pepper-spray along with shower shoes and new bed sheets when we go out in the real world on our own.

I have always tried to turn away from tragedies like this, realizing that the publicity and attention is exactly what these people are looking for.  But I also feel like now that I am aware that this is a relevant issue and as said by many men in the "Men's Movement" that they too are tired of being rejected by women and are ready to act out their own "Rodger" acts to teach the world that us "sluts" need to stop going after the "brutes" and give more attention to a group of people that spend their time putting us down on the internet rather than trying to meet us and create relationships with us, getting to know us as people and not just as a whole gender picking and choosing who we want to be with based off some societal view of what we want men to be.

I don't know how to fix this.  I don't even know how to make my stomach settle or my hands stop shaking when I think about a mentality that would encourage men to seek out destruction because of rejection and heart-break.  I haven't taken a gun to the men that have followed me to my car late at night, in the same way I haven't taken a gun to the guy who took me out on one date and then never called me again.  There has to be a way to teach social interaction and respect not only towards women, but towards each other every day so we stop resorting to these violent actions as an only way out from a life of heartache and rejection.

I have survived 27 years of heartache and rejection.  You know the difference? I was raised by parents who taught me to respect everyone.  That everyone has a story and for better or worse, their life is just as valuable as my own despite how terrible their actions may sometimes be.  That is why at the end of this tangent, and really left with no actual resolution on how to fix this huge and what feels insurmountable problem, I will say that I forgive Elliot Rodger.  I forgive the men that don't see and value themselves enough to go out and find something worth living for.  Mental illness aside, we have resources and we have each other.  And if we can all just find it in our hearts to love and respect each other that maybe that will be a start to us viewing each other as equals.  And that we'll want to stand up for each other, and not just ourselves, or our genders.  But as a world full of humans just trying to find love and acceptance.

I am currently seeking out abuse and sexual assault organizations to help women who have been through similar situations as myself.  And I want to do what little I can to offer the perspective that when something bad or "unfair" happens to you, you can do two things with it: you can use it to be stronger and make others stronger, or you can let it destroy you.  Sometimes to the point where you can justify destroying others.  And I will do everything in my power to help the world see the first option is far better.

Striving For Our Happily Ever After

When you start dating someone, regardless of your history, there is certain dating protocol that needs to be followed.  You can't express your feelings too soon, or call/text too much.  You can't expect them to spend every day with you, or want to even spend the night for the first while assuming you have separate homes. So you walk on eggshells.  Making sure the most that comes out of your mouth is the occasional "I like spending time with you." And not being the first to text and waiting the appropriate 15 minutes to respond as to not seem too eager to talk to them. 

Ryan and I had been together for just a few weeks when he helped me put up my Christmas tree.  We were halfway through untangling blue and white lights when he said "Next year when we put up the tree..." I believe he finished that sentence with something about it being decorated in the theme of Dr. Who.  But shortly after he said "next year" I stopped listening and immediately started to focus on my breathing as to not pass out.  Next year? Next year?! As in, like, you see yourself dating me past New Year's and then another 11 months after that?  

It always came as a shock to me when he would talk about our future in the beginning, so confidentially as though he'd already read our story and knew what would happen. One of our first dates we agreed on the name of our first son.  The more comfortable he became with talking about our future the more I started to let my feelings slip out and threw caution and protocol to the wind. 

As time went on I was sharing everything, except that one big "L" word that I swallowed down basically every minute as I was feeling it, but I'd be damned if I would be the first to say it.  So instead I would subliminally slip it into conversation by saying things like "I really love you in that sweater." "Cook dinner? I'd love you to!". New Year's Eve he finally broke down and said it first. I WIN!

The point is is that sometimes it still seems really premature to talk about the future of our relationship the way we do.  And it even seems a little crazy that he is moving in so soon and that our cat and dog coexist, and that we've decided on a wedding cake, and the theme of our engagement photos.  We don't talk about them as "ifs" we talk about them as "whens".  And it feels so comfortable and so right and so exciting.  I feel like it's the security and confidence in a romantic relationship that I've always searched for but was never quite sure if it could actually exist.

All of this fairy tale (or maybe let's just call it healthy) relationship goodness would be put to the test a few weeks ago when we attended a friend of his wedding.  He was standing up in the wedding, so I got to be a plus one to eat, drink and spend more time with his friends I've already grown to adore.  The night before the wedding the groomsmen plus me were hitting the bottle pretty hard when I caught myself saying things like "At our wedding..." or "When we get married..." All of a sudden it occurred to me that us talking about our future between him and I is one thing, but what if I am crossing a boundary by sharing this shared confidence in our future with his bros? 

We snuck outside for a moment alone and I asked him if it freaked him out that I was speaking so candidly about a potential marriage, children etc. in front of his friends.  His response was simple and perfect.  "If we don't have something to strive for, than what's the point? If I didn't see that being us and where we end up then why would we be together at all?  I wouldn't talk about it to you if I wouldn't talk about it in front of my friends" A timid, doe-eyed me just looked up and asked "So, it's me you are striving for?" And he said yes. 

Needless to say I spent the rest of the weekend comparing their wedding to the one we strive to have ourselves.  And a few days later I even boldly said "When we get married..." to his mother.  The security of knowing that someone's end goal is you is the greatest feeling in the world.  It can't be bought.  It can only be shown.  And it makes my heart feel safe every day we move forward striving in this relationship together towards our happily ever after.

Remembering To Forget Katie Keller (To Hell and Back and Better)

A lot of people have been encouraging me to start writing again lately. I miss it. I've wanted to come back for quite some time now.  But the idea of just jumping back into telling the story of my life seems more and more daunting as time passes from the last time I checked in with all of you. I feel like I need to find a way to catch you up to speed before I can resume sharing social, personal, relationship, sexual, and otherwise commentary on my 20sSomething life. I would love to call this a brief summary of where we'd left off.  But I have a feeling there will be nothing brief about it.  I will say that once we get this out of the way I will have a blank canvas to start drawing on again. It's just the last few scribbled-on pages need to be torn away before we can get there.  So here goes: 

So my Dad died.  And everything got real foggy.  It was the most intense, disconnected, real, unreal experience of my life.  I remember some things very vividly.  Like my siblings and I embracing on the front lawn, almost in slow motion, holding each other and crying minutes after he took his last breath.  But the day of the actual funeral is a blur of PBRs in the parking lot, Beatles tunes, and a late-night Sonic run. I stopped writing around then because I didn't have anything to say.  I didn't know what or how to feel, so I certainly didn't know what to write. 

After a few months of floating, surviving the days, things started getting weird.  I was receiving cryptic text messages from an unknown number explaining that my boyfriend was cheating on me.  I don't know if I really believed him, or if I was just too sad about everything else to question him, but I assumed it was just a crazy ex of his and let it go.  Well, my lack of response to these texts was not okay for this unknown person on the other side of this unknown number. So texts turned into phone calls. But like, a psychotic amount of phone calls.  We're talking 60 missed calls in under 10 minutes.

With the situation with this person I didn't even have so much of a name of continued to escalate, my boyfriend and I finally decided to go to the cops.  Over the time that we were filing police reports and getting the ball in motion for a restraining order, she had shown up at my house, my work, had taken video of me inside my work, followed him and I around to numerous events and outings. It was scary and it took most of this happening before all the pieces fell apart and my boyfriend admitted that he had been cheating on me with this woman for the vast majority of our relationship.

I didn't want to give up on the relationship though. I was still hurting from everything else, and I didn't feel like hurting more by ending the relationship or fighting to make it work.  So I just lived in it.  But as time wore on, and the truth revealed itself, I had found some of the things he did were plain disgusting.  He held me with one hand while texting her with the other from my father's funeral to make plans.  And those nights that he was "out with friends" he was taking her on dates.  He even shared with her some of my deepest fears and most intimate secrets that no one outside my immediate circle of people has the right to know.  It just all became too much.  It hurt too much. 

As a result of being punched in the stomach with a bunch of sick realities of what he had been doing to me, I started to evaluate if I'd ever been capable of doing this to someone else.  I couldn't imagine I had, at least not to this degree. I mean, not in the midst of losing a loved one.  But if on any level if I was capable of being so deceitful and going to such lengths to disguise my lies.  The only time that I could really remember back to was my senior year high school boyfriend Ryan.  I had an immediate sinking feeling as I remembered that I did cheat on him, albeit we were 18 years old, I cheated on him, he found out, and shortly after he ended the relationship. (I could have maybe learned a few things from his timeline versus mine).

So I sat down one Friday night and wrote an email. I didn't know if the email would be found.  If it would be read, acknowledged, and I was most certain it wouldn't warrant a response.  I wrote an email to Ryan explaining that I looked back at what I had done to him and that it was completely wrong and that I have learned and grown since then, and that I hoped that at some point along the way he could forgive me.  And if not, just know that I was sorry for what I had done and any pain that I may have caused.  I said I hoped he was finding happiness and his life was going well and I signed off.

About an hour later, to my surprise, he responded.  He said it was long in the past, that all people can do is grow and try to be better each day.  He said he had made his fair-share of mistakes and he'd let go of any anger years ago.  My heart immediately felt lighter.  It was as though knowing my sin was forgiven could make me start to heal the wound of what was done to me.  But not with someone, like Ryan said, who wasn't trying to be better each day.  So I ended my relationship with Jason.

A week later after a long series of emails and text messages, I boldly asked Ryan if he'd like to grab a drink sometime.  We had that drink on Thursday, November 13th.  We went on a few dates after that, and he didn't kiss me until the third time we hung out.  Which made me crazy but led to the greatest kiss of my life.  It wasn't like kissing him back in high school.  It was like kissing someone new, better, but in a familiar place. I'm pretty sure I floated away from his face after that kiss. And he's made me float with every kiss since.

We consider our actual anniversary to be in December, as that's when his roommate at the time awkwardly called us boyfriend and girlfriend and we agreed to it.  But since about November 14th and a 1/2 I knew I had found the one that every sad blog has led me to.  Including this one.  I have a feeling deep in my gut that the just previously told story will be the last sad ending in the romantic life of Katie Keller. Every day with him I am reminded of those first few words he said to me about trying to be a better person every day.  And it's easy to want to be when you are with someone that treats you like you deserve to be the best version of yourself always.

April 27th marked the one year anniversary of my Dad passing.  It's been a whole year.  And in that year I've managed to shake the bad and start actively searching for and loving the good.  Both inside of me and around me in my life. An in just 14 short days Ryan and I will share our first home together with a cat and a dog and a real, uncomplicated, simple, true and faithful love.  And I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that my Dad would be elated for me (mainly to have someone else around to do the guy things in my life) but because I am being treated the way he'd always hoped for. And standing on my own two feet proudly all the while.

So here we are, folks.  Death, affairs, police and restraining orders, emails to long-lost boyfriends, first kisses, and first homes. You can't say I haven't been busy.  Or at least, as always, entertaining to watch. It's time to start putting my heart back on paper.  Not for you, but for me.  Because it's finally strong enough for it.

Until next time...