We're Not Supposed to Do It Alone

​I believe you need to be strong. I believe you need to love yourself. And you have to fight for yourself and what you deserve. I believe you should be able to tuck yourself into bed at night, with no one next to you, and fall asleep in love with your life. And wake up hopeful for what's still to come and grateful for what you already have. I believe you should go to the movies by yourself every once and a while. I believe you should laugh loudly when watching something funny alone in your house. You need to be able to stand on your own two feet and find happiness whether you are in a crowd of a hundred, or stranded on a deserted island. I believe you should be able to break down hard and wipe away your own tears, or scream loudly to yourself about the struggles of life in your car. 

But I don't believe we are intended to do it all alone always. Our lives are a group project, and everyone we meet, good or bad, plays their part in creating the lives we are destined to live.

I have met quite a few people lately with this 'survive it all alone' mentality. And sure, we all die alone or whatever. But every day you get up and every moment you experience you make a decision of whether to face those things by yourself, or to grab onto the love and light in the people around you and amplify those experiences through shared emotion, inspiration, and support. It's not always about having someone there to push you through it, some times it's just having someone there to watch you succeed. To celebrate your victories, and to grieve your losses and failures.  We don't need people in our lives to make us whole, but we need people in our lives to make it count.

I love big. I love so big that I get my heart smashed into bits in front of me more than I like to admit to. But could you imagine the alternative? I love so big that when I do need help, I have an army of people behind me moving mountains to help me get to where I need to be. And when I accomplish something amazing for myself, I am surrounded by hearts as full as mine that I did something great. It has allowed me to be apart of the most crucial moments of other people's lives as well. Moments that they will look back on forever and my smile will be engraved in those memories as strongly as theirs are engraved in mine. 

I have a blog from years ago titled "Who's Standing Next to You When All Your Dreams Come True?" and it's been a resounding theme in my life for years. Because imagine it, imagine you get everything you've ever wanted in your life tomorrow, but no one was there. Not a friend, no family, no LOVE, how does it feel? Not to say your successes are for other people, but it's the pride and joy and love you receive from the world around you that makes your success real. Makes it alive. 

You can keep the world at arm's length from your heart. That is a sure fire way to make sure no one ever lets you down, disappoints you, or even worse, leaves you. But you make a choice to live a life less fulfilled when you block yourself off that way. 

Live with an open heart. Know that the hurt you feel when your vulnerability blows up in your face goes away. Because in my experience the hurt is always temporary. And the love, even the love of those I have lost, is very permanent. And I wouldn't change that for the world. 

We're not supposed to do it alone. 

The Art of Being Nice

We live in a society that praises Beyonce smashing car windows and artists walking around with both middle fingers raised in the air. There is an expectation to find your #squad and get into group texts so that you have an army of people to trash the people you don't like with. We want to be mean girls, because we want to fit in. And the easiest way to bond with someone these days is to help take aim at someone or something you both don't agree with. We can't wait to capture that one threatening screen shot to hold as ammunition. We are constantly walking around with claws out perceiving every interaction as a challenge.

This is exhausting. And I will be the first to admit I used to love being apart of all this noise. I was good at it. But something has shifted in my adult years, and that girl that foamed at the mouth for confrontation shudders at Facebook messages when they come in because I don't even want to be privy to the drama that is occurring around me. I don't want to be mad at someone's friend's ex boyfriend. And I don't want to dislike that girl that posted that thing about that show she was at. It's all too much to keep up with, and I can't battle the negativity that all these situations seem to be dripping with. 

I feel like we spend so much time and energy beating the shit out of ourselves, that we should want to give it a rest when we can. And even more so, if we acknowledge that we are all struggling with insecurities, self-doubt, the crushing realization that this life can be real fucking heavy sometimes, we should be responsible for taking away the bad from each other's lives. Not adding to it. I haven't figured out yet how to be nice to myself, but being nice to someone else? I can do that like falling off a log. Because if you look past the passive aggressive memes about fuck bois, I think we are all still doing really well. We are still creating, inspiring, sometimes merely surviving. And that in and of itself is something worth celebrating.

I am sure there is great satisfaction in landing a punch into someone. I am sure in that moment, finding those perfect words that cut into what someone is wearing, who they are dating, what they are looking for - you did it. You hurt someone. Good job. But what I've found is that the power behind being kind is 100% stronger than that of being hurtful. Because people take shots at me every day. I shed them quickly. The man who came up to me and told me my laugh turned his night around, that's the one I remember.

I can't change our mean culture. I can't break apart covens or stop all the subtweets. But I will remain active in creating as much positive in the environment that I can control. So I have started making it a point to pay 5 compliments a day. To anyone. Friends, coworkers, strangers. Sometimes it's just noticing someone's shoes, and sometimes it's a bigger reminder that you're good enough. Because I don't know about you, but I need to hear that more often than I'd like to admit to. Maybe if we start putting it out around us, we'll learn how to do it for ourselves. And in the meantime, we'll all have reminders that none of us are in this alone. 

Katie Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Part 2

It was the first time I had actually laughed since being checked into Good Samaritan Hospital on that Friday morning. I was lying in my assigned bed, on a paper thin mattress, trying to wrap my head around where I was and how I got there. But all I could hear, getting louder and louder as I focused in on it, was the sink of the bathroom a few feet from my bed. 

Drip. 

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

They have removed all the art from the walls, put metal bars across the windows, and we weren't allowed to have drawstrings on our sweatpants, but no one in this mental institution thought to check the leaky faucets?  I was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown as it was. On a good day the sound of this sink would make me contemplate ending my life. But here I was, actually voluntarily in an insane asylum for wanting to kill myself, and I am forced to sleep next to a dripping fucking faucet. You can't make this shit up.

I laughed to myself, actually making note that I would have to write this down somewhere some day as it seemed too rich to be forgotten. I wanted to say something to the girl lying awake in the bed next to me. But she didn't talk much. I mean, she didn't talk at all. Not only did she not have anything to say when it was just her and I in the room together, but she didn't ever leave the room. Not for group therapy or meals. It was my understanding she was going through some form of electric shock therapy that left her exhausted and unable to get out of bed. This would be the first time I had heard of electric shock therapy still being used, all my memory of this going back to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" or "Running with Scissors". It seemed insane to me that it was still being practiced, but gave me some perspective of the variety of diseases the other patients were dealing with.

The wonderfully broken and inspiring people that occupied the dozen or so rooms on our floor were a colorful cast of characters. There were older women dealing with grief from losing their husbands. And younger women suffering from postpartum depression. There were men dealing with addiction. And there were young adults (roughly my age) that just couldn't deal with living anymore. And no matter how different we appeared to be in the varying lines in our faces or the wear and tear of our clothes, we all had the darkest most vacant looks behind our eyes. We were all lost. And it didn't matter what brought each of us there individually, we knew that our eyes matched. And we knew that our stories were of different lives and different paths, but all of them would very intentionally meet at this point, in this hospital, together. 

Even when I am going through the deepest thicket of my depression, I still feel an obligation to make people happy. Probably even more so when I am depressed, because it gives me some sense of control when I can't find a way to make myself happy. In this particular environment, I had the ability to vocalize the absurdity of it all in a way that was relatable to every one. Whether it was poking fun at our daily goals ("if I could just feel slightly less suicidal, that would be make it a banner day for Katie") or quietly showing my table mate that I had snuck my cookie from lunch up my shirt sleeve to eat later in clear violation of the floor rules. I could tell people were starting to warm up to me. And in turn I began warming up to them.

So we starting talking about what it is that makes us so unhappy. How you don't feel pretty or lovable. That you genuinely feel it would be less of a hassle for the people around you if you just ceased to exist. And you come to find these people, these strangers, can't understand how. How you could see that in yourself, when they are seeing you for the first time and already understand how lovable you actually are. The therapy, the medicine, the counseling, it all mattered. But how these then strangers began to see me, no make-up, puffy eyes, messy hair, how they began to see me would turn out to be exactly what would save me. 

Katie Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Part I

​It was this time last year, on a Tuesday night, I drunkenly stood ​on the front step of my house smoking a cigarette staring at a list of suicide hotline numbers. I wanted to dial for help, but I also didn't know what I would say to them. "Hey, my name is Katie. I don't know why today is different than any other, but I am pretty certain I am over being alive. Any suggestions?" 

I chose one of the many numbers listed at random and waited until what sounded like a middle-aged white woman picked up on the other line. She started asking me questions, rather aggressively. It seemed like she just wanted to hear me say the words, "I am going to kill myself" so that she could move forward with dispatching a police officer to my home. Before I even started to express what I was feeling, I very quickly started backtracking to avoid it going any further. "No. No. I guess, I guess I'm just depressed. I am not going to kill myself. Thank you for your time." and I hung up the phone. Fairly certain I convinced her I would be okay, but definitely not convincing myself.

The thing about the depression this time, unlike I had ever felt it before, was that I didn't think about whether or not I wanted to kill myself. I didn't think about who it would effect or what I would be missing. It wasn't a decision to be made, it was more or less the accepted end game for me. That night I took six Xanax and six Tramadol. I knew it wouldn't kill me. It was merely an exercise for what I would eventually do to turn it all off for good.  

When I woke up the following morning, hungover and nauseous from the cocktail of drugs the night before, I made the decision to burn it all down. I knew come Thursday morning I would either be dead, or I would absolutely have to go to the hospital.  Because I was scraping at the bottom of something I could not get myself back from on my own. I knew this. It was time for fight or flight. And I frankly didn't care which one it was, as long as something broke. But I had one more day to fuck everything up before it ended, whichever way the end would present itself. 

I called off work shortly after Ryan had left for the day, drove to CVS and bought 3 bottles of champagne. I drank alone on the couch all afternoon until I passed out for what I assume was the rest of the night.  I don't remember that day. The only memories I have of that day are through cryptic tweets and Instagram pictures alluding to me celebrating the end of everything. 

I woke up on Thursday morning. Alive. Very much alive. And very much at the mercy of my deepest depression screaming in my face that the previous day had changed nothing, and it was time to make my move. I didn't call off work. I didn't call my family. I didn't do anything but get into my car and drive to urgent care. When I approached the counter, I felt a lump form in the back of my throat, and my feet cement themselves to the ground in front of the charge nurse before me. "I want to kill myself."

I was expecting alarms to go off. Men in white coats jumping into the waiting room with nets to bring me down, and tie me up to keep me from myself. Instead everyone was eerily calm about it. "Okay, ma'am. If you could just take a seat, the doctor will see you shortly." 

I don't remember what time it was when I first got to the hospital. I don't remember if it was day time, light out, dark out. They brought me from urgent care to a separate hospital for a psych evaluation in an ambulance. I laid strapped down on a stretcher in an ER hallway for hours waiting to find out what they were going to do with me. I didn't know what time it was, where I was, or when I would be outside again. I didn't look at a phone. I didn't look at a clock. I laid on my back, staring up at the florescent lights, suspended in time, knowing only that I wasn't going to die. And that alone was progress.