Archive for the ‘The Serious’ Category

Last week I got an email from Facebook letting me know a friend of mine had added me to group. When I went and investigated I realized it was a group for my 10 year high school reunion, which is apparently coming up this fall. It was kind of fun to see all the people from high school and it actually made me really excited to see old friends.

And then we got a message from our class president. At first I didn’t realize that it was from her because she has a different last name now, like many of us. And her new last name jumped out at me for some reason. I recognized it, but I couldn’t figure out why. It’s not a common last name, it wasn’t the last name of her high school sweetheart. I was stumped. And then it hit me.

It’s the last name of a girl who made my childhood a living hell.

Our class president’s now sister-in-law was a ring leader of my bullies in elementary school and she was one of the few kids who continued to bully me into junior high. I remember one day in 7th grade when she and her friend followed me into a bathroom to tease me where the teachers couldn’t stop them. They surrounded me while I washed my hands, called me names, told me I was fat and ugly and that I would never have friends because no one liked people like me. And even though they stood there telling me that I was fat, in that moment, I felt like I was shrinking. I could see my reflection in the mirror and I felt ugly and fat and weak.

I grew to hate myself because of this girl.

So after my memory of that bully was jogged I did what any normal person would do, I googled her. I was kind of surprised at how many links the search came up with because her name isn’t a very common one. Surely they couldn’t all be her, right?

Or they could.

It turns out that she is now a professional make up artist and has worked for a lot of celebrities in the past few years. Oh and she’s on twitter. And she has 19,000 people following her.

I’m not sure what I expected to find. I guess I’d hoped she wouldn’t be successful, that at some point, karma would catch up and she’d have to deal with hardships like the ones she inflicted upon me. I had hoped her life would be just a little bit harder, that she’d get a little taste of the struggles she caused me. But apparently that isn’t how life works. And as I read through her tweets and saw her face for the first time in over 10 years, I felt small again. I felt like that 12 year old girl in the bathroom all those years ago.

And then I felt worried.

What if she found me the same way I found her? What if she saw that I am still in graduate school, that I live in a tiny apartment, that we’re drowning in debt? What if she saw that I’m still not as thin as she is, what if she saw pictures from college when I fought anorexia and then gained all the weight back?

For a moment I was tempted to block her pre-emptively on twitter, or to tweet to Ellen Degeneres (who follows her) to let her know that this girl is one of the bullies that she has been speaking out against. I just wanted to find a way to hurt this girl just like she had hurt me. I know revenge is not a particularly pretty thing, but it’s what I wanted.

But I put my computer down before I could do anything I would regret.

The next morning, when I got up the tv was on and I found myself watching a music video countdown for the first time since I was 16 years old. And a song came on that caught my attention.

Done looking for the critics, cause they’re everywhere.
They don’t like my jeans, they don’t get my hair.
Exchange ourselves, and we do it all the time.
Why do we do that? Why do I do that?
Pretty pretty please, don’t you ever ever feel
Like you’re less than fuckin’ perfect.
Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel
Like you’re nothing, you’re fuckin’ perfect to me.

I almost burst into tears on the spot. The video was like a 3 minute clip of my life. And suddenly I knew what I needed to do about the bully from my past.

Nothing.

I needed to close her twitter page, I needed to stop thinking about her. She has no place in my life or my mind. I have a good life. I have a husband I love and who loves me back. I have a wonderful family, I’m heading into a career that I am proud of, and in the end, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

This is my life, this is who I am. I need to stop caring about what other people think, to stop trying to reach some invisible standard I think someone set somewhere. I am not a kid anymore, this is not elementary school and I’m done living like this. I will not live in fear of bullies, I will not live in my past.

This is my life and though it may not seem perfect, it’s fucking perfect to me.

(The video is a little…graphic, I guess. Probably not best to watch in front of kids, though this is the more work friendly version.)

I was reading through some news stories on CNN the other day and I saw one about parents protesting at a school. I used to be a teacher, so these kinds of things regularly attract my attention, but never has any upset me like this one.

These parents were not protesting the school for better education or for a wrong that had occurred, they were protesting a child. This child is not violent, in fact, she’s only 6. This child has not committed any noteworthy mistakes, she’s not a behavioral problem. The thing is, she has a peanut allergy.

Peanut allergies are among the most common food allergies and some of them are extremely severe. In some cases, if someone nearby is eating something containing peanuts, a child can have an anaphylactic reaction, meaning their throat closes up and they cannot breathe. This allergy is literally life threatening. Which is why my mind BOGGLES that parents are protesting the school’s method of helping to protect this 1st grader.

The school’s accommodations for this allergy requires all children (not sure if it’s all in her grade, or class or the whole school) to keep lunches outside the room, it requires the children to wash their hands before entering the room and after lunch, and though it is not in effect anymore, they used to require the kids to rinse out their mouths after lunch. So, basically the school is trying to get the kids to wash their hands at times when they already should be and do something that GASP could improve their dental hygiene. Yea, you should definitely go protest that.

Their complaint is that it’s taking away school time, which, I’m sorry, is complete bullshit. To properly wash your hands you must scrub with soap for 15 seconds. FIFTEEN SECONDS. Oh boy, how can you get any classwork done if you spend an entire 2 minutes a day on hand washing? And putting lunches outside, yea, I’m pretty sure that takes a solid hour of time away from learning.

This child is entitled to a public education in a safe environment and as someone with food allergies and as a decent human being, I applaud the school for the measures they have taken to protect this child.

I had a student in my homeroom and one of my classes who had a similarly severe peanut allergy. All her teachers met at the beginning of the school year and were trained by the nurse and the child’s mother on when and how to use an epi-pen for her peanut allergy. We were told that if we had peanut butter at lunch that for the safety of the child we should wash our hands thoroughly and if possible rinse out our mouths. And you know what? We all did it, happily, for the safety of this child. It didn’t take away my free time, it took a mere few minutes each day to keep a child safe. You’d think parents would have a similar list of priorities.

And that’s why I keep wondering what the hell is wrong with these parents. They are protesting at the school and while they say they are not protesting against the child, I think that’s just a line of crap to make them feel better. Their goal is either to get the school to loosen the restrictions or to get the child sent elsewhere, and neither option is acceptable to me. If it was their child, they would want everything done to keep them safe while at school and yet, they’re carrying signs and encouraging their kids to get the school to stop keeping another child safe.

Shame on you, parents.

This child is entitled to the same free public education your kids are getting and her safety, like your kids’ safety has to be a priority. Instead of standing up and holding signs protesting that your poor babies have to WASH THEIR HANDS twice a day, maybe you should take a minute and be grateful that you don’t have to worry about your child’s throat swelling up at school.

Or take a moment to be grateful that selfish parents like you aren’t encouraging the school to risk your child’s health. To risk her very life.

While I haven’t written about it at length, my health has been kinda crappy lately. I’ve been having more major headaches than usual and I’m struggling with some long term side effects from the headache meds that are not really doing their job. Add sleep deprivation to the mix and basically I’ve been a hot mess.

There have been several days where I have wondered if I would be able to make it through a full day at my clinical. There have been several days where I’ve wanted nothing more than a big long break from everything. Where I’ve just wanted some good news, good change. I’ve been having a lot of small private pity parties.

And life has been doing a really good job of giving me perspective.

I’m working with children who have profound injuries, children who have brain damage, who have cancer. Yesterday I met a kid who has been fighting Leukemia since he was a year old, he’s 4 now and he’s running out of treatment options. I also met an 18 year old girl who is so sick from her chemo that getting out of bed exceeded her energy reserves for the day.

Last week I met an 8 year old who was in the hospital with a new diagnosis of a bone cancer. We met her on her first day of chemo and she was a happy, bright little girl. She was worked with us happily that day, but when we came to see her the next day, she was incredibly sick. Each day we’ve tried to see her since then and she’s gotten sicker and sicker. Her smile fainter and fainter. Today we found out that despite the chemo that has been making her violently ill all week, her tumor has doubled in size. In a week. She will probably end up having her leg amputated.

Everywhere I look, I see people who are fighting battles that make mine look trivial. And this perspective doesn’t make my head hurt any less. It doesn’t make me feel less exhausted. It doesn’t make the side effects of the medication any more easy to manage. But it does make me realize something- people have survived worse than this. Children are managing pain and sickness that I will hopefully never understand. Their parents are standing strong in the face of fear I hope to never know.

Things are still far from good here, but looking around, I know that I can manage. I can function despite this pain, I can do what I need to do so that I can help these kids, these families to find a way to manage too. And though I may not make a huge difference in their day or their lives, I can say without hesitation that they have profoundly changed mine.

Last night I saw a video that was making its rounds on the internet. It wasn’t a video of someone singing or a celebrity making an ass of themselves like usual, it was a video of a boy being bullied. And then of him fighting back.

I know that many people have written and will write about what happened to Casey Heynes, and I’m sure many will say it more gracefully, but I need to weigh in.

I was bullied mercilessly throughout elementary school. My bullying was almost exclusively done with words and only very rarely with physical action, but there was some of both. Each night when I’d think about what had happened on the school yard that day, I’d wonder why I hadn’t fought back. Why I hadn’t stood up for myself. I would have dreams where they were terrorizing me and I would swing my fists, but never actually hit them. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to fight back.

So when I saw the video of a young boy fighting back against a bully, my reactions were mixed. On the one hand, I don’t condone violence and I wish it had never happened. On the other hand, I’m kind of glad that the bully got what was coming to him. Maybe that makes me a monster because he is a child, but I’m sorry, he deserved it and I hope it hurt (not did permanent damage, but I hope it really sucked).

That bully walked up and punched another kid in the face. He taunted him, he had a friend TAPING it. There was nothing that wasn’t awful about what that boy had planned and began to carry out. And yesterday, he saw a consequence, for what is probably the first time, for his bullying. He now knows that treating other kids like crap might get you treated exactly the same way.

And if that was the end of it, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. But the thing is, Casey Haynes, the boy who fought back, got suspended. And yea, he probably deserved that for what he did. But the bully did not get punished. A kid who set out to terrorize another child, who punched him square in the face, didn’t get punished. How is that fair? (correction: according to commenters both boys involved were suspended for 4 days. I was getting my information from a news clip I saw last night, my apologies.)

Given how big of a problem bullying has been and has become, it’s clear that our schools are not doing a good enough job of dealing with this kind of behavior. I don’t say this to be critical of schools, I used to be a teacher and both my father and step-mom are principals. I know how hard they work and how much they care about their kids. But this is unacceptable. The bullying shouldn’t be happening in the first place and at some point, we have GOT to start punishing the bullies. I don’t care if they use their words or their fists, letting them continue to treat other kids like crap is not okay. It’s just not.

I’m 27 years old and when I watched that video for the first time and heard the other kids cheering the bully on, I nearly burst into tears. Bullying isn’t a simple act, the feelings it generates do not go away as soon as the words or the action stops. It’s more than that, it’s deeper than that. Bullying makes you feel inferior, it makes you feel like you’re not good enough. It destroys self-esteem, it changes you to your soul.

I can promise without hesitation that bullying hurts a hundred times more than hitting your leg on a brick planter. In fact, if someone had offered me the option of the bullying I received or the brick planter, I’d have chosen the latter in a heartbeat. The bully got off easy. His leg will heal if it’s even still hurt. Casey will take longer. This probably wasn’t the first time he’s been through this and while he stood up for himself and probably won’t be taunted again, he will have to live with the memories of what his classmates have done.

The bottom line is that we need to do better. We need to stop bullying in schools, we need to raise our kids so that they understand that it is unacceptable when they treat each other badly and we need to punish those who bully.

Yesterday, a boy in another continent stood up for himself and the world took notice. We can’t ignore this anymore, we can’t pretend like it isn’t happening. We need to fight back with our words and our examples, so that our children don’t have to find a way to fight back for themselves.

In December, I got an email from a professor asking if any students were interested in coaching basketball teams for the YMCA near our school. I won’t say that I jumped at the opportunity, but I thought about it for a while and decided that it sounded like something that I would be able to squeeze into my schedule and that I’d really enjoy being a part of. So in January, I began spending 2 hours a week with a bunch of 7 and 8 year old girls.

On the whole, the experience was fantastic. I had a really great time and my players did as well. They don’t keep score at that age, so it really is all about having fun and I think we accomplished that each and every week, and hey we played some pretty good basketball too. But there was one thing that nagged at me.

I had one player, who was on the younger end our age group, who hadn’t played much basketball. She gave 100% at each practice, no doubt, but she wasn’t a stand out player. Since it’s a team sport, it was no big deal, she was a great defensive player and I did everything I could to lift her up and make her proud of the improvements she made throughout the season, just like the other players.

But her dad did not.

Every time we took a water break during practice or between quarters of the game, her dad called her over, away from the other kids, to tell her what she needed to do better. He would yell at her while on the court, even in practice, to play harder, to do x, y, or z and he almost never commended her for doing anything right. There were multiple days where she left practice in tears. Not from an injury, from her dad.

I am not a parent, and I know I’ll get criticism for this, but I am horrified by this father. I think he is doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing with his child. Yes, encourage her to participate in sports, yes, encourage her to play her hardest, to give it her all. Yes to all of that. But to berate a 7 year old for not getting rebounds when she is clearly afraid of getting hit in the face with the ball? Or to yell at her across the court in a game because she made a bad pass?

No. I’m sorry, no. That is not how you raise a child, that’s how you break one.

Each week I could see more and more of this little girls’ sparkle fading. I could see that basketball became less fun and more exhausting, not just physically, but mentally. And all I could think is, is it really worth this? Is having your child be good at something really worth tearing them down to get there? Do we really care so much that our kids are the best at some sport, more than we do about their happiness?

I think that there are a lot of parents who are doing a fantastic job. In fact, two mothers from my team were talking and one suggested that the other’s daughter should definitely play college basketball (and to her credit, this kid is outstanding at basketball) and her mother replied, “only if she wants to.” I wanted to hug her, I want to put her on a pedestal, because this is what we should be doing for our kids.

We’ve somehow set our focus on first place, and everything else stopped mattering. And I think that’s wrong. And I may not have children, I may not know the first thing about being a parent, but I watched a child dissolve because she was constantly reminded by her father that she wasn’t the best. I watched a child feel like a failure for doing the best she could. And I don’t think I need to be a parent to point out that we need to do better.

Let your kids be kids. Let them do things that make them happy, even if they’re not the best. Let them try new things and even occasionally fail. Be there to pick them up, to give them a high five and tell them that you’re proud of them.

And mean it.

On Friday I saw my physical therapist at a last minute appointment because my neck flared up suddenly in a very short period of time. She asked me what had been going on that may have started the flare and I told her about exams and a few life stressors and she looked me in the eye and gave me some ugly news. She said that if I didn’t get my stress under control that my neck would continue to be a problem.

I go back and see her again tomorrow and let’s just say she is not going to be pleased.

The stress kind of snuck up on me. It’s not that I didn’t have stressors, it’s that for a while I’ve been doing a really good job of compartmentalizing. In one compartment I had the stress of being sick for over a month. In another compartment I had the stress of being told I’ll need another brain surgery. In another compartment were my midterms and in another, an upcoming project and an upcoming clinical rotation. I tried to focus on one thing at a time, but before I knew it, the background stress grew to a deafening level and I could hardly focus on any one thing because there were so many others begging for my attention.

For the past week and a half I’ve had a twitch in the muscle just below my right eye. This morning for no apparent reason (except stress), I broke out in hives all over my back. I’ve had an absolutely unrelentingly bad increase in my normal headache for the past 3 days and sleeping has been difficult to come by.

I am slowly, but surely, unraveling. And the most frustrating part is that it’s my own fault.

Yes, there are a lot of things going on and most of them are outside my realm of control. I’ve actually done a pretty decent job staying up to date on most of my classes and studying in advance instead of at the last minute, but I’ve put such a tremendous amount of pressure on myself this semester, that I don’t see how I can possibly succeed.

I made a decision two years ago to go to this program even though my sister was not just a graduate, but a stand out graduate who later came back to teach one of the courses. I knew that there would be added pressure from that, but I felt comforted because I had changed my last name prior to starting and because we really don’t look anything alike. And then the name change didn’t really work and word travelled through the program, and everyone knows I’m her sister and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s harder than it would otherwise be.

My sister is a neuro-focused person. She treats neurologically compromised patients, she’s writing a textbook on neuro treatment techniques. She is important in her field and she is really good at what she does. I’d love to spend a day just watching her treat patients because she is astoundingly good at it. That said, I do not care for neuro. I just don’t, I don’t mind some parts of it, but as someone who has experienced neurological deficits, I don’t think it’s a field I would be happy working in.

This semester is all neuro. Every class is neuro based, neuro focused and our big project involves a neuro patient. It’s a tough semester for everyone, I’m not the only one who is stressed. But somehow, I found a way to make it tougher. Because I feel like I can’t just be okay, I have to be amazing. I fee like if I don’t get As, my teachers (all of who know that I’m my sister’s sister) will think less of me, less of her. My sister’s reputation proceeds me and even though no one has asked me to, I feel like I need to live up to the standards she set. I feel like not doing as well as her makes me a failure.

I’ve created stress where it doesn’t need to be and I feel like I’m drowning in it. I’m forgetting who I am and how important it is for me to be me, for me to just give my best effort and celebrate my victories, however small. I let the expectations, my expectations, grow out of control. I set the bar too high and now I’m somehow surprised that I can’t clear it.

I don’t want to go to physical therapy tomorrow because I don’t want to have to face what I already know. I am making myself sicker, I’m making myself hurt more. I don’t want to face the fact that I am, in many ways, my biggest problem.

Because that’s one I don’t know how to fix.

I made it through the entire day today without realizing. I mean, I wrote the date on a piece of paper, I even moved my watch date forward, but it still didn’t register. Which is really odd since changing the date on my watch will always make me think of my grandfather, sitting in his chair in his living room, saying some curse word at his watch when he was trying to change the date to March 1st as we sat around him, reeling.

Today is March 1st.

And while that may not be especially significant to most of you, it’s a day that my family knows well. Nine years ago today, my grandma died.

I truly can’t believe it’s been 9 years, and I know I say that each year, but it continues to amaze me. It feels like just yesterday but also a little like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was just me, but this Christmas was one of the hardest without her, and the past 8 have been anything but easy. I feel like our family is changing somehow and all I want to do is go back in time, spend a Christmas with her and savor it.

I want one more day, one more conversation, one more game of dwindle, even though I hate that game. I want just one more moment with her or one more chance to tell her how much I love her and how much she has meant to me. And it still brings me to tears that I can’t have that. That I can’t have any more of her.

The fact I’ve now lived a third of my life without my grandma mystifies me. And I don’t know how I’m going to go about having kids without her in my life.

My grandma was above all else, a mother. She raised 5 kids, and every single one of them graduated from college, every single one of them made something of themselves and I think that says a lot about her. She worked as a labor and delivery nurse until she was around 70 years old. She spent her last 5 years on this earth giving food to those who needed it. She had compassion that I can barely begin to grasp and she cared so much for others that it was captivating to watch her.

She wanted the best for everyone. She wanted us to be happy and safe all the time. She bought little trinket gifts everywhere she went, she organized, hosted and cooked family dinners more times than I can begin to count. It’s not to say that she never took any time for herself, but her family, her friends, others around her were so incredibly important to her. She loved fiercely and she made sure we always knew how loved we were.

I think the greatest testament that I can say to her is that each year when March 1st comes and goes, I feel devastated all over again because this world is missing one of the best people it ever had. The world is better for her having been in it and it’s quieter for her absence now. And it will never be the same again.

Each year I try to take some time and glean something from the 365 days that I’ve survived without this woman in my life and even 9 years later, there are still things I’m learning from her. There are things deep in my memory and it makes me sad how fuzzy some of the memories have become. How I can’t remember the sound of her voice anymore or how soft her skin was. I hate that I can barely remember the way she used to do the voices in her favorite book or the song she sang every time we got on the swing in her backyard.

Each year a little more of her is gone and I feel like the only thing I can do is try, each year, to be a little more like her because the world needs more of what she was. I feel that the least I can do is learn a lesson from her life and pass it on to my cousins, the ones who never met her and my children who will never know the amazing woman who took care of an amazing family. I was so blessed to have her in my life and I never want to forget the life, the happiness, the memories that she gave me.

I really wasn’t sure what my lesson was going to be this year, and to be honest, I’ve been having trouble facing another year, another milestone. But I think the only way I can honor her this year is by doing the things she would be doing if she was still here. I want to help others. I want to give to those who need care right now, to those who need someone to be a mother to them, like she was a mother to so many. My funds and time are limited, but my ability to help is not.

Tonight, on the 9th anniversary of her death, I’m making a donation to Friends of Maddie. My grandma helped deliver hundreds of babies in her life and I know that if she was here, she’d love the heart of this organization and the care, love and support they provides families who desperately need it.

My grandma was a caregiver. She gave everything she had to anyone who needed it. And while it might take me a lifetime to live up to the legacy of love she has left behind, I’m taking a first step, of many, tonight. If I can make a fraction of the impact she made on peoples’ lives, if I can give to others a fraction of what she gave, then maybe I’ll feel like the world isn’t missing her as badly. Maybe I’ll feel like someday, we’ll really be okay without her.

But until then, I’ll try to live each day to make her proud, to give to others whenever I can and to share her heart with the world. Because we desperately need more people like my grandma in this world.

I’m angry at the universe right now. I guess I’m mostly angry at God, but I’m hesitant to call Him out because I don’t know what the consequences of that might be.

In 2010, my cousin (who is in his mid-40s) was diagnosed with aggressive colon cancer. He has since had chemo, radiation, a very invasive surgery and is now back on chemo. He is doing incredibly well and frankly most of the time makes me feel like a whiner because he is just so damn optimistic. He handles his struggles with grace, but it’s just so wrong to me that he has to handle them at all.

I just can’t help but think that it’s not fair.

In January, I found out that my step-grandfather has prostate cancer. As far as we know, the cancer is contained and slow growing, but he is having surgery in February and treatment will proceed from there. I have known this man for half my life and I can tell you, honestly, that there is no one kinder. He welcomed us into his family as if we were his grandchildren and it just makes me so sad to know that he and his wife (who I also love) have to deal with this.

It’s not fair.

Later in January, I found out that Jackie, who I met via Heather, has had a recurrence of her brain tumor. Yes, more cancer. If you’ve never met Jackie, you are absolutely missing out. She is one of those insanely kind people who you cannot imagine anyone not loving. Her prognosis is not what we want, in fact, it’s kind of the opposite. She’s preparing to face a struggle that I can only barely begin to imagine.

It’s just really not fair.

And then last night, I found out that Sue, who has been a commenter here for as long as I can remember, has had a recurrence of her cancer. It’s in her brain and she’s starting a new treatment soon. If you haven’t read her comments, Sue is kind and caring and she leaves comments on here that simultaneously lift me up and challenge me to try harder. Half the time my mom or aunt will tell me that they were going to comment on something, but Sue already covered it. I kind of feel like she’s my internet mom, and I’m scared for her. And I’m sad because she shouldn’t have to go through more pain.

It’s just so incredibly not fair.

There is so much pain and suffering among the people I love, and I am feeling a little lost by it all. I don’t understand how so many great people are having to endure such pain, fear and ugliness. How is there reason in this? How can we sit by and not be outraged? I can’t.

I don’t understand how these terrible things are happening to good people. I don’t know how to trust in a higher power or in a plan that doesn’t make any sense. It is wrong that these people are suffering, that they are struggling when they deserve so much happiness, when they deserve a freaking break. It doesn’t make sense that people who bring so much light and joy and love into this world, end up fighting for their place in it.

And I am tired of this. I feel helpless to do anything for the people I love, to help those who struggle and suffer burdens they do not deserve. There is no reason any more, there is no sense, no understanding.

And I’ve just had enough. I want answers, and if I can’t have answers, then I want peace. Peace for the people I love, for the people who deserve a break, for the people who deserve something better than what they are being forced to deal with.

Enough already. Do you hear me?

Last night I read a post by The Bloggess about stepping forward and acknowledging mental illness. She wrote about a woman whose husband recently committed suicide because he never took the time to take care of himself. It’s a story that is both tragic and terrifying.

So I’m speaking out too, because I can.

I have struggled with anxiety since I was 12 and depression and an eating disorder since I was 18. I have been on medication almost continuously for the past 9 years even though I never wanted to be on it in the first place.

The first time I was hit by anxiety, I didn’t know it had a name. I was in the 7th grade and I missed weeks of school. I couldn’t be left alone, I couldn’t manage going out in public. It was such a terrible feeling and nothing I did, nothing we tried made any difference. It was months before I wasn’t scared all the time, and though things got better, it took a very long time and the feelings always simmered quietly under the surface.

When I started college, my life came to a screeching halt.

I hated it. I wanted to go home. I missed my family, I missed my home. I was miserable. I cried all the time. There were days where I didn’t do anything except go to my classes and come home and cry. I can barely count how many phone calls I made, sobbing, from my dorm room. In just a few weeks, I could not see the sun from behind the clouds of my depression, my world was upside down.

There was a night in September where I had a huge headache from non-stop crying. I grabbed my Costco bottle of Advil and poured a few out. Then I poured a few more. I looked at my handful of Advil and I sat down on my bed.

I had an out.

A horrible awful out that I hadn’t thought of before.

I didn’t know what to do. I was so miserable. I was hopelessly sad. I didn’t want to keep fighting. But I didn’t know if I could do it.

I sat there for what felt like ages. Then I looked around me and saw pictures. Pictures of my family, pictures of my friends. Pictures of people who loved me and who I loved back. Pictures of people who were there for me and who would be as lost without me as I would be without them. And slowly I poured the pills back in the bottle, called my mom and a week later was on medication. It took a while, but things began to turn around. There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think of that night, that I don’t realize that having people to turn to, having people who loved me, saved my life.

In the 9 years since that night, I’ve grown by leaps and bounds. I have gone through phases of terrifying anxiety and days of subtle depression, depression I didn’t realize until it was treated accidentally by a headache medication. What I’ve learned through these past 9 years is that this is a life-long battle. I can’t just decide that I’m not going to feel hopeless or not feel panicked to the point of not breathing. If I could, if any of us could, we wouldn’t need help.

But we do. We cannot do this alone.

My only hope in writing this today is that those of you who are in that place, who are considering an out, know that there are people who care about you. People who would be lost without you. People who want you to take care of yourself, and soon. I’m one of them. I want you to take care of yourself.

As someone who fought long and hard against taking medication, please listen to me, because I understand what you’re feeling. But that voice in your head telling you that medication and therapy mean you have failed? That voice is wrong. There is nothing wrong with needing help- whether it is medicinal or from a therapist or both. We all need help sometimes and this is bigger than you. It’s a fight you cannot win on your own, and you don’t have to.

I fought depression and I almost lost. You cannot do this alone, so speak up. Someone is listening.

47 and a half years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in front of a crowd of people. He spoke eloquently of the hopes he held for his children, of the hopes he held for this country. He spoke about the things that divide us and the things that could bring us back together.

Martin Luther King Jr. lived in a world that was not so different from our world today. It was a time of political turmoil where the differences that separated people seemed enormous. It was a time where many were fighting for rights that others never had to give a second thought to, that seemed so very basic. It was a time when violence was common, when people were overcome by anger, by confusion. Where the whole country seemed on the brink of war.

And yet, Dr. King stood amidst the churning seas of violence and he preached non-violence to his followers, even when others were violent to them.

As I read the news today, stores of those in Tucson, stories of those around the world, I was overcome by disappointment. I think if Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today, he would be disappointed. Yes, civil rights were extended to African Americans in the United States, but the violence of the political parties, the refusal to give fairly basic rights to homosexuals scream out at me. We can do better than this.

We can extend rights to people so that when my children are old enough to marry, they can marry whoever it is they love, regardless of gender. We can extend non-violence and use diplomacy so that my children will never know a world where politics is ever even considered to be a source of violence. We can love each other, we can support each other.

We can do better. And I think we owe it to those who came before us, those who fought for what we have today, what we don’t give a second thought to, to try harder. I can’t wait for the day where Dr. Kings dreams are realized. Where children will live in a nation where all men are truly created equal. Where “‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

He had a dream. Let’s keep fighting for it.