I’d like to talk a little bit today about the act of crying. Now, this may seem an odd topic to tackle in my blog, but bear with me. All will be explained.
You see, I’m not afraid or embarrassed to reveal that I’ve been doing a lot of crying over the past year. And while that, too, may sound a bit odd, there’s good reason for it. You see, the entire meaning and purpose of crying has been redefined for me. The act no longer means to me what it once did. It’s not about being sad. Or at least, it’s not always about being sad.
Let me back up a bit here.
I’ve written a lot about my depression in this space. Well, maybe not a lot, because I don’t update this blog very often (actually, my main blog gets pretty neglected too, but that’s a tale for another time), but I have delved into some fairly personal stuff here.
Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet…
I originally designated my main blog as a “professional” blog and this one as my “personal blog”, but over time, I began to recognize that the notion was a bit of a conceit, because personal stuff began creeping into my main blog, leaving this one rather orphaned. So, a redefinition is in order. This blog will now become my “journal” blog, and in it I will simply blow off steam or delve a bit deeper into the whole personal demons/personal development journey I’ve been on. The main blog will, of course, never be personal-info-free, so it was nuts to even attempt that. Still, however, the main blog will be mostly for writing about topics that interest me and projects I’m working on.
So, enough categorizing and defining, and back to the issue at hand.
Somewhere along the line, in one or the other of my blogs (or both, perhaps) I mentioned something or other about a “mental health crisis”. Nice euphemism, that, and one that leaves the reader wondering (perhaps) what actually went on.
Well, that event did actually occur, over a year ago now, and it wasn’t a nervous breakdown, or a nervous collapse, or a major meltdown, or a big fat wigging-out.
It was worse than that.
On September 22nd of 2009, I reached the lowest point I had ever reached in my depressive life, and I did what most people would consider the unthinkable: I attempted suicide.
I won’t get into the reasons for it. Suffice it to say that a couple of things converged upon me at just the wrong time, and I felt I could no longer handle it. It’s utterly amazing what the depressive mind will do when it feels that it simply cannot abide feeling the way it does any longer.
I never thought I’d write about this in a blog entry. Seriously. It just didn’t seem to me that it would be a productive, or even wise, thing to do. A few people knew about it at the time, and I’ve since told a select couple of other folks, but I figured it would be best to just learn from the experience and move on.
But you know, this whole issue of mental health is extremely important to me, and I’ve decided that I want to tell my story in a bit more detail. Perhaps it will be useful or helpful to someone else, out there, somewhere. You never know.
Anyway, my actions ended me up in hospital for a few days, and I was referred to a six-week intensive group-therapy program, which I started two months later, on November 23rd. I knew I needed to do something, and I was more than willing to go along with any suggestions the doctors had for me.
Let me tell you, entering that program was the best thing I could have done for myself. I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of how it was set up, but I will tell you that there were a number of components, most of them involving the group. To my mind, the most important of these components was the process of getting at buried feelings. It was simple on the surface, but highly effective. It involved writing exercises, often in the form of letters to loved ones in a specific format, followed by reading those pieces of writing out loud to the group.
At first, this was intimidating. Terrifyingly intimidating. But once I began to realize that I was safe in the group and that everyone was there for the same purpose, it got easier. And once that comfort level went up, the tears began to flow. Reading my written pieces out loud became a cathartic, cleansing, healing activity. It was almost unbelievable.
From this program, I learned one of the best skills I’ve ever been taught. I now know that if I’m feeling anxious, unsettled, or upset, I need to sit quietly with myself and really feel the feelings underneath. Find where in my body the feelings are located. Find out what’s underneath the anxiety. Allow the feeling to be. And let the tears flow.
As I said earlier, crying has been redefined for me. It is no longer merely an expression of intense sorrow or grief, though those feelings are often at the root of it. But the actual act of crying is a release valve. It gets the uncomfortable feelings out and makes room for the positive ones. Every time I cry, it’s like popping a blister and letting out the pus inside it. It relieves the pressure.
My journey is far from over. I have a lot of buried feelings still to process, and these past few months have really convinced me of that. I’ve had positive and negative things happen all in the same short space of time. I left my job at the bookstore, had a brief, horrible experience working in a coffee shop, and then got a much better job at a financial institution’s call center, which is, surprisingly, a very supportive environment. During that same roller-coaster period, my mother went into hospital and now will not be returning to her home, because she can no longer take care of herself. She’s awaiting placement in a nursing home, and we are trying to find homes for her cats (a depressingly unlikely prospect at this point) and go through stuff in her house.
Like I said, I’ve been doing a lot of crying. There’s a lot going on, and the feelings are just waiting to jump out at me, sometimes when I least expect it.
But I know I have the tools to cope, to process, to move forward, and eventually step out into the light.
And as I always say, don’t forget to leave your own light on.
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