On 2009 and a little history

Tags

2009 retrospective, Depression, EMDR, fireworks, freelance writing, Jeff Martin, Kindness, kirtan, Meditation, Panic attacks, PTSD, redundant, self-knowledge, Shadow Yoga, Suicide, Yoga, yoga teacher training

As I watched Sydney’s fireworks going off from my vantage point at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair (not an actual chair, of course), the following words excitedly slipped from between my lips…

Fuck off 2009! Seeeeeyah! GOOD RIDDANCE!!

Okay, perhaps that was a little vehement. Or perhaps not. Can’t think of too many people I know that had a fantastic 2009. For the most part it was pretty much a total bastard of a year. A struggle. Hard work. Ups and downs. Mostly downs. Generally it was a rather shitful twelve months…

Interestingly for me, it resembled 2005 in that it was both one of the best and worst years of my life.

The worst things about 2009 included:

• Being made redundant;
• Not being able to find a job for four very long months;
• Having a major stack on my bike and injuring my shoulder (it’s still not okay);
• Falling deeply into a morbid depression;
• Feeling suicidal for a fair portion of that time;
• Becoming almost entirely penniless;
• Taking on a job I loathed, because it was the only one I was offered at the time;
• Losing a good friend; and
• Being ignored by my family when I really needed their support (or is that perhaps a good thing?).

The best things about 2009 were:

• Seemingly overcoming my PTSD flashbacks* – I haven’t had one in almost a year, since February 2009. Which is actually pretty major. EMDR saved my life;
• The birth of my second niece;
• Yoga Teacher Training, which also saved my life;
• Being shown great kindness by M, the woman who runs the yoga school;
• Being hired for some freelance writing;
• Meeting my rock star crush (hubba hubba);
• Gaining some good friends;
• Discovering a local Kirtan group, oh and Shadow Yoga too;
• Finally getting a job I really like!!!
• Becoming a yoga teacher;
• Meeting up with some blog pals; and
• Finally, having a really great New Year’s Eve, the first in a long time (instead of being alone and depressed)

* Subject to further observation and continued cessation of flashbacks.

Overall, 2009 turned out to be sorta okay in the end, especially in the final three months or so. But much of the year was such a struggle. And yet, somehow I’ve managed to discover amazing new strengths and self-knowledge – spurred on very much by all the yoga and meditation, for sure.

In the same reflective vein, one of my Twitter buddies recently asked the question: where were you twenty years ago? So, while on holidays I undertook a bit of a mental wander through the past, given we’re now at the start of a new decade and all… the following is what I found.

Twenty years ago… I was eighteen, just finished/failed high school. I was mortified and embarrassed, and my fellow students couldn’t believe it (What? Svasti failed and I passed? I never would’ve expected that, LMAO!). I’d had something of a mental meltdown in my final year and completely screwed up my exams, missing entire sections of a couple of them. Not to mention that inexplicably, I had Physics as one of my subjects, and I’m hopeless at science! I shouldn’t have let my parents and teachers talk me into it. Honestly, I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but everyone else seemed convinced I could. But my brain simply doesn’t function that way – its more colours, shapes and flowers than numbers and measurements. I should’ve stuck with the literature and drama subjects. The assumption was that I’d be going to university. But when I failed, the new assumption was that I’d repeat the year. I tried to do that, switching schools of course, to avoid further embarrassment, but I couldn’t stick it out. There wasn’t a great deal of motivation in it for me as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and very little support or encouragement. And so I became a high school dropout and a stripper. Heh, go figure.

Ten years ago… I was twenty-eight, and in a very short space of time I’d met my Guru and left my fiancé of almost three years. It was a brand new phase of my life, not that I knew it so much at the time…

Five years ago… I was thirty-three, and within just a few months, I was finally initiated into my Guru’s lineage, I was assaulted, and began a truly horrifying descent into PTSD and depression. Nuff said.

One year ago… I was thirty-seven, and doing the hard yards with resurfaced PTSD and depression. And I was working up the courage to get some EMDR therapy – I can’t believe I thought it would be scary! Not that it wasn’t super-hard, but living without daily flashbacks is infinitely better than living with them! Also, I was on the verge of starting my yoga teacher training (at the time, I was just going for a yoga studies certificate!). For that, I really have to thank my first therapist, H. When she seemed to be getting nowhere with me, in exasperation she asked me what I wanted to do with my life. What my dreams were. And out of my mouth poured a bunch of things, including: I wanna be a yoga teacher…

Today… I’m thirty-eight, and I am a yoga teacher. Which still feels kinda surreal. I’ve found a measure of joy, and a way to generate self-love and self-joy. Can’t say I’m good at doing those things 100% of the time, but I’m working on it. In fact, part of my upcoming plans for this year will include ways to generate more love and joy in my life on a daily basis. I still get panic attacks occasionally. I still experience anxiety when I’m in massive crowds of people (which has to change if I’m going to go to India). There’s still plenty of work for me to do. But I’m endlessly grateful that I now feel equipped to take on these challenges. That I know how to fend off my depression. And I’m watching as I evolve into an actual yoga teacher – not just by certification. Finally, I think I’m possibly-maybe ready to fall in love again, whenever I am blessed with meeting the right person. I can only hope that that’s on the cards for me. And whoever they are, watch out because I’ve got so much I want to share!

So yeah. A year of pain and triumph, too. And it’s interesting to take a look back and notice that there does seem to be some kind of journey unfolding here. Sorta.

Next post… my plans for 2010!!

~Svasti

The loss of two Jims

Tags

Contentment, death, Depression, Habits of Depression, Healing, joi de vivre, Persistence, Suicide, the Bottom Lurker

My friend Christa over at Giggle On! has a very sad tale to tell.

Her blog was created in memory of a good friend Jim (#1) who lost his battle with depression and committed suicide in 2005.

His death helped Christa to climb out of her own depression and since then, she’s been on a mission to fight the good fight of suicide prevention and bring happiness and laughter to the world.

Her message is: Don’t give up! Giggle on!

Or in other words: find another way. Christa’s way is laughter and humour.

The message continues: Know that where you’re at with your depression is NOT the end of the world. And that when we back ourselves into a corner of a small claustrophobic room called Depression, our choices seem very few. It looks like those limited choices are all we have.

And that’s when suicide can start to look like a good idea.

Very sadly, another friend of Christa’s – also called Jim – has taken his life, just this week. This Jim (#2) was a support to Christa as she grieved for the loss of Jim #1. And he helped her to create the Giggle On! site.

To Christa, the friends and family of the two Jims… I offer endless sympathy and love. No matter what, suicide is shocking and painful for those left behind.

You know, it wasn’t long ago I was engaged in my own showdown with depression – one that could’ve very easily ended the same way as the two Jims.

BlissChick has just written a beautiful post on the Habits of Depression. She describes something I’ve labelled the “Bottom Lurker” – an energy that’s just waiting for an excuse to re-emerge. It sits patiently on the ocean floor of our sub-concious in the shadows and it waits.

And while that Bottom Lurker exists, depression is always a possibility. It’s capable of robbing us of sunshine and joi de vivre, especially if we let our guard down.

I understand how bad it can feel to be alive when your mind is telling you there’s no point. But it’s a lie. It is your mind lying to you, pulling down the shades and painting everything midnight black and scary.

I don’t pretend to know why we so readily believe these lies. Why it’s so tough to see alternatives when we are depressed. It’s just so unfair, because right around the corner is our potential, waiting mutely in the wings for us to awaken.

The trick is to find a way to hang on til you do. To trust the stories of others who’ve been where you’re standing who can honestly say: There is another way out!

Because there really is a way to recover that doesn’t involve taking your own life.

My wish for everyone out there dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts is Strength and Persistence. And Trust. And the desire to Hold On and Push Through those painfully difficult times. And for a Break in the Clouds, one that’s big enough to help you remember what life can be like when you are not depressed.

Ultimately, I wish Healing, Joy, Happiness and the desire to live out your life in Contentment. For all of us.

Namaste.

~Svasti

World Suicide Prevention Day

Tags

Depression, PTSD, Suicide, World Suicide Prevention Day, Yoga

Apparently 10^th September is World Suicide Prevention Day. I was alerted to this by two of my blogger friends (Christa and Clinically Clueless), who’ve been writing about their own experiences with suicide.

I’ve touched on this topic before. Many years ago I lost a friend to suicide, and it sucked. It’s never stopped sucking, really.

Something I haven’t shared with many people until right now, and certainly almost nobody at the time… (deep breath!!)… was that for many months earlier this year I was fending off the desire to end my life almost daily.

Of course, this was going on at the same time as one of my most intensely painful bouts of depression.

Ironically, I went through all of this after drop-kicking PTSD in the ass. I’d been through a great deal of therapy, and finally, finally… I was no longer suffering daily flashbacks.

Double irony – I’d started my yoga studies by this time, too. Something that’s turned into an extremely positive part of my life, as I’ve been writing about in recent times.

In other words, I was through the worst of my hard-won battles.

But I’d lost my job, and was having an extremely hard time getting another one. My family could’ve have been on the other side of the world, for all the support they offered me. Even my dear sister (actually, I suspect she deals with depression too, but has yet to admit it). Around the same time, I also lost a friendship, someone I’d relied on (perhaps a little too much).

Night after night, I’d stare down dark places that beckoned with seductive promises. I considered numerous strategies for taking my life. I thought about giving away all of my things (to make life simpler for everyone). I thought about my Guru and the many things he’s told me in the past about why suicide seems so appealing sometimes. And why many spiritual seekers end up in this place at least once in their journey. And I thought about my friend who jumped off a cliff and the heartbreak this caused everyone who knew him.

And I told no one what was I was thinking.

Because if I intended to do it, I wasn’t going to give anyone, not a single person, the chance to change my mind.

In fact, the only reason I’m writing about this now, is because I no longer wish to end my life.

Luckily, the voices in my head that egged me on were opposed by other voices. The parts of me that know life is worth living, despite the heartache and pain. That things do get better and that it is worth hanging in there.

It wasn’t an easily won battle, not by a long stretch. And what do you know? I did get another job. I was shown incredible kindness by the woman who runs my yoga school. And now, I’m gonna be a yoga teacher!!

So… I’m outing myself in this post in support of World Suicide Prevention Day.

Yet, I find I can not preach about how ‘suicide is not the answer’.

Of course, its not. But that argument doesn’t stack up when someone is trapped in a maze of depression.

In her post, Clinically Clueless writes that her mother wrote off her suicidal nature as ‘just wanting attention’. You bet your ass she did! And that’s a good thing.

Everyone on this planet needs attention, needs to feel loved, connected and as though there’s a point to being alive. Many people who are suicidal simply do not feel any of those things.

And Christa has built her blog and message in memory of her good friend’s suicide and her own near misses.

Recently, we nearly lost a blogger from this world. Someone I didn’t know before their suicide attempt, but other blogger friends did. Luckily, this person was found in time and is now on the road back. And though we’ve never met and live far apart, I’m thrilled things worked out as they did.

As Christa often says: DON’T. GIVE. UP!!

And please, take care of your loved ones. You may never get the chance to stop them taking their life. But by ensuring they know you love them, you might be one of the reasons they choose not to.

~Svasti

On not contemplating suicide

Tags

death, Depression, Fragility, Life, Mark Priestly, Suicide

Hopefully the title of this piece does not cause any alarm. But I’d like to talk about the “s” word without sounding suicidal. Which I’m not.

Recently here in Australia, a well known and well liked actor starring in an Australian TV show killed himself. This news, combined with my own internal contemplations of late, has created this post.

Now, I know I’m not suicidal, because if I was going to do it, there’s a specific night around eight years ago that it would have been all over for me in this lifetime. Sayonara. Goodnight.

Also, with everything I’ve been through in the past few years, not once have I seriously thought about it.

However, it would be true to say I have very mixed feelings about the whole concept of suicide.

For example, I’m pro-euthanasia: humanely allowing people to end their misery if they choose to with a sane mind. I don’t think that should be a crime for either the person dying or the person(s) helping them. Especially where someone has chronic pain or an incurable disease that will eventually rob them of their dignity.

In my early 20’s, I had a friend, Rhett. I don’t have that friend any more because one day he killed himself. No one knew he was feeling so bad or that he had suicidal tendencies. He got stoned off his tree, drove to a nearby beach, and threw himself over the edge of a cliff.

His death brought utter devastation to the lives of his friends and family. The funeral, a cremation, looked like a car crash scene. It was unbearable to look anyone in the eye because of the haunted, lost and searching expressions that pervaded. His brother, whom I’d once dated, cried openly in my arms.

Fifteen years later and I still think of Rhett from time to time. I can’t quite believe that he did what he did. Sometimes I wonder what his life might have been like if he’d just reached out and told someone he was feeling really crappy. And I think of his family, for whom the grief may never end as long as they live.

Then in the year 2000, a very torrid, passionate and self-destructive relationship I was in came to a screeching halt. Metal and against metal, my ex A, ended things painfully, harshly. It’s possibly the only way he could’ve ended things to make it stick. Prior to this I’d been in counselling, trying to get over him and not go back or take him back. So it shouldn’t have come as such a shock, given we’d been on and off for over eighteen months. But it did. And it was.

To blot out the pain, I threw myself into my stupid meaningless job. Friday night drinks would turn into a bender, and I began to understand why people anesthetise themselves with alcohol. Sometimes it can really help for a bit, I thought at the time. In retrospect, I’d say I was suffering shock and depression.

I can’t remember what night of the week it was, but I came home and my flatmate wasn’t there. She was staying at her boyfriend’s place like she often did and our little flat was empty. Since I was crying most nights anyway, that kind of suited me.

Fragility is a funny thing. Physically you can be really strong and powerful, but the state of helplessness siphons that away. The sensation that your bones will crack with the slightest touch replaces any strength you possess.

And that night something had cracked and was desperately broken.

I knew I was in trouble when no matter what, I couldn’t stop crying. I tried practicing breathing that I knew from yoga. I talked sternly to myself. I walked around the flat and tried to do stuff to distract. But nope, I was still crying uncontrollably.

Sitting on the couch, everything went a little dark and it seemed as though I’d paid admission to a jerky fun park ghost ride: Welcome… to your own personal dark night of the soul…

Down, down, down. The further I plunged, the more painful things got and I knew, I just knew right then I needed some help.

My thoughts had turned to how I could stop feeling so torn. This is the first time I’d seriously considered suicide in my life. I reached the bottom of that ocean, and it was decision time. Black thoughts, deepening darkness and intentions of eradicating myself. But no… I touched the sandy ocean floor and kicked back towards the surface again.

In the moment of my worst pain, I was glad to know that about myself. But still, I hurt ferociously. So the next step was thinking I needed to create some other sort of pain. Like, how when you cut your finger but then bang your head and you don’t notice the finger anymore? That’s what I was thinking. Of cutting.

Around this time I was hysterical. So much so I thought it would be a good idea to call my mother. Call mummy. But this was my first important lesson in why I should never call my mother when in this kind of state.

She picks up and I’m crying like a banshee. She asks me what’s wrong but I can’t talk. I can barely catch my breath. After trying for a few minutes to get me to talk, coldly she says: “Stop acting like a baby. Grow up and stop crying.”

This shocks me awake enough to hang up the phone. She doesn’t try to call back. Not that night and not the next day either. She never mentions it to me again.

Eventually I get up the nerve to call my counsellor – because it was late, I’d hesitated, not wanting to bother her. But she was the correct choice all along. She helped me work things out and find a way through the night. But I’ve never forgotten that plunge to the depths of my dark side.

Last week I was driving with my mum over to my nan’s house and there was a news story on the radio about the actor who committed suicide.

I start saying how sad it was, how it’s such a terrible experience for those left behind. About then Mum got all reactive which is pretty normal for her.

She said she doesn’t see it that way. Foolishly I tried to debate it with her a bit, but she’s not interested as per usual. There’s an old standard argument ender in my family – “If you’re right, then I must be wrong again”. It’s used to shut down so many conversations it’s just not funny. And it drives me batty because there’s no way to talk to someone who takes that stance. Both my parents do it actually and I want to shake them from their comatose animal realm view of life each and every time. So she pulls that line out and for now the conversation is over.

A little later she said: “I’ve got news for you. If the doctors couldn’t save my arm with this last operation, they were going to amputate it. And if that happened I wasn’t going to live. I had it all planned out, with the pills and everything.”

I tell her that I don’t think she could or would actually go through with it. That she has a baby grand-daughter and another on the way and I just don’t believe she’d do it.

She admitted that her grand daughter was the only thing that made her think twice, but she was going to try and go through with it if she had the balls. She thought it was about balls.

But I’m not so sure it’s about courage when it comes to suicide. My completely unqualified opinion is this: I think people stop identifying with themselves and instead identify only with the pain. Really bad pain that they can’t see a way out of it whilst they’re alive. But because they don’t like the pain, they want to end it. And since they’ve stopped identifying with themselves as a valued individual, it really isn’t a big deal for them to end their life.

All of this said… I still have mixed feelings about suicide. I mean, it’s not for others to judge how much pain someone else is in. But it’s always my hope that people feel they can just tell someone else how they’re feeling. Because I truly believe part of what makes us feel so bad is keeping it to ourselves. Thinking no one else could understand, and that there’s no end to how we feel.

Righto then… just to complicate matters I can truly empathise with those who do take their lives even though I wish they’d try to work it out another way.

A lot of the inner world thinking that belongs to the darker part of myself – as opposed to the sage yogi part of myself – is probably not that healthy. And its active right now unfortunately…

For example: “There’s not one person who relies on me for anything in their daily life, except for going to work. So, if I just vanished from this world… its not like it would make a huge difference to anyone.”

This is despite knowing from my friend Rhett’s death just how it is for those left behind.

But when these trains of thought are in operation, I completely agree with what I’m telling myself.

“It’s such a shame really that I have to endure this existence. I’d probably have a better shot at liberation in another lifetime anyway. It would be simpler for me not to be here. What would it really matter?”

Oh, so this voice also engages with the yogic part of my being too! And tries to incorporate yogi philosophy about life and death. Luckily, I know better.

On my side, is the knowledge it’s not what I want. But the dark thoughts, they persist, tormenting and whispering…

This post is for all those out there feeling low. Get help, reach out. Trust that others care, no matter what you tell yourself.

And god bless Mark Priestly. I hope he found some peace in the after-death state.

~Svasti