hopelessness

A few events this week brought up some thoughts on what it is that I am trained to do here... As a therapist in training, pain and hopelessness are part of my job. Sometimes, I am the only one holding on to any hope for the lives of the people I work with. Sometimes, even this hope is not enough. Sometimes the hopelessness gets overwhelming.

Spring is the season for suicides, though I thought by May we would be more in the clear. And yet just this week:

1. The mom of my colleague who committed suicide 2 years ago is doing the San Francisco overnight Out of the Darkness walk in June. The walk is sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and happens at night so that you finish walking at dawn, thus symbolically coming out of the darkness about this issue. A link was sent around to support the mom who, of course, is walking in her daughter's name. The walkers do this thing where they light candles in paper bags along the path, and these lanterns have the names of the people the walkers are honoring written on them. I hope that this experience is reparative for the mom and her team; I hope that they find a sense of community and compassion from others. This reminder though made me remember, again, how there we were in class just a few days before, talking about psychology things. While we contemplated what brings about changes in people, she secretly couldn't imagine the dark days getting any better. 
2. Today I also found out that two days ago, a UC Berkeley student jumped from a 6th floor story of his dorm, about 1 mile from where we live. The report says that they are still investigating whether this was truly a suicide, but the air on campus makes it seem that it was. After all, this student's last Facebook update was: RIP [student's name] 11/18/91 – 5/8/12.
3. Finally, there's this. A person I didn't know at all, but someone who is still touching the hearts of internet friends and acquaintances. This is tragic because, all existential crises aside, the act of giving up on life so completely is jarring. The ripples of grief are broad and it's difficult to wrap my mind around an act so counterintuitive to the survival and adaptivity of human beings. No matter what explanations are offered to me–it's the circle of life, we are all regenerated energy, everybody dies eventually–being confronted with someone giving up on a fight against their pain can feel as if any hope that things can look up for people is sucked right out of me. 

Suicide is an act of hopelessness. In their suicide notes, people often say things like, "I tried, I really tried everything I could think of, and yet nothing helped to take the pain away." I can't speak for everyone's experience, maybe there are situations in which nothing really truly can help, but I have to hold on to the thought that there is hope, that there is quite often, most of the time, some way out. Life is not a steady line of happiness or unhappiness. Downs exist, really really lows exist, they may even exist most of the time for some people. But ups, even really pale ups, some subjective versions of better, they also exist, they have to, for everyone. But in those dissociated states at the moment of suicide, people cannot fathom the alternatives to pain. It's my job, then, to not drown in the hopelessness, and to believe in the possibility of better.

surviving the flames

Remember that time I decided it would be a wonderfully stimulating adventure to go to grad school? That time when I didn't realize that grad school = professional hazing where they make you jump through flaming hoops to advance from level to level until you are deemed worthy enough of holding a title that's supposed to mean something? Luckily, I'm not the only one sitting with these feelings, and others have even written about the experience:

  26 Fun Facts About Grad School « Thought Catalog

Right now I am living in a world of #16, #17, #22, and #24. This week though is a bit of a lull (read: tonight I only need to add another preliminary analysis to my dissertation proposal before sending out to my committee, write a few essays for a scholarship application, and finish updating my CV; see #16 above) before the giant storm (oral proposal for said dissertation, oral clinical competency exam) that will be the end of this month.

So tonight, as I wasted some time and thought about the ridiculousness of this grad school circus, I decided that hey, while doing all those dog-and-pony shows over the years, I may have even learned something! Here are a few of those things:

• How to say no
• How to say yes
• How to ask for what I need
• How to manage my time
• How to have fun on a budget 
• That public speaking and group/team work are not my strengths
• That individual interactions, deep critical thinking, and writing are my strengths
• To go between my Russian and US identities more fluidly
• How to delegate tasks and manage the work of others
• That I am good at statistics and ok at math in general
• How to talk about my interests in an engaging manner
• That, despite the debt, I have many more career options than I realized
• That I can persevere, even under a lot of criticism and with few rewards
• How to call out microaggressions
• How to stop apologizing for having a voice
• Enough to understand and find this blog funny

so far

I wish I could write here more. I think I will write here more after May 21, when I better pass my clinical proficiency exam and also successfully propose my dissertation orals.

For now I will say that whoever sent in this postsecret knows a thing or two about advanced degree education. Just replace the words "law school" with "grad school" and you will approximate my experience in the last several years.

P.S. Have I mentioned that my dream in life is to be a Russian-style Frida? I already have my garb in place, now all I need is freedom.

on being a therapist

Therapy is a mysterious process. Something unique happens when two souls meet in a circumscribed safe space. They affect each other in ways that are hard to describe to the outside world. Many people wonder what makes therapy special and what exactly produces results. When people hear about my training, they start asking me questions, or they make comments about therapy that are wrought with their own assumptions. Usually it's people who haven't experienced therapy for themselves.

I've been thinking about my answers to some of these common questions or comments, so here are my attempts to clear up some misconceptions:

Therapists get paid to be supportive and automatically like the people they work with.
Ethical therapists don't lie to their clients, ever. Sure, we receive some training on how to evade certain questions we feel would be harmful to answer, and we don't disclose too much personal information. But other than that, everything we say is truly what we think and how we feel. We are genuinely amazed by people, their survival and their abilities. We don't love our clients blindly and automatically, without any consideration of who they are, just because it's our job. We don't even necessarily love all aspects of our clients all the time. There are usually things we don't like as well, and when the time is right and the relationship is strong enough, your therapist will probably point those out. But therapy wouldn't be what it is if we didn't find beauty in all of our clients' souls. People, in their struggles, in their vulnerabilities, in pain, in perseverance, are pretty amazing. And this includes every person I have worked with up to now and will work with in the future.

What's the point of therapy; can't you just complain to your friends?
Therapy and friendship are similar and different. Both therapists and friends see people during painful and vulnerable points in their lives, and both like those people despite their faults and mistakes. However, therapists are trained to listen with a different ear. They open up a door in their hearts and take on pieces of people's struggles. Therapists listen to their clients, and they listen to themselves. Therapists listen to the tone in the room. Therapists listen for patterns, for significant motifs, for contexts. Therapists don't even really have any stakes in what you say; they just care about what it means to you. They care about how you're feeling now, and how you felt then. They care about your process through tough times, and they rejoice with you in happy times. So the next time you have an issue that you can't talk to your friends about or a feeling so unbearable it keeps you up at night – great! Talk to a therapist; that's what we're here for.

All people do in therapy is complain in the presence of another person, who just gets paid to listen.
Many people tell me that therapy is just about people whining. They ask me how I can choose to sit and listen to people's endless complaining. What they should be asking me is how I chose a profession that is actually one emotional mind-twist. We function on a completely different level than simply "tolerating whininess" and nodding our heads in automatic agreement. Through tuning in to people's emotions, we actually alter their experiences. Consider this hypothetical scenario: a man comes to therapy after growing up with an aggressive father and an absent mother. He has a general disposition of feeling angry, hurt, helpless, ineffectual, undermined, unappreciated. The female therapist, in her position of caretaking and authority, triggers those feelings, and he is usually angry at her in their sessions. But she, unlike his parents, recognizes those feelings, absorbs his anger without retaliating, and also appreciates and empowers him. Over time, he becomes less self-depricating and explosive, and gains a clearer and healthier sense of self. In other words, the process of therapy actually changes his internal experience. So the whining and the complaining is only the tip of the iceberg of everything that is bound to happen in therapy.

Life sucks, get over it. Everyone has issues, move on.
Occasionally I get the "what's the point of therapy; people just need to learn to suck it up" comment. Incidentally, this is a philosophical question that I (and I assure you, many other therapists) have asked myself as well: if therapy is a relatively new field and people have gone on living in tough circumstances and with painful emotions, then why change it all now and advocate that people get help and feel better? The answer is complex, but for me it boils down to these points: a) people have always sought the help of various healers, for emotional, relationship, sexual, existential, etc. issues; b) our knowledge of ourselves continues to grow, how can we not use it to help ourselves (see: medicine); and c) just because people "sucked it up" before, doesn't mean that they didn't suffer all their lives from emotional ailments that we now know are very preventable and healable. Who knows what was getting people through life before (wizards, tight communities, shorter lifespans, rigid social roles, religions?), now we have this tool that anyone can use to find healing and purpose. And I think everyone should give it a try.

Have anything else to add to how therapy works? Anything else left you curious about therapy?

my brain on grad school

This is pretty much my life. I am in my 4th year of grad school and my ambitions went from Abolish Sexism to work for an influential organization, like the UN! to publish anything something that someone will maybe even read one day to put on a shirt and brush my hair in the morning.

So this is where I am. This academic year I am hoping to take things down a notch. I am hoping to really focus, to figure out what in life is important, and to take better care of myself. The latter will involve self-compassion*, which is an astonishingly simple and difficult thing to practice:

Self-compassion entails three main components: (a) self-kindness--being kind and understanding toward oneself in instances of pain or failure rather than being harshly self-critical, (b) common humanity--perceiving one's experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating, and (c) mindfulness--holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with them.

I don't really understand why so many people are so bad at this, and I am certainly one of the ones who is. So I am learning to be gentle with myself and to cherish my small accomplishments of every day.

* My linguist husband objects to this term, because it literally translates to self-co-suffering, which I guess is an impossibility. I told him that I am practicing self-compassion by refraining from stabbing him with my pen. I also hold him that he may think of a better term, if he so desires, and then we'll talk. Because I am that diplomatic and ready for work at the UN!

summer survival

If you were to ask me exactly how stressed out I have been, I would answer you with this: last month for the first time in my 15 menstruating years, I skipped my period. And I know that this is nothing more than stress, because a) I peed on about 930293409234 pregnancy tests and they were all negative, and b) I got my period this month. So yup, this is just another blatant example of how much damage my body is physically going through as I plug away in grad school*.

I have realized something that is almost laughable in its simplicity. Namely that I am no longer interested in learning how to manage stress, given the amount of stress currently residing on my shoulders. Rather, I need to get things off my plate, reduce the baseline amount of stress in my life, and watch as things become much more manageable. So now finally, I am quitting projects, I am becoming ok with not being involved here and there, and I am attempting to replenish the cocoon that normally buffers me from the external world.

Redwoods in Northern California

Which involves getting away on the weekends and spending some moments in the woods, on the sand, following trails, looking for tracks, exploring new shores and rediscovering old ones. Anything that pulls me away from metro systems and desk tasks and the emotional vulnerability that comes with the profession; every little bit helps.

Beach time on Lake Tahoe

So that during the week, on long Tuesday nights with hours of work again of me, I can smell the sun on my skin and remember the sounds of pine trees rustling.

* Other examples of stress-related un-health that continue to exasperate my adrenaline-flooded body include: ridiculously damaging eating habits, ridiculously damaging sleeping habits, ridiculously damaging substance use, and this new one: near-constant joint pain. 

still surviving

Possibly. Barely. Persistently.

Although wouldn't it be nice to have someone not let me choke on the noose around my neck?:





But then, why aren't there any women in this video? And the fact that the band is all-male hardly counts as a true explanation.

perhaps the breaking point

This year has been (and continues to be) utterly horrible. I am still not done with it, even, so my absence here is only a testament to my exhaustion. I am too tired to reach out, like I am the one drowning so I can't throw myself a lifejacket. Each year of grad school has been worse than the one before so far. Maybe because each year carries the weight of the last and then snowballs exponentially (I don't even know if a snowball can snowball exponentially, that just might be a mathematic improbability, but I'm going with it at this point, because if there is one thing I have learned in grad school, it's that I need to be gentler with myself because no one else will be). Each week that passes carries with it disappointments and critiques and traumatic experiences. I have no time to recover, and I think that people around me are waiting for me to break in order to pull back a bit from all this craziness. But how do I know what the breaking point is until I reach it?

Perhaps having fever for a week, getting joint pains in my wrists and ankles, and failing an exam that I really should've could've passed because I was just that exhausted, burnt out, anxious, and incomprehensible (I am retaking it next week) is just it?

So. Old rule out; new rule: even though this summer I will still be working ~50 hrs/week at two mental health agencies simultaneously while also volunteering on crisis lines and possibly running a domestic violence support group in Russian, I am making a conscious self-care plan for myself: therapy 3-4 times/month, energy-focused massage once/month (I've never had one of those before, but this is Berkeley and they are all the rave!), rowing team because I loved it when I did it in the past, and yoga as often as I can because I miss my meditative mental space*. This all costs money (and time), which has been one of my biggest hesitations, but you know what, the other way of living is costing me my health (and I don't even have health insurance, so go ahead and chew on that irony!)

And goddam, this better work.


* I'm aware of the fact that this list makes me sound obnoxious and ridiculous. (Though better obnoxious than loosing my mind, perhaps?) But mostly, I hope, I sound like I've discovered where the resources are (because it's true!). And now I'm telling you: there are resources, in every community (I'm willing to bet). You don't have to be super wealthy or super fancy or super cool or super relaxed or super anything to use many of them. You just have to be super. Which you are. So go ahead and enjoy what your community has to offer.

if the sun don't come

Clarity about my life only happens in little snippets these days.

Because I am burnt out. Really really burnt out. I don't talk, write, or think anymore. Or, let me rephrase: of course, all I do day in and day out is listen, talk, write, and think. But I can no longer do it for myself.

I now know that compassion fatigue is a real thing. It happens when there is just too much crap (i.e., terrifying, heartbreaking feelings and information about humanity) poured (people are there for a service) on me (my heart, my soul, my brain, my mind, my limbs, whatever other parts make me a me), and not enough support (systemically, logistically, personally) to hold it all together. So I've become tired and apathetic, like every other beginning therapist. Talking about a murder-suicide of your close friends who weren't found for 10 days after the deed? Yup, I know, the world is indeed a horrible place. And there is not a whole lot I can do about that*.

A professor described my practicum experience as a battle field. Which is such a lovely picture, no? Every hour we go into our rooms with clients to be wounded, slashed, and assaulted**. We come out battered and bleeding, sometimes contaminating the spaces of others. We are truly in the trenches of our work here and we are barely armed. The bandages in county-funded community mental health agencies are few.

However, I do notice that outside of the battle field, things seem more feasible. When I rest a bit and cease being a robot, I am a lot more aware of my reactions to things and people. And I have many more coping skills. So I guess, as trite as it may seem, whatever doesn't kill you, really does make you stronger. So hopefully your therapist really is a hunk of emotional steel. Wrapped in an empathetic bubble dress with a soft, comforting smile, of course.


* I can help people process through and eventually come to terms with this set of events.

** Not by any malice of our clients, of course, but by the very virtue of therapy. The stories, situations, circumstances, and emotions we hear and experience hurt us, too. But we are there to think about and digest all of that sensory information, and present it back in some manageable way. Helping clients understand themselves by understanding our experiences with the clients is the gist of a lot of the work. And that takes a lot of feeling and thinking. To the point that sometimes I forget to (or cannot/will not/better not) feel and think about my own emotions in the rest of life.

you know how they say, time is money

One thing that really blows about being a graduate student (or I guess, any very busy person working for non-profits, meaning that I am really looking at my whole future here) is that I am always pressed for time and money. And those two seem like the most important and inversely-related things to get me through. I am constantly choosing between spending precious time on something to save money or am essentially buying my time in other situations.

It's an everyday struggle: do I spend an hour of the 3 hours I spend at home in the evenings before passing out preparing a lunch or do I just cave and buy it tomorrow? Do I spend 30 minutes walking from campus to BART or do I pay for the bus pass that will get me there in 10 minutes? And the latest: do I become another casualty of the corporate machine and buy an iPhone so that I can work on my long-ass commutes instead of spending 2 hours at night going through emails?

In truth, I love being busy and I really believe in the work that I am being trained to do. But this type of lifestyle makes me uncomfortable. I only hope that my schedule will slow down a bit after I graduate, and maybe I'll be able to get back to my usual living-in-the-moment roses-smelling self.

Because this person running from the train to the bus with her nose in some internet-enabled device while chewing down some sandwich and sipping on disposable coffee is simply not me. And that is hard to reconcile.

expanding

View Larger Map

Three of my 5.5 work days I spend all the way in the Outer Richmond area of San Francisco. It takes me nearly two hours to commute to this distant neighborhood by climbing various hills and riding various buses and metro systems. Although I am generally surrounded by water, it used to be a rarity that I saw the Pacific Ocean. The Richmond is known for some of the worst weather in the city, which is also known to be worse than Berkeley. And usually, when people say "bad San Francisco weather"--meaning cold and misty, I translate it into "pleasantly cool and refreshing". Except in the Richmond. There, the rolling fog from the ocean never lifts above the tree line and the whole neighborhood feels like a dry ice incubator. So I take four hours of my day to transport from the sunny land of tie-dye shirts and Birkenstocks to the North Pole of the Bay Area. All to help immigrants adjust to their lives in the US, among other things.

It's a dang good thing I love my work. And the clients better be worth it; it's all I'm saying.

It is stunning out there though. Once I adjust to having to wear an extra sweater, and perhaps a hat, I'll fully appreciate the beautiful views and character of this neighborhood. The Outer Richmond is raised a bit on a hill, so as you turn in a circle from any one point, you go from gazing at the ocean to the Golden Gate Bridge to the sparkling downtown skyline to the forest of the Golden Gate Park. But because of how far this area is (with a commute of 1-1.5 hrs to anywhere within the city even), it remains rather unpopular by general hipsters San Franciscans. This leaves it quiet, peaceful, and undisturbed. There isn't even a Starbucks out there, and all the small businesses are locally owned by the Russians, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, and Thai people. It is enough removed from the hustle and bustle of inner city life, but still maintains an urban atmosphere. Yeah, I could even see myself living out there someday.

take me all the way

Under the bridge downtown
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge downtown
I gave my life away

Credit: Khataroo at DeviantArt


I mentioned before that there have been sad things happening in my life. I've been trying for months now to write something down, but it's difficult to find the words to really describe what has gone on, externally and internally. Everything I say sounds gauche and awkward. This is just another one of those clumsy attempts.

Three months ago today, a friend of mine committed suicide. She wasn't in my circle of closest friends, but she was a colleague in our small graduate program, and more than an acquaintance. We were in a class (of 12 people) together this past semester. And last semester, she planned a baby shower for a good friend of ours, where we all enjoyed her New Orleanese cooking. She was also the roommate of another close friend, and our paths crossed all the time, whether through studying, mutual social activities, or in conversations about dogs.

Credit: PostSecret

On March 17th, on St. Patrick's Day, she jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. This fact feels just as beautiful and grotesque as it sounds. Beautiful, because it essentially bypasses the mess of death. This is exactly how I would picture her leaving this world: falling weightlessly into the abyss of the waters, surrounded by the beauty of the Bay. And grotesque, because there it is: the magnificent enormous symbolic San Franciscan sculpture transformed into a killing machine. I haven't brought myself to be near it yet (walking or driving), but whenever I catch a glimpse of it from across the Bay or through the buildings of the city, I feel it staring back, stoically and mysteriously. Just like in the movie, The Bridge:





Everybody always wants to know the facts surrounding this event, and the facts are that yes, she most likely had a mental illness. She was in a lot of pain, and many of us knew that. We think she had Bipolar II (depression is predominant to mania), which is actually one of the most deadly disorders, since as you come out of a depressive episode and you still taste the bitterness of depression, but you also have more energy and the impulsivity to hurt yourself. There were times when she was clearly manic, and (most) times when she was pretty depressed. She had attempted suicide before, and that just drives the risk even higher. She was in the field of mental health and knew all her resources, but this was her definite decision. There is such finality to taking that plunge off the bridge. There is no turning back and virtually no possibility of survival. As you're standing on that ledge, the pain of life must outweigh the fear of death.

While we knew she was quietly suffering inside, she poured her heart into giving to others. She was honestly one of the most selfless people I have known. She made everyone around her feel comfortable and accepted. She knew exactly how to converse with every person, on very diverse topics. She loved experiencing foods and culture, she loved to meet new dogs in parks, she loved to welcome everybody into her heart. And maybe that got a little too heavy.

And the feelings since then? There have been so many: disbelief (we were in class together two days before this happened, her name is still listed in our online class database), guilt (were we really all so wrapped up in our cocoons of grad school stress? and did these cocoons really matter so much that we couldn't look around? were we not watching/listening/understanding? and where was that suicide hotline number?), anger (because, wtf? WTF?!, sometimes I wish I could just shake her, screaming, are you f'ing kidding me?!). But the most prominent feeling is sadness. Powerless, despairing, soul-wrenching sadness. Because we lost an amazing friend and talented colleague. Because my first funeral was for a young classmate. Because the menacing Golden Gate Bridge is a reminder of the pain people in this world feel every day, when death seems like the best most logical option.

Credit: Vaggelisf at DeviantArt

I wanted to write more, especially about the aftermath and where all these events have brought me, but I'm afraid I am running out of steam tonight. You will just have to hold tight for an equally-awkward Part 2. Until then, stay safe, and please enjoy every moment with your friends and loved ones.

a striking image

I also see a client at the agency itself. This is a younger woman who, like most of us, has a chaotic family that often drives her nuts. So her family was coming into town that weekend after our scheduled session, and she confessed her gratitude that she'd be able to see me before they all came. "I knew I needed to see my therapist before the weekend of family," she said to me.

Eek! You guys (and girls), I am now that therapist who people need to/want to see in difficult times. Yikes! But also, what a validation of my work! Of course, as therapists we have to remain somewhat skeptical or cautious of the true meanings of such statements... but I gave myself an internal high-five anyway. Because this is just such a striking contrast to those times in the beginning, when I used to go home and cry after sessions, feeling like I couldn't really help anyone.

And I mean, I still can't really help anyone; people have to ultimately help themselves. But hopefully, my presence, my support, and the bit of my expertise makes it just a little easier.

an ironic image

As part of my practicum, I work at a large, confusing inner-city high school that's located in a primarily Mexican-American neighborhood. About two blocks from the school, there is an absolutely giant Catholic church with typical Spanish architecture and a big lawn. I know that many people in that community attend the church, at least out of tradition. My students generally think it's too conservative, but they still go with their families, every Sunday.

The other day, as I was passing it on my way to the school, I spotted an enormous sign in the front lawn of the church. I mean, this sign was huge, wooden, hosted on large wooden posts the size of tree trunks. It was a sign about teen pregnancy. The clipart of the girl holding her baby even looked a little like Madonna and Child.

This is probably a good thing, that the church is willing to talk about this issue, rather than shunning it. And if I had read the sign closer, it probably would've had a pro-life spin on it. Like, we know you're a pregnant teen; just come to our church and we can help! But in the moment on my way to work, it seemed like the perfect imagine to describe my experience there: poor Mexican neighborhood, conservative Catholic church, giant teen pregnancy sign.

learn to fly

I thought in graduate school, in my adult mid-20s life, I would have to, I don't know, start acting like an adult. But here I am, rocking out to the Foo Fighters while grading statistics homework. Oh, they are just so good.



Things have been happening in my life, both incredibly sad and incredibly exciting. One of these days, I will have the time to sit still and write everything down. I promise (to myself).

rummaging for answers in the pages

So I realized the other day that I work more than two full-time jobs. I did the calculations and it actually hit me: my practicum is 20 hrs/week, which is a part-time job, on top of a full-time load of courses, on top of another part-time load of teaching and tutoring. The rest of the time is spent stressing about assignments, feeling pain for my clients' difficult lives, worrying about recruiting participants for my research project, and generally feeling inadequate in all of the tasks I'm undertaking. I've also done these calculations: there are 24 x 7 = 168 hours in a week, right? 168 total hrs - 80 hrs of work = 88 non-immediate-work hours - (5 hrs/night x 7 = 35 hrs of sleep per week) = 53 hrs / 7 = 7.5 hrs per day available, where 2-3 hrs/day are spent commuting, 1-2 hrs/day are spent eating, and the rest are spent feverishly scrambling. And that's my breakdown every day (including weekends) and every week (including holidays). All of this on half the sleep that I'd normally need, and 10x the coffee that I'd normally consume. I'm only writing this down, because, although I knew it was this way, I didn't know it was this way. And when I realized it, I finally went, Wow! No wonder I've been feeling so shitty!

I'm all about externalizing blame.

Here is a new word I learned today: alexithymia. It stems from Greek, meaning: a (without) + lexi (words) + thymia (emotions). Someone who exhibits alexithymia is someone who cannot put words to their emotions. Or, like, every man you know. This also made me wonder if someone named Alexis would be someone without words? Without a voice? Mute? And also, is someone named Alexanda, someone who is without the words of man (andros)? I'm sure baby books will tell you that they both have something to do with God or wisdom or power, but hey, I'm just deciphering Greek here.

Ok, now that I've spent 30 min writing nothing important to no one in particular, I better get on with it. On to my scheduled freakout, ahoy!

life is a box of chocolates

Why hello there December, being more than halfway through and everything. And what happened to your friend, November?? I will never really understand. Oh and how am I, you ask? Well...

Actually, this semester really kicked my ass. It was very hard and I am still recovering. I feel silly, really, for feeling this exhausted; it's not like I birthed a baby (though, remember the parenting-grad school analogy?) or built myself a house from scratch or survived some terrible tragedy (not that tragedies can ever be un-terrible, but I guess the extra verbiage's supposed to add to the effect). All I did was move up to year 2 of my schooling; something every graduated student before me has also done, with grace. But I guess I also took on many projects in areas that I have never really dabbled into before. That part was hard.

I need to sit down one day and write about my experience this semester; how it ate me alive. And only left my feet. But it's kinda hard when this

is the scene on and around my keyboard and computer screen. Ella says hi.

we can do it

I have compared the experience of graduate school to that of having a child (you don't sleep, you tend to it 24/7, it brings you a great deal of pain and frustration, but also a sense of joy and accomplishment). But this is another apt comparison (though, I suppose, parenthood doesn't have a safety word, either). This graduate experience is quite torturous, and we have willingly submitted ourselves to it.

The hardest part this year is that, being the novice that I am, I'm always at the bottom, with very little to offer, while still evaluated. In addition to the usual classes, with their usual demands and assessments, I am suddenly in the role of the expert in many various domains. All of a sudden, I'm the one people turn to, but really, I'm a terrified toddler behind a mask of knowledge and readiness.

I mean, I know I was selected to be where I am for the important skills I do possess. I'm a statistics teacher, because I come from a family of mathematicians (huh, paying homage to ancestral talents? hello, collectivist upbringing) and probabilities don't scare me. I'm a high school counselor, because I know adolescence sure can suck and adults who you depend on for your life sure can suck, too. And I'd like to think I'm an empathetic listener. But as I go about the terrifying hours of my day, I'm constantly humbled by the truly amazing stories of all the fascinating people I get to meet. The clients, the students, the teachers, the supporters, you are what is right in the world. So I may at times not have a safety word, but my goggles of pessimism are starting to pick up on the bright specs of light and energy around me, so I guess it is worth it.

Thus, you know, this work, my life completely engulfed by and saturated in this work is quite exhilarating, actually. My mind is overextended between pondering the psyche, finding ways to research the psyche, and nurturing people's psyches in a therapeutic environment. And basically, (unlike my undergrad experience), I super love grad school.

running and running

Uff, so obviously the previous post was written in the middle of a sleep-deprived stress-filled night, and freakouts just happen in circumstances such as that. But I'm going to keep it up, because it kind of reminds me of what I'm like, what I think and feel, when I am uninhibited. I spend so much time during the day holding my shit together, both for myself and for other people, but the defenses, they have to come down eventually. Which is when you really see what is going on. And that is what therapy is all about.

Speaking of which, I've spent a few weeks now answering crisis calls on a hotline for some surrounding counties. I can't get into too much detail about it here for various confidentiality reasons, but let me just tell you, the 4-hr shift goes by in a blink of an eye. The stories we hear really normalize all these experiences we think are pretty crazy. Life is complex, and all sorts of things happen to all sorts of people. I know we are there to ground our callers, but sometimes it's the callers who ground me.

the freaks

Sometime last year around the holidays my school abided with its tradition to put on a Talent Show. You know, the kind where students sign up to do embarrassing things in front of each other, like play the latest emo song on guitar, recite jokes that include lines like "oh to be Jung again", and I don't know, do a shirtless dance of male pudge jiggle. This is the point at which the gay guys rolled their eyes, grabbed their complimentary glasses of white wine, and went to sit on the railing looking at the sunset over the Bay. This straight-boy humor was not for them, and I will admit in having joined them in the renunciation.

This outrageous event also provided students with goody bags filled with candy, coupons to nearby coffee shops (quite useful, actually!), and a $5 gift card to Barnes & Noble. Not that the latter in any way makes up for the thousands of dollars we spend in loans to the institution, but I'll welcome anything to put even the slightest dent in my school book orders that often carelessly exceed hundreds of dollars. So I stuck the gift card in my wallet fully intending to use it in the fall.

However, as fall came and I was once again ordering my stack of textbooks, I somehow felt sad about using this gift money on such a trivial purchase. This poor $5 amount would be swallowed effortlessly by the beast that would be my textbook order. I wanted to get my money's worth, so to speak; I wanted to spend it on something useful and enjoyable.

So I logged onto the Barnes & Noble website, searching for the books on my pleasure-reading list, and came across The Daily Coyote. For a while now I've been intrigued by this story of a girl and her coyote, and I've wanted to read this book ever since it came out. And let me tell you, this was $5 well spent!

Which brings me to the real point of this post. In the very first chapter, as Shreve Stockton (the author) is introducing herself and putting her character into perspective, she references a passage from Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Something about "those born not belonging". And as I've been a fan of Salman Rushdie's fantastical writing, with his themes of artists and vagabonds, people misplaced and people searching, I looked up that passage and here it is (bear with me and my choices of long-winded writers; yes, this is all one paragraph):

"For a long while I have believed--this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama's belief in a fourth function of outsideness--that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, in you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as "natural" a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time."

So yeah. At least it's nice to know that there are others like me, always migrating and always adjusting to the times and to the surroundings.

We may be misunderstood, but we really are the constants of this fleeting world.