breaking arms

I'm terrified.

I'm not usually a risk taker--I refuse to place bets, I wear a helmet on a bicycle, I almost always go the speed limit--and yet I seem live a pretty risky life. I refuse to settle. I go right for the bullseye. I let my heart lead me around the earth. I wish I could say it felt exhilarating--sometimes it does--but right now it feels terrifying.

It's terrifying because I change the consistency of my life. I uproot and get used to my surroundings, in endless cycles. I move from city to city, then from country to country. I encounter a lot of dissent for my decisions. I wish my attitude would allow me not to care, but I'd like to have the support from the people who matter.

I admit, with age, it becomes harder and harder to be a vagabond with convictions and a career. But it also becomes harder and harder to live away from my community. I am pulled toward my homeland, and then toward my husband's homeland. I am pulled and I follow the pull. I don't resist and I hope it works out for the best of everyone. It's still terrifying though, and I am terrified.

whatever tomorrow brings, i'll be there

Last week I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting as part of my training in mental health. It's really important for us therapists to understand the dynamics of addiction and how 12-step programs offer pretty successful treatment. From my experience, NA meetings are different from AA ones in that they tend to be very diverse: you'll see everyone from crack-dealing prison-tattooed guys to high-society pill poppers. Addiction unites people across classes, genders, place in life, and drugs of choice. It was a speaker's meeting, which meant that one member was invited to share their story. The woman detailed her struggles with various drugs, but her "favorite" was heroin. She described it like this: when you go under anesthesia before surgery they ask you to count backwards from 10, and by 7 or 6 you're usually already out; well, being on heroin is like being at an 8. It's going through life in a sedated haze, free of worries and pain. I've heard someone else describing the heroin high as being wrapped in a blanket of love, feeling protected, warm, and carefree. And man, honestly, being someone who often battles demons of hopelessness, this sounds kind of awesome. Not awesome in a let's-glorify-addiction kinda way, but just… I understand the pull. I really get looking toward something that might help you cope, something that might give you a sense of relief, however momentary.

Then this week, Philip Seymour Hoffman died of heroin addiction, and there have been countless others recently in Hollywood and beyond. Addiction is dangerous and deadly, probably because life never stops being painful, and perhaps becomes more so with the drug involved. The only way to deal with life, it seems, is to increase positive coping mechanisms, increase social support, and confront internal demons turning them into the loving blanket one desires. This has been a startling reminder to keep relying on my own internal strength, even if I don't feel that I have much of it, to battle my daily struggles.

Inhale, exhale, and keep going.

shifting

Two thoughts have come into my mind recently that are making life a bit more bearable, or I should say, manageable. It sounds melodramatic, yes, but somehow this is how I tend to approach life: as a long-long walk through the mud at sea in low tide. There are some beautiful moments, rays of magnificent sunlight streaming through the ominous clouds. But the day-to-day is tedious and there is always the threat of a wave to wash over and engulf all of your efforts. I think I'm in need of a shift in perspective and these are some things that are helping me do that:

1. Life is a Rorschach test. It--that is, life--doesn't actually mean anything in and of itself. Its meaning comes only from the projections we place on it. There are many ways to say this ("you are in control of how you view the world," "your life is what you make of it," etc.), but this is the way it made sense to me. Therapists try to get people to take this perspective all the time, but it is indeed incredibly difficult. We tend to look for meaning externally and make generalizations about it based on our own internal experiences. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly glum and pessimistic about the state of the world, I remember that it is only a Rorschach ink blot. Where I normally see a menacing monster bat, in a different light I might see a butterfly.

Source

It all seems a bit basic and obvious, but it was in fact a deep realization for me. Just the understanding that the way I feel about the world comes from me and not the world itself was particularly freeing.

2. "Accept the things you cannot change" is an expression often used in recovery, but here is how it suddenly became relevant for me. I've been known to go through life angry at how it played out back in the day, when I couldn't give consent or indicate a choice about the things that were happening to me. I'm angry that I was plucked away from my family and dropped into a totally foreign, totally unsupportive world across the ocean. I'm angry that I couldn't keep in touch with my dad, and that I don't really know where home is. I'm angry that I've built something here now, like a traitor, and that with being in this deep, it's hard to leave forever. But you know what: it is what it is. Those things happened to me and they are my past. They brought me to where I am now, but I can't let them control me. This is another one of those easier-said-than-done scenarios, but it's doable. Now I try a different approach. Whenever I feel myself becoming angry and sad about being here, without family, losing touch with my culture, I try to remember to accept those things I cannot change. And focus on the ones I can.

All of this is a work in progress, with the hope that progress leads to a more peaceful life.

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.

things I learned about myself in therapy

Turns out, I am somewhat shy and fairly introverted. I have some social anxiety and I usually get anxious and easily overwhelmed around groups of people. I am fairly inhibited and I have to feel pretty safe with others before revealing my feelings. I definitely have performance anxiety and, like many people, I get very nervous when I talk or do anything in front of others.

These are things I already knew about myself, at least in the back of my mind. As in, I could have described myself in these terms, and yet, I would have still judged myself when all those things would happen to me in various situations. Therapy has helped me not only to accept these things as simply characteristics of myself, but it has also taught me how to manage them in order to seem less like an anti-social trembling weirdo.

Here is what social psychologists say about shyness:

Shyness can arise from different sources. In some cases, it may be an inborn personality trait. In other cases, shyness develops as a learned reaction to failed interactions with others. Thus, interpersonal problems of the past can ignite social anxieties about the future.

Ok, I don't know how I acted as an infant, but I certainly think that many interactions with others have failed me in my past. Or at least, maybe for one, shyness is what happens when one is uprooted from the safety of a social support system, brought to another culture in preadolescence, and forced to interact with strange people in a foreign language. Just a thought.

Whatever the source, shyness is a real problem, and it has painful consequences. Studies show that shy people evaluate themselves negatively, expect to fail in their social encounters, and blame themselves when they do.

Wait, maybe I don't seem like an anti-social trembling weirdo to others?

As a result, many shy people go into self-imposed isolation, which makes them feel lonely, or in other words, deprived of social relations. Their loneliness is triggered by a discrepancy between the level of social contact that they have and the level that they desire. 

Who knew that my loneliness was, at least in part, caused by my social anxiety, which was caused by failed social interactions in my past, which were caused by various emotionally-unavailable family members and, you know, immigration. It's also good to know that there may be hope for me after all.

In any case, this is all very interesting and relevant, considering I'm about to make a profession out of interacting with people, through teaching, advocating and therapizing. But at least these issues of mine aren't huge and I am certainly learning how to work around, with, and through them.

crescent moon

Gypsy String Music @ Freight & Salvage...

Lists & Thoughts:

1) Turns out, I close my eyes and twiddle my thumbs to music. A familiar familial image. Nature, nurture, or nostalgia?

2) I close my eyes and listen to my breath match rhythmically with harp accords. I watch my thoughts evaporate in green curlicues.

3) Gypsy music connects me to my ancestors from the Caucuses (the true Caucasians), the trojan horses, the frauds, the foreigners in classical, aristocratic St. Petersburg.

4) It's clear: being nomadic, being a stranger in a strange land is in my blood with an intensity that ebbs and flows like tides that crash across rocky shores.

5) Otherness and familiarity both define my existence.

6) My distant dreams, the stars in my head: to live in Russia once again, to learn and play folk music, and, to join my grandpa in the armchair, giant headphones over our ears, and twiddle our thumbs.

experience the warmth

The breaking point turned out to be a breaking year month. It's like I've been held under water all this time and I am only now coming up for air. I feel like my being has been living as a lump in my throat, somewhere between my brain and my vital organs. It has obstructed my breathing in, my breathing out, and any communication between my heart and my mind. I have not been connected to any part of my internal body and I have lost contact with an essential part of my intuition. Only now do I realize that there is also a ladder in my throat and that my being is free to move throughout. There is so much room inside my self that I get dizzy when I close my eyes and turn my gaze within. And all of it is waiting to be me.

memoriam

March 17th marked a year since my friend's suicide, and all this time has been quite a journey. In the year, I cycled from anger and disbelief to general sadness and anxiety to fear of the Bridge to transforming the Bridge into a memorial, and feeling generally at peace about it.

And to now being able to remember and honor her life. On the anniversary, I wrote a poem in her memory, just something informal to commemorate her, the event, and my personal reconstruction.

I think sometime soon I will go to the Bridge and read this poem there quietly. Then I will burn the paper so the flames meet the atmosphere and so the ash falls into the water. Fire is often a symbol of purification and rebirth, and out of death always comes life, new ideas, and a new purpose.

transformation

In January, a friend came to visit me from Ireland and of course one of the items on her tourist list was to walk on the Golden Gate Bridge. And yes, even after all this time, I was still nervous to actually walk on what I viewed as a killing machine, and not a beautiful landmark. Since my friend's suicide, I'd only driven on it twice, very quickly, while focusing on the road. I pictured that being on the bridge on foot would be really intimate, like there we were, in direct contact with each other. On the other hand, I feared that it would feel inescapable, in case anything came up for me, or I ran into a suicidal person.

I talked about this with my therapist and she suggested that I light a candle or bring flowers or say kind words for my friend while on the bridge. This would reframe the monument into a memorial, kind of in the way that tombstones are eery but useful for remembering. So on the way there, we stopped to buy a candle, and while we were right over the churning dark waves, I lit it, had a moment of silence, and left the burning candle (in its fire-proof protective casing) by one of the towers. Others passed it, looked and probably understood. Maybe it even deterred a few people that day or at least provided solace to possible friends and family of the deceased. Interestingly enough, this simple deed really worked to transform my view of the bridge, and it is now no longer a scary means for death, but a quiet, elegant memorial to the sad circumstances under which people choose to end their pain. When I catch a glimpse of it now from any corner of the Bay, I send a few thoughts to the fallen souls. Maybe they really did find a sense of other-worldly peace...

Photo belongs to Jennbawa

Still, while we were on the bridge lighting the candle, a strange man kept pacing from the tower to the railing and back to the tower. It was a gloomy windy day, so he'd look down at the waves and return to the safety of the tower nook. His behavior seemed sketchy enough that my heart started to pound hard and fast. The statistics were against him: he was alone, he was a man, he looked disheveled like he might have been drinking. I really wasn't in the right state of mind to deal with it, but my crisis training would not let my conscience go. I had to find out what was going on. In an awkward way, I asked how he was feeling, and he said he was fine. Oh, he was just waiting for his friend and friend's son who wanted to walk just a little bit further. He was knowledgable about boats and so was watching the freight ships perusing the Bay underneath. Later, as we drove on the bridge on our way home, I saw him walking with another man and a boy. So he wasn't lying; he was alive and well, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He probably tells the story now of how some random girl bothered him out of nowhere to see if he was ok. But asking proactively is the way to take care of each other, and concern and curiosity may very well be the first step in saving someone's life.

unanswered

On Saturday was the birthday of my school friend who committed suicide earlier this year. Our mutual classmates have posted various notes about it here and there.

It's surreal to celebrate the Birthday of someone who also has a Deathday. Suddenly it seems strange, and maybe a little trite, that all of our lives we celebrate this one day on which we are born, but nearing the day we die. Which becomes more important or more memorable after that point?

Somehow birthdays seem reserved for people who are living, but I guess we all choose different days and moments to honor the departed, a birthday as good as any other special memory.

On Saturday, we should have all been out getting cupcakes. Instead "Dream On" came on in the car and I cried. There is no happy ending.

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away

fail

Unfinished thoughts about my life right now:

I keep playing phone tag with the psychotherapy institute (and it is not a fun game). 

Don't they know that this therapist needs therapy of her own? 

So far my own therapy consist of: hookah, alcohol, friends. Coffee and cigarettes. 

Whoever will be assigned to my case has some stiff competition.

sitting on a cornflake

Today I am feeling rather distraught and pessimistic about the state of humanity. That happens to me every once in a while. Actually, these feelings are in the back of my mind pretty much most of the time, but sometimes they surface for no apparent reason. I think: you know, life is pretty painful. Painful and pointless, in a general sense, so maybe that's why I can survive being in this profession.

People ask me how I can choose a career of listening to the awful painful stories of others. Doesn't it suck my will to live? Doesn't it make me want to cry, for a long time? Most students in my field will probably tell you that they're going into this because, yes, the stories of our clients are awful, but we are here to help them change for the better. I am here because life is painful, pain is a part of life, and that doesn't bother me. No point in trying to safeguard ourselves in all of our futile attempts to deny the true awfulness of life. Sure, I still want others to try to change for the better, but there's no point in holding out for much of a better world.

I don't know. I feel different from the people around me in this respect. This isn't utter hopelessness or depression, just a general disposition toward accepting the inevitable negatives of life. So I'm not bothered (in the sense of fear, that is, not injustice) to get harassed by the homeless on Shattuck St. and the crackwhores of the Tenderloin (I say this lovingly; I love all the crackwhores of San Francisco), or to see picketers outside the Hyatt and guerrilla street canvassers for the environment. Life deals many of us shitty hands, but to me there is a certain realness and humanity to floating through this shittiness of life.

What I will fight for, though, is justice. Not safety and comfort and other subjective goods of the world, but liberty and equality for all. Because, well, we all should have equal dibs on the painfulness and pointlessness of life.

ridiculous

My mind, it does funky things.

Like when I recently picked up a long-forgotten book, one I thought was mine, off my bookshelf and saw an old friend's name written in tiny letters in the upper right-hand corner of the opening page, I felt punched in the stomach. I started having the dreams again. Dreams that ruminate on our then-connection and haunt me all day afterward.

Thankfully these dreams have over the years lessened in intensity. They went from depicting our (again, then-) soulmateness in a way that left me with an aching heart in the morning to cordial camaraderie that just turns me wistful. They've even recently included a priest collar, which I think is a step in the right direction?

I realized this book was given to me sometime around 8 years ago, and holy shit, time flies. A lot has happened in those years, of course, for both of us, and dammit, it is time to let go.

I am trying to understand here, what it is that I am holding on to. An idealistic image of love imprinted on my youthful impressionable brain? The true qualities of a really awesome person? The way I liked myself in that particular time period of my life?

Most importantly, it hurts that we are no longer part of the same movement, no longer marching side-by-side toward a great goal. We were both little punks back then, trying to find something anything in and out of ourselves that made sense. Now, I still retain a large part of that identity: a bohemian vagabond without roots and never good at playing by the rules. Whereas he? He found a family, settled for a brotherhood, for belonging, and will now be protected, safe, and taken care of. It's still a radical decision, given modern values, but it borders on a more conservative conformity, one I can't totally understand. I should be happy for him, but I just terribly miss the raucous friendship of our past.

ruminating on mankind's debacles

It was only a matter of time before I finally sat down to write anything about a book that pretty much changed my life (or at least, had a large influence on my current perspective on life). 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being offers a series of convoluted love stories that take place during the tumultuous late-1960s in Czechoslovakia, and a really wonderful glimpse into the philosophical innerworkings of these interesting characters. Anyway, all these said philosophical innerworkings have in many ways affected those chronic dilemmas I have brewing in the back of my mind. And one of these days, I should really sit down and formulate said effects (it is hard!). For now, I will leave you with a passage that is found toward the end of the book, and that had me crying my eyes out just now. It's about one of the female characters, Tereza, her terminally ill dog, Karenin, and their mutual loving companionship as members of the animal kingdom:

"Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin's head and ruminating on mankind's debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears.

That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes [who claimed that animals have no souls and that man is "maître et propriétaire de la nature". I myself am just really not a huge fan of Descartes in general.]. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.

And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, "the master and proprietor of nature," marches onward."

I think I might finally be ready now to defy my Russian upbringing and all other cultural considerations, and that is, to try being a vegetarian.

falling slowly

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now

I am restless. I feel like screaming. I want to break away.

Sigh. Ever since I came back from Europe, I can't quite adjust to life here. I know, I've lived here long enough to understand how things work, to communicate with people in a common language, to get around. It's safe here, it's familiar, I can easily find my way. But. But but but. BUT. This is not home. I am sorry, California; I really tried, New York. I love you all dearly, but you are my foster family. My long-lost blood-family is across that stupid ocean, over on the stupid capricious continent.

And I know that grass isn't greener on the other side. I've seen and lived the struggles over there. I am willing to take them on. Because there is something, and I really can't explain it, but there is something about returning to a land that is your home.

But then, I worry about practicalities. I am too far along in my American career and settling into certain dreams. I am young, but I can't run forever. I am scared the madness in my head won't let me live the humble inspired life I'd imagined for myself. There are rules to life, and guidelines, and I am running out of time.

A calming answer came to me aboard a greyhound bus on the way to Toronto. With Canada as the backdrop (kilometre signs and litre gas stations and centres along the road), these Irish and Eastern European characters whispered hope into my ear. I'm a sinking boat, but God, please take it and point it home. I've still got time...

Needless to say, at this APA convention, I will be making my way to talk to representatives from the division of international psychology. Wish me luck, friends.

even when refusing the labels

Independent book shops, especially with used books sections, on cute streets in small American towns get me every time. My actually-no-money-in-a-quite-literal-sense self always manages to scrape together the $3 for an Oldie But Goodie. This time it was The Plague by Albert Camus. Feeling a little reluctant about the translated version and a little guilty about skipping out on the French one, I decided to dive into it anyway.

That time period, the first half of the 20th century, kind of amazes me. The amount of thought and passionate philosophies emanating from authors, teachers, leaders, people all intermixing and challenging each other is quite a contrast to our relatively quiet times. Of course, they also had wars and whatnot, and the world was changing shape, but people were reacting and writing about it! There were the nihilists, the socialists, the communists, the fascists, the existentialists all concentrating in one melting pot. Do peaceful times come with complacent citizens? Or am I, no surprise, being pessimistic about the people of today?

But basically, man, I miss Europe.

trans-disciplinary wisdom

The other day a friend in my program, a former student of sociology, relayed to me this basic truth: happiness is based on social norms. The end. Now I can go get a good night's rest.

I'm sure I knew this, somewhere in the back of my mind, but never realized the potency of the statement or the fact that it's the answer to many of my dilemmas. Like the fact that I so often struggle between self-sacrifice for the sake of familial fulfillment and the achievement of personal goals for my own individual selfish fulfillment. I often envy Russian women who are able to derive genuine pleasure from setting aside their own interests for their family members. The social norm for a woman is to be a caretaker, to somehow deal with everyone's shit in a graceful feminine manner, and many are very happy in that role. Social norms for American women are less clearly defined, which is a dilemma in itself, though it seems that intrinsically, individual self-actualization is what's often emphasized.

Eventually, I guess, I will figure out which norms I am ok or not ok conforming to. I'll decide to follow in the ways of Russian foremothers or I'll raise my fist with other American feminists. And I will be happy. Until then, you'll just have to bear with my occasional existential freak-outs.

shower realizations

I didn't love myself at 114 lbs, so I might as well now at 145 lbs.

sometimes all you can do is laugh...

...because humor is a defense mechanism, too.



Would you seriously tell this guy your life story?:



Come on, it's worked for others in the past. Clearly.

existential thought of the moment

I always try to pick good music to listen to while going through the Bay tunnel on the BART. That way, if the long-awaited earthquake happens at that time, I can go listening to Queen or Radiohead or U2.