Actually, It Started

In May my friend Lauren wrote a post about God hitting her upside the head.

I started thinking about it today, right after the Universe was smacked me upside the head with its own two-by-four

***

This blog started last week when I sat down to try to write a post about moving back to Minneapolis/St. Paul. Oh right. You may not know about that because I never managed to write the fucking post.

I'm moving back to Minneapolis/St. Paul.

It scares the hell out of me.

When I moved to the North Country two years ago, I always suspected that the move was, well, probably not permanent. I liked the work I was doing well enough, but I didn't know how I felt about living in a place where it snows over eighty inches a year. And I didn't know how I felt about living hundreds of miles away from people I loved. And the longer I stayed here, the more apparent it became that I didn't quite fit in. I don't kayak or canoe. I like running, but not when I have to use YakTrax to do it. I would rather get papercuts on my corneas than go skiing in any capacity. But I stayed. I told myself I was staying because I wanted to learn to be on my own. I wanted to learn loneliness and how to live with it. My Daddy didn't raise a quitter.

And those were . . . well, they were part of the reason I stayed. The bigger reason, I suspect was because the North Country became a convenient excuse. My love life is rotten? The guys here are awful! Having a difficult time with anxiety? The sun is barely out for five hours a day in the winter! All those professional goals you have for yourself? Well, they're overly ambitious and now I can scale them back and not set myself up for disappointment!

A few weeks ago I interviewed for and was offered a new position, one for an organization I adore doing work that I love. It's a big job. It's a job that it's a big deal for me to have as early in my professional life as I am. It's a job that excites me and scares the crap out of me in (almost) equal measure.

I almost didn't take it.

My life here in the North Country, while it isn't particularly satisfying, is completely comfortable. I can be single here and not wonder if I'm not trying. I have a job I'm pretty good at, whose rhythms and quirks I understand really well. Here in the North Country, no one can see how terrible I am at adulthood. How I forget laundry in the dryer for a week, how my bathroom constantly looks like a group of frat guys spent the night.

The thing was, if I took this job in the Twin Cities it would be entirely unknown. It would be difficult and rewarding in ways I honestly could not fathom. And if I couldn't make a relationship shake out in the Twin Cities, surrounded by interested, engaging men, I wouldn't be able to make one work anywhere. And God knows a move South wouldn't magically make me into a grown-up.

In the end, I took the job.

***

Actually, this post started sometime earlier this year, when I wrote a post about writing dangerously. 

For the past--holy shit--almost a year already, I've been walking around feeling like my skin is inside out. Feeling like I have a bad sunburn and people keep poking it or making me take a scaldingly hot shower. 

It's been wonderful.

It's been terrible. 

Writing about what's going on in my head when I'm alone, writing about who I want to be and who I'm afraid I actually am, exposing all most of what's going on in my head and my heart has made me feel so vulnerable there are days when I'm afraid I won't be able to stand it. Writing about my mental health issues has convinced me that I'm never going to find a partner if they happen along this blog first. Who would want to be a part of this mess?

Writing about obsessive-compulsive disorder, writing about depression and anxiety has left me wondering ohmygodhowcanthisdoanyoneanygood? And there'snopointinselfflagellatinginpublic. Every time I write something about mental health I consider trashing the whole blog, of just deleting it straight off. Because it hurts to write these things, and it's really fucking hard to risk my family and friendships on something when I wonder what good it could possibly be doing.

This weekend I was sitting outside with some friends. I can't remember how it came up, but it came out that I write this blog. A friend had never read it, never heard of it, and I made some offhand comment about how it's mostly silly, mostly me bitching about my love life and being crazy. Rather unexpectedly Jacob sushed me and even more unexpectedly got really, really gushy about my writing. And it was uncomfortable. And it was sweet. And at first I chalked it up to sun and lawn games and beer and expected he probably wouldn't remember being quite so enthusiastic the next day. Until something tumbled out of his mouth.

"Her writing made me want to be a better writer." 

At this point I actually had to get up and go inside to refill my water glass. Because, well, shit. 

Three days later and I still can't articulate a response to that one. 

***

Actually this post started this morning, when I was up early writing and listening to the new Dessa album. 

You know where this is going.

There was that song. That song that suddenly becomes my new obsession, the song that I've listened to on repeat all day today. The song that is the perfect song for this part of my life. And, as always happens, it was the lyrics and really knocked me out.

Around here we don't like talk of big dreams

To stand out is a pride and conceit. 

To aim high is to make waves, to split seams.

But that's not what it seems like to me.

I wanna try, I wanna risk  .

And I don't wanna walk, rather swing and miss. 

And suddenly there was the Universe, wielding its two-by-four, swinging straight at my forehead. 

The only two things I have ever wanted to do are big things. I've always wanted to change the world and be a writer. And by grace or divine intervention or sheer blind luck, I am finally doing both. In two years I've raised nearly half a million dollars for organizations that are trying to improve the lives of girls and women. Over the past year, I've written some things for this blog that I'm really proud of. There are days when I leave work crying over some depressing statistics that I read or heard. There are days when I've written something that's too hard, too much of myself, and I don't want to share it. And these things are risky and have left me vulnerable and open in ways I couldn't have anticipated. But this morning, spellbound by this Dessa song I realized that these crazy, difficult, risky things I'm doing are helping be the person I've always wanted to be. And that I can either stay stagnant, stay comfortable, stay in the North Country and write small, obtuse poems that don't mean anything to anyone but me. Or I can take the risks, do the work, and possibly bite it, hard, but put something out into the world that means something. That makes someone rest a little easier, get a mental health diagnosis a little sooner. 

Who am I kidding? I made this decision a year ago , with that first post, when the Universe first started eyeing up my forehead. 

Pretty

My favorite moment in Firefly comes in Heart of Gold.

Don't get me wrong, I think Our Mrs. Reynolds is the best episode, hands down. It's funny, it's smart, it has Christina Hendricks, but my favorite moment in the entire show, the moment I find most relatable, comes during a conversation Kaylee and Wash have.

Kaylee: Everyone's got somebody. Wash, tell me I'm pretty.
Wash: Were I unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion.
Kaylee: 'Cause I'm pretty?
Wash: 'Cause you're pretty.

When I first watched this episode with my roommate Maggie (who introduced me to Firefly) I made her rewind that particular bit of dialogue about five times. It became shorthand for us, the thing I would text here when I was feeling fat or ugly or was on my way to a date and need a confidence booster.

Wash, tell me I'm pretty. 

***

Over the weekend, I had an hour long conversation with a friend about boobs.

I fall into the category of women who are euphemistically called "busty." Busty would be a great word if we still all wore corsets and clothing made to, you know, make the most out of a large chest, but in a world where I can literally spend an entire eight hour day looking for a button down shirt that both buttons up over my chest and doesn't look like I'm wearing a circus tent, I prefer the truth. 

I have enormous boobs. 

***

Back in December, I wrote a post about having beautiful friends and what that does to a woman over time. And it was popular. People liked it and what it said and the way it was written. But, as I do with this blog, when I told a truth, I only told half of it. Here's the rest. 

There is no part of my body I have not thought "Huh I could use (insert cosmetic surgery)" about. 

Teeth Invisaligned? Where can I sign up? Jaw reset so it stop clicking and I actually have a chin? I could do food through a straw for a few weeks. Scars from bike accidents and teenage acne removed? As long as it doesn't leave more scars, yeah, let's go. 

***

While writing this post I have, no fewer than eight times, paused to consider deleting the whole damn thing. Because I'm not trawling for sympathy ohmygodkellyyou'retotallybeautiful. (Ew.) But moreso because I hate admitting that the one thing I'd change about myself is my looks. And it's true. If I had two buttons sitting in front of me, one that would increase my IQ 25% and one that would make me 25% more beautiful, most days I would push the button to make me more beautiful. 

It seems I've already got the attendant shallowness down. 

***

When I was in college, my roommate Krista used to give me advice before I went to parties. 

Just fake it, Kel. 

Fake being comfortable in a large group of people. Fake the ability to talk to strangers. Fake being the chatty, outgoing person that you want to be. Fake confidence and eventually you'll have it. 

It is, as I discovered, pretty standard advice to people going into socially uncomfortable situations or job interviews. Fake confidence for long enough and you'll eventually have it. 

I am really fucking good at faking it. 

I can make offhanded comments Oh, it must be so hard to be around a woman who's bright and beautiful and funny fairly frequently. It seems to work. Or it seems to work in groups. But the second someone pulls out a camera, I instinctively wince and think "I will be untagging this picture on Facebook" or "Oh, God, I need to shift around so no one can see my chins!" Or "Shit, a picture at breakfast? What the hell is the matter with you!? Can't you see I'm not wearing a bra?" On one very memorable occasion, I got into bed with a guy I had been seeing still wearing my bra. Have you ever tried to sleep in an underwire bra? Probably not. You know why? It's really fucking uncomfortable and no woman in her right mind who is dating someone will do it. 

And, somehow, those aren't even my low points. When I'm home alone I only look in the mirror when absolutely necessary. I realized recently that my medicine cabinet is almost always open so that I don't have to look in the mirror until I'm actually ready to do it, until I've . . . I don't know screwed up the courage to do it or something ridiculous. 

Just fake it, Kel.

***

I hate my chest with all of the intensity of a star going super-nova. 

I have very few good reasons for hating it so much. Yeah, a big chest makes buying clothes that fit sort of tricky, but I don't have any back problems. My boobs don't make it difficult to go running or biking or do any of the things that I enjoy doing. I just don't like them because I just don't like them. They're not trying their best. They're not working hard to ensure that we're a package deal. Nope, they're just there, apparently doing their best to undermine all the work my brain and my personality and my intellect are doing.

The thing that frustrates me the most about my boobs, about my body. the thing that makes me (yes, occassionally, so sue me) hate it beyond reason is the fact that the genetic lot I got stuck with is just that: the genetic lot I got stuck with. I'm always going to be five-foot-three-and-three-quarters. My thighs are always going to touch. My hair is always going to look like a madwoman's and I will never, never in my life learn how to flip it seductively. 

I'm comfortable enough with myself intellectually to know that if I don't know something I can always go out and learn it. And, yeah, I'll never understand complex mathematics, but I write well and I can think through arguments, and I have a weird propensity to remember things I've been told in the form of a narrative. I can't raise my IQ, true, but I can fake convincingly enough that I manage to believe it myself. 

Our hour long conversation about boobs isn't really about boobs as much as it's about breast reduction surgery. About the pros and cons of losing two pounds on each side of your chest (believe me, they're mostly pros.) Really, it's about whether or not with a smaller, different, better body part I'll actually be happier.

The answer is, of course, no. My insecurities, my desire to be pretty have very little to do with with my actual component body parts or even the whole that they make up. Just like losing weight, buying new clothes, getting a new hair cut, etc ad nauseam are never going to make me stop saying Wash, tell me I'm pretty.    

Headache

When I arrived home from work today, the very first thing I did was dash around to the front of the house.

Today, you see, is a very special day. 

Today is Ocean at the End of the Lane Day. 

I came relatively late to the Neil Gaiman party. I'd heard of American Gods, and had friends who mentioned that he lived in Minneapolis and would talk about his books constantly, but I never read him. Because no one ever suggested that I should. When I finally got around to reading him, I was hooked within the first twenty pages. I devoured everything I could get my hands on that he had written. His short stories. His novels. The graphic novels made out of his novels. The audiobooks. His young adult fiction. I read everything of his that I could borrow from the library or steal from one of my friends or find the cash to buy out of my tiny monthly book budget. 

I was late to the Neil Gaiman party, but once I arrived I put on my party hat, threw a fistful of glitter in the air, got wasted, and insisted everyone sing Call Your Girlfriend and dance with me. 

Right. Ocean at the End of the Lane. 

When I skittered around to the front porch there was the box, as promised. I barely responded to my neighbors, sitting out front enjoying the sunshine. I snatched up the box, hurried into my house, and very nearly burst into tears. 

Yup. I was very nearly crying over a new book. A book I hadn't even read yet. A book that was still in the packaging. If anyone saw me, they'd wonder if I needed to have my head examined. 

***

It was, inevitably, a comic book that saved my life.

Depression isn't about sadness. It's not the blues. It's not feeling bummed out. Or morose. Or dispirited. Or just plain old unhappiness. In fact, depression, for me, was never about feeling. We laugh (I laughed) at the depiction in Twilight of Bella Swan sitting spaced out in a chair as months rolled by, but I am deeply ashamed to admit that that is exactly how I experienced depression. 

Depression was never about feeling. It was about not feeling. It was about numbness. About day after day of sheer, grinding, nothingness. If I felt anything it was anxiety or worry.  I think I would have taken getting worked up into a lather about something just for the change. But I just . . . couldn't. Instead I went to work, came home, and sat for hours in front of the television, not reading, not thinking, not writing, not doing anything I enjoyed because if I just sat there I could shut off my brain and not think about why I wasn't feeling anything. 

My mental health issues had been building for years. I was always an anxious kid, and my parents would tell me constantly to just stop worrying. As if it was a choice. As it was, I spent most of my life with gradually building anxiety and depression that were never addressed. They built up so slowly that before I realized it, I had tucked my heart away inside of a glass jar. And it was fine in that jar, no one could hurt me as long as it was in there, but I couldn't feel anything and worse--I couldn't remember a time when I had felt something.

It was, quite simply, terrifying.

I was deeply, borderline desperately, unwell. But I didn't know it. I had never thought of myself as the kind of person who would contemplate suicide, but suddenly there I was, standing on just the other side of the line separating me from that level of despair.  Now, writing this, for the first time I realize how unwell I was and how fucking good I was at hiding it. Depression was insidious. Its onset was so gradual that I couldn't talk about it, couldn't recognize it for what it was. And I couldn't make it better. And I couldn't imagine a future where I felt anything.

So, the winter of 2011 in the North Country. The lack of sunlight is enough to make anyone a little potty, but added to loneliness, depression, and anxiety, and I was a fucking disaster. And I was very, very good at hiding it. On the outside I was a successful, put-together, well-liked, respected young professional. Inside I was just a mess.

And for whatever reason, I decided that the thing to do during that period of my life was read Neil Gaiman's Sandman. 

What a stupid idea. 

Sandman is many things, like all of Gaiman's writing. It is layered and witty and sad and funny and deeply frightening. It is not a wintertime comic. It is not a comic to read while you're suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression. 

I read it anyway. 

I fell apart. 

I went to pieces during the first volume, Preludes and Nocturnes. During a scene in A Hope in Hell I set the comic down and wept. I cried for longer than I had cried at any one time in years. And when I was finished, when the hiccups I had given myself settled down, I picked it up and kept reading. I finished the whole series in the course of a week, more reading than I had done at any one time during the previous year. 

It sounds silly and dramatic and sophomoric to say that a comic book saved my life. I know that. But I also know that when I read that one specific line in A Hope in Hell and started crying during a completely mad, fantastic, absurd story, that I felt something for the first time in months. I wouldn't have my real Come to Jesus moment about my mental health for another nine months but reading Sandman put microscopic cracks in the jar where I was keeping my heart.

***

The highest compliment that I can give a television show, a book, a movie is "I cried so hard I gave myself a headache." It's the experience I had two years ago, sitting on my bed reading A Hope in Hell and feeling something for the first time in months. 

I finished Ocean at the End of the Lane between when I started writing this blog and now. And it was brilliant. And beautiful. And deeply moving. And completely mad and terrifying and a thousand other things that I've come to expect from Neil Gaiman's writing. And I cried so hard I gave myself a headache. Partially, I expect, because it's that good.

It's also, I expect, because these days many more things are making me cry. And that's a hopeful thing.

Home (Is Wherever I'm with You)

I'm curled up under a pile of fluffy comforters in heavy winter pajamas despite the warmth outdoors (I'm a cold sleeper.) My belly is full of homemade pie and hot tea and I'm being lulled to sleep by the sound of my clothing being tumbled in the dryer.

I've just finished biking 150 miles over the course of two days. When the logistics of taking the bus back to the North Country proved too daunting (soaking clothes, covered in sand, dead cellphone and no ability to call a ride when I got there) I decided "screw it, I'm staying here." Andy and Jacob offer to put me up for the evening and bring me home the next day. It isn't until I'm drifting off to sleep that I realize I didn't wash the clothes. I didn't make dinner or the pie or the tea. I didn't make the bed and I'm not even wearing my own pajamas (see the aforementioned soaked clothing.)

The last thing I say before falling asleep is Goddamn it. They did it again.

***

48 hours earlier I was standing in Jacob and Andy's kitchen when I got the Phone Call. 

If you haven't already gotten one, let me tell you, if you're over the age of 22 you've spent some time thinking about it. How the Phone Call will change your life in a completely horrible way that you can't even begin to anticipate. How the Phone Call will trigger all of your OCD symptoms and undo the work you've done over the past nine months to become a healthy, functioning human being. How after the Phone Call you'd like to drop to the ground and scream and cry, but you can't, because you're in a room full of your friends figuring out logistics for the 150 mile bike ride you're about to do. 

This is the second Phone Call I've had in the past six months, and thankfully, I don't drop to the ground and scream or burst into sobs. I excuse myself to the bathroom, run the water for a bit and hope they attribute it to the OCD and handwashing, and cry. When I come out, we finish planning logistics, I merely shake my head at Jacob's murmured question, and leave to go bike 150 miles. 

***

When I'm upset, I mean, truly and deeply upset, I throw myself into some Big Project. I've got over a bad relationship in graduate school by acing my comprehensive exams, a feat that required no fewer than thirty hours a week in my study carrel at the library. When I didn't get into a Ph.D. program, I learned academic French and wrote my thesis. Two years prior, I got over a(nother) disastrous relationship by training for a half marathon.

I like Big Projects. 

Thankfully, the weekend after the Phone Call is the MS 150 bike ride. A ride I've been training for over the course of about six months. A ride I've been looking forward to for almost as long. A ride I'm doing with Andy, to whom I've slowly spilled my guts over the course of the 2.5 hour ride to the North Country, someone I have come to love and trust implicitly.

It seems like a good Big Project to be undertaking at this moment. 

 Endurance events are funny things. If you're a headcase like me you run through stages while participating in them. From the initial thrill of ohmygodI'mdoingthis to the HolyShitsnackslookathowfarwe'vegone to the seemingly inevitable hitting the wall whatthefuckamIdoing? to the grim determination to finish Don'tyougetonthatSAGwagonKellyMarieProsen to the final, elated feeling at the conclusion OhmyGodIdidthat! 

Endurance events are funny things. They're even odder when you're doing them alongside another person, because I can almost guarantee that when you finish the event, you'll be closer than you anticipated. As a result, it's good to pick someone with the same basic fitness level as you, who can help pull you through the rough spots and cheer you up and keep you motivated. 

I literally could not have picked better when I asked Andy to do this with me. Sunday was, well, difficult. It was 55 degrees and raining. There was a headwind the whole day. And sometimes, even with a physical activity you love doing. I don't know. The joy just goes out of it and you're stuck either a) quitting and hating yourself forever or b) grimly determined to finish. I'm sure everyone reading will be shocked, shocked! to find out that I usually belong to the latter camp. 

I honestly don't now how, but Andy cajoled and prodded and teased me through those last seventy-five miles. And that day--those two days--were one of the best expressions of grace I've ever experienced. For two days, I didn't think about the Phone Call. I didn't care about the huge, complicated, conflicting emotions I've been having over two different, huge, complicated things that are happening in my personal life right now. I just got on my bike next to this person I love and did this Big Project.

***

If you could see my Spotify playlist you'd see that I've listened to the song Home by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros about three hundred times in the past month. The first 290 times I listened to it, I was trying to get my head around the chorus of the song Home is wherever I'm with you. I couldn't imagine ever being so close to someone that home wasn't Minneapolis/Saint Paul or Collegeville or Milwaukee, but could be wherever I was with them (and yes, I do constantly over analyze the lyrics to pop songs.) 

Listens 290-300+ came after Sunday. When Andy and I finished our ride on Sunday, I was supposed to take the bus back to the North Country. Soaked through to the skin, blistered, chafed by bike shorts, hungry, dirty, and physically and mentally exhausted, I started to think about the Phone Call. 

And I could not get on that fucking bus. Even if the volunteers had been more helpful in communicating the details (their disorganization and the fact that I literally did not have a stitch of  dry clothing were reasons I seized on to take a bus the following day) I could not have gotten on that bus for anything short of my mother magically being at the other end. And whatever my friends saw in my face or heard in my voice, they opened up their homes to me. They let me leave sand all over their bathrooms (biking 75 miles in the rain ensures that you'll have sand everywhere--and I mean everywhere), loaned me pajamas, made me dinner, did my laundry, gave me wine, sat next to me on the couch, made me laugh, gave me pie and tea and then sent me to bed under a giant pile of fluffy comforters. The next day, Jacob drove me home. These people cared for me in ways I could have never articulated but needed absolutely.

I'm not the kind of person who will ever be completely easy having one person take care of me. For as much as I want that kind of relationship, I don't know if I'll ever be able to be entirely at home in one. However, as part of a group of people, who share the endurance events and adult Phone Calls and Big Projects with one another?

Home is wherever I'm with ya'll.