Super-Corny Life Soundtrack Suggestion: Breakeven-The Script
This post is kind of difficult to write, but it’s been on my
mind a lot, so it seemed worth putting out there. I can’t speak for anyone
else, but for most of my life, I always imagined that as long as you have
friends and family (or any real kind of support network), all you have to do
when you need help is to ask for it. I wouldn’t say that I was entirely wrong,
but holy shit, it is nowhere near that simple…
If you’ve kept up with my posts, you know that I am (or at
least I was) dealing with suicidal thoughts. Well, suicidal thoughts are really
just the final straw (right?! I mean if you go that route, suicidal thoughts
seem like they would be pretty near the end of that path). There are a million
things that happened that helped bring me to that place. I don’t feel ready to
discuss most of them, so I need you to trust me; I have dealt with a lot of
rough shit, both internally and with other people, since I started
transitioning. It’s been a very bumpy ride. I’ve needed (and gotten!) SO much
help. But often I end up getting that help a little late and not quite in the
way I need, because actually calling for help is really difficult. It kind of
feels like you are drowning in a pool and your friends are 5 feet away from
you, standing on the side, but they can’t hear or see a single bit of your
struggle until you use every single last bit of energy to make a blood-curdling
scream, which they hear…but just barely.
The first, and probably largest obstacle is that you begin
to doubt yourself and whether you actually need help. Right now, I am not
stable. I have mood swings, some of which can send me into an awful depression.
I freak out about tiny things. Some big things somehow don’t bother me. I don’t
even vaguely know what’s going with myself. I can’t predict my thoughts,
emotions, and the scariest of all, sometimes my actions. So…I don’t trust
myself. If I get into a non-academic disagreement with a friend, before we even
hash out all of the arguments, I just assume they are right and I am wrong.
It’s actually incredibly strange to so quickly dismiss your own thoughts and
beliefs, because you know there is a good chance you’ll end up disagreeing with
yourself in just an hour or so, but it seems like the most logical thing to do.
A closely related issue is that because I don’t trust
myself, combined with huge gender-related personality changes and slow
psychological effects of HRT (I think), I don’t really get angry anymore. I
just beat myself up. If a friend does something that would make most people
angry, I kind of just take it and assume that I did something to deserve it. I
actually do like the way I relate with people more now than before. I don’t
fight. No one really gets mad at me. I’m not making any enemies…and I’m not
further pushing away friends I’ve already pushed away. But over time, all the
beating myself up left (and leaves) bruises and I just got exhausted. Because I
had school and always had a deadline in front of me to make me stress out and
people around to distract me (not always in positive ways), I was able to bury
my pain and exhaustion and push on like the good soldier I was trying to be.
But then…last quarter ended. Spring Break started. No more deadlines. Everyone
left town. No more people to distract me. It was just me. And everything that’s
happened. What do I even do from there?
That’s when I started my very quick drop into depression and
self-loathing that brought me to first call out for help. One day, I kind of
spiraled. A million thoughts rushed through my head. I couldn’t stop them. Most
of them were pretty negative. I couldn’t stop crying. I had actually been about
to start an appointment with my therapist, when she accidentally popped the
balloon of shittiness that had been slowly and then quickly inflating over
quite some time. I literally ran out crying with only one memorable thought: “I
just want to go to my room. I’ll feel safe there.” So I drove home (not a great
decision). The thoughts just kept coming and I just wanted them to stop. I
wanted to stop thinking. I couldn’t take it anymore. And the irony is that this
barrage of thoughts essentially made it so I couldn’t think. I could just freak
out.
So if I can’t trust myself and my thoughts, if I start to
freak out, what the fuck do I do with that? In an hour, I might be fine. On the
other hand, I could be spiraling out of control all day…all week. But even if I
do spiral out of control for a week, do I actually need help or am I somehow
psyching myself out and convincing myself there is something wrong with me? I
don’t trust myself, so it almost seems more likely that I am freaking out over
nothing.
Then, I of course get afraid of becoming the girl who called
wolf, for two reasons actually. First, if I am fine and am just driving myself
crazy, if I go to my friends with this, specifically saying that I really need
help, A. what will they think of me? And B. what if I actually do need their
help in the future? Second, even if I am actually having real problems, who is
to say that this is anywhere near the last or worst of them? I’ve never been in
this place before. How bad does it get? How could I possibly know how that
feels, even if I reach that point?! After all, it could always get worse. So if
I go to friends now, what will happen? Will they just get fed up with me? Will
it make it less likely they will help me in the future if and when I need even
more help?
I’ve brought up this issue before and across the board,
almost everyone has said something to the effect of “Well if they are real
friends, it doesn’t matter…they will be there and they will want to be there
for you in that situation, even if you aren’t sure what is going on.” In fact,
on the older side, prior to coming out, I absolutely would (and probably did)
say the exact same thing. The problem is…it’s never that simple. We don’t live
in vacuums where friends just sit in their houses unless you are hanging out
with them (I have met people who seem to believe this is the case, but it
doesn’t seem to make it any more true). People have lives, and in the case of
my friends, they have the exact same type of awfully stressful lives as I do.
So I can’t blame them if they need to take care of themselves and their work.
Also, we can define the word “friend” however we want, but
what advice-givers tend to forget is that there are a bunch of different types
of friends. Do you have a friend who is incredibly fun to hang out with, but
you probably wouldn’t want to have a deep life talk with them? Or even you
might, but they wouldn’t want to have a deep life talk with you? You probably
do. Most of us do. Are those people somehow then not friends? No. Not every
friend will be your closest confidant.
So then is it possible to have a number of close friends,
but not actually one who is willing/able to help in the way that you need? Fuck
yes it is. That being said, I wasn’t in that position. But I had this awful
anxiety that I already had pushed so many people away (generally by being
uber-selfish as I struggled during the early stages of my transition)…or that I
might push people away in the future, that I was almost paralyzed by anxiety.
You definitely should recognize that I do have amazing support from my close
friends…They have put up with so much from me and each been there…but in their
own way. Plus I know that of I was majorly injured or something, they would
make sure I got to the hospital.
However, I did push away one friend with a cry for help. ..
And here is where you might get to step a little into the
mind of an unstable transitioning transgender 20-something…
With absolutely no intention of doing so, in an early cry
for help, I accidentally pushed one of my friends away. I of course apologized
a dozen times, but because my self-confidence is so low right now that I
apologize non-stop, I fear that my apologies are (somehow) less meaningful. It
sucks. But I pulled one of her triggers and she realized that being around me
was a negative impact on her (oh god, the irony…) Then when I more explicitly
called out again for help, this friend wasn’t there. Something very similar happened
with another friend (I was not too proud to call [or text] multiple people). I
pushed her away by unloading about myself too much and then she didn’t want
to/feel comfortable coming to my aid (at least I think). Honestly, I’m still
really confused about what happened, but when I was in the worst of it, I
didn’t understand her point of view much at all. After I put out my (vague)
call for help and she didn’t answer (positively), in desperation, I
specifically told them about my suicidal feelings. But then (me still not
seeing what they were going through), they still didn’t answer. And let me tell
you, when you tell two people (who are two of your closer confidants) that you
are suicidal, and they don’t even give you an “I’d miss you,” it feels kinda shitty
:-(
These events had two huge effects. First, not only were
these friends (I think) fed up with me, but whenever I thought about them, I
could not help but remind myself “They would not care if you killed yourself.”
And generally, starting about three days after I first told them I was
suicidal, I would burst into tears multiple times per day thinking about it..
Eventually, that thought would lead into “If two of your closest friends
wouldn’t care if you died, other people definitely wouldn’t!” Remember, I’m not
stable right now. The second effect was that just seeing these friends tore me
apart inside. I would physically feel my heart drop in my chest and all of my
self-doubts would flood into my head. It was bad. So, I learned to avoid them.
However, when people are in your department/circle of friends, such a task is
pretty difficult. So…I either left social situations when they showed up, or I
stayed and just tried to fight against the flood of thoughts and feelings
swirling in my head.
If you couldn’t tell, another huge issue I am having right
now is that I have somehow lost my ability to compartmentalize. That is
a-whole-nother discussion. But regardless, “just not thinking about it,” just
did not work anymore, no matter how many friends who told me I just had to try
harder.
Ok, I need to stop the story here. A lot more stuff
happened, both in Santa Barbara, and here in the Bay Area, but a lot of it is
so recent, yet far enough away that I am no longer distressed about it (and
don’t need to write about it), so I don’t have much perspective right now and
need to wait a little. I will end with three points though.
1.Skipping to the end…If you are suicidal or in a similar
situation to this, go to your friends, sure, but they should NOT be your first
nor your only call. CALL A MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL or A SUICIDE HOTLINE.
Friends may mean the absolutely best, but only about 25% of people (in my
experience) have enough empathy or their own experience to actually help you.
If you call out to one of the 75% of people who don’t understand, it may end up
making things WAY worse. Call. A. Professional.
2. I was kind of hard on some of my friends. But right now, I honestly feel very lucky to have the friends I do. In fact, the ones who I got particularly hurt by in this post are the same ones who have been there for me a million times before. They are definitely friends and they are definitely good friends…They may just not be the right kind of friend to help in certain situations.
Oh…Plus I am uber biased. Don’t listen to me. I don’t even
listen to myself! Haha
3.I know I talked about some rough stuff. But I am honestly
good right now. I’ve met one seriously AMAZING friend here in the Bay Area and
am slowly making other ones. I don’t feel lonely and I don’t feel stressed.
Things are going to get better. And I am going to be ok :-)
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