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need-a-new-hobby · 4 years

Text

Mayhem

| part 1 |

note: listened to hurts like hell by fleurie for this part.

Piper was pacing in the conference room, tossing a marker in her hand, going through the motions as she found the missing piece. She rummaged through the evidence, pulling out the tarot card. It was personal, for us. Her veins ran cold. How could she be so stupid? Death. She ran to the elevator, but it had already gone down. Panicking, she sprinted to the nearest window. She pulled out her phone, dialling the most recently dialled number, not even thinking. “Don’t start the car!” she yelled into the phone, but her heart sank as she saw an SUV blow up in front of her eyes. Her knees buckled and she didn’t stop herself hit the floor. “No.” She whispered, closing her eyes, wishing for it all to be over.

“Piper? What’s wrong?” Spencer’s voice flooded into her ear. “Pipes, are you crying?”

“The tarot card, Spence. Death. That was their target.” She sobbed. “I coul-- I couldn’t stop it. Spence. I was so scared it-- it was you...”

“Wait, I’m coming back up.” Spencer ran out of the car, sprinting back up to the office quarters, oblivious to the explosion on the other side of the building, her sobs echoing in his ears.

She felt gentle hands lift her up and she melted into Spencer’s embrace. “They were targeting us, one of our SUVs.” She immediately pushed herself off. “So who was it?” Panicked, they tried calling everyone but the cells weren’t working. “Network’s down. Where would they go?”

“NYPD’s Command Centre for joint operations. We have to go there.” Piper stared out the window as Spencer drove. There had only been one SUV blown up. They didn’t know whose. Just that they had to get somewhere safe. In the back, all the evidence was stored in the tubs. As soon as the SUV stopped, Piper ran out, lugging the evidence with them on the way in. Relief washed over her as she saw Rossi standing, staring at the TV screen. He enveloped them in a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“We tried reaching people but--”

“Can’t, communications network is crashing. And what do you two mean by ‘glad I’m okay’?”

“The car bomb. Didn’t they-- Rossi, it’s a black SUV. We don’t know who’s safe and who isn’t.”

“How do you know this?”

“The explosion was right outside the field office, on the far side of the road. I have no idea who took which SUV, no idea who’s hurt.”

“Garcia has a satellite phone. I don’t know why, but we could reach her,” Spencer recalled as he dialled the number. “Where are you?”

“I just walked into the CCTV Command Post.”

“Can you see anything?”

“I literally just walked through the door, Spencer.”

“We got on the news it was an SUV that exploded. A black SUV within blocks of the federal plaza.”

“Oh, god.”

“Now, do you have eyes there?”

“I, uh--yeah, yeah, I've got like 300 cameras right there. Give me a sec.”

“I'm here with Rossi and Piper, but I don't know where anyone else is. Find them, Garcia.” Piper wiped her face with her hand.

^-^

Penelope starting ringing everyone, feeling relieved as she heard Derek and Emily’s voices. But there was still no response from Hotch or JJ. Instead of giving in to her inner worry, Penelope forged ahead, finding every camera angle of the explosion possible to see Hotch and Kate walk up to the SUV, to see it explode, rewinding it to see the bastard in that damned hoodie, switching angles to see him walk over to behind a column, fast forward it to see him walk out sans hoodie, talking to her boss.

“He watched it,” she whispered, “that son of a bitch watched it all.” She dialled Derek as fast as she could, praying for service.

“Garcia, I got Hotch. But listen to me. You gotta get somebody down here right away, you hear me? Right now.”

“Derek, listen to me, there’s someone else there, he’s the bomber.”

“The kid? You’re sure?”

“As sure as I love warm, buttery croissants.” She heard the line cut and let out a sob. She dialled the number Spencer called her from.

“Hello?” A soft, weak voice spoke from the phone. “This is Dr. Piper Bishop, who is this?”

“Pipes, oh god, are you okay?”

“Nothing a shower won’t fix. Is...is everyone okay?”

“Oh, Pipes, it’s Hotch and Kate’s SUV. But they weren’t in it yet.”

“So they’re okay?” Penelope heard the hope rise in her voice.

“They’re injured, the ambulance won’t get them though.”

“Shit, I forgot. We thought the first responders were the real target. Do... Are they gonna be okay?” Piper’s voice shook.

“I...I don’t know. JJ won’t pick up, Morgan’s chasing the bomber and Emily’s headed to a command centre. I don’t know which one.”

“Thank you, Pen.”

“Piper, be safe.” She heard her laugh derisively.

“I was never the one in a black SUV, Penny. I-- I have to go. Bye Pen.” And just like that, her last friend clicked away.

^-^

Piper lay her head in her hands as Spencer paced. Rossi surveyed the board, turning at the sound of a familiar voice. “Emily,” she breathed, launching herself at her friend. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, you all okay?”

“Yeah, our cars were fine,” Rossi said.

“Not Hotch’s,” Piper muttered darkly.

“Wait, what?” JJ asked, showing up and Emily enveloped her in a hug.

“I should have figured it out sooner. The tarot card was personal, left for us. They meant death for us. Placed a bomb under Hotch’s SUV. They never got in. Bomb blew as they were walking to the car.” Piper’s voice was hollow. “Morgan’s running after a possible suspect, she’s figuring out how we can help.”

“Wait...” Reid murmured, turning over the tarot card. “They never delivered on it.” He caught blank stares from the team. “I mean, no-one’s dead. Hotch and Kate are injured, they weren’t in the SUV.”

“It was a remote detonation,” Piper considered. “The unsub was still there. He could’ve waited till they got inside.”

“With a cell as large as this one and multiple targets to choose from, they target a single SUV?” Rossi pondered. The question remained unanswered as the phone rang. Emily answered before turning to the fax machine. They watched as Emily put up pictures of the unsub Morgan was chasing. Then the one she shot that week.

“These are smart, well-educated kids, hand-picked and trained to be martyrs. They're not gonna be in any government file and they won't have rap sheets,” Rossi noted as Piper kept pacing next to him.

“Hotch and Kate are at St. Barclay's Hospital,” JJ announced.

“How are they?” Piper looked up.

“Well, Hotch is in the ER, Kate’s in surgery. Morgan's on his way down there now.”

“There’s got to be more.” Piper racked her brain. “They shot 6 people in different subways to create chaos and terror. They left a tarot card saying death for us so we know that they know we’re here. They shot a cop and then let themselves be gunned down by Emily to show the strength of their convictions. Everyone’s trapped on the island, all trains have been closed down. They found nothing at any of the sites that we told them that these guys were targeting. What are they targeting then?”

“The profile’s wrong,” Rossi stood up, meeting her eyes. “Everything--everything they've done so far has appeared to be something it's not.”

“I don't follow.”

“The seemingly random acts of murder, the attempt to hack into our security surveillance systems. The suicide by cop to make us all believe that it was over. Don't forget the death card telling us they know we're watching. All diversions. To ensure our attention and analysis of any given situation would than incorrectly inform our profile.”

“So the first responders were not the real target? Hotch and Kate were a diversion, too? From what?” JJ walked in again, her hand covering the cell.

“Guys, it’s Morgan. Hotch wants us all at St Barclay’s now.” They dispersed, gathering their things. Piper grabbed her blazer and passed Spencer his satchel as Emily grabbed her laptop and Rossi grabbed his keys. The four of them sat in the one SUV, Piper staring at her credentials. She was sick of her team constantly being in danger. Putting herself in danger, she could control. But them? Piper passed Emily a spare elastic for her hair and passed Spencer his Kevlar vest, glaring down his pouting look.

They waited outside Hotch’s room as he changed into the clothes they brought. Piper helped him with the bulletproof vest, or as Garcia would put it, his bullet-resistant vest as he spoke quietly. “I just want to understand why I'm still alive.”

“I think the idea was to maim, not to kill.” She guided him outside to the team.

“Did you identify Sam, the bomber?”

“Garcia put Sam and the other dead unsub into every know database. Nothing.”

“We know how terror cells evolve,” Rossi spoke. “They learn from one campaign to the next. How to stay off radar like the London Bombers.”

“Yeah, but they, uh, they hit at 8:50 in the morning with a series of coordinated blasts aimed at London's transportation system, and this cell targeted a lone SUV where the only people on the street are 2 federal agents,” Hotch spoke, his voice laced with helplessness.

“It's not multiple targets, it's one target,” Morgan spoke, crossing his arms. “One target, one bomb.”

“Garcia said the device was placed under Kate's SUV,” Rossi thought aloud.

“It was likely made using oxidising agents, including chromates, peroxides, perchlorates, chlorates, and red mercury, all jammed into a device no larger than a cell phone,” Spencer added, gesturing as he spoke.

“Imagine what a bomb the size of an oil drum could do,” Morgan scoffed.

“Yeah, but to make something that big, you'd need a chemical engineer,” Piper added softly.

“Like the recently deceased Dr. Azahari Husin, Asia's most-wanted bomb-maker? Authorities dubbed him the, uh, demolition man. He treated each bomb like a work of art. One wrong move... He becomes a victim of his own creation,” Rossi spoke disdainfully. “He'll be more revered than all of the people who died as a result of his devices.”

“Stop the bomber, stop the bomb,” Emily murmured.

“To do that, we need to know how they would deploy something that big,” Morgan added.

“Morgan. Did you ever find Sam's cell phone?” Hotch asked.

“Yes.”

“Did he call 911?”

“No. He dialled one number 6 times every few minutes. It was a disposable cell. Garcia tried to track the number but it went dead minutes after Sam died. Whoever had it destroyed it.”

“Well, if he didn't have a secondary device to detonate, there's only one reason that he stayed with us. To make sure the ambulance got to us.”

“And in a city on lockdown,” Emily realised, “an ambulance with its siren blaring and lights on, it's gonna make it through every roadblock virtually uncontested.”

“And straight into a hospital with a bypass order,” Hotch murmured.

“What do you mean?” Piper asked him, gently touching his arm.

“Secret service has a bypass on this hospital.”

“Secret service? Who are they protecting?”

“That's who Sam was calling, the paramedic on the ambulance. The ambulance which I drove in here. This hospital is their target. Let's go.” Hotch beckoned his team to follow behind him as he confronted the Secret Service agent. “Who do you have in here?”

“Why is that information important to you?”

“The ambulance I drove in here-- where is it now?”

“In the basement. Why?”

“There's a bomb in it.”

“What?”

“It's rigged to assassinate whoever it is you're protecting. You need to get them and everyone else out of here right now.”

“We can't do that. He's undergoing surgery as we speak.”

“The paramedic I came in with-- do you have eyes on him? Is that a cell in his hands? Rossi, get Garcia to remote access the cell phone grid and jam all the frequencies.” Rossi moved away from the group as he raised his radio. “Where the hell is Morgan?”

“He went to find the ambulance,” Spencer spoke, wringing his hands.

“Alone? Let's head down,” Hotch ordered. The five of them sped down through to the basement, guns at the ready. They rushed down the stairs as Derek glanced through the ambulance window. He pulled up his radio, talking to Garcia.

“You’ve only got three minutes till the satellite comes back around.” Three minutes to get the bomb out of there. He ran around to the driver’s seat, getting in and trying to jumpstart the ambulance, ordering Garcia to get him directions to the nearest area of town he can drive.

“You tell everybody, you hear me, everybody that I'm coming.” She told him to head north and he floored it, waiting for the next direction as the paramedic ran out, yelling and firing at the ambulance.

The five other team members slipped down the stairs and into the basement, still searching for Morgan, the ambulance and the unsub. Silently, they stalked into the parking lot and Spencer, gun up, walked toward the elevator. “Guys,” He whispered to his team. “He shot the Secret Service agents.” Rossi creeped west, followed by a limping Hotch as Reid, Bishop and Prentiss sneaked around the other side while Derek drove the ambulance as fast as he could.

“How long Garcia?”

“Signal's coming back online. 30 seconds to full coverage. Derek, drive to the opening and then get the hell out.”

“There's something I really want you to know, Garcia.”

20 seconds.

“Save it. Just get out.”

“No, no, no, I'm not quite there yet.”

10...

“Morgan... Just listen to me.”

9... 8...

“Morgan, please.”

“You know what you are, Garcia?” There was a pregnant pause on the line as the service came back online. The paramedic was seated cross-legged against a wired fence as Spencer, Piper and Emily approached him, silent as the grave. Emily glanced at Piper who had determination etched on her face. They fanned out to arrest him, but it was too late. He had pressed the button. The ambulance rolled in the grassy terrain as the bomb detonated, fire bursting out of the ambulance and spurting out metal as Derek watched from a distance. He leaned into his radio as he spoke to Garcia. “I'll tell you what you are to me. You're my god-given solace. Woman, you promise me one thing... Whatever happens... Don't you ever stop talking to me.”

“I can’t right now, ‘cause I’m mad at you. I’m sending someone to pick you up.”

Piper studied the paramedic, crimson liquid dripping down his neck, his uniform soaked in blood and a blood dripping from the knife in his had. Too late indeed.

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sebastyansmith-writer · 4 years

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Her Name Was Arthur

Or:

Getting to grips with my first ever panic attack at 30

Note: The following is written chronologically. The relevance of these events only became clear after a lot of soul searching and personal psychological analysis after the fact.

Initially none of it was clear, but reaching back and finding the root cause of where I believe my panic attack came from helped massively with fighting through it and moving on.

I’ve had a few people ask for more information on this, especially those who have struggled with anxiety and panic attacks nearly their entire life. I think seeing someone process it all for the first time offers a unique angle. That’s what this post is about.

At age 5/6 our family cat gave birth to a litter of kittens. I was allowed to chose one and name it, and from that point it would my cat. Looking back this was the first meaningful instance of real responsibility, and even at a young age I understood its importance.

I chose a kitten and named her Arthur. I can’t remember if I knew her sex, or cared, but I certainly loved me some King Arthur.

How not to hold a sword

For the first time in my young life I had a charge, a living creature that would rely on me. Obviously looking back I probably wouldn’t have had to do much, but all the same I took it very seriously.

A few weeks later she died.

It was an illness no-one knew she had, and according to the vet – unavoidable.

According to my mother I was inconsolable. It took a hundred conversations to settle me, and I’m fortunate that my mother excels at emotional conversations.

I remember choosing the name Arthur. I remember the kitten dying. I don’t remember what she looked like, or crying at all. Apparently my mind decided to repress all that.

From that point on I didn’t properly connect with any of the pet cats we owned, though to such a degree that I didn’t notice until getting Ink and Bobby, years later.

Ink

Bobby

I loved animals. I practically lived off nature programs. But I had a deep, subconscious fear of being responsible for them.

This might sound all a bit dramatic but I was – and am – what some would call a delicate flower. Losing Arthur hit me hard.

It’s funny, I started talking about the above on a regular basis. Saying how relieved I was that I could open myself up again to pets, happy that I was able to let myself feel things properly, even at the risk of eventually losing them.

In retrospect this was my mind trying to draw my attention to another issue that would only become clear to me later:

It wasn’t just pets that I had began detaching from.

As a child I had a smattering of friends. I loved them, and trusted them, but when we moved away I was able to disconnect from them without much drama. They had been good people, and probably still are (this is long before social media so who bloody knows!). Yet I moved on without much of a backwards glance. When they didn’t show much interest I would leave.

Anyway, I carried on, I grew up, I was able to develop some brilliant relationships with people. Things were going really well. I grew into a happy adult and am lucky to count some brilliant people as friends.

As an aside: I think this was due to my up-bringing. My parents (and other parental figures) were superb. They installed so much strength and self-respect in me. That’s not to say I haven’t stumbled over the years and been an idiot – I have. Even so, I had an exemplary upbringing and I will always be thankful for that.

I still retained the ability to move on from people if things didn’t work out, or if they let me down. Looking back it could be something as simple as them not keeping to an arranged meeting time or place and I’d totally cut ties with them. Not socially, but I’d take away any level of trust I had in them.

This came instinctively and followed me into my mid twenties until I made a breakthrough.

I found myself trusting people again, really letting them in. Here’s the issue –

As children we learn how to let people in and how to block people out. It’s a system of trial and error which most take for granted as ‘learning how society works’. I don’t think I did that. I think losing Arthur had such a profound effect on me that I took the shortcut of distancing myself from others as a means of avoiding losing them.

On some level my ability to process trust issues stopped when Arthur died (bear with me on this).

So when I started trusting people, I did so as a child might, because that part of my processing hadn’t had chance to develop.

Someone who I deemed ‘special’ (super cringey, I know – I assure you this wasn’t a conscious distinction, but rather a subconscious one I’ve only recently identified) would be elevated to such a degree that they could do no wrong. They were perfect, they were above reproach. They could – wait for it – be trusted and relied upon! They wouldn’t ever let me down, why would they?

wow

Here’s where the healthy/unhealthy cycle begins. Through sheer dumb luck, and hopefully my own judgement, these few people never let me down. They were, and are, brilliant. My child-like projections of them were never shattered.

Until they were.

What happens when the psychological foundations of your mind that you’ve been building subconsciously your entire life begin to crumble?

I can only describe it as my brain short-circuiting. I have never had any mental health issues. I have always had a positive outlook and tend to take difficult things in my stride. I am not one to obsess, or to spiral. I was thus utterly unprepared for what was to come. All at once my mind seemed to collapse in on itself. I didn’t react like an adult, I reacted like a 6 year old whose kitten just died.

I couldn’t understand it. I kept saying ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’ like an endless mantra. I was unprepared.

You see, on a level I wasn’t aware of, child me blamed himself for Arthur’s death. It wasn’t my fault, obviously, but we’re beyond normal logic at this point (keep up Neurotypicals!). Arthur had been my responsibility and she died. I internalised that and blamed myself for it.

Therefore, if I was to blame for the kitten, then adult Me was to blame for any upset caused by an individual elevated to my special little compartmentalised group of friendships. What should have been something I reacted to and processed relatively normally became a mental cliff which I promptly fell off. The two events became linked.

I tried to shrug it off as I would a regular upset and ended up crying uncontrollably in work. Fortunately my colleagues were superb and called me a taxi home. I did all the things I usually did to take my mind off it and that only made me spiral more. My thoughts were no longer my own, I felt hurt, confused, and more vulnerable than I have ever felt before. My sleeping pattern almost vanished. I would have moments of clarity, but they were quickly fog over again. I’d have good days, but always bad days would follow.

Keep in mind that you’ve had this story in order. At the point of the panic attack I didn’t understand where this reservoir of emotion had come from. All I kept doing was blaming myself and silently arguing myself until I could feel my thoughts falling apart.

Artist: Bryony Mulvill

I’ve always known panic attacks were real, often comparing them to a type of fit, but experiencing one firsthand opened my eyes. It is terrifying.

For all my strength as a person, for all my good mental health, one incident and my world nearly fell apart. Fortunately I wasn’t alone. My partner and my friends were there for me and they pulled me through it. No-one is an island.

Do you know what surprised me further? The anger. As part of my mental block with letting people in I also restrained a lot of emotion. For the first time in my adult life I felt angry. It was like a damn bursting. Every single emotion all wanted to be at the front but the anger? That bloody scared me.

It also pointed out something fascinating: as an adult I had never been angry before. Not really, deep-in-your-gut, truly angry. Y’know what? Being angry makes me want to cry.

Delicate flower, n’all that.

Fortunately a lifetime of good mental health kicked in with a vengeance.

I began exercising to give myself the impression of control over my life. I began taking B12 supplements to help with the fatigue. I also began talking about what I was going through, not just to people on social media and to friends/family, but to myself.

I started asking: Why?

I’d gone through hard things in the past. I’d felt pain and loss and sadness, so why now? That line of questioning uncovered everything you’ve been reading.

I love psychoanalysis. I love the idea of the human mind as a machine with cause and effect, with a little bit of chaos in there for good measure. Until recently I’d had little cause to direct this interest inwardly. It took two months to trace things back to the Arthur conclusion. Written down it might look silly, and to some degree it is:

Child doesn’t deal with losing kitten = adult doesn’t know how to process being let down.

It’s dumb, but it’s also an answer. Rather than endlessly repeating: ‘I don’t understand’ I now DO understand. More importantly, I can tell my 6 year old self that it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have known what was going to happen. I can resolve the relatively innocent incident of childhood trauma.

Not me and Arthur, but probably fairly accurate. Fuck I wish I remembered more.

You see, giving myself the answer provides me with a key. I’m no longer looking outwards for a solution, I can look inwards. And until recently my own head was the safest place for me to be. Like fuck I’m giving up that ground to anxiety. That territory is mine, baby.

I can also begin to work on how I view people, how I project onto them, and why I project onto them.

This has been a chaotic post, and to get the first hand journey experience you might have to read it backwards, from panic attack to naming a female kitten Arthur.

So there you have it. My first panic attack. Such innocent, naive little origins for something that could have so easily ruined me as an adult. Ain’t the human brain great/terrible.

Weirdly, I feel stronger and more alive than I ever have.

2020 is going to be amazing, I promise.

– Seb

Her Name Was Arthur Her Name Was Arthur Or: Getting to grips with my first ever panic attack at 30…

#2019 #2020 #king arthur #kitten #mental health #psychology

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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So after the spate of high-profile celebrity suicides recently, and the short-lived discussion of mental health that surrounds them (kind of like the way the gun control debate appears for a week after a mass shooting and then vanishes), I have had some probably disconnected thoughts that I finally felt like putting down somewhere (and honestly, I had most of this post typed up and then tumblr deleted it, so... round two and Fuck You Very Much Tumblr). I briefly thought about putting it on facebook, but a) fuck facebook, I’m barely on it anymore, and b) everyone that I care about is either or also here. So I guess it’s once more using the big blue hellsite as a diary, because I was awake until 1am last night talking to myself about this, and writing is how I work things out.

As ever, please do not feel obliged to read the post or whatever else, especially if you’re uncomfortable with the themes/subjects discussed. Again, it’s essentially for my own benefit and trying to organize things I’ve wanted to say, as a long-term sufferer of depression and anxiety who is also having a really tough time now, and how I see that reflecting on what’s happening both with me and the wider world.

Anyway.

I feel like my main reaction is one of weariness that so much of the response is “get help if you’re struggling! Reach out! Call someone! Things will get better!” Which is... helpful in its way, and I genuinely believe that the people reblogging suicide hotline numbers and “don’t kill yourself” posts and so on really want to help. I am not one to point fingers at anyone who really wants to reach out and do something to make a difference. But that’s also it? We’re barely getting to the place of recognizing depression as a legitimate problem and not stigmatizing people who have it (hah), but to me, it sounds so much like “well, I know you have two broken legs and can’t stand upright, but you should still go walk to the clinic and ask them to help you.” Again. Important. But why is so much of it centered around the assumption that the depression sufferer has the responsibility to go on an individual basis and try therapy or meds or whatever, while the mental health services that even exist are being slashed? While some people seem perfectly happy to talk about how mental health is the problem, and not readily legal assault rifles and a culture of white male entitlement and grievance), and the assumption remains that we can just treat depression on an individual, ad hoc basis, rather than looking at it systematically.

We’ve had a ton of studies and research showing that depression rates are way up, that a lot of people identify as having anxiety and mental issues and are messed up out the wazoo (which frankly, I think most of us are), and then the attendant “everyone’s a snowflake, buck up and take it on the chin!” backlash, because frankly the world is horrible and society sucks. (This opinion is sometimes subject to revision, but still.) Honestly, is this any surprise? When we’re in collapsing late-stage capitalism that has basically utterly fucked everyone born after 1980, we live in this awareness that things are systematically and unbearably evil and oppressive but the vast majority of us have no ability to do anything about that, and birth rates and marriage rates are declining because people (completely understandably) don’t want to bring children into this nightmare of a world and are realizing that traditional ideals of marriage and sexual morality are BS.... I mean, are we surprised that people just don’t want to live in this world anymore? When I find myself worrying about the idea of taking on another student loan (another of the basic commodities that it has become expected that you’ll go tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for) and then am like, “well, there’s a less than zero chance that Western civilization collapses in my lifetime/the next ten years, and I’m going to die in debt anyway, so...”, there’s a sense of surreality and almost despondency that we’re able to know more than ever how shitty things are, but again, can’t do anything about it. Again. We can’t fix depression by telling people individually to go try therapy or whatever else. It doesn’t get at the reasons that so many of us just can’t stand the world anymore.

I feel like I’ve settled well on my belief that people, even if often beholden to centuries-old bullshit and tribalism and prejudice, are individually good, often amazingly and soul-sustainingly so (I’m not joking when I say that I would probably be dead by now if not for the kindness of strangers and friends, including many of you who I’ve met here), but society and the overall structure is pretty much rotten. We find ways to manage, to exist, to ameliorate, to distract, and I am honestly delighted for the people who can live more or less happy existences despite everything, have found a way to do that. Again, this isn’t a “don’t go to therapy!!” sort of post, because yes, if you’re depressed, you have to decide whether and how you want to get better. But sometimes you just can’t fucking do that. You just exist this way and you know how it is and it becomes sort of familiar and accounted for.

I’m lucky to be a mostly high-functioning sufferer, who has lived with long-term and chronic depression and anxiety since at least the age of 18 (and probably, through most of my childhood as well), which has left me latently suicidal, physically fucked up, mentally exhausted, and emotionally isolated for my entire adult life. But I’ve also managed to hold jobs and complete several advanced degrees and get out of bed and put on makeup and keep my commitments and so on and otherwise outwardly resemble a normal person. So I then read posts about people who can’t get out of bed or even brush their teeth, and I start wondering if I “really” have depression or it’s just an excuse or I’m a weak person or just broken somehow else. Which is 0% helpful and is the bad brain talking, as I recognize. Looking at me from the outside, it feels like you wouldn’t guess, which also seems to be a theme with the celebrities who died. They always seemed happy and well put together and confident, until they didn’t. I turn 30 this August, and feel about 800.

And yet. I have made the choice to live, and I have continued to make the choice, and I have learned that I have a lot of strength I didn’t know I did, and I am proud of that. But I also read a post by someone I otherwise admire and whose work I really like, about how you can’t ever have the life you want until you take suicide off the table as an option, as if you can just choose once to live and not think about it again. And I just am like... how? I’ve made it before and I’ll have to do it again, but god, I wish with my entire heart that I could just make it once and not look back. I wish I could ever be confident that I could say without qualification that I want to live more than I want to die. Because well, I DON’T want to die, not really. I find things that make me happy and that give me small joys and distract me and which I enjoy. I still have a lot of things I want to do (even while feeling I won’t get the chance) and feel like it would be stupid to die because my brain doesn’t work. So I’m still here. I’ve never made a serious attempt to kill myself, and I obviously hope that doesn’t change. But it remains in the back of my head, the idea that I just wish I could switch off for five years and come back and find that things have somehow worked out. Which obviously is not the way it works, and you don’t get to temporarily go away. But this world is so hard and so tiring to live in, and sometimes it gets to me.

As for the getting help part -- I’ve been trying to do that myself recently. Go to counselling services and the university support centre and whatever else, even though it causes me anxiety to the point of physically messing me up. It feels like being drunk or hungover or just off balance and unable to see or breathe normally. I convulse in bed at night and wake up just as tired when I went to sleep and just don’t feel like I run correctly. And this is from a relatively high-functioning person who isn’t trying to stop herself (at least currently) from suicide, but just enough to keep her going. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a person depressed to the point of being unable to get out of bed, told to call someone or reach out or whatever else. That’s practically inhumane. We live, for better or worse, in a Western “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” culture that puts the onus on the individual to fix their own problems. When honestly, the collective society that exists right now is a toxic, oppressive, and impossible one that keeps chewing up people from every walk of life and which nobody with the actual ability to do anything about it seems to want to change. Encouraging individuals with depression to seek help is nice, sure. But until something fundamentally and permanently changes in society and how we view our obligations to each other and what we are willing to do to help and to change this culture that tells you you’re responsible for your own illness, people are going to keep dying from depression in droves, and everyone else is just going to figure we’re weak. Or there will be a short-lived mental health awareness campaign, and nice things will be said, and then it will be back to business as usual. Because man, are we good at burying our heads in the sand for any number of things.

The choice to live doesn’t usually have the luxury of being made once and then never revisited. You have to do it yearly, monthly, weekly, sometimes even daily. And frankly, I don’t blame anyone who feels that the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t really add up to staying here anymore. I’m here certainly in part because of you here on tumblr, who have indirectly (and sometimes directly) saved my life. You have talked with me on text or email or in person for years, have read my fics and thought of things you wanted to tell me and sent me nice messages and otherwise made me feel less invisible. Your kindness has been often what has sustained me, and made me decide that I’d rather be here than anywhere else, and given me what little faith in humanity I have left. And one of the reasons I write all the time (books/fics/asks/metas/papers/theses/projects...etc) is because I literally cannot stand to live in my own head if I don’t. I do love creating things and am happy that people enjoy what I post here, and it’s a major source of pleasure and distraction for me. But I also do it because I will literally cease to function (in what limited capacity I have) if I don’t. I have to do it in order to live with myself and this monster at all, and that is also tiring.

Overall, we’re all fucked-up people with a very dark sense of humor, whose compassion and conscience is about all we have going for us, and we just have to try to cling together and do for each other what we can. And god, I’m grateful for it. I have a lot of financial terror right now in addition to everything else, and am looking into the aforementioned student loan for short-term stabilizing (limited work rights are a Bitch), and I basically paid my rent last month because of you guys. So yeah, you’ve made the difference for a stranger on the internet being homeless or not, and I have no idea why, but please know that it means more to me than I can ever say, and I hope to give back what I can.

(I also still have a Kofi account, while I’m trying to get things under control here, so... again, entirely up to you.)

I’m not sure how I will make it to December and (supposedly, ha) my PhD graduation, let alone after that. I will probably have to choose to live again several more times between now and then, and then again after that. I hope I can continue to do that. And I hope I can talk to you, both if you need someone to listen and whatever I can do for you by that, and if I do the same.

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, mazel tov.

#hilary for ts #personal #tw depression #tw suicide

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