Thug life. Hood...or how come it used to be so much easier

A: It's so much easier to be a good person in small-town Indiana than here, in our hood.

B: Oh no, it's easier here. There's a lot more good that needs to be done.

It's difficult to figure out what's right. You can live in white suburbia and pretend that all the shit outside of it doesn't exist, you might just not know about it. You can do it all your life, never confronted with the issues hitting and kicking you, often literally, right in your smiling face.

Ethical questions have been concerning me ever since we moved here. "Am I doing the right thing?" Or the one that's way more common, "What the fuck is going on and why am I here?"

Just the other night I was out on the street at night and police stopped me, suspecting I was a prostitute. I was wearing sweats and tennis shoes. They couldn't believe I lived here. "This is a really rough neighborhood", one of them said...as if I didn't notice.

Real shit is happening here. It gets nearly impossible to not get in it.

There's always police here. They never go alone. Usually at least 2 to 5 officers keeping together. I'm white and I wear nice clothes for work. I often get the "good guy" card just because. I also get asked for change, bus tickets, phone, laptop, real money...also, just because a.k.a an affluent white young female with license plates not from around here. I used to feel like we stood out too much. "Ahem....Did you just get off the bus, darling?" Now I'm concerned we're well too adjusted.

The clouds around my husband and me seem so thick I can barely breath. It's almost humorous when I go to work or grad school classes, immersing myself in a completely different world. They don't understand. I'd never share. I don't know nothing anyway, right?

Half of the time I sincerely don't understand the way the people speak around here.

The H-word

Does 'hopeless' have a set limit?

Where it bumps into a sticky bottom

Reluctantly acknowledging

that its meaning is exhausted in its full entirety?

Would it matter if it hurt so much

You kind of wished you ached a bit physically

To match at least one ounce

of what you're plunging through internally?

Ice-cold eyes, like a piece of glass,

Staring right though you

Are you even there?

Your tears are sure funny.

Funny as hell.

Help. Why is it never there?

When every grown back bone is broken

You're crushed, wailing, chewing on snot,

Saying His name

In vain.

What did you even expect?

A pair of caring arms

Taking you out of it,

Singing a song, helping you close your eyes

For a while?

Real while

Till you're ever able to say the H-word

The silent word,

making you want to slam your fists

Right into the mirror

to not ever face that face again?

No, it's not "hurt"

or "hate" or "hopeless",

"happy", "hungover"

It's "HU-MI-LI-A-TION".

Writing "failure" and "weakness"

all over your back.

And you're back

With your multiple 'WHY's

Trying to rescue "respect", "worth, "dignity"

And you know

that they'll never be answered.

Why do you even ask?

I feel lonely. Not the type of 'lonely' when you long for someone to come and save you, I just feel that I need to move on my own for now. Sure, there is my husband. He's always with me, he's part of me. It's just other people seem farther than usual and I don't want to come closer at this moment.

My body feels like it's been inside out and upside down these past few days. Chills, high fever, speech difficulties. I couldn't get up for couple days straight. This morning, while crawling on the shower floor because of bad stomach spasms, I wanted to scream.

No matter what people say about insignificance of their bodies and soul being more important, if your body is f-ed up, good luck getting out a smart idea out of your head or helping other people while all you can concentrate on is physical pain. Body is a vessel, and I've been driving mine too far.

I feel so angry. It's really eating me up. I don't handle the feeling too well, but it takes time to work it out. What's worse, sometimes that anger turns inward, and that is when it feels like I can't cope. Such moods make me want to shut myself off for a while, when at the same time it's not really what I want.

I'd better go to sleep.

Why did you call?

Caution: This blog post is severely fucked up. I mean it. I want to apologize upfront to the people who care about me. I do know that "sorry" doesn't just do it in such situations, but this is how I felt at that time and I want to share it in hopes to help other people who have been there.This post is going to be very very hard to write. I'm really trying to forget that anyone might read it as I'm typing.

But i decided I will do it, because it doesn't make sense to contemplate doing something when you can't even talk about contemplating it.

I get those episodes once in a while. It used to be very rare, but as I got done with school and strayed away from my clear-cut path, it started happening more and more often. It can last from a few minutes to almost a day, never longer. So I just live through it. I know it will pass, so I push through all the negativity and try to LIVE through it. No matter how long it takes, I know there will be a calm after the storm.
I am very ashamed of it.

You won't find any sleeping peels in our apartment, nor any other medications that could be lethal. All the knives are saw-like to make it harder to cut through the skin. I am not to use the car when I am distressed.

I was laying in the darkness, thinking about my death. No, it wasn't death that occupied my mind. It was life I was not proud of, life that I thought wasn't worthy enough to keep living. That's what I thought then. Everything seemed black and white. One-sided problems had no solutions, no future, no hope. I couldn't go on any more. I'm just not doing a good job with too many things. A failure. The mere fact of me having those thoughts, cowardly giving up like that and considering suicide just made me want to do it more. [kind of a chicken or an egg situation] Those thoughts can't keep coming over again.. It's like a vicious cycle spiraling inward toward a center. There should be a resolution. That's what I thought then.
this is enough of having those thoughts. they just get more fequent. there should be an end.

The thing is, I don't want any pain or even any inconvenience to others if I decide to do something [completely and uterly dumb] to myself. i even thought of a way to kill myself so my loved ones wouldn't need to be bothred much with my rotten body. I laid in bed and mentally wrote a poem, which I thought I wouldn't be able to post here as it might disturb people who care about me [again, makes a lot of sense. writing about it might disturb them, but it's totally cool that I'm thinking about actually DOING it. no, that won't disturb anyone at all]. I was wishing to have a way to vanish without anyone noticing, without anyone feeling hurt or harmed by my disappearance. i didn't want anyone to worry about my nasty body, a funeral, the whole idea that someone they knew commited suicide. I imagined that scenario lmost like keeping my body but having that something that people call "self" or their soul, cease existing.

Then I heard a phone call. Right as I was in the midth of my agony someone called. It was my very good friend. I pulled together all my energy and tried coming up with the most cheerful "Hey" I could get out of myself at the time. The next thing I heard was him wondering if I was ok. Oh well, I guess acting is not my thing. "Why did you call?" "Is that a bad time?" "No, but why did you call now? ". I thought it was almost psychic of him to call exactly then. Just a very nice coincidenece. It gets even weirder.

"I almost killed myself today" - he said. Ok, here it got really hard. All of a sudden I didn't mourn about my miserable stupid self. I would never want my friend to hurt himself. So once again, I pulled whatever's left together and prepared to listen calmly. The thing about suicidal people, they often describe similar feelings. Of course, perceived problems vary, but the overall message always seems to be along the lines of "I can't cope any longer". As I was listening to the guy, I heard him say the things swirling in MY mind, but I couldn't afford to let him think this way. With each encouraging word I gave him, I pulled myself up as well. It was an awfully difficult task, when I kept holding the phone's microphone away, so God forbid he realizes that I'm crying. We talked for about an hour. At the end he remembered that i sounded distressed at the begging.

What was wrong?
Oh...I'm over it now. Don't worry. I'm just so glad you called.

What do you do?

What do you do when it seems like the whole world is against you? When everyone says go, give up, don't even bother, this won't ever change, it will only get worse. You search for proactive solutions and in return just have people shake their heads at you. You climb and they tell you it's not worth it, quit. How come it's so black and white for them? As if I ask someone to help me with a very challenging assignment to only hear back that I should drop the class. It's ridiculously difficult anyway, you don't deserve this, right? Or when I have an infection on my arm and my doctor suggests to amputate it all the way instead of helping me to first figure out how I can heal the wound. Hey, just get a good surgeon to cut off your arm, they'd say.

As much as I'm frustrated about the problem in my relationship, I'm even more upset at people who can't see that pulling out is not the only solution. Life is so complex. You can not just say that this is THE way to deal with your problem, no matter who you are and what all the nuances of your issue are.

This massive misunderstanding is perhaps partially responsible for why so many people are going through the same problems in complete silence. Outsider's view that there is a one-size-fits-all solution only emphasizes a lack of sufficient empathy and ability to relate realistically.

It's hard. It is so demonically hard to move in the darkness without any support. I wouldn't want pity, just knowing that someone is on my side, standing by me, trusting me to make my own choices and to live with their consequences. And even if that someone is not the one to help with my hard class assignment, at least I'd know they are with me, emotionally helping to deal with that decision to not drop out.

Call me a fool, tell me it won't work as much as you want. I simply refuse to listen!

I'm on a quest. I will confide in God, pull all my strength together and prove the whole freaking world wrong. I don't know how yet, but I will. You'll see...

What the hell is happening to me?

It's blurry and distorted. Water drops on the mirror slowly slide down, and I can see my reflection again. Disgusted.

If there was snow on the ground, I would go outside, just like that, in my t-shirt, and throw snowballs around...hard.

Would you?

It's dark.

You are out in the rain.

No shoes or a jacket.

No face. And no pain.

Completely alone.

Entirely broken.

Just you and the darkness.

Can now you be open?

If anyone ever asked why you're out

Would you reply?

Would you suppress your pain,

Cover your tears and lie?

Would you laugh blissfully at what's inside

And hate every piece of your dispirited mind?

Would you?

It's cold.

Your clothes stick to the skin.

Your feet pet the asphalt

No God. And no sin.

Invisible someone.

Lost in despair.

Searching for sanity

Will it ever be fair?

What do you care what others think?

There are times when I feel like flipping off the entire world. These are those few, rare times when I want everyone to leave me alone.

I am upset. With myself.

Go away...but not yet.

I am sick of thinking about my self image. Worrying on and on about what other people might say or even think about my choices, actions. I am tired of adjusting my life to how they would want it or at least pretending that I do. Tired of being afraid that I'll make someone mad, that they wouldn't like me. Feeling abashed and insecure. I've known for a while that you can never please everyone. It is physically impossible and stupid. Then why do I chase rainbows? Why the f@%k do I care? Honestly.

One Russian poet and writer, Boris Pasternak, noted that

"The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you do the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune."

Pasternak had to live through Stalin's purges, despising communism and its ideals. At least he had a clear reasoning for masking his true self for a while. But what about me?

This constant search for social acceptance doesn't lead to great rewards, at least not long-lasting. In the end it makes no sense and just brings more frustration as you are not being yourself. What does it mean anyway, to be yourself? I am not doubting that humans are social beings, thus it would make sense for us to pay attention to perceptions of others. There is a fine line though that I can never discover, that allows you to keep an eye open on people's views of you while not betraying what you really are.

Why am I afraid to speak up?

It seems that my strength is returning to me. I recently started something that I was hesitant to do for a really long time. I started looking up more about my emotional issues.

I was afraid to do this at first. Perhaps because I thought that by doing this I would be finally admitting that I have a problem. Reading more about the issue turned out to be a tremendous help, however. It appears there is a plethora of encouraging information out there AND what's more important, I now know that there are others who feel just like me. If I was talking about one single website, one might think I am giving a paid testimony. But seriously, it was mind-blowing to realize that so many people around the world are going through the same patterns of thoughts that have been haunting me recently.

Those people shared about their dark feelings, and that helped me, so why don't I do that? Why am I afraid to speak up?

This is a quote that I found on one of those helpful websites:

"Many people feel pressured into hiding their feelings out of embarrassment or concern not to burden family or friends. But hiding under a calm exterior only saves the problem for later and stress can build up until it becomes unbearable."

That's exactly the case with me.

I don't want people to know, to view me as some sort of walking disease with contagious negativity. I am afraid to carry a stigma if I end up sharing my problem. As if next time someone sees me, they would think "oh, that's the one who...".
It also could be very unfair to a friend I choose to confide in, to absorb all the pain that I would be letting out. I read about crisis hotline volunteers who at times need help with depressions themselves after going through a round of people on the edge.

There is something else though that prevents me from sharing. It is by far the biggest obstacle for me with this. I know that I will make someone else, very dear to me, vulnerable if I share the truth, and this keeps me quiet.

I feel much better now and again think that I can be fine on my own. No doubt though that in the future, as so many times before, there will be another tough moment in my life, when I will stare at the phone and be prompted to call someone who might understand. As so many times before, I probably will not call. I just wouldn't know what to say. And people are not usually prepared that all you would want from them is a simple "It'll be ok".

When will it ever end?

One day keeps being worse than the other one

When will it ever end?

I don't know how to deal with reality

How can I even pretend

That all is well and I am alright

And you are not about to snap?

Last night we got in a fight again

No one wants to move their stand

Why can't our lives be stabilized?

I Never seem to understand

Where all this anger's coming from

And how much more can I withstand?

Pain is a part of our life. Only where does it stop?

Blame. I am tired throwing words

You don't listen. You are too upset!

Song lyrics

Don't you wish you could do whatever?

Things haven't been working out for me lately. Hence is the break in my posts. I had so much to share yet so little courage to publish my drafts. I decided to slowly open up.

I sometimes want to withdraw and do something unrelated to my everyday life. I wish I could watch a movie. I used to really like doing that. I wouldn't want anything serious now, no violence, just something that would take my mind off of what's going on in my life. I remember last week, while at my in-laws, I watched some sort of silly family sitcom. Normally I don't watch such stuff. But then it was so good to vegetate for a little bit observing a family dealing with their issues so lightly and with humor.

I wish I could listen to comforting music, turning it up as high as I want. Or maybe I could whine to my close friends about how life is a b$tch. I wish I could paint a peaceful landscape. I really would like to sew or knit if i were better at it. Or I would stroll outside with my awesome camera and capture beautiful moments of life. I wish.

I could do that all, but I wouldn't get away from reality, guilt, my problems. I just can't.