Awful wonderful or how I tried to not breath so fast

I feel like the greatest idiot on the planet. It's been about two or three hours and I still can't sit down for too long. My heart is racing and I keep wanting to jump like a jack rabbit in heat. "Shit!", - yeah,that comes out once in a while, as well. I am happy, very much so, maybe just as much as I am embarrassed and wanting to feel awful or not feel anything at all. Shit. I prayed a few times and cried with remorse. It must be sick. I can't even share.

Support

I love my job! It makes sense. It's safe. It fulfills me. It pays the bills.

If we run out of chalk - I know to go to the supply guy. If there is a medical emergency - I call the nurse. There is security, tech people, my department, the entire staff supposedly working for the same goal, administration making sure that we are indeed pushing for the same goal, janitors, social workers, coordinators, payroll people, HR. I even have a mentor. When there is a big issue - I have my union. It's clear. There are rules and procedures. They make sense. They should.

I feel like I'm much better at figuring out the supports I have available at work than outside of it.
It's almost Monday.

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.

Forgive me

Today, in preparation for the Great Lent, Eastern Orthodox Church observed Forgiveness Sunday. The first time I heard about it was in one of my favorite movies, The Barber of Siberia.

Wikipedia explains that:

"Lent itself—begins on the preceding (Sunday) night, at a special service called Forgiveness Vespers, which culminates with the Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness, at which all present will bow down before one another and ask forgiveness. In this way, the faithful begin Lent with a clean conscience, with forgiveness, and with renewed Christian love."

Today was my first experience of actually participating in the service. People would hold hands, look each other in the eyes and ask for forgiveness. A very tight hug came afterwards. With people I didn't know well or with those who were still young, it didn't have much of an effect. It was incredibly powerful to ask for forgiveness and give it when people genuinely meant it. My eyes got watery when I did it with my husband.

I wish I could practice the ritual -- maybe at least only in my mind -- with some people outside of the church. It brings a lot of peace to know that something you feel bad about is forgiven. One might feel even more relieved letting go and forgiving someone else. It is easier to live and love this way.

I am someone who has trouble letting go, perhaps more so than others, and know way too well that holding a grudge is like tying a rope over your own neck. There are a few people from my past and present, who I wish I could face, give them a firm hug and say with all sincerity, "I forgive you".

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.