“I think I’m ready to talk about it. For real this time.”

“Talk about what?”

“It.”

Lauren looked up at me and looked at me. Really looked. She tilted her head to the side and said, “what do you mean it?” I sat there silently.

Lauren has been my therapist for 3 years now. I had another therapist before her that moved to her own practice and couldn’t take me with her. I can’t even remember her name anymore. I don’t remember a lot of things. I think my brain blocks things out. Even years later, I can’t put my finger on why I know someone or where a memory pops up from.

“Are you talking about your suicide attempt?” She asked. Her voice echoed inside my brain. Almost challenging my statement, making me think again before I answered.

“I think so. It’s been like 16 years.” I commented back. I could feel my head squeezing my brain almost out of my ears. I sat there, waiting for her to prompt me.

“So, talk.”

I sat there, 35 years old…50 pounds heavier…a whole life lived in-between then and now. Sitting in my house, the house I bought when I was 25, at a computer I bought when I was 33, speaking in hushed tones so my son, who I had when I was 26, wouldn’t hear me.

“I think it was stupid.”

“What was?”

“Me trying. I wouldn’t have the guts, I don’t even know why I did it.”

“Why are you putting down yourself and your ability to kill yourself?”

“I’m not, I’m just saying–” She cut me off.

“Why are you judging the mind, body, and soul of a person who you once were?”

And just like that, I’m circling my apartment again. I walk up the dingy stairs and open the door. There she is, standing over her bathroom sink.

“No, like what the fuck was I thinking?”

“You were thinking you couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Yeah, but… I didn’t cut the right way.”

“Kate, I don’t think it’s the time to critique the way you tried to cut yourself.”

There she is again. A blue Venus razor dropping to the tile floor and getting lost under the metal bars of the sink. A small cry, and silence. There she is, slowly bringing herself down onto the floor.

“I remember that feeling.”

“Which one?”

“How hard my chest felt. Like my lungs were going to come out of my mouth.”

As I stood there in my apartment, watching my willingness disappear, the door flung open and knocked me to the side.

And just like that I’m back.

“What were you thinking about?”

“I was just, in it.”

Lauren moved on, asking why I brought it up today.

“It’s almost my niece’s 16th birthday.”

“The one that made you realize you can’t leave?”

“yeah..that one.”

I sat there, in my sister’s first house, twenty years old and too heavy for my own body. My sister was leaving for work and running around trying to get her bag packed. She really needed me to watch the baby. I had left school, was off from the job my mom made me get, and was terribly addicted to cigarettes.

“You can do this right? You just have to make sure her diaper is good and you can watch TV and stuff.”

“yeah, I’m fine.”

But, my mom’s voice was in the back of my head. “Katie you tried to kill yourself and now Kerry is depending on you to make sure that baby is ok. She needs to you do this, can she trust you?”

“What time will you be home?”

“As soon as I can.”

I moved my legs to under my body and sat up straight. Looking at Lauren’s zoom window.

“Ok, so what I’m getting is that you’re unsure of how you got from there to here?” Lauren said again, this time with certainty. “That’s why you’re doing this to yourself again.”

I nodded and looked down, trying to ground myself in anything that feels real. I glanced around quickly and my pens caught my eye. I had gotten new highlighters because I wanted to cross off tasks and color code them if they were “fully done” or “just working on it.”

“I think I just got here,” I said.

“You got here because you lived through it,” she said after a beat.

pause.

“Maybe not the way you wanted to,” she added.

My eyes landed on the Taylor Swift prayer candle.

“But I did it wrong.”

I looked back up and flashed into my childhood home. Sitting across from my brother at the dining room, I grew angrier each time he spoke to me.

I remember the heat building in my chest before I even understood what I was angry about.

“I’m taking medication for depression,” I said.

It came out flat. Like it meant nothing.

He barely looked up.

“Okay and?” he said. “You can’t talk to mom that way.”

I took a sip of water. My foot was asleep.

“I think I did it wrong,” I said.

Lauren just looked at me like she was waiting for me to stay in the present long enough to notice I was already here.

“That’s what it feels like to you,” she said finally.

My hour was up.

“We can pick this up next week,” she said. “But you did get through it.”

“I know,” I said. “I just think I could have handled it better.”

I stayed on the call a second after she logged off.

I looked at my desk again. The highlighters still waiting for tasks that didn’t feel real anymore.

I thought about how many versions of me exist in the same space without agreeing on what happened.

And I stayed sitting there, not trying to resolve it this time.

My husband comes around the corner, the guy I met at 18, and slows when he sees me. He already knows how this part goes. He doesn’t say anything right away.

“I think I’m ok today.”

Says the 35-year-old in the house she bought at 25.

---

 I sang for the first time in 6 months today.

It was like autopilot; I pulled out of my driveway, and as I put my car in drive, I turned on Ida Rose’s “If I Don’t Have You” and started humming. I had the driver’s side window open, and felt the warmth of the sun on my arm and sang the first chorus with her. Something about the last 48 hours in my life started running through my head, and I started to feel normal again. I started to feel like I wanted to live again, and clean my car. I thought about the last couple of days, and how I pushed myself to take a shower and brush my hair. I thought through every last action, up to reading my son a story at bedtime…because I haven’t done that in quite some time. By the end of the song, I had tears streaming down my face, and a feeling of lightness in my body. Was this what it’s like to feel ok? To feel normal? Is this what everyone feels like? 

My whole life, I sang. Not well, but I sang. I sang when I wanted to release pressure, anxiety, happiness, and sadness. I was never so sad that I stopped singing. Until this year. 

2021 hasn’t been kind to many, and it’s been a year of a lot of gritty feelings, and a lot of pushing through pain. My family is no exception. Our pain started in March, and after pairing our loss with a continuing pandemic, tough world affairs, and divide, we found ourselves hit hard.

In the same timeframe, work started ramping up and things seemed to be going extremely well. So, I ran with it. I worked harder than anyone I knew and threw myself into my work to get away from my pain. It worked…for a couple of months. And then we were hit again, and again, and again. Loss after loss of various people in my life passing away that I almost started losing count of who I still had, and who I may have limited time with. Throughout everything, I was struggling with extreme imposter syndrome at my job and I stopped going to the gym. My fail-safes failed. 

I just…couldn’t do it anymore. 

I stopped caring about myself. My self-talk became extremely erratic and harmful. I let myself believe that I was not anything but taking up space in this world. I stopped going to Home Goods and stopped trying to improve our house, my motivation and drive withered to nothing. I fixated on specific things, and picked apart myself with a magnifying glass. Any flaw I could find, I told myself I should be better, I should be prettier, I should be happier. And then one day, I started getting that feeling of no feelings. I’ve been down this road before, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be in the same position as before. This time, I said something to a friend. I said what I felt and how I felt without fearing she would judge me. I told her I thought I had OCD, and that my depression was getting bad again…and she gave me the name of a place and told me to make an appointment. It took me 3 weeks after getting the name of the office to muster up the courage to call. Not for fear of judgement, but because I was exhausted, and calling someone on the phone was too much for me. 

I had been down the therapy road, and I was better! How could I possibly be sick enough to go back? I didn’t let myself believe it for a while, but as I got worse, my habits became more erratic. I sat in silence at home, ignoring my child and husband. I had disassociated myself with everything that meant so much to me. I drained my energy at work and in my social life to ensure that I never gave off the impression of any sort of sadness. I’d put on a brave face and be the funny one, the smart one, and the put together one. I tried to make up for how much I hated my insides and how much space I took up. I made jokes to make people laugh because I couldn’t laugh at anything. I played myself, because while others thought I was okay, I was just ready to disappear. 

However, I called. Despite my negative self-talk, I called the office and I asked for an appointment. When the secretary said there was a two month wait- I started to cry and told her it needed to be now. Something about that sounded off alarms, because I got a phone call later that day from a therapist asking which days she could fit me in. I had to be an advocate for myself, because if I didn’t, who would?

My first couple of sessions brought up a lot of trauma from my past. A lot of talk about my first attempt of suicide, and if I was feeling any sort of way now. I said no, but only because I was so tired. She asked me to tell my husband so he was aware. Later that night, we spoke, and I told him everything. Not that he didn’t know what was going through my mind, but this solidified what he already knew. 

The next couple of sessions were a blur. I talked about dumb things; my family, my friends, and my work. I talked about myself and shamed myself for everything that I *think* I do wrong. I was either shaming myself for not being present with my husband and son, or not signing my son up for soccer in time. I spoke about how much I loathed my body, my personality, and the way my life is turning out. Lastly, I spoke to my therapist about the “good” things that happen in my life. 

Two sessions ago, at the end of my session, my therapist wanted to point something out to me. 

She said, “I’ve noticed that you tend to change your language when you speak about the positive things that are happening to you.” and I inquired what she meant. She went on to say, “When you talk about hurtful things, things that you shame yourself for, you say ‘I’ and own the responsibility of the actions or failure to act… BUT when you speak about things that are positive and exciting in your life, you speak about yourself in the third person, as if you don’t believe it’s happening to you.”

And boy, did that hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t own a single one of my accomplishments. I downplayed them, I made them into a team effort, or into something not that important. Slowly, I tried to recognize my self-talk. I gave myself grace, and I let myself sit in some “failures.” I didn’t jump to volunteer for every committee at work, and I let myself understand that just because I don’t do something, or don’t go out every time someone invites me, it’s okay…because I’m looking out for myself. 

The last couple of weeks, I stopped drinking to the point of no return, I stopped putting myself in situations that could lead to problems in the morning, and began to respect myself. Am I finished improving myself? Absolutely not. But, for today, I sang. I sang every Taylor Swift song I know, and made sure everyone heard me. 

Sure, I still look at myself in the mirror with a magnifying glass and wonder how anyone could love me some days– but today, I let myself off the hook. I’m choosing to not see myself as a burden, but rather someone that is meant to be included, and celebrated. 

And that is self care.