Terrible, Thanks For Asking...

"...All of these people I meet, it seems like they're fine; Yeah in some ways, I hope that they're not and their hearts are like mine. Yeah it's wrong when it seems like work, to belong all I feel is hurt; Oh if God is on my side, yeah if God is on my side. oh I God is on my side, who can be against me; Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin' there is a crack in the door filled with light and it's all I need to get by; Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin' there is a crack in the door filled with light and it's all I need to shine..." [-NeedToBreathe]

#shitsabouttogetreal

[3/4/2018]

I am not well.

I have not been well.

I cannot tell you when it took root or how, but it did.

And it has been pulling me under for weeks.

There are dark shadows underneath my eyes and for a moment my gaze is glued to those dark smudges etched into those wide grey-blue eyes of this unkempt woman in her week old pajamas and unwashed hair and I think to myself, my god, you are a monster. And no one can love a monster. And I turn the bathroom light off and crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep.

Rinse and repeat.

Rinse and repeat.

Rinse and repeat.

Days falling off the calendar into the abyss...

....

This is my wasteland.

This is the reality of depression and shitty PTSD.

I am sinking without a sound, without a fight, without a ....

I am sinking.
....

[4/15/2018]

I remember that moment of standing in front of my bathroom mirror, I remember thinking that I just so desperately wanted someone to hold me and let me fall spectacularly apart with another living soul- to let someone into this darkness so that they might in turn carry some light into it- and yet there I stood, this profoundly empty, aching, creature, alone in her bathroom, and all I saw was this version of myself that resembled a monster and it was so utterly crushing, this perception that I have about myself when I am in the throes of depression and PTSD- I had never realized my own sheer hatred of Depressed/PTSD saturated Jillian.

I abhor her, that woman.

Because living in her skin, in that wasteland, it is never more clear just how lonely her life is for the simple fact that she still doesn't let people in. Not really. And all my smiles that hide a thousand little deaths, when all of my please and thank you's, when all of my color inside the lines, when all of my crossed 't's' and dotted 'i's are cast off into the wasteland, so too is the illusion that I so carefully operate under.

This illusion that I do life with people.

I do illusion.

Not life.

I wonder if you are like me in that regard?

I wonder if there are parts of you that you hide away behind closed doors- where you take your smile off and you stare at yourself in your bathroom mirror and look on in unfiltered sorrow and think to yourself that you are a monster- and that no one can love a monster.

I wonder.

I wonder if you feel as alone as I do in your own stuff. Because who the hell could possibly understand you when there are times when you don't even understand yourself?

I wonder.

I wonder if you wish that when someone asked you, "Hey you, how are you?" that you could just this once, just this one time, give an honest answer. Because after all "fine" is just another was of saying, fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional, thank you very much.

I wonder.

But mostly I wonder if maybe like me, there is a part of you that just wants to know that you know that you know, that you're not alone in it, in the wasteland.

I needed to know that and so I did what I do - I got my nerd on. I went about searching for something- I didn't know what to label it, this thing that I was searching for but I knew it when I found it. I knew it. And it knew me. It was a meeting of minds, stories, and hearts like mine- it was a beautiful, messy, terrible wasteland.

So here's the thing, I'm a bit of a pod junkie- because listening to other people talk for whatever reason helps me think that I am somehow less alone- yep, my morning coffee is paired with Small Town Murder. I eat my pb&j with Sword & Scale. Last Podcast on the Left rides shotgun with me in afternoon traffic. S-Town, Serial, and Up & Vanished- among my favorite Saturday nights. Clearly you should be seeing a theme here- I am mostly drawn to the seemingly more somber, dark, melancholy, or bent side of the pod universe ...And in the last couple of weeks, every time I was listening to a pod on Stitcher, I kept seeing this pod pop-up in my recommended for you section...it was called 'Terrible, Thanks for Asking'- I was sitting at my desk on a Monday morning just staring at that neon yellow one-eyed tear drop logo thinking that that is me. That is me. That is me. And I opened up the podcast and went back to the first episode, "Sad Nora and The Secret Baby."

Meet Sad Nora.

Sad Nora, meet sad Jillian.

How are you? Terrible, thanks for asking.

Grief and mourning. And pain. And life and death. And living. And happy. And sad. And while it was different circumstance, it resonated within my own being on my own journey, in my own grief and mourning, in my own pain, in my own lens of life and death- in my own living, in my own happy, and my own sad and it somehow fit. I somehow fit.

There were things that Nora articulated so beautifully about her story that it was as if she translated this foreign language that I have been trying to speak for years in my own story...

“Happiness to me was only acceptable in small increments, I could have a little at a time just not too much. I never knew really what grief looked like; We’re very, very good at hiding it, compartmentalizing it, experiencing it in private mostly…”

“People were always telling me they appreciate my honesty and transparency and I was like whyyyy- not because I was lying about anything but because even if I was made of saran-wrap and glass, there’s no way you could see this part..."

"I want to give this [...] my best but sometimes I think my best is gone and what's left is whoever I am now..."

I listened to every episode in the course of 3 days until I was all caught up and what I walked away with was this: Nora's terrible and the terrible's of her guests may look vastly different from my own, although sometimes not, I digress, but while each story is to unique to the individual, the crux of the narrative feels like home. 

A wasteland. And the stories, raw, and sad, and sometimes laced with humor, they are the crack in the door filled with light. 

I started to understand something in the wake of this last depression/ PTSD detour, that my overall life experience, my terribles if you will, oftentimes leaves me feeling like an outsider. I walk through this life of mine stranded on this island wasteland, allowing people to row to shore for a visit but inevitably always standing at the shoreline waving goodbye as they row away. Because I can smile and laugh and hold out my cup and show you that it really is half-full damn it but there comes a moment when you'll ask me, "Jillian, how are you?" And in this moment I will be dying inside while I smile and tell you, "I'm Fine." 

And I don't know why that is or how to change it. I just know that that I know that I don't belong. My pieces somehow don't fit because all of these people I meet, it seems like they're fine...

Did you see what I just did there....And maybe we are all fine. Maybe we all smile on cue while we post that last pic to Insta, and make sure to insert that glowing status update on Facebook, and send a well framed snap to our Snapchat story- maybe we all let the world see the highlight reel as if that is all that exists. 

But the cup isn't half-full. Nor is it half-empty. It is both.

We are both. Some of us have more stuff. Some of us have less stuff. But we are both.

Maybe we just don't know how to embrace it. 

The further along that I have come in my recovery journey, the more that I know that honesty makes people uncomfortable. Pain makes people uncomfortable. Not having the right words or the latest, greatest antidotes or enough band-aides to go around leaves us uncomfortable because in these places, vulnerability is a candle that burns on both ends.

I think this is why so often we get to this place- to the, "Hey you, how are you?"/ "I'm fine" place- because it's so much easier, so much safer, so much nicer there.

And so we all walk around, carrying our own terribles, constantly pulling ourselves up by the boot-straps, forging ahead, and getting by and getting through and it's exhausting.

When depression comes to town and PTSD throws a block party, I cave in. I white-knuckle my way through the muck and the mire in my week old pajamas and my unwashed hair and I loathe the terrible monster. Alone. Because I am fine, thank you very much.

My god, how exhausting it all is.

I wonder if it would be less so if I let a little light in? What do you think?

Light. You. Your terribles. Me. My terribles. Together. Nora might call it an emotional stew- and I have it on good authority that stew is disgusting, pretty tasty though. Messy and yet so wonderfully filling.

So where I am today, let's check in, "Jillian, how are you?"

Terrible, thanks for asking.

Although to be fair, I finally washed my hair.

End Note: I joined Nora's Terrble Club- it has been a crack in a door filled with light. I share my stuff. My fellow terribles share theirs. They are teaching me to embrace the stew. I think that's a good thing.


-Jillian Nichole, terrible, thanks for asking...

p.s. You should give Nora's pod a listen... www.ttfa.org...