Just never need medial help, okay?

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The day I've been dreading for three weeks has come. I finally got my bills from my trip to the ER. To say they are overwhelming is an understatement. I rarely go to the doctor. I don't say that as a claim of toughness or lack of faith in medicine. When I was much younger I went to the doctor constantly. I was diagnosed with an abnormal growth condition when I was kid and had to go to the doctor regularly to have it monitored. I wasn't limited in activities or had dietary restrictions because of this condition, I was just at the doctor regularly until late high school. It was at this time my doctor determined my growth as a child was mostly over and whatever growth that remained would happen at a normal rate. I was cleared to discontinue regular monitoring and free to visit the doctor just whenever I felt it was necessary. I took this as a sign that I was basically physically an adult and didn't have much to worry about when it came to my health. So far this has essentially been correct.

I avoid going to the doctor now because it cost me so much money. This started around the time I graduated from college and didn't have insurance, or a job, so going to the doctor cost me a great deal of money. Well, a great deal in percentage when compared with my income was then. Oddly enough, the bills now are close to the same percentage as then. It's just now, theoretically anyway, I should be able to afford them. I don't know any working class person who can casually be handed a bill close to $3000 and can just pay it on the spot.

When I looked into the billing, it looks like my insurance hasn't really pay anything on the bill. I don't know why I'm paying for insurance if it's not being used to pay anything on my medical bills. And mentally dealing with this is threatening to undo all the work I've done over the past three weeks dealing with my anxiety and depression. Talking with my therapist has done so much good for helping me cope. I don't want to talk to her about this as it's embarrassing to be reminded of what happened that day. And it's embarrassing to think that all the work I've done can be so easily undone. I'd almost forgotten about all the sadness, anger, and embarrassment I felt that day. It feels like an enormous weight as been dropped on me. Something I'm supposed to be able to carry despite everything else I'm already carrying.  In addition to having to hold the burden of being black, being a woman, knowing my government don't care about me and is actively trying to kill me, having crushing student loan debt (and all the mental stress that adds to a person. You can pretend it doesn't, but I can tell you it definitely does) and on top of all that having a plus sized body, I'm supposed to be able to handle the sudden financial responsibility of the equivalence of a cheap used car? How, Sway?

I never thought about suicide before as an actual method of  escape. To be clear, I'm not thinking about it now. I've never respected it as a choice before now. I couldn't see how someone could feel so helpless and overwhelmed that they would actually give real thought to just ending their life. Not just because I believe life to be precious, but also because you can never take that choice back. There is no way to make another decision after you've made that choice. There is no way to just say, "You know what? Being dead isn't any better. Can I have my life back, please?"  But now, I can see how it might seem like a viable option for someone. How the hopelessness is not only overwhelming but endless. How it feels like there is no other option to put a stop to it. How, given the choice to live like this or not, one can feel it is the only way.

I hope to never be in that place. I hope I can be honest enough with myself to tell someone when I feel this way and they help pull me back from that edge. That they widen my perspective, remind me of my strength and my brilliance. That I remember all of the characteristics I embody and know I can handle this burden in addition to others I am carrying. That I remember and know everything I need to continue is already inside me.

Missing Reading

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I didn't realized how much I miss reading until I did it this week. As a way of helping my mind quiet itself and not spiral into negative thoughts, my therapist suggest doing something that would fully engage my mind. It was only after she suggested read that I realized I haven't really read a book in years. I've listened to audiobooks and often suggest people listen them to read if they are short on time. But sitting down and reading a book, without guilt is something I haven't done in years. It started in graduate school, the guilt associated with reading for pleasure. At the time I didn't really have enough time in a day to complete all the school work I was given, work a job, feed myself, and sleep. In my case, I cut a lot of things out of my life so I could finish school with a sane mind. One of those things was doing anything for pleasure. I didn't watch tv, read, write, or make art unless it was for school. This probably wasn't the healthiest choice but it allowed me to managed my time so I was most successful academically.

Now, nearly a decade later, I still have guilt associated with doing things I enjoy. I hadn't thought about why I was so anxious when I would go to the movies, or to happy hour with friends, or just take a Saturday morning to admire how the sun reflected off the wall of my bedroom. It wasn't until my panic attack I thought about getting to the root of why I felt guilt when doing these things. Part of it was because of the perception of how we should spend time and what we believe time to be worth. I would say as a working class person, the idea of me using time in a pleasurable way is thought of as wasteful. If I'm not taking the time to make money or get thinner or more beautiful or acquire more things, the time is wasted and I should feel guilty and shameful about it. I've never subscribed to this ideal before grad school and still don't now, but I wasn't aware I'd internalized it anyway. Now that I'm aware of this harmful thinking I can work to undo it.

One way I work against this harmful thinking, that I must always be striving toward a goal that isn't mine or constantly engaged in the zeitgeist is to meditate on a quote I read a few weeks ago. Annie Dillard said, "Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you." So much wisdom in such word economy. The idea of taking an afternoon to spend it however you like so that you're happy, healed, and whole isn't something we teach in America. Thinking about how to pass on this understanding- that your time is yours and not someone else's, that not all ideas in your head are your own and you should question how they got there- is something that's been occupying my mind of late. I still struggle with guilt about reading or sleeping in but it's to a much lesser degree than it has been in years. I remind myself when I start to feel the pulling dread of guilt that it's misplaced and shouldn't be here. That's she is allowed to be in some places but not here, not attached to this joyful action. Usually she goes away. Sometimes she doesn't. I'm still working on were she should go other than were she had been. As of right now, I won't allow her to stay here cause I've got some reading to do.

More than my heart is broken

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I think my vagine is broken. Okay, that's a strong line to start with, let me back up a little. I've struggled with body imagine, feeling sexy, dating, and sex for my whole life. I was always the biggest kid in the class, both in height and weight, until middle school when I became just the fattest kid in my class. When I look back at pictures of myself, I wasn't as fat as I felt, and even now while I am plus sized I'm not as fat I think I am. But feeling fat mentally for a long time stopped me from living life. It does not do so now. I've lived a lot of life in the last 15 years and I plan on living a lot more. The one part of my life I've been missing that I still haven't figured out is a love life.

Now, to be fair to myself I'm still unlearning a lot of internalized misogyny The Church taught me. It has only been in the last five years that I have seriously tried to date. I wouldn't saying I picked the best time to go out in the world and find a lover but It's hard near impossible to find something if you never look for it at all. I've managed to find out that men my age are trash (this doesn't mean all men or trash or that I hate mean, it's just that usually if a guy isn't in a relationship by now it's because he can't figure it out or doesn't want to), I don't want to raise a boy into a man (I don't have any children on purpose), and I hate online dating. Every time I decide I'm going really give Tinder/Bumble/POF/OKCupid a try I have some kind of interaction that let's me know I don't have the personality to put up with the bullshit that is online dating. There is so much of me that doesn't fit well into a text message or a phone call that I am often miss understood when communicating over text. And I always thought I'd get to have a love story.

I remember as a kid I would dream up ridiculous scenario in which I'd meet a ruggedly handsome man that bugged the crap out of but held my interest. After a reluctant courtship I'd realized I was madly in love and we would get married, have kids, and life happily ever after. Or I'd be shopping in the middle of the night cause I couldn't sleep and we'd bump into each other grabbing the same rare bottle of roasted walnut oil. The one that cost too much but makes an amazing vinaigrette. We'd swap numbers and take turns making each other dinner and laughing too hard at silly jokes until one night we never actually made it to dinner for all the sex we were having and just order pizza. We would meld our lives together knowing we were better together and never really have a formal conversation about how we would just be together for the rest of our loves. Maybe we'd have  a kid or just adopt and live in a loft with one too many rescue dogs.

But I've never had a love story. Once I had a high school boyfriend. We "dated" for three weeks before he told me he wanted to break up. I remember impersonating every golden area Hollywood actress and dramatically hanging up the phone because that's what you're supposed to do when your boyfriend breaks up with you. I also remember not feeling anything once he called back and we agreed it was over. I liked that he was interested in me, but there was nothing about him that made me want to date him other than he wanted to date me. I knew then I didn't love him and this wasn't my love story. After that I didn't really want to date anyone. I wasn't attracted to anyone in my circles or outside of my circles. There was one boy I had a crush on but whenever I tried to talk to him I would be too tongue tied to make conversation. I remember he was slender with dark mahogany skin and an Scurl. He looked like a young Blair Underwood. I don't remember what happened to him but I do remember that after him I didn't really try to talk to an boys. My strongest attractions were to grown men and to this day still are. I thought by now I would have found the person who makes me a better version of myself.

In fact, I'd convinced myself that since he hadn't come into my life by 35, I would just be single the rest of my life and I was fine with that. I didn't need him (I don't actually, I'm a boss ass bitch) and it was his lost for not finding me in time cause now I didn't want him! I lied to myself and said I was okay with this and would be fine on my own. Oh how naive and foolish I've been. This summer, I was visiting a friend and over drinks we had a long meandering conversation. The kind that happen only while intoxicated on a patio, the summer humidity working it's magic to loosen your tongue. Several times over the course of this conversation I mentioned that I'd probably never get married, after having me say this a few times she asked me why I believed that? I told her it was because I truly believed that if I were going to be married in my life then it probably would have happened by now. She asked me how I knew that? Even now, months later I don't have an answer for her. I'd just believed, like I did everything else The Church told me, that if I were to be married with children in my life it would have happened by now. I know this is a lie but it feels very real.

I'm not a dumb person, I know the stats and know that most people get married or have a LTR in their lifetime, but for some reason I was convinced it wasn't for me because it hadn't happened yet. But before my panic attack I thought I'd die young so that tells you what I know. What I do know is that thinking about never having a love story makes me sad. Not the sadness that is my depression, just sad. The kind of sad that makes you cry when no one is around or suddenly hits you while driving home in rush hour on a Tuesday. It makes you cry Dawson's Creek tears no reason other then you're lonely.

I hate that so much of my self imagine and self worth is still tied up in the idea that I should be a wife. I feel guilty for wanting to be loved and have someone love me, cause a strong women wouldn't want a man, right?. To tell the truth I don't even know if I want to be a mother anymore. Raising kids in this dark timeline seems impossibly hard. And here I was thinking I'd locked this part of my heart away, it having sufficiently atrophied away so I wouldn't have to feel this particular pain again.

I was so wrong. 

So wrong that the loneliness had made my vagine not want to be touched and she loves to be touched. She has a whole drawer of toys she likes to play with but now none of them interest her. I know this loneliness will pass and she will want her toys again but right now I think, like my heart, she is broken.

Trying to Fix a broken heart

I stopped going to church in the spring. It wasn't a big decision I made after hours of contemplation, prayer and fasting, or discussions with friends. It was more of a realization I had after leaving my childhood church a couple of years ago. It was only after I left that I realized that the church had broken my heart and that going to church wasn't actually going to help me heal. I needed time and space to heal so i wouldn't become a bitter Christian. So I called the head of the ministry I was serving in and told him I wouldn't be coming back. He said he understood but was sad to see me go. In fact, I think he knew before I did that I would be leaving because he didn't even try to convince me I was wrong, like other people in the church have done in the past. I was a little surprised but relieved when he didn't try and tell me God had told him otherwise. I took this relief as a sign I was doing the right thing and left The Church. I had no plan to deal with my heart break but figured it was work itself out and started viewing my Sundays as more a recovery day then a day for the Lord. I would prep for the up coming week and enjoy a quite breakfast after sleeping in for the first it in my life.

Over the summer I did visit a couple of churches when I was visiting friends and family in other states. The messages were full of determination and love for disenfranchised people. For those who felt the church and country had forgotten about them. One of the churches had a Black Lives Matter banner out front and I didn't know how much I needed to hear the church say that until I saw it. I felt like I'd found what I'd been missing from the church back home. A place that made me feel like I mattered, like I was a person and they were waiting for me to show up. They weren't waiting for me to set up a camera or check the sound system or run the CG during worship. It felt like they saw me, Sydnie, and were glad I was there. It was unsettling at first. I'd never felt that from the Church before. I'd never felt like anyone in the church had ever missed me if I wasn't serving in the ministry. In fact feeling Seen helped me to realize that I often felt insignificant. In the past and sometimes now I struggle with negative self talk that makes me think that if someone ignored me when I spoke to them it's because I don't matter, not because they probably just didn't hear me. That if I didn't get a reply to my email it's because the other person didn't care, not because they are just busy and haven't gotten to it just yet.

I took all these realizations, balled them up, and shoved them down deep within me. I didn't want to deal with how small my childhood church had made me feel. I didn't want to tell my parents I no longer believed in The Church and wouldn't be going back for awhile. I didn't want to have to deal with having a broken heart because I had done everything I was taught to do to be a good Christian girl but still had ended up brokenhearted, single, and childless in my late thirties. It was too much to deal with so I didn't deal with it. I went to concerts, had drunken evenings with my friends, stayed out late, when to art shows, anything that distracted me from having to think about and process how insignificant I felt. Part of me knew it wasn't true, the feeling of insignificance, but more of me thought it was so I just avoided it and took the advice of Instagram and lived my best black life. And for awhile,  it worked. I was able to ignore or push down my anxiety about these feelings and pretend they weren't effecting me.

Then I moved back in with my parents and things quickly started to fall apart, mentally anyway. Outwardly I appeared happy and joyful. I was tired, cause I had three life changes happen in a week, but I was fine. At least that's what I kept telling myself. I'm just tired and need to sleep. While traveling with my parents back to Dallas from Chicago I had what I thought was a heart attack. My mom started praying and called 911. She kept calling on Jesus and I wanted to tell her she was wasting her time. God didn't care about me, I was insignificant, and no matter how much she loved me God wouldn't be doing anything to help me. The paramedics arrived, put stickers all over my chest, performed test, and told me I wasn't having a heart attack. In fact, I was in perfect health, there was nothing wrong with me. They took me to the hospital and performed more detailed test but came to the same conclusion, I was in perfect health and my heart was very healthy. It was only on the ride to the hospital that I realized I'd had a panic attack. All the work I'd done to ignore or cover up my sadness and anxiousness was undone in a matter of minutes. It was a reality I hadn't accounted for.

When we finally arrived home, the depression fully hit me. Not as hard as when my aunt unexpectedly passed or when I'd gotten fired or when I realized that the American education system is fucking over poor people and mostly poor brown people so it can reinforce the status quo. Those times it felt like I was floating in space, untethered to reality with no way to find my way back. This time the depression was a pool of sadness, it's depth's unknown. I was the lone swimmer in this pool and it kept pulling me down deeper into it, the weight of the water pressing in on me, weighting me down. It was hard to get out of bed, hard to keep the sadness off my face, hard just to function as an adult. So I did something I've been putting for more than a year. I got a therapist. I took the advice of my internet friend Crissle and signed up for TalkSpace. I knew an in person therapist would be more effective, and I will more than likely end up with an in person therapist, but taking that first step was necessary to help pull me out of the pool.

No one tells you how to fix a broken heart, they only tell you that time heals all. I don't know that I really believe this but I know I have some work to do. This is bound to be a long journey that has no real end and a lot of peaks and valleys but it's the journey I'd rather take then let myself be pulled to the bottom of the endless pool of sadness.

Dumpster Fire 2016

2016 has already been pretty crappy, starting with all the deaths of musical and acting influencies that I love. Then Trump happened and the crazy clowns thing started and I didn't see how it could have gotten worst.

Then my dad called me and told me my uncle, my mother's only brother, died. I nearly wrecked my new car because of course I was driving. I've not slept much since the news but I did get to spend the weekend with my cousins who I consider my sisters. While we are sad, we aren't hopeless.

So far the best thing about 2016 is Lemonade and My cousin's wedding. Here's hoping it doesn't get much worst.

Annoying Teenagers

From unsplash, By Danka Peter

I know I've only worked at a high school full time for five months, so I'm no authority on teens, but recently I've noticed something about high school students I don't like. It could be I'd forgotten this or was too young to recognize it before but teenagers are annoying. Ignorant machines made in a factory somewhere with the specific purpose of making noises, sounds, movements, and displaying behaviors that grate on my patience.

I guess this is God's way of preparing me for children or perhaps payback for putting my parents through this for most of a decade, teaching teens is one of the most fun but most irritating jobs I've ever had. If I had to pick any age children to work with, I wouldn't change my mind for the world. As cute as the elementary kids are, they are too little for me. It is those students who are on the verge of being adults, who are standing on the edge of possibility and shouting into its face to "Remember me!" These are the people who light up the most when you help clear the fog in their heads about which way to tackle the mountain before them.

They may get on my nerves, and I am sure I get on theirs, but I wouldn't trade those arrogant naive fearless children for anything. They remind me that this part of me is still alive and is worthy of my attention, even if only every other month.

No, I will not fix your Stuff!

Because of circumstances being what they are, I am on the IT department at my job. I was volunteered for this position because, naturally teaching classes that use a computer means I know how to fix complex network problems. I have never setup a network outside of plugging in the ISP provided router and using the provide password to log my home computer onto that network. I very little knowledge of IP number blocking, subnets, remote accessing, and editing permissions for domains.

If you ask me to fix your computer problem, I will more than likely tell you to A) restart it - "it" ranging from your computer to your router to whatever device isn't working how you think it should work-, B) make sure it's plugged in all the way, C) Google the problem first, or D) talk to the person who gave you the device because I have no special power or knowledge about your problem. I have fixed most of my computer problem because I know how to Google and know a couple of people who have actual training in this field who I can ask to "answer a quick question". Most of the time they tell me to Google a particular phrase.

So you got it right? Ask Google, not me cause I don't know why your "thing" doesn't work when you plug the "cord" into it.