Remember to Breathe

My life has been a journey of healing with many, MANY broken chapters before finally stepping into a path that I can be fully in love with; although admittedly, I am still working on discerning what that path is. I developed the sense early on in life that I was not meant to be here—that life mistakenly spit me out in an existence that I didn’t belong in and I had an overwhelming sense of the walls closing in all around me, trying to snuff me out in some cruel cosmic game. I was terrified at the idea of not being here anymore, but I desperately believed the world would be better off without me. My introvertedness came more from a fear of stepping out of line and drawing the arrows of hate and disgust of others who were clearly, in some way, inconvenienced by my existence. I’ve found later in life that I’ve had this ongoing tendency to hold my breath or start breathing extremely shallowly in unknown situations as though I was trying to make the least amount of physical moves necessary to get through without drawing attention to myself. Still, I would dream of a world where I DID belong. I used to pray, first, that I would go away and fade out of the existence I was sure I wasn’t right for so that the overwhelming loathing of the world would no longer grip me in Every. Single. Thing. That I did. I am one, like so many before me and around me currently, who has spent hours upon hours upon hours wrapped up in soul-crushing suicidal ideation and a desperate need to appease the world through alleviating it of my existence. I spent so much time believing that the world would somehow be better off without me in it. Thus the short breaths to attempt to do as little damage to the existence I was forced to appear in—kind of like how some say that if you were to go back in time, even the flapping of a butterfly’s wings would change the course of events to come—I was trying not to make more of a mess than my existence already had forced me to make.

After the realization that praying for my existence to cease wasn’t working, and a night of failed suicide attempts, I started to pray for healing so that, if nothing else, I wouldn’t pass on any of the bad habits, patterns or beliefs that I had inherited in life (as we all inherit) from previous, even if well-meaning (if we’re lucky), generations before me. That night, I begged and pleaded for the Universe to help me find anyone or anything to help me find the strength and courage to keep going— if that was what I was meant to do (since the suicide thing wasn’t working). In the days ahead, my school ended up starting a Winter Percussion program that I got to participate in during the last 3 years of my high school experience. The last 2 years of which were spent as one of the two co-captains for the group, even though I frequently had to be reminded of the necessity of breathing while I was playing my assigned parts then, too. I would go on to find some of the best friendships I could have ever dreamt of, have some incredible experiences and memories that have stayed with me throughout my lifetime, and that I treasure still, 20 years later; including the fact that this program was THE first of all activities in my school’s history to win a State Championship, which happened my junior year through the Indiana Percussion Association. My senior year we didn’t care about the State Championship so much as we were focused on winning the Winter Guard Internationals championship for our class in percussion—which we also did, and another first for the school district.

The week of my high school graduation, I was standing outside at the end of my driveway with my boyfriend at the time, who had also been active in the first Winter Percussion years. We were talking about how wild those years had been along with the uncertainty that lay ahead. After all, both of the Winter Percussion captains were graduating along with 3 other valued members of the team, and 3 of the 5 of us seniors had been in percussion together since we first started band activities in 6th grade (both captains included). My 2 long-time percussion counterparts, Tyler and Paul, were going to schools to continue musical pursuits, and I was staying close to home due to the fact that I wasn’t really sure what my next step was meant to be. I’d only signed up for university because my mom had always told my brother and I that she wanted us to go on to college since she hadn’t done so and it had always been one of her biggest regrets. I had no idea what I wanted to do, I loved music but always felt like a fraud among peers who clearly were more musically inclined than I was. As my boyfriend of 2.5 years and I stood there under the street lamp talking, I had this premonition that was clear as day that all of our group would go our separate ways and it would be the death of my co-captain, Tyler, in our mid-30s that would bring us back together. I didn’t know what capacity any of it would be, but I felt an intense desperation to run from this thought—as though I had some role in his death that would come far too young if this idea that was suddenly in my head were true, just by thinking it. I felt an even greater sense of anxiety going into the next week than had been present before that thought popped into my head. I would go on to run as hard and as fast from everyone as I could; although the next and last year and a half with that boyfriend would be a back and forth as I tried to detach myself from the possibility of being connected to our friend’s eventual death as well as the terror of feeling entirely detached from the friends who had come to mean so much to me and who’d gotten me through the last 2 years of my grade school experience with far less obsession on my own death than otherwise might have been.

As those friendships faded away and the suicidal ideation came back around at varying levels of intensity and with a return to isolation, my prayers would go on to become a mix of desperate pleading for things to get easier and eventually a resigned reluctance of “well, if my life can be used in anyway as an example for people who are going through their own s**t, then I’ll do it. Make my life mean SOMETHING.” As I continued not dying (but by no means thriving), I started to ask for love to be my life’s greatest message. That any who I encounter would see the light of love reflected in my eyes and would want to seek that same light for themselves in order to change the world and make it a truly wonderful place to live—for ALL of us. There has always been that inkling of hope along the way. Even in the early days. I didn’t understand the hostility I felt coming my way, but there was always a spark of hope in the idea of a peaceful world, where the good of all was the goal. A world where we all know and love ourselves and are able to put forth the gifts and hidden treasures we are often unaware of. That spark seemed to fade out the more hurt I felt and the more I lashed out and hurt others just to keep them at a distance, but I would go on to realize it never fully disappeared, despite appearances otherwise.

All throughout undergrad I found myself bouncing back and forth between desperation to avoid drawing attention to myself as well as an intense longing for some kind of connection. I started participating in activities where I could be around people yet maybe not engage too deeply with them, as though I might be able to find something to hang onto while not simultaneously dragging peers back down into the black hole of despair that always seemed to be waiting to consume me. There were flyers around campus for an upcoming Campus Crusade event with some speaker who had had some kind of name for himself but I didn’t know of him. It was within walking distance of my dorm, and so I decided to go. I was able to walk to and from it with a large crowd of people so I could get there safely and still go alone, but I was still among the last to trickle into the auditorium. I sat in a seat in the last few rows, surrounded by mostly empty chairs as I was trying not to get too close and risk spreading my brokenness to unknowing bystanders in mere proximity. All throughout the speaker’s presentation, I sat in my seat and bawled my eyes out, not really paying attention to what he was saying so much as releasing all the pent up anxiety that comes from chronically holding your breath all the time. I tried to go unnoticed here, too, but apparently failed as some guy a few seats over handed me a box of tissues since I was sobbing uncontrollably. I barely looked at him, afraid my patheticism would spread, said thanks as best as I could muster, and accepted the box of tissues eagerly since the two I’d had shoved in my pocket before the event were long passed their retirement point that night.

That organization would connect me to a small group in my dorm that would help me to feel connected briefly in my dorm-living experience and even connect me to people who I would live with in off-campus housing my last 2 years. I found ways to stay indirectly active with the outside world without spreading the ickiness I felt by getting too close to too many people, although my roommate sophomore year and my small group leader got closer than most were allowed to. Sorrow and despair followed nearby at all times and I often felt like I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I was always afraid that anyone I let in might inadvertently be consumed by the black hole always eager to catch me should I take that leap or even stumble clumsily its way. My junior year at the university I lived in a house with 5 roommates and mine was a room in the finished basement, right next to stairs leading to the parking lot for the house. The shadows seemed to take on more form while I lived there and I had dreams that would occasionally cause me to awaken, too afraid to move enough to turn on the lamp by my head because it felt as though something was breathing down my neck. The first day that I found myself alone in the house for a few hours, I’d walked home from my last Friday class feeling like I was being screamed and laughed at mockingly while I was all alone, until I found myself hiding in the downstairs bathroom, sitting on the lid of the toilet with my hands over my ears, rocking back and forth as I sang Sunday school songs I’d learned as a child over and over to myself with tears streaming down my face. I was relieved when a couple of my roommates got back later that evening from their own activities.

As always, my anxiety grew as I came closer to graduating from the university, unsure of what would come about next. I ended up moving home, as I’d never wanted to do since I first moved a little over an hour away to my college experience. My parents allowed me to take some time off after school before I dove in to my occupational pursuits. They said 6 months but I got bored by month 4 or 5 and found a job that actually used my psychology degree. This job didn’t require the degree but it seemed like it might be beneficial. Soon after, I met a guy I thought I was going to marry and we were together 4 years. I spent 13 months in my job before I couldn’t take it any longer and quit to find something else, only to go back within 6 months, because I knew they would hire me back since I was already trained. They offered me a spot at a different location and I jumped at the opportunity. I only went back part-time at first since it was such a tedious role, and while I liked the people I worked with and loved my coworkers, I still hated the mental health aspect of it. Perhaps in part because I’d felt like I was so close to a mental health break myself in those early years. Then after randomly saying some things about feeling like my boyfriend and I were growing apart (to him of course), I found myself getting dumped after 4 years—lovingly on what was actually the 4 year anniversary of us having decided we wanted to exclusively see one another (we had always counted our anniversary as the month before since that was the anniversary of our first date and we knew from then we didn’t want to date around).

At a loss once again, I took some time and found myself enlisting in the military. It seemed like the most obvious choice for me. I had decided I wanted to do family counseling with military families and felt I would have more credibility if I had military experience myself. I enlisted in the National Guard thinking that since it would be a part-time endeavor after the initial training, that I could go to school and work to making both endeavors happen. I was calm about enlisting in the Army and leaving for basic training after my 28th birthday. It seemed a natural choice for my path. Then I got there. I never regretted enlisting or the experience but found myself forgetting to breathe on a regular basis as I was consistently faced with situations that ended up forcing me to realize I was apparently more capable of doing a lot more than I ever would have believed myself to be capable of. I would do what I had to do during the week, and go to church on Sunday and once again bawl my way through services, finally able to release the pent-up anxiety of just getting through the day to day stresses of having drill sergeants yell at you almost nonstop. I always felt like an outsider. I was surrounded by people who were mostly much younger than I was and in immensely better shape physically, who were there for the sake of they wanted to be a soldier for whatever reason brought them there. I was there as someone who wanted to be familiar with the experience of being a soldier so that I could help soldiers in the future. There among them, I still never felt a part of it, and multiple times daily I had drill sergeants honing in on me and often asking if I was going to cry, for reasons I never understood but eventually came to realize that apparently my face always looked sad. But there again, I did cry my way through Sunday services each week so maybe it was just that burden of carrying the anxiety while trying not to draw attention to myself and ALWAYS, ALWAYS managing to draw attention to myself.

I did my advanced training as a chaplain assistant, to see if I might eventually want to pursue the chaplaincy role one day, too, and when I got out of training I returned home. My unit was 3.5 hours from home. I got home realizing I was capable of far more than I ever had known before and trying to make sense of who my old life seemed to require me to be while also incorporating the new strengths I had found. I didn’t know where I fit in. Then my guard unit was so far away from my house that I only had drill weekends or annual trainings to connect with peers in my unit. I was the only chaplain assistant for part of the time and at no point with the unit did I have a chaplain with which to assist. Once again my life seemed to be spiraling and I had nothing to latch onto for some sense of meaning or purpose. Then I met the walking red flag that I would marry because I’d lost myself and only knew I liked helping people, and he was clearly someone who needed some assistance.

He was fresh out of a divorce and in a custody battle with someone he had not married and who had never told him about his son until after he was married to someone else--or so I was told anyway. She had filed for paternity only after her newly ex-husband had been put into jail and was no longer going to be a help with her 2 sons (1 that was her ex-husband’s, and the other that belonged to this walking red flag). When I first met his 3 year old son, I felt sorry for him with how screwed up the situation was with his parents and I really felt a connection because he shared the name of my co-captain from my Winter Percussion days. I found myself thinking about my friend every time I thought about or heard the name, Tyler. I even told the kid that one of the coolest people I had ever gotten to know shared his name. I wanted to reach out to my friend who was by now playing drums in a band that was actively touring and had been for some time, but once again I felt the burden of not wanting to risk contaminating his life with the toxicity of my own life should I reach out to him. I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t want to see his life’s end, I wanted to remember him as the guy who’d gotten to live his dream like he seemed to be doing, and so I let the opportunities go. I made this decision to marry poorly what would become one of my life’s greatest lessons.

Fresh out of training with the military, unsure again of who I was or what I was supposed to be doing, I jumped into marriage. I spent my time trying to help my husband with his ugly fight to be able to have a role in his son’s life, and making excuses for this person who lashed out at me verbally and kept me feeling as though there was never any certainty. If I was to feel comfortable having a night at home, he would yell out for no reason just so the atmosphere never felt stable. We got a dog together, and I sustained a TBI when I was home alone one day and she followed me up the stairs. Afraid she would get hurt on the stairs; I went back after her and ended up falling, myself. She became my protector as my TBI and the instability of the environment had me constantly confused about everything I might have to be confused about. My husband’s best friend started working with my best friend’s fiancé and my husband started going out of his way to talk about how the 2 guys would talk about how crazy I was. I didn’t like my friend’s fiancé before that, but constantly hearing about the conversations they supposedly had made me dislike him even more. There, of course, was a wedge between my best friend and I, which had really started to be noticeable since I got back home from my military training and she started asking who I was because she said she didn’t know me anymore after some poor decision-making on my part. I stopped talking to friends and family members at various occasions since I didn’t trust myself either and my husband’s gaslighting would wane and grow depending on the other circumstances around our relationship and whether I was actively trying to leave him at any given point or not.

The second to last time that I would leave him, I found myself once again in my parents’ house, with 1 of the now 3 dogs we had together and trying to figure things out for myself. I was upset that I had had to leave 2 of my dogs behind because the environment was always on edge with him randomly yelling out so no one could get comfortable. I moved back home in December 2017 and was focusing on writing and trying to heal from much that I had carried with me over the years. In May 2018, I heard that my co-captain was in the hospital in a coma as his liver and kidneys were shutting down. It was like a slap in the face that the thing I had been running so hard and so long to try to avoid because I felt like I somehow had a part in it ended up happening anyway. His dad said he had had to move back home in December as well and all I could think about was that I could have reached out, but his dad said he probably wouldn't have been up for hanging out at that time either. I was still struck by the common ground we shared once again, I thought everything was going well for him but at no point had I ever thought I had my s**t together, then I found out he likely had felt something similar to what I'd always felt about my own life.

In July he was out of the coma for a while and a friend came up from Texas and wanted to go see him. She asked if I would go with her and I jumped at the opportunity even though I entirely dreaded it too. He died a couple weeks later at the age of 34. No longer able to reach out to my friend in the physical world, I started writing letters to him. Letters filled with regret, with pain, and a whole lot of tears. I believed that since he was no longer physically present, he probably knew everything I could possibly have been carrying around by myself all these years and I started opening up about things I had never been able to process before—going back as far as a series of traumas from 7-10 years old that I had never been able to talk about. I started getting to the bottom of some things I’d carried on my own that had contributed to my constant fear of existing and being noticed in the world. I processed anger, grief, regret, and finally came face to face with the little girl I’d carried with me all those years and who I was actively seeking suicide to destroy for so long. And then, after I let all of that go, I went back to my husband for one last attempt at making the marriage work out.

It didn’t--

but I left with far less baggage than I had carried in a long time emotionally and psychologically speaking. I left behind a lot of possessions just to be rid of the situation sooner. I took my 3 dogs, my birds and some reptiles of my choosing and whatever I could fit into the trailer my parents rented (again) to get my away from my, now, ex-husband and start anew.

This story was originally written for a webpage that I started, dedicated to the various lifelines that have kept me holding on over all these years. The website is my acknowledgement of things that caused me pain and the ways I realized I have caused others pain along the way, but more importantly, it is my hope to show gratitude for the artists, songs, friends, everyday situations and lessons that kept me putting one foot in front of the other even on days I haven’t wanted to get out of bed. Although putting an entire webpage dedicated to the journey of someone who forgets to breathe so easily in times of uncertainty invokes more uncertainty, and this webpage has been no different. I started it, got the intro done and after briefly locking myself out of it for a short span of time, I find myself struggling to get back to work on it. When the breathing gets shallow, I tend to go back into hiding. Perhaps this social shock challenge submission will be the kick I need to get back to work on this side passion project that I also happen to be more than slightly terrified of.

“When the dreamer dies, so dies the dream” –The Amity Affliction, “Soak Me in Bleach”

I always thought my big life purpose was in writing a book where I would tell the stories that I will share in the days ahead but when I really sat down to work on hashing out those details, I realized that those stories are too heavy to have confined to a book and thus the idea for my webpage: MysticFuchsia.com was born. It is a place where I will share some of the hardest moments of my life but more importantly, where I will tell of the little things that connected together in lessons I will never forget that kept me going. It is my hope that if you have found this story or my webpage, that you might find something of value to carry on in your own life, and perhaps help you on your own path to healing.