Why Grace?

This was written on April 24, 2014.

grace (noun) -- favor or goodwill; mercy; clemency; pardon 

I am not perfect. No one is. But my brain constantly tells me that I have to be perfect. No one taught me to be this way. All of the pressure I feel comes from me, not my parents or siblings or peers. But it also means that I can't blame anyone else when I mess up. 

About 13 months ago, I was diagnosed with moderately severe depression. I was a second semester college freshman at Washington University in St. Louis. I managed, just barely, to pass most of my classes. I made the decision to take a year-long leave of absence. But, being the person I am, I enrolled in classes at the community college in SF. There was some adjustment to my medications, but overall I was doing pretty darn well. I wasn't necessarily happy, but I wasn't numb and unmotivated either. I felt things, I was interested in doing things. And things were like this until about month ago. My cat died. Penny was almost nineteen years old. She had kidney disease and arthritis, her heart started to fail, there was a mass in one lung, she had lost almost 50% of her weight (she never weighed more than 8 pounds). She was old, and she was dying, and it wasn't kind to her to keep her around. We euthanized her on March 27th. 

TRIGGER WARNING for cutting and self-harm. It ends at the next line. 

------------------------------------------------------------- 

I didn't notice at first that I was feeling more stress and anxiety. Until April 12th, around midnight, when I started wanting to self-harm. I didn't that first time. I dug my nails into my palm, but I didn't break skin and just ended up with sore hands the next day from clenching them so hard. I was so terrified by the thoughts that I told my mom immediately. 

I cut for the first time the following Monday evening. I broke apart one of my razor blade heads and used one of the razors to cut just above my knee. Twice on Tuesday, once on Wednesday, once on Thursday, once on Friday. A total of 23 cuts. None were particularly deep. The first ones have already healed completely. 

I didn't cut after I saw my therapist on Friday and told her about wanting to cut. But I didn't tell her that I had cut. My parents and I had seen my psychiatrist on Tuesday, when he prescribed an anxiolytic and increased my antidepressant dose and suggested I see my therapist twice a week instead of only once a week. I still want to cut a lot of the time. I wanted to slice my forearm open yesterday, I'm proud that I only cut half an inch instead of the seven I thought I wanted to. And today I told my therapist that I was cutting. 

That conversation and the one I had with my mom last night were the two hardest conversations I have ever had, harder than when I had suicidal thoughts last year before I was diagnosed. 

------------------------------------------------------------- 

Those who skipped the previous section can pick back up here. That's me. Depressed, anxious, self-harming, numb. And sometimes I hate myself for succumbing to all of this. For letting my mind steamroll over my will. And that is why I need to learn grace. I need to learn that no one expects me to be perfect. I am expected to blunder and fumble around. I am nineteen. NINETEEN. My grandparents are in their 80s, so I have at least another 60 years of life in me. I am in college. No one my age has it all together. Very few people know exactly what they want to do with their lives. In some ways, I am lucky to experience all of this now rather than earlier in my life, when peer pressure was a more active part of my life, or later, when it can seriously impact my future. At nineteen, all of this is easier to handle than if I were in my thirties and had a career and possibly a family. Right now, the person this most effects is me. No one is dependent on me for everything. But that is all logic and rationality. I still have to learn the emotional forgiveness I need to give myself; for how can I really care for and be kind to others when I can't do the same for myself. 

That is what I am here to do. I am going to be honest, brutally so if necessary, and I am going to try my very best to learn to forgive myself.