Saturday, August 21, 2021
It has been nine months of blog silence.
It has been a long nine months.
The last time I went to my little corner of the internet here, it was November of 2020, at the end of a long day. I had walked the ~200 feet to a friend's apartment, presumably to do homework. I had my casebook for Torts with me. My friend sat busily typing away at her kitchen table, and I sat on her couch with my casebook and laptop open in front of me. Both stayed open and untouched.
I was spent. I was tired. I was done.
I could feel myself start to slip into dissociation, losing my grip minute by minute. I hate that feeling, that slow slipping away from reality that is already too easy to fall into for someone who tends to live in her head, even on a "good day" (whatever that means).
For me, the onset of a dissociative episode feels like getting tipsy, but without the accompanying physical warmth and the comfort that that warmth brings. I hate losing control of my mind, so I hate the foggy feeling alcohol brings when I haven't had enough to eat before drinking something. But at least I can prevent tipsiness by mixing a cocktail that only has a bit of alcohol in it (I'm a lightweight), or by eating protein beforehand. I can feel a little tipsy and stop or slow it by putting the rest of the drink in the fridge for later.
Control is key for me, which makes dissociation suck. Controlling it in the moment doesn't happen very often, because I'm unaware of falling into a dissociative episode till I'm already in the thick of one. When the present moment has given way entirely to whatever past memory or potential future problem in my brain--when I'm so far gone that my body will jolt my brain awake enough to do something instead of worrying about everything.
I am fortunate in that my feelings and my physical state tend to be in-tune with each other, so when I can't detect a problem from one system, the other one will often remind me. For example,I might not be able to identify that reliving a particular traumatic memory makes me feel anxious (even though, like, duh),but I will be able to process the physical sensation of my heart racing, my shoulders tensing, and my breathing going shallow. From which my intelligent, idiotic brain can eventually conclude, Oh, shoot! Physical symptoms say :Big Yikes! Body, we must be anxious or something!
And then, ideally, I do something with that feedback. Often, I will physically make the motion of shrugging off the weight, and physically get up and leave the room--anything to cross the brain/body/present moment divide. Sometimes, I make a snack and focus on the physical sensations of taste and sound as I eat it. Sometimes, I have a good cry instead. Love me some variety.
But that November night, staring at the blank wall at my friend's house, starting to feel the distance in between each present moment expand, I fought back.
I placed my hands on the keyboard and opened up this blog. I wrote out my frustration, my sense of failure, my self-inflicted woes, my dissatisfaction with law school and life and myself as a person. I edited nothing, aside from grammar and mechanics (hey, I have standards, and mental illness doesn't get to take those away). I posted the damn thing.
And then, I could breathe again.
I had been breathing, ragged, shallow breaths, but after releasing the angst on the internet, I could breathe deeply again. And I breathed. My chest rose and fell, in and out, in and out, in and out--and each breath felt like a vacation from anxiety.
I say "vacation" because the temporary connotations of that word were accurate for the situation. I would still have to go home to my anxiety, literally. I couldn't stay at my friend's apartment all night. (She probably would have let me, because she's one of the kindest and most generous people I've met in law school, but I digress.) I could see the anxiety, but from the outside in. I was "dissociating" from the anxiety, in a sense, viewing it more objectively now that I could read over what I had written and understand what I was feeling, without having to try to process moments in the middle of reliving them.
I was no less spent, but I felt peace.
A moment of peace.
A fleeting, fragile peace.
A peace that was gone by the next morning, which found me up way too early trying to finish up the reading for Torts. By "trying" I mean "frantically skimming while panicking"; and by "finish", I mean "attempt in one sitting"; and by way of a spoiler alert: No, the reading did not get finished that morning. It was that kind of day.
But,that November night spent sitting on my friend's couch vomiting words into the void marked a turning point in the year.
It marked the beginning of giving myself permission to verbally process my feelings. It marked the beginning of being comfortable enough with myself to allow myself to feel all the feels. It marked the beginning of trying to extending kindness to myself, something I'm still working on every day.
And that moment of peace, and all it led to, could not have come from me. It was all grace.
I had always known that God gives grace each day, enough to get us through the day. I had read and accepted that, if God has planned a future for me (and He has), then he has given me all the grace I need to get there (and He has.)But, after that November night, I could believe that He would give that grace. I could see with new eyes that "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9, ESV, emphasis added.)I could know more deeply the "peace of God, which surpasses all understanding," because I definitely couldn't understand why I felt at peace in that moment (Phil 4:7, ESV, emphasis added.)
Looking back, I thank God for the low point that brought me to that November night. The view from here is the clarity that hindsight brings, and I am thankful for how He showed himself to me then.
Have I lived according to that truth every day since? Nope.
I struggle daily against the old part of me, that doesn't trust myself, other people, or God. I struggle moment by moment to live in each moment, instead of retreating to the past or grabbing hold of the future. I struggle with knowing how I feel, with giving myself permission to take the time to process how I feel, with shaping how I feel into words, with speaking those words to God, with sharing my burdens with others--it's a process, and it's exhausting.
I struggle accepting the grace He extends, because my pride demands that I become worthy of it. Which is impossible. But God is patient with me--and He keeps giving more grace. He is the God of grace; it's what He does. He gives more grace. He makes all grace abound to me (2 Cor 9:8). His promise rests on grace, and it is guaranteed (Rom 4:16). His saving grace is a gift, and He saves me from myself every day,that I may do all the good He has planned for me to do (Eph 2:8). All is grace.
So, here I sit, preaching to myself, reminding myself of grace at the end of a week of beating myself up instead of extending grace to myself, yet again. 2L year starts on Monday, and so much still remains to be done. I was supposed to have attended meetings this week, but I got sick and had to reschedule them. I was supposed to have met up with friends this week, but I've only seen one friend apart from my roommate this week.
And yet, those few minutes spent with said friend, a bizarre combination of making eye contact through my sliding glass door while talking on the phone so we could hear each other, made my entire day.It was completely unexpected. It made me laugh. It was a moment of real-time connection in the midst of an isolating few days that stopped a tough day from becoming a bad day. And it came right when I needed it most.
All is grace.
