After After Life

 

This blog post is about a television show, but it is also about suicide, so if you’re triggered in any way by that content, please feel free to click away; you have my blessing and my wish for a stellar day.

Also: If you believe suicide is “the coward’s way out,” or that it is “a long-term solution to a short-term problem,” or that when a person has the extraordinary courage to admit they may be suicidal, they’re just a “drama queen” or “crying out for attention,” you can click away as well. Just bugger off. You’ll get the day you deserve.

Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but these are all things that have been said to me over the years, quite insensitively, I might add. And here’s a few more gems:

From my ex-husband: “It’s part of your life’s script to be sad, so you’re always going to be sad, no matter what.” (What in fecking hell does that even mean?)

From a colleague: “We all feel despair. Life is mostly hard and depressing, with only the rare, occasional bright spot of joy. That’s what we live for. So that someday—maybe—we might feel joy again.” (Just shoot me now, then.)

From a friend: “All that depression stuff is just brain chemistry. These days, fixing it is just a matter of finding the right medication.” (Well then! So good to know!)

If you’re new to the blog, and you’ve never read my memoir, The Dogs Who Saved Me, let me just say briefly that several times in my life, I have been clinically depressed. Twice I have been suicidal, the first time when I was fifteen. That time, I hardly ate or slept, and all I thought about was how to kill myself—without failing, because I was terrified of being shoved off to a psych ward—and if you don’t know me, just trust me; I had reason enough to despair. But time moved me forward (and out of certain situations), and I got better.

I kept a journal during those dark times. I still have it. And it seems as though Ricky Gervais has been reading it. Because he says that he is “fine” and “happy,” so how else could he fully understand what the absolute edge of despair is? And then offer a depiction as vivid as he does with the series he has written and directed, After Life? It’s brilliant. It’s absolutely brilliant. One hundred percent spot on with its dialog about the aching, empty loneliness that brings some of us to the brink and asking “What’s the point?” Or, more precisely and in his words, “What’s the fucking point?”

If you haven’t seen it, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s funny. Like, laugh out loud funny. But also cringeworthy in some scenes. (Season 3, Episode 4, “Kath” goes on a date with a teacher, and I swear to Buddha, I dated that guy. He snaps his fingers to get the server’s attention, tells Kath repeatedly to take her elbows off the table, and makes her feel, in his overbearing, condescending, demanding way, stupid and about two inches tall. I could barely watch it, it hit so close to home for me.) The show is also more than a bit raunchy, yet so heartbreakingly sweet in some scenes that my tears just flow and flow, and I wonder if it’s because I feel a touch of the old sadness or because of my relief at the realization that I’m still here, that I stayed long enough to see my life become good and rewarding and worth all the pain. Or both.

The premise of the show is that “Tony” (the main character, played by Gervais) has lost his wife, Lisa, to cancer, and he is so angry and heartbroken and alone without her that he moves through life inflicting his grief upon everyone around him but simultaneously trying to find a way out of his personal hell. Every time I watch it, I want to go along on one of his long walks with his dog (a gorgeous German Shepherd—and may the Universe bless Gervais for all his work in animal rescue), and I want to tell him, “Hang on, Tony. You’ll find a tiny ray of hope, and it will get brighter as the days go by, and life will look beautiful again. Just trust me.” And as each episode ends, I think, “Thank goodness it’s just a show, and he is “fine” and “happy” in real life (whatever that is).

The truth is, not everyone is fine and happy. I am. Now. But I haven’t always been. So I know what that road to recovery feels like. How heavy each step feels as you trudge forward at an agonizingly slow pace, pressed down by the enormous weight of all the pain you carry. I’m here to tell you, it will get easier. Not tomorrow or the day after. Not this week. It will get easier so gradually that you won’t feel the difference as the weight is lifted. You’ll just be halfway through your day one day and realize you haven’t thought of taking yourself out today. Or you actually smiled at someone. Or you made actual plans to do something you enjoy.

If you are feeling that way, please never hesitate to reach out or get help (from a professional, not some asshole acquaintance or colleague or significant other who just doesn’t get it).

I see you.

I acknowledge your cry for help as absolutely legitimate.

You deserve the same happiness as everyone else on the planet.

I love you.

National Suicide Hotline: 800-273-8255

This is a link to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 

B:P3 Early Departure

 

 

 

In Memoriam: 

Scott, you left way too early, honey. There was still so much good stuff....

 

Some time ago a friend mentioned the book A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, in a way that made me feel as if I'd been missing something without knowing it because I hadn't read it. Instead of buying the book or at least putting it on my to-read list, I started reading about the book instead. I quickly learned of Toole's suicide--prior to the book being published. Sigh....

 

The mythology within the literary community is that Toole was so despondent over his failure to find a publisher for his book, he killed himself, at which point his mother took up the cause, eventually finding a publisher who agreed to take it on--to great success. Toole was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for the book. It was first published in 1980 but today is still an Amazon best seller.

 

The truth about Toole is far more complex, of course.

 

I have yet to read A Confederacy of Dunces. But I did read Butterfly in the Typewriter by Cory MacLauchlin, which details the life and death of Toole. (The title comes from writing by Toole himself, who described himself at one point as a butterfly being smashed to death by a typewriter key, an accurate reference, I suppose, to the fragility of many creative minds.)

 

I'm not here to recommend MacLauchlin's book. (Sorry, fellow author.) It's far too long and rambling for its purpose, a bit repetitious and not well edited. (Sorry again. Truly.) Something happened, though, just as I was getting to the part of the book I'd wanted to read, the part about Toole's suicide, the part that explained what he did and what led up to it.

 

Just about the time I read about Toole's mental collapse and subsequent suicide, a cousin called to tell me that our youngest cousin had killed himself. He had a wife and kids and grandkids, but his mental anguish, his degree of depression, his "psychache," as Edwin Shneidman, founder of the American Association of Suicidology, would put it, had become unbearable, so he took it upon himself to end it.

 

I cried for days. At his loss (at Toole's as well), at the grief his wife and children will bear for the rest of their lives, at the agony he must have endured in the weeks, months, years before he felt he could no longer go on.

 

The "if onlys" come hard and fast during these times. If only we had a one-dose-fits-all pill to cure debilitating sadness. If only he could have waited just a little longer, until that dark depression eased its grip on him a bit. Because it always does. It always gets better eventually. Ask anyone who has contemplated an early departure but decided against it, and they will say the same: "I was in a very dark place then, but I'm glad I lived to see/to hear/to experience...."

 

I'm glad I lived.

 

If I had taken my life at 15, I never would have experienced the ineffable joy of watching my children grow up... then my grandchildren. I would never have known how powerful and heady it can feel to set a difficult and far-off goal--publish a book, earn a degree--and keep slogging forward until it has been reached. I would not have experienced the humbling yet noble and rewarding duty of guiding young people toward their own goals and aspirations.

 

Yes, sadness still haunts me at times. I still struggle to shrug off that heavy coat of my heart-crushing childhood. (Butterfly... typewriter....) But this is what I know: As stormy as the night may be, the morning always comes. The sun will rise, the light will shine, spring emerges after winter and brings warmth, relief, and new growth. I have a thousand things to look forward to, still. I'm glad I lived.

 

If you have come upon this post in a state of deep sadness and you have considered or are considering making an early departure, please, please, I beg of of you, talk to someone first. Just... talk. No, there are no easy answers, there is no magic pill. It's hard. Damn hard. But it will be so worth it if you can just hang on another day. There are people out here who care. I promise.

 

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 

Checking out

Fair warning: This post includes a frank discussion of suicide.

If you're the type of person who believes suicide is a failure or weakness of some sort, or that it's "a long-term solution to a short-term problem," move on, tend to your own business. Nothing to see here. 

If you've clicked on this link because that dark cloud is threatening, let me go no further before I share this information:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Or you can visit the website at suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Or you can click here to chat online instead of on the phone.

Or if you prefer to text, text HOME to 741741.

The TTY number is: 1-800-799-4889.

The veterans' crisis line is 1-800-273-8255.

If you feel awkward or uncomfortable about calling because you're not sure what to say or how it works, click here for a brief summary of exactly what happens when you call. (Thank you, BuzzFeed News. I love y'all for that.)

While you're summoning the courage to do that, go to Netflix and watch the entire first season of After Life with Ricky Gervais. The episodes are only 30 minutes, and there are only six, so you can binge watch it if you like. Trust me on this one; the series is delightfully course and profane, and you'll find yourself laughing at things you feel guilty laughing at--despite your sadness. Just do it.

And one more note before I go any further with my own stuff: I just want to state quite honestly that I am fine today. I know that over the next couple of days, some certain friends who know me well and love me anyway will call or text to check in and see how I'm doing. Because they'll be concerned. For those folks: I'm good right now. I promise. I love you, too.

So....
A doctor killed herself last week. Lorna Breen was a forty-nine-year-old emergency room physician who worked in New York City. She contracted COVID-19. Her body recovered, but tragically, her psyche did not.

I haven't stopped thinking about her or feeling heartbroken for her family.

Edwin Schneidman, author of The Suicidal Mind, coined the term "psychache" to describe the psychological torment a suicidal person endures when he or she experiences an unresolved sadness or yearning for so long, suicide seems the only escape from the unbearable psychological pain. This pain, by the way, worsens with stress.

You see the problem here.

I have no doubt there are far more people than we realize hovering on the brink right now, ruminating on what a relief it would be to simply check out.

Because life has some really shitty aspects right now. What are we supposed to be doing at this point in the pandemic? Should we keep isolating? Break out? Wear a mask everywhere? Or give up because others aren't? Will we be able to meet our basic needs for food and toiletries ongoing? Will we lose everything in our retirement accounts because the stock market keeps fluctuating? If we get sick, will we recover?  Or languish alone in a hospital room until we die? When will we ever get to see our friends and family members again?

We're all trying to sort our way through, and every day is frustrating and exasperating and don't even get me started on how really, really, lonely this isolation can be for some folks. Even those of us who are profound introverts enjoy the company of a few close friends. I haven't seen my friends or my kids or my grandkids in months. Yes, we talk on the phone. Sort of. Is texting the same as talking?

Loneliness eats away at potential suicides. And I'll tell you a secret about us: We don't tell people when we're lonely. In fact, we tend to withdraw even more. Because when we get lonely, we assume it's because others have stopped calling because they've stopped caring. I know, I know, it's not true, but the fact is, self-loathing and depression are bosom buddies.

Most people struggling with clinical depression have learned through conditioned response to stop mentioning it. Because mentioning it often brings on platitudes that, at the very least, don't help ("You just need to get out more, have some fun once in a while"), and at worst, might push us a bit closer to the edge ("You wouldn't feel this way if you weren't so self-absorbed all the time").

So we back away quietly (so you won't notice we're missing), wrap ourselves in a mantel of sad thoughts, and go sit somewhere (on a couch, in a bed) so we can listen to sad music or watch sad or dark TV or movies or videos.

This is what I imagine happened with Dr. Lorna Breen. She went from working 18-hour days with colleagues she loved and patients who needed her to being quarantined alone with a disease, day after lonely day. The feeling is that the world, that life, goes on without you, and you aren't needed anyway... so why linger?

I'll tell you--from experience--why you should linger: Because it gets better. No, really, it does. Life is just shitty at times. There is definitely a yin and yang to it, though, a balance of pain and pleasure, sadness and elation. Yes, there are moments of intense despair. But there are dogs. And sunsets. And sunrises. And incredible constellations stretched across the night sky. (Go on, pry yourself out, have a look.) There's ice cream and lasagna. And there are books. Thousands and thousands of books that will transport you so far into your imagination you will forget (if just for a time) how shitty life feels right now.

And there are definitely people who care. I met one of my most beloved friends in an online chat room for clinically depressed people. We have been friends for 20 years now, and I treasure that friendship because he gets it. He'll always be there for me, and I for him. (And just as a side note, if you're thinking an online chat room for really depressed people might be a bad idea, it's the polar opposite of what you would imagine--lots of highly intelligent, very caring, very funny people riffing on the absurdity and/or shittiness of life can be profoundly entertaining. Trust me.)

If you're feeling that dark shadow closing in, please, please reach out. Call someone who is non-judgmental and supportive. Or call the lifeline number above. Sometimes talking to a stranger is much easier than opening up to someone you know. And yes, I realize how very hard it is to take that first step. Just know that there is someone here who knows how hard it is... and how much better you'll feel after you've taken it.

Getting Ink

2016 was a year that was chock-full of truly awful events, the worst of which was the death—by suicide—of my goofy, sweet, troubled friend John. On and off throughout his life, John had battled with depression, self-medicating along the way, getting clean and sober, doing battle again, and on and on. Later in his life, he began to deal with multiple health issues; he quit smoking to get healthy, only to gain enough weight to put increased stress on his heart and lungs. Over the years, he was in and out of relationships. When he took his life, he had been single for some time. “He was just so lonely,” his sister told me later. I had spent time with John in the months prior to his death… but I never saw it coming—and I am one who truly knows the signs.

Two years before John died, a new young friend, Michael, also took his life. I had met him through a writing event that he had put together for other young people, a contest for high school students to help them exhibit their writing and, in the long run, gain confidence in their writing skills. At one of the preparatory events, his father mentioned to me as an aside that writing had been the one stabilizing factor in Michael’s life. “He’s always had difficulty in school fitting in,” his father said. This resonated with me. As a depressed child, I could sit with a pencil and notebook and simply write whatever came to mind. It anchored me, gave me purpose and a sense that I could do something not everyone could do. Robert Frost referred to the act of writing verse as “a momentary stay against confusion.” When I read that for the first time, I was in college, and the idea resonated with me so strongly, it made my heart pound. My journals, kept over the decades since my children were young, contain many pages that were filled on days when I was too sad to function. The act of writing down my thoughts was often enough to calm me, to help organize the chaos and confusion in my head. Setting the emotions carefully down on paper helped me distance myself from them and find resolution to some of the factors contributing to that chaos.

I’ve been alone for a very long time now. I understand loneliness, especially as an older person. I also understand isolation, that feeling of not fitting in, of not finding a tribe to belong to, and of needing to pour onto paper the words that seemed locked away otherwise. And I fully understand the need to make the mental anguish and emotional pain stop. In my life, there have been times when I questioned why I was even continuing to go forward. What’s the point? I often wondered. Of course, intellectually, I understand what “the point” is; it’s my children. It’s my family. Now, it is putting words on a page that just may resonate with someone else, help them heal or laugh or cry or feel less alone. I understand my gift, and what I am to do with it. I doubt that I will feel suicidal again in my life.

But… just as a reminder… and to honor the lives of Michael and John (because I miss their light in this world), I have gotten my first tattoo. It’s a semi-colon. If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see it there on my right wrist, a reminder daily that yes, sometimes our life story needs a “pause.” But it will continue. Life sometimes hurts like a slap in the face from a trusted friend. It’s shocking and it stings and we wonder in the moment how we will recover. But we can. If we wait a bit, things do get better. The pain does ease enough to be tolerable. With time, it’s possible to see beauty in the world again.

When Chris (Christopher Lloyd Davis of Reflect Tattoo Studio in Redlands, California—a former band nerd and beautiful human being) was situating the tattoo on my arm, he said, “I can move it down further so you can cover it if you need to.”

“No,” I told him, “I’m never going to want to cover this up. I want to see it every day. And I want everyone else to see it as well.”

So now the daily reminder is there.

If you have been previously unaware that a semi-colon tattoo is generally done to honor someone who has taken his or her own life, I encourage you to use your search engine to look at images of semi-colon tattoos. Most are far more beautiful than mine, but mine is serving its purpose just fine.

TheNational Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. If you’ve ever had one of those days (or as I used to say, “one of those lives”), jot that down and stick it somewhere safe. Sometimes we just need another voice to reassure us that the pain will ease, things will get better. A pause is fine before going forward once again.

When Children Lose Hope

Our little city of Calimesa made the news last week, and not for anything good. Thirteen-year-old Rosalie Avila, a student at Mesa View Middle School, hanged herself in her bedroom. She was found by her parents.

This is a tragic story.
This is a familiar story.

This is a photo of Rosalie:

Kids at school told her she was ugly. Her parents had arranged counseling for her months before her suicide because they discovered she'd been cutting herself. They did everything right in their attempt to save their daughter. Sadly, forces greater than themselves intervened.

In August,  the Huffington Post ran a story on teen suicide rates--because they have hit an all-time high and continue to rise. Nowadays, more young girls kill themselves than ever before.

This is a gut punch to me.

I want to blame social media. I want to blame a society that reveres youth and beauty above all gifts, talents, abilities or strengths.

I want to blame the parents of the bullies, but I know that those parents love their kids and think they're terrific. Of course they do. It has been my experience that the parents of bullies are the last people to discover that their 'good' kids are going off to school and taunting, tormenting, and humiliating other kids.

I want to blame the bullies, of course. I want to pull them aside, sit them down, get in their faces with my harshest teacher voice and ask, "Do you understand exactly what you did here?" But... they're kids. They did what kids have done for countless generations. I was told horrible things in middle school, too. "Your teeth are crooked." "You walk funny." "You're ugly." "You're dumb." And I was depressed, though not suicidal. That depth would come later, in high school, when I was fifteen.... All those voices echoing in my psyche contributed, though, I have no doubt.

I want to blame somebody, anybody, because I'm just angry. I'm furious that another girl thought she wasn't pretty enough... thought that happiness would only be held out to the beautiful people in life. I'm sure she watched enough TV and saw enough online and heard enough at school to believe that this is so.

And so she simply lost hope. She was embarrassed by her crooked teeth. Her parents got her the orthodontia she needed, but then she was teased about wearing braces. She couldn't win. So she gave up.

We lost her. And I am so sad for that.

I went for a walk this morning around Mesa View Middle School. I took Thomas with me (because one should always take a beloved companion along when one chooses to immerse oneself in sadness). We walked the perimeter of the school, then found ourselves walking the athletic track, then discovered Rosalie's name scraped out in the dirt in letters as long as my shadow. I stepped back in order not to walk on someone's memorial and saw that a third of the track had been covered in messages:

Rosie, we miss you!
Rosie, we love you!
Rosalie (signed by Aubrianna)

And the last one pictured below. To that one, I say, Amen.

Tis the season...

I didn't write a blog post in November. In fact, I didn't write a single thing (except a one-page journal entry) for the entire month. Although I had several writing projects going, and I'd said that I was going to do NaNoWriMo, I didn't, and I pretty much abandoned everything regarding writing. Or singing. I didn't sing, either, which is pretty unusual for me.

While everyone else was weeping over or celebrating the results of the national election, I was learning that a close family friend had taken his own life. So yeah, as time periods go, November really blew. In most years, November is a good month for me (despite the dreaded time change and the ever-expanding darkness). Our family celebrates a big Thanksgiving at my brother's house, and I see people I don't see the rest of the year. But this year my brother had the stomach flu... and certain family members were unhappy with other family members.... You know, typical family stuff (though in other years, we've been great at setting all that aside).

So Thanksgiving was canceled, essentially. And John opted out of a life that was fraught with pain and loneliness. And my son, who had originally planned to stay a week with me, ended up staying for two. When I returned from driving him to San Diego where he will hop a flight back to Ohio, I told myself this: "You may now return to living inside your head."

Because that's what it takes for me to produce anything on the page. I have to ponder, contemplate, muse and reflect. I have to be still in the silence and listen to what my heart is singing about. Whatever the song turns out to be is what I am feeling. All that is left, then, is to determine why I am feeling what I am feeling.

My son has been gone nearly twenty-four hours and mostly what I have heard is silence. I did not hear the owl calling last night nor did I hear the coyotes howling. The churning of the washer and the hum of the refrigerator are all that are breaking through.

I don't know what to think or feel or say about John's death. Of all my friends who struggle with the darkness, he was the least likely on my list to finally say, "I'm done." I'm trying not to feel guilty. (If I'd called more often... made more of an effort to go see him....) Intellectually, that's wasted energy; it wasn't my fault, was not my decision, and it certainly won't change things for John. I think I'm also trying not to feel relieved or at least admit to those feelings. John was a big, hard man and he lived a big, hard life (to riff off of Eddie Vedder's song). Once his body began to break down from all its years of hard living, his pain was monumental. And he wanted to be loved. He desperately wanted to find exquisite, transcendental, romantic love (as we all do, really, if the truth were told), but that had proven to be an elusive dream... and he was nearing seventy. I'm sure he felt his time had come and gone, and there was little left to live for. The last several times we'd talked or spent time together, he'd cried. He wanted to go off-roading in his 4x4 truck and take long motorcycle rides on his Harley, and he wanted to do all that without feeling stiff and tired and achy the next day. And he wanted to fall head over heels in love. In short, he wanted to be young again. I wish on all that is sacred to me I could have helped him do that. But I couldn't.

I guess I'm glad Thanksgiving was canceled. It would not have been the same without John's booming laughter (followed by his horrendous chronic smoker's cough) at the table. It's almost like the Universe felt my pain and said, "You know what, let's just skip this one. Next year will be better."

Next year will. Time will give me opportunity to muse and reflect. And hey, back there a couple of paragraphs ago, I think I started to hear a song.

The Fisher King

In 1991, I was one year into a separation from the man I used to introduce as "the most wonderful man in the world," working slowly toward an amicable but irreparably wounding divorce. I've rarely felt so alone in the world.

Somehow I saw a trailer for a movie with Robin Williams called The Fisher King. Williams had won my heart years before with his brilliant stand-up routines and as the goofhead alien in Mork & Mindy, then in his more dramatic roles in Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and Awakenings. Especially in the latter film, it was possible to see a depth of pain in Williams that was well-masked by his comedy, and that shared human condition resonated with my soul.

The premise of The Fisher King is this: The sanity of Williams' character, "Parry," has become unmoored after the senseless shooting of his beloved wife by a madman. Once "normal," he now lives in a homeless encampment, struggling daily against the dark force that threatens constantly to overtake him while simultaneously he extends charity, warmth and kindness to others.

I don't know how I found time and opportunity to sneak off to sit in a theater alone and watch The Fisher King. I only remember coming away from it changed. Not healed, exactly, certainly not led from the darkness of the time into a lighter place, but having been handed a sword with which to do battle. In the film, Parry's madness is made manifest in the form of a fierce and fiery figure on horseback which appears whenever something triggers a memory of his wife. Each time, his fear overwhelms him—until he finally discovers what he needs to confront the ominous form.

Wandering, lost, through this very dark time, I had lost all my power, had allowed the heart wound to bring me to my knees. Watching this film and the powerful performances of both Robin Williams and Michael Jeter, I began to find my legs again.

The screenplay, written by Richard LaGravenese, reiterates the theme that there is a very, very fine line—a gossamer thread—between sanity and madness, one step from sunlight to shadow. In watching the film, I heard a voice calling, saw a light shining—albeit far off—which led me back toward the light. Twenty-three years later, I still stand, sword drawn in readiness to ward off the darkness that I know could come for me at any time.

Tragically, we have lost Robin Williams to that same shadow, that dark sadness which menaces anyone with a tender, open heart. Like his character in The Fisher King, he spent his life reaching out to others, even as his own demons taunted him. May he step now into eternal light and peace, and may we always remember his gift.

To watch a short clip of the movie which includes both Robin Williams and Michael Jeter, click here.

I know who I am (Part 2)

To say that my father's death when I was eight years old had an impact on my life would be an understatement. It was in that exact moment that the forward momentum in my life began to make a slow, steady turn in a different direction.

I was in the third grade when he died. In the fourth grade, Mrs. Walton told me that I could be a writer, and, as I noted in my previous post, I believed her. In the fifth grade, two things happened. First, my sister won a pony in a contest. She'd been entering the same tell-us-in-fifty-words-or-less-why-you-want-a-pony contest for years, my dad encouraging her to do so, promising her that someday he would get her a horse. After he died, her fifty words were heart wrenching. She won, and our lives became centered around a little dappled Shetland pony mare named Silver.

The second thing that happened that year was that I was I.Q. tested and found to be gifted. In the early 1960's, all fifth graders in California were I.Q. tested so that they could be "appropriately placed" in the academic programs that would best serve them in public school. (Don't get me started on tracking; that is a subject for another day.) I can't tell you what my I.Q. was because my mother wouldn't tell me. I do know that the school psychologist called her to give her this information and to let her know that I would be offered the opportunity to attend a special program for gifted children in the sixth grade. I would be bussed, along with four of my gifted peers, to another school every day to attend a class made up solely of gifted children.

So there I was every day that remained of the fifth grade, hanging out with my mutually smart friends, Cathy Dodd and Melinda Lively and Steve McCutcheon, planning for the next year, speculating on all the fun we would have, reveling in our newfound pride as smart kids, considering what our futures would bring. Cathy was my best friend and lived a block away. Her dad was a professor at UCLA, and way off in the distance I could see us attending college together there.

Oh—something else happened when I was in the fifth grade, or rather right after school ended for the summer. We moved. Mom said it was too expensive to pay the stable rental on Silver, so we moved a few miles away, from Lakewood to Cypress, to a house zoned for horses with a barn and a corral right there in the back yard. Heaven. For my sister, anyway.

The new elementary school had no program for gifted children. So that little part of my identity was no longer important or significant. I made new friends. Horsie friends. Turns out my sister's pony was pregnant, so we soon had another pony, then a horse, then the pony was given to me and I spent my time after school not doing homework but riding, cleaning, brushing, feeding, watering and preparing for the many horseshows I would enter.

I won a lot of trophies. And I'm proud to say that by the time I was sixteen I could train a horse "from the ground up," as they say in the horse world. But by then we were living in a new place because my mother had married my wicked step-father, and I was a clinically depressed, suicidal teen trying to navigate through deep emotional pain.

I didn't get good grades any more. I hadn't done homework since the seventh grade. No teacher ever told me I had the potential to do something with my life.

I did manage to finish high school. And then I got married, at age seventeen, for lack of any better options. And also because, in my senior year, I came home from school one day to find a Volkswagon "bug" in the driveway, the keys to which my mother handed over, telling me, "Let's face it, you're not going to college, so I took the money out of your savings account (which were funds from a death benefit paid out after Dad died) and bought you a car. You can stop borrowing mine now."

I still had a goal: I would train horses and write. I did begin writing. One of my first published pieces appeared in a horse magazine. But I became pregnant at eighteen, had my daughter on my nineteenth birthday, and in the years that followed, we adopted several children and eventually came to the realization that we could either feed our kids or feed our horses, so the horses had to go (all except my beloved pony, Silver, who lived to be twenty-three and was the first horse my daughter ever rode).

This story has a happy ending, it really does. When my marriage ended in divorce, I finally went to college. The snooty lady in the admissions office at UC Riverside looked at my high school transcript and explained that "for some people" community college is the best option, and so I went to Chaffey for two years, earned straight A's, applied to UCR again, was admitted with a full scholarship and graduated cum laude two years later (this, while raising four children as a single parent). In my senior year, one of my English papers was accepted into Ideas of Order, the prestigious "journal of letters" for UCR's English department.

Before I'd ever begun college, though, I'd been freelance writing for a decade, and I'd had a book published by a national publishing house, so really, writing was my first career. I began teaching after college so that I'd be able to support my kids, since I never received a dime in child support from my husband. Oh, and while I taught high school full time and continued to raise my own rowdy teens, I entered a graduate program, earning a master's degree in literature.

Yeah, I rock. (Little pat on the back there.)

Of course, I still had a colleague approach me one day as I stood in a processional line with nineteen other teachers, proudly wearing my cap and gown in UCR blue and gold colors, about to walk out onto the football field with our graduating students. She said, "Kay, you're wearing the wrong colors."

"No...." was my confused response.

"Yes, you are. Those aren't Cal State colors." (Only other academics, I think, will appreciate the bias in the distinction here. At least I hope so.)

"I'm a UC grad," I told her.

"What? No you're not!"

Really? Upon what did she base her judgment? That same old far-too-pensive expression? My tendency, still, to wear boots and cowboy shirts and drop "ain't" into a conversation just to shock my fellow academics? Here was Miss Madden all over again.

I have continued to encounter other Miss Maddens in my life, a few in particular in very recent days because I chose to teach Honors level classes this year, after twenty-four years of saying "Give me the sweathogs!" because those were the kids I could relate to. Some... people with whom I teach feel I am not qualified to teach in the Honors program. Things have been said, intimations have been made.

But I'm no longer the quiet little girl who sadly returned her green dot book to the shelf. So beware, Miss Maddens of the world. Stop trying to bring down my success at the end of the rainbow with your self-righteous superiority. That ain't gonna fly anymore. Because I know who I am. See?

Leaving before it's time to go....

The family member of a close friend killed himself last week.  His funeral is today.

It’s been a long time since I wrote about suicide.  Most of my bi-polar and depressive friends have been doing just fine on their meds or using the strategies they’ve learned in therapy so that they can quickly arrest a descent into the ominous dark spiral.  I’m grateful for that.  I love all of them and would be devastated if any one of them chose to take the shortcut-of-no-return, as J did.

This was a young man who had been troubled for a long, long time, though he was not without love and support and encouragement from patient, sincere, understanding family members.  But… in spite of their best efforts, he began to feel helpless in the face of the events which comprised his life… and one night when that feeling overwhelmed him, he opted for permanent relief from the pain….

And so my friends, this is just the gentlest of reminders:

We can never control the circumstances of our lives.  We can only control our response to those circumstances.  This is true for all of us, whether we’re happy and well-adjusted or have been bashed around by the harsh, capricious nature of life in this world.

As I wrote in The Dogs WhoSaved Me, forty+ years ago I was a clinically depressed teen who had lost all reason to live.  Well… save one: Rufus, the dog who taught me what loyalty and unconditional love are all about kept me from leaving before it was really time to go.  Back then, if someone had told me, “Just hang on, K; in a few short years you’re going to have four incredible kids and even more grandkids and you’ll go to college and earn a master’s degree in literature and become a published author,” I would have told them they were nuts.  And yet here I am with a thousand blessings to be thankful for every single day.

We cannot know, day by day, which way the path of life will turn or what obstacles will appear before us.  But from this side of life I can see that there is balance in all things.  For every rotten tomato life throws at us, a golden apple will fall from a tree nearby and roll onto the path at our feet.  We just have to keep our eyes open, keep looking for the beauty (because believe me, it’s there, even when the dark clouds above us shut out the light for a bit and we can’t quite see it) and above all, keep making forward progress—even if it is measured in inches—so we don’t miss the good stuff.  And trust me, there’s a whole lot of good stuff along the way.  Sometimes we just have to hunker down in the bottom of the boat and wait until the storm passes.  (Hug yourself and rock if it helps.  Don’t laugh; Dr. Temple Grandin would agree with me.  I did this in a figurative sense when I would sit on my bedroom floor and listen to music for hours.  Better yet, hug a fur person.)  Just… don’t give up and jump overboard.  Your feelings are real, and I would never discount them.  I’ve had them myself.  I know how much it hurts.  But when the pain seems unbearable, gather around you those things that you love and hang on; clear skies and a gorgeous sunrise are just a few moments away….