A Little Bit More Truth for You

I'm sort of lost in this 30 days of truth exercise. I know I'm a few days behind, up to day 25 when I think I should be on day 27, but I feel like I may have skipped a day and lied too much already. I'm not out and out lying, I'm just obscuring the truth too much. It's an old habit, one that goes back to my childhood and having an abusive, alcoholic parent. That was the lie that I had to learn to tell; I couldn't tell the truth about that situation at all. Not, I've since realized, that anyone would have done anything to rectify the situation--there are no heroes in that story--but it was a shameful thing to me as a child.

So Day 25 is → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.

I'd probably have to give credit to David for the past couple of decades and to my mother for the couple of decades before that. There is no thing that has kept me tethered to this life, except the feeling that my exit might disappoint only those two people.

Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?

It's funny, but the suicide question is one that every therapist is trained to ask, so I've heard it a lot. Years ago, I used to lie and say no, but then a therapist told me that everyone at some point or another has had thoughts of suicide. So I changed my answer to: It's a plan, but it's not today's plan.

It's not today's plan, but about a year and a half ago, I really had to think long and hard about why it wasn't that day's plan. I thought that for many, many days in a row. I was going through one of the worst bouts of depression that I've ever had, and I really was afraid that I was going to harm myself. It seemed so inevitable that I had a hard time coming up with reasons to make it through a given day. Looking back, I can't remember even what those reasons were.

Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?

I guess a pat answer would be my health, which is fair to middling. The Brain has other ideas about that, but I'm fine with giving that answer.

Etc.

Oh, dude. I am reading the funniest book right now: Elinore Pruitt Stewart's Letters of a Woman Homesteader. It was free Kindle download from, I think, Amazon; I downloaded it probably more than a year ago, but never bothered to open it up until a few days ago. I wish now I had read it ten years ago so that I might have read it ten times by now.

What else? I started teaching this past week and I think I'm going to have to teach this 3 month run and then give it up (along with my ancillary job loading kilns and working as a studio monitor). It's not because I don't enjoy teaching, but because I'm spending too much time at the studio doing everything but my own work. The trade off is not worth it to me.

I'm also ready to go back to school perhaps. After I passed up the position in the botany lab, I realized that I do want to be in school. I do want to be studying something, even if it's just to keep The Brain limber. Maybe I'll take a welding class.