Pushing Pause

My friend Maunderer wrote a post the other day that got me thinking. I've been MIA in the blogging world for a while...I feel like I haven't had much to say lately, in person or on here, but this was a place to start writing again. He was talking about suicide, which reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in a while. About 6 years ago, I started thinking frequently about being in a bad car accident. Not so bad that it would kill me, but bad enough to put me in the hospital for a while...Maybe even a coma. There were several months there where I thought about this every day, frequently multiple times a day. It seemed to be a solution to a lot of things that were going on with me and in my life at that point. I didn't want to die, but it would sure be nice to hit the Pause button on my life for a bit.

Many things that I needed to change seemed to have a solution in this scenario. I needed people to reassure me of my importance to them. I needed to get out of the job I was in because it was depressing me. I was in an abusive relationship that I couldn't stay out of, and had tried many other ways to stop the madness there but hadn't found a solution that lasted more than a few days. My family was falling to pieces as well, with all the dysfunction we'd kept bundled up tight starting to oooze out & stink, and I didn't want to deal with all that lay under that set of problems either. And in general, I was just worn down to the point of exhaustion. So a few weeks' stint in the hospital seemed a great solution! People would get their perspectives straight, I'd know who really cared about me, and I'd be released from the responsibilities that I felt were pressing down on me...win, win, win, right? I knew it wasn't healthy thinking, but my rationale was "At least I'm not suicidal".

I told people around me, too, thinking that that was the 'good' thing to do, but never let on how frequently or seriously I thought about it. And as much as I wanted to be involved in a car crash, I couldn't bring myself to initiate it, for fear I'd not be hurt enough, or that I'd end up killing myself. I wanted God to orchestrate it for me so I'd be out of commission for a bit but not be liable for it, and started almost asking for that.

A few months went by like this, and I gradually made some progress around my issues with a fresh-out-of-grad-school LDS Family Services therapist. A couple of months of no contact with my 'boyfriend' had me feeling pretty strong, and then I caved in at one of his attempts to talk & spiraled back to where we'd been in a matter of days.

And that's when I decided I'd had enough & something really, REALLY had to change...so I moved to Memphis. It's been a tough five years here, but I think I really got a pause on some things that helped make a difference in my life. I found a great therapist who knows his stuff, and who wasn't afraid to challenge me on my issues & was able to give me the tools I needed to deal with them effectively. I spent 10 weeks at a treatment center where I began picking up the pieces of my Self, whom I had lost to codependency, and I started to regain my self-esteem. I found EDA and SLAA, 12-step programs that supported my recovery around my eating disorder and my relationship issues. As a result of all this I came to understand the Atonement of Christ in a way that being raised in the LDS church for two decades had never been able to communicate to me. And I was incredibly blessed to have a mother who pioneered the way and took great strides to look at the dysfunction she contributed to our family, improve herself, and work her own recovery process.

I've had a good life here in Memphis, but I'm ready to move forward. I've had relationships that were healthier than the ones before, both romantic and otherwise; I've felt the pain of having to say goodbye because I know I deserve to be treated better; and I've been told goodbye by others. It has definitely been a learning process these past 5 years, with, as Alma the Younger said, "exquisite pain" as well as "exquisite joy". I learned here in Memphis that I can get through whatever life throws at me, and I don't have to medicate myself through food or people (or the lack thereof), or by any other means, to be able to experience the lows and highs of life.

And I'm ready for a new change. My moving date to Phoenix will be exactly 5 years from when I arrived in Memphis. I'm ready to carry my recovery into my experiences of a new place and new people. I'll hopefully be working at a wilderness therapy program for troubled teens, and am eager to give back and help those who are travelling along a path similar to the one I've been on. I'm not finished improving, but I am definitely living a more whole, choiceful, overall peace-filled life than my 22-year-old self knew how to do when I left Norman, Ok on August 13, 2004. In some ways, Memphis WAS my "Pause" button that I prayed so hard for in Norman, and now I'm ready to hit "Play" in the HD version of my life!