Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: bird on ice... (LONG POST) *>
From: <KZAHLLER@MIAMIU.BITNET>
Date: Saturday, 23 Jan 1993 13:25:13 EST
Organization: Miami University - Academic Computer Service

Magda-Wolf shifts uneasily in the corner where she has been
quietly sitting, staying out of the way and watching her new
friends.  Callahans's is a place you find when you need to find
it, true, but perhaps it is also a place you find when someone
else needs you to find it.  She tentatively clears her throat, and
comes out of the shadows far enough that she hopes the small gray
bird can see her.

"I know we don't know each other very well, and I'm--obviously--
not Thyra, but I think I need to say something here.

"I know exactly how you are feeling.  Much of what you said hit
way too close to home.  I, too, have fought the depression and
utter emptiness ever since I can remember.  It's only in the last
year or two, thanks to a lot of healing inside, that I have realized
that, no, everyone in the world did not go through their childhood
and subsequent rest of their life feeling completely, mind-numbingly
alone.  It's only been recently that some very good friends got it
through my head that it IS safe to let down the walls and care about
people.  I've had to realize that no, it was not normal for a child
of 7 to be seriously evaluating suicide and dispassionately gathering
information on and comparing various methods of committing the act.

"Obviously, I didn't do it, and I really doubt I ever will.  Call
it stubborness, maybe, a severe religious upbringing, whatever,
that kept me from it then.  Now, it is against my code of honor--
Magdas, no matter how bad things are, don't quit and take the easy
way out, we lower our heads, get stubborn, grit our teeth and hang
in there.  That's not to say we're perfect or strong, or anyting like
that.  Far from it.  I think it's just that my curiousity to see what
will happen to me in the future is too great.

"But that curiousity is a luxury I didn't have most of my life.  I
remember going off to my first year of university and my mother tried
to give me a hug good-bye.  I went stiff and didn't hug back--up til
then I had lived my life with the *conscious* application of the same
stoic philosophy you're following.  NEVER SHOW THEM YOUR SCARS OR
SOFT SPOTS OR YOU ARE DEAD!  That first year at college was a tough
one.  I started out as literally not being able to be physically
touched.  Then I found a group of friends--kind of like Callahan's,
actually--that were a lot off the wall, lots of fun, accepted me as
I was, and were different like me.  There were still problems and I
didn't know how to help myself--I'd have had to know what was wrong
first, adn I didn't--but I started to get better.  I learned how to
have fun.  I learned how to talk to people and look them in the eyes
without quitting breathing, having panic attacks, or being afraid of
reading in their eyes what they thought of me.  I learned how to
open up and show emotions.  And I got hurt--badly.  I survived two
rape attempts, a lot of mind games, a lot of manipulation.  But I
survived.

"By the second year I was pretty well a nut case.  I was trying
desperately to get my feet on the ground and figure out how I felt,
why, who I could trust, what had gone wrong, etc, etc, ad infinitum,
ad nauseum.  It hurt to realize some of the people I had trusted
had used me and were not really my friends.  I became very bitter
about some of them.  But I decided the risks were worth it, and
one year was not a fair test of trying to come out of my shell.

"The third year I walled myself off from most people while at the
same time looking happy and bouncy and like nothing was wrong to
the world.  I still felt utterly alone in the world and we aren't
even going to get into the romantic disasters I seemed to stumble
into all the time.  I ended up being "Mama Magda" to the entire
group!  I took care of everyone else's needs but my own and told
myself it was because THEY needed help more than I did--dumb.

"By the next year, I was burned out.  I remember finding out one
last betrayal and literally walking around in shock for a week.
I tried to feel but I couldn't.  I tried to care but I couldn't.
I decided the only way to survive was to make myself so busy I
didn't have time to think about how bad it hurt/how much I could
no longer feel.  I went through my senior year of college with 2
majors, 2 minors, 2 jobs, and no time for myself.  I burned out
big time.

"I know what you mean about not being able to feel.  There came
a point where I couldn't feel anything and I knew I should be
terrified but I couldn't even be afraid about it.  I quit working
as hard as I should on things I wanted to do, I lost all motivation,
I had no energy.  I would come home, turn on music, sit down, and
basically stare at the wall for hours at a time dispassionately
trying to figure out what was going on and why I couldn't care.
I knew I was self-destructing, but I couldn't seem to find the enery
or will to do anything about it.  Your description of ice is excellent--
that's exactly the way it felt.  Frozen nothingness on the inside.  I
even started walking in front of traffic again.

"Fortunately for me, I began to get to know another group of friends
better--actually we're more like a family.  We got to be very close
during the next year (my first of grad school) so that I survived the
additional problem of moving to another city and literally having no
one there to talk to or who I knew.  My "foster Mom" (who is also a
Wolf, by the way) taught me a lot about myself during those years
(she also happens to be a psych nurse who suffers/ed from heavy
rounds of depression herself).

"What really made the difference was finding out I WAS NOT ALONE.
It really made a difference when I started understanding why I felt
the way I did, that others had felt the same way before me, were
still fighting the same battles, and were surviving.  I basically
became very selfish with my time and energy and started healing.
Part of the problem with the emptiness was I was totally psychologically,
emotionally, and physically drained.  I had to build up my store of
energy again--and let me tell you it's a long, slow, process.  I'm
still not done.  I also discovered there was too much bitterness I
was dealing with from things I felt I had been cheated of doing by
circumstances.  So, I decided to put my courage on the line and
do them.

"I went to Spain that summer and spent three months living and
studying there.  I proved to myself that I WAS capable of achieving
something, and of surviving on my own.  Then I helped move my
foster Mom to Wyoming.  On that trip, driving a cargo van (I'd never
driven a van before) down Medicine Bow pass in the dark, in high winds,
and with three cats loose and trying to 'help', I learned that despite
what I had always been told I was capable of deciding to do something
against everyone's advice, and doing it well, and on my own.

"That's when I really noticed the healing started.  I had my self-
confidence for the first time in my life, I had learned to start
seperating my goals from everyone else's goals for me, and I was
learning to like myself and decide that I was a pretty interesting
individual, warts and all.

"Taht was two years ago.  I still can't cry.  But I've learned to
LOVE hugs (would you like a Wolf Attack Hug?), I've learned to
be open and friendly (from being an extremely painfully introverted
person), and I've learned to be very choosy about who I let close
enough to me to really hurt me.  But there are those people, and I
do get hurt occasionally, but I know they don't mean to, they're
only human, and I hurt them unintentionally, too, sometimes.  I
just have to pick myself up, shake it off, and tell myself, well,
that's their opinion, and it doesn't match mine, and since I know
myself better than they do, well, they're wrong.

"My latest accomplishment is learning to let someone very special to
me inside all (I think) of my walls and learning to let myself be
loved--to take as well as give.

"Yes, changing old self-destructive habits is very hard and it is
a long, slow, painful process, but it can be done.  You know it, too,
and you know it is worth it or you wouldn't have come here and asked
for help.  That's an important part of the healing.  You know you
aren't the only one who feels/felt like nothingness inside, and
that certainly helped me.  You've shown anger, so you *aren't*
completely dead inside--you're just in shell shock, as it were.
You've got friends here who care about you, by your own admission,
and even new friends who care (and are worried about) you.

"As for the immediate problem:  this is a dream of yours, to be
a freelance worker, right?  This is your goal not someone else's
goal *for* you?  If it is, then get angry--don't let what others
have done (or not done) in the past cheat you of your right to
choose your own dreams and goals and accomplish them.  Remind
yourself of the things you achieved against everyone else's advice
and especially of those things you did even when you weren't sure
you could really do them.  Give yourself permission to fail--that
doesn't mean you're a bad or incompetent person.  It means you
made a mistake somewhere.  So, you look for that mistake, find
out what it was, and try again *and don't repeat the mistake this
time*.  I know whereof I speak--this is my second graduate degree,
you see.  After I got the first one, I realized I was in the wrong
field.  Sigh.  And I'm still not doing what I really want to do,
because I'm still fighting fear of incompetence and everyone else's
expectations.  I have a dream of being a writer, but I'm letting that
fear cripple me and if I don't learn to overcome it soon, I fear I'll
never be one.

"I'm not sure what else to tell you or your RL counterpart, Feather.
It hurts to see someone else going through the same thing I went
through and which, to some degree, I'm still going through.  I
think the keys to my survival, at least, were not isolating myself
from others and my very special circle of friends I could count on
to care about me and let me know I wasn't alone and who gave me
the time, support, and shoulders to cry/bitch on I needed while
I was healing.

"Be well, new friend."

Magda stands for a moment, unsure of herself, in front of Feather.
She fears she may be felt presumptuos (or even--Heaven forbid--
utterly boring and a total buttinsky), and that she may have
made the small gray bird unhappy.  She blushes with the
realization that she just spent entirely too much of everyone's
time running her mouth off and starts to go back to her corner
sit down and shut up again.