Rock Bottom

From May until August, I worked at a mental health hospital called The Pavilion in Champaign, IL. I don't think I have ever felt such a wide range of emotions on a daily basis, and there was rarely the opportunity to pause and reflect on them. As much as this is taught in social work programs across the country, no one tells you how to actually do that when you're working 90 hour weeks for 3 months straight. Anyway, while I was there, I worked with some teen girls who were suicidal and engaging in self-harming behaviors. As much as I tried to empathize with them, I found it hard to imagine getting to the point of being so hopeless and numb that hurting myself became an option. In my head, I could imagine the things these girls faced, but I could never effectively put myself in that situation to understand how I would respond. I had felt similar emotions, but they hadn't been caused by the same thing. I definitely don't want this to sound like I was blaming those girls or judging them; I just hadn't experienced the depth of their emotions in my own life.

This changed a few weeks ago. As much as I like to think that I have it all together and am "mentally sound" or whatever you want to call it, there were a solid few days when all I thought about was how I could feel something again. I felt alone, stuck, and completely useless. I felt like all the progress I had made this far in my life was for nothing and any future I had with my goals depended on something completely out of my control. I had never been in this place before. I was constantly thinking about the person that hurt me and trying to see what could have been done differently to make it better. I couldn't find anything that should have been different, and that made me feel totally hopeless. It was at this point that I started to think of ways to take back control of my emotions and the pain I was feeling.

I hated feeling like this and thinking the things I thought, and to be totally honest, I haven't quite figured out how to change those things. I still feel very alone. I spent a long time trying to make things work with someone I loved. I spent countless hours bettering myself in my career field. I made plan after plan seeking ways to keep improving and become the best I could be to live up to what I knew I could do. All of that was taken away in an instant because someone else had more power and influence than I did. Even now that I'm out of that situation, other people are still in control of what happens and how it all gets fixed. The only thing keeping me together has been my choice to find new things to work on. I have started exercising more like I have wanted to do in a long time. This time it's for me, not so I run into a certain someone. I have started working on my spiritual development and finding ways to make more covenants. These are new things for me, but they are holding me together right now. I've had to completely change my life plans, at least for the moment, so I could stop allowing someone else to have control. I had to make new goals so I knew I was doing them for myself. I finally learned what my girls were going through and how they felt when they turned to hurting themselves. I wish there was a way for me to tell them that I get it.

I constantly told my girls to find out what they wanted from those behaviors and find another way to get it. Most of their responses came down to wanting attention or power. Like I said, I found that I wanted control. The only way I could get that was to focus on myself and make changes to my direction in life. As long as that person knew what I wanted out of life, I felt like I was only doing those things to prove him right or wrong and to show that he couldn't take them from me. I know I will get back to those goals at some point, but I need to have a stronger foundation before I do so I know they are still what I want, not what I want because of someone else. Change is scary, but it's even scarier to feel like my only way to control myself is to beat myself down. I can use that same energy to build myself up, and that has to be my new goal.