I wasn’t suicidal, per se, but I had definitely and
altogether lost my will to live. I sat down on a flimsy deck chair outside
Toast in Norfolk around 10:30pm. My boyfriend, Mikey, and his roommate/bestie
were still listening to the rock band play. I whispered (shouted in his ear) to
Mikey that I wasn’t feeling well and was going to go sit down. This was true,
but not in the physical sense. I was sobbing internally, attempting to hold it
together (I was in public, you know). I couldn’t stand it anymore.
What I couldn’t stand was the overwhelming feeling of
suffering and sorrow that I felt with each intoxicated face that passed before
me. Don’t get me wrong; no one was walking around with a big sign on their head
that said, ‘I’M IN PAIN,’ but I knew it to be true because to live is to suffer.
I don’t say that to be dark or cynical. It’s just the sum of
the empirical data I have compiled over the course of my 24 years on this
lonely planet.
I finally got home and made it to the refuge of my room with
a candle still lit (oops…). I texted Mikey, ‘I haven’t stopped shaking all
day.’ I should have known that going to a festival of concerts with all the
noise and lights and people was not good for me; I could have told you that to
be true beforehand. But I wasn’t thinking and I decided to go anyways.
You see, episodes of bipolar disorder have triggers. Unique
to the individual, some of mine happen to be bright lights, loud noises, and,
most especially, crowds.
My mind keeps torturing me with the replaying of a scene
from tonight over and over. I was sitting by the door to the bar when a young
man, who looked to be around my age (24), walked outside into the chilly March
air dressed quite nicely. He was casually slipping on a beanie that covered up
the fact that he was completely bald. I wondered if he was in the middle of
chemo or had alopecia. Either way, it was the straw that broke this camel’s
back. I couldn’t conceive of him suffering in any way and me not being there to
help him.
Was I experiencing a weird form of survivor’s guilt? That my
portion of pain was removed with clear margins with one horrific, 8-hour
surgery rather than months of agonizing chemo? ‘Anna, stop. You’re thinking too
much into this,’ I thought. Then I had the sobering realization that every
single person at this festival had pain and a story and that I couldn’t take
their pain for them no matter how badly I wanted to.
This was not a coherent post, and it doesn’t really have a
point (I’ll tell you if I figure it out ;)). But I’ll just leave you with a
quote and a thought, neither of which are mine originally, that offer some sort
of response to this train wreck of a blog post.
First, a quote by Mr. Henri Nouwen: “Joy and sadness are
born at the same time, both arising from such deep places in your heart that
you can’t find words to capture your complex experience. But this intimate
experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us
beyond the limits of our existence (Out
of Solitude 277).”
In her seminal work, The
Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Fleming Rutledge
makes a recurring point that ends with the book in a crescendo: the work of
Jesus Christ on the cross will not only right every wrong on the Last Day, but
will erase any memory of it.
Oh, Lord, I pray that’s true.
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