Simple steps for when you most need a lifeline.

So one of my favorite quotes when I’m not feeling well (and by not feeling well I mean I’m having a really hard time with suicidal ideation. I don’t actually want to die but it’s almost as if there is something chemical that keeps triggering that switch) is, just to give you a heads up, ironic given the topic. But, for some reason, it works for me. As ironic and insensitive as it may sound (I am a firm believer in being genuine and still mindful to wording things as sensitively as I can), in that moment I  get some relief from an old FDR quote. Paraphrased, it’s basically: when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. I figure if a sailor’s knot can hold a ship to a dock, it can sure as well at least keep me holding on for the time being.

It’s not a quick fix but it’s a reminder of what I need to do. Tying a knot is a skill you need to know before you need it and its utility is to hold something together. This is my metaphorical knot when I need something to hang on.  Different things work for everybody and I’m not saying it will work for you but if you’re like me, you keep trying something new, never expecting anything to stick and then something seems to have at least a little adhesiveness. Because because mental illness is a fickle and confusing thing and I can only speak to my experience, I suggest the following. If it works for you, then it has made writing this impromptu post worth it. If it doesn’t, as hard as it is, keep trying because something could surprise you (even if you feel like that is a Hallmark thing to say and there is no way that could happen, been there).

Okay, so let me walk you through it. Chances are, if you don’t feel well, you aren’t up to doing a lot of things, so determine tasks with your depressed self in mind, meaning don’t get overly enthusiastic about solutions that sound great when you feel well but will be barriers when you don’t.

Below you’ll see that I address the note and use the word “you” instead of “I.” I write “you” because, at least for me, when I’m having suicidal ideation, the person telling me I can’t get past it might at the moment feel like the real me but it isn’t. And the real me isn’t going to be there if I’m that bad so I essentially write a note for myself for when I need it. It’s short, sweet, and in that moment I can trust it because I know the better version of myself that thinks more clearly wrote it knowing how hard that moment is.

Step 1: Address your note. Keep it short. Example:

Hey Atlas,

I know you don’t feel well right now and you’re not up to a lot but just trust me on this one, do each of these things your list and it will be okay.

Step 2: Write down the following on a piece of paper (these exact words in this exact order):

Something that brings you relief:
Something that brings you comfort:
Something that makes you feel connected:
Something that makes you feel supported and loved:

Note, these should be very easy and simple to do. Mine, for example, are as follows:

Something that brings you relief: Open up your Cooking Craze app. Don’t spend any money but play this until you can at least think.

Something that brings you comfort: Put on your soft hoodie, pick up three things that you can easily put away/throw away in one minute. Put on either your I want to process and embrace the suck right now playlist or your pick-me-up playlist. [I actually have mine under the playlists tab if you are into this idea. Or you can just go here:]

Something that makes you feel connected: text somebody you miss. All you have to do is say, “Hi.” When they respond, respond back. It only has to be one sentence.

Something that makes you feel supported and loved: Open your planner, page 3 or 4. [This is a page where I have written down things that people have said to me in the past, including myself, that have made me feel loved or good about myself. It can be validating like acknowledging something I have done well or just an expression of how the person feels).

Step 3: If you took the time to read this, you clearly haven’t quit yet. Love, Atlas.

I prefer a handwritten note because I’m almost always home when I need it but it can be an email, a note in your phone, whatever works for you. For me, the note just says, Hey, you believed in this enough at one point to write it down. 

If you try it and it works, or if you try it and it doesn’t, I’d love to hear about it. I haven’t ever read about this particular coping solution but I’m sure somebody else has written about it at some point and it kind of fits within the overall umbrella of making some sort of plan. Whether it is this or something else, I hope you find something that helps you.

Do you have other things that work for you? Have you tried anything that didn’t work?

Sucker.

I want a lollipop. I want a red lollipop full of swirls and a stick as long as my arm. The colors should spin like a merry-go-round, or the spokes on a bike, round and round until I’m dizzy from head to toe. When I hold it up it should stick out like a red kite on a blue sky line, shaping clouds of white elephants chasing circus peanuts. It should exist forever and never run out of licks. It should be everything I want it to be.

But I wake and I open my eyes and it’s only a sucker. It cracks when I bite it, like grinding rock against rock. It sticks to my lips and to my jeans when I drop it- and I always drop it. The taste dulls. Fields of cherries become watered down, flooded out. I want a lollipop but he gave me a sucker, sticky and now fuzzy, cracking and dissolving until one day it will only be a soggy stick.

Walking beside me in the dark.

I stand next to this twin of mine. This twin that looks as much like me as a sewer does a stream. It is bent over under the burden of an invisible weight. I hold my cane behind my back and debate going it alone. It has the nose of Cyrano with a stout end. Mine is nothing special but normal all the same. Its ears droop and it drags along in a tired sort of way. I stand upright wearing my a silver wrist watch and finely laced black leather shoes. I wear a crisp peacoat tailored to my tall frame while it is draped in an ill-fitting sheet with a ghostly silhouette. There is nothing gentle or feminine about it, nothing bold or masculine. This is not my twin whose beige skin is broken along like the cracks of a concrete wall, broken and to the mercy of any passersby. This is not my twin that walks beside me, always chained to me where our feet meet the sidewalk. This is not my shadow.

Afraid of the dark.

I’m feeling better. This is the moment that always scares me because it is in such close proximity to when I have felt my worst and I can still taste that bitterness and feel how it makes my mouth water as if I’m going to vomit so violently I can feel my stomach spasm. I’m feeling better but I still remember vividly how it was and how it could be.

Depression takes such a strong hold of me when I’m in its throes that I get to a point where I can’t really remember the feelings I had outside of it. It is like somebody reached inside me and took out the best emotions and left only the most shallow, dark, or destructive. I don’t miss being happy in those times because I don’t really believe I was ever happy. I know I was, at some point, logically, the way you just know the sun has risen before and warmed the Earth when you step outside on a morning mid-winter and it’s cold, dark, and you can see your breath more immediately. You have to prepare yourself for the uncomfortable chill that comes from stepping out of a hot shower and even if you’re so cold you can’t physically bring the feeling to your skin, you know that at some point you rushed outside half-clothed, sprinting across the grass to leap in a cold, blue pool. While your mind has memory of it, your body has none, not even the memory of a feeling.

black pathway between green trees towards body of water during daytime
Photo by Josh Sorenson on Pexels.com

But exiting depression is the opposite, like stepping out of a dark movie theater directly into the mid-day sunlight. It’s almost blinding. You’re glad it’s sunny but the jolt is startling because part of you is still sitting in the dark and trying to decide if you want to leave the familiar comfort of a seat you’ve been in for several hours, only starting to stir and not eager to wake up. You begin to brim with energy at the idea that you have the rest of the Sunday afternoon to get things done, to be productive, and to be outside in your neighborhood and a part of the world but you still know at some point it will get dark again. It won’t always be like this and the night will blanket your world and the dark black of it will fill the spaces between your house and your neighbors’ and between you and anybody else. It makes you enjoy the sunlight more but you do so reservedly this time, unable to love it without abandon. As good as it feels, as much as its energy radiates your skin and your soul stretches satisfying after a long nap, at the back of your mind you’re already afraid of the dark.

empty hallway
Photo by Paweł L. on Pexels.com

Arori (third installment)

That night was the most fantastic and terrifying thing I had ever seen. Raining golden, red, and amber sparklers is a wonderful image but terrible in actual reality. And as much as it scared me, I couldn’t avoid it. It would be too cliche to compare it to the sensation of not being able to look away from a train wreck. And really not much very like it. The experience was something more comparable to when something happens and you’re just caught there, in that moment. You can feel time spinning around you but those whole few seconds open up to you as if you were meant to see it. You have to look not because you’re intruding, like a person gawking at somebody in a car crash, but because it’s like it’s happening inside you. It’s hard to explain but once it happens you just know. And that was why I had to wander back out into the street again the next night.

afterglow art backlit bokeh
Photo by luizclas on Pexels.com

The potholes still had rainwater in them from that afternoon. I put my hands into the pocket of my hoody as I strolled down the street, just looking, hoping for something. I walked and walked but the sky was too cloudy and every time I thought I got a glimpse of the moon is was covered up by another cloud. Nothing changed the  rest of the week. Every time I went out and every time, nothing.

I chalked it up to my imagination which was what everything had always turned out to be. I was always more afraid, more excited, more anxious, more everything than other people. My mother called it being sensitive which I certainly was and always had been. Nobody ever really figured out what made me that way but I was terrified of my own shadow and I had an overactive imagination. So I stopped wondering and wandering. I tried to take my mind off it and even avoided looking out the window at night.

Then one night I didn’t have to sneak out to look and I didn’t have to come up with a reason to avoid it. Some friends and I went to some mediocre movie and walked home after. It was a short walk and they lived nearby. Purposely, I stayed engaged in conversation and looked down at my green converse, searching for a speck of dirt even though I’d long ceased to care. Yet all along in the back of my head was what I had seen those two nights and I couldn’t shake it. One peek, I told myself, and then you’re done. I  thought I saw a pale toe hanging over the moon’s edge.  Sure enough there was still a toe, and more toes, a foot, and an ankle. The ankle rolled slowly back and forth almost as if to an unheard song.

Without even thinking about it I started to branch off into a side street. My friends called after me and I yelled back that I forgot an errand for my mom. I stepped up my pace so none of them would join me. I could feel their surprised gazes on my back until I rounded the nearest corner. Then I dared to look up, searching for her.

Arori, I called in my mind. Arori. Persistence didn’t seem to pay off after a few minutes, then I looked down to narrowly avoid a black cat with fiercely green eyes. When I returned my glance to the moon,  there she was, staring calmly down at me as if she had been there all night. There you are.

Here I am. I’d forgotten how much her voice sounded like a melody and a hum at the same time.

Hello, I laughed, this time out loud. She just sat there patiently, expressionless and looking back at me.

Then I was at a loss. What do you say to a, whatever she was? I hadn’t had enough conversations with people in the sky to have experiences to fall back on, probably luckily for me.

Silver pupils sparkled under long black eyelashes. She rolled them playfully. You’d be surprised how many conversations I have with people like you.

People talk to you?

Yes, they talk to me. Quite often, actually.

But you’re not real.

She laughed.

But really, you’re not.

I suppose you could say that, depending on your definition of real.

Well, according to science…

I know what science says. Rock. And I know what science says about rocks.

And it’s all true.

Well it’s science. It’s true, and often times quite reliable it seems, until it’s overturned. In that respect, it’s temporary and I’ve been here longer than “temporary.” Science does describe me but just because man hasn’t unraveled the truth entirely does not mean that is all there is to me. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Juno’s fountain.

A lot of days I like to sit in the town square and eat my lunch—egg salad on crumbling white bread and grape juice usually. It’s quiet enough but just the right rhythm. I slide under the same tree, depending on the weather, not too mindful about getting dirt on my pants—that’s what black slacks are for. The clock chimes noon and by fifteen after I’ll have peeled back the plastic wrap, alternating my focus between my meal and the cars passing by, going wherever they’re supposed to go, places not on my list of to-dos. Most of them come and go on bikes, riding in cars, elbows on windows and cigarettes snug between fingers, walking briskly by, eager to squeeze an appointment in the lunch hour. Always coming and going, focusing on saving time or wasting it.

Sometimes though, you get the people attracted by the square, the ones who amble aimlessly around the city, looking for something to make their day matter or to inspire them. They’re the only ones who come here. I don’t quite know why—for me it’s the proximity of it to my office, a bleak place that always seems to leave me achy for a little sunlight, even from a rundown square like this one. But they stop, take a look around, have lunch perched on the fountain in the center; it’s a crumbling one, spare stones caught between worn crevices, a nostalgic throwback caught from some Greek deity and dragged to a nowhere American town. The centerpiece pays tribute to some goddess, Juno, I think, but I can’t be sure. At any rate, she’s missing a few fingers, her ring and middle, and looks as if she’s taken a blow to the cheek, probably by the same wind that’s causing her death grip on that sheet pressed against and pulled from her contours. The people who stop by usually either ignore her presence or stare at her romantically, a little too strongly for my taste, like they’re staring at a piece in the Louvre instead of a marble mirage drowning in a crumbling brick courtyard. I get tempted to tell them to knock it off but they’d be too blind to see that anyways.

So I keep my teeth behind my closed lips and just watch them get on with it and sometimes I’ll see something that interests me. Every once in a while, a couple will stop by out of boredom and try to capture a romantic moment. It’s generally cliche or forced—they’ll try to hold hands just the right way, smile at just the right angles as if being photographed in time. Memory doesn’t really work that way but it will take a few years for them to realize that—to grasp the idea that memories usually trigger involuntary emotional reactions, not glorified black-and-white or sepia tones. But okay.

A lot of them are young couples, like the one I saw early spring, hatchlings just shedding their last bits of shell. She was pretty, but in an awkward way—an honest but unwrinkled smile that looked like it sat just where it belonged, followed by a body that was all elbows and knock-knees. She was a bit sheepish and her lashes long and dark like a lamb’s, shades over unscathed eyes. Ivory skin covered bony fingers which grazed the palm of a boy about the same age, maybe sixteen, maybe a year older than her. He had one of those closely-shaven buzz cuts freshly done in mom’s kitchen, a school baseball tee covering scrawny limbs which would be trunks by the end of spring, and high tops just a little too long for his legs.

They took forever to get up to the fountain, him stopping periodically to tickle her sides, her to giggle and wriggle away—both of them trying to avoid stomping the daisies planted all around them, placed in spots a little too delicate for walkways. When they finally got up to the fountain, in the midst of all that marble, she looked up in awe at the goddess like a young kid does at a baseball star. I smirked—she reminded me of someone I once knew, someone with the same endlessness in her eyes. He didn’t spend much time staring at the fountain but instead focused on his companion, frozen in step. He took a breath, as if he was about to dive into the water before them. I waited, knowing it would happen. It always did and it had to at some point. He slid off his shoes and socks, dipped a toe in, bobbing his head forward a moment. Then he dove, leaning in, nose first, face breaking the water’s surface, lightly brushing his lips at the corner of her mouth, and then resting them there. She shied away a moment, smiling as if it tickled, and then faced him to return the kiss. Feeling a bit strange, I turned my head, watched a few passing cars. I observed the patches of grass worn out by treading feet, left only with mud and a few struggling blades. I searched for a passing bird, looking down on the same scene. But I found nothing so lively, nothing that wasn’t automated, nothing else in the passing world that had anything to say to me. Nothing that soothed the forced feeling of longing that was itching its way up my skin. Something here was all too familiar.

Continue reading Juno’s fountain.

Arori, the painter.

Heat seared towards me on the tails of red sparks. I was in the wrong end of a firework shot towards the ground rather than away from it. It felt like one of those moments you see in an apocalypse movie. I was going to die. We all were. But when I looked up at the woman, I noticed her eyes for the first time. Large, but not in a looming kind of way. They were black but a gentle black with a twinkle, like a diamond sat in each of them. You’d think she would have realized what she had done. You’d think there would be an expression of guilt, or at least one of panic. But nothing. She just waited.

And then the shower fell to the earth all around the awning. It looked like handfuls of sparklers falling to the ground and extinguishing in puddles. Steam curled up in snakelike tendrils from where each spark had landed. There was some hissing for a bit and then nothing. Silence except for a dented pop can being pushed across the pavement down the street.

I thought that when I looked up she would be gone, like she had never been there. Just a constellation outlining a shape I had imagined. But she was, and was staring down at me knowlingly, like we had known each other my whole life. She smiled and I saw rows of pearls, real pearls.

Arori, I thought. I didn’t understand where that came from. My name is Arori. I looked over my shoulder for somebody. Up here. She smiled again.

“Oh.” Very eloquent response of course.

She nodded and turned away from me, spreading pink, orange, and yellow across the sky. It was most vibrant in the east and faded out into the west where she sat on the silver edge. Goodnight. But, it’s almost morning. I heard a laugh that sounded like a short melody. Maybe for you.

The lady waved a few multicolored fingers then hung onto the moon as it flipped around and the sun began to rise above a cloud like a child slowly peering out from under the blankets in the morning.

Out to Sea.

You left. I still ache for the leaves that were on the ground the last time you danced across the lawn. I watched you go. I let you go, pledging to follow that old time rule: if you love something, let it go and if it comes back to you, its yours. Well, doesn’t really work that way with ships because your current never came back my way. You left. And I stayed.

I stood there, that afternoon. I’m sure my body witnessed the sunset-they’re so pretty on beaches- but I didn’t. I was glued to that skyline, the one where the waves slip into the clouds. The water washed my sandy feet again and again, a little colder, a little more each time. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been. All I know is sometimes I’ll drive by, peer over that hill, and see myself, rooted there, hair surrendering to the wind, watching that skyline. And that’s when I know, even if I haven’t remembered to look in a while, that you left. You never came back. And I’m still standing there.

#OUTtober and Blogtober all in one.

First of all, I’m not LGBTQ, which I think makes it all the more important that I’m more focused on LGBTQ+ voices in October than simply my own. Somebody close to me did not realize he was questioning until well in his 20s, long after college and a lot of the community of support he would have had access to was gone. I don’t remember the first time I learned what LGBTQ was but I know that, in spite of how much I had heard about it, when he told me, it still threw me for a loop because it impacted my life in a big way. The impact itself, regardless of the reason, was jarring but it was more disconcerting that I had trouble wrapping my head around something I thought I really accepted. I thought I was open-minded, and was probably to a degree, but this particular time it was too far out of the box for me to process. I have learned more about the challenges and pride of being LGBTQ by listening to him talk as he goes through this and I understand it more than I did after any documentary, class, etc. Having somebody that close to me go through it really changed my understanding and made me realize how much I don’t understand or can’t empathize with because I haven’t walked through it myself.

OUTtober and blogtober in 1.png

With that being said, I think it would be better to share stories like the one I have been fortunate to witness as he goes through it. We spend a lot of time debating issues which affect LGBTQ people but there are a lot of people in this country who, in spite of having strong opinions, have never considered these experiences outside their own lenses. If you have any story of your own experience, whether it is coming out, a particular situation, a moment of joy as a member of the LGBTQ community, or anything else that you think could be personal, humanizing, and eyeopening, please share it. I will post your entry and link it to your page.

Since I have learned just how much more I have to learn, regardless I am going to post articles or something each day of October, but it would be great if I was including the voices that matter most. If you do, please email me at atlasgriffin12@gmail.com. 

Thank you for your time and I wish you the best.

The painter.

I looked up. It was one of those nights where I had nowhere to go so I just picked a star in the sky and followed the streets I thought would get me closest to it, ignoring the fact that none of the streets were on hills and I wasn’t climbing any higher. It didn’t matter though because I wanted to be closer to the star, not in possession of it. Doing that would only make it a flimsy night light I could buy at the corner store adjacent to my flat.

So like I did most nights when I couldn’t sleep, I just followed. I figured the less I looked at the ground, the less aware I was that I was pinned to it, like a piece of fabric safety pinned to the quilt–I hopefully wasn’t being sewn into the earth any time soon. If I could just avoid looking at the ground and try to make sure nothing got in my sights but the sky, then maybe I could convince myself that was where I was.

In order to see the moon, I had to round the corner of a crumbled brick building with dusty windows that distorted my reflection when I glanced at them. The moon wasn’t really my thing. I generally preferred the simple stars but that night it seemed different to me. Nobody believes when I tell them what I experienced, what I saw on any night of any year. They say my nighttime walks are just dreams and maybe this one was but I was certain there was a woman sitting on the moon. I had no idea how but it was glaringly obvious she sat there nonetheless.

She had short, chocolate brown hair that hung in loose curly tendrils only to her jaw line. A thin, white, lace dress hung from her ivory shoulders. Her ankles were crossed and hung over one of the edges, keeping her balance as she leaned into the sky, painting silver and gold stars. She was articulate and graceful. She wasn’t worried about who was watching her or the lengths of her strokes. It was like she was illustrating something that had already been created and she was just filling in the truth.

People always tell you this junk about how you’re looking into the past when you see the stars and explain the science of light-years. And, I generally am in favor of knowledge of whatever kind in order to support belief but there she was and I didn’t need any other sort of explanation. It just was. She was there painting stars, and then, as if it was part of the plan, she began painting something else.

It was as if a child had tipped his crayon box over into the sky, a crayon box that had been left out in the sun turning it into melted wax. She spread the melted wax with her fingers in different directions. Blue violet and indigo. Fuschia and Sea Green. Turquoise and orchid and a hundred other colors. Stars burst from clouds and their golden sparks rained down through the atmosphere until it turned into cool, light drops that brushed my face before falling to the sordid bricks in the sidewalk. It was like watching the creation of something. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing but it felt mythological and real, magical and true all at the same time. I just knew I somehow was a part of it.

And then she did something I didn’t expect. She began to paint with crimson and firebrick and forest green, grey and black. And something in me grew fearful. I could feel my heart pressing slightly harder against my chest, my breath catching. Then she ran palms of paint across the fierce, new clouds and as radiant as they were, I felt uneasy and as if an invisible leash tugged me back to my stoop. I’d just stepped under the awning when the clouds she’d painted, those clouds that had been so beautiful and graceful, ripped themselves open and a crimson flood of sparks fell toward the earth.