Life Updates: September 2019

Alright, it's been a while since I've posted. A lot has happened. A lot has changed. For the sake of clarity for future posts, let's talk about my life.

I started this blog because-- actually, I'm not quite sure why I started this blog. I liked writing, I liked sharing stories of my life in (and now post) college, and I wanted to share that with whatever small audience I might have who was also interested. This blog has given me a lot of closure for certain aspects of my life, such as what I call "the dark years" in high school when I suffered severe mental illness and misdiagnosis (full post here)

I want this blog to be a place where I can share my truths and my life, the good things and the tough stuff. Here's a little of both, in the last couple months.

Suicide Prevention and 13 Reasons Why

My thoughts regarding the Netflix edits around the season one suicide scene

Trigger Warning: Depression, Mental Illness, Suicide, Self-Harm

  

Note: I will be discussing very heavy themes such as suicide, self-harm, and mental illness. Please always remember to take care of yourself and know that your mental well-being is more important than any article or written piece

I was honored to write a guest post for the prominent news site HuffPost, where I shared my thoughts regarding the first season of the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why". Here is the post, I highly recommend reading it prior to this updated thoughts post.

I did not watch any farther than season one. While I had originally enjoyed the series, the more time I spent reflecting on it the more problematic it became. Not only because a lot of the topics covered in the show were triggering for me personally, but because the manner in which they were tackled was problematic to say the least.

Ahead of the season three release, Netflix opted to remove a controversial and graphic scene from the first season, depicting the main character's suicide act. This was seen by many, myself included, as too little, too late. The weeks and months following the Netflix release led to an increase in the teen suicide rate, as well as an uptick in searches with keywords relating to suicide. While it is important to note that correlation is not causation (i.e. just because these tragedies corresponded with the release does not fault Netflix for this) and there are likely many other variables leading to this result. However, the correlation cannot and should not be ignored.

Here is my honest, straightforward, personal opinion on the series, as a psychology major, a mental health advocate, and a suicide survivor:

Stop. Don't watch it. Don't let your kids watch it. There are better shows and better movies to spend your time on. The series as a whole is depressing, tragic, horrifying, and glamorizes mental illness and suicide.

No Going Back

Every so often I will feel the itch

The regression, reminder of time

gone by. I will remember what

it was like in the dark days, before

I knew what it meant to see light.

My fingers crawl to the phone, wishing

I could text my mother, call my father.

Hear the love and care in their voice,

when they tell me I am doing good.

I do the little things to reach accomplishment;

arrive early to my flight, despite 

having ADHD. I make friends with flight

attendants, despite my social anxiety.

I live every day because I am here,

and part of me wonders if I'm supposed to be.

Rebecca died a long time ago. I killed 

that part of myself, so I could move on,

move forward, be reborn. A better version

of the me that used to be.

See, that's what no one tells you, when

you feel as though you're out of options.

You don't have to kill yourself to be reborn.

You just have to know you are worthy 

to keep moving forward.

I haven't written poetry, not in a long

time. I miss the way my fingers curve out 

beautiful symbols and meaningless tales.

I wonder if the poetic part is still

here, trapped somewhere beneath 

my pressed down darkness. 

We keep a part of ourselves, so we can learn. 

We remember so we may move forward, one foot

in front of the other, knowing we are making

a change, and knowing there is 

no going back. No going back to the 

dark places. My demons have shriveled up,

curled back into a cave, a faraway place

that has no place in my soul. Today,

the light outshines the darkness.

I made it this far.

I will make it farther. 

There is no going back.

Rivi D

July 2, 2019

How Good It Can Feel to Feel Good

Recently, I have been taking mental note of times when I feel good. Not just okay, not just fine, but truly, genuinely, good.

For me, these moments can be fleeting, but I am grateful nonetheless. They are afternoons of winding yarn and listening to a fantastic new audiobook. They are times when I feel inspired by a new project or plan. I am setting up a life for myself in Berkeley, CA, so in August I will be moving there. Thinking about that, planning my move, looking for apartments, and setting up job interviews and opportunities-- all of this gives me joy and fulfillment.

For quite some time now, I have been feeling down. Not clinically depressed, not panic attack level anxious, not the struggling dependence of ADHD, but just somewhat off. I didn't realize it fully until recently, and not until tonight, as I am writing this, am I recognizing the complexity of what I have been going through.

Social media will have you believe I am knitting up a storm of beautiful projects while laughing with my family on the weekends and holding it all together working part time at a local preschool. But that was hardly the case. Because life is never how it is on social media.

The Hygge of Singing the Shema

My Nightly Tradition with Nonny

My grandma on my mom's side, who I call Nonny, calls me every night to sing the Shema. When I was growing up, my parents would sing the Shema and "shelter us" song to my sister and me, and recently Nonny and I have continued the tradition nightly. We talk about our days, catch up, and recite the Jewish prayer.

This tradition started a few months ago. I live in Claremont, and my grandparents are only about an hour's drive away (which, to be fair, can greatly depend on LA traffic). I liked the idea of visiting my Nonny and Poppy, my maternal grandparents, about monthly. This slowed down a bit once I started teaching at Kiddie Academy, but I did get to visit them this past weekend.

A few months ago, when I was visiting them, I recited Shema with Nonny and we exchanged thoughts about what we are grateful for. It was a nice little thing to do before I slept and made me feel a type of familial comfort I hadn't felt since living on my own.

Sickness and Health

For the past two weeks, I have been pretty sick. It's what my supervisor at the preschool calls "preschool-itis", basically guaranteeing that the ridiculous amount of germs and illness we teachers come into contact with on a daily basis will make any new teacher come down with the all too common cold.

I'm not perfect yet, but I'm pretty close to getting back to full health. For the past couple weeks, I have been coughing, wheezing, going through phases of complete voice loss, and other symptoms that made my daily life miserable. There were good days and bad, and it was especially rough to manage it all alone since I didn't have my parents to take care of me.

I honestly never thought I'd say this in my life, but I am so grateful today to be at the gym. I know, I know! It's crazy coming from me, but it's true. I'm finally back into my comfortable routine of walking the quarter mile uphill to the Claremont Club (my local health club/gym) and sitting myself at the cafe to write out a blog post before getting in a workout. It's strange, but I am so grateful to be back.

I'm a preschool teacher!

I come from a family of educators. My dad is a college professor in American Jewish studies, and my mom has taught and subbed in elementary school for as long as I can remember. When my sister and I were growing up we had a little playhouse outside we converted into a mini classroom, complete with an old fashioned desk, a chalkboard, and dusty, cobweb covered workbooks. I was always the teacher and Shayna was my student (other than the times she wanted to be the cleaning lady). The schoolhouse was later converted into a chicken coop, which was later donated along with the chickens when I left for college. But some of my fondest memories stem from my aspirations to emulate my parents, to teach, empower, and engage.

Around September of this past year, I was enrolled in a graduate program for developmental positive psychology at Claremont Graduate University. I tried to convince myself this was a good fit, that teaching would be too draining and I wanted to work in research or the clinical practice. After a few emotional days and what I would consider a full breakdown, I decided to reexamine my choices. (For a longer description, see the full post)

I majored in psychology at Pitzer College and managed excellent grades and strong extracurricular activities. My main work experience came from the Autism Center at Claremont McKenna, which led me to the graduate from at CGU. What I discovered while at CGU was that while I loved working with the kids and engaging with behavioral psychology concepts, the research, academics, and statistics were not suited for me at all.

So I took a break, a gap year if you will. I had rented an apartment in Claremont and my lease lasted a year, so I stayed. I decided to try and find my path.

One reason I love my apartment in Claremont is the proximity to Starbucks. There's a small shopping center about 500 feet from my door, which includes the Starbucks I went to on a regular basis in my undergraduate time. What I also found was a daycare/preschool called Kiddie Academy, right next door to my favorite Starbucks, just a stone's throw away.

My mom encouraged me to apply, but I was hesitant. I was convinced teaching would give me burnout, a defeat even more intense than my breakdown from the psychology master's program. But here's the thing about burnout:

It's harder to burnout when what you are doing lights you up.

Seasons of Love

How do you measure a year?

Rent, the stage musical as well as the movie version, has shaped a lot of my beliefs around living and what it means to exist. (Given my liberal arts education, I can of course look back and see the problematic aspects of the storyline, but for the sake of argument, let's set those aside for now.)

One of the most famous songs from the musical, as well as in general as a Broadway tune, is "Seasons of Love" (or you may recognize it by the chorus, "525,600 minutes/525,000 moments so dear/525,600 minutes/How do you measure, measure a year"). Here's the movie version if you want to check that out.

I've been reflecting on that idea a lot lately, especially since I have begun documenting and essentially scrapbooking my life in my journals and planners. And as December 24, 9pm, Eastern Standard time approaches (Rent reference), I thought I'd reflect back on what made up my year of 2018.

Joining the Health Club

New Election Cycle, New Me

You've probably heard of new year's resolutions. You know, the time of the year you are definitely going to lose 20 pounds, go to the gym, wake up early, and cook a three course meal every night? Yeah, that idea. Well, I'm starting some now, on a Tuesday in November.

Tragedy Overload

Saturday I woke up to breaking news of another mass shooting. Barely a day has gone by since the pipe bomb suspect was arrested and now we have something else. My heart broke as I clicked the news video, and it sank deep into my chest as I learned, in horror, that this one was targeted at a synagogue.

Something in me broke.

Something I had been pushing around for some time now, a sense of doom and hopelessness and sadness. This morning, I felt it. The utter sense of sorrow, of grief, of acceptance of tragedy. The point I realize I cannot leave, I am not immigrating to Europe, this is real and this is my life now. This is our American reality.

Each time something happens, I tell myself I am done. I will fight this. I will vote. I will protest. I will move far away from this dystopian reality. But this morning, as 8 souls were snatched from this world and hundreds of lives forever changed, I just sank.

I checked my Facebook obsessively. I shared a post, I followed the breaking news. My feed was filled with Jewish friends and family sharing outrage and non-Jewish friends expressing fear and sadness.

I didn't know if I could take it anymore. So I stopped.

I turned it off. I clicked away. I put mu phone on silent and my media on pause, just for a minute. And you know what? It was okay.

I made myself some iced tea. I changed my sheets. I tidied my floor. I cast on a new knitting project. And it felt alright.

No, it didn't solve anything. The news was still there when I got back, and the hurt and the pain came rushing back. But that afternoon, I needed some time to shut off before I shut down.