Cracking Up
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
—Herman Melville
Once or twice since I relaunched the blog last December, I’ve alluded to a period last year during which I experienced what in another era might have been called a nervous breakdown. There are more technical terms, of course, and I’m sure at some point I’ll delve—in excruciating detail—into the nuances of how to describe cracking up. At present, the laymen’s term should suffice.
It may seem odd to mention one of the darkest times of my life now, positioned as I am on the cusp of a promising adventure. The thing is, people tell me I’m brave to up and move, to start anew. They say I’m strong. Some insist it takes a courage they don’t themselves possess. Admittedly, I’m not all that comfortable with praise, in general, and nervous breakdowns, specifically, don’t do much for your inner rock star. Still, it feels false to hold myself up as a model of daring. (My plucky acts often seem like little more than the path of last resort after exhausting all the more cowardly routes.) So I demure and chuckle inwardly at the thought my epitaph might one day read:
Brave. Or crazy. (Jury’s still out.)
It’s a fine line, after all.
Naturally, I’ve been pondering this brave-or-crazy question, in the background, as I’ve gone about preparing for the move, but it all sort of came into focus for me earlier this evening. It was during my last DBT group session at McLean Hospital, where I was lucky enough to land a spot for treatment last year. At the end of the session, while saying our goodbyes, several people in the group offered encouragement and support, and those words began popping up again … brave, courageous, strong.
It struck me then just how much my time in that room, with those nine people had prepared me for the next chapter of my life. Or, rather, it struck me that I’d never told them how much I’d grown because they’d each had the courage to show up week after week and talk about stuff that can be downright, well, gut-wrenching.
So I told them. And I cried. And they cried. Still, it doesn’t seem enough somehow. How do you ever pay a gift like that forward?
A while back I said, “Being alive to being alive takes a foolish courage.” I still think that’s true. Thing is, sometimes it looks like packing up and driving to California. Sometimes it looks like sharing the details of your darkest days with a room full of strangers.
Thank you, McLean friends, for helping me find my brave fool.
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Name's Kirsten. I'm a splitter of hairs, a hillbilly, a rock horns devotee, an ellipses-lovin' fool, and queen of the conceptual jinx. I'm also a geek and the grateful human of littleblackdog. I do this and that and some of the other … up to and including writing this here blog.
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