Mending

A friend of mine has been having a hard time for a while. Below is a slight reworking of an email I just sent that I think has some broader implications than just this friend:

I read Allegiant by Veronica Roth this weekend (final book in the Divergent trilogy). It ends like this:

Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.

It reminded me of this part in Angels in America when Harper is having a psychotic break and she says:

...and if it gets really cold, she'll have a pouch I can crawl into. Like a marsupial. And we'll mend together. That's what we'll do. We'll mend.

In both cases, I underlined the hell out of those things, because those words feel like truth deep, deep down inside me. (Which is why I felt the need to involve so many others in my grieving process -- because I needed other people to help me mend myself, to feel somewhat whole again.)

In his vlog for today, John Green talked about how 12 years ago he had what's usually termed a "major depressive episode." He was living in Chicago and things got so bad that he was going to quit his job, go home to Florida, and try to get some help. (His dad drove from Orlando to Chicago, picked him up, drove him back to Florida, and he went into daily therapy for two weeks. He went on meds, went back to Chicago, and started the hard work of putting his life back together.)

Listening to him describe all of that sounded familiar. When I found out my mom's cancer was terminal, my friend John asked me if I was going to see a therapist. I told him I would eventually. I wasn't opposed to therapy, I just needed a little time to wrap my head around it before I could talk to a stranger. He totally manipulated me into scheduling my first appointment with Dr. B by 1. telling me he didn't think I'd do it (I can be very oppositionally defiant sometimes) and 2. promising me he'd go skating with me (something I'd been trying for months to get him to do and something that still has not happened almost 5 years later). Therapy with Dr. B was one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

I never would have made it through mom's death and the last four years without her without the two years of therapy I had with Dr. B or all the misadventures I had with my partners in awesome. For me, mending really was something I could not do alone. Maybe I just happen to be wired this way. But it seems like if it's not a universal thing, it's at least something pretty common (see Veronica Roth, Tony Kushner, John Green).

It seems to me from my very limited perspective that you could use some mending. I don't know what will do that for you. I don't know if any of the stuff I'm writing about here will help in any way. But on the off chance that it might, I thought I should write this.

You want to talk about gratitude? I'm grateful that John manipulated me into seeing Dr. B almost five years ago (and that he knew exactly how to do it to get the desired result). I'm grateful for all the help Dr. B gave me. I'm grateful to all the people who supported me when I reached out because I was afraid or hurting or lonely. I'm grateful that today I feel mostly whole (mended) on most days. Those are the things I celebrate even as I feel the tremendous loss of my mother every single day.