How I stopped wanting to hurt or kill myself

My motto for this month has been, “No negative self-talk.”  Almost every woman and many men who come to my office or call me on the phone have some way of talking to themself that is a put down or a negative comment toward themselves.  It could be as simple as apologizing when it’s not necessary or saying, “I was stupid to do that,” but almost everyone has a way to put themselves down.

For those of us who are abuse survivors, the problem can be much more acute.  When I got sober I found my thoughts often turned to wanting to hurt myself or wanting to die.

When I was a very short time sober, maybe one year, I heard someone tell a similar story to mine and at the end of it she said that she had not wanted to kill herself in five years.  I remembered this since then – it was about 20 years ago that I heard her say this.  For me, it was a complete message of hope, that someone with a similar story to mine could go five years without wanting to kill herself.  I think that was the day when I knew there was hope for me and the day that I decided to reach for being like her.  And today I can honestly say I have not wanted to kill myself in quite a bit more than five years.

Our minds have grooves in them and as we play the same messages over and over we deepen the groove.  I had a groove in my mind that was “I should drive my car into a tree.”  I had another one that I wanted to cut myself.  I did not do these things, but I did think these thoughts, over and over and over again. 

One thing I like to say is, “if you can hear it, you can change it.”  More on point perhaps, “if you can hear your thought, you can interrupt your thought.”  It was second nature to me to think, “I want to drive my car into a tree,” but as I started to listen to my thoughts I became willing to question them.  So when I heard myself say that, I could ask myself, “Do I really and truly want to drive my car into that tree?”  I began to think my thought through.  “I want to drive my car into a tree” was a shorthand way of saying, “I feel bad”. 

So then I asked myself, “why am I feeling bad?”  I took an approach Geneen Roth describes as “curiosity and kindness” toward my own thoughts.  And I found out there was usually a reason why I felt bad – I was upset by something someone had said, or I was tired, or I was hungry, or I was scared.

And once I found out why I felt bad – I could work to change how I felt – by eating, by sleeping, by talking to a friend, by writing about how I was feeling, by praying.  A big thing that helped me was the saying, “feelings aren’t facts.”  But more than that, I learned that I could change my thoughts and listen to my feelings.  Over time, my feelings changed.  But it began inside my head when I refused to indulge in thoughts about hurting myself, and started to take that first sign, the first thought of hurting myself, as a signal that I needed to do something to take loving care of myself and to help myself feel better. 

A friend tells a joke about the alcoholic with a flat tire who calls the suicide hotline.  I still go down that road sometimes, finding whatever I can’t handle as a reason to want to die.  But much more often these days, I can stop the thought before it starts, remember that there are ways, like roadside service, to deal with the flat tires of life, and that I can handle what comes my way without turning to negative thoughts and negative self – talk.  And I honestly believe that if I could make such a huge change in my thoughts that anyone, anyone at all, can make new choices and become a person who does not want to kill herself.  I find it to be totally worth it!

Ancient History - Part Two

I suddenly realized Coming Out Day will come and go and I won't have finished my story - yikes!  I just re-read the last installment and it feels so raw.  I'm impressed I was able to feel that close to that time last week and aware why it kept me awake.

That's something I remember - waking up at about 4 am every day.  Not know how to know myself, not knowing who I was. 

Secrets are bad for me from a young age when I started keeping some.  So that month of not telling anyone went very much against my nature.

I decided to tell someone.  An old boyfriend - maybe my most recent serious boyfriend - was coming to town and I thought maybe I could tell him.  First we spent some time together.  I think I told him I had something I wanted to talk to him about but I was afraid to tell him.  I never write about sex particularly but that was the last time I had sex with a man.  Then I got up to go to the bathroom and said, "I'll be right back, don't go away," and when I got back he said:

"You know, sometimes you say things and I don't know if you mean me to hear them."

And I said "what do you mean?"

And he said, "when you got up you said, 'by the way, I'm gay.'"

Which I never said, I said, "I'll be right back, don't go away."  I have proof he misheard things because once before I had told him something like, "I love you very much" and he thought I said, "I want to make you lunch."

So that was the first person I came out to, and I know G-d was acting in my life because he heard me say what I was afraid to say.

Then I started telling other people and all their reactions totally annoyed me.  Lesbian friends said, "oh, we always knew you were gay," and I was like, "how could you know when I didn't know, how can you say that?"  And straight friends were either like, "so what?" or "really?" or "yeah, we knew that," and I'm like, "It's a really big deal" and "Yes, really" and "How could you know that if I didn't?"

I wasn't happy with anyone's response.  Can't think of one person I felt like talking to about it except maybe the woman I was starting to have a crush on.  And one other friend who was coming out at the time.

So then I told my parents.  Why not, right?  I guess it was Thanksgiving.  I was applying to rabbinical school.  My mom said being a lesbian rabbi was like shooting yourself in the foot.   She said I would never have kids.  Then when I said I still wanted kids she said they wouldn't have a father and it would screw them up.  Yup.  Lesbianism was fine for all her friends but not for her daughter.  Makes sense.  I don't remember what my dad said, but no doubt it had something in it about the importance of biological reproduction and reproductive relationships being better than other kinds. 

I like my parents.  I'm not writing this to dishonor them.  This is really what they said.  You can read elsewhere on my blog about how my grandmother responded when I told her about 7 years later, after I had met Alen.  The good thing about my parents is they never stopped the dialogue and eventually, in time for our wedding about 9 years after this, they got it together, and after the wedding they really got it together.

I remember at the time I read some great books - Mary Borhek's classic Coming Out to Parents and another book called Parents Matter.  The Parents Matter book was based on a survey that found that the greatest relationship damage/danger of coming out was actually between lesbians and their fathers.  The most ruptures were there.  But the average time from coming out in the people surveyed for the book was 7 years and my boss told me it wasn't long enough.  She told me after 15 years there's real acceptance, and I have found that to be the case.

Coming out was like shedding a skin.  Everything was raw.  Nothing made sense and everything made sense.  I don't know how many years it took for the shock to wear off.  It was being comfortable with myself and no one else, it was making sense in a different way of everywhere I had been, it was hard and it was real.

A shout out at the end of this installment (I don't know if it is the end or not) to the ex-boyfriend and dear friend mentioned above and to others including Alan Kaufmann z"l.  I don't remember when I told and who I told (except the story above) but I remember I was met with love and support.   And to all my other friends who weathered the storm and stuck with me and to all my friends especially from work who showed me the way and to my family too who were always with me despite some memorable things they said.

Ancient History - My Coming Out Story

National Coming Out Day is October 11, and I have been thinking about when I came out in 1987 and what it meant to me then and means to me now.

The events aren’t fuzzy in my mind but the dates are.  I thought I was 26 turning 27 when I came out, but I am sure it was 1987, and that year I was actually 25 turning 26.  It was the fall.  I had received a call, I think in early September, asking me to take a job with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.  I left where I had been working, at Women Against Abuse in downtown Philly, and took the job in Reading PA.  The understanding was that this was temporary, for less than a year, until they could do a real search, for which I would also be able to apply.

Taking this job allowed me to move from downtown, where I had been working, to a more suburban part of Philly (Mt. Airy) which had more of a Jewish community.  My brother was living there and we rented an apartment together.  I’m not sure the sequence of events that fall – what happened first after the new job – the move or the monumental conversation that changed my life.

It sounds kind of funny, naïve and trite, but this is what happened:

I was working with a brilliant lesbian attorney and we were travelling the state.  The head office was in Harrisburg.  We also had meetings all over the state – I think we tried to meet each month in a different county with legal advocates.  Mostly this involved driving.  We also had trainings several times a year in different parts of the state.  Early in the fall, Ellen Pence, may her memory be a blessing, came to do a training.  I don’t remember where it was.  I remember of course how brilliant she was.  I don’t think it was the first time I heard her speak, but being in a room with her was always wonderful.   I read something online after she died that so captured the way she was in a room – at the same time making you feel really good and also challenging you to be so much better.

So my boss, me and Ellen were in one of our hotel rooms after this training.  And somehow the topic came around to me, and how I “thought I was not a lesbian.”  And Ellen told me that I was making a mistake if I thought I was going to marry a man, and that it was a bad idea, because one day, I would be working on a committee with some woman, and I would look into her eyes and fall in love, and if I was married to a man it would be a messy divorce, maybe a custody battle.  She presented it very romantically and I laughed and said, “Will she wear glasses?”

I said, “Why do you think I’m a lesbian, just because I am masculine?” and she said, “no you’re not, you are a fembot.”

Ellen was such a huge personality – when she tells you something about yourself, it’s not something you can shrug off.  Or maybe had I been more straight I could have, but as it was, I started thinking.

And I asked myself, “is it possible I am a lesbian”?

And the answer that came to me was that I had no idea, because for me any kind of feeling I might have for any woman was locked behind a door that said “don’t come in here”.  I couldn’t know if I was attracted to women or any woman because it was not something I allowed myself to feel.  Opening that locked door to wonder was a step toward finding out about myself.  In the words of Geneen Roth I read just recently, it was a beginning toward treating myself with kindness and curiosity.  It was an opening to learning about myself rather than trying to force myself to be what I thought the world wanted me to be.

It was about accepting myself and being myself.  What a concept.

Now that I have a 10 year old daughter, I see the process close up of how we (especially girls but probably boys too) try to mold ourselves to be what we think the world (in the form of our cruel peers, our teachers and others) wants from us.

What I felt in the coming out process was that all of a sudden I could re-access my 8 and 9 year old self.  I had energy, exuberance, and joy.  My 8 and 9 year old self had wanted to be a rabbi.  And lo and behold, I suddenly felt free to apply to rabbinical school.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First I spent a month, a whole month, not telling anyone about this.  I spend a month driving 75 minutes each way to work and crying, wondering if I could be a lesbian and trying to figure out what that would mean in my life.

One day on my return trip from work I heard Joni Mitchell’s Song for Sharon.  And cried over the first verse:

I went to Staten Island, Sharon
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy

I cried because I was so sure I would never wear a wedding dress, cried again that January when I saw a photo of Jan Pierce in her wedding dress, after she died suddenly and I guess I was with her daughter looking at her old wedding album.

And I knew at the same time that if what I wanted from heterosexuality was that day and that wedding dress, it probably wasn’t enough.

Stay tuned for Part 2!