I watched these videos, imagining how therapeutic they would have been to twelve-year-old me, when I seriously considered all avenues to end my despair, something occurred to me: What if we all extended that same compassion far before others got to the point where they life-or-death needed it? What if we opened our eyes and recognized the small signs that someone's hurting and then let her know we've been there, too, and we'll be there for her now?
Of course, it's not just the outsiders who have a responsibility. All the support in the world will be useless if those who are hurting refuse to admit we need it. In an article about Phoebe Prince, one of the bullied teenagers who committed suicide, Emily Bazelon cited a definition of bullying as “repeated acts of abuse that involve a power imbalance.” By this definition, it seems clear to me that a lot of us bully ourselves. We choose to take away our own power by beating ourselves up even further than did the external injury. We torment ourselves in silence to avoid feeling vulnerable and inferior.
Of all the burdens I've carried around, the heaviest was the belief that I was wrong to be hurting—that enlightened people felt pain like a raindrop on their shoe whereas I let it hit me like a self-contained tsunami because I was tragically weak. I felt certain I had to either hide or package myself in smiles and lies—otherwise I'd expose the ugliest flaw in my character. I've come to realize that the only mistake when it comes to pain is to assume life shouldn't involve it and that pain often starts to dull when I decide to embrace it, acknowledge it, and grow from it. Sadness, fear, disgust, and even anger can make the world a better place if we find the strength to channel them toward something good.
Why is there suffering the world? Because there is—the more important question is: what good can we do for ourselves and each other knowing that pain to be inevitable?
LET YOUR PAIN CONNECT YOU TO OTHER PEOPLE.
Instead of sitting alone in your pain:
Be honest with other people about what you're experiencing. Nothing feels more liberating than the freedom to be exactly where you are, without apologizing or trying to protect yourself from judgment. That doesn't mean that no one will judge you—some people will, and that's just life. Be honest anyway. Being disliked and misunderstood by some is worth the freedom of knowing you are loved and supported by many.
Express yourself to release the feelings, not to dwell on them. There's a difference between sharing your experiences for support and seeking an audience with no intention of finding a solution. Whether you're talking to your friends or to strangers in a support group, be honest about your experience but release the need to pull them into the story. Your goal isn't to create an identity so that people constantly relate to your pain; it's to share your pain so that you can release it, allowing people the opportunity to relate to all of you.
Help heal other people's pain. Because you know what pain feels like, you can recognize it in other people—so be there in the way you'd want it. For me, that means asking, “How can I help?” when someone seems burdened, and then being open to whatever is needed without judgment or expectation; or giving someone an uncomfortably long hug when he appears to be weak, allowing him to melt into my arms. We are all in this together. Now we just have to act like it.
MEANING
WHAT's THE MEANING OF LIFE?
It's perhaps the oldest and most frequently asked question in the world : why are we all here? The persistent need to make sense of life, to gain some semblance of control in an otherwise uncertain world, is one of the few things that unites us all. No matter how much we gain or how much we learn, there's no escaping the reality that nothing is permanent and a lot is unknowable.
To temper our uneasiness about what we might lose, how we might hurt, and how desperately we want to believe there's some reason for it all, we cling to ideas of what it all might mean—what the events of our lives mean about the grand picture, what our accomplishments mean about us, what we mean to the people we meet, and what our lives mean in the context of history. We can never know for sure what life itself means, but we can know that we mean something in a potentially meaningless world. When we realize that our actions might be our only hope at living a meaningful life, it's easy to feel paralyzed. After all, purpose is something deliberate, something grand, something beautiful—something people would want to talk about. Meaning can be a high-pressure situation if we don't trust ourselves to identify it and then live in accordance with it.
At twenty-four years old, I'd officially set up shop in Manhattan, where I planned to become a Broadway star. I was rarely sure I liked myself, but I was certain I loved myself when I gutted myself onstage and filled the hole with a fictional character. Also: everyone else knew that I came to New York to become someone. I felt desperate to succeed on a massive scale—to take that small bit of joy I felt while in a costume and pump it into an aura of greatness that everyone could see, admire, and respect.
Going to New York was easy; doing something when I got there, not so much. If I pursued my purpose and failed, I'd have to acknowledge that I wasn't good enough to do what I was meant to do, and worse yet, I'd confirm what I assumed to be my family members’ suspicions: that I was inadequate and a horrible disappointment. You could have watched me from afar for a lifetime and never have known it, but you'd have been certain if you looked into my eyes for even a second: for the vast majority of my life, I believed the words Lori Deschene meant “worthless.” In fear of confirming this under a magnifying spotlight, I tucked myself into a hole of a home the moment I got to New York. If I chose to sit on the sidelines, I figured, I wasn't choosing not to try; I was just waiting for the right time.
I worked for four hours a day as a telemarketer and lived in a week-to-week single-room-occupancy building, somewhat like a dorm for crackheads, prostitutes, and little girls lost. On most afternoons, after work, I filled a small rolling suitcase with the necessities I didn't want stolen if someone ransacked my place for drug money and then made the trek to the Times Square Internet Café. After finding a relatively odorless spot to camp out through the evening, I'd dive into Craigslist, hoping to emerge at the surface of reality with some answer as to what I should do and who I should be. I looked for jobs; I searched for roommate situations; I browsed the event section to fantasize about hobbies I might take up; I even frequented the platonic personals section for friendships. Although I made a few peripheral connections, I knew I wasn't going to really open myself up to new people and experiences. It was like I was creating a vision board for a life I had no intention of realizing in the foreseeable future. I was pretty much just going through the motions. I was “trying” to fill my life, while secretly feeling opposed to the risk it would involve.
One month into my daily web surfing, I met Rich and Jim, two middle-aged homeless men who looked more like suburbanites who'd simply been car-sprayed with a muddy rain puddle. Rich and Jim owned an online software-support company that went bankrupt after 9/11. Having put all their funding and energy into the business, they decided to go for broke—to stay in NYC despite their dwindling resources and to sacrifice everything for their goals, including their rent money. When I met them, they were thousands in the hole, with holes throughout their newspaper-lined coats, and close to having their servers shut down. Yet I never got any sense of anger or despondency from them. They were like cocky kids going for their black belts, each sparring against the best at the dojo—even massive bruises and bloody welts would be cool if they came with victory and bragging rights.
I immediately wanted to be like them. I imagined what it would feel like to package all of the events in my life as signs that I was on the right track, even when presented with abundant evidence to the contrary. I wondered how liberating it would feel to do only what I really wanted to do and to ostracize myself out of passion instead of fear. I ached for that sense of blind faith and obliviousness and
