Two decades of learning

20 years ago, I was in the middle of the worst year of my life - and it was about to get even worse. I was, or about to become, a loser in every way - romantically, professionally, financially and socially. I was betrayed and deceived by people I had trusted. People I thought were my friends went silent. By the time I limped to Austin, Texas near the end of 1996, I was very much alone and shattered. I still don’t know how I managed to find an apartment and move - it was like I turned on a machine and just let it run, but wasn't really involved at all. 

I got completely lucky just after I arrived - a job literally landed in my mailbox. A good-paying job I could do from my home. I’d gotten it because of something I’d been dabbling in, on my own, and talking about online. That job - and the Internet - saved my life - it not only gave me financial stability under a sea of debt, it also redeemed my professional reputation and jump-started my career. Austin also saved my life: I made friends that I still have in my life, that delight me even from afar, and the music all around me fed my soul, and still does, to this day. 

That very dark time is always in the back of my head, though I don't dwell on it. Now, exactly 20 years later after that horrible time, it's been more prominent in my thinking. I’ve been thinking in particularly about what I learned since then:

• I’m much stronger than I thought I was. 
• You can get better alone - but a good therapist is worth the money. 
• Listening to music, and drastically reducing the amount of TV you watch, is great for the soul. 
• To get better, you have to want to get better. 
• To get better takes more than time - it takes hard work. 
• To get better, you have to focus not on what you don’t want, but what you do want. You can’t just say, “I hate that such-and-such happened/is happening, I wish it would stop.” You have to focus on what you want instead, and do all you can to live that reality. 
• Do what you love, no apologies to anyone. 
• Anyone who tries to separate you from the activities you love should be dropped from your life immediately. 
• Everyone wastes at least some time on crappy people. Learn from it and forgive yourself. 
• Friends build you up, and when they criticize, it’s from a place of care and love. Toxic people speak from a place of contempt for your life and your choices, particularly regarding things that make you happy. 
• You don’t need any dramatic speeches to get rid of toxic people in your life - just stop engaging with them. Most will never notice you’ve dropped them.
• In the USA, you always have choices. You may not like them, but you have them. If nothing else, you can improve your health. 
• If you are still complaining about the same thing two years later, the biggest problem is YOU. 
• Moving is expensive, and you lose a lot in terms of friends and comfort, but it's also a glorious fresh start. In a new place, no one knows anything about you that you don't want them to know, and you are free to be the person you want to be. And sometimes, it's exactly the change you need. 
• It really does get better - if you want it to and are willing to work at it. 

It took two years for me to really start recovering. And I’m very pleased with all I’ve done professionally since then, but I’m even more pleased with all that I’ve done personally: all the travel, learning another language, learning to cook, singing in public, and learning to ride a motorcycle and taking it some amazing places. That I’ve married a man that loves me for who I am is delicious icing on a cake I made myself. 

I hope this blog helps someone out there who feels like all is lost. It's not. You may not get the life you planned on, by a happy life is possible. 

She was convinced she was a failure

I spent an entire morning crying over this ESPN story of Madison Holleran, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who killed herself last year, leaping off the ninth level of a parking garage in downtown Philadelphia.

She was convinced she was a failure. And if you have never experienced depression, you will probably be incredibly confused when you read the article, because you will think, "But she's so loved, so talented, so beautiful - how can that be?" But do read it. Please read it.

There was no widespread Internet connectivity back in the 1980s, but back then, high school yearbooks and morning school announcement and even the local newspaper did what Facebook and Instagram do now: present an upbeat image of the lives of teenagers, where everyone is happy and successful and talented and beautiful. And if you aren't, you aren't pictured at all.

It's only been now, in my late 40s, that I've learned just how unhappy so many beautiful people around me were in high school, how much they were struggling. And it's only now that some of my closest friends have learned just how unhappy I was in my first two years at university, how much I struggled, how much I felt like I was on the verge of a colossal failure. As I read this story, of how afraid Madison Holleran was of failure, of disappointing people, it brought back so many memories of my own struggles. It's mind-boggling that she could feel this way when it's obvious she is SO loved, that people around her would do ANYTHING for her - I didn't have nearly so much support. But, of course, that's what depression does, it twists your mind, it twists reality. You cannot be reasoned-with - your mind isn't working right.

And the most pressing thought of all: If she quit, wasn't she just a failure? Wouldn't that be the first in what would become a lifetime of letdowns?

Throughout my freshman and sophomore years, I felt like I was one failure away from being exposed as the total loser I believed I was, the utter fraud I believed myself to be. If I couldn't make it at a public state university that took anyone with a heartbeat and ability to pay, I had no backup for somewhere else - the university I was attending, the one I could afford, was my backup, when I realized I couldn't attend my first choice, in another state, nor my second choice, in California, because the person I was going to go there with backed out.

I could not grasp the idea that things would get better, that I could survive it, and that people around me probably were NOT judging me - and if they were, screw 'em.

But things did get better, I did survive it, and I gradually stopped constantly comparing myself to other people (though I do still compare sometimes). And it was time, more than anything, that got me through it. I still grapple with insecurity and fears of failure, but nothing - NOTHING - like I did in high school and at university. I so wish Madison Holleran could have held out - even for just one year, because I think she would have realized all this as well.