WHERE DO I BELONG?

Where Do I Belong?

The vast majority of the time, I feel like I know where I need to be. But now, as summer waxes, I feel unsure about what to do about potentially coming back to Chicago.

Even just typing the words makes me anxious, and my natural reaction to things that make me that anxious is to shy away. I’ve shied away for months now - I’ve been living with my family for almost four months - but the more time goes by, the more the idea impresses itself upon me that I need to go back to Chicago.

The feelings of cowardice from the beginning of the pandemic are starting to come back, not to mention I miss my friends, potential love interest, and the few activities that are starting to reappear. People have mentioned that they miss me, and my parents feel that I need to go back to my life even if it’s not the same life it was when I left.

As for me, I remember how lonely it can feel to be by myself, and due to the pandemic, I will need to do a hard quarantine for two weeks when I come back from my current location. I’m in a state that has more of the virus than many others, so staying away from people could protect them - but it would also place me in the precarious position of being both bored and lonely, two major triggers of negative thoughts.

I can’t help but picture disaster scenarios where I wander my small apartment for hours on end, feeling desperate and helpless. I can’t help but think that I’ll feel trapped in my apartment and in my head, and that the transition from having family around me whenever I want them to being completely alone will be extremely difficult to handle.

Most of all, these thoughts scare me because they remind me of other times when I’ve been bored and alone. At those times, I feel particularly precarious, like the smallest thing can send me into a spiral. I think of the time I did a summer program at a faraway college while I was still in high school, and the two weeks felt like a year when I got sick to my stomach a few days in. I think of my junior year of college, when I was so far gone I had no hope I could come back.

These are extreme cases, but the fact that there’s a global pandemic making me overthink simple things even when I’m here at home makes me question going back. It’s not that I don’t miss the friends I’ve made, the activities I’ve started, or the independence of living alone. It’s that I am afraid to let go of my comfort in the storm of the pandemic when things are getting worse rather than better.

 I consulted with my psychiatrist who has known me since childhood, and she offered me advice in her very practical style: make a calendar for the first two weeks and fill the days with activities I enjoy, making sure to keep myself busy and definitely not bored. When she said that, I could already think of how I could paint miniatures for D&D and other tabletop games, play Animal Crossing and a brand-new remake of a game I loved as a kid, and watch shows on Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix.

I also dared to venture into my cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) archives to find some of the techniques that helped me at another time when I was having huge trouble with transitions. I read through my old thought journal and saw how I categorized the different automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and taught myself to fight back against them. I found a document filled with best- and worst-case scenarios I wrote to try to get the fear of the unknown out of my head. I found a painful document where I wrote in painstaking detail the moment I knew I was in a crisis situation. I found a recording of a therapy session that I haven’t been brave enough to listen to yet, but I must have kept it to inspire myself at another difficult time.

In the next few weeks, I’m going to try my best to use these tools to fight back against my automatic rejection of the idea of going back. I’ll try to talk things out with family and friends, write down my thoughts and feelings, and remember the motto of one of my CBT books - “thoughts are thoughts, not threats.” Just because I am so afraid of going back and spiraling out of control doesn’t mean that will actually happen. I am strong, and I have been through much worse before. It’s just a matter of reminding myself over and over, each time the thought cycles, until it stops appearing in the first place.

It’s been a while since I’ve tried such a regimented approach to CBT, but I feel like it’s my best bet for this. I can’t do exposure therapy since the change will be big and all at once, and I can’t know for sure how things will go, but if I take the time to prepare myself as best as I can ahead of time, I hope I will be able to have a relatively smooth transition when the time comes.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

TRAUMA AND SWEATSHIRTS.....Guest Blogger

Trauma and Sweatshirts
Trigger Warning: PTSD, Accident, Violence

I got a sweatshirt in the mail today.

It was delivered in a suitcase packed with a bunch of other clothing—about half my wardrobe. I’d left it all in Jerusalem when I came hastily back to America in March; I only brought the other half with me because I expected to return in a month. The pandemic stymied those plans, so for the past four months I’ve been missing half my belongings. I got them back today after using a special delivery service to send them back home to Chicago. 

It was a relief to have the rest of my clothes back so I could stop cycling through the same seven T-shirts every week, but the sweatshirt I had to think about. I’d already been nervous for the previous week about what my reaction to seeing it would be. When I took a look in my suitcase today, it filled me with a sense of dread. Of foreboding. There was a feeling of gravity that occupied the room, weird and dark, that slipped in from what felt like another world, another time.

On December 22nd, 2019—the first night of Hanukkah—I was taking a bus to an engagement party of two friends that left from Jerusalem at about 6 PM. Near Ben Gurion airport, it crashed into a bus stop, whose concrete ceiling detached and smashed into the front-right of the bus, killing four people. I spent the next several minutes with two women at the front of the bus, and I took off both of the shirts I was wearing (a T-shirt and a button-down) to stop their bleeding. When I got off the bus, I grabbed the sweatshirt I had left at my seat in the back to cover myself. Because it was the only piece of clothing I wore that night that wasn’t covered in blood, it was also the only piece of clothing I kept. It was and is my only link to the accident. 

Let me explain. Memory is the key element of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Trauma is an inability to process a memory or series of memories because it is too horrific, grotesque, violent, or simply big for the brain to fully apprehend. So instead of the memory becoming, precisely, a memory—a flowing river of images and sensations that you can observe safely from a distance, like a movie—it becomes a relived episode, an event that will not rest in the past and that will continually replay itself. The severity of these moments of replay—flashbacks—can vary depending on the prior sensitivities of the person and of the nature of the trauma. Some people have flashbacks as they’re typically and dramatically depicted in mainstream media, where they genuinely believe they’re back in Afghanistan, or their abusive childhood home. Others have sensory flashbacks, where they don’t lose their sense of time and place but they re-experience sounds and smells from the event. As for me, when I get them, I get emotional flashbacks: My emotional state mirrors what it was the night of the accident and I relive the very same (or, after certain forms of therapy, decreased level of) unprocessed horror, bewilderment, panic. 

All of that is a pretty scientific understanding of memory’s relationship with trauma, but here’s what it feelslike. To me, it feels like the realm of the accident was literally not of this world. Because my brain was, until undergoing a special form of therapy, incapable of integrating my memories of the bus into my normal stream of memory, it felt like the place of the accident itself wasn’t integrated with the rest of reality. Like it was its own Place, with a capital ‘P,’ alien, outside, governed by different laws of reality or more probably by none at all. In that sense my experience of the trauma was almost mystical. In fact, I have seen people use the same term to describe their experience in EMDR therapy—stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and it uses physiological processes and conversational tactics to help people integrate traumatic memories. The reintegration of memories neurologically actually feels like a reintegration of another reality into this one, like the darkness of a netherworld gets little by little cast away and enters the world we’re in everyday. 

 This way of thinking about trauma also helps explain why I find writing about it so cathartic (as well as challenging), and why I welcomed the opportunity to write about my experience here on this blog. What happened to me feels like it occurred in an Outside Place, with no law or meaning, but language is governed by meaning, sequence, grammar, storytelling. Writing in a very real way is a kind of therapy, one that creates a space for the chaotic to enter the everyday world, even a little bit. 

 As for my sweatshirt, it’s become a kind of mystical object. Like a child’s blankie kept into adulthood, it’s a relic from an otherworldly moment, and despite the nature of profound suffering and disintegration of this particular moment, it’s also defining and essential. On the one hand I want to forget and on the other I want nothing less. That’s the weird thing about memory. It gets tied up with questions of identity (in a very real way who we are might be nothing more than the conglomerate of our memories and how we feel about them), and when it comes to a topic so intense people will have a whole slew of responses. Some people are filled with regret and want nothing more than to eliminate memory, and some people cling to it toxically. As for me, I believe memory should be integrated—the past should stay in the past, and when it’s infiltrating the present, something’s wrong; but it should also stay in the past. It shouldn’t be ignored or swept away, it should take its seat as a meaningful determinant of who you are.

 So I kept the sweatshirt. 

Gavi Kutliroff lives in New York City, where he's looking for jobs in social work (he'll update this bio as soon as he's hired). A recent graduate of Brandeis University, he's also a musician, a poet, a Wikipedia enthusiast, and an avid fan of indie coming-of-age films. He believes in the value of a public, open discourse about mental health and in the power of writing and communication to help people understand each other and themselves.

NOT MISSING EVERYTHING

Not Missing Everything

I have to admit that, at this point in the pandemic, I was relieved to hear that DragonCon was canceled, even though it’s taking place in a state where most things aren’t getting canceled.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not too important. There are far more crucial things to consider, including staying healthy (hooray for my dad’s negative COVID result, even if it took way too long to come back) and planning for the future both with and without the virus.

But still, even within this crisis, I find it very important to stay connected to my favorite people, places, and things, even if I can’t go in person. I was therefore very excited to hear that AnimeNEXT, a convention I was planning to go to last month that got canceled, was holding a virtual LARP event.

LARP, or live-action roleplay, is something I discovered at that con a few years ago, and was looking forward greatly to picking up again. During the event, everyone gets a character sheet of a character from one of their favorite movies, TV shows, animes, or video games, and the whole time you’re in that room, you have to be in character. Everything that comes out of your mouth contributes to an overarching story that everyone plays a part in.

I was thrilled to hear that there might be a chance to join in virtually, and I quickly applied, even though there were a lot of people trying and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it in. I was even more thrilled when a friend of mine who I met at that con many years ago wrote to me, excitedly letting me know that both she and I made it into the LARP.

Even though it’s not the same as going to AnimeNEXT and walking into the big room full of people in cosplay, I was thrilled to join the Discord group of everyone preparing, introduce myself in character, and have been eagerly awaiting Friday (the start of the LARP) ever since. As soon as I got my character sheet - a character from one of my favorite games of all time that I discovered and binged shortly after getting out of the hospital eight years ago - I wanted to practice, and my friend and I have been on the phone every night this week working on our skills from far away.

Part of me will still miss the experience that COVID has taken away, the opportunity to actually go to a con and have the LARP be just one part of a weekend full of other activities like cosplay, shopping, and spending the weekend with my best friend from college and their family.

But at the same time, I realized that there was so much I would be able to do that I couldn’t do at a regular con. Usually, the LARP takes a back seat to the many interesting things going on around me, and I never end up doing as much as I want to because I lose track of time. This time, since I don’t have other activities, I’ll be able to participate in every session and make myself a more important part of the story. The groups will be smaller, which means there will be more time to get to know people and make new friends. And I’m still managing to get time with my old friends over Discord.

I was initially upset because the LARP this weekend won’t be exactly the same. But I will be able to sit at my computer in my elf dress, hold the character sheet of a character I’ve loved for years, and play the weekend away. That’s what has to matter at times like these, when there are so many more important things going on. Modifications don’t completely ruin everything, and as someone who is usually rigid to the point that I have trouble modifying even the smallest things, it’s hard to accept that. But if it’s that or nothing, I will choose to throw myself into this LARP completely and enjoy it as much as I can. That’s one thing that can’t be taken away!

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

HOLDING THE LINE

Holding The Line

For lack of a better word, this week has been intense.

I came downstairs after work one day, prepared for dinner, only to find my dad locked in his office and my mom sitting at the kitchen table, terror in her eyes. She said my dad was working out when he suddenly felt weak, and he felt like he had a fever.

It felt like the floor fell out from underneath my feet. Suddenly, there were so many fears in my head that hadn’t been there seconds before: did he have the virus? Even though he doesn’t have any pre-existing conditions, would he get a bad case? Would he need to go to the hospital? What about Mom, who spends a ton of time with him? And I wasn’t distancing from him either, how was my breathing? And most importantly, I felt the urgent need to call my Nana, who turns 92 later this summer and has heart problems, since he had been in her apartment just four days before.

In the immediate moment, I was able to squash this down and come up with a rudimentary plan for that night. I threw on my mask and ran upstairs to my room, grabbing basic supplies and preparing to stay downstairs with my mom until we knew for sure. When the panic did hit, she reassured me that she would be the one to deliver him food and other supplies, and I gladly volunteered to go to CVS and pick up a pulse ox machine (even though they terrify me) because it got me out of the house. I could sit alone in my car and breathe freely.

Even though I don’t have nightmares often, I wasn’t too surprised to have one that night, but I was surprised when I woke up to sounds of distress. I was sleeping in my parents’ room, and Dad was still in his office-turned-quarantine-room, but Mom was just arriving home from a walk where she’d fallen and gotten hurt. Her ankle looked like a baseball, and even before I could get my contacts in, I was filled with so much dread I had no idea what to do with it.

It fell on me, then, to not only take care of my dad who potentially had the virus, and whose temperature climbed up to 102 degrees that day, but to take care of Mom and of my dog, who is elderly and has problems with fecal incontinence (which triggers my OCD just like his puppyhood accidents), all the while praying to hear Nana’s voice on the phone saying that she was safe and sound.

It was dinnertime when I finally broke. It was Friday, and on Fridays, I love to reward myself for making it through the work week with my favorite food - baked ziti. I knew my favorite place right down the street experienced a fire right after reopening from the pandemic, so I called my backup place, only to hear that they’d taken it off the menu.

It’s such a small thing in the grand scheme of everything going on that day, from the walks and medications for the dog to delivering things upstairs while trying as hard as I could to not breathe even with a mask on, but it broke me. I couldn’t stop crying, and even when we ultimately agreed to get pizza, I was despondent when I picked it up, grumbling the entire time that we’d stopped going to this place years ago because it wasn’t even that good, and I didn’t even want pizza anyway. I convinced myself, by the time I got home, that I would need to make enough trips to bring up multiple slices of pizza and sodas to Dad that I wouldn’t be able to eat while the food was still warm, and I further convinced myself that since it wasn’t what I really wanted, I could spite this stupid situation by not eating at all.

I did end up eating dinner, in the end - my stubborn resolve broke at the smell of garlic rolls - but it still took me a while to calm down. Later that night, just as Mom and I had talked the previous night, I started to confess how the ANTs were piling up in my head, and that’s why I’d been distracting myself all day with everything possible. Often, I had my Nintendo Switch in one hand and my phone in the other, making sure there was something other than anxiety in my head every second.

She asked me if I was doing the right thing that I’d learned in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) - wasn’t I supposed to be challenging my negative thoughts instead of simply pushing them away? I thought about it briefly, and tried to isolate a thought - and then I found the problem. I was being assaulted by so many powerful ANTs at once that it felt like a tsunami, each individual ANT indistinguishable from the horde.

I learned, in CBT, to write down a thought, classify what kind of thought it was from a list, and reframe the thought in a healthier way. But with so many coming in at once, I needed to escape from the immediate flood in order to be able to focus. In other words, I needed the ANTs to line up rather than pour over me like ocean waves, and once I gave myself time and permission to seek distractions and things that make me happy, I was able to isolate individual things I was worried about and talk through them.

Ever since this realization, even though I’m still staying in Mom’s room as she recuperates and taking care of the dog and making deliveries to my dad while calling Nana a little too much just to make sure she’s not coughing, I have stopped being ashamed of my need for distractions. I’ve taken long walks by myself in the mornings, making up stories in my head and sinking into my imagination while catching pokemon. I’ve cultivated my Animal Crossing island into a beautiful paradise, and when Lord of the Rings Online came out with an expansion that included one of my favorite scenes from Return of the King, I gave myself a whole evening to play it, even though I could have been doing more productive things.

Any one of these complications to normal life would be enough to make me spiral. But with all of them happening at once, it’s essential for me to take time to calm down. Once I’ve been playing for a while - like I did for a while before I wrote this post - I’m able to process what’s going on in a more organized and less panicked fashion.

I hope that my dad will get a negative result on his COVID-19 test since he’s been feeling better, and he’ll be able to move downstairs again and everything will go back to the tentative normal we formed during such crazy times. But in the meantime, I have a strategy - a new combination of distraction and processing that will let me hold the line against the armies of ANTs that are inevitable in tough times.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

THE WRONG SORT OF COMPLIMENT

The Wrong Sort of Compliment

I have always wanted a trophy. To me, it’s a symbol of achieving something special in a world where I’m not great at sports, debate, or any other activities that typically give trophies. So, when work started giving an employee of the month award as a trophy, I have wanted to earn it. I take pride in my work and try to do the best job I can, even though I’m a low rung on the totem pole and thus not in the group typically receiving the award.

Needless to say, I was very excited when my department head announced this morning that she had created awards for everyone for this month, to honor the work we’ve done over three months of quarantine. Everyone looked thrilled, and as she went down the list alphabetically, I couldn’t wait until she got to “Ellie” and told everyone what I had earned. I even had my finger on the screenshot button so I could remember the moment forever in a picture showing me it was worth it even with the hardships I’ve been having at work.

But when she finally got to me, she said that the award I earned was called “Hyper Helper.”

I nearly missed the explanation that it was meant to compliment me on my eagerness to jump into projects and help people wherever my help is needed. I was too busy being stunned, then remembering I was on camera and my department head said she was specifically looking for people’s reactions, and I pasted on a fake smile as soon as I could think of it.

The fake smile didn’t last very long, and soon, I was heading on an unpleasant trip down memory lane to every time I’ve been called “too much,” which stems from the fact that my brain goes a mile a minute. I generally have at least one song, two story ideas, and several video game strategies in my head at any given moment, and I feel most content when I am multitasking with a variety of activities, especially since I am on a medication that makes my brain go very fast (a side effect I’m willing to put up with especially since it means I have an easier time chasing the negative thoughts away). I’ve spent years of my life learning how to whittle this chaos down into something acceptable to others.

For months, I’ve been having a problem doing this at work. Because I have room for so much to go on in my head at any given time, I have a very hard time doing nothing, and when I run out of tasks to do at work, I can’t do any of my usual things like playing video games, reading books, watching YouTube videos or Netflix shows, or listening to music to calm myself down. Furthermore, I know that the more bored I am, especially over time, the easier it is for negative thoughts to enter my head.

Being bored at work - where I’m sitting there for 8 hours a day, sometimes with only one hour of actual work - means I’m desperate, and when I get desperate, I ask for more to do. It’s a pattern I’ve had across school, jobs, and more. My dad, an HR professional, told me that this was a way to make myself useful to my colleagues while alleviating my boredom - killing two birds with one stone. I agreed, and have gotten myself involved with several other things since that have helped me feel less bored.

During the process of asking for more work, I made sure to not ask too often, loudly, or annoyingly. I paid so much attention to my tone and the words I used, making sure that they wouldn’t come off as needy or begging even if that was how I was feeling on the inside. After all, work is no place for OCD, and I’ve known that my entire life.

I interpret this “award” to mean that I’m not doing as good as I thought here.

It brings me back to a friend I had during the years of my childhood that were ruled by obsessions, where I had so much trouble fitting in that I was willing to be friends with anyone who would accept me back. I knew a girl named Dee (name changed) who was extremely hyper and annoyed everyone around her, and even me sometimes, but I was desperate, and I tried to see the person under all the intense enthusiasm. I stayed friends with her for years, even though my mom couldn’t stand the way she yelled “Ellie’s mom! Ellie’s mom! Ellie’s mom!” to get her attention, and I don’t have any memories of her that don’t involve repetitive, rapidfire talking for hours on end.

All of those memories went through my head on that Zoom call, as I focused on clapping for other people’s awards. Why couldn’t I be the one known as calm in a crisis? It’s probably because I get stressed on high-stress projects, and even if I get the work done well and on time, my anxiety kicks in. Another award was for bringing happiness, something I like to think I do when I stock the snack area, donate books, and share fun collectibles with my teammates.

Other names included balancing projects well, doing things quickly, and balancing real life with work. I would have loved something like that. I would have loved to be known as just a helper, and if they wanted to do alliteration with another word beginning with H, I could see “happy” applying - after all, I do a much better job of faking happiness when I know I have to do it in advance.

But the title I earned is “Hyper Helper,” and I have to use the background representing the “award” for the next month on all of my team Zoom calls. I hope that seeing it repeatedly over the next few weeks will help me get over at least some of my sensitivity, but I’m afraid all it’ll do is remind me that I failed, once again, to be normal. For now, all I can picture is my childhood friend yelling “Ellie’s mom! Ellie’s mom! Ellie’s mom!” A friendless girl doing things so annoying that no one wanted to be around her unless they were forced. Is that how my coworkers see me?

I’m ashamed for my mom to read this, and perhaps picture that in her head. I’m ashamed to show my face around my colleagues and even though I’m pretty sure I’m the only one reading this deeply into my “award,” I feel like this is just another blow in the fight I’ve been having to make my work more tolerable. For today, I managed to not cry about it, and during the quarantine, I am in the wonderful position where if I’m bored at work, I can entertain myself with no one watching.

I’m also working with my parents to figure out something to do when I’m back in the office, where I don’t have to beg for more work and never receive any. I don’t know exactly what it’ll look like, but I have some ideas I’d like to explore. After all, I do have a lot of interests that occupy space in my head that I can put to good use. I hope I can figure out a rock-solid plan, because even with my germaphobia, my worst fear about going back to Chicago is going back to being bored for 7-8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I wish there was a way to be more open about this at the workplace, to be honest with people about why I can’t be bored like this, to explain the probably-strange behavior of asking for more work multiple times when I know many people who are feeling overworked. But I feel I can’t be honest, so in the meantime, I’ll grit my teeth and pretend it’s a smile whenever I have to use the colorful background, and hope for a time when my job better matches my speed and focus.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.