Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

At some point, you are going to come to a crossroads, and there will be a choice: either you will accept the Beast as gospel or you will fight for your life. I sincerely hope you fight like hell: you and I – we – are worth the fight. Anyone is worth the fight – no one should go gentle into that good night.

The Beast is a shapeshifter: it can take the form of many ills. For example, that night terror you wake up from, the one where you relived the trauma you experienced, can be enough to want to walk with the Beast. Your spouse leaves despite everything you have done to save your marriage – this can be enough to side with the Beast. You get a “C” in a class in graduate school, and a parent is furious – again, this can make one want to give up, to buy into the myth that you are somehow not worthy, that you deserve to die at the hands of the Beast.

Sports fans, let’s talk stats: one person dies by suicide every 40 seconds. One in 100 deaths is by suicide. Between ages 15-29, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death. That’s a whole lotta dying that doesn’t have to happen.

Why does the Beast attract so many people – people who are beloved and cherished? It’s simple, really: the Beast attacks its victim’s Achilles’ heel. Where are you most vulnerable? There are a lot of drivers of suicide: for me, personally, it is a matter of not feeling good enough – and feeling an exquisite sense of shame.

Where do I NOT feel like I am good enough (or even just plain “enough”)? Well, I feel like a complete and utter failure for not having the career I went to school for – for not being a lawyer. I feel an immense sense of failure over a career that never really even happened. Why?? Because I am supremely hard on myself, harder than anybody else could ever be. Sadly, my punitive mind is my own worst enemy.

And then there is the eensy, teensy, itsy, bitsy issue of shame. What, SHAME?? That thing you keep buried in the back corner of your closet? That thing you try – unsuccessfully – to juggle like hot lava? (Spoiler alert: you’ll always get burned.)

Brene Brown, a leading researcher on shame, talks about “shame spirals,” those things that act to pull us under like no other. My shame spiral is all about my being a bad person and not having a career as a lawyer. My treaters have asked me for evidence that I am a bad person – I tell them it’s not what they see (or don’t see), it’s what I feel internally, what I know to be true. They beg to differ, and we’re often at an impasse.

My treaters have kindly, gently – and firmly – pointed out that my illness got very bad at the exact same time that I was launching my legal career. They tell me that it is very difficult to be a newbie lawyer – not to mention being a newbie lawyer struggling with PTSD and schizoaffective disorder. That there is no shame in having taken care of my mental health.

I feel like I beg to differ – that I hid my hallucinations until relatively recently. I wonder if I could have had an actual career if I hadn’t hamstrung my treaters by not telling them all that I was struggling with.

When it comes to push and shove, however, even I – the negative, punishing me – acknowledges that I struggle and that the struggling is NOT my choice, and as such, NOT my fault or my cross to bear. Now, do I always remember that? No. But acknowledging that it is not under my control feels like a start in the right direction.

My point in this blog is to help you to slay your beast – and to hopefully save you from making my mistakes. Of course, you will make your own mistakes, but maybe, perhaps, you will have an easier time, or at least to know that there are people out there who have walked in your shoes – people like me.