Thursday, February 28, 2013

Coping with Suicide: Now, or, In Pictures

Or, A Post With Nothing to do With The Doctor

Questions I ask:

Les Misérables (2012)  Quote (About who am I singing prisoner musical gifs 24601)
a

What I would like to do for a few days:

b

Where I would like to do that:

b

Things I should probably remember:

c

and:

c

Because:

d


I guess I just need to be prepared to be vulnerable to Him again...
Ora pro me?

From Erin

at her Random Ramblings
Do you hear the Catholics sing?
Singing a song of holy men
It is the music of a Church who
will have a new Pope again
Benedict 16 was great
And we will miss him very much
But even in his retirement, he’ll pray for us
 

So long, farewell


Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Grazie, Sancte Pater!

Friday, February 22, 2013

Coping with Suicide: Things I've Learned from Jen

Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary, who also blogs over at the National Catholic Register, has been really helpful to me since the end of December.

I feel strange saying that a mother of six who lives on the other side of the world, blogging about the various aspects of her life (though it's particularly her blogs on motherhood) in the context of the faith have helped me deal with dad's suicide. But they have. I have already mentioned something she said a little over a month ago that I found really helpful.

I like to think that it's Jen's willingness to share and in a manner that isn't asking me for help, that I find so helpful but I'm aware that it's more than that. I'm just not aware of what that 'more' is. Some of it must be that she also seems to live somewhat in her head, as I do. Also, she's putting voice to some of the thoughts going around in my head. 

It also probably has something to do with her honesty. There's something refreshing about someone not being ashamed to say, "I'm having a little trouble in the "suffering with joy" department.

Here, then, are some of the other things Jen has said that I've found helpful.


  • "Also, has anyone heard reports of a rift in the time-space continuum that has caused the passage of time to slow to a crawl? Because I am positive that the weeks are going by at least twice as slowly as they used to." (x)
I wish I could explain how slowly these weeks have been going for me. I think I tried in The Scottish Play but did a pretty poor job, It's nice to hear (read) that someone else can sense the rift in the time-space continuum.

  • "But there was something else, too, that was responsible for my surprisingly peaceful state of mind: Relief.December was a hard month. I couldn’t seem to stay on top of anything, and my inability to deal with life seemed to get worse by the week. " (x)
I've explained this in my initial thoughts here.
  • "My husband has a saying that 'it's never the things you think it's going to be,'" (x)
Sure, it's about problems; it seems particularly applicable to my life now. The things I thought - say, two months ago - would annoy me, don't all do so. Oh, some do. But there are somethings which annoy me now, or some sources of comfort that I have at the moment, which are not what I thought they'd be. Jen's writing, for example, falls into the second categorically.
  • There is truth to the accusations that I’m ungrateful, spoiled, and lazy. No false humility here — I really do posses all those attributes to some degree or another. But it was simply not true to say that those faults alone were the cause of my suffering. (x)
This is a great reminder, one which I'll need to keep coming back to. This suffering is not all my fault, but it's not all not-my-fault either.

Also, all the things she mentions in her most recent post about her "Month O' Doom"

In my next post in this series, I'll be talking about why the thought of visiting the Doctor scares me.



Thursday, February 21, 2013

Cardinal Arinze on Redemptionis Sacramentum


How to Write a Worship Song, or, Why Hymns Are Better




Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Quote of the Now


. . . the silence of St. Joseph does not demonstrate an empty interior, but rather the fullness of faith that he carries in his heart, and that guides each of his thoughts and actions. A silence through which Joseph, together with Mary, guard the Word of God, known through sacred Scripture, comparing it continually to the events of the life of Jesus; a silence interwoven with constant prayer, a prayer of blessing of the Lord, of adoration of his holy will and of boundless confidence in his providence.

– Pope Benedict XVI
Address before midday Angelus in St. Peter's Square, December 18, 2005
Quoted at stjosephaltar.blogspot.com.au/

Friday, February 15, 2013

Coping with Suicide: WANTED - Body Parts

WANTED Body Parts, Various
To Borrow:
Ears, for listening
Shoulder, to cry on
Hand, to hold.
(Preferable all from
same person.)
To Keep:
Two (2) Legs, to stand on.
Must be tangible and
in good working order.

Contact: Kelly

"We need to tell our story over and over again. There is no limit to the number of times we need to tell it." - Glenn Morrison
Here’s the thing: All the people I trust have heard my story to at least some extent and I’m reluctant to tell it to them again.

It’s dad’s birthday this Sunday; this is a date I’ve always simultaneously acknowledged and avoided. I had been hoping this year would be different. If I’d made contact with dad before Christmas (as I’d hoped,) I wanted to be able to see him for his birthday. The best laid plans…

Anyway, That’s not even what I want to talk about and it’s not that I don’t think those around me wouldn’t want to listen. I believe that all of my friends, if I told them that I needed to talk, would want to be there for me. Most of them, however, aren’t capable, for various reasons; capable of listening to me as I need, that is. Some of them are capable, but I wouldn’t know where to start; some of them are capable, and I wouldn’t know how to finish. There are very few of my friends that I’m comfortable around at all, fewer still that I’m comfortable crying around on rare occasions.

I don’t know how most of my friends would react to me crying on their shoulder, though I believe all of them would want to be sympathetic and, as much as possible, empathetic. Not knowing, however, both scares and deters me. As I wrote in At The Moment, I still need to know how a given social situation is likely to play out. In fact, this is something that I normally need - yes, there are still parts of my life that are normal - it’s just that my need is more encompassing than usual.

A dear friend and brother asked me the other day how I was, how I am. When I failed to find words to express my answer, he kindly and accurately suggested “struggling.” In my aim to ‘get back to normal’ I have realised that I have lacked direction in my life for some time. By remaining at University, I had deluded myself into thinking that I had direction. A degree for the sake of being at University, rather than being at University for the sake of a degree. I saw at the end of last year how futile and, frankly, facile this had been and decided to give up the gag. Now, however, with the rest of my life whirling around me, I feel like my legs have slipped out from underneath me and that I have little to stand on. I am struggling. If the Holy Faith I profess was not so solid, if I did not have within it the support and structure that I do, I would have nothing at all to stand on.

***

As I’ve been typing this, I’ve wondered whether I should post it. I don’t want my friends who may read it to think that I think that they’re not there for me: I know they are. I am relying on their prayer and the love they bear me in Christ to get through. I know that if I approached any one of them to talk to them, to ask to cry in front of them, to ask them to hold my hand as I find my feet, they would be there in a heartbeat. I know that, in Christ, I am loved by so many. I am so grateful for that; I am grateful to them and, most of all, to Him Who loves me through them.

I will post this, praying that those who read it, whom I consider friends, will not take offence because none is meant.

I will post this because this is how I’m coping at the moment.
I will post this because the point of this series is to put out into the public sphere the story of someone dealing with a suicide.
 I will post this because I must,
whether or not anyone listens.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Coping with Suicide: The Scottish Play

In my first post in this series, I said that I wanted to get back to normal as son as possible. This particular hour, these past few days, I am not sure what ‘normal’ is. My normal is doing lots of things so as to avoid discovering, as Henri Nouwen would say, my loneliness.

This past two months has been so slow. It’s been 52 days since Christmas and 73 since dad died. It feels like it was only this week that we had his funeral. It feels like only a few months ago that I saw him, alive and in Canberra.

I miss my dad. It seems like an odd thing for someone who avoided seeing their father to say, I guess; but I really do miss him. I’ve missed him for the past few years. There’s a voice in my head that says I should have made more of an effort to see him, but that voice isn’t reasonable. There is no way that I could have.

I had put in so much work to be able to get to the point where I felt like I could call him, to talk to him, to relate to him as both of us were able and as I needed. It was only the end of November when I had, with the help of my counselor, got to the point where I thought I might be ready to call him again. I’d intended to do so around Christmas time.

But I couldn’t. I can’t.
He’s dead and I can’t.

Normal, in 2012, was trying to figure out how I could best relate to my dad. That’s not really something I can get back to. The same was true in 2011. Trying to figure this out was difficult and often resulted in poor academic and social performances on my part. I cannot yet begin to relate, even to myself, the process that I went through, mentally and spiritually, to come to the point where I felt that I might be able to relate to my dad in a way that befitted both our natural relationship (that of father-daughter) and the history of our relationship, together with our personalities, various addictions and crosses.

I have supped full with horrors.

Yet, having had my fill, I had begun to digest them. Just as I was preparing for the battle of repairing my relationship with him, I received the terrible news, almost word for word:

Your dad, Kelly, is dead.

He should have died here after. There would have been time for such a word.
I could have at least made an attempt, have tried to heal some of those wounds which I had caused him; I could have shown him the wounds he caused me as the beauty that they now display. They are, in a sense, very much like the Grand Canyon (I borrow here, Nouwen’s image.) They are a great schism, a tear in the surface of my self, my identity. Yet, they have become a source of knowledge about myself. I wish I could have shown this to dad while he was alive.

Glenn Morrison, a past lecturer of mine recently reminded me that there is no limit to the pain a person can feel. There is no limit to any person’s woundedness. There is always, however, also an infinite possibility of healing. Often, there are multiple wounds, multiple levels of woundedness; yet, these always hold within themselves the possibility of limitless levels of healings. But they take time.

All my yesterdays may have lighted fools on the way to dusty death. They have very often lit that way for me. However, they do not have to. Seen in the right light, as it were, the path leads away from dusty death; all my yesterdays can be, should be, are filled with hope. “[A]t the very least, hope is moving from despair to something more positive,” Fr Tony Kelly writes in Eschatology and Hope. “Hope in all its registers implies a trustful and confident movement toward the future.” Despair is not too strong of a word. It is often over used to mean ‘great sadness,’ however, it is more than this. It is defined by the lack of hope; dusty death is the image of despair. If death and dust is all that is left for us, then despair is the most reasonable attitude. However, one would not wish to hasten the inevitable.

Glenn challenged me to change my thinking on suicide. “Suicide is actually an act of hope,” he said, “it’s as if they’re looking forward to something beyond this life.” If anyone other than Glenn had said this, I would have rejected it straight away. However, Glenn’s appreciation of the face of the Other (to use his own terms) makes me think there might be truth in what he is saying. I don’t know. I would like to believe that it is so, but I really, really can’t say.

Tomorrow
I will get up and do things like an average person

And Tomorrow
I will spend more time in prayer

And Tomorrow
I will live in the hope my God gives me through His Son.

Thus creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time:
Time continues to move slowly for me, but I must make the best use of it. I must continue to live in His grace, His Love. In this way, though I am a poor player with but an hour upon the stage, I dare not strut because I rely on Him for everything; I need not fret, for I live in the hope of Him providing everything.

Life is often full of sound and fury, it is so important to  take a break from both. It means switching off, as it were, the voices in my head, the anger, the mistrust, the misgivings; it means becoming comfortable with my loneliness. It means sitting and binding my wounds one at a time. Because life does not signify nothing.

“In Him was Life.” “In hoc signo vinces