“Frozen”
The Good Luck Joes
Five years ago you sat across from me. I bought us Wendy’s with my freshman meal card because you had spent all of yours. I wasn’t surprised.
I asked what you were doing, and you laughed and told me all of the reasons that moving home was what you wanted. I asked what you were really doing, what you were doing to yourself, and you said you didn’t know.
You didn’t know.
I told you for the millionth time how smart you were, how sickeningly smart you could be if you just stopped being stupid. And even though you shook your head I knew that you agreed because I could see it in your eyes. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would ever read what you weren’t saying in them.
“And I don’t mind, and I don’t mind to look inside your thoughts.
And I don’t mind, and I don’t mind, but I can’t find my way in.”
We were supposed to hang out during my free week between semesters, but I forgot to call you, and you didn’t call me. I think we would have gone to Steak and Shake. I think we would have talked about all of the times we’d eaten there while we were student directing. I would have shown you that I still had that key we had copied, and you would have asked for it again and I would have said no because it would be way too big of a temptation for you, and when I promised your mom that I would make sure you passed AP English, that also seemed to include a silent agreement that I wouldn’t give you the master key to the high school to help you to get in trouble.
I don’t know if I would have seen it in your face this time. I don’t know if I would have asked the right questions. This is the part that feels so hollowed by cliché. These are the questions that have been asked millions of times. Would I have known? How could I have seen it if no one else did? Why didn’t you tell someone? Why didn’t you tell me? But we didn’t go to Steak and Shake, and you didn’t tell anyone, and I went back to school, and you slipped away.
“Far away, what was deemed to never change, found a rift, made a void at its own pace.
In a blindside ambush fight, it all fell at the hands of a mind game.”
I wonder all the time what your last thoughts were. I wonder the last words you spoke. I wonder if you wished you could take it back. I try so hard to remember what the last thing I said to you was, but it’s moments like that one where you don’t realize how much you should hold on to it until you’ve already let it go.
“And I will, and I will, and I will set you free.
And I will, and I will, and I will set you free.”
I know that it’s been five years now, but I still see you almost every day. You don’t look the way you used to; your story isn’t the same. But then again, when you boil it down, isn’t every hurting person’s story about a human in pain? There are so many things I wish I could have said to you back then, but I didn’t know I needed to say them. I can say them to you now, though.
It is never too late for you. Never. There is no escape in a bottle, only another handful of chains. There is always hope. You might not see it, but it is there in your ska music and your frisbee golf and every time you play your trombone. There is hope in the battle. I am with you. Don’t stop fighting because I can’t win it on my own, and neither can you.
And I care. I care that you are hurting and I care that you make it through this. Please don’t give up. Please.
—Lindsey
“Dead Hearts”
Stars
“Tell me everything that happened.
Tell me everything you saw.”
I have never been able to forget the feeling I had the first time I wanted to be somebody else and began to dream of all the possibilities. The reality settled quickly and overwhelmed me. I was young and had just grasped the concept of change, that I would not always be who I was in that moment. It was exciting because I knew it meant dreaming wasn’t pointless. Everything seemed endless in the best kind of way.
“Did you see the closing window?
Did you hear the slamming door?”
Much later I realized the same goes for other people—they would not always be who I thought they were, who I wanted them to be. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way, and that feeling of infinity was replaced with constriction.
Dead hearts can be something that changes parts inside of you for the worst way or something that reshapes your views and preconceived notions for the better. I know both roads.
“They moved forward, my heart died.
They moved forward, my heart died.”
You’re in fifth grade, and your friends say they no longer want to be friends with you because you don’t wear the same jean size. The definition of friendship and what it looked like changes forever.
You’re sixteen, and your hero packs his suitcases after telling your Mom he’s leaving because he met a woman three weeks ago and no longer wants to stay. And everything you thought you knew is broken.
You’re in a three-year relationship, and you learn the boy you love has been unfaithful to you with his ex-girlfriend. You accept the lie that you aren’t enough and believe staying is the only way to prove your worth.
We always have choices, but along with self-realization I didn’t acknowledge how other people’s decisions could create dead hearts in me.
“It’s hard to know they’re out there.
It’s hard to know that you still care.”
Little by little the world changes. There are the surprises—the people who bring you back to life and help lay current dead hearts to rest.
The guy following you out of the bookstore late at night rather quickly is bringing you your credit card, not getting ready to attack you.
Your hero, the man who said he couldn’t stay, realizes home with your family is the only place he wants to be.
The high school teacher who keeps questioning and pushing you actually thinks you’re smart, so he’s trying to challenge, not antagonize, you.
“Dead hearts are everywhere.
Dead hearts are everywhere.”
I have had my fair share of heartbreaks and disappointments. I know sometimes it can be much easier to focus on everything that’s missing because I do that in my own head. The thing I’ve come to understand is when I do that, it’s my own choice. In those moments, I choose to let the doubt, anxiety, and dead hearts come back to life.
“They make me feel I’m falling down.
They make me feel I’m falling down.”
Contending with the past and the people in it can be a battlefield. It’s haunting to know all the different past versions of myself and others still exist in some space. I look back at photos from only a few years ago, and while I still have the memories from those moments, it looks nothing like my life anymore. The old selves, the dead hearts, the ones who made bad decisions, hurt people, were reckless and harmful to myself are no longer present in my life, but sometimes I see their shadows. I laid the former versions of myself and their dead hearts to rest, but their shadows remind me that I still carry them.
“Was there one you saw too clearly?
Did they seem too real to you?”
There are things we cannot help, but at the core, we have the ability to change—or not change—who we are. Sometimes it feels like the shadows of people I’ve been are staring back at me, and those former selves I knew might still have some life left in them after all. I cannot change the fact that at times I have been a person I am not proud of.
Instead of dwelling on my inability to change the past, I reconcile who I was with who I am and in doing so give myself the power to believe that who I am is a choice. That belief is by no means easy, but the potential for possibility is enough for me.
—Chloe
TWLOHA Staff
Jason Russell is my friend. i reached out to him a few years ago, as TWLOHA was starting to take off. i was a fan of Invisible Children and it seemed we could learn a lot from them, and i could learn a lot from him. Like IC, TWLOHA was born from a story and the surprising response to that…
“Walk On”
U2
“And love, it’s not the easy thing.”
Love isn’t something I receive very well. I never understood why my friends stuck by me or people who continued to believe in me, because I never even loved myself. I think some of that stems from being adopted and this overwhelming fear of being abandoned because I felt that I have never belonged. The fear might have made me sad at first, but I grew accustomed to it over the years because it was what I knew.
I was at home with my depression. The self-hate tore my life apart and was written on the surface of my body. There were nights where I numbed myself to the world around me, trying not to feel anything, and mornings that I regretted waking up. In my sport, pain was a good thing, so I associated putting myself through agony as an okay way to cope (despite the fact that I don’t believe it made me a better swimmer). I carried this darkness with me at all times, reluctant to let anyone in because I wanted to paint a mask of perfection. The mask didn’t fool many people. I defined myself by my perceived failures, and I couldn’t shake it, the truth coming through even when I wouldn’t own it out loud.
“And if the darkness is to keep us apart,
And if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off,
And if your glass heart should crack,
And for a second you turn back,
Oh no, be strong.”
I centered my life around this concept of complete and utter self-loathing, which I used as a shield so that people couldn’t get near me. Like self-loathing was a contagious disease that might spread if someone got too close. I kept telling myself that no one needed to rescue me because I wasn’t worth saving anyway. It got to the point where I had to be removed from my swim team because I was sucking the good out of everything around me.
Here I was living this dream of being a successful scholarship athlete at one of the best programs in the country, but I didn’t even care. There were few moments of brilliance as my talent took over my stubbornness, but mostly I just wallowed in darkness. One of my coaches, who I thought the world of, told me that I was stronger than I knew, but I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t find any strength, and I was too tired to look.
“And I know it aches.
How your heart, it breaks.
You can only take so much.”
I don’t remember if there was an actual rock bottom moment. I felt like I had been settled at the bottom for a while. Then, Frank showed up, and I couldn’t stand him one bit. As my new coach, he was honest with me and refused to put up with my attitude. He challenged me to make a change. On multiple occasions.
It’s not that people before him hadn’t tried to help me build a way out of my depression, but he was there when I was mature enough and ready to listen.
“All that you fashion, all that you make.
All that you build, all that you break.
All that you measure, all that you feel.
All this you can leave behind.”
Frank and his wife created a sort of safe harbor for me and opened my mind up to the possibility of recovery and the idea of healing. When I started actually fighting for my life, I became aware that there were so many people around me who had been there, patiently waiting for me to see that they would try to understand. People who loved me all along — through the storms and brokenness. What a miracle that seemed to me.
“Home, I can’t say where it is, but I know I’m going.”
I don’t believe I am defined by this struggle, but it is a part of what shaped me into the person I am today. I’m still working hard to understand grace and forgiveness, but I’m in a place where I can let those ideas inside.
One foot in front of the other, and one day at a time.
There are times when I feel weak, but my community shares its strength and reminds me of my own. I am forever grateful that I had those people in my life who believed I was worth fighting for and taught me the true meaning of love. That’s what makes all of this so beautiful, because now I get to share it.
This isn’t just my story.
—Caitlin
Spring 2012 Intern
Amazing
This week, February 26 through March 3, is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. It’s about bringing public attention to eating disorders and the prominent impact they have in our society. Because eating disorders are often accompanied by isolation and shame, the seriousness of these…
Share hope and support during Self-Injury Awareness Day today by wearing orange and starting conversations. You can also join us by adding a little orange to your profile photo in support of SIAD. http://www.twloha.com/facts
Confession: During my first four months on staff at TWLOHA, I mostly cried when I wasn’t at work.
(And, sometimes, even when I was.)
It wasn’t TWLOHA’s fault that I wasn’t okay. I should have been perfectly happy: I had a job in a difficult economy; I worked for a cause I believed in; I had…
Love it.
