In the depths of my clinical depression, I didn’t contemplate suicide. Instead, I would go to sleep at night praying that I would die before I awoke the next morning. Perhaps, choosing to live was either sheer cowardice for fear of shame or it was unrecognized resilience. Still, I suffered.
Sometimes the fear of living in suffering eclipses the inherent fear of dying. A couple of years ago, my dear friend Grant succumbed to his fear of living in suffering. He was a good, kind man. Rest in peace, my brother.
On Thanksgiving Day a few years ago, I sat in the movie theater watching writer and director Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen, starring Hailee Steinfeld as 17-year-old smarter-than-thou drama queen Nadine. In the aftermath of her binge drinking night with BFF Krista, played by Haley Lu Richardson, Nadine lurches over the bathroom toilet.
Nadine hated on nearly everyone. Yet, she hated on herself most of all. She cried, “I just had the worst thought. I’m gonna have to spend the rest of my life with myself.” Nadine falls asleep, curled up on the floor.
Nadine hated on herself almost as much as I hated on myself. I got it. I needed to lighten the fuck up. No, I couldn’t just love myself from where I was, from my zero. I started by hating on myself a whole lot less. I took my baby steps to heal myself.
My dear friend Cheryl Hunter said, “Be kind to others. Be kind to yourself.” That landed for me. Enduring my abusive childhood, kindness didn’t come naturally for me, especially having kindness for myself. So, I practiced kindness over, and over, and over, and over again. Repetition makes the unnatural, natural. The late Mizukami Sensei said, “Just train. It’s not like you have to get somewhere.” Amen.
I worked with my therapist Lance in healing my childhood trauma and depression. I distinguished the voice in my head that said, “Jon, you’re not good enough,” was my dad’s voice. Dad had gotten that voice from his dad, who was far more abusive with him. The tragic legacy of abusive parents.
For sure, my suffering and hating on myself likely sourced from my childhood relationship with Dad. As a young boy, I was so terrified of Dad. I never knew what made him so angry with me. Maybe, I was not the son he wanted. After all, we seemed so very different.
Ironically years later, I got that we were so very much alike: We were both scared as hell. I was scared as hell as a kid, never knowing what I did or didn’t do that made Dad so angry. Dad was scared as hell, too. He didn’t know how to raise me.
Still, I am the source of healing and forgiving myself. No, I didn’t forgive Dad for his cruel capricious acts upon Mom, my sister Carol, and me. I forgave Dad for being human, for being afraid, for not knowing how to be a father. He wasn’t to blame for my suffering. No one was to blame. I had to learn to love and forgive mine own self. That was all on me.
O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, Founder of Aikido, said, “True victory is victory over oneself.” I work on me. I don’t blame others.
In Sunday Aikido class, Ishibashi Sensei had us practice katate-tori technique. The uke, the attacker, grabs my wrist with his hand: his right hand to my right wrist; his left hand to my left wrist.
As the nage receiving the attack, I executed three variations of iriminage (clothesline to the head). In each variation, I apply kotegaeshi and nikkyo (both wristlocks) to myself, extending my arms out in front of me. I literally applied the technique on myself by putting my own wrists into proper position. The attacker is irrelevant. I apply the technique on myself. The attacker falls to the Aikido mat. I don’t defend against the attack. I invite the attack. No contest. No fight.
When someone attacks, it’s only me against me. I work on myself. I’m the source. I’m responsible for how it goes. In the bigger picture, whether I take down the 250-pound dude coming to punch me out or heal my childhood trauma and depression, I overcome me. No one’s to blame.
In that bigger picture, I could blame Dad’s fear and anger for me hating on myself. Yet, that doesn’t resolve anything. Sure, I could be right and make Dad wrong. Still, I would suffer. Instead, I forgave Dad for being human, for being afraid. I forgave myself for not being strong enough to stand up to him as a little boy.
Maybe, the hardest thing to accept is that life can and will be unfair, that there will be suffering in life. Blaming others for my own suffering can make me right and them wrong. That doesn’t resolve the suffering, resolve what’s present.
In mathematics, in the field of inductive logic, the premise supplies some evidence, but not full assurance, of the truth of the conclusion or outcome. It’s possible that who I am, can be the aftermath of the actions from the past. That’s entirely possible. Indeed, very likely.
Yet, I choose, who I am going to be in the present and in moving on. I work on me. I don’t work on others. No one’s to blame. Just train. Just saying.
Suicide prevention lifeline
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This post is republished on Medium.
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