I am a very guilt driven person. I'll be the first to admit it. I'm a sucker for the guys who stand outside Walmart with cardboard signs saying "God Bless." (I cried when Ted Williams, the man with the "Golden Voice," was plucked from poverty and given a home and a several thousand dollar contract to Mac and Cheese, even though he used that money to promptly turn to alcohol again.)
I apologize when I cut someone off on the freeway, even as they flip me off. I had to quit my volunteer job at the pound in Jr. High because I learned they euthenized all the animals that didn't get adopted, and looking into those sad brown eyes every Saturday pleading for me to take this or that furball home was simply too much. When my family traveled to Peru in tenth grade I witnessed true poverty for the first time, and upon our return to the States, I hated myself for having "luxuries" like clean underwear and two-ply paper in the bathroom.
So what does a person like me--who beat herself up for a month because she forgot to donate blood last fall and the Red Cross won't stop sending those "we NEED you" e-mails--DO when an actual damning event occurs, and offense is taken, and consequences are severe? Like say, being involved in an awful affair. Or single-handedly altering three different lives in a negative way.
When something like this happens, my guilty alter-ego, "Victim Girl," steps in. She shoulders all responsibility, attaches all blame and discouragement and hopelessness with steel velcro to her person, and marches herself and me straight to an abyss.
She's not fun company, by any means. And she always seems to make an appearance when I am at my highest peak. For example, right after finishing the best ice cream of my life. Or after an evening out with friends. Or when an entire week goes by where nothing fell apart and I'm just beginning to believe in myself again.
SMASH. SHATTER. KAPOW.
Everything's blown to hell.
It's like this at the beginning of every new semester. I measure up my new classes and look at the workload, and just barely finish convincing myself that it's doable when She appears. At first it's just a virtual tap on the shoulder. Hey there friend, I don't want to startle you but, um, you're going to fail miserably. Then the tap gets stronger. Soon it's a choke hold. GIVE UP. LAY DOWN. EIGHTY SIX IT.
Sorry Alter Ego, but I'm not buying it this time. I know that I can pass these classes. I know that I can continue to change myself and be happier, be selfless, and make peace with the past. I'm ready to let go of some of that weight. I'm ready to let go of YOU.
In A Beautiful Mind, Russel Crowe plays a Professor plagued by schizophrenia. His own personal demons take the form of his best friend, an imaginary jokester; a FBI agent, his imaginary antagonist; and a little girl, his imagined innocent return to childhood. Throughout the movie you come to love, or at least trust, these characters undisputed existence, and you are almost thrown out of your seat when you learn that they aren't real. Fake. Phantoms. When the Professor, Nash, finally recognizes the hallucinations for himself, he struggles to turn his back on them, taking years and years of practice until finally he can ignore his best friend, his enemy, and the little girl who stretches her arms up to him for comfort. It's a bitter sweet victory for him, and in my mind, a similar situation for depression.
My personal demon is not physically manifest, and there is no real person whispering real doubts into my ear. But the crushing weight of guilt IS real, and it's something that, like Nash, I hope I can learn to live with. My favorite scene in the movie is at the end, when Nash gives an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. In the audience he sees his wife, his kids, his friends and colleagues. And, of course, the three hallucinations. He meets their gaze, falters in his speech for a moment, then turns away. He recognizes them as an equal. Something he can choose to pay attention to, but won't.
Today I recognize my elephantine guilt, rooted both in truth and lies, as an equal. I know my past is not spotless. I know I still need to make my peace with a lot of it. I can choose to constantly give my life to this grief, but I won't. I can choose to be constantly self-absorbed in a pity party, but then I will have nothing left over to give to those around me. Those who still stand by me.
I owe it to them, and I owe it to myself, to stand tall. To give myself just enough credit so that I can give OF myself, again and again and again.
