Self-helping shenanigans

Hi. My name is Crystal. And I’m a self-help slut. Actually, the correct phrasing is ‘I’m a fucking self-help slut’ as inspired by Paolo Sambrano. His words, not mine. He also talks a bit about mindfulness, a word I really hate, even though it’s terribly accurate. Anyway, hi, nice to meet you. Let me tell you a bit about self-help-slut-shaming.

“How is it self-help if you have to get it from somebody else? I mean, if you’re reading  a book somebody wrote, then technically, you’re not helping yourself. Technically, they’re helping you.”

“I think all self-help writers are con-artists. They pretend to have answers to questions that everybody asks. I mean, Danielle Steele writes best-selling love stories and she has seven ex-husbands!”

“I don’t read self-help because it’s really just common sense. Why buy a book to read things that are obvious? Si you live life and discover it yourself?”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those self-help people? Surely! Well, I like the person you are, so if reading self-help helped you become that person, then I guess I can put up with it. But it’s still stupid.”

Wise comments from people I hold dear to me – who are all extremely anti-self-help. Me, I see it more as research. I get curious about something. iGoogle the topic. I read an article. I find a self-help title that’s related. iGoogle some more. I torrent. If I can’t find it on torrent, I buy. Mostly on Amazon.

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I guess maybe it’s just how I’m wired. My therapist says I have a questioning core and that I’m always trying to fix things. And since I love words and am fairly self-reliant, I fix a lot of things by reading books. When I had my first boyfriend and was having trouble orgasming, I read The Act of Marriage.

When I had a secret crush and wanted to see if I had the slightest chance, I read 6 signs a guy likes you. When I was taking Psych 101 and trying to use juju science to get a different boy’s attention, I read Why we act the way we do. When I was questioning religion, aliens, and sexuality, I read Conversations with God.

When I was trying to suceed as a freelancer, I read The Science of Getting Rich and the one about the cheese. I even went through phases with The Secret and Manifesting things. Turns out a sure way to get rich is to write a self-help book about, well, getting rich. Weight loss and relationship books sell well too.

I don’t remember much about these books except that I’ve read them, and I still have a lot of them lying around my house. They’re generally quite hard to read, because you have to stop after every sentence to absorb what’s being said. They use the word ‘you’ a lot, often in bold or italics. It gets a bit disorienting. Also, meditation.

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I like reading these books though. I know that what they say is common knowldege to some people. Maybe even most people. But I do learn a lot from these books. I suppose it’s because I’m a hermit-prone introvert, so I don’t enjoy talking to people. I’d rather read a book that transcribes their conversations.

I suppose that for the average person, if they have a questions about parenting, they’ll ask their parents. Or if they’re curious about banking, they’ll walk into a bank. Me, my first port of call is the internet, a torrent site, and PDF book, though lately I take Mobi. It’s easier to read on my Kindle.

So … what am I reading right now? The Noticer. It’s about an ageless old man named Jones Garcia, who may or may not be a racially ambiguous angel. In my mind, he looks like Kwai Chang Caine, but with jeans and a blue bandanna. He walks around town giving people advice and changing their perspective on life.

The Noticer is easier to read than other self-help books, because it’s written like a story. As you read, you’re watching people interact rather than hearing catch phrases and mantras. I admit I was suspicious at first, because the author’s name is Andy Andrews – typical self-help name. And he gives motivational talks, which is disturbing as well. But I’m liking the book so far, even if it does give ‘public knowledge’ that I may not possess. Common sense isn’t common, after all.

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This book kind of reminds me of how Paulo Coelho writes. He puts down deep, philosophical, esoteric, and sometimes biographical information, but he puts it in the form of a story. While you’re enjoying the narrative, you’re also learning things. For me, Paulo’s books reach beyond entertainment and settle deep inside my heart. I end up cherishing his words, even in the books I don’t like. I want to write like that.

I’ve often been accused of being too open with my life, of being exhibitionist, sometimes even sensationalist. I don’t always see it that way, but there is some truth there. I’ve found as I get older that certain things are best kept to myself, because even though sharing them could do a world of good, they could also affect my baby.

For example, speaking about abortion or feminism or depression might help other people, but it might also put my daughter as risk as people ask her questions that she doesn’t need to deal with. I can’t even begin to imagine how I’d respond if a classmate walked up to me and said, ‘I heard your mom did xyz. It’s on the internet.’ Like teenagers don’t have enough problems already.

I suppose a clever workaround would be to pull a Paulo or do like Andrews does, make it into a story. Most readers assume that leading men/women are biographical either way, so why not tap into it? #ProjectBreakMy(Fiction)WritersBlock…

♫ Wrecking ball ♫ Miley Cyrus ♫

So I read The Manipulated Man …

It was recommended by a commenter on my post about gender. I also read The Polygamous Sex. Both books are by Esther Villar. According to the books, not only are women NOT oppressed by men, but they are actually the Master Gender (um … Mistress Gender?) and are holding men under their thumbs. She makes some interesting points, for example:

  1. Men are conscripted; women are not.
  2. Men are sent to fight in wars; women are not.
  3. Men retire later than women (even though, due to their lower life-expectancy, they should have the right to retire earlier).
  4. Men have almost no influence over their reproduction (for males, there is neither a pill nor abortion – they can only get the children women want them to have).
  5. Men support women; women never, or only temporarily, support men.
  6. Men work all their lives; women work only temporarily or not at all.
  7. Even though men work all their lives, and women work only temporarily or not at all, on average, men are poorer than women.
  8. Men only `borrow’ their children; women can keep them (as men work all their lives and women do not, men are automatically robbed of their children in cases of separation – with the reasoning that they have to work).

And yet …

I am a delicate feminine flower

Okay. Let’s start with a story. There are five guys in my building. Okay, there are more than five guys in my building, but I’m only discussing five of them right now. I consider all five of them my friends, and we get a long pretty well. I earn considerably more than all five of them, some as much as five times.

So, Guy 1. We’re going home together after work. No, not like that, mind out of gutter please. We are walking together to the stage, after which we’ll probably take the same mathree to town. Once we get there, we’ll part ways and go to our respective homes. When we get into the matatu, Guy 1 offers to pay my fare for me. It’s only 30 bob, and it’s not like I can’t afford it, but I gladly accept, because it makes me feel nice. It makes me feel like a lady.

Guy 2. We bump into each other at the stage, waiting for a matatu to work. We each pay our own fare, and as we alight he wants to take a detour to buy breakfast from the neighbourhood kiosk. He offers to buy me some as well. Nothing fancy, just a couple of mandazis or a chapati. I say thank you, because, again, it makes me feel valued, and I like feeling valued.

Woman hugging chocolate

Guy 3. We’re in the same industry, we’ve worked together on many projects, and we follow each other on social media. That’s actually how we met, before we ended up in the same job. Twice. So every once in a while, I will put up a random post, and he will respond in the sweetest way. I tweet, ‘craving chocolate.’ He drops one on my desk. I lament on my lost phone case. He offers me a spare. I wax lyrical about bubble wrap. He gets me a few rolls. It’s nice. It makes me feel like he listened, and everyone wants someone to listen.

Guy 4. We share a naughty sense of humour, so one day we make a bet over the meaning of a cheeky little joke. I lose the bet, so I buy him a tub of ice cream at Coldstone. Again, it does’t cost much (the smallest tub is 350) but it’s the principle of the thing. Besides, everybody loves free ice cream.

Now, Guy 5. Things start to go a little beyond good neighbourliness. It seems he’s showing interest. He says he knows that I’m a ‘feminist’, a ‘high earner’ and a ‘single mother.’ I tell him that I understand what all of that implies, and that I’m not looking for someone to pay my bills. However, if a man is in a relationship with me, he does need to be – you know – the man. Which means he needs to ask me out, take me there, and pay for it. I don’t need something fancy. It can even be a plate of 50 bob fries and a soda. After all, it’s not the cost, it’s the principle. He never calls again.

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According to Esther Villar, all these guys prove her point. That I am controlling all these men, and that I’m lying if I say that I’m oppressed in any way. She says women are housewives because they choose to be housewives, because sitting at home and taking care of household chores and babies is the easy job, and that it’s the man who is the slave, forced to go to the office and provide for his wife and kids.

He says if the housewife really wanted to be emancipated, she’d go out and get a job, instead of sitting at home eating her husband’s money. She says if being a Stay-At-Home-Mum was such a terrible punishment, a lot less women would be doing it.

She says that from Age 12, girls decide to become prostitutes and stop developing their brains. Instead, they do everything possible to remain child-like while developing a woman’s body, so that the men in her life will be drawn to protect her. She says mothers – especially the ones that stay at home – raise their daughters to enslave men, and raise their sons to be enslaved by women. She says the only women who take on the work of men are the old, damaged, ugly ones.

When I first read the books, I didn’t get particularly worked up, because apart from those first eight points, I couldn’t see anything of substance. It just wasn’t serious enough to get me upset. I figured she was probably being deliberately inflammatory to sell books, especially since she wrote them in 1972.

Easy as pie my ass

This is 2015, and while a lot of what she wrote still applies in the West, the situation is pretty different for women in ‘the third world’, and even for women in rural Western towns. There are still ‘villages’ even in the US with like 3,000 residents who have never seen a black person, and where the only ‘choice’ for a girl after high school is to marry and have babies.

That said, in today’s world, it’s not necessarily a case of either-or. Few women can ‘decide’ to quit their jobs to raise their kids. A lot of us simply have to make it all work, go to work and look after your babies. If we’re lucky, we have a three month maternity leave, then it’s back to business as usual, except for the leaking breasts and the infant at home. In the third world, we have relatively affordable domestic help – and distant relatives from the village. Out there in the developed world, it’s more like high school babysitters and hyper-expensive day care.

I did wonder about the military service though. For a long time, I didn’t understand why women would want to ‘fight for their country.’ But then I met a few military types. Daughters who grew up in the barracks and wanted to be just like their daddies. Or maybe it was their most logical employment option.

Female soldiers in training

In a lot of countries, being in the army/navy/airforce means free housing, education, and medical facilities. Being sent into active war situations could mean death. But in the event you don’t – you know – die, it means hardship bonuses, promotions, and raises. In short, physically fighting enemies means lots more money for your family. Unless you die first, which would really suck. In that situation – the one where you don’t actually die –  I can see why military women would want front-line rights.

On the other side, in corporate settings, I do see how employers can choose to pay women less for doing the same job. Because if a career woman decides to have a child, she will leave work for a while, maybe a long while, and her husband will have to support at least three mouths on one salary. So it helps if he gets a raise. And employers have no guarantee that a female employee will never have a child and stop working for a few months, or even a few years.

That said … if I’m earning the same as male colleagues, will my salary go down when I get married or start having children? Logically, it can be justified by my time off and my husband’s raise … but it’s still going to feel pretty unfair.

Working mama

And what about the successful mum who comes back to the work force? It’s reasonable she’ll expect to be paid the same as when she left, but what about all the upward movement of her peers while she was away? What about any developments in the field, or training opportunities she may have missed?

The logical thing is to start low and play-catch-up, but again, it feels pretty victimising for her. And that’s assuming her employers are willing to spend the resources needed to get her back up to speed. Strictly from  a business perspective, it may not make a lot of sense.

Feminism – for me – is about women getting the same rights and opportunities that men do. Opportunities for safety, well-being, employment, social amenities, fulfilling lives. Except that in the real world, it may not always be practical for these opportunities to be completely equal. There’s the standard argument that women don’t want to work as loggers or miners or garbage collectors. That we demand equality, but only in the cushy jobs. That we want to leave the ‘dirty’ work for men.

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Thing is though … there are women who want to do those jobs. Not many, but definitely some. And so equality means rather than using the lack of women in – say – construction work – as an example of ‘feminine delicacy’, we should let the woman that want to carpenters be carpenters, and the woman that want to be CEOs be CEOs. Not many men are denied a job – any job – simply because they are men. And yet women are denied jobs based on their gender every day.

And even when they get those jobs, their salaries are based on their gender as well. Plus … and this is the best part … even in jobs that are ‘designated’ for women, men do better and earn more. Case in point? Chefs. Fashion designers. Hairdressers. Even male sex workers get a better deal, and that’s saying a lot.

I suppose then that the ideal situation for me is for everyone to have an equal choice. Do I want to live on a ship and blow up boats from other navies? Do I want to stay at home and raise my kids till they’re 18? Do I want to dress modestly and cover my arms, face, and hair? Do I want to decide when, how, and if I should be pregnant?

Do I want to be promoted no matter how many years, kids, or spouses I may have? Do I want to marry someone that I love? Or walk around – safely – and at all hours – in clothes that I like – without fearing sexual harm? These are choices that should be open to everyone. Nobody should dictate your answers, no matter what organs you have between your legs. And this – I suppose – is why I identify as feminist.

♫ I’m alive ♫ Qqu ♫

My semicolon tattoo

“Mummy, if you tell people you are in therapy, they will think you’re crazy.” Pause. “And I’m not saying you’re crazy. I’m just saying that if you tell people you’re in therapy, they will think your crazy.” Trouble is … sometimes I think I am crazy.

Talking about depression is hard, but not for the reasons you’d think. In this part of the world, depression is still considered a ‘white person disease.’ So I suppose it makes sense I have it, since I’ve often been called the whitest black girl around. Also, for some reason, all my baby’s friends (and their parents) claim I talk like a mzungu.

Depression is sometimes seen as a form of indulgence, because the people that admit to having depression are often upper middle class types in ‘prestigious’ industries like media, advertising, entertainment, or NGOs.

I suppose this is partly because it is people from those industries that would be open to therapy, treatment, and diagnoses. It is also people from those industries that can afford treatment, therapy, or diagnoses.

I read a study that said people in developed countries have higher rates of depression than those from the third world. The study concluded that such people have depression simply because they can afford to. And that’s what makes it hard to talk about depression – the fear – not of being thought of as crazy, but of being reduced to a ‘poor little rich girl.’

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To someone struggling to pay their bills or barely surviving from day to day, I must seem pretty shallow. Someone like me claiming to be ‘depressed’ must seem like an insult of massive proportions. I have a good job, a beautiful child, an above-average lifestyle, yet here I am claiming to be so low that I can barely get out of bed.

Here is a person with more than most people would dream of having … brazenly claiming she wants to die. I guess that’s why I’ve been described as seeking attention, emo, fake-deep, spoilt, bored, undersexed, ungrateful, melodramatic … insane.

And yet that’s what depression is. An inexplicable sickness that mocks all the joys and blessing in your life, leaving you feeling worthless and dead, like your existence doesn’t matter, and like the world would be better off without you.

In many ways, Robin Williams proved that to the world, and by his death, he spoke for all of us that live what he lived. Robin Williams is gone, but by some miracle, we’re still here.

A few days ago, I found out about Project Semicolon. It’s a movement started by Angela Bleuel in honour of her father, who killed himself when she was 18. She started the project to offer hope, love, inspiration, and encouragement to people struggling with depression, suicide, addiction and self-injury. In her words:

Angela Bleuel
“A semicolon is used when an author could’ve ended their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.” 

Project semicolon says the tattoo serves several purposes. It reminds the owner that they shouldn’t give up yet. It shows others that this person is a safe space, that they understand, that they can talk about depression, suicide, and self injury. It opens up constructive, sympathetic discussions on self-harm and mental illness.

A few days ago, I got my very own semicolon tattoo. It’s my third one, and for me, it’s a reminder that I’m still here, and that as long as I’m still breathing, there’s always hope. Of course my baby thinks tattoos are super cool, so she showed my latest one to a family friend, and he asked what it was about. He has known me for just over a year, and I see him roughly once a week, but he didn’t know I have clinical depression. In fact, he says I’m the ‘happiest person he’s ever met.’

As we talked about it more, he seemed sobered. He said he’d only heard about things like depression and bipolar on TV, and had never met anyone who had it. He asked if it ‘just about being sad.’ I tried to explain that it was more than that, that in the deepest part of a depressive cycle, you don’t feel sad. In fact, you barely feel anything. You are literally the walking dead, and so you ‘feel’ that you might as well be. That’s what drives a lot of patients to suicide.

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Another cause is the relentlessness of this disease. You have a depressive bout. You see a therapist. You take medication. It lifts. Then after a few weeks, or months, or even years, the cycle re-ignites. Medication. Therapy. Another lift. Another downer. It gets to a point you just don’t want to do it anymore. You think the cycle will never end and you no longer want to waste your energy. Why bother even trying? So you make everything stop.

I could tell by the look in my friend’s eye that he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Especially when he asked in what sounded like puzzled frustration, ‘What’s so bad about not feeling anything?’

I have a few theories. I think that maybe my friend, being an African man, is used to suppressing and even ignoring his feelings, so he doesn’t see what the big deal is. Maybe that’s why more men commit suicide than women. Maybe they’ve been taught to keep their feelings deeply hidden, so even when they get overwhelmed by depression, they’d rather die than admit it. Literally.

Ironically, more women attempt suicide than men. Some people misinterpret this. They think suicidal women are simply seeking attention, while the men actually WANT to die and make sure that they do. They think teenage girls who cut themselves are just trying it out, the way some teenagers do drugs, or booze, or ‘experiment’ with gay/lesbian/bisexual sex. They think our failed suicide attempts are not ‘serious’ or ‘real’, especially when we have more than one.

*trigger warning: methodology mentioned below*

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There’s a line I remember from an 80s sitcom called The Facts of Life. In one episode, a girl overdoses and ends up in hospital. Her roommate says something like, ‘She didn’t really want to die. I had this one friend, she jumped off a building during history class. They didn’t find her for hours. Now that’s someone who wanted to die.’

And so you hear that women often attempt suicide by swallowing pills or cutting their hands. And you hear that they ‘didn’t want to die’ because if they did, they’d use a gun, or jump, or hang, or use efficient, ‘manly’ forms of death.

I know that on the three occasions I attempted suicide, I did want to die. I can also say I’m grateful for each failed attempt, because if I had succeeded, I would not be the mother of my beautiful baby almost-teenage girl.

I don’t know why I talk about depression so openly. I suppose it’s because there are people that can’t talk about it. I hope that in some way, my words tell them that it’s okay to be this way, to have this thing. Maybe if they know they’re not alone, then they’ll hold on one more day. Although, I suppose, the people that most need to hear this aren’t people that read blogs. Some of them aren’t people that read at all.

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My workmates have started noticing my new tattoo. One asked why I would spend 5K to have someone stick needles in my arm. Another wondered why I chose half a butterfly instead of a full one. A few others mentioned it was pretty. Only one asked what it signified. I told her it was about depression.

“Why would you brand your body with depression?”

“It’s more about getting over depression.”

“You have depression?”

“Yes. I see a therapist every week.”

“But … you don’t look like you have depression.”

“Neither did Robin Williams.”

And for that matter … neither did Omosh.

Oddly enough, some people are offended by my semicolon. They feel that wrist tattoos are only for cutters – people who slit their wrists to deal with the pain of mental illness. I’ve attempted suicide more than once, but I’ve never cut myself, except in the depths of my own mind. For me, the butterfly on my wrist keeps me going. It reminds me that my story isn’t over yet, and that when it is, it won’t be terminated by my own hand.

Ironically, in early programming languages, the semicolon meant ‘terminate’ and was used to end a command. So to some people – especially old school coders – the semicolon tattoo is backfired symbol of hope. I see it differently. Having a ‘terminate’ symbol on my wrist reminds me that the power to end things is literally in my hand. It’s all up to me. It’s a useful reminder to take a step back, breathe, wait this thing out, and live another day. I am my own terminator – or at least, I could be. And every time I look at my tattoo, I choose not to be.

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Besides, before all the drama with Maria and whatnot, The Terminator was pretty badass, no?

Finding Project Semicolon was a lifesaver for me. I’m in the middle of a depressive episode, and am about to start taking meds. Not many people can tell, because depressives are experts at covering things up. But as my not-so-little girl says, when you’re with someone all day every day, you eventually know all their secrets.

Inside Out is an animated Pixar film about a child with depression. Which makes it sound really terrible, but it’s actually quite cool. There’s a scene *spoiler alert* where the control panel goes dark. The Emotions panic as they realise that they can’t make Riley feel anything at all.

That’s the climax of clinical depression, when you feel nothing. And it’s at that point that many people kill themselves, because they truly believe that their loved ones, their neighbours, their kids – would be better off without them, and that this repressive darkness will never end. It’s hard to pull yourself back from that edge.

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As a person living with depression, I’m training myself to pull back long before I get to that point. When the darkness starts to creep in, I consciously think of my child, and how much she would suffer if I was gone. Then I look at my new tattoo, I breathe, and I say hold on girl, make it through one more day, this sh*t will pass.

It’s not always that easy. I have tons of support. Medication, loved ones, an awesome therapist. And yet there are still days I wake up wishing I had died in my sleep.

I know that I am blessed. I know that not everyone can get the help I’m getting. Not everyone can afford a doctor, or drugs, or a couch, or even the luxury to talk about their suffering. I just hope someone might read this and know they’re not alone, and that maybe the knowledge will keep them going a little bit longer.

Because with every day you open your eyes and face another day, no matter how horrible, draining, or debilitating that day might seem to be, you’re one step closer to getting better. And when you’re in that moment, please believe you’ll get better, because … take it from someone who’s been there … you can’t get much worse.

Omosh
A tribute by Fuad Ally

BurnEllie Goulding ♫