Hurt People, Hurt People

My family is riddled with mental illness. I remember a beloved member of my family asking me if I was certain  I wanted to have children given the DNA and genetic makeup of my family. Hmmm, I’m predisposed to:  anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dyslexia, & ADHD. My desire to have children outweighed my fear of mental illness. Hope, 5, & James, 3  are the 2 things I’m most proud of in my whole life.  To have children is to wear your heart outside of your body 24/7 and to love more than you could ever even possibly imagine. It’s been hard lately. This season of my life has been a tough one. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared  to send my kids into this world every single day, given the current state our world is in. I’m scared for them because the truth is, tomorrow is not guaranteed. We only have today.

Vegas hit me hard. Those Jason Aldean fans were attending a God Damn concert for Christ sake. & those innocent country fans left terrified & in a blood bath, if they even left at all. Those attendees will never ever ever ever ever be the same and some never made it out at all. My heart aches for all involved and for the victims and their families. I will continue to pray because our God is big, powerful,  and listening. Lord, I need YOU, we all do. Prayer will not solve problems, but it certainly can’t hurt.

I’ve been reading about our need for reform, policy change, government blame, and more. I’ve been scrolling my Facebook feed less frequently  because it’s filled with that in which I can no longer tolerate, more of the same about the lunatic we call our president of the land of the ‘free’ and home of the ‘brave.’ We aren’t free until we are all free and I certainly don’t feel brave much these days.

I have a theory:  hurt people hurt people. I’m convinced that if we created a safe  space for those that are hurt to speak their pain, there would be less crime overall. We spend a lot of time numbing our pain & not enough time putting words to our pain- speaking it out loud. We’ve been taught that being vulnerable makes us look weak. We are taught to stuff our pain with words like: ‘boys don’t cry,’ ‘buck up,’  ‘get over it,’  ‘man up,’ ‘I’ll give you something to cry about,’ & more. We aren’t given the tools to deal with our emotional pain. We don’t know how to regulate our big feelings.  We are lacking in the coping skills department and so we numb in order to deal with the hard stuff life throws at us. So we: eat crap to temporarily feel good, smoke our pain into oblivion, drink our pain away, hide behind our pain, push our pain way down deep, avoid, perfect, pretend, & avoid looking bad to look good. We do everything and anything to not allow anyone else on planet earth to see that we are  hurting in some way, shape, or form.

According to Brene Brown, we can’t selectively numb, so if you numb the bad, you also numb the good. Don’t numb, speak and seek the help you need and desire.

Pain has to go somewhere, it has to be taken care of somehow. It will show its ugly nasty face somehow, in some way. If we stuff it long enough,  the lid is bound to bubble over and blow off at some point and manifest itself in not so pretty ways. We must find healthy and safe ways to deal with:  hurt,  pain, grief,  sorrow,  loneliness, anger, rage, and sadness. When we share our true feelings,  with someone we deem a safe person we trust, when we put words to our feelings, and that person shows empathy in that sharing, our shame  can no longer exist & our pain lessens or disappears. We are wired for connection. We need people so we can be seen and heard.

What would our world look like if we shared our feelings instead of stuffing them into the deep and dark places?

What would our world look like if vulnerability was accepted & encouraged?

If we do not start recognizing our true feelings, by giving them a voice, we will continue to see things like Vegas, Columbine, V.T., Charlottesville, and more. It does not start at the policy change level, it starts in the 4 walls of our homes, our schools, our jobs, our communities, our churches, and more. We must reach out to those we care about to check in on them, to truly see their hearts, and ask how they’re truly doing. We have to stand for those we love, even when they are struggling to stand for themselves. We must show we care.

Picking up the phone is so incredibly important and has really become a foreign concept in this day and age of texting and social media. We have to start having more face to face connections.  By us truly asking how our peeps are doing, we are connecting and making each other’s lives better. We are preventing  hurt, eliminating sorrow, and decreasing loneliness.

We must not numb our feelings because the second we numb our feelings, we deny our truth and it will show up in our mannerisms via: the way in which we treat those we love, anger, resentment, unkindness, & illness. We’ll become riddled with unhealthy ailments & negative behaviors we never even knew were possible because we were so damn afraid of admitting our pain to anyone. We ball it all up &  will do any and everything to not let a single sign of vulnerability show up. Then, we wonder why  we get sick,  have eating disorders, suffer from depression, deal with  anxiety, & more.

That shooter in Vegas was hurting and was riddled with heartache, for whatever  reason, and we didn’t reach him fast enough, we didn’t get to him fast enough to see what it was that he was dealing with from the inside out. I imagine he carried all of that pain, rage, and hatred around with him like a 500 pound weight. He couldn’t bear it anymore and so he shot, at random, to express what was going on inside his heart and mind. He lost his shit and  lost his mind. He was unable to identify what was going on, from the inside out, and share that pain with another human being in a healthy way, in a real way.  We failed him. We didn’t get to him fast enough & people lost their freaking lives and now his rage and anger have manifested itself in the death of 59 people and hundreds injured. It’s heartbreaking and sad and horrible and horrific and unfair and senseless.

How can we reach more people to prevent this from occurring time and time and time again?

How can we guarantee our children will be safe going to school?

Check in on your loved ones and notice how they are acting around you. If your gut says something is up, do something, say something, act. Don’t ignore that gut instinct that something is up. Take a step towards that person and check in with them.

I’m not a therapist, a theorist, a politician, or a policy changer, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that mental illness is HUGE & right smack in the middle of the very reason people kill people. Hurt people hurt people. They want to be seen, heard, paid attention to, and know they are worthy and relevant and will do anything in their power to get attention, even at the expense of innocent lives. They need help long before acting out. We have to lean into the discomfort and do what we can, where we can, and how we can. Pay attention.

Embrace vulnerability. Speak the truth. Be bold. Be brave. Make your truth known. Seek help. Talk to each other. Be the change by making your voice  heard loud & clear. Pray for peace, love your neighbor, check in often with your loved ones, neighbors, and family. If something is off, speak it & act, don’t sit with it. You might save their lives. Speak your truth, give a voice to your pain, call a thing a thing, be real, be transparent, be vulnerable, and be brave. Lives depend on it. Being aware, awake, & mindful of your loved ones is absolutely critical in making our world a better and safer place to live our lives.

From the bottom of my broken heart to yours, I’m sorry we failed you, Vegas.