Chapter 33

Let's call things what they are.

Because while it may not seem like much, saying it's real name brings so much more meaning.

I was lounging on the almost new loveseat across from him; he kept changing positions. As if he couldn't get comfortable. To be honest, it was probably the conversation more than the couch. On my end, I was tearing off the layers of emotional baggage, exposing the average nudity underneath. Once all the baggage is gone, people are pretty much the same. His end was more of philosophical meanderings with a destination somewhere close to my soul. He didn't expose much.

But me?

I was letting it all out. I was finally telling someone of my percieved shame. I would call it an emotional striptease, but there was nothing tantalizing about it. I was stark naked. Twirling, arms in the air, pointing out my flaws. There are so many truths that came out that night.

I wonder if he knows what he witnessed. If he even cares. If it stopped being appealing because it was that primitive. The documentaries of half-naked natives, whose exposed flesh ceases to attract the carnal and sensual simply because it is so haphazard. Attraction has nothing to do with baring it all, but how temptingly you cover it up.

Call it what it is: an emotional breakdown, followed by a mental breakdown.

It's like I can't actually emotionally connect to experiences before that day. I picture my synapses as threads of hardened sugar candy, that snapped. You can't repair those. So all the emotional pathways I had created before my mission were gone – I physically could not come to the same conclusions. And so there I was, as empty a slate as a newborn, in the body of a 21 year old.

If I had known that, I would have been more careful. Expected less of myself. But I couldn't understand why everything was so empty, and the only emotions I could feel were taught to me by the few days that followed.

Desperation. So hungry or tired that you would scratch and claw at your own face for a morsel of food, a quiet place to rest your head. I was starved at that point. Physically, spiritually, emotionally starved. I was in my last moments fighting for life.

Shame. I learned that one from President Pace. As he told me all the reasons I had to be ashamed of myself. That I had “improved”. That my lack of resistance was the most admirable quality he had seen in me. He kept me in his office for 2 hours. Forced me to reveal things I barely remembered. Interpreted my statements in the way he chose. Chopping me up, adding my bloodied remains to the tens of others he destroyed.

Confusion. God told me that all was well. He kept telling me, over and over again. I was so confused why he would tell me that when His representative was claiming the opposite. Confused why I couldn't find the door to my room, that night I woke up in agony. I was in the downstairs bedroom, surrounded by bookcases full of children's books. I sat up, running for the bathroom as the disease tore my stomach apart. But the door wasn't where it should be. All I could find were the broken spines resting on the shelves Well worn companions from a childhood forgotten and meaningless. I called out for her, over and over again, betrayed when she didn't answer. I thought her patience had finally expired.

Eventually I remembered. I remembered that I had left that place, where she would come running when I called. I found the doorknob and hurried into the bathroom. I would have given anything to be back in that tiny apartment, where I could find her next to me. I wouldn't even mind the cockroaches. They would be welcome companions, if only I weren't so lost in what used to be my home.

My dad and I drove to Utah together, supposedly for a weekend, and I ended up staying. I slept on couches, floors, under trees. I lived as a homeless vagabond for a week. I was so used to walking, I would just spend my days wandering the streets of Provo, mumbling to myself. There was no one else to talk to. And when there was, I didn't have anything to say. Eventually I moved into a tiny house on 600 East. The old house where Maureen used to live.

I remember the late nights in Armenia; I would picture what it would be like when I was finally done with my mission. When I had finally fulfilled my commitment. In those sunny dreams, those glittery fantasies, there was one thing that was always consistent.

I was never alone.

But reality never is as you project it to be. The future never glitters as much when it becomes the present.

I've spent almost 3 years cowering behind my percieved inferiority. Filling only the most trusting silences with my story. I convinced myself that my breakdown makes me less worthwhile, weaker, and unworthy. That everything I have and am is a miracle after that kind of shame.

I stand tall now. I don't hide. I unabashely and unashamedly declare what I should have known for so long.

My descent into mental illness is one of my most proud posessions.

So lets call it what it is. Mental illness. A mental breakdown. Post traumatic stress.

Because there is no shame in letting the world break you. There is only shame if you don't let the people who love you put you back together.