No Matter Where You Go, There You Are

Funny how when I went to look for the origin of the quote "no matter where you go, there you are", I actually cannot find a source. Or at least not a clear origin point, which usually to me suggests this saying is something that's from the collective Lyrian consciousness and it keeps popping up.

​Anyway, the following post will be an exceedingly heavy one. Topics of suicide, depression, and spiritual malaise are discussed.

This was inspired by Mari's recent video where she discusses what it's like to remember your past lives. She said something in there, just a single statement (a single, but very loaded statement regarding suicide), that made me want to write this. Because it's true and I came to her same conclusion.

I don't think I've told anyone this story in full before. I've told some friends on Earth a little bit of this story, I've mentioned some of it on this blog (maybe), and some of my Earth family are aware of the circumstances. But I don't think I've sat down, Kyrie's Storytime style, and told it in full. So, let's go on a journey together.

It's 2005, late September. I'm 18, and I've graduated high school and am moving into my dorms in college. This is a very exciting and nervous time for me. I got accepted into a college many hundreds of miles away from home, but it's a prestigious art college and the town is beautiful. But it's still hundreds of miles away from everyone I know.

I'm excited, because this means no one knows me. I can be whoever I want to be, which means I can try out being myself for once. No filters applied. I can be fully-leaded Kyriel.

I'm nervous, because I'm all alone and now I have to make friends from scratch. This is not something that I do easily in this lifetime. I have great trouble making friends, and often deal with considerable social anxiety around strangers. It takes me a while to open up to people, and most people my age are extremely impatient with people like me. Still, I am brave. I will stick my neck out and try.

I know I have to share my dorm with another girl. I'm also nervous about this, because I've never had to share a room before and the thought of not having a door to put between me and everyone else makes me uncomfortable. Also the fact that I do not know this person at all and now I have to live with them also makes me uncomfortable. Plus, I like to sleep naked, and this means I can't do that. That also bothers me. I mean, I guess I could, but at this time I'm extremely self-conscious so I decide to suffer through pajamas.

I have no choice, anyway. This is the only housing option that we can afford for me. Therefore, I have a roommate who's a complete stranger.

The first few weeks of college are rocky to say the least. I'm shy around my roommate, painfully so, and I learn we have absolutely nothing in common. She likes to go shopping and party. I like to read books and play video games. Thankfully, she spends a lot of time partying, which means I get to be left alone in peace.

We also have orientation, where a bunch of random freshmen (first years) are put together in a class and forced to get to know each other. They say it's so you can make friendships. Well, okay, we try putting on fully-leaded Kyriel in these sessions. I act like the way I really am, with all my strange interests, intellectual pursuits, weird humor, and quirky expressions. It comes time for people to pair up voluntarily. Last paired up every time. People want nothing to do with me. I guess fully-leaded Kyriel is too strange for them, even at an art college.

In fact, I find myself rather flabbergasted at this experience, because I think "art college" right, "weirdos like me". Nope. Even Kyriel is too strange for most. I want to clarify something here, though. My strangeness came not from anything identifiable. I would dress pretty normally for an 18-year-old art student. Yes, I was a little shy, but that's not all that weird. And it's not like I'd say things that were creepy or morbid or not exactly that. It was an energetic weirdness. Like they'd look in my eyes and get a little freaked out by something there.

This came to a head later in the year, when I finally did make a friend who enjoyed philosophy. Everything was going great. Until one day, on the bus, I say something philosophical. Something I've been thinking about, and the girl who is my friend goes white with fear. She backs away. Gets off the bus pronto, and I never see her again. I'm left hurt and confused. Today, when preparing to write this piece, I asked my soul what the hell happened. Apparently, for just a moment, she looked into my eyes and saw the incalculable distances I've traveled and knew suddenly I was not from Earth at all. And that scared the shit out of her.

Anyway, this experience gets repeated to varying degrees throughout the first year. I find myself getting lonelier and lonelier. There's no one really to talk to, because all the other freshmen want to do is go party, smoke weed, and have sex. All the thoughts I keep having are building up in my head with no outlet. This is before I understand that my mind must have some kind of outlet. The downloads I get must be expressed or they start to back up and I start ruminating.

I bury myself in schoolwork, because making art is the one thing that's keeping me sane. Even when I'm having to stay up late just to paint color swatches. My roommate continues to be MIA, or when she's there, I'm usually facing the wall feeling miserable and crying. She ignores me, which makes me feel like a burden, but I can't blame her for doing so. Who wants to live with someone who's sad all the time?

The weight of the loneliness gets worse, and depression starts to set in. I talk to my mom every week, but I just keep getting platitudes. She's not really listening. No one's really listening. One day, I go to the cafeteria to have some lunch, and I find the food tastes like ash. It tastes terrible. I don't want food. I stop eating. Or I eat just enough not to pass out from low blood sugar. The color starts going out of the world. It all looks gray.

(For those of you who know me, you know I love food. If I stop eating, or if you see me picking at my food and staring at it, please ask me what's wrong. Because something is severely bothering me if I'm not able to eat.)

Now it's December, and I'm going home for winter break. My mother takes me to the doctor, and all he says is "You have situational dysphoria. We can give you an anti-depressant..." I feel my heart say "NO!" really loudly at this, so I say no. And really, what I want is someone to listen to me, not medicate me. I make it through Christmas okay, and eventually I'm back at school. My roommate dropped out and doesn't come back. At first I like this.

I still have problems eating and now my focus is going out of my work. I just don't care anymore. I decide I need help, so I go to the school counselor, hoping that whoever is there will just look me in the eyes and listen to me. I just want someone to listen and look me in the face. This is how desperate I am, that I'm willing for a stranger to listen to my private troubles. I go up to the counselor's room, which is a tiny little closet that's bright yellow. The "counselor" is actually an older student in his 20's. He stares at his sheet, not at me, as I start to talk. After 5 minutes of talking, he shifts uncomfortably and says, "Have you tried joining a social group?"

All of the sudden, I want to punch him. Instead, I just hang my head, feeling utterly defeated. I take his paper, which is supposed to be some kind of encouraging list of "things to do". I go outside the building, which is an old courthouse. I sit on the big steps outside, and I just collapse and cry. And cry. And cry. I don't care who hears anymore. The fuck do they care about me anyway? I call my mom, because I don't know. I need someone familiar. She gives me platitudes. She doesn't come to visit me, she has to work. I hate my mom in this moment.

I go back to my room, and sit there, and I start to think that maybe it's better if I just kill myself. Then I won't be such a burden on everyone that they can't even stand to be around me. They'll be free of me, and I'll be free of this hell. So, I spend a few days trying to figure out the best way to go about it.

I don't have drugs, so I can't drug myself. I don't have a gun, so I can't shoot myself. I'm on the second floor, and there's not enough room to hang myself. I have many very sharp knives, though. And then I look at the floor and imagine the pool of blood and the mess that's going to make. Or I look at my bathtub and think about somebody finding me there weeks after I'm dead, and I just can't quite manage to make myself make that kind of chaos.

Further, no matter how much I want to end it, it just doesn't feel like the right answer. Would I really be free? Or would I just be taking my sadness with me? I was at a fragile time spiritually. I had left organized religion behind, but did not yet have any belief system to replace it. I was in the process of forming the belief system I have today, and I had to do it without any guru or spiritual teachers in my physical life. So, I was at a place where I was certain there was a higher power in the universe, but that it was unknowable. And there was a lot I also didn't know. That everything I was taught was probably wrong, but I didn't know what my understanding of the truth was yet. Much of the drive and interest in philosophy, as well as all the downloads my soul was giving me at the time (that I didn't quite recognize as such yet), was part of building the foundations for my spirituality.

But I was fairly convinced that dying wasn't going to make the pain stop. I'd just have that pain with me after I died. I didn't believe in what Christians said about going to "heaven" and everything being perfect. Plus, when I'd think about being in heaven singing hymns all day, I'd immediately think, "I would get so bored. I'd want to come back and live again."

Finally, one night, I talk to my brother. I tell him exactly what I just told you. My brother, in a bit of divine brilliance, says just one thing: "But who's going to help me escape our relatives at Thanksgiving? I need you there!"

You see, up until this point, I always thought my brother was the more extroverted one. That he liked being around our family at social gatherings. That this was his deal, and I was always the one who wanted to run away from everyone. Well, turns out, I was wrong. My brother was just as socially anxious as I was, he just hid it better than I did. I was the one who was always able to craft our escape from the party where we could play Zelda in peace.

So, I decide I will make it to Thanksgiving for my brother. If I live for no other reason, let it be so I can help my brother. I'll try to make it to then.

It's spring time now, I start having strange experiences. Not exactly paranormal in the sense of seeing entities. More like strange sudden shifts in perception. The world feels gray, but sometimes, just sometimes, all the sudden the mist is gone and all the color is back even brighter than before. Sometimes I see colors others don't. Sometimes, I turn a corner in the street, and the street looks like it's from a different time period. I cannot place this feeling of intense "deja vu" or "unreality", but it's there. I wonder if I'm just losing my mind, but it doesn't feel quite right.

Though the thought of being a bit schizophrenic does have its appeal. It would certainly explain some things...

One thing I do is I purge through my art. So, because I am feeling better, I do a final piece for a class where I actually draw someone who committed suicide. Of course, half the class thinks now I want to murder them, which makes me roll my eyes so hard they almost fall out of my head. I can't believe how dumb people are sometimes.

Anyway, the professor asks me if I'm okay. I say, "I wanted to draw something that almost happened to me. I don't want to do that anymore. I just needed to get it out of myself." He, shockingly, understands exactly what I'm saying. I want to say he gave me a hug, but I don't quite remember. I do remember him keeping a sharper eye on me from that day forward. I don't mind. It's nice to have someone project father energy for me. I didn't get that growing up, so I privately appreciate it.

I start to walk around the city a lot. I buy a black fedora hat. I don't know why. I just do. Maybe this is me. I wear a black jacket. I don't know why. I just do. Feels right. I feel like I look about right. I don't know what that means. I just accept it and keep walking. Walking helps, and it brings back my appetite. I start doing little things just for me. Like every other Saturday, I walk down to the river where the shops are, and I get a bag of fruit-flavored licorice. Then I go to the end of the street where the hotel is and nobody walks, and I sit and eat my licorice while watching the river. Sometimes big tanker ships come into the port, and I watch their slow progress not caring about the time.

I start rearranging my classes so I have more time in between them. I walk to every class, too. One of my classes takes me from the bookstore, which has a little café inside it, through a particularly scenic square. (The city I was in was full of squares, fountains, and ancient live oak trees.) So, before class, I get a beef, swiss, and mustard sandwich. I take it to this particular square, sit at the bottom of one particular tree, and eat my lunch while reading a book.

I start doing the same on the way back from another class, whose path takes me through one of the local cemeteries. I find a particularly shady gravestone under another large live oak, and sometimes I sit and read or sketch.

I come back to life very slowly. The next year, I have a different roommate, who I don't particularly like, but I deal with it. She goes after a couple of quarters. Then I have one more roommate, and she's okay. Eventually, I get apartment housing, which is much better. Things continue to improve, and my weirdness just starts to become more a part of me. People learn they have to deal with that being part of knowing me, and I start to attract in roommates who are also strange in the same way. My professors, especially the ones I have repeatedly, start feeling like parents and colleagues at the same time. It's an interesting dynamic. I start to enjoy life again.

And all of this I write today, just to say, "No matter where you go, there you are." You can't suicide your way out of your problems.

Also to say, any amount of depression can be overcome. That you can overcome it on your own, but it's really nice to have people in your corner. Sometimes, it just takes a while to find them.

I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

--Kyriel