Bend, but never break.

Lately it's taken all I've got to make it through my work day. That moment of the day when I can remove the physical therapist role when I unclip my badge and coil up my gait belt is a moment when I can finally drop the reigns and let my surrender take the wheel.

I think even that is warrior of me.

I'm not one to count the tick marks of loss in my life but sometimes even I have weak moments where I feel all the odds are stacked against me and all I have been doing is rallying and rallying. I've been rallying endlessly for so long.

I listened to a song today written by one of my favorite songwriters, and a few of the lyrics spoke so deeply to me. About weathering the storm and getting through difficult times in life.

Try to ease my troubled soul. 
Try to weather this storm.
Grab on tight and just hold on to me.

Failure has never been a choice
And now I'm singing out my voice.
I'm seeking shelter in the sounds, it's never let me down.
I'm seeking refuge in a friend who reminds me, once again, that I will bend but never break.

That is something that I have to remember.
I will bend but never break.

Grab on tight and just hold on to me.

To Be Soldiers For Each Other

When you get worried, I'll be your soldier.

This song.  I have written about it before.  It used to always make me sad, as I yearned for another soul like mine who could be my soldier. My peers, who I would typically lean on, always seemed to miss the depth of this and how this concept of being someone's soldier runs so strongly in my blood.

Where did all the people go? They got scared when the lights went low.

When I've needed a soldier, I haven't gotten one.  I've had to be my own soldier. My own warrior.  When life is easy and fun, look at all these people in your life who are around.  Which of those people understand your own personal struggles?

Funny when times get hard, at the last moment when you're supposed to charge. Always on the longest yard, they feel their feet get cold.

Sometimes life gets unattractive, embarrassing, humiliating. Sometimes we have to go through things that we are ashamed of or uncomfortable with. Sometimes we hurt. Sometimes we are afraid. Sometimes we experience pain that makes us wonder if we can ever overcome it.  Our hearts break, our bodies disappoint us, our souls yearn for a kindred spirit who understands. We experience trauma, loss. Why do people run away from that?

Afraid of what they might lose.  Might get scraped or they might be bruised. You could beg them, but what's the use? That's why it's called the moment of truth.

Why does the moment of truth have to reveal, time and time again, that they don't understand and don't charge with you when times get hard. You shouldn't have to ask.  When I can see that someone I love needs someone to be a soldier for them, I do it. I don't make you wonder if I would be trustworthy and then make you beg me to help you. No. I'm already there, carrying you as much as you'll let me.

Hiding here, hiding there.  Find them underneath the stairs. People hiding everywhere, trying to be as still as a stone.

I know what it feels like to see the people around you hiding from your pain. Watch them not understand, and as a result feel so alone in a crowd. To feel so judged. I felt like everybody would hide from me when life got un-pretty and rough. They got cold feet. Afraid of what they might lose if they involve themselves in my pain. That was my moment of truth. Who would take my pain when I was hurt? When I run out of strength myself, where can I pull more strength from?  Who is my soldier?

I'll get it, if you need it. I'll search if you don't see it. You're thirsty? I'll be your rain. You get hurt, I'll take your pain.

I would rather feel that pain with you than miss out on being your soldier, and making you carry it alone. I would rather get scraped and bruised in the mess with you than leave you behind without a warrior to charge with you.  And you wouldn't have to beg me, either. In said moment of truth, I will be there with you and I will fight for you. I will choose to accept the truth and the reality of how much pain, suffering, and fear life can bring us, and I will embrace it and carry it with you.  I would do any of those things, because that is real.  I can't and won't ignore it and cover it up and put it in a pretty wrapped box with a bow on it and pretend the pain doesn't exist.

My aim is so true. I want to show you. I'll try forever, and I'm never going to say surrender.

This song used to make me sad, but it doesn't anymore.  Not when I trust that there is a soldier out there who understands me, accepts me, and will some day stand by me for anything.  And in any moment of difficulty and pain, I will get to be your soldier too.

Wherever you are and whenever you will be here, we will be strong for each other. And my aim, I promise you, is truer than true.

For the days I'm afraid I won't have.

This isn't something that I can just sit down and write about to get meaning across  But I'm doing it anyway or else I'll continue feeling like I can't breathe.  Alone in this house, I'm just sitting here in the dark at a loss.   I feel like all I can hear is a deafening silence in this room that makes me have to feel my cries so explicitly as the sharp daggers that they are.   I'm not afraid of crying.   But it's the truth behind the sobs that makes my heart ache so much.

Am I about to lose my best friend?  If I am about to lose this person who I have come to love and care for, I am completely and utterly powerless. All I have is this heart filled with all these things I want to say and can't because he's not here, and because what's more important is his own state of mind going into such a big thing.  In order to make it about him, it has to not be about me.

I'm sitting here trying to muscle through each moment, breath by breath, second by second, feeling completely heartbroken at even the slightest chance that I won't see him again. I'm crying and through my tears trying to get my heart onto paper with nothing short of mediocre words, and virtually leaning on my friend Jessica across the country for the love and warmth my heart so desperately needs, while I flounder in the fear of what could happen.

I've had a lot of loss in my life.  Unexpected goodbyes forced through circumstances that tore my heart out.  Loss of a good friend, a family member, a loved one.  I can't breathe at the thought of losing this one.

And while I sit here I realize I'm totally alone and the one person who would understand is him.

I yearn for the day this becomes a distant memory, the day I can just be in front of him and say everything I need to, the day I can stand here and know that he will be okay, and for the day that somehow, in a some way, I can be for him all that he's been for me.

To Everyone Who Has Anxiety, Me Too.

I'd like to share an article I wrote about my experience with anxiety. As a freelance writer and in an effort to raise awareness of mental illness and the mental health community, I decided to publish it here in hopes that it will speak to others.  You are not alone!

"To Everyone Who Has Anxiety, Me Too."
Written by Hannah Miller on 12/27/16

I know what it's like to live with anxiety.

Now that I know what it's like, and what it actually is, I can see where it had shown up throughout my life. I see the many different moments of anxiety I have experienced throughout childhood, teenage years, and into adulthood.  At the time, I just thought it was how everyone felt in those situations. 

Crippled by fear, frozen in one place while your mind paces endlessly, stomach nerves raging, heart rate rising and hands shaking. The more you try to fight it, the more aggressive it strikes. It is a full on body-trembling, soul-twisting voice of panic and fear. It makes you question your own reality, sanity, and identity. It makes you feel out of body, out of mind, and out of control.

It's the feeling you get in your belly, the jolt of shock, when you step off the side of a curb that you didn't know was there. Only it is constant, and coursing through your whole body like waves of debilitating pain and adrenaline.

This was just a normal stress response, I thought. 

I didn't know to reach out, didn't know that I could. For so long I thought I was just insecure and didn't know how to cope.

But that could not be further away from the truth.  The reality is that I didn't know it was because of a chemical imbalance in my brain.  I didn't know it was because of a learned response of behavior from my environment.  I didn't know parts of this illness can be genetic.  I didn't know anything. Most importantly, I didn't know it was not my fault, that it was not a character or personality flaw, and that it should be taken as seriously as a physical illness should. 

After suffering with chronic illness for 4 years and many different life events, my anxiety had soon become a living nightmare.  Others talk of taking it day by day, but I soon had to take it moment by moment, breath by breath. Sometimes, doing even just that seemed so impossible. When those feelings became so devastating that I could barely function, sleep, or eat, I knew I needed help.

It wasn't until I was 24 years old that I called it by its name and began the process of learning how to lovingly navigate this life with mental illness.

Now I know it's not a character flaw.  It's not that I can't cope.  Anxiety is NOT who I am, but something I live with and learn to navigate.  It does not mean I am out of control.

I know what it's like to live with anxiety, and I know now that I can still love myself deeply despite the insecurities, doubts, and fear that the voice of anxiety brings to my life.

I know what it's like to feel alone, like you are the only one who has to be strong, the only one who gets it. 

I know what it's like to search, and yearn, and struggle to find the empathy you know that you deserve from those around you. Just someone, anyone, who can love you through your despair and authentically understand what you're going through. Someone who at least would not judge you for the anxiety you experience and how that makes you different than those who don't know what it's like.

I know what it's like to feel lost, afraid of the anxiety, wondering and worrying if it can get any scarier, any worse, if you can feel any more defeated, small, and insecure than you do right now.

I know what it's like to live with anxiety.

I am here to tell you, me too. 

Hearing "me too" from others during my roughest years of panic attacks and anxiety was what I needed and what truly got me through the darkest of days. While I have worked on many years of self care, with counseling, psychiatry, medication, massage and yoga, meditation, and a huge toolbox of self care activities, nothing has helped me as much as a loving voice of empathy letting me know I'm not alone.

Hearing "me too" from another person suffering from mental illness means more to the heart than just two words at face value. 

Hearing "me too" means you're not alone. It means there are others out there like you.  It means you're not going crazy with irrational fear or worry, but instead you're a freaking warrior battling an all out mind-war and rallying to make a decision every day to choose loving yourself over believing the lies that anxiety feeds you. It means that even when you feel like you fail, you are not a failure.

You are not your anxiety.

Hearing "me too" means that while you feel like you're drowning in a sea of anxiety, there is someone who has been there and can inspire you to dig deep and find the skills to swim better than you ever have. Hearing "me too" can be the difference between feeling defeated and being victorious.

Ever since I have heard the words "me too", I've felt empowered to not suffer in silence, but to instead suffer together with others who have a mental illness so that we, together, can be warriors. Together, we can be the mighty warriors that help each other to remember who we are, and how to distinguish the difference between our own voices and anxiety's, even when we've forgotten.

To everyone who has experienced that unending dreadful nervousness in the pits of their stomachs...

To everyone who knows what it's like to feel like it takes every ounce of your being to pull yourself out of a panic attack...

To everyone who has ever felt alone, scared, judged, threatened, or anxious...

Me too.  And you are not alone.