Habibi,
I found out today that a friend killed himself a few days ago.
His death makes me sad and makes me think how sad I would be if I lost you and felt I had not done as much as I possibly could to help you.
I love you and I hope you are ok.
Over the years, especially recently, you have spoken to me about your severe anxiety, depression, PTSD and other issues, and about wanting—at times—to kill yourself.
I have tried to be a good friend, to listen and, when you asked for it, give you names of therapists and other resources that could help you address these issues.
We haven’t spoken in a few weeks, so maybe you are feeling great these days and I am worried for nothing. If this is the case, I am very happy for you.
After losing my friend Tony, I can’t be silent. I have to ask: Have you followed up and sought help for the issues bringing you such pain?
If not, I beg you, call one of those therapists whose names I shared with you a few weeks back (after your request to me), or to seek help in other ways.
Even if you are feeling good these days—especially if you are feeling good—now is the time to do something about all this, while it is easier to take steps that connect you to support that will help you survive the times when you are not feeling so happy.
If you are feeling down these days, I still urge you to seek help. I know how hard it can be to seek help when we are down, you know I know this, but I still hope you will try. It could save your life. Just as importantly, it could help turn it around.
I keep learning and still have to keep reminding myself that nothing in life is permanent. Not joy and not pain. LIFE is not permanent! But it does not have to be painful. We may have to do some hard work to make things better, but things can get better.
As you know, I use Surat al-Asr as my mantra in times of loss, pain, confusion, and fear. This Qur’anic prayer tells me: Time itself is a witness, all humanity experiences loss and pain, except for those who have faith, do good works (or are of service), and live as an example of honesty and as an example of patience (and forbearance).
I’ve shared this with you before, and this painful reminder is impetus to share it with you again.
My friend Tony is dead, and I am still here.
I do not know why, but I do know this has been one of the resources that got me through those terrifyingly bleak times when I considered doing what Tony did.
How does this simple yet powerful prayer work for me? As any mantra, repeating it means I change the tape in my head from whatever terrible tape to this pre-recorded, familiar, repetition. In that way it functions like any prayer or ritual in which we can seek refuge.
But this prayer is pragmatic in other ways too.
It comforts me by reminding me that my pain and suffering is not something I alone endure—“The Ages witness: all humanity experiences suffering”—and it gives me practical steps I can take, solutions to my pain, loss, and confusion:
Faith (Imaan)
The prayer directs me to have faith. To me this means making a choice to believe things can get better, even that a specific someone or Something loves us. Sometimes I have had to simply trust that this was true even when I doubted it deeply or didn’t feel it. But then, that is why it is called “faith.” :) Sometimes it has been faith in, belief in, someone other than myself, someone who told me things do get better. At those moments, again, I did not believe it was true, but I could believe my friend believed it, and, ”borrow” her faith. At times it has meant a faith in a Divinity, Most Merciful and Most Compassionate, Greater than any trouble I might face, an Everlasting (internal) Resource any one of us can tap into, in times of loss or not.
Service (Saalihaat)
The prayer suggests that I do good works, that I be of service. I take this to mean reach out and help a friend or volunteer in an effort to improve my community. Doing something good for others gets my focus off my problems. When I do this, I shift the focus from the running commentary and obsessive concern with my own problems to the world outside my head. This liberates me from the not-so-merry-go-round of nasty thoughts *in* my head (that nasty committee that never has anything nice to say to me about me). There is always someone can use our help, so why not shift the focus from our complaints to gratitude and to service? Let us improve the world we find ourselves in! It sorely needs it. And we end up feeling better about ourselves because we are doing something positive in the world, rather than feeling stuck in, or focused on, our pain, fear, and confusion.
Honesty (Al-Haq)
The prayer suggests that I live as an example of honesty and truth. What this means to me is that I am supposed to walk through my fears and be rigorously honest with myself and others about my fears and the reality (or falseness) of them. Living as an example of honesty means letting go of my fantasies or the narratives I spin about how things are. When I am truly honest, I can see what I can change and what really needs to change. I also see what is not in my power and how, if I have no power over it, it makes no sense to spend time worrying about it. You know what I mean: If I have a role to play or choices that could be different, I can do that, if I can’t, well, then I can’t. Talk about freedom! Living a life of honesty and truth also means unburdening myself with someone I trust about what I have done or am doing, or what I am feeling, all of which helps me not live in shame, secrecy, or fear. This frees me from carrying the burden of my troubles all by myself. Living honestly and in truth also means removing that awkward, painful, conflict and stress that arises when I say one thing (to be polite or because I am avoiding a confrontation), but I really mean or want to say another. This type of honesty also can be daunting, but it too sets me free.
Patience (Sabr)
Lastly, the prayer says I am to try to live as an example of patience and forbearance (while facing all my troubles). This to me means, “Don’t give up.” Ever. It is a reminder that things get better. Things change. The hard work we can do (therapy or whatever path we choose) takes time. We didn’t get into our mess and messed up way of thinking overnight. We won’t get out of them overnight. We have to give time time. I know the despair can be all-encompassing, I have felt it. But I also have learned—as I am sure you have too—that I am strong in patience. No matter what troubles that befall me, even when despair feels like a reality convincing me to my bones, something that I feel as if I KNOW will always be my reality, I can be patient. I can wait the pain out. It too will pass.
Trust me. Things do get better, if we do our work and we are willing to wait.
Things have gotten better for me, and I promise they can get better for you too.
Love, Light, & Peace,
Kamal
P.S. I would add one more thing to all my fabulous (& unsolicited) advice above (): Music. I know you love music. And that’s great, because music moves us, changes our mood, reminds us things get better (and have been better). Here are some of my favorites that have so far worked to get me through some pretty tough times:
“I Look to You” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYFfmFeFGZg&feature=related as sung by Whitney Houston (RIP) or the GLEE version with Amber Riley, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQgO5TtBF6g
A soft strumming song I just recently discovered, by City and Colour, “O’ Sister” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi-crVagUok&feature=youtu.be
“It’s a Beautiful Day [don’t let it get away]” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co6WMzDOh1o by U2
“Feeling Good” by Michael Bublé, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edwsf-8F3sI&ob=av2e, or the Nina Simone version, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHs98TEYecM
“I Am Changing” by Jennifer Hudson, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYuFvu2gdFU
P.P.S. What are your favorite songs to get you through tough times?
Bio: Kamal Fizazi is a writer, activist, lawyer, policy wonk, strategic planning and program consultant, and all-around good guy who spends his time thinking about and working on issues of human rights and equality, diversity and inclusion, democracy and social justice, equity, gender, sexuality, public health, HIV/AIDS, addiction, mental health, recovery, faith-based anti-oppression efforts and interfaith organizing, and Lord only knows what else.
You can follow Kamal on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kamalfizazi or on twitter: @kamalfizazi. You can also read his blogs on http://izazif.wordpress.com and http://wholooksinsideawakens.blogspot.com.
Additional notes and links:
Suicide claims 36,500 lives yearly in the USA; close to one million attempt it each year.
Suicide Prevention & Support:
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/Default.aspx
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/
http://veteranscrisisline.net/
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
http://www.samaritansnyc.org/
http://www.afsp.org/
Solidarity & Fundraising:
http://www.outofthedarkness.org/
The Disturbing Origins of 10 Famous Fairy Tales
by Emily Temple (reblogged from Flavorwire)
Sleeping Beauty
In one of the very earliest versions of this classic story, published in 1634 by Giambattista Basile as Sun, Moon, and Talia, the princess does not prick her finger on a spindle, but rather gets a sliver of flax stuck under her fingernail. She falls down, apparently dead, but her father cannot face the idea of losing her, so he lays her body on a bed in one of his estates.
Later, a king out hunting in the woods finds her, and since he can’t wake her up, rapes her while she’s unconscious, then heads home to his own country. Some time after that, still unconscious, she gives birth to two children, and one of them accidentally sucks the splinter out of her finger, so she wakes up. The king who raped her is already married, but he burns his wife alive so he and Talia can be together. Don’t worry, the wife tries to kill and eat the babies first, so it’s all morally sound.Little Red Riding Hood
If you can believe it, the Brothers Grimm actually made this story a lot nicer than it was when they got their hands on it. In Charles Perrault’s version, included in his 1697 collection Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times: Tales of Mother Goose, there is no intrepid huntsman. Little Red simply strips naked, gets in bed, and then dies, eaten up by the big bad wolf, with no miraculous relief (in another version, she eats her own grandmother first, her flesh cooked up and her blood poured into a wine glass by our wolfish friend).
Instead, Perrault gives us a little rhyming verse reminding us that not all wolves are wild beasts — some seduce with gentleness, sneak into our beds, and get us there. The sexual undertones are not lost on us — after all, the contemporary French idiom for a girl having lost her virginity was elle avoit vû le loup — she has seen the wolf.Rumpelstiltskin
This story is pretty simple: a miller’s daughter is trapped and forced to spin straw into gold, on pain of death. A little man appears to her, and spins it for her, but says that he will take her child in payment unless she can guess his name. In the Grimm version, when the maiden finally figures out Rumpelstiltskin’s name, he reacts rather badly: ‘The Devil told you that! The Devil told you that!’ the little man yelled, and in his fury he stamped his right foot so hard that he drove it into the ground right up to his waist. Then he took hold of his left foot with both hands and tore himself in two.” Ick.Cinderella
Here, Perrault is much nicer than Grimm — in his version, the two cruel stepsisters get married off to members of the royal court after Cinderella is properly married to the prince. In the Grimm story, not only do the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the glass slippers (surprise, surprise, the blood pooling in their shoes gives them away), but at the end, they have their eyes pecked out by doves. Just for good measure.Snow White
First of all, in the original 1812 Grimm version of this tale, the evil Queen is Snow White’s actual mother, not her stepmother. We don’t know, but that makes it a lot more terrifying to us. The Disney version also left out the fact that the Queen sends the huntsman out to bring back Snow White’s liver and lungs, which she then means to eat. And the fact that she’s actually not in a deep sleep when the prince finds her — she’s dead, and he’s carting off her dead body to play with when his servant trips, jostles the coffin, and dislodges the poison apple from SW’s throat.
Most notable, however, is the punishment the Grimms thought up for her. When the queen shows up at Snow White’s wedding, she’s forced to step into iron shoes that had been cooking in the fire, and then dances until she falls down dead.Hansel and Gretel
The version of the story we know is already pretty gruesome — the evil stepmother abandons the children to die in the forest, they happen upon a cannibalistic witch’s cottage, she fattens them up to eat, they outwit and kill her and escape. The Grimm version is basically the same, but in an early French version, called The Lost Children, the witch is the Devil, and the Devil wants to bleed the children on a sawhorse. Of course, they pretend not to know how to get on, so the Devil has his wife (who tried to help the poor kids earlier in the story) show them. They promptly slit her throat, steal all the Devil’s money, and run off.Rapunzel
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Well, in the Grimm version, she does, a little too often, to a prince, and winds up pregnant, innocently remarking to her jailer witch that her clothes feel too tight.
The witch, not to have any competition, chops off Rapunzel’s hair and magically transports her far away, where she lives as a beggar with no money, no home, and after a few months, two hungry mouths to feed. As for the prince, the witch lures him up and then pushes him from the window. Some thorn bushes break his fall, but also poke out his eyes. For all this extra bloodshed, however, there’s still a happy ending.Goldilocks and the Three Bears
In this tale’s earliest known incarnation, there was no Goldilocks — only the three bears and a fox called Scrapefoot, who enters the three bears’ palace, sleeps in their beds and messes around with their salmon of knowledge. In the end, she either gets thrown out of the window or eaten, depending on who’s telling the tale. Interestingly, it has been suggested that the use of the word “vixen” to mean female fox is how we got to Goldilocks, by means of a crafty old woman in the intervening story incarnations.The Little Mermaid
We all know the story of the little mermaid: she sells her voice for a pair of legs, flops around for a bit, then wins her prince’s heart, right? Well, not exactly. In Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale, she trades tongue for legs all right, but part of the deal is that every step will be nearly unbearable, like walking on sharp swords, and the day after the prince marries someone else, she’ll die and turn into sea foam.
Hoping to win the prince’s heart, she dances for him, even though it’s agony. He claps along, but eventually decides to marry another. The mermaid’s sisters sell their hair to bring her a dagger and urge her to kill the prince and let his blood drip onto her feet, which will then become fins again. She sneaks up on him, but can’t bring herself to do it. So she dies, and dissolves into foam. Later, Andersen changed the ending, so that the mermaid becomes a “daughter of the air” — if she does good deeds for 300 years, she can get a soul and go to heaven. Many scholars find this rubbish.The Frog Prince
Traditionally the very first story in the Grimm Brothers’ collection, this story is simple enough: the princess kisses the frog, out of the goodness of her heart, and he turns into a prince. Or, if you’re reading the original version, the frog tricks the resentful princess into making a deal with him, follows her home, keeps pushing himself further and further onto her silken pillow, until finally she hurls him against the wall. Somehow, this action is rewarded by his transformation into a prince, but it’s not even the most violent. In other early versions, she has to cut off his head instead. That’s rather far off from the traditional kiss, don’t you think?