mental health journalist
I never stopped missing the girl who yelled the “Pledge of Allegiance” with me every morning in kindergarten. Katie and I were obedient rebels with loud voices and wide smirks. She was “best friend” in my mind, but her family moved away before we started first grade. I blamed my mom. I worried Katie felt…
It is what it is. I met Chris at an art show in Baltimore in November 1999. A few days later, he took me on a date to an indoor firing range. I was a newly minted 21-year-old seeking a college education, life experience and a way to control my emotions. Chris was almost eight…
Lamora Williams lives rent-free in my mind even as she serves a life sentence for murder. The kind of unexpected closure that feels neither kind nor complete came tonight. Insecure closure that floats like a fact in a pool of questions. What made Lamora Williams snap? The 24-year-old mother of four was overwhelmed by a…
I shiver when my cell phone vibrates from Mom’s calls; my brother’s calls more often make me nervous. “Oh, no. What happened to Joe now?” sort of thinking. This time they teamed up, called from Joe’s number and put me on speaker phone. In the spirit of anti-hypocrisy, I accepted my mother’s invitation to my…
The bug had it coming. They all do. Waving like a fly strip in the wind, you know, I don’t look forward to seeing you again. Over the last few days/weeks/moments buried in blinks, flies have been buzzing through my kitchen and around my bathroom mirror. I hate flies. They mean death is near. Shit…
“Run. Away. Screaming.” That’s what I told Russell when we started dating in early 2008. Now, we’re married with two teenagers. I’ve been trying to make sense of the first thirty years of my life for the last fifteen. People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are among the most suicidal and toughest clients to counsel….
A psychiatrist helped me name my demon in 1997. Spoiler alert: it’s me.
I hurt myself by pulling my thumbs away from my body causing inflamed tendons to swell and pop. The joints do, too. The small bones in the fingers feel relief with the snap crack of my knuckles, but I can feel I’m doing damage. The swelling pools in the space between my pointer finger and…
It’s 80 degrees as the sun sets minutes before 9 p.m. on the longest day of the year. The day with the most light seems like the perfect time to make time for reflection on the shorter days that came before. Peak sunshine at the end of a rainy week. Tears fall across my smile….