"You're So Strong..."

Thanks, but what other choice do I have?

I have heard this a lot:

“You’re so strong.”

“I don’t know how you did it.”

On the one hand, I deeply appreciate it. Because sometimes I feel weak and broken. And because I need the support, encouragement and validation.

Because it comes from friends and loved ones who care. And I have often needed that over the past few years. Immensely.

But, I also struggle with it because there have also been points when I want to scream in response (not to these wonderful people, but, rather, to the universe):

“What other choice did I have?!?!”

And I feel angry and frustrated that I was put in this position, to have to be “so strong.”

But I do understand what they mean, where they are coming from:

I was in the second year of my doctoral program when my father completed suicide. It was fall, October, of 2015. I was taking doctoral seminars. I was working in an assistantship—teaching and working in the ESOL office. I was preparing for my comprehensive exams and starting steps to write my proposal for my dissertation research.

Though, truly, there is never a “good time” for your father to kill himself, it was a challenging time for that to take place; I had just gotten divorced. So this suicide, an extra stressor and immense life change, shook my foundation. (Which says a lot. I’ve never known home or my father to be a stable, grounding force, like some do with their fathers or their childhood residence. So, for me, to reel from this, obviously speaks to the horrendous nature of surviving a parental suicide.)

After he died, I knew my mother would not be okay. I knew I needed to step in, as best I could from 4 hours away, to help support her.

I also knew that I couldn’t drop out of my doctoral program. I had to focus and to finish. I had to finish my dissertation. I had to become a doctor. I had to get a salaried position.

And honestly, though it was hard. I was, I am, thankful for my work at that point in my life. It diverted my attention. It gave me something to focus on. I had to power through, or so I thoroughly believed and told myself. Quitting or a temporary leave was simply not an option in my mind.

Looking back, I know now that though I did all of that, I was still traumatized.

I let…had to let infected wounds scab over, without giving them the proper attention to them and to the healing that they needed. Some of that was that I didn’t have the time. Some of that was that it required money and resources (I was a poor grad student). I also think I was in a state of perpetual shock for awhile and unable to process what had just taken place.

Still, when people say this to me, I often times think of that cliché that I see so often pop up on social media.

The one that says:

“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.”

Word. True freaking story.

It is cheesy, but it’s true.

Although my therapist has since reassured me, helping me to believe that, yes, I indeed did have a choice. I could have dropped out. I could have become an alcoholic. At that moment, I didn’t believe that I did. So, I powered through. I survived.

I am thankful that I could do so. I was able to do so because I had a supportive professors and community at Bowling Green. I had…have some amazing friends.

And I didn’t take it all in stride and with healthy responses. My learned survival skills at that time were not always healthy. I coped at points by drinking too much wine. I had my own versions of escapism in dealing from the trauma, the grief, and the pain. Though, eventually, I had to feel all the feels. And I have had to unlearn, and am still struggling to unlearn some unhealthy and now unnecessary survival strategies. I have undergone many hours of therapy to do so. I am still working on myself.

I am thankful for friends who reassure me when I need to hear it that, given where I came from, that I am way more normal than I have any right to be.

I appreciate it when they say it would be perfectly understandable if I was a coke addict at this point. I value that and need that boost sometimes.

But I also have had beloved people remind me that I couldn’t…shouldn’t… remain in the victim, indefinitely. That was I more then that. That eventually, I had to move on, to survive, to work towards thriving. That was difficult to hear, but it was an invaluable lesson that I had to hear and to learn.

In truth, I had to hear both messages. I have had to embrace and learn from both of them.

Both now…are how I understand my identity, my identities, as victim, survivor, thriver, and conqueror.

And you know what? I am all three.

And perhaps even more importantly, I know see that there is strength in all three.