Being among other bulls like myself I was, for one incredible hour, no longer a bull in a china shop. Perhaps it was because the idea of the bull took on a different and more complicated meaning during that hour.
The bull was treated as a manifestation of an experience that needed to be managed rather than a problem that needed to be removed, avoided or corrected. Instead of seeing the bull as a fixed and opaque metaphor, the group saw the bull as something alive and living and flexible. By rethinking the bull, we shook the china shop and began to peel away at its structure, at the barriers that we, in the “real world,” abide by or hide behind or tip-toe around.
Though these barriers broke down gradually throughout the hour, they did so with incredible vigor, passion and care. It was utterly delightful to revamp the china shop, to treat our differences, which would otherwise be seen as broken and wrong and wonky, as opportunities and beginnings. For one hour, our differences were not an object of conflict, a catalyst of fear or confusion or a reason to reinforce the barriers that stifle human understanding and compassion. For one hour, we changed the china shop, capitalized upon it. We thrived as bulls.
This is the beauty of self-care in company. Last week I attended my first group therapy meeting for my mental illness. Going to that meeting and experiencing new ways of thinking about the bull and the china shop caused me to reflect on my recent hospitalization, the events leading up to it, and my attitude towards my difference. I saw my difference as an issue, an interruption not to be touched or “messed with.” I was a first semester senior with a thesis on my hands, the best job a student could ask for, and ambitions to one day become a professor of literature. I absolutely had to stay on track.
And so, I lugged my illness along with me. I tip-toed around it and brushed it off, slowly and abrasively damaging myself. This, I desperately wanted to believe, was perseverance. I valued my academic success over my health and conflated my productivity with my well-being (“This, above all: To thine own work be true!”). College environments, especially one as rigorous as Bard College’s, seem to encourage this outlook on life and oneself. Among college students, there is a sense of heroism associated with behaving in accordance with this outlook, with conflating productivity with well-being and, worst of all, self-worth.
Our astounding lack of sleep is seen as the condition of valiant and admirable champions —the gray circles under our eyes as badges of honor. To suppress one’s baggage, to constantly keep moving, forward moving, no matter what, is success, is strength, is expected. Oftentimes, this is college and this is also the American way. All of this constituted my china shop — god did I feel so much like a bull!
Mental illness, or any chronic illness, is a sort of china shop as well. It makes you feel like a bull in your own skin. My illness made me feel like a walking problem. Every move and decision I made felt like an incredible risk. In this regard, I felt like the bull and the china shop.
It was not until my second and long-term hospitalization that I fully comprehended what I had done over the previous four months. This comprehension occurred out of shock, out of pulling myself from my day to day life. It was through this hospitalization that I learned to
be human again.
Though I was going through a very important period of transformation in my life, I often felt like I was living on the sidelines of life, watching it, hearing about it, considering and re-considering it, anticipating it. Life would often flood in from the outside through Facebook, my cell phone, family and friends. Life would linger and canker in my thoughts, and it took a lot of time and trust for me to let go of the need to go along with it, at its pace. And so, I learned to notice the life I put on hold for treatment, what was happening beyond the walls of the hospital, rather than judging myself based on my relationship to that life.
This experience of being out of the man-made flow of life reminded me that the progression of my life need not be linear or in accordance with the standard progression of things. What divine law states that I have to complete college in four years? Where is there a rule that states that one must constantly be productive, constantly be forward moving? Why is it so “selfish” and so “unproductive” to turn to yourself and admit that “you need to take time”?
And so, in the face of the hard feelings I still experience for taking this pause in my life, I try to remind myself that having the courage to pause, to live outside of the man-made flow of things, to do for myself what I would suggest for others in pain, is not only an act of profound courage but also of incredible self-compassion.
