Yesterday I had an asthma attack while wearing the mask. No, it wasn’t the mask who gave it to me. It was the fact that I’ve been having asthma attacks for the past week due to dust, pollen, and bad air quality. Which definitely has made life interesting in the fact that I’ve had to wear a mask for most of the week due to work.

And yesterday at church, while working the livestream, I had another one.

I was able to at least go into the other room and take my mask off to take my inhaler, but I couldn’t stay in there for long because I had a responsibility. And I had to have my mask on.

Luckily, it wasn’t a terrible asthma attack today. I’ve had a couple at work, where I also can’t take my mask off, and they have been worse.

BUT, It did make me think. I could definitely breathe better with my mask off. But I didn’t have the ability to keep it off for long because I had a job to do. The same goes for when I’m at work and suddenly can’t breathe, not due to the mask, but due to the fact that my lungs aren’t perfect and like to suddenly give out on me.

I’m fine. It wasn’t terrible. But, it also happened and wearing a mask didn’t make it worse. (Necessarily…it was a bit easier to breathe with the mask off, but that’s why I went into the other room for a minute to try to regulate my breathing again).

The mask didn’t make it so I couldn’t breathe at all.

I’m not saying this for everyone who has asthma attacks, and I know that some people have way worse asthma than I do, but I will say:

Sometimes there are people who are working who can’t take off their masks and suddenly they can’t breathe. But they are wearing it for you. They are wearing them because they have to work and work requires it.

They are wearing them for hours…and hours at a time….

And yet, the amount of people I see complain over having to wear them for 20 minutes to grab something from the grocery store. One of my friends works at a local restaurant and she told me a store about a man who refused to wear a mask for one minute, while walking to his table because he claimed he had “asthma” and couldn’t wear them. It was for one minute.

I know that wearing a mask is uncomfortable. I know that sometimes you can’t breathe well in them. And I know that when you already have a lung condition and you have to wear a mask, it makes it worse sometimes.

But here’s the thing: I would much rather wear a mask and have to step away for a minute to take an inhaler, than not wear a mask, and get so sick that I can’t breathe for months…with or without a mask.

Wearing a mask is a sacrifice. Not just for you, but for other people too. I know that some people believe that this is just the government trying to tell you what to do, but here’s the thing: for right now: it helps. Doctors and nurses are also telling us this, not just the government. And they are the ones who know what’s up.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s hard to breathe.

Here’s a tip: Find a looser fitting mask to wear if it’s harder for you to breathe. And don’t take it off to talk to someone. Enunciate. We can hear you just fine.

Together we can do this. If I can wear a mask for 6 straight hours at work, WHILE talking to customers and WHILE working register, then you can wear it for 20 minutes to grab 3 things from a grocery store.

Wash your hands. Cover you Cough. Don’t go out when you are sick.

And Wear a Mask. It’s not that big of a sacrifice. It’s relatively small in the scheme of things. But, if everyone makes that small sacrifice, even for one minute of their day outside, then in the whole scheme of things, it will be a big sacrifice.

For now, the world is still hurting. For now, it needs our help.

In every story ever written there is a call to action. Even in the Bible. Jesus’s call to action is to “Go and make disciples of all nations.”

Our call to action in the story of our lives, in this historic time we are living in is this: Protect your fellow humans. Protect your loved ones. Make the small sacrifice that may just make the bigger difference. The call to action in a story is one of the most important parts. It is the catalyst that sets everything in motion, for good or ill. It is the catalyst to make things better. It may not be better right away. It might take some time. And usually you have to go through the lowest point, the “dark night of the soul” before you see the light at the end of the tunnel and things start looking up. Together, let’s make the “dark night of the soul” less so, and let’s skip ahead to the ending.

This isn’t going to last forever. If history has taught us anything it’s that it is always changing. The story doesn’t stay stagnant. In history we have had all sorts of diseases that spring up and then go away after awhile. We don’t still have smallpox or much of the bubonic plague anymore.

If we can band together and work as a team in the great story to work towards the climax and end of the story, then together, we may just be able to kick this and make 2021 a much better year.

Our call to arms, our small sacrifice to make for our fellow humans, is to wear a mask. For just a little while.

It won’t be forever.

 

I haven’t written in awhile. I don’t know why, I guess I just didn’t feel like it.

But now, I do.

I’ve been writing almost every day, chronicling my life during a pandemic. A pandemic that came up so suddenly that it just all fell apart. And by “it” I mean everyone’s life. And by “everyone” I mean everyone.

My life. The world. You name it.

It’s gone.

The old one anyway.

My journal started very post-apocalyptic. It took several weeks for me to get used to pandemic life, quarantine life, and suddenly being alone, not able to go anywhere, and jobless.

I lost one of my jobs permanently. The other just recently started back up.

The world is starting to slowly open back up. And with that comes the question that I tend to quote at the end of big important events in my life.

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life?” – Frodo Baggins, Return of the King film. 

It’s true though. The quarantine and sudden loss of the ability to see people and go places took much longer to get used to, I feel like, than the slowly opening back up and people walking around wearing masks. Which weirdly feels almost normal now, and it’s only been a couple weeks.

But I still question: Life isn’t the same. And it never will be. The world went through a major re-birth. Whether it will be a re-birth for good or ill, that remains to be seen. Currently, the unrest in our country seems to be leaning more towards the ill side of things, which is unfortunate. But who knows? Maybe some good will come of that, too. I dearly hope so.

We have the ability to start over. I have the ability to start over. I realized that. The job I was working was not the job that I wanted to end up in forever. It was a job I needed, and I am grateful for it and the people that I met. But now, I have the chance to start over. To focus on what I want to do.

And yet, I still find myself questioning: How do I pick up the threads of my old life? The job searching feels the same almost, but the world around me does not. I am slowly getting into the groove of working part time again, but still the world around me is acting like a scared rabbit, slowly poking it’s head out wondering if things will go back to “normal” or will just all fall apart again with a “second wave”.

I don’t believe we will ever go back to the “old normal”. The old normal doesn’t exist anymore. Why? Because we are like a butterfly. We went into this strange ordeal and have started to come out again. But just like a caterpillar to a butterfly, everyone, no matter what circumstance they went through, has changed. We may not have all been in the same boat, but we were all in the same storm. Everyone felt something from this. Whether you didn’t have to worry about money or you did. Whether you were very sick or you weren’t. Everyone was affected.

And because of that, we can’t go back. None of us can. We have turned into butterflies.

We may be able to pick up some threads of our old life, but just like Frodo felt after coming home from his long journey, it won’t be the same. Ever.

History has done this for centuries. Whether it was a hard war that changed things for people or the previous epidemics and pandemics that changed things. And yet, we have found a new normal every single time. We have grown. We have evolved. And we have become stronger for it.

That is what I am holding onto. I may be doing some of the same things now that I did before the pandemic, job searching on the internet, working a part time retail job, hopefully going to see friends again soon…but it looks different.

And that’s ok. I have the chance now to figure out what I actually want in life. I thought I had that chance before, but now, with everything going on, I actually have the chance to stop and think. What is it that I want to turn into? What butterfly do I want to be, emerging from this pandemic stronger than before?

I can’t pick up the threads from my old life. But I can weave some of the threads into a new life. A new person.

And maybe, just maybe, this change will be for the better. Perhaps this butterfly will change for good and not ill. We shall see.

Theoden utters the first line (of the title of this article) in The Two Towers Lord of the Rings movie. Aragorn answers with the second line, and they rally against the Uruk-hai at Helm’s Deep and win the day. Theoden says this in the moment that it looks like they have been beaten. The Uruk-hai do not care who they kill, they only want to kill because they hate all. And they have decimated the people of Rohan, pillaging, burning, and killing everyone for months.  In both the movie and the book, this speech is said in response:

“Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
They days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”

J.R.R. Tolkien experienced the first World War first hand. He also experienced the second. He saw reckless hate. He saw horrors. And he questioned why. He tried to answer those questions through literature. I have a tendency to look at these same problems through the lens of literature, music, movies, etc. I find it helps me to process better, and to find courage and light.

In the last hour I’ve been really trying to process all the hate that is happening in a country that I have loved for so long. My heart physically hurts for the people in England. I read news reports of the first hand accounts of what happened and what people heard. There is reckless hate. The people who are killing are killing because they want to because they hate everyone who isn’t like them. They are so consumed with hate that they can’t think straight. They think they are doing a good thing, which hurts even more. They have strayed so far from the light that they can’t even see it anymore.

And yet, you always find stories of people helping the victims and helping each other after the horrors. You find stories of people running at the attackers to stop them with no thought to personal safety. You find stories of people running to help those severely injured, even in the midst of the attack, with no thought of themselves. The rallying that happens is inspirational.

And in that moment, you realize that there is still good. Sam Gamgee answers this in one of my favorite inspirational speeches in The Two Towers.

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”

Frodo asks: “What are we holding onto, Sam?”

Sam answers: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

There’s some good. When I was a kid, my favorite TV show was Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. His quote has been circulating the internet lately in light of all these attacks.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” – Mr. Rogers

I question God. I ask why he allows this. I ask why he doesn’t seem to help. And then I realize, he does help. He sends the helpers. He sends the light. It hasn’t left. It is still there. Through it all, there is still hope. There will always be hope as long as we keep it alive. God hasn’t abandoned us.

There will be more attacks. There will be more people killed all over the world. But we will ride out and meet it. We will fight it. We will find the helpers. We will be the helpers. And we will pray for the world. Because love and hope always trump hate. And they always will. Because God has already won against the hate. We just have to keep the fight going. We aren’t done yet. There’s good in this world, and we have to find it. We have to keep it. We haven’t made it to the climax. We are still in the fight. Just like any good story, there has to be darkness before we can find the end. We just have to keep that goal, that light, that end, in mind. We need to make it to the climax. And then, then the denouement will be the best one yet. Then like C.S. Lewis said it will be chapter 1 of the Great Adventure.

In the past few months, I’ve written several short screenplays. I’ve tried my hand at short movies and a collaborative webisode. I’ve written original ideas, and stories based on other’s ideas. Currently, I’m working on a treatment for a feature film. It’s historical fiction set in WWII. I would love to eventually get it made, but we shall see. I’m just having fun writing it right now. I also may have an amazing opportunity to take one of my favorite books and turn it into a screenplay. I’ve been in contact with the authors, but I’m not sure yet how that will pan out. I’m focusing most of my energy on graduating from College in 4 weeks. Yipes!

At the beginning of this semester, I finished 250 pages of writing, most of which was my main fantasy book. I hope to work more on it once I graduate and have more time.

I’m excited to graduate so that I can work more on my writing. I hope to keep you updated regularly on my writing and my life after graduation. Right now I’m more excited than scared, but I’m sure that may change as it gets closer to making decisions.

If you are interested in reading the prologue of my fantasy book or any of the screenplays I’ve written recently, you can check out my writing tab. Enjoy!

If anyone wants to know what it is like to have bipolar and panic attacks here’s what it’s like:
You’re just going about your day, doing your normal routine. You’re happy and doing all right. Nothing major is happening. When out of the blue, you are hit with a sudden wave of extreme sadness and panic. Everything starts to swim in your eyesight. You can’t breathe. Your heart is thumping ten times more than it should. You don’t know what happened and you can’t stop it. It’s like someone close to you has died, and you can’t do anything about it. You feel like curling into a ball and crying.
Then, quite as suddenly, you realize that everything is happy again. Everything is going ok. Your heart is not racing. You don’t feel sad. Everything is as it should be. You even get insanely excited about stuff you love. You go about normal routine, excited for the rest of the day.
Then you take another step and suddenly, you can’t breathe. A depressing weight is making you physically bow down. You feel an intense sadness that you can’t place. And because you can’t place it, your heart starts to race again. You start panicking. What on earth is happening? Why do I feel this way right now? What happened? You start to psychoanalyze, to figure it out. But nothing comes to mind. That makes it worse. You have no appetite, you feel tired. And you can’t tell if you want to be with people to make you feel better or run and hide yourself from all human interaction.
And then you’re “fine.” At least that’s what they tell you. “Everything will be all right.” “You can do this.” “You beat this before.” But it’s hard. It’s hard to figure out what is right and what is wrong. It’s hard to figure out which emotions are real or not. And if what you’re feeling is who you are. It’s hard not to sink into the mire and stay there when your heart tells you one thing and your head tells another. And you just want to hide from it all, not sure who to trust and who to believe…even if those voices are just in your head.
When things are up and down and one minute you’re fine and the next you’re definitely not. How do you deal with that? How do you know what to do? And does anyone understand….
Yes, I am talking about my day. Yes, I know I will be fine. But right now…I’m dealing. I’m working through it. And no, I have no idea what caused it. I just know it’s panic. It’s depression. And it’s a manic episode. I’m caught between two worlds that I can’t escape. No matter how hard I try, I just have to deal. And live.

Today is Suicide Prevention Day.

Last night my friends Jonathan and Rachel and I watched “Hook” with Robin Williams. It spurred some sad conversations of people we knew who had committed suicide or thought about it and why. It made us realize the impact that people have on even just one person and don’t even realize that. That’s why the ending of “It’s a Wonderful Life” is so strong. People say suicide is so selfish and people who take their own lives don’t care about the people they are hurting. And while I see this point of view, this is not something that is going on in people’s minds when they want to kill themselves.

I know. I wanted to. I just believed that no one loved me or wanted me or needed me. My mind was so fixated on the negative and awful things that I had been listening to for so long that I was physically and mentally unable to see that there were people, like my family, who really did care about me. But I wasn’t thinking about this. Because all I wanted was the pain to stop.

I have already described my journey to healing in the post “I Am Loved.” And please feel free to read that. It is by the grace of God, my friends and family, that I am alive now. I still have to fight the depression sometimes. But I now know that I don’t have to do it alone. And I can fight it. I beat it before; I can beat it again.

As my friends and I were talking yesterday, I realized that I wouldn’t have known Jonathan at all had I decided to kill myself Sophomore year. And that made me sad because Jonathan is a wonderful person. I have already said that I would never have had the experiences that I have had in the past twelve months either had I killed myself. However, each day, that feeling of “Wow, I’m alive” still hits me. Yes, I’ve had a pretty hard year in 2016, and it’s only slowly getting better, but it is still nothing compared to my struggles with depression.

I am currently in the midst of writing a screenplay about a girl who struggles with depression and tries to commit suicide. I hope to make it into an impactful short film. As I was researching it, I came across some stories of several famous people who have struggled with depression, including: J.K. Rowling, Carrie Fisher, and Stephen Fry. Obviously, there are those like Robin Williams who lost his battle and couldn’t fight it. The world hurts with the loss of him and his talents.

But here’s the thing: you have no idea the impact you have. You have no idea the impact you will have. If J.K. Rowling had killed herself, we would have no Harry Potter. She fought it. She got help. And writing Harry Potter helped to bring her out of the depression. Now, she has impacted thousands of children and young adults, many of whom are alive because of Harry Potter.

You have no idea the impact you have. Each one of you has made and will make a mark on this world. As The Doctor, in Doctor Who, points out: “900 years of time and space and I’ve never met anyone who isn’t important.”

I know there are some of you out there who don’t believe this, or who are incapable of believing this right now. But, I still want to let you know: You are important. And you are loved.

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.” – J.K. Rowling
Don’t ever be ashamed. You’ve just reached the point in the sentence where you have to choose to continue or end. Don’t hit the period key. Choose the semi-colon. You have no idea where you are going in life. I ended up in Oxford, England mere months after wanting to end my life. Oxford was a dream of mine. I would have never gotten there.

“And I’d say, the world is full of wonderful things you haven’t seen yet. Don’t ever give up on the chance of seeing them.” – J.K. Rowling

So please don’t give up. You don’t have to fight it alone.

 

 

Sometimes you look at the world around you and you judge yourself by what others are doing and what opportunities they have that you don’t. Sometimes you look at yourself and judge yourself and feel like you’ve failed at life, because seriously, everything you try just jumps back at your face laughing at your tenacity to hang on. But that’s just it. You have the tenacity to hang on. You may hit rock bottom. You may feel like everything you do turns out terrible, that even when it seems like it’s going ok, it goes downhill again. But in reality, you are fighting. You may not have the same opportunities as everyone else, but you sure as heck will have amazing opportunities yourself in time. You just have to wait, and push through, and keep hanging on. Because you are NOT A FAILURE. Just because you fail at something, does not make you yourself a failure. You have so much potential. But sometimes you just have to hit the bottom and go back up fighting for your life before anything happens.
As J.K. Rowling said about herself: “Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.”
Rowling is an example of someone who hit rock bottom and dug herself out to become one of the most brilliant writers of our age. She did not let her failure define her and keep her down.
My theme song for my life right now is Fight Song by Rachel Platten. The chorus helps to keep me going.
“This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I’m alright song
My power’s turned on
Starting right now I’ll be strong
I’ll play my fight song
And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me”
I’ve realized that this time in my life is probably the best and worst possible time (so far) in my life. I’ve had some amazing experiences, but have hit rock bottom as well. I’ve always come up fighting, even if I only felt like I grasped some air before going under again. This transition period feels like hell and happiness all bundled up in one. You have to decide which path to take. Will you keep fighting or will you let the feeling of failure drag you down until you no longer want to keep fighting?
“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.” – J.K. Rowling

Two weeks ago I wrote an article entitled: “How To Treat Someone With Mental Illness Part 1.” This article is going to continue that conversation. This time it will focus on the stigma surrounding mental illness.

 

The main problem with mental illness is that people do not talk about it enough. The same goes for the mental illnesses of anorexia and bulimia and other eating disorders. It also goes for people diagnosed with Autism or Down Syndrome. These are just a few of the disorders that affect people either mentally or otherwise and that are not talked about enough. The question that is being asked more and more is: Why are people so afraid of mental illness and why do they automatically shun people with it?

 

I think deep down when people find out that someone is “different” or struggles with a mental disorder, their immediate reaction is to shun or leave them alone. As stated in my previous article, sometimes it can be hard to live with someone with a severe mental disorder, especially if it is something permanent that cannot be totally fixed with medication if that is even an option. It can be extremely difficult as well if that person could get help and doesn’t want to. So automatically, most people’s first reaction to seeing someone who is “different” or finding out that someone they know struggles with something that makes them “different” is almost revulsion or wanting to not hang out with or love that person. Some people when they find out their unborn child has a birth defect that will make them deformed or mentally challenged want to terminate the pregnancy because they are scared or don’t want a child who is “different.” Some kids won’t be friends with the kid in their class who is crazy and hyper all the time or that kid who is in a wheelchair because they are “weird” and “different.” Some people don’t know how to deal with their friends who are depressed or not eating because of body image and so they walk away because they don’t want to have to “deal with it.”

 

When these things happen, especially if it is a kid who is affected by this shunning or teasing, they feel embarrassed and upset because of who they are. Some mental illness and disabilities you can’t change completely, and you will always have it. Some you can change, but the stigma around you still hurts so that some people don’t even want to get the help because they are embarrassed to admit that they struggle with it. This embarrassment can sometimes lead to even worse behavior such as suicide because the people with the mental illness don’t feel loved or wanted and are teased, shunned, and embarrassed. They think they are a problem or a mistake because they are “different,” and they believe that people will be better off without them.

 

That being said, the best thing you can do for someone with mental illness or a disability is not to shun them, but to include them and love them. They want to be wanted and have friends just like you do.

 

The main idea I want you to take away from these articles is this: be aware. Mental illness is not talked about enough, it is not funded enough, and it is hard for people to get the help they need because the cost of the medicines and health care is so high. This should not be the case. We need to be aware of the situation, to take care of and to love people no matter what their situation and mental stability. We need to talk about this and not hide the truths. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the suicide rate per year is 12.93 per 100,000 individuals. Most of us either have had someone close to us or someone we semi knew commit suicide. And that is not counting the people who have attempted and/or thought about it. And most people who do believe they are not wanted because they are shunned and not loved. This is not okay. We have the power to make the difference. We have the power to be aware and to help. And we have the power to fight the stigma and overcome and to get the word about how to help those with mental illness to fight back and get the help they need.

        Most of us know at least one person with mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experiences mental illness. 1 in 5 youth aged 13-18 experience a severe mental disorder. 2.6% adults live with bipolar disorder. About 16 million adults in the U.S. have had at least one severe depressive episode in the past year. 18.1% of adults experience anxiety, PTSD, OCD, or specific phobias. These are just a few of the statistics. And the chances of you knowing someone are very probable.

The issue with mental illness is that is silent. Many people have no idea that someone they know struggles every day with panic attacks or suicidal thoughts. Many people don’t know what is going on when they have thoughts they can’t explain or things they must do or they will die. When it is brought to light, people have no idea what to do with it. When you find out that your best friend struggles with depression due to bipolar disorder or regular panic attacks, how do you react? How are you supposed to react? Unfortunately, many people react the wrong way. And that can lead to bad consequences.

It is true that living with someone with mental illness, especially someone who has a severe mental illness, can be hard. However, the best thing you can do, is love someone. As soon as someone gets diagnosed with mental illness they are branded. It becomes their identity because the other people tell them that they are that mental illness; “You’re bipolar” “You’re OCD.” Don’t push people away just because you don’t know how to “deal with them” anymore. Take the time. Learn how to be there for someone who does desperately need you. Because even though someone with mental illness usually says they don’t need or want anyone we shouldn’t take that as a cue to walk away. We don’t have to be obsessive with how we hang out with people, but we don’t want to totally cut them from our lives. That’s the worst thing you can do to anyone who may need your help; just walk away.

To many people, especially those struggling with deep depression, they struggle with many deeply negative thoughts. For me personally, I struggled with thoughts such as: “I’m not loved,” “I’m not important,” “I’m not wanted,” “I’m not smart.” The worst thing you can ever do if someone tells you these things when they are really struggling is to say: “Try to think positively. You are always so negative. Stop telling yourself lies. You are loved, you are important. Just believe it.” These are just a few of the things I got whenever I would say things, even around my friends. Please understand: to someone living with depression and mental illness, this is their world. This is what they believe. And just like with any belief, you can’t just tell someone to stop believing it, to stop listening and be positive all the time. You can’t be positive unless you choose it. And for many of us with mental illness, it is not easy to choose it. Think before you talk. Be careful what you say. We can take it the wrong way, and it can actually make it worse. Sometimes saying something is not the answer. Sometimes just being there and showing with your actions that you are there for them is the best thing. Showing that you want to hang out, suggesting going to a movie or doing something to take the person’s mind off of the thoughts can be the best way to show love and that you care.

Another mistake that many people make when dealing with people with mental illness is to make them or tell them incessantly to get medication. Now, I don’t want this to come off the wrong way or to make it seem like I’m saying not to medicate someone who needs it. What I’m saying is, for many people, the idea of medication scares them. For me, struggling with bipolar disorder, I was scared to get on the medication because my best writing times happened when I was on an emotional high. I was scared it would ruin my creativity and totally change my personality. For many people, because the illness is part of their identity, they are afraid to change. And they choose not to get help because of this. The problem is, and this is where it gets tricky to say to people who don’t understand, do not force someone to get medication. They will fight you, and chances are, they will not keep taking the medication, and this is the worst thing. When you stop taking mental illness medication just cold turkey, it does weird things to your body and makes everything worse, even to the point of suicide. Do not pester them about getting medication either. This will make them even more averse to it. The best thing you can do is be loving and help them slowly to understand that they need help. For me, I had a lot of people tell me to get help before I actually sought it out. I finally sought it out because I was terrified of losing friends. This doesn’t always happen, and in some cases it may be too severe, and you may need to make the decision for the person to save their life. But in most cases, the person who needs the treatment should decide on their own to get it. You can help them, and most of the time, they will respond positively. Although, I’m going to repeat, I do not want this taken the wrong way, and I understand that there are many different cases and that people respond differently to things. I am just suggesting a different approach than force and incessant pestering, which really, in any case not just mental illness, does not work. I mean, do you like being pestered about something?

Another terrorist attack happened yesterday. This time in Brussels Belgium. It hit me hard, almost as hard as when the Paris attacks happened while I was in England. My heart is still racing.

I have several friends over in England and Spain right now. They are all safe, but they have been traveling lately since it is break during the semester for them. The fact that the attacks happened in airports, busy areas, and subways made me realize how many times I have used airports and subways and busy areas in the past few months, especially while traveling in England. It could have been me. It could be you.

And yet….

Do we really care in America? Be honest. What did you do when you thought of Brussels yesterday? Did you think about it the entire day? Did you feel sad? Did you feel your heart breaking? Did you get angry? Are you still thinking about it?

I felt my heart break. But, I did not think about it every hour of yesterday, mainly because of the point that I want to get to: in America, we are cut off from Europe and the Middle East  and Africa where major terrorist attacks are happening. When we see things happening far away we think: ‘Oh, that is really sad, I’m sorry that happened.’But since it isn’t close, it doesn’t have the significance it should. It doesn’t hurt us in the way it should. We feel sad for about five minutes, and then we go on with our lives not even thinking about the hurt that people thousands of miles away are feeling because it didn’t happen to us…it didn’t happen to our friends…it didn’t happen a few miles away from me. And yet, our world is hurting. We need to care. We need to not just dismiss when things happen that hurt other people other than ourselves.

The past few weeks there have been attacks in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey through car bombs and explosions in crowded areas. But I have sadly only seen one of my friends post about it on Facebook when they happened. He grew up there so it hit him hard. No one has talked about the hurt that has happened there. The same thing goes for Nigeria and other African countries that have had terrorist attacks. As well as the hundreds of terrorist attacks in the Middle East that are not even reported on in the news because they are not deemed “important enough” or “news worthy” because there are so many and they get “old.” It is only after this attack that I have seen people talking about the other attacks that have happened recently.

Excuse me? Terrorist attacks are “old news” because they happen all the time in these places? Uh, no. That is extremely sad. That is something that needs to be talked about. We need to hear the hurt in the world even if it does hurt to receive it. We need to be aware. We need to not be so self-centered and apathetic.

Monday during chapel at school I had this weird out of body experience. Sometimes I am able to take myself out of the environment and look at it like I’m above the situation and analyze the situation in this way. And yesterday I realized that the life we live, the world we live in, is like a really complex fiction story. It has all the pieces just like our favorite stories. It has God. It has Jesus, which is the character who dies to save the others. There are the “villains” and the “heroes” and the “ordinary man.”

The question we need to ask ourselves is: what character are we? Who are we in the world? We may not be able to “fix” the world and stop these attacks, but we can start with caring. We can start with sending relief to those people affected. We can start by praying for those people. Prayer can be powerful. It can change nations, lives, and situations, even if we may not see it on a large scale.

Because we are not cut off from these attacks. It could be you. It could be your neighbor. The thing with terrorist attacks is we don’t know when they will happen or where. That is what a terrorist attack is.

We need to care. We need to not think that this won’t happen to us…it only happens to them. When the Paris attacks happened, I went to London the next day and realized that I could not come back. We had no idea if London was a target as it just across the channel. I had no idea if a bomb would go off in the underground or at the Doctor Who convention I was attending. But then I realized something, we need to be aware of the hurt and the ruin going on the world, but we do not have to be afraid. We have a hope in God. We can put our trust in Him. Even when bad things happen like this, we do know that in the end, the story does end happily. Sometimes that means people die who don’t deserve it. And people live who don’t deserve it (As Gandalf tells Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring). “Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life.” When you read a book and something bad happens to your favorite character or a horrific battle is portrayed, there is always hope at the end of the tunnel even if you hate it at the time and want to change the story (or rewrite the ending to make it happier).

We need to care. We need to be informed of every horrific attack. We need to pray.

I knew God was caring for me and my friend Elissa that day in London. And I knew that even if something happened, I would have God with me everywhere. And that gave me peace.

Don’t just pray for one place. Pray for the world. And remember even through the hurt, there is light there. Through the darkness, there are rays of hope.  And remember the people everywhere who are victims of the hurt in the world.