Ingrid Murray, Author at Ingrid Murray

2011: I Lost a Friend Today

Ten years ago today, on April 28, 2011, a friend of mine took her own life at the young age of 23. In her honor, I’m reposting what I wrote after I learned of her death and sharing resources for mental health crises.

I knew her in high school. She was in my grade, only a few months older, beautiful, outgoing, and confident. She had a clear and smooth singing voice. I admired her. I envied the way she carried herself and how she seemed to have life so organized and all figured out; I wanted the stability and assuredness she possessed.

We were very similar in some ways: we were creative and romantics, dreamers in love with Lucy Maud Montgomery‘s beautiful books. And, it seems, we shared a secret, dark, lonely place of depression, loneliness, and uncertainty. I struggled, forcing myself to keep moving forward, one day at a time. Some days are still difficult, but I have found the path into the light. Today, she gave up.

My heart aches for this gorgeous woman, for her husband and family who are struggling with confusion, guilt, and pain. Please keep them in your hearts, thoughts, and prayers.

You deserve to wake up every morning to the sun.

Depression is very real. It is painful and lonely and suffocating, and the world feels as if it is caving in on you. But you are not alone. You are NOT alone. You are not alone in your suffering, and you do not have to be alone in finding a way out. You – yes, you, you beautiful, magnificent being – are endlessly, hugely loved; you deserve every happiness; you deserve life. The guilt, heartache, loneliness, and hurt can be released. There are answers, and the black veil can be lifted. Yes, even for you, my dear. Call the number below, or write anonymously at Postsecret Community. If you feel you can, reach out to a family member or friend and tell them that you need their help.

You deserve to wake up every morning to the sun. You deserve to make decisions about what you want to do tomorrow, and next month, and next year. You deserve to do what you love, to watch the spring bloom around you, to go on adventures and to daydream. You deserve to give yourself a chance to find your way out of the dark, deep hole that seems to have no escape, and others deserve to have a chance to show you just how much they love you. Please, give them that chance.

1 – 800 – 442 – HOPE
Trained individuals are available 24/7

Call this number if you ever feel as if you are losing the struggle to continue forward. Call if you’re unsure if you “qualify”. Call if you feel lonely, or sad, or if you don’t know how you feel. The people on the other end are available 24/7 and love you deeply, deeply, deeply, and will hold you and guide you into the light. I promise.

Some more resources:

National suicide/crisis hotlines: 1-800-273-TALK or 1-800-SUICIDE (both available 24/7 in both English and Spanish)
HOPELINE: “Text HOPELINE to 741741 — from anywhere, anytime, about any type of challenge or struggle. Help and hope is just a text away.™”
PostSecret Community
Hotlines and resources outside the US
Database for resources and support from To Write Love on Her Arms

COVID & HOBBES: Week 13

Gratitude

Each year, I take a photo on (or near) my birthday to capture both the moment and the passage of time. Some photos are better than others; some hold better memories than others.

Today, I add another photo to the collection, a memento from the second birthday I’ve celebrated in this pandemic. Today, I’m especially humbled and overwhelmed, in ways I can’t even express, by the love that surrounds me. I’m so grateful.

What a thing it is “to be alive / on this fresh morning / in the broken world.”

COVID & HOBBES: Week 12

Change is the Only Constant

Three hundred and sixty-some days. A year of a pandemic, lived, survived, now behind us; onto the next.

I gained weight, lost weight, didn’t leave the house for days on end, watched approximately all of Netflix, created Calvin and Hobbes collage remixes for 100 days, walked miles and miles, read more than 20 books, ran a 5K, finished two art journals, ate and slept and went to the grocery store (and sometimes Target as a treat) and worked from home every single day.

I saw my family four whole times.

In the midst of all this, I’ve been thinking a lot about change. There’s some poetry in that, as we’re marking the anniversary of the pandemic, spring is arriving.

Change is always hard, even if it’s for the better; it requires us to be open to growth and prepared for discomfort. Choosing change, or being forced into it, requires commitment and vulnerability and hope, and faith that it will all work out. (As Anaïs Nin famously wrote, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”)

In the depths of 2020, I read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents (both here). Based in a future in the midst of a climate-change-driven apocalypse, the main character builds a religion rooted in and defined by change:

God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.

In this moment, the world is showing us just how beautiful change can be.

Three hundred and sixty some days later, and the world is still spinning, and change is still constant, and hope still springs eternal.