Intro to Storytelling Showcase featuring Rachel Cherrick

This episode features Rachel Cherrick, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Rachel Cherrick on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/intro-to-storytelling-showcase-spring-2019/.  

These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Students told stories around “unsaid things.” 

This episode was originally performed in April 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.

Transcript

Steven Harowitz:   0:12
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, Executive Director of Campfire, and you are listening to Campfire at Home. It's our way of bringing the live experience to you, whether that be listening and reflecting by yourself or experiencing it with friends. Each Campfire invites listeners in the life and how we live it. Before we get too deep into Campfire at Home, I want to share a few opportunities for you to get involved beyond our live show. We offer classes and workshops on public speaking, story construction and group facilitation to answer the big questions in your life or at work. If you or your organization are interested, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that's explored by our Campfire Fellows together with our audiences. For our Intro to Storytelling showcase students, they take this question and turn into a theme. This season their theme was things left unsaid. Let's go to the stage at KDHX to listen to these stories.

Unknown:   1:09
Please help me welcome Rachel to the Campfire.

Rachel Cherrick:   1:20
I couldn't believe that my mom would just leave me at preschool at three years old, with these snot-nosed, smelly kids who were throwing blocks at each other and trying to poke and prod me every chance that they got. And I would cry and scream for Mom to come and get me. But I'm three years old. I don't know how to talk about my feelings or anything. So I do other stuff, like scratch myself and punch myself and throw my head against the wall and even start throwing up. But my mom doesn't come back. This goes on for a few months, and just for some context, I'm an only child. My parents were really anxious people, and they do what they can to reassure me. But ultimately they don't know how to help me. So they send me to this talking doctor who is super nice and she plays with me. She's got all these great toys, and she tries to find ways to make the worry monster in my mind less scary. And that works for a little bit, until I go to kindergarten, which is a whole new school, and the same things keep happening. And so they sent me to this other talking doctor, and this talking doctor he has these magic pills he gives me, and he tells me that these pills will shrink my worry monster so that it's so small. I won't be scared anymore. It might even make it go away, and it definitely shrunk the monster, but it stayed with me for a long time. Now, fast forward to 11 years old, puberty setting in and the monster shifts shape. It turns into this monster that's full of self-loathing and dread and sadness, and I start having my first thoughts of wanting to end my life. I actually write this will where I give away all my earthly possessions, namely my stuffed animals and Beanie Babies, and my parents find it. And again, they're still anxious. I'm still an only child, and they just don't really know how to support me. So they send me to this other talking doctor, who I now know was called a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist tells me that I have a chemical imbalance in my brain called depression, and he prescribes me my first antidepressant. Now, around this time too, I'm just trying to figure out who I am, who I want to be in the world. Just what I'm doing with my life. And as I'm thinking about that, I'm also realizing that maybe these antidepressants are impacting that. So for years I have this battle going on in my mind, right between, like, two parts of myself. There's this monster, which is like a cross between like John Travolta in Grease and like this like scary biker dude who has like slicked back hair, glasses, and a black leather jacket. And he's telling me,  "You should go off the meds. The meds, when you're on them it, like, prevents you from being your true self. You'll never really figure out who you are if you're on them." And then the logic part of my mind telling me that the meds were actually enhancing who I am and that I should really stay on them because it will really help me figure out who I am. And I listen to that logic part of me for years, until one fateful day in April 2014 when I'm 23 years old, I succumb to the monster's argument. I moved to Bushwick in Brooklyn a couple of months later, because I'm starting social worker at NYU. And it's not like I had nothing to do that summer. But it's not like I had a lot going on either. I had taken on running actually a couple months when I'd gone off my meds a couple months earlier, and I felt like I could just connect with my body and kind of get away from my mind. I could just focus on my heart beating in my chest, my arms pumping back and forth, the sweat dripping on my brow, putting one foot in front of the other. And I could get away from that monster for a little bit. I would often go on this run in a nearby park, there was like 1/2 a mile trail that I would run over and over again, thinking that the more I ran that maybe the more my monster would shrink. But instead I would see these kids laughing and playing with each other in the sprinklers, and they just look so happy and tears would stream down my face because I realized I would probably never feel that kind of happiness again, and at that point I would usually start hyperventilating and I'd collapse into the grass and I usually called my mom. Now, just for context, again, I'm in a pretty desperate situation because, as you can remember, my parents really struggle to support me emotionally. But I call her because I don't feel like there's anyone else there in my corner. I tell her that I don't know what I'm gonna do with my life. I feel like I should just drop out of school. I just saw on the Internet about this farm in Seattle. It's an organic vegetable farm. Maybe I could just work the land. And that would make things better, right? She listened, and she tried to convince me that she could go to New York and visit me and help me figure out what to do. But I refused. I was 23 fucking years old. I should have my life together. But what 23 year old does, right? Um, so after that, when I was, I had a couple of days left and, um, I kept well, I actually kept calling my mom, and the same conversation happened over and over again. And this one time I called her. She was the one who was hyperventilating and crying, and I was super uncomfortable, I hate it when my parents cry. She told me that she was really scared. She didn't know if I could survive that summer. She demanded that I come home immediately to St. Louis, and that way she could give me the care and support that I needed. But I refused. I didn't want to do that. I don't want to go home, and I apologized. I said I was so sorry. I wouldn't bother her again. I would figure it out myself. And then I got an email from my dad that evening and he told me that I caused my mom to have a nervous breakdown and he told me that I needed to stop ruining their lives with my mental problems. And he told me that they were throwing me a life boat, and if I didn't take it, I was ruining my life. That was really hard to hear. I was really angry, actually. But then I thought about it, and I thought maybe he was right. Maybe a part of me did want to drown because life was just getting really, really hard to bear. So what was I supposed to do? I started school at NYU a couple days later, and I was on a break in Washington Square Park sitting on a bench and I got a call and I knew immediately was my dad. I had a big lump in my throat and my stomach dropped. My heart was pounding, and I was actually surprised when he called me to hear that he was smiling in his voice. He told me that he had pulled some strings, and if I apply today, I could go to WashU's social work school. In my mind, I was thinking, "Today's Wednesday. Monday's in five fucking days. What is he talking about?" Finally, I'm able to stammer. "What if, what if I don't want to go?" I braced myself for his reaction. Top of his lungs, he screamed at me and said, "Well, if you don't go, we'll have to cut you off because we cannot enable this kind of behavior. It's your decision." I was shocked. What was I supposed to do? Have you ever been in a situation like that where you had very little time to make a huge life decision? Yeah, that's what I was going through. And I don't really remember the next hour. But I do remember calling my dad and telling him that I agreed to go home, back to St. Louis, and I agreed to go to WashU. The next few days were a really big blur for me. I withdrew from NYU social work school. I broke my lease in Bushwick. I applied to WashU, got into WashU the next day. I packed up all my belongings, and the stuff I couldn't fit, I stuffed in black trash bags and dragged him through the streets of Bushwick on a rainy Saturday night to the UPS Store. And on Sunday, I was on a plane back home to St. Louis, and on Monday I was in class. The first few weeks were really hard. I woke up every day full of regret. I felt like I wanted to be anywhere but here. A part of me wished I was in New York. The other part of me wish I was on on this organic vegetable farm in Seattle, but I certainly didn't want to be here, and I wish I could say that everything got better, that I was able to regulate my emotions, that I got on the right kinds of medication, that I repaired my relation with my parents. But that hasn't happened, not yet. That's not my story, but a lot of healing has happened, and I've had a lot of really big realizations. I now know that I live my best, highest quality of life when I'm on my meds, and I've accepted the fact that I'll be on my meds for most of my life. I now know that I can truly experience moments of joy. And I am so grateful for those beautiful, blissful moments because when I was running in the park and seeing those kids playing together, I really thought I would never feel happiness again. But even with all of that, the monsters inside of me, the darkness, it's still there, and it can plug me for days on end. They're days when it's really hard to get out of bed. It's really hard to get to work and do all that you do to function on a daily basis. But what's different now is that I know the darkness will pass. What's different now is that I have, and I wish I could tell this to my 23 year old self, but there are people in my life who love me, who care about me and want to support me in all the ways that they can. And I'm so grateful for that. The thing that's hard, though, is that when the monster gets really big, it tells me things like, "You shouldn't burden them. Your mental problems will be too much for them. You should just leave it unsaid." And so I do. I often leave my darkness and my monsters unsaid. Until tonight, because tonight, for the first time, I publicly share my darkness with all of you. So thank you for being here, for witnessing that, and I commit to you knowing that I might not always succeed. But I commit to more openly sharing my darkness with you, not only because it lessens the monster's grip on my own mind, but to give others the permission. Is your their darkness as well. Thanks.

Steven Harowitz:   12:18
If you want, you can see the answers to this Season's question as written by audience members from each Campfire by visiting our Facebook page at facebook.com/campfirestl. That's c a m p f i r e s t l. A big thank you to the Campfire team, our photographers and videographers, and a special thanks to KDHX Community Media for being our partners on this journey. If you want to learn more about Campfire and the work we do, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com And if you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts, because it really helps. Until next time.