Love Wins

Today, the Supreme Court has ruled that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states.

I don't have much to say, except that I am incredibly happy. Many people that I know and love happen to be gay, and I am so glad that they will now not be denied legal recognition of marriage.

Earlier in the month my cousin Whitney married her sweet girlfriend of many years, Sara. While I was filled with joy to see them declare their love for each other, it saddened me to know that their marriage wouldn't be legally recognized in the eyes of the state - unlike the marriages of their straight peers.

But that has changed now. And I couldn't be happier.

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.” - Cesar Chavez

I witnessed an execution

On June 3, the State of Texas executed Lester Bower for the murders of four men more than 30 years ago near Sherman. I was asked by my bosses months beforehand to be a media witness. While I fully expected Mr. Bower to receive a stay of execution, he did not. 

I watched him die. I wrote an article about it that ran in the paper on June 4.

Earlier in the week, my boss asked me to write a piece for the paper about my experience as a witness. The piece was to be more personal than a normal article, but without the opinion of a column.

Here is what I wrote:

One week ago today, I watched a man die.

Several people have asked me what the experience was like, and I generally reply with: weird. It was weird, and I’m still sorting through my thoughts on it. Here are a few of my reflections on the experience. Ask me again in a year, and my response may be different.

I didn’t know how to prepare myself to see an execution. I don’t know that anyone can, really. But I still made an attempt. I did some Internet searches and emailed reporters who had covered executions in the past, including last year’s botched execution in Oklahoma.

I was going to witness the execution of Lester Bower. For anyone who may not know, Mr. Bower was convicted of shooting and killing four men in 1983 at an airplane hangar near Sherman. Mr. Bower at first lied to authorities about his involvement with the victims. He later admitted that he had visited the hangar and bought an ultralight aircraft from one of the victims, but said that the men were alive and well when he left.

A Grayson County jury sentenced Mr. Bower to death in 1984. Altogether he served 31 years on death row and received eight execution dates and seven stays.

As I drove down to Huntsville on Wednesday afternoon, I fully expected to receive a call telling me that Mr. Bower had received another stay of execution. The hours ticked by, and no such call came. At about 5 p.m. I headed to the prison where the execution was to take place, still skeptical as to whether the execution would actually happen.

A picture of the Walls Unit. A friend of mine said, "That prison looks like something from the freakin' Shawshank Redemption!" Indeed.

The prison itself is an intimidating structure. It’s a large, menacing building that first opened to prisoners in 1849. Its official name is the “Huntsville Unit,” however it is commonly referred to as the “Walls Unit” because of its distinct, red brick walls. The prison sticks out among its surrounding buildings, which sprung up more recently.

The execution was to occur at 6 p.m. Shortly beforehand, Jason Clark of the Texas Department of Corrections led us five reporters from a TDC administrative building to the Huntsville Unit across the street. Several yards to our right, the road was cordoned off with police tape and a few law enforcement officers stood by. About 20 protesters stood watching us as we walked into the prison. They held signs, and a woman with a megaphone addressed us.

“Texas is about to murder an innocent man!” she said, among other things. Her words echoed as I walked up the steps and into the old building.

The TDC splits up media witnesses between the two witness rooms, one of which is for the family of the offender and the other of which is for family of the victims. Prison officials put me in the room with the victims’ families, along with Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk.

In the minutes leading up to the execution, we waited in a hallway where visits usually take place. There was a long booth in the middle of the room with a glass partition. Every few feet was an empty chair and a telephone on each side of the glass.

Clark, Graczyk and I chatted about Graczyk’s college years in 1960s Detroit, Michigan. Interesting as it was, it was not enough to distract me from what was about to happen. After what seemed like forever (but was likely 10 minutes, at the most) a corrections officer met our group and led us out a door to the execution chamber.

We walked outside and through a surprisingly beautiful courtyard. Someone had clearly put many hours and much effort into making the space beautiful. An ivy-like plant climbed up the red brick walls. There were several bushes, trees and flowers of many colors.

My head swiveled around 360 degrees as I tried to take this all in. It was a beautiful sight, but a strange one. Juxtaposed beside the lush foliage were chain-link fences and razor wire, reminding me of where exactly I was.

The corrections officer led us through a door, told us to take a right and then a left. We had arrived.

I let the victims’ families enter the room, and then looked through the window before us. There was Lester Bower, strapped to a gurney with no decipherable expression. We were standing directly to his right. Again, it was strange. I had done months of research on this man, but until that point had never seen him in person. He had turned down all interview requests from local media.

As I stood in the witness room, I tried to take in as many details as possible. I wanted my article on the execution to put the reader in the small, cramped room with me, so I pointed out unusual details. The execution chamber had bright, sea foam-green walls, which I found to be an odd choice of color. The windows looking into the room had similarly colored turquoise bars on them.

Even with the knowledge of the crime Mr. Bower was convicted of more than 30 years ago, I did not want to see a gruesome death. And I didn’t.

It literally looked as though the man went to sleep. Besides the doctor announcing that Bower was dead, the only indication that he had passed was the sudden absence of his breathing, which had previously been audible. By all accounts, Bower’s death was calm and peaceful.

Lester Bower's last words. TDC provided me with a transcript.

The whole process took 18 minutes. As we witnesses were lead back outside, I asked Graczyk if the execution was average. He said yes, and that actually Mr. Bower’s execution was shorter than most that he had witnessed.

Since the execution, I have been asked many times, “Are you OK?” I wondered that to myself as I left the execution chamber. I felt fine, but I wondered if I should have been upset or affected.

In all honesty, I am fine; perhaps because of how calm everyone involved seemed to be. Graczyk told me stories of witnesses crying, pounding on the window and falling to the ground. He said he has seen offenders try to free themselves from the gurney, sob violently and convulse once the lethal injection drugs began flowing.

Everyone present appeared to have accepted that the execution was happening, whether they agreed with it or not.

I’ve only been working as a reporter for the last one-and-a-half years, and I hopefully have a long career ahead of me. I know that I will see a lot. I also know that I will always have vivid memories of the Lester Bower execution.

Ann Smajstrla is a reporter with the Herald Democrat. Email her at asmajstrla@heralddemocrat.com. Follow her on Twitter @ASmajstrlaHD.

Dear anxiety: I want to punch you in the face

I write this post while I experience an amalgam of feelings: confusion. Frustration. Some anger.

I write about mental health, and my mental health specifically, because it's an important aspect of my life and an issue that I am passionate about. I don't do it to try to tell a sob story and gain sympathy or attention. Sometimes I fear that divulging my mental health struggles will make me seem "crazy."

But I find it important to share what I go through because 1, I find it encouraging to read about similar struggles of others, and 2, people who are lucky enough to have never had a mental illness need to understand it better.

Anxiety is so frustrating because it is completely separate from reason. There is reasonable, rational Ann, and there is anxious and depressed Ann. Many times, reasonable Ann will identify when anxious Ann is being ... well, anxious. But once anxious Ann has grabbed a hold of my thoughts, she takes over and doesn't let go. It doesn't matter how much reasonable Ann tries to talk anxious Ann down. No logic works on her.

It started Friday. I get an anxious feeling, a feeling of worry, over nothing in particular. But my mind soon finds and grabs hold of things to worry about; things that may not worry me on a normal day. I think about things happening in the future, and they seem scary. I think about things I've done in my past, or didn't do, and feel like I did the wrong thing. My life is all wrong, I think. I screwed it all up. I'm not on the path I need to be. I'm not reaching my full potential. 

My thoughts go like this: Your friends - it's a wonder you have any. Your job - you're not good enough at it. Your relationship - you don't deserve him. Person X, Y or Z - they're better than you and always will be so you should just stop trying. That social get together this weekend - be afraid of it. Be very afraid - everyone is going to think you're weird and you won't fit in. That pain in your side/weird medical symptom? - probably cancer.

Any situation in life --> worst-case scenario.

My thought process was very similar to this on Friday. Soon after the thoughts begin flowing, the physical effects begin to kick in. My chest tightens up first. Then my muscles tense up, starting with my arms and then spreading to my upper back. I take shorter breaths. My heart beats faster. My palms get sweaty.

Having dealt with this for years now, I've mastered the ability to power through it. I can sit at my desk at work and appear completely normal. I usually try to avoid talking to people, but I can if I need to. I can fake a smile. It just leaves me really tired.

I sometimes get to a point where I reach an incredibly painful level of sadness. I don't feel like doing anything, going anywhere or interacting with anyone. Nothing seems enjoyable. In the worst cases, I don't even feel like eating. I've thought to myself before, "I can't think of anything that would make me feel better right now. Nothing."

It's completely horrible and completely irrational.

I've reached a point of reckoning ... I don't mean to sound cryptic, but determined. I'm determined to do something about this. I've done many things about my anxiety, seeing doctors and taking medicines and self-medicating with various substances and trying to distract myself with various things. I've tried a lot of things, yes, and my anxiety still reaches unbearable levels for seemingly no reason - or for reasons that make little sense.

I am a hopeful person. I've tried many things, but I haven't tried everything. Or maybe I've been doing these treatments wrong. I don't know how to fix this, but I do know that this is not how I want to live my life. I tell myself many cynical lies during my anxious and depressive episodes, but hope for my mental health is one thing that I legitimately believe in. I will hold onto that forever.

It's my body and I'll cry if I want to

It's rant time again.

If there's one topic I'm sick of hearing about, it might be body image.

Our society is really, really good at sending out a clusterf*ck of a message about people's bodies. Women generally try to be thin, men generally try to be ripped.

I see images like this one and hear people screaming "love your body." I fear that too much of this message can lead to people becoming content with being unhealthy. While social movements like Dove's "real beauty" campaign have good intentions, if I'm being totally, 100% honest, these messages kind of irk me after a while.

On the other end, I see infomercials for P90X and Insanity, championing a sleek and toned body with, like, .1% body fat. That's just not realistic. Too often, the ideal body type is one that is unattainable.

Comedian Amy Schumer (my favorite) recently tweeted that she's a "proud size 6" - I'm a size 6, sometimes a 4, depending on where I'm shopping ... and I don't see this as something I necessarily need to be "proud" of.

I don't have an athlete's body. Most people don't. It's not something I'm ashamed of, but it's also not something that I feel I need to be especially proud of.

LOOK AT ME EVERYBODY, I'M WEARING A BIKINI AND I DON'T HAVE A SIX PACK! YOU SHOULD ALL BE SO PROUD OF ME LOOK AT HOW BRAAAAAVE I AM!

I'm sick of it.

I don't think I've ever met another woman who was not critical of her body. Not one. Even women who probably weighed a bit less than me and had bodies that I would consider ideal.

I haven't had many conversations with men on this topic, but I'm sure the outcome would be similar.

What prompted me to write this post is that I've been dealing with something recently: a warped body image. This has been an issue of mine for a while (since I was about 12, I guess), but it's really come to the forefront and slapped me in my face in the past couple weeks.

I've made a recent endeavor to build my professional wardrobe, since my most often worn look is just jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. I'm legally a grown-ass woman, I guess I should start dressing like one, too. I prefer to do most of my clothes shopping online, but I've also made a few purchases in stores.

I have, several times now, bought clothes that are too big for me. I mean, way too big for me. Clothes too big to wear anywhere without it being obvious. Clothes that are baggy and look like they're about to fall off. Hell, with pants and skirts, sometimes they literally are about to fall off. I've done this both online (where it's more understandable, since you can't actually try the clothes on) and in stores, which really boggles my mind.

After doing this about five times, I had to straight up admit something to myself: I am buying clothes that are too big for me because I think I'm bigger than I actually am. I have a warped body image.

Another relevant thing that happened in the past month is that I received a ton of hand-me-down clothes from my boyfriend's sister. She had a baby a few months ago and has been ridding her closet of some pre-pregnancy clothes. She was kind enough to give me three, super-full trash bags worth of blouses, sweaters, skirts, pants, jackets, et. al.

I tried on every single article of clothing. As I did so, I got nervous. I would look at the sizes - small, extra small, 2, 4 - and cringe. I would think, "There's no way I can fit into these. She must think I'm smaller than I actually am."

A good 90%, if not more, of the clothes fit.

So much of it is just psychosomatic.

I'm tired of having such anxiety about whether clothes will fit. If I try on an article of clothing and it's too small, it should be no big deal.

What am I so afraid of? What's the worst that could happen if a certain article of clothing doesn't fit me?

I went to see a doctor this morning. I have a BMI of 21 and "excellent" blood pressure numbers (according to the nurse). As long as I have the doctor's OK, then whether I can fit into a size 0 should be inconsequential.

Should be. Should be. Should be.

Mid-year resolutions and one revelation

I just finished writing this post, and I've concluded that it's really just, for lack of a better term, word vomit. It's me emptying the contents of my brain onto a post so that my as-of-yet abstract thoughts and goals can seem more tangible. 
Why couldn't I have done this in my personal moleskine? I don't know. Perhaps the thought that there's a chance other people will read these resolutions will make me more likely to follow through on them.

Almost one year ago I made some mid-year resolutions.

I did wear more hats, but I did not read Rob Lowe's autobiography or create any other mid-year resolutions. For some reason, I have decided to make another list that will probably receive as much attention as last year's did.

Resolutions

-Finish the many books I have laying around my tiny house, which include but are not limited to: Attempting Normal by Marc Maron (I relate to this more than I probably should), Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (book club read), Sweet Tooth by Yves Navarre (quirky Half Price Books find), Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl and The Defining Decade by Meg Jay (both for when I'm having a quarter-life crisis, which is nearly every damn day).

-Read magazines that I buy from front to back and then recycle them.

-Stop comparing my life and start living it.

-Get more sleep.

-Finish putting together my professional capsule wardrobe, which I am drawing inspiration for here. I have been interested in minimalism for a couple years now, but the thought of getting rid of a bunch of my possessions all at once makes me ... hyperventilate. I decided I'm going to go through one item category at a time. First: clothes.
If anyone has really been "into" minimalism I would love to hear how you did it.

I'm pleased to say that resolutions I have set in previous years - like eating more vegetables, eating less sugar and getting more exercise - are now habitual practices for me.

Mid-year revelation: I have officially added Don Cheadle to my list of celebrity crushes.

Until next time, peace out.

Relation-shit: advice to my younger self

There used to be a location of the now-defunct restaurant chain Bennigan's right off the west side of U.S. Highway 35 at the entrance of Round Rock, Texas - the town I grew up in. As a member of the marching band in high school, the Bennigan's and the Ihop were popular post-football game locations for high schoolers to congregate. These were the days when I would happily eat a second dinner of chocolate chip pancakes and not think twice about the potential health ramifications.

My visits to Bennigan's were many and I don't remember all of them. But I do remember sitting in an almost-empty Bennigan's after a football game in the fall of 2006, with probably about seven or eight of my peers. Among them was a senior baritone player who I'll just identify as "M." 

M was (and I imagine still is) attractive, popular and talented. He was an excellent baritone player and an even better piano player. At our annual band Christmas party, or any event with a piano ready and available, someone would undoubtedly exclaim, "M! Play Charlie Brown! Play Charlie Brown!" M would promptly take to the piano and bust out a rendition of "Linus and Lucy" that sounded perfect to our teenage ears.

In other words, as a 15-year-old who was already intimidated by anyone with the tiniest amount of confidence, I was severely intimidated by M.

That night at Bennigan's, M had a date in tow with him. She was my age, a member of the drill team. I didn't know her well, but she had been in my integrated physics and chemistry class the year before. Not the brightest bulb in the package, but she was pretty and could dance. I didn't think she was good enough for M; and suddenly, I was mad at both of them.

M's attitude toward drill team girl could only be compared to Thumper's reaction to a female bunny in the Disney film, Bambi. She told the waitress she wanted water, and M gazed at her with a big, fat grin on his face. He acted fascinated by every word that came from her mouth. I was disgusted, yet envious.

If I could go back and tell one piece of advice to my high school self, it would be to not worry about dating relationships. I was usually the only person in my friend group without a significant other. That was a big deal to me then, but it shouldn't have been.

At some point during the night, the restaurant staff began playing "Closing Time" by Semisonic. We took it as a cue to leave.

I couldn't drive yet, so my dad picked me up from the Bennigan's. We talked a bit about the football game, and at some point I brought up my disgust with M's infatuation with the drill team member.

"He agrees with everything she says," I said, rolling my eyes. 

My dad laughed.

"Just wait," he said. "In a few months, he'll be disagreeing with everything she says."

My dad may have just been saying this in passing, but it's something that I have remembered over the years. And it's something that makes better sense to me now.

As a high schooler who had never been in a serious relationship, I couldn't imagine that having a significant other would be anything but great. It seemed like the solution to my problems. I wasn't very confident, and the idea of having a guy who thought I was pretty and worth being around sounded awesome. I also didn't want to have to make my own homecoming mums.

At one point in high school, after seeing the majority of my friend group be doted over while I was passed up, I was convinced that I would be alone forever. But that changed, it seemed, almost immediately after I graduated high school. I've had a few relationships since then.

Had I not idolized the idea of having a boyfriend, and had I not seen it as the solution to a few of my problems, I probably could have avoided a few terrible dating experiences.

I don't consider any of my three previous relationships before my current one to have been "failures." My previous relationships were many things. Above all else, they were learning experiences. In order for the relationships to have succeeded, I would have had to do something that I didn't want to do: Buy a new car. Continue to be pelted with criticism veiled as "advice." Keep someone in my life who ignored me for about two whole months with no explanation, then expected our relationship to pick up where it left off.

If I had done any of those things, then I would have been a failure.

I recently realized that my current relationship is the only relationship I've had in which, by entering into it, I haven't been looking to fill a void. This has made a huge difference, for the better.

I wish I could go back in time to that night at Bennigan's, grab myself by the shoulders and tell 15-year-old Ann to snap out of it. Life doesn't begin and end in high school. You won't be alone forever. You're looking at boys with rose-colored glasses. You will learn that relationships are great, but many times they are not great. I am still figuring them out.

This is what depression really looks like

Every time a new mental health awareness campaign becomes a "thing," I get very excited. Those who know me know that mental health is a cause that is near and dear to my heart, mostly because I have dealt with anxiety and depression for much of my life; and because many of my loved ones have as well.

I came across this article on Buzzfeed, which was inspired by Time to Change's "Get the picture" campaign. The Get the Picture website raised a point that I had never considered before -- most representations of depressed people in the media look something like this:

(The above picture was the first result when I Google image searched "depressed person")

Get the Picture calls this the "head clutcher" image. The thing is, however, people with mental health problems don't look depressed all the time. The campaign's aim is to bring awareness to this fact. Many people have taken to social media and shared pictures of themselves from when they were depressed.

Interestingly enough, this is a topic that I recently blogged about.

So I'm participating, too. Here are pictures of me from instances when I remember feeling depressed and was trying my best to appear as "normal" as possible to others.

One thing that could help remedy the stigma surrounding mental illness, I believe, is a widespread understanding that depressed does not always equal outwardly sad.
Maybe this would encourage people to always be kind and understanding of others.