Returning From Break: Melancholy, Bones, and Chocolate

This first week back after Spring Break has been rough, with being sick and mourning. Grieving for Levi without concretely facing his absence is so odd. A friend made an innocent mistake the other day when she asked if I had pets at home. My immediate reaction was to fondly say, “Yes” and begin describing my adorable puppy. The “Yes” slipped out before I caught myself and began stuttering. It was one of the first times I’d been forced to face Levi’s death unexpectedly. It was depressing, but I am thankful that I managed to explain what had happened without crying.

In addition to this understandable melancholy, I’ve been struggling emotionally for reasons I can’t really explain. For a few years now, I have been coping with low self-esteem, poor body image, and disordered eating. The severity of these issues has ebbed and flowed, and I have felt them becoming more pronounced during my time here. Over the past few weeks, they have taken over more and more of my life, prompting me to begin seeking therapy. (To be honest, it feels almost inappropriate to share something so personal on a fairly public forum such as this. However, I recognize that societal stigma attached to therapy has deterred me from seeking help until now, and I do not want to let this stigma also prevent me from openly sharing this process.)

The combination of all this left me feeling pretty awful until Friday, when the clouds lifted a bit. I went for a walk and it was sunny out. I sat in the park and did some yoga. My knee didn’t hurt. I got hot chocolate at Choco-Café and worked on an essay. I bought some nail polish and painted my nails a reddish orangey color. It was a good day.

Beautiful picture of the river and town from Kampa Island

The next morning, I went on a day trip with my program to Kutna Hora, a medium-sized town an hour’s drive outside of Prague. It used to compete with Prague, and it has a church modeled after St. Vitus and a bridge with statues like Charles Bridge. We had a nice tour of the city and some of the churches there. We also went on a tour through the silver mines, in which I learned that I would have made a terrible miner. We walked through the mine, which was basically a limestone cave (it reminded me of Carlsbad Caverns), and at one point, our guide turned off all the lights. Immediately, I realized that I almost never see complete darkness. As we all imagined being down there when your candle goes out, sitting in the darkness waiting and hoping someone would come to your rescue, we decided we were very happy not to be miners.

Pretty church in Kutna Hora modeled after Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral

The coolest part of the trip, though, was our visit to Sedluc Ossuary, the bone church. It’s a church that is decorated with unidentified bones of victims of the Bubonic Plague. As a Religious Studies/Health Sciences major, a church filled with bones sounded right up my alley. It was pretty surreal walking in there, seeing piles of skulls and long bones of the leg and arm. I had fun naming the different bones I saw. I was expecting the space in the church to feel creepy or haunted somehow. Instead, this art felt to me like a beautiful use of these bones that otherwise would have been destined for a mass grave. To use them in art in a church felt honoring. I could have spent longer there, but in keeping with the nature of large group travel, we had a schedule to keep. We took a bus back to Prague and I had a nice quiet evening at home.

Decorations inside Sedluc Ossuary

Sedluc Ossuary

There were four of these pyramids of bones. Originally there were six pyramids, but an artist was allowed to destroy two of them in order to decorate the church with the bones.

Skulls that show evidence of brain injuries and of healing, suggesting that the people survived their injuries

Sedluc Ossuary

Coat of arms made of bones in Sedluc Ossuary

Sunday was filled with a lot of emotional work. While talking about big-and-scary emotion stuff, David and I hiked up Petrin Hill, which was beautiful. I’m really trying to be conscious of not over-stressing my knee, because I’m so loving being able to walk for fun again. Also I had forgotten how fantastic taking the stairs is. David and I made Mexican-ish food for dinner, and we’re going to try a Mexican food restaurant (supposedly run by Mexicans) later this week. We’re feeling a little homesick. 

View while hiking Petrin Hill

Yesterday was filled mostly with classes and weird weather. On the way to my morning class, it was cold and raining. Two hours later, I walked home because it was sunny and warm. After arriving home, it began hailing on and off, and continued for the rest of the evening.

The documentary we watched in my evening class on the Holocaust was especially depressing. Apparently there is a whole academic field called “comparative genocide,” for which I am not cut out. Did you know that there was genocide in Indonesia in the 1960s? Around 2 million people were judged to be communist and were killed. And the United States, afraid of a communist Indonesia, actually encouraged and sponsored the killings. The murderers were never tried and they still run the country. The documentary we watched showed the killers proudly reenacting the murders they committed. It was probably the second most depressing thing I’ve ever seen (“12 Years a Slave” still takes the cake on that one). I left class feeling physically ill and decided to walk home because I couldn’t face a tram full of people.

Luckily, I had started reading Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylors’ book “Traveling with Pomegranates” earlier that day. It’s a mother-daughter book about their trip to Greece and I’m already halfway through it. Within the first few pages, I got the feeling that I was reading something deeply significant to me. I had a very difficult time putting it down to go to my evening class, and I stayed up late eating popcorn and chocolate while reading.

I am hoping this week will be easier than last. I have so much to be thankful for and excited about. It feels as though these emotions are getting stuck somewhere in me, and I am working on letting them flow more freely. Some days it comes more easily than others, and I’m looking forward to creating more easy days.