Erin is the writer of Daisies and Bruises, a blog about "finding her way one step and one word at a time. After losing most of her youth to severe depression, she decided that since death was no longer an option, she had to find a way to live. This is it."

When I was about eleven I remember watching this show on tv about the Guinness Book of World Records. They talked about a man who had over 90% percent of his body tattooed so that he looked like a leopard. When he shut his eyes, yellow leopard eyes peered from his lids. What stood out to me most was that this man lived in a cabin in a remote wooded area and hadn’t socialized with people for years. Upon doing a quick Google search for this post I learned that this man was named The Leopard Man of Skye. One could argue that the man isolated himself like that because of his tattooed self that society might not approve of, but he was also a war veteran and admitted to being unable to return to civilian life after wartime. As an eleven-year-old the story of this man stuck with me and I often thought of The Leopard Man living out there all alone.

As an adult I have learned the hard way that isolation is something I am drawn to and must try to avoid. My favourite activities, reading, writing, and art, are mainly solitary tasks and considering the length of my reading list, writing goals, and art projects planned it would be great if I could go about my day in complete solitude. If it weren’t for the loneliness that creeps in I would be productive and efficient, generating my will to live as I went.

Unfortunately, doing so is difficult because humans are not solitary creatures. We depend on each other to survive; solitary confinement is considered a method of psychological torture in prisons worldwide. In caveman days, it was safest for people to live in a group for protection from predators, gathering food, and maintaining warmth. Any book you read on human nature would tell you that  in the twenty-first century, it is still of optimum benefit to live with others, but I will fight tooth and nail to disagree. Deep down, however, I know that is the reality of the human condition.

I isolated myself for years before going to Homewood because I was so crippled with social anxiety. I felt like The Leopard Man, an outcast, more animal than human and destined to be alone. In short, I felt like a freak. At Homewood, however, I learned that it’s common for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to withdraw from society. Trauma is essentially a “social wound” that is often the result of cruelty at the hands of other people. Traumatized people lose their sense of safety and no longer trust anyone but themselves. Me in a nutshell.

Another thing that stood out to me from my stays at Homewood was a wagon wheel model of support. If you think of an old-fashioned wagon wheel, there is the center circle and an outer circle, which is the part that touches the ground. In between those two circles are spokes. If a wheel was built with only three spokes, it wouldn’t be very strong and even a slight accident could damage its structure. Two spokes would be even weaker. So, the more spokes there are, the stronger the wheel is. Does that make sense? At Homewood they told us that the wagon wheel is symbolic of the human support system. For my model, I am in the center of the wheel, and each spoke is a relationship in my life. The more people I have supporting me, the stronger I will be. I count my therapist as one spoke, and each of my family members as others. That gives me four spokes. In other words, enough for my wheel to work but it is not as strong as it could be.

I have some more spokes now, some friends that I can count on. My wheel is pretty weak, though, and as much as I want to only reply upon myself, that isn’t going to work. It’s really hard for me to trust people but I think I’m getting better at it.

Here’s an exercise for you:

Get a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil. Make a list of the people you have in your life that you can count on. Count those people. Now draw two circles, one inside the other. You are going to make your own wheel. Add a spoke for each person in your list. What does it look like to you? Is it a sturdy wagon wheel or does it look flimsy? What would you do if you lost a few spokes? Do you think the remaining spokes could hold your weight?

Remember that you are part of other people’s support systems too. Are you taking too much of the weight of someone else when they need more spokes? That’s when a therapist or counselor can really help. Keep the wagon wheel in mind the next time you are struggling and remember that you need a network of people to get where you need to in life and that doesn’t make you weak or needy. It makes you human.

-by Erin