My depression is something I've battled with my entire life. It's always been a vicious cycle and one time, when I was about thirteen, my mom walked in on me with a pair of scissors. I was cutting my wrist, and I remember being completely spaced out while I was doing it. I'd gone into a weird trancey state where everything felt totally normal and I was hypnotized by the way the blood looked on my arm. I'd cut myself before, but I always kept it to my thighs or somewhere that people couldn't see. More than cutting, I was into hurting myself in a thousand tinier and less obvious ways. I was hiding food and eating it like it was going to be taken away from me at any moment. I was coming home from school and drowning my heavy heart in ice cream and junk food and frozen pizzas and lying on the couch watching movies that felt like a comfort blanket. I was writing angry, angsty poetry in notebooks--- I found one recently when packing up my house. A black spiral notebook and within the first few pages I had written "I wish I was dead" and then traced it so hard and so many times that my pen had torn through the paper and bled ink onto the pages below. "I wish I was dead" and its ghostly echoes took up the first maybe ten pages of the notebook. It was a mantra, but I was never quite brave enough to actually do it. Instead I just retreated into myself, put on a careful mask of laughter and confidence and a bubbly personality. Inside I was slogging through neck-deep water in concrete shoes, just trying to keep my nose above the tide lines.
It's always come and gone, and I don't know how to explain it to people who don't have depression. (I'm not, you may have guessed, referring to "Oh, my team lost the Superbowl, I'm so depressed" depression here.) Sometimes you see it on the horizon like a summer storm, ominous hints; a song comes on the radio and you feel the familiar sting in your sinuses that means you're about to cry, or you wake up with an unexplainable sense of "Today's going to suck" (self-fulfilling prophecy?). Other times you're sitting at work composing a perfectly innocent email and the next thing you know you've locked yourself in the bathroom and you're crying so hard you can't breathe. I've given myself multiple panic attacks before because my depression couples with anxiety. I get depressed, then I feel guilty about being depressed ("There are people who have it so much worse than you, are you KIDDING me?!"), and it snowballs from there until I am unable to function and I just totally shut down. I wind up crying and hyperventilating and pulling into myself and I can't explain to anyone
why it's happening, only that it
is.
I've been like this for as long as I can remember, even as a very young kid, but it just really manifested itself and found its legs when I became an adolescent. My mom knew, but she didn't know how to help. A therapist wasn't covered by her insurance and she didn't know what to do for me. When I was seventeen, I went to my regular doctor, who was kind of a prick. I'd already been having heaps of medical problems--- I was morbidly obese and the doctor was sure that I had polycystic ovarian syndrome because I wasn't menstruating. He sat me down and said matter-of-factly "It's going to be incredibly hard for you to ever have children. Your body just isn't producing eggs. I can put you on birth control to make you have a regular period, but there's no point to that because it obviously won't make you fertile. So you're just going to have to accept that it's going to be a very difficult and unlikely thing if you want to get pregnant." Now at seventeen I had no intention of getting pregnant, but I also had no idea if I was ever going to want babies, if I was going to meet some amazing partner and decide I wanted to be a mommy. So needless to say this was pretty devastating news. I started crying and instead of exhibiting any good bedside manners, the doctor asked me if I considered myself 'overly emotional' as a regular thing. I told him that yes, I did cry at the drop of a hat and something as minor as a commercial could literally ruin my entire day. He asked me the routine questions and I went through the checklist, thinking about it.
Do you find yourself losing enjoyment in things that you once loved doing? I thought about writing, how when I was younger I hadn't ever been without a pen or my electric typewriter. I drove my family insane thrusting pieces of paper at them, "Here, read this!" every ten minutes. I was enamored with words and I made them my bitch. And then I thought about me at seventeen, using my words like weapons, writing trite bullshit about being sad all the time. Where had my
stories gone, where had the actual imagination and happiness and beautiful stories gone in my brain?
Do you isolate yourself from others in social situations? I was the king of bringing a book or two to school with me, of reading through lunch, of sitting on the bleachers during gym class when I could get away with it. I loved what friends I did have, but I was perfectly content to run by myself. I didn't like the pressure of always having to be charming and sweet and fun around my friends; I felt like if I showed them that I was sad or fucked-up or depressed they would go away and find someone who was less of a 'downer'.
When we finished our stupid little interview he smirked and asked how long I'd been dealing with these feelings, and then he wrote me a prescription for Prozac. He told me that I should've come forward sooner, that he could've helped me with my depression years ago.
I took it for weeks, and after awhile I realized that I wasn't sad anymore, but everything felt dull and desaturated. Instead of the ultraviolet brilliance of my joy and my pain, there was only blunted, staticky transmissions--- my emotions were a radio station that was a mile out of comfortable tune-in range and I was getting them in starts and fits through a veil of crackling, muffled nonsense when I got them at all. I didn't care about school, though I still made straight As. I didn't cry when I heard a particularly moving song, though I still listened to the same music I always had. There was just nothing there, and I didn't wean myself off the pills or tell the doctor that I was stopping. I just quit taking them and flushed them down the toilet. They weren't an answer, not for me, and those few moments of peace they brought me weren't worth the price I felt I was paying to give up what made me who I was.
I was officially diagnosed with manic depression that day when I was seventeen, and the 'manic' part of it is very true. I don't ever understand what's happening inside my own head. When I'm alone sometimes I'm perfectly happy and content. Other times I feel like the apocalypse has happened and I'm the only person on this earth--- I am crippled by despair and loneliness and a desperation to connect. Sometimes I laugh too loudly at jokes or cling to my friends like a kid to his mother's apron strings; I am overly affectionate, holding hands, hugging, playing with someone's hair in that need to feel connected to someone. I've been known to be self-destructive; I have picked fights with people over insignificant shit just to see if they'll fight with me or if they'll decide I'm not worth the trouble and just walk away. Deep down a part of me is convinced that if I died, only a handful of people would even attend the funeral--- I often lose myself in fantasies about me dying, wondering who would care, what impact it would have on the people around me. I used to think that everyone thought like this, because I couldn't remember a time when I
didn't. I have found journal entries I wrote at seven and eight years old saying that I wished I would die or disappear, that I hated myself.
Now I am twenty-seven years old and for about half a year there, I had a good run. When my mom got diagnosed with cancer I tried to remain optimistic--- my mom was a goddamned superhero. Nothing as stupid as cancer was going to take her down; she was going to die of old age someday after I'd gotten married and had a bomb-ass job in a big city. I used to joke with her that if I ever got famous she'd walk the red carpet with me, that she would be my 'date' to awards shows and signings and things like that. I knew that she was going to beat that shit. I put warpaint on her cheeks and took pictures of her in pink boxing gloves, ready to kick cancer's ass. I called up sponsors and companies and asked them for donations for a raffle and auction to raise money for her fight, knowing that once we paid the bills off and she'd finished her chemo we'd laugh about it. She'd sit with me and help me write the thank-you notes to all of those companies who donated shit to the charity event. She would be there when I someday decided that yeah, I
did want to get pregnant, and she'd make fun of me for not knowing how to work the velcro tabs on a diaper and she'd teach me how to get the baby to stop crying at 4 AM because I never met a baby who didn't love my mother the instant they met her.
Instead, she died, and I shut down. It was like someone unplugged my heart the day I got the phone call at work. I was in the middle of ringing up a customer at the comic book store where I worked when the hospice worker called, and matter-of-factly said with notes of sympathy in their voice that my mother had died a half-hour ago. I hung up and finished bagging the customer's books; then I looked at my boss. She knew in my eyes what had happened, and her face was a theatre mask of tragedy and grief and pity. I simply said "I need to go" and I took my purse and walked out to my car. People offered to drive me, but I was fine. I was numb. My mother was alive last night but now she wasn't. It didn't sink in. I drove to the nursing home where we'd been forced to put her, and my grandmother and uncle were already there. My grandmother was sobbing. We walked to her patient room and I thought she would be in the morgue or somewhere waiting for the coroner; there wasn't even a sign on the door.
Do Not Disturb would've been nice, since we opened the door to pack up her personal things and there she was, lying in the bed without the curtain even drawn around her. She could've been asleep except she wasn't. Even then, I just felt hollowed-out like a jack-o-lantern. I couldn't go in there; my uncle had to remove my mom's rings and things because I couldn't set foot in the room with her body.
For a year after she died, I did nothing. I went to school and I worked at my job, making money and making perfect grades. I drove to Dallas every weekend to see my friends and sought solace in their arms. I didn't write; when I went to open a word processor, I would feel a sense of bland tranquility like when I took the Prozac. Nothing was there, nothing mattered. I had no words for the first time in my life. I started to get anxious about this--- if I couldn't write, who was I? What was I going to do? This quickly escalated into me having panic attacks when I tried to write, and so I stopped. For a year I didn't write. I took pictures because it was easier and it still gave me the artistic outlet I needed, but I wasn't particularly pushing myself to make good art. I just wanted to do
something before I stagnated and rotted away.
Moving to LA felt like plugging a live wire directly into my heart. There was adrenaline, there was the sense of urgency that came with being told "You have to go right now, you don't have time to think, this job offer expires in a few weeks". There was the chaos of packing up my life in a little over two weeks, in leaving my lifelong home, in dropping out of school two months before graduation with a perfect GPA. There was the support
and the doubt from my friends and family, most of whom thought I was probably making a mistake but who smiled and nodded and waved pom-poms for me anyway. I got here and had about two days to move into my apartment before I was thrown headfirst into work; I came to work in an amazing FX shop full of werewolves and monsters and aliens and Terminators, with a crazy boss who pulled me into his world. We worked in tandem, writing and editing the script and scribbling on Post-Its, chain-drinking Coke Zeros and making five-AM runs for breakfast burritos after endless sleepless nights, passing out in office chairs, listening to movie scores and watching
Prince of Darkness and forgetting what sunlight and fresh air felt and looked like. But it was
phenomenal for me. I was living my dream, I was working on a major horror film starring people I really admired, the assistant to not only a great director and FX master but a good friend. I was lucky as fuck and I had been rejuvenated, I was remembering how not only to walk but to run. We got on set and we kicked ass through chaos and adversity and lots of weirdness, and we made a movie.
I started to make a life for myself here. I began slowly to build myself a tribe out of the people I was meeting; I was finding other weirdos like myself, other outcasts and rebels and most importantly, artists. People who loved life and art and music and culture and adventure, people who made me laugh and cry, people who inspired me. I started going out more and more because being home in my apartment was such a sad, bleak alternative. This city is electric and full of incredible people living out insane, beautiful stories; I wanted to be one of them, not a voyeur anymore. I jumped off the deep end; I went out dancing until my feet were numb, I drank until I couldn't stop laughing, I was completely entranced by the city and its beauty. Every moment here was a triumph and I could get drunk on the sunshine and the palm trees and the Hollywood sign. I wanted to be a part of it more than anything.
And then the depression clouds began brewing.
The movie was over, things had slowed down a little, the insanity of work had become a memory like a phantom itch. My friends were becoming busier with new projects. I went home for a week and was desperately reminded of how much I loved my friends there, my life there. I walked through my old house and stared at the open walls and empty floors and felt pain echoing through my heart. I kissed my best friend and wondered, as I slept in his tattooed perfect arms and listened to him breathe, how the
fuck I was going to walk away from something so comfortable and wonderful.
Since I've been back, my panic attacks have been teetering in the peripheral of my vision. I can see the darkness coming but I don't know what to do except batten down the hatches and buy up a lot of canned goods because I know from experience that once it gets its hooks in me, I'm pretty much toast until I reach the eye again. I am full of this dull ache like the aftershock of a quake; I lay awake at night, unable to sleep, and yet during the day I'm so bogged down with my own despair and insecurities and feelings of inadequacy that I can't fathom the idea of getting out of bed. I just want to lay on my sheets, buried in the pillows, and listen to music that makes me feel something through a safety railing. I want to have Matt here because he knows how to listen and how to touch me and kiss me to make me forget how much I hate being me. Instead I just find myself crying myself to sleep in my apartment, canceling plans, eating junk food when I'm stressed, curling up in a ball and wishing the world would stop being so
mean sometimes. And then feeling guilt and remorse and stress over the fact that I am depressed when I'm, for all outward appearances, living this charmed life and experiencing things I dreamt about since I was a kid. The guilt only makes the depression worse, and by the end of things I am just unable to lift my head off the pillow. It feels like a noose around my neck getting tighter and tighter.
But I keep smiling, and pushing it down like a drunk girl swallowing back her puke. All of this sadness and heaviness and futility in me is growing, feeding on my brain, and to anyone who says "Just shake it off! Your life's not so bad" I say
fuck you because that isn't how mental illness works.
My depression has teeth and they're in me pretty firmly right now. And no matter how gently I manage to pry its jaws open, or how many fingers I may lose in the process, sometimes those teeth leave pretty gnarly scars.
I am terrified of making mistakes. I'm terrified of people being disappointed in me. I'm convinced that I am a fuck-up who has fooled people that I am capable and has my shit together. I am a mess and I am frightened when people put a lot of pressure on me and ask me to do things I've never done before, because I've never been without a support system and a spotter. I am so afraid of fucking things up that I will stay in my comfort zone for years because I'm afraid of wasting someone's time, of having them think I'm incompetent, of having them realize that I'm a fraud and a loser and stupid. My boyfriend goes onto a set and learns difficult FX shots on the fly sometimes simply because he
has to and if he doesn't, they won't get done. My coworkers blindly throw things into the ether with the hopes of hitting a target because they are fearless and courageous. My mom went at cancer with her teeth and claws bared, positive that she was going to beat it even as it sucked the life out of her in a few short months. She never stopped fighting and even though she was afraid, she almost never let anyone see it.
And me, I am sitting in my bedroom with the covers pulled up over my head, wishing I was brave. Wishing I had half the balls other people seem to think I have. Wishing that I was the person that I always thought I'd be.
Wishing that drowning was harder, because sometimes sinking just seems so fucking easy that it's seductive. I know the saying is
if it's easy it isn't worth fighting for but fuck, sometimes I get tired of fighting against the current and trying to convince those little voices in my head that I'm not a complete failure and fuckup.
I just want to know what it feels like to go "I got this" and actually mean it.
I want to stop being scared of everything, most importantly scared of myself.
