Her story and mine are, in so many ways completely opposite. I've only been truly suicidal once (twice if you count that time the Amoxicillin made me psychotic), and even that in hindsight was a weak attempt, one I openly mock. I've never been hospitalized. I've never completely shut down. The list of courses I've failed because of my brain dysfunction is quite short. But that itself is a pernicious source for my mind. I'm not depressed enough.
In elementary school I was weird. Not like the kid who eats bugs weird, but emotionally and socially bizarre. I had severe fight or flight reactions to what may have seemed like very benign situations. When I was in the second grade, the PE teacher didn't like me and for some crazy reason that is no longer stored in my memory files came back with our class with the specific intention of making a big fuss about some wretched thing or another I had done. I panicked. I stayed at the back of the line as we walked back to class and hid behind the library book drop box in the hall. I stayed there for at least an hour while they scoured the school, called my mother, and everyone, naturally, freaked the fuck out. I finally came out when my mother arrived. After my father died, the frequency of these kind of reactions increased. When I wasn't feeling well, I didn't want to be around people. Now, when a child chooses to seclude herself, people respond exactly the wrong way. They give chase. It's stupid. Don't do it. Just give a little space and everything will be okay.
In middle school, I was volatile. This lasted into high school a little. My brother and I fought, brutally. I am thankful that we didn't kill each other. I'm also thankful that I had that outlet and the volatility only rarely manifested outside the house. But, the escapism continued as needed. Fortunately, I had better options in high school, when I could escape directly to the Deans' office. I got in trouble less then. Overall, I was a troll in high school. I was completely isolated, whether by my own actions or those of my fellow students is really immaterial. I was beyond angry with the world. I couldn't see past my own furrowed brow. Again, in hindsight, I have discovered that the tricyclic antidepressants I was on may have played a role in this, increasing my level of agitation. Of course, who knows what I might have been without them. No need entertaining that fresh hell.
On that note of suicide, I have thought about it a lot. I don't really have any history that qualifies as ideation, at least not as far as I conceive it in my overthinking head. Ideation requires more than consideration, more than grimacing thoughts, more than what ifs. In my mind, it requires a plan. Maybe I'm just really that bad at planning, but the one time I was suicidal, I just took the nearest thing, and not very much of it. I clearly didn't mean it. There was no planning, no note, no cry for help, no real complaints... just my ordinary trollish mood and a nearby bottle of pills. I only took twice the normal dosage. Again, weak sauce. I can't even commit to that. No one knew about it for years. I think I told my mother last year. I don't even remember exactly when it happened.
College was something like an asylum for me. It was in some ways a replay of the isolation of high school. In other ways, it was exactly what high school should have been if I hadn't been quite so isolated. Still weird and awkward, my social station hadn't changed, but I wasn't a complete pariah and being forced into tight quarters bred a familial concern for others in most of the residents.
The first year was rocky. I was hospitalized for a (physical) illness in the fall. The spring, for reasons unbeknownst to me, saw me grow horrifically fragile. My friends were being weird (as it turns out, one friend had an incurable weirdness which later severed our friendship) and my own social and emotional turmoil was compounded by this bizzaro emotional blackmail I found myself mixed up in. I think, had I not been in a communal living environment, things would have gone much worse that semester. As it was, I only spent about a month calling myself by someone else's name because I was too stressed and broken to remember my own. I melded with my friends that year. The line between myself and them never quite rematerialized. Fortunately, at least one of them forgave me that delicate insanity and has remained a vital piece of my existence, both an immutable fixture in my future and an unbreakable tie to the person I once was.
It is odd to look back on my life so far and see that, as horrible as the last segment of my life seems, I always note that the beginning of the next chapter feels so golden and shining and youthful and promising in comparison to its end. Perhaps it's that anxious freshness of new adventures, but even this dark spring is a fond memory compared to the jumble of the next two years.
I spent my Sophomore year back home. I finished my AA. I took lots of exciting classes. I had lots of fun with some rediscovered high school friends. I discovered photography and the ability to socialize without socializing--to communicate with people by pointing a metal and glass box at them. People like feeling important and they don't much like talking to me. Cameras are the perfect tool for such encounters. (My camera was stolen last year and I am still inconsolable.) Once again, though, I was the troll I had been in high school. More sociable, yes, but home was a nightmare and I did everything in my power to avoid it. If you think one depressive is hard to deal with, try stuffing four into a house that, despite its size, could never house that much gloom. At least I came by this honestly. I am not aware of any member of my extended family that doesn't have depression or anxiety issues of some form or another, even if they're just a little too contemplative.
I left home again the spring of my Junior year. It was like crawling out of a cave... and right into a new one. I got into an unfortunate mixed bag of a relationship with someone who wasn't healthy, at least not for me. The next fall after being abruptly removed from it, I really came into my own. I was independent. I glowed. I was adventurous. I was happy. I got into and out of trouble of all sorts and it was fantastic. In truth, I was less gleeful than I remember, but overall it was a great year. I had some plans for the future and freedom and I'd even shed the last vestiges of pretending that I owed anyone an apology for being and doing what I wanted.
The years since then have been... difficult and complicated. Relationships do that. Graduate school was challenging. The coursework was nowhere near as difficult as the politics and the doubt and the self-sabotage became. I did well enough and I finished. But, it took longer than it should have and I faced wall after wall and by the time I finished I was utterly defeated. The roller coaster of personal life and illness and family losses in the mean time amplified the trial. as it happens, my transition from graduate school to not graduate school was thus blurred and there was no fresh new adventure, just old, sopping doom.
Since then, I have been in a holding pattern. I started to get out of it last summer when I was irresponsibly happy and in the fall when I started skating. I had everything. New people, exertion, responsibility, expectations, a much needed release from all the personal bullshit. And then I broke my ankle and sank right back in. Even though I've escaped occasionally, I'm still trapped back inside my head. And yet, I'm still happier this spring than I've been for years. I have a plan, even if it doesn't work out. There's a future that I can build, I just have to do it. I just have to pick a direction and run. And, the magical part is that it isn't escaping. It isn't avoidance. It's just a new direction.
I commented to a friend that it shocked me last week to have to explain to one of the ladies that I suffered from chronic depression. That there's this whole group of people who know me and seem to love me and have no idea that I'm anything but chipper is completely foreign. Even though I've always been distractible and happy enough considering, it always seemed that everyone knew I wasn't right. Maybe they noticed when I disappeared after my injury. No one really said anything. But I've never had to pretend... it just never came up.
But, still, I'm not depressed enough. Even now, I'm a shitty enough day away from a month of wanting to sleep till 3 and avoiding everything that isn't necessary. Sure, some things (even very important things!) fall by the wayside when I get sucked into a funk, but it's so rarely enough to disrupt functioning. I'm not depressed enough to quit my job. I'm not depressed enough to eat way too much or way too little. I'm not depressed enough to actually stop going through the motions. Even at my most depressed, I still go to work or class or whatever. I still shop and eat and drive and clean (okay I never clean). I persist. I perseverate. Not because these motions provide comfort, normalcy, but because they must be done. I don't have an out. I cannot quit. It just isn't in me. It's not some grandiose force of will or any such admirable creature. I'm just too dumb to stop. In some ways, this persistence is what keeps me connected. In some ways it worsens the weight of the gloom. For all the not stopping, though, I am never, even at my best, able to perform to my potential. The crushing reality of my depression is that I am forever consigned to mediocrity because my beautiful poosibility is destroyed by The Grim that strangles everything but subsistence.
Maybe I've never really hit the bottom. Maybe I will yet. I've never been institutionalized, but I've arguably spent my whole life as though I were. The problem with mental illness is that you can't escape. You can't take a vacation from yourself. Those who try often don't survive. On the sixth page of that article
But in truth there was more uncharted time than not, especially for the depressives — great swaths of white space that wrapped themselves around the day, creating an undertow of lassitude.
(Oh to be able to write that well!) That's life for me. You don't have to be locked in a controlled facility to be surrounded by interminable hours free for the most painful memories and sharpest self-criticisms to be regurgitated and ruminated on again and again and again and again. Even when I'm busy, busy, busy, I still have time and brain space for the same abuse I've inflicted upon myself for years.
I don't know if I learned it from my mother, but I knew early on that I wasn't to blame for feeling this way. Maybe I was just lucky enough to be surrounded by people just as ill as I was who I suppose didn't know it wasn't normal. The idea of possibly being at fault for this affliction never was part of the equation. I can never express my gratitude for whatever nameless fortune protected me from that. I've always known that this feeling wasn't really me, but something that happened to me. As an adult, I am secure in the truth that this is an illness, a disease that I am not a party to. I am a person, an interesting and meaningful person, despite and because of this disease, no less than if it had been diabetes or cancer or MS or some other persistent, nagging threat to my existence. I guess that is why I'm still a fairly happy person. Good grief is that a difficult concept. Hi, I'm chronically depressed but I'm otherwise pretty happy and thrilled to be alive. Maybe it is The Grim that makes life so magical. Maybe it's how horrible things can be inside my head that makes every single tiniest thing outside of it beautiful and shining and wondrous. Maybe it is the depression that makes everything else such a curiosity and an adventure. Life is a dance, and one I've always been painfully aware will end too soon. I've never really comprehended the idea that there would be more after. It's a good thing I gave up trying. It is profoundly healthier to allow myself to be consumed in this life than risk the idea that there's something better if I just give in to the beast and slip away.
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