Sophomore year of high school is really the first time I can acutely remember feeling something simply wasn’t right. It was summertime and my family was driving through the Swiss countryside in a large rented van (not quite Partridge family-style, but you get the idea).
It was beautiful, and I had no reason to be upset. No schoolwork, no impending deadlines, no typical life stresses. And, yet, I was sitting by myself in the farthest back seat, on the brink of tears.
It didn’t make any sense. All the ingredients necessary for perfect contentment, as our world might define it, were present.
But I remember thinking I wanted to die, to merely stop existing.
Not in an active kind-of-way, but more so along the lines of if someone were to offer me a pill that would cause some kind of eternal, thoughtless sleep, I probably would have taken it in that moment.
Because here’s the thing about depression: it doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care where you are or what you’re doing or who you are. It just shows up, unannounced.
And it makes itself at home indefinitely.
Fast forward to my senior year. It had gotten to the point where my parents and relatives noticed a change. I had very little desire to see anybody or do much of anything beyond sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the wall.
Fortunately, I have been extremely blessed by parents who are willing to dive into the messiest aspects of life. They helped me find a counselor and start on medication.
In many ways, life regained a fair bit of color after this. Medication definitely helped, and I still take it. Perhaps one day my body will be OK without it, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. Some days depression quiets to a subtle whisper in the back of my mind, but, other days, it is ruthlessly loud.
For one of my poetry classes last semester, I wrote a snippet about my relationship with depression (especially as I've experienced it to be on those ruthlessly loud days) and I thought I’d share it.
My body seeps between
day and night
insidious molasses
settling over conversations,
laughter, dreaming.
Sometimes I hold
a firm pillow
against my body
to stave off
the lonely
and the grass is green
except when you remember
someone one day slipped
a lens over your eyes
and now I see
in black and white.
Unsure if my heart
still beats,
I don’t let the stillness
stay long enough to hear
its tender pulse.
Morning tries to quiet
the noise my knees melt
into my chest,
my trembling lips
whisper fuck and
I drop from my bed
to the ground –
the day is an insipid
drink I don’t know
how to swallow.
