Well hello there. I don't know if this is sooner or later than you expected me to be back, but either way, it's good to be back here.
I'm sitting in the window of the Mainz Hauptbahnhof (main train station) Starbucks, drinking a decaf latte and trying not to make a face at the kid staring in the window at me. His dark, unblinking eyes are unnerving me, and I'm nervous enough already about writing this post. Shoo, German child, shoo.
I've contemplated writing this post many times; to be honest, it scares me quite a bit. I thought of writing it back in September, then October, then November, and then I went through a period where writing seemed impossible, and I decided it was best if I put it on the back burner. But, for the first time in a long time, I woke up this morning with the itch to write. What's more, I knew exactly what I would write. I've felt the beginnings of the itch for a little while, but I put it off, wanting to make sure it was sincere. It is. So here I am.
If I'm being completely sincere, I'm human like the rest of you, and I'm terrified of the backlash. I'm afraid of being treated differently, looked at strangely, getting whispers. I've always been the paranoid sort. (My nickname in high school was Nixon for a while.) But being afraid of being seen as vulnerable isn't going to get me anywhere in life, and at a time when we have more and more people speaking out about this sort of thing, it feels fitting to add my voice to the conversation. Nothing's going to get done if we don't speak up. And so, when I tell you that depression's a bitch, and it's what's been keeping me silent for months on end, what I'm doing is asking you not to look at me sideways. I'm asking you to take a cup of coffee, sit down with me, and listen. Feel free to ask questions, but do try to keep an open mind.
People have many different ways of describing depression; all of them are legitimate. In my own experience, depression is the meanest playground bully; he's the punk who takes your lunch money, then holds you in a head lock until you're gasping for breath and begging him to stop. You say anything he wants you to say so he'll let up--and he still doesn't let up. He'll sometimes let you think you're getting away, a brief respite, a moment of sunshine, and then he pulls you back into that headlock, even more relentless than before.
I've had this in my life before. If we're being more precise, I have a specific type known as adjustment disorder. Normally I'm not depressed, but particularly stressful periods of my life can send me into a tailspin of hopelessness and anxiety. And god knows I've had the stress. For a while, I chalked everything--the insomnia, the heaviness of each day, the sudden inability to focus on even a single page of a book--up to getting settled in Germany.
And then, one night in early November, I came back from a perfectly nice dinner with friends and felt desperate, like my time with them had just been a necessary distraction to save me from myself. I had a vision of sinking into a black hole, seeing only the sky above me, trying to claw the walls and realizing they were made of that slippery plastic material on playground slides. And I thought, oh, I'm depressed, aren't I. I called a therapist the next day.
I'm not telling you all this to evoke sympathy, and I'm certainly hoping I don't get the sideways look, although that's your choice. I'm telling you all this not to be a hypocrite. There's been more and more publicity on this lately, particularly when Robin Williams died this past August. In the wake of his death, a rash of articles popped up about depression, all saying basically the same thing: "We need to be more open about this." There was also a slew of statuses in every news feed I opened: "Friends, if you ever feel this way, feel free to talk to me."
And then we stopped. Silence begets ignorance, and if we want to fight that ignorance, we need to keep this conversation open. We don't talk in whispers about cancer or heart attacks. Why do we do it with mental illness? Let's not, please. I'm not one to harp on and on about illness in general, but when we do need to talk about it, let's not say that one is more legitimate than the other, more deserving of treatment and discussion.
One last thing for today, before I let you go. The biggest thing that gave me the courage to share this in such a public space wasn't my therapist or my itch to write or any celebrity death, it was my friends. At first, I was beyond embarrassed to talk to them about my illness, to let them know that I was still emotional about events that happened months ago. I'm a capable human being; shouldn't I be over these things by now?
I'm slowly learning not to be ashamed of my emotions, no matter what they may be. And when I did "come out," in a sense, to my friends, they were amazingly supportive. I know a lot of people say that, but it's really true in my case. There have been promises of help whenever I need it, code words indicating I need to talk about specific things, and three hour Skype sessions with lots of laughter. I'm so lucky to have such friends. I hit the friend jackpot, so to speak. You know who you are.
Let's keep this conversation open. Grab that cup of coffee, sit with me, and let's talk.
I'm sitting in the window of the Mainz Hauptbahnhof (main train station) Starbucks, drinking a decaf latte and trying not to make a face at the kid staring in the window at me. His dark, unblinking eyes are unnerving me, and I'm nervous enough already about writing this post. Shoo, German child, shoo.
I've contemplated writing this post many times; to be honest, it scares me quite a bit. I thought of writing it back in September, then October, then November, and then I went through a period where writing seemed impossible, and I decided it was best if I put it on the back burner. But, for the first time in a long time, I woke up this morning with the itch to write. What's more, I knew exactly what I would write. I've felt the beginnings of the itch for a little while, but I put it off, wanting to make sure it was sincere. It is. So here I am.
If I'm being completely sincere, I'm human like the rest of you, and I'm terrified of the backlash. I'm afraid of being treated differently, looked at strangely, getting whispers. I've always been the paranoid sort. (My nickname in high school was Nixon for a while.) But being afraid of being seen as vulnerable isn't going to get me anywhere in life, and at a time when we have more and more people speaking out about this sort of thing, it feels fitting to add my voice to the conversation. Nothing's going to get done if we don't speak up. And so, when I tell you that depression's a bitch, and it's what's been keeping me silent for months on end, what I'm doing is asking you not to look at me sideways. I'm asking you to take a cup of coffee, sit down with me, and listen. Feel free to ask questions, but do try to keep an open mind.
People have many different ways of describing depression; all of them are legitimate. In my own experience, depression is the meanest playground bully; he's the punk who takes your lunch money, then holds you in a head lock until you're gasping for breath and begging him to stop. You say anything he wants you to say so he'll let up--and he still doesn't let up. He'll sometimes let you think you're getting away, a brief respite, a moment of sunshine, and then he pulls you back into that headlock, even more relentless than before.
I've had this in my life before. If we're being more precise, I have a specific type known as adjustment disorder. Normally I'm not depressed, but particularly stressful periods of my life can send me into a tailspin of hopelessness and anxiety. And god knows I've had the stress. For a while, I chalked everything--the insomnia, the heaviness of each day, the sudden inability to focus on even a single page of a book--up to getting settled in Germany.
And then, one night in early November, I came back from a perfectly nice dinner with friends and felt desperate, like my time with them had just been a necessary distraction to save me from myself. I had a vision of sinking into a black hole, seeing only the sky above me, trying to claw the walls and realizing they were made of that slippery plastic material on playground slides. And I thought, oh, I'm depressed, aren't I. I called a therapist the next day.
I'm not telling you all this to evoke sympathy, and I'm certainly hoping I don't get the sideways look, although that's your choice. I'm telling you all this not to be a hypocrite. There's been more and more publicity on this lately, particularly when Robin Williams died this past August. In the wake of his death, a rash of articles popped up about depression, all saying basically the same thing: "We need to be more open about this." There was also a slew of statuses in every news feed I opened: "Friends, if you ever feel this way, feel free to talk to me."
And then we stopped. Silence begets ignorance, and if we want to fight that ignorance, we need to keep this conversation open. We don't talk in whispers about cancer or heart attacks. Why do we do it with mental illness? Let's not, please. I'm not one to harp on and on about illness in general, but when we do need to talk about it, let's not say that one is more legitimate than the other, more deserving of treatment and discussion.
One last thing for today, before I let you go. The biggest thing that gave me the courage to share this in such a public space wasn't my therapist or my itch to write or any celebrity death, it was my friends. At first, I was beyond embarrassed to talk to them about my illness, to let them know that I was still emotional about events that happened months ago. I'm a capable human being; shouldn't I be over these things by now?
I'm slowly learning not to be ashamed of my emotions, no matter what they may be. And when I did "come out," in a sense, to my friends, they were amazingly supportive. I know a lot of people say that, but it's really true in my case. There have been promises of help whenever I need it, code words indicating I need to talk about specific things, and three hour Skype sessions with lots of laughter. I'm so lucky to have such friends. I hit the friend jackpot, so to speak. You know who you are.
Let's keep this conversation open. Grab that cup of coffee, sit with me, and let's talk.
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