When I was sixteen years old, I had my first full-blown encounter with depression, a disease that has followed me from high school, to college, to my first job (still my only job); from dorm rooms to roommates to my first one-bedroom; from the West coast, to the East coast, and back again.
I remember crying so hard that I thought I'd blinded myself with tears on the floor of my childhood bedroom. I remember one of my college roommates dragging me to the campus health center as I blubbered and babbled. I remember breakdowns in a dizzying array of bathrooms - high school bathrooms, lecture hall bathrooms, grimy nightclub toilet stalls. I recall many impromptu outdoor walks at my office campus spent sobbing and staggering, incoherently wailing on my cell phone to my poor, beleaguered mother.
I remember going on meds and the elation of the cloud lifting for the first time. I remember thinking I was "better" and could go off them on my own, leading, of course, to a sudden drop back down the familiar black hole. I remember doing this two or three times until I finally realized that I needed the meds, that I would always need them, that I could very possibly die without them.
I remember five or six failed attempts at therapy with awful practitioners; women who thought that if I could just eat better and exercise more and meditate daily I would be fine. I remember thinking that if one more therapist told me to eat more fruit and meditate I actually would kill myself.
I remember wanting to kill myself, more times than I can count.
Most of all, I remember this week last year. In late January of 2013, I had what I now think of as "The Big Breakdown." We had some sort of awful week-long work meeting with "planning" and "strategy" and a million people milling around everywhere, asking, "How are you, it's been so long," and I lost it it. I got a migraine that turned into a flu that turned into a bleeding, aching hole in my chest out of which my depression screamed "DIE DIE DIE YOU ARE NOTHING." I made some sort of minor mistake at work and lost my shit. My boss at the time, bless her heart, had no idea what to do with me, but was compassionate when I realized I needed to get some help and didn't guilt trip me about what happened next.
I took two weeks of medical leave. My poor beleaguered mother flew out to stay with me, and she helped me get what I needed. She listened to me when I cried, and she helped me make and keep therapy and doctor appointments. She walked with me in Golden Gate park and watched TV with me and took me to IKEA to buy a side table for my living room, which was something I desperately needed, apparently. She washed my dishes.
I found, for the first time in over a decade, an amazing therapist. I had begun to think that they didn't exist, but they do, and he is one of them. I got a new diagnosis and new meds and they helped.
My mother went home, I went back to work, and it was hard. Really hard. A year later, it still is. But I have a therapist now, and my friends, and my family, and the knowledge that after thirteen years of this shit, there are good times in between the bad ones and that I have what I need in place to get through the bad ones. This past week was a bad one, this Anniversary of The Big Breakdown. But I survived it, and I can feel myself coming out of it. It will be ok, for now.
I turned twenty-nine earlier this month, which means it's been thirteen years with this disease. That's nearly half my life. I know that I will have this disease as long as I live. I know that it's a part of me, and that no matter how many times I beat myself up about not being "normal" that this is my normal - and that many others share this normal with me. And so I try to remember instead that I'm one of the lucky ones. I have help. I am lucky. I am so, so lucky.
I write this not to indulge in self-pity or self-aggrandizement, nor to celebrate my triumph over depression (especially not the latter, because there is no triumph over depression, as any sufferer knows). I guess that on this Anniversary of The Big Breakdown, and after thirteen years of my brand of normal, it's good to remember where I've been and what I have and to be grateful. And to take a breath before diving into whatever's next. Here's to the next thirteen years.
