Tue, 5 Jul 2022
A Bittersweet Irony
Today marks the first official day of my extended leave of absence. Over the past month and a half my mental health has taken a nosedive. In late May of this year, a depressive episode worse than I'd experienced within the past year or two telegraphed its arrival. I encountered a series of triggers and felt the shift: in a few days, the depressive fog would roll in, ensconcing me with clouded vision. The future would look bleak at best. Right on cue, a few days later, the wave struck the shore and depression poured in, rushing to fill the floodplains.
A week or two later, I experienced a second series of triggers from an entirely different angle—an angle I'm not used to at that—and a second depressive episode exploded onto the scene, joining forces with the first. No warning preceded this additional episode, which was of an intensity I have only twice in my life experienced. It was not simply arithmetical addition, nor did it simply double the impact of the existing depression; the two amplified each other, becoming a feedback loop of exponentially exaggerated intensity. And for the first time, I experienced unrelenting anxiety for weeks on end in tandem with the familiar mists of depression.
At the zenith of this combined episode's rising action, I was suicidal for three or four days. I threw away all of my Benadryl for fear I would use it in an attempt to escape. I haven't been on a rooftop by myself for a month and a half. I avoid certain bridges now. In a moment of lucidity, I called a crisis line because I knew if I had to call a crisis line for the first time in the midst of a moment of crisis, I would never pick up the fucking phone. I told friends and family about my headspace so folks could check in on me and I would have the external accountability of it being more socially acceptable to continue to exist than to eliminate my map for keeps. I seldom take sick time at work, but I had to take at least four sick days within the span of a week and a half because my anxiety was bordering panic levels of severe and I was unable to function as a person. I stopped listening to podcasts or paying attention to current events. I lost all sense of hope in even the idea of a future that I want any part of.
I was existentially exhausted to the point of the particular sort of contemplative processes that can only result in one outcome if not synthetically encumbered in some way. It's not so much that I wanted to die; it's more that I didn't want to exist. I still don't. I rarely ever have. Not consciously. And yet, I still exist, which means more of me than not wants to. I still exist, which means I must honor that part of me fighting so fucking hard to stay alive. So I set about removing opportunity, putting up obstacles—no matter how artificial—to impede the likelihood that I might attempt anything I know I don't truly want to do.
***
I do not want to exist. I've known this for a long time. I have admitted it not nearly as long, but I've known it since I was a child. And for just as long, I've managed that existential angst to such an apparently impressive degree that, unless I were to tell you, you would likely have no idea I was being slowly strangled by depression. I used the past tense there. That was unintentional. The truth is I am being slowly strangled by depression—as I write this, as you read this. It was not merely happening then, it's happening now, and it has been since I was at most seven, though I suspect this really began around four or five.
I've gone this long with that as my latent reality, and no one knew about it, not even me. But when I was about twenty-four, I learned. I was riding my bike home from work and a vivid thought, wrapped in morbid hope and relief, a thought that I could simply turn my handlebars just a little to the left and all of this might be over. The oncoming traffic was heavier than usual that day. If I timed it right, I might just escape this fucking prison.
And then I realized what I was thinking. And then I knew I needed help. And then I got therapy. And I improved. I was diagnosed with major recurring depressive disorder. As I discussed my existential experience with my first therapist, she told me that the emotional responses I was describing to her were the same sorts of things she hears from trauma survivors when they talk about episodes related to post-traumatic stress disorder. It was the first time anyone suggested that I was experiencing trauma, and through this (as well as subsequent) discussions, I had a label for my experience and developed tools for navigating these depressive episodes.
Depression continued to throw its rippling waves against the shores of my weary soul, but I had tsunami warning systems in place now. Depression couldn't sneak up on me, couldn't catch me unawares. Whenever I would experience a trigger, I could prepare for the surge and for years it didn't overwhelm me, nothing like it had managed in the past. I felt I had won something of a victory, and to be fair, I had. But I mistakenly attributed a victorious battle to the end of the war.
I got complacent. It happened like it always happens: in a moment of crisis, of severe duress, I say, "This is it! I have to do something. This is my wake up call." And then the moment passes, the crisis abates, and that sense of normalcy returns, tricking me into thinking, "Oh, I'm better now. I must have been overreacting." And the more normal I feel, the less urgent my predicament begins to seem. I gaslight myself into thinking that depression is for people with real problems, and tell myself I'll address my mental health "someday" (meaning, "when it seems convenient to do so”). I'm still waiting for "someday."
These most recent combined and compounded episodes were—are—different. Before, suicide was academic: a fanciful, wistful idea, a promise to oneself, a promise of relief that only braver souls than I had the wherewithal to keep, not anything I was ever likely to have the courage—read: desperation—to do myself. Even when I’ve experienced suicidal ideation in the past, like on my bike commuting home, as one example, I’ve never felt I was in immediate danger of legitimately going through with anything. Then the past month and a half happened. Academics met the real world in a frightening collision of two mutually exclusive realities: the reality I want to live in, and the one I want to leave. In this collision, the latter overpowered the former to an extent I had never before understood was possible for me.
It's possible—and inevitable if unchecked. This is also not news, but it is new that I'm acknowledging it.
***
I've known for some years now that I will not live to see forty. I have a doomsday clock, but mine counts down not to nuclear annihilation, but rather to my own breaking point—the point at which the internal forces keeping me alive will be too fatigued to carry on, and so will surrender, waving that white flag with weak arms, as in need of oblivious rest as my mind is.
In the wake of the past month and some change, the clock is less than a minute from midnight. Upon recognizing this, I took a good look at that minute hand, threatening to fulfill a promise made by a monkey’s paw with malicious fingers crossed. I realized that this ephemeral "someday" will never come. The urgency will dissipate just like it always does. Life as usual will resume. I'll carry on just as I always have and when the next episode comes (and it will come), I'll be that much more likely to do something I'd know I don't actually want to do. If I don't take care of this now, I might not even see thirty, forget about anything beyond that.
So I began speaking with HR at work. They walked me through the necessary steps to take in service of embarking upon a twelve-week medical leave of absence, which (as I stated) begins today.
This is ironic. And it’s a bittersweet irony at that. Exactly one year ago to the day, I was promoted to a Lead at work and experienced the most hope for the future I had experienced for years. As I learned the role, I realized that so much of it really spoke to my values and I enjoyed it in a way I didn’t know it was possible to enjoy work. I shit you not, at the beginning of 2022, I truly felt like this might be my year. Maybe this is the year when I finally feel like a human person. Maybe this year I will finally learn why it is that other people are grateful to continue waking up each day. Maybe this will be the year of hope. Six months later, and here we are. So it goes.
The purpose of this leave of absence is to focus on my brain, to seek long-term solutions in whatever form that takes, which is something I should have done over a decade ago. Overdue is better than never done, I suppose. So I intend to spend the next several weeks diving into parts of myself I have historically avoided.
***
I'm extremely self-aware. I spend most of my alone time introspecting in some capacity, whether intentionally, consciously, or neither of those things. I am very well acquainted to many of the disparate parts of myself, those aspects of my personality and consciousness that compose the atomic makeup of my personhood. While I don't always particularly enjoy the company of all of these contrasting parts equally, I have generally found (at a minimum) ways of peaceably coexisting with each.
There is one (known) glaring exception to this self-knowledge for me. When I turn my gaze inward and look at the various and sundry parts of myself milling about their various and sundry roles, there's also a shadow. This shadow glowers just out of view, but its presence is always felt, emanating like a pulse, reminding my internal world that we are living in the orbit of a black hole. I've known this shadow exists for at least fifteen years, but I've ignored it for most of that time. And even when I started paying attention, I kept the shadow at a distance. I set up perimeters and boundaries, walls and warning signals, to alert me when there was activity coming from the shadow. Because while I don't know exactly what this shadow is, or where exactly it came from, or what exactly is inside, I do know that all of my depressive episodes are born there. Every single one. All of them come to me from that place, from the shadow. And while I've known this to be the case, for so long I believed I had the shadow contained. I truly thought I'd set up enough safeguards. In my naiveté, I imagined that I was in control and that the worst was over.
I have never been so goddamn wrong. The shadow vociferously pushed back against my simplistic notions of control, as well as who had it. The light illuminating my inner world, revealing all those various, unique aspects of myself, went out almost entirely. All I could see, all I could experience, was the shadow. And when the light returned, each part of myself I had once known well was just as frightened and traumatized as I was. As I am.
I was a different person a month and a half ago. Being so completely felled by depression left a significant scar, an indelible memory of a wound that won’t go away. These recent depressive episodes have become one of those events, one of those singular moments that serves as a fulcrum to which you can point and contrast the flow of time as a binary: those things which happened prior to, and that which happened after. I died and was reborn with a second chance and a gift: the knowledge there won't be a third.
The real insidious kicker here is I'm pretty sure all of the above seems vulnerable to many, brave to some, and familiar to a few (and if you're one of the latter, I see you and I am so sorry—you don’t deserve this). But while all of the above is truthful and genuine to the best of my ability, it is not vulnerable, it is not brave, and I wish it weren't familiar.
***
I’ve lived most of my life without anyone suspecting I was clinically depressed (including myself), and even now, many people would never know I'm depressed were it not for the fact that I tell them. And do you know why I tell them? Why I talk about any of this? There are two reasons. The first I'm proud of, the second I'm not.
First, I've always experienced the world differently than most people I know (or have heard of for that matter). I've always been melancholic and prone to dismal emotional states that I recognize can seem—for lack of a better word—sad. But I find melancholy to be beautiful as long as one maintains a healthy dose of perspective, balance, and realism. I don't really care to be happy, per se. I often get happy and sad backwards. In truth, I just want to feel connected, like I'm a part of the human drama. I seldom feel connected, though. I usually feel like an alien, like an observer to the human experience and not an active participant. To Alan Watts’ posthumous chagrin, I feel as a stranger in the world, as something here on probation, as something that has arrived here by fluke.
I've felt this way for a very long time and it is difficult to describe how exhausting it is. The uninitiated so rarely offer any meaningful encouragement to me (though I do recognize and appreciate genuine attempts at such). So when I hear someone else articulating in precise detail the psychological experiences and emotional realities I know all too well, I feel connected, seen, loved—even if for the briefest of moments. When someone truly sees me and understands, when I can tell they’ve been here before and emerged alive, and further that they’re somehow grateful to be alive, I recognize the face of hope and feel that maybe I, too, can find what they found.
To say these experiences are like a welcoming oasis for a lonely desert nomad on the verge of losing all hope of ever tasting water again would be apt, if cliché, reductive, and somewhat understated.
So now, whenever I get the chance, I talk about my experience with depression: how I've coped with it throughout my life, what has and hasn't worked well for me. I want others to know that, in spite of how it feels, others have been there, others truly understand and empathize, others are trying their best just to show up and engage with life, and recognize that you’re doing your best too, and that it's enough. I take every chance I can to let folks know that it's okay to not be okay, and that help is there for the asking—you just need to know where to look, and who to ask (which can be its own challenge for many people, I understand).
I want to be the voice of reassurance I have always craved, always needed—the reminder that chaos truly is a beautiful thing. Murphy's Law is not "anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Murphy's Law is the suggestion that, if given enough time, anything that can happen will happen, which of course means that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, but it also means that anything that can go right will go right; you just have to give all eventualities enough time.
This is why I stay alive. If I can give myself one more day on this planet, anything could happen. And if I give myself a day after that, anything could happen again. The binary of good and bad is seldom a clean split. Trust the chaos, something wonderful might be just around the temporal corner.
Second, while all of the above is true, it's also incomplete. While others might need to find a state of naked vulnerability to discuss such intimate internal experiences as depression and suicidal ideation, I do not. I use vulnerability as a smoke screen, as a shield, a diversion, something that keeps myself and others from getting curious about what exactly lurks within the shadow I mentioned before. The right questions followed by honest answers are liable to lead directly to revelations I don't want to know, and that I certainly don't want others to know. I use insecurity to hide insecurity. I use openness to cultivate invulnerability.
I've spent the better part of the twenty-nine years of my life constructing a wall around myself built of eggshells, which are preventative of intrusion only because the natural conclusion one must draw upon seeing such a fragile barrier is that whatever the poor bastard is hiding behind it must not be all that valuable—if it were he would have selected sturdier raw materials. When I'm in conversation and things skirt a little too close to the shadow, I leverage my comfort with vulnerability to move us away from accidentally treading into the darkness I fear so much. I do this both intentionally and unintentionally. It is difficult to overstate how fucking frustrating is the latter.
***
So here I am. On a medical leave of absence with the goal of finding healing, if that's possible. I don't know if it is. I've heard that it is. And if I learn this to be the case, I'll be sure to tell you on the other side of that healing. But although I don't know whether or not reparation is truly possible for a mind as weary as mine, and though I don't know whether I'll be able to repair my brain even if it is possible, I do know one thing: to save my life, I am going to have to peel back the gloaming curtain with reluctant, tremulous fingers, and look into the shadow.