Category Archives: depression

Jul19

This is 40: Or How I Spent My (Incredibly Long) Summer Vacation

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On July 31, 2009—29 days before my 40th birthday—I walked away from my job. Period. No new job lined up, no clear idea of what to do next and only the flimsiest of plans for supporting myself. Just a need to step off the ledge—not to go “splat,” but as a leap of faith. I could see it in my mind’s eye—the wind in my hair, arms wide open. Freedom.

I had been depressed for 5 years. 5.

And I had had it.


“This is 40,” Bono would announce every morning in the months leading up to my birthday (I had chosen to wake up to the live version of the song “40” on my iPod).

Yes. This IS 40. And what was 40 going to be? What was the rest of my life going to be? A series of crippling bouts of the depression that had gutted my ability to write, left me unable to enjoy a good glass of wine or much of anything else and made me so apathetic that I settled for a view from 15 feet away instead of PUSHING MY WAY TO THE FRONT OF THE CATWALK AT THE U2 show?

Eff that.

40 would be remission. The rest of my life would, hopefully, be mostly whatever I wanted it to be. There would be ups and downs, and probably a few minor bouts of depression (it’s a lifelong illness), but I refused to be paralyzed anymore. I wasn’t going to stay in a job that was supposed to help me recover, but had ground me down instead. Screw the Puritan work ethic.

So I walked away. It was either that or lose my shit and be locked up for murder OR end up in the hospital. Even money on whether it would be the cardiac or the psych ward.

I gave myself the month of August “off”–a birthday present to myself and the first step in my recovery plan. I figured by September, I’d be posting to my new health blog and working towards some perfect new job opportunity. Which would come along in just a few months. And I’d be all better!

Ha! said my brain. I have my OWN time line. My body agreed.

It was kind of like being in psychological traction.

This is an analogy that has only recently occurred to me. My descriptive powers had left the building. So I had a hard time explaining to people why sending one email could wipe me out for the rest of the day. Or how I could really only leave the house to get the necessities: drugs (prescription!), books and food. It wasn’t agoraphobia or laziness. I just had no energy. At all. Really. People were sympathetic and nobody close to me really pushed, but they were puzzled and concerned. And my brain was so scrambled that I once found myself trying to explain it to my dad this way:

“Imagine that you have a broken leg and a sprained wrist, with your arm in a sling on one side of your body…no wait, wait, I mean that your arm is on the OPPOSITE side of your body, like your crutch arm right? So you can’t really use a crutch because of the sling and stuff and I guess you could hop on your good leg, but then you couldn’t balance….Anyway, it’s technically possible to move, but not really?”

I think the best analogy might be the sense of profound fatigue that chemotherapy patients often describe. I wouldn’t presume to know what it’s like to go through chemo, but what I’ve heard about the energy drain resonates. Actually, the whole idea of depression as a cancer of the soul resonates. But that’s a topic for another time…

However you describe it, it often took all my strength to get out for an integral part of my treatment: therapy and contact with friends.

The essential power of cupcakes, really bubbly bubble baths, re-watching all of the past seasons of “Lost,” and sitting out in the sun with Houdini (indeed any time with Houdini) also cannot be discounted.

All of it inextricably intertwined with time. Time to rest, to heal. A clock I could not set.

So here I am, almost one year later. This is the first time I have found it in me to sit down and really write. Recovery is ongoing. A return to the work world (temping) is imminent. But I think I may yet have a few more thoughts about the year that was “40.” A short series of posts, perhaps. So stay tuned.

40 has been nothing like what I pictured at 20, 30 or even 35. But I think it was exactly what I needed.

Jan5

Sometimes I miss my office

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Who am I kidding? I ALWAYS miss my office.

Late last April, I left a reporting job I’d been at for almost 3 years. It was my first—and most likely only—job with an office.

And it was great. Who wouldn’t happily abandon cubicle-land for their own office? I had a window. With a view of….the side of Union Station!! Woo hoo! And if I squished the left side of my face up to the window and craned my neck, I could look up First Street and see the Capitol dome. Or, closer by, the every-other-week convergence of emergency vehicles for yet another unattended package in the train station. And who could forget the summer of striking, chanting, workers and their giant inflatable rat?

Bnd it wasn’t just the view. I could hang some nice pictures, turn my music up pretty loud (actually I sometimes used to do this in cubicles too), put my feet up on my desk, and shop online without looking over my shoulder. In short, I had a DOOR. Pretty damn handy. Because even in at a company with a “nap room” and all sorts of wellness programs, lying down on the floor to meditate (and no that’s not a euphemism for sleep) in a cubicle is pretty awkward.

The office was also a place to let out the crazy. And that was part of the problem, really. Not so much the office itself, but my state of mind.

When I came to that job I was fleeing a really bad place. A really really bad place. For eight months, my boss made it her mission in life to tell me all the ways in which I sucked. So, I was feeling kinda…shaky. My former editor didn’t like to edit. So I obsessed over my choice of words. The thing is, when you’re so afraid of the wrong words, eventually the right ones don’t come either. My writing became, to put it not-so-delicately, constipated. And at my new job I started experiencing this really weird form of post-bullying-PTSD. As I nervously began to learn the ropes, I half expected someone to burst through my brand new office door and point their finger, “j’accuse-style,” shouting, “IMPOSTER! You are obviously not a reporter! Or a writer! Go now—and hang your head in shame!”

They didn’t, obviously. But you get the idea.

I started having trouble with deadlines. I’d always been a procrastinator, but I’d also made my deadlines. And my copy was good. But suddenly it became a struggle.

Ah, Depression, my old friend. Come in. Shut the (office) door behind you.

But I had a good boss. And I was working my way through my issues.

Then we got a new boss. And everything started to slide again.

Our new boss was…mercurial, is the best way to put it, I guess. Suddenly everything had to change, RIGHT NOW. And then it had to change AGAIN, right now. Deadlines? Deadlines were random, moving targets.

My office had now become my Fortress of Freakitude. As in my place to go to freak out, rant, rave and just generally break down. Whispered bitch-sessions with co-workers. Frantic calls to my therapist. Breaking out the Valium. It was ON, bitches.

I would (yet again) kick depression’s ass. I would meet my deadlines. But it wasn’t enough. Not for this boss.

And so I hid again, trying not to be accused of, among other things, talking too much. Which led to ridiculous email exchanges like this one, with my friend and co-worker, Amy.

ME: “Wanna go over to McDonald’s to see if they have Shamrock shakes?!”

AMY: “OMG! I’ve been thinking about that exact thing all day.”

ME: “OK. But I can’t risk being seen on your end of the hall. And you probably shouldn’t be seen down here….”

AMY: “Meet by the elevators again?”

ME: “See you in 2 minutes.”

Skulking about for a Shamrock shake? Is this really what it had come to?

I was all but recovered. In fact, the only barrier to my mental health was my job. In a continuation of the (somewhat disturbing) trend of music from Grey’s Anatomy as soundtrack of my life, I couldn’t get, “This is your life. Are you who you want to be?” out of my mind.

So in the end, the office had to go. My view, my door, my work (which I really loved), my always interesting interviews—none of it was enough.

I’m back in a cubicle. I work in a suburban office park, so the view, if I had one, would be less than thrilling. No door, virtually no privacy.

No breakdowns.

And the right words? I think they’re back….

May15

All we can do is keep breathing

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I wrote this a while ago, intending to post it to some anonymous depression-focused blog I created, but it’s part of who I am (sometimes) and I think it really belongs on the Chronicles. I don’t feel the need to be anonymous anymore.

I like “Grey’s Anatomy.” I think at its best, the show can be genuinely moving. It’s no “Buffy”–pondering the nature of good and evil and what it means to have a soul. But definitely glimpses of the simultaneous fragility and resilience of the human heart.

I also really like its music. I’ll leave it to others to analyze what that says about my hipness or lack thereof, but I enjoy what I find. And sometimes I find pieces that resonate. Like the song I currently can’t get out of my head: “Keep Breathing” by Ingrid Michaelson:

I want to change the world. Instead, I sleep.

Wow, did that catch my attention the first time I heard it. Not that my aspirations were ever quite that lofty, but there are things I thought I would do and I haven’t. Projects I want to do, but don’t. Specifically, this current relapse has been all about apathy. A lack of desire and energy to do anything but keep body and soul (and my dog) together. Like the song goes on to say:

All that I know is I’m breathing.

Pretty grim, right? And it’s definitely felt like that sometimes. Full on episodes of that scary nothingness that is woven into the fabric of depression–what I like to call “the abyss.” But I also find another meaning in the song–a subtle shift in the lyrics:

All I can do is keep breathing

Like, as long as I’m breathing, anything is possible.

Breath, in various contexts, is kind of a personal touchstone. Like another song I picked up from Grey’s: “Breathe (2 AM).” The tension–musically and lyrically–continuously intensifies, as life throws itself at the narrator, building into a crescendo. The movement and urgency are reminiscent of developing panic attack. Pulse racing, brain sprinting as you try to just hold it together. And then you remember:

Breathe, just breathe.

Taking deep, measured breaths has been a major coping mechanism for me for so long, and while sometimes, during really sustained bouts of panic, only a little valium will do, I like the reminder that sometimes it’s possible to just pause and slow it down a few beats.

Or, as the great philosopher and poet Paul Hewson (aka Bono) would say:

And if the night runs over
And if the day won’t last
And if your way should falter
along the stony pass
it’s just a moment
this time will pass.