From Michele: Did you ever look at someone who you passed on the street and wonder what their story would be? If so, here’s the latest story of a girl who you may know. Despite her smile now, her past was very much different. And that’s just the thing, sometimes you need to get through the “bad” parts to get onto the good. It takes time and patience finding who you are and what makes you happiest.
**Trigger Warning: The aim of this site is to tell our experiences with honesty. Therefore, some blog posts may trigger an adverse reaction. If a post is beginning to upset you, I advise that you please stop reading it immediately and talk to your support team.**
Wednesday, May 21st, 2014.
The day I was diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety. I sat in the walk-in clinic waiting room, my eyes darting between my phone screen as I waited for each encouraging text from my best friend to come through, and to the floor at my shoes. I wouldn’t – couldn’t – make eye contact with anyone else. When the receptionist finally called my name and moved me into one of the little consultation rooms, I thought I was going to throw up. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that I was actually there.
My story didn’t begin on that warm May afternoon, though. I suppose the most accurate moment where I can say “it began” was on the day of my eighth-grade graduation, when I truly felt my life spiralling out of control. Looking back, this isn’t to say that I was very surprised that the previous years led to thirteen-year-old me sticking her fingers down her throat. That this red-eyed and panic-sticken teenager was desperate to feel some semblance of control over her life, and that seemed the only way to achieve it. That a year later, she would feel that her last frantic clutch at control was to try to end it altogether…
No, I truly cannot say that I am very surprised. Looking back, understanding how one thing segued to the next, how each stressor made the last seem all the more unbearable – it just makes sense. My undoubtable predisposition to depression and anxiety leapt into action by an outsider I could not cut ties with. Year after year, as I felt the control of my life slip through my fingers, the porcelain bowl of my toilet became my release. Each time I emptied my stomach out, I felt as if I had been purified. For an hour or two, nursing my secret like a newborn baby, I felt relief in its purest form. I felt freedom.
The rest of high school was a blur, with several distinct moments standing out for me; good ones, thankfully. I made friends, gained some popularity even, and feigned an ability to coast through those four years under the guise of honour roll grades and a contrived smile. In truth, I felt myself being violently yanked through life with my only solace being music. Concert after concert, I felt my deep desire to die dissipate each time I listened to my favourite artists perform live. Each time I felt the bass rolling through my body like a wave, felt my heart beating in time with the roaring beat of the drums. I got lost in those moments, a temporary high lifting me above myself to a place where I was safe from that sad girl and the thoughts that anchored her to her depression.
It wasn’t until the initiator of my mental illness left the picture that I realized I had taken the reins to become the ringleader. I grasped the whip in my own hand, conducting the circus that was now my life. I was a lion unable to leap through the ring of fire without charring my skin, an acrobat with broken limbs, a trapeze artist without balance. Running seemed like the only logical option.
For my first year of university, I moved three hours away to a rainy town where I only knew one person. I dreamed of a life where I would make an infinite number of new friends, entertaining them in my little residence house alongside my idealized roommates. It took me all of twenty-four hours for that dream to slip through my fingers; I felt the panic of sheer aloneness begin to suffocate me and spent my first night curled up on the gym mat that was the mattress of my tiny single bed my shoebox-sized bedroom. This was not what I had envisioned. This was not what I wanted with my life.
By the end of frosh week, before my classes had officially begun, I knew I would have to leave. I doubted even my ability to get through a single semester, petrified by the idea of spending life outside the twelve hours per week of school alone with my thoughts. I began to eat excessively, cooking in the middle of the night to avoid two of my three roommates, which I discovered were aggressive alcoholics who threw parties in our house until 3.00am and locked up my belongings when I asked them to stop. I felt my sanity being grated down with each passing hour, so I decided to keep a journal. I would sometimes write in three or four times a day, beginning each entry with “X DAYS UNTIL I GO HOME”.
With a stroke of luck and a bit of mental clarity, I realized that dropping out of school completely would not benefit me in any way. I could however, transfer to a university closer to home. And so I did.
My first semester at my new school was a dream. With such a stark contrast from the life I was living a semester prior, my new situation felt like an incredibly different existence altogether. I had good grades, I was happy, and I was finally back home. Thinking that all my major life mishaps were now in the past, I would have never guessed that the following winter I would once again feel my emotions begin spiralling out of control.
But they did.
I had moved from experiencing crippling depression year-round to it manifesting itself in the form of Seasonal Affect Disorder (with the ironic acronym ‘S.A.D.’). Though it was a relief from an unwavering experience of nothingness, it came on so suddenly that it often left me breathless. Literally. Severe panic attacks became the norm, and I often found myself pressed against the wall of a subway platform on my way to class, eyes closed as I tried to come down from such high levels of sheer terror while train after train passed me by. I learned to roll with it, unsurprised by the multiple attacks I had on a daily basis; I would move off to the side, close my eyes, and breathe through it. Sometimes it passed within a few moments, sometimes it took a half hour. Experience had taught me to avoid any high expectations for each situation.
This dwindling ability to cling to hope led me right back to that notion of, “What’s the point anymore?” Finally, at a Victoria Day party with my hometown friends, feeling miserable and feeling defeated, somewhere between that moment and dawn I found myself praying to God with my whole heart to just let me die, please. But she doesn’t let me, my best friend. In a gin-induced lull, I tell her everything. She makes me promise to go see a doctor. I don’t want to, but somehow I agree.
Wednesday, May 21st, 2014.
The day I was diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety. Stories, I find, often come full circle. It’s a familiar habit that I can usually rely on. They’re pretty safe bets to make.
That was nearly five years ago. Since then, though it hasn’t completely gone away (will it ever, really?), it lays dormant in the very core of my being like a sleeping dragon. I ignore it for as long as possible, avoiding the opportunity to provide it nourishment at any point, to help it rouse from hibernation to attempt a hostile takeover on its host once again. When I feel it stir, when I feel that sense of dread and nausea wash over me,
I pause. I breathe. “I’m okay.” More times than not, the dragon yawns and goes right back to sleep. If she doesn’t, then I ride it out until she grows fatigued.
That young teenaged girl is a recollection, albeit a not-so-distant one. I find it hard to talk about her; speaking of her memory is like memorializing the dead. I remember we had some incredible times, but there were also undeniable hardships. Privation of her faculties were undeniable, yet I nonetheless try to pick out only the positive moments from our time together… after all, it’s not fair to speak ill of the dead.
That girl is no longer here to defend herself. A phoenix has risen from her ashes.