sideways
/Before you read, listen to: Growing Sideways by Noah Kahan.
Depression is a bitch. I remember moving to Colorado and thinking to myself how excited I was to move to the mountains and the sun, believing that it would finally rid me of my cyclical depressive states forever. There was no looking back.
Except. Colorado didn’t cure me. The 365 days of sun didn’t cure me. Endless hikes and trail runs didn’t cure me. And when my first “dip” hit after moving here, I dipped so hard and plummeted so deep because of this tragic disappointment and let down to the inevitable realization that I was still me…and part of me was chemical imbalances, loss of brain grey matter, some faulty hormones and fucked up neurotransmitters. I couldn’t wish it away, I couldn’t believe it away, and I definitely couldn’t trick it away by moving half way across the country.
I remember listening to that song for the first time, and instantly feeling connected to it somewhere down deep in my soul. I told Dave right away that Noah was singing about depression, and without really understanding Dave shrugged it off with a general like for the song, and I thought to myself… you only really know it, or hear it, feel it, sing it… if you know it. It’s like being a part of a club with a secret language.
A difficult part of being in the club is that most people don’t speak the language, and quite frankly it is an unteachable one. Sometimes dips feel so incredibly lonely just because you can’t explain it to anyone. It’s not that you can’t ask for help, or that you don’t want others around, or that you are too depressed to even get out of bed… sometimes it’s just simply because the only cure you actually crave is for your loved ones to hear your language, a language they can never hear or be taught. It’s an incurable cure. I crave to explain something I can never vocalize, and I crave to feel cared for in a space that no one else can sit in with me unless they are a club member. And as comfy as it can be to chill in that space with another club member, it doesn’t fulfill our loneliness.
I think that’s part of the reason I became a therapist. It was an easy way out. I am surrounded by others pain, and so I feel less need to be painless. I am surrounded by others sadness, and so I feel less need to be happy. I am surrounded by others struggles, and so I feel more valid in my own. It is ALOT easier to heal the world through others than it is to heal yourself. And I’m really good at it. My job definitely requires me to be a functional depressive, and it really does allow me to take my pain and turn it into purpose, but at times it can be a distraction from my own tendencies and dips and my cycle has begun to mirror that of my community and circle.
When I’m dipping, my clients are dipping. When I’m dipping, my community is dipping. And this tumultuous cycle creates a tidal wave of disaster, that I can now see more clearly over the course of the years as my burn out trajectory. Shit hits the fan, all fucking at once. My shit has currently hit the fan, and right here is where I always wind up finding myself, typing away at an attempt to come to some formal conclusion about depression. I don’t have one.
Here’s what I know.
There isn’t a one size fits all. What’s symptomatic for one person, isn’t always for another. Depression doesn’t always mean you want to kill yourself, or that you are suicidal, but it typically means that you’ve at least thought about it before and at times, not being alive, can feel like a relieving solution to speaking a secret language that is impossible to teach. You may cry endlessly and feel trapped inside the corners of your bed, but most of the time it’s not so dramatic. It’s more like the universal feeling of the alarm going off in the morning and the tinge of dread that pings your body, but for us in dips, this feeling becomes gnawing and constant throughout the day like a dull pain in the back of your head and in the pit of your stomach. Sometimes it’s internal rage and instant mood shifts, like one minute you are laughing with your partner and they say something that is slightly cringeworthy or maybe a little wrong or judgmental (in your opinion), and instead of brushing it off like a normal human or like you would on a non-dip kind of day, you feel your entire body shake and shift into a downward spiral of self-pity and they notice your immediate change in demeanor, but you have zero idea how to explain how crappy you feel in the slightest change of a second. It’s repetition of personally joyful things or activities that start to feel ridiculously obligatory and survivalistic. It’s debilitating annoyance and resentment. It’s feeling completely broken inside all of your organs, but walking around WITHOUT ONE scratch on your body. It can be exhaustion and days and months of sickness and somatic pain. It’s looking in the mirror and seeing how you feel on the inside bleeding its way through your pores and your skin and creeping its way all over your face, but knowing that you look exactly the same as you do everyday to everyone else. Most importantly it’s extreme helplessness, it’s a feeling that you’re stuck like this forever and you may as well just unpack and settle in on this shitty-ass vacation. And so you continue working, and surviving, and parenting, and taking your kids to birthday parties and practices and drop-offs, and having dinner with your in-laws, and celebrating holidays, and cleaning your house, and laundry-ing, and paying bills, and cooking meals, and making everyone’s life that rely on you continue to move and grow and spin, all while feeling like you’re imprisoned on the world’s worst shittiest of vacations, suffering in silence and pretending it’s fine, because this language can’t be spoken.
The hardest part about depression can be when you try to speak the language and no one seems to hear you. When you confide in another and they respond dismissively because of discomfort, or they try to relate unrelate-ably, or when they just tell you to let it go or that things aren’t that bad. It’s in these moments that you realize who can hold space for you and who can’t. And as a therapist, my hardest struggle has been to find those that can truly hold this for me, because I am usually the one holding everything else for everyone else.
I am confident to say that I do have those people. Yet. I still protect them. I still only let them see the little crack in my brain, not the whole shitty vacation I’ve planned. I think it’s because I've gotten so burned in the past by letting others in and being so horribly and devastatingly disappointed by their inability to hold space with me, that I keep myself at an arms length distance even to my closest humans. And over these last few months this has become incredibly problematic for me, because by keeping them from seeing my full dip, yet desperately wanting them to be there in my full dip, I haven’t quite allowed them the opportunity, while still expecting it. I’m preparing myself for disappointment, and by preparing for it, I’m creating it.
To be fair to myself, it is astonishly difficult, as I feel like I have tried to articulate in this writing, to explain how depression feels and how bad it can get. This unteachable language can make us feel crazy, can make us uncommonly angry, and can make meaningful relationships feel conflictual and weary. It can make parenting and managing children feel like a complete nightmare, it can make optimal stress feel overwhelming and depleting, it can make obstacles seem like Mt. Everest, and it can make daily triggers feel like torture.
My least favorite thing about depression, is that for me, it very much resembles the plight of being a stepparent. Sometimes it feels like they are interchangeable, and I can’t tell if I’m in a dip, if I’m in a dip because of stepparenting, if stepparenting is my dip, or if I’m just having a bad day. Being a stepparent is one of the single most misunderstood, judged, double-standard, living crises that I have ever experienced. And I have to say, depression can feel exactly the same way.
So I boil down my stepparenting experience to the last years- learning to self advocate, to repeat my needs, to set my own boundaries, and to vocalize my empowerment. I guess that’s why I'm here then today, writing. To relate my lessons in stepmom life, to the journey of depression. I’m here to advocate. To make it uncomfortable to hear what it’s like to live with depression. For most of the world who just dip for just one day at a time, to hear what it might feel like for us living with consistent, agonizing and cyclical dips, and to feel uncomfortable in that realization. Discomfort is what teaches us, and maybe I can teach a few words of our unteachable language through discomfort.
I’m here to repeat my own struggle to myself, in order to recognize where I’m at and I need my people, and that it’s okay to need them. To begin resetting the boundaries that I let so quickly break down when my dips feel gone and I feel like I can tackle the world. To recognize I’m not superwoman, and to remind my loved ones that I’m not in fact, unbreakable.
And I’m here to empower my club members. There is life with depression. There are moments without. Stop driving on empty. There are a million things we can do when we recognize we are dipping, I promise you. I know them well and I practice them well. Sometimes shit gets away from me, and I spin into a tornado of my own dips and community dips and I plunge further into the depths to help others before I help myself. It doesn’t ever make it easier to do it that way and to avoid my own despair…
…It’s hard now. Or it’s hard later. Dig deep to find your center, because we, depressives, have a lot to teach this world.