What Happened Next - Trapped

I'm pretty sure this is what going crazy feels like.

My entire world has crumbled down around me, and I can't face it. With medication to assist me, I have shoved all my demons into a locked room. With my back to the door, I tell myself that everything's okay now. There's a door between me and them. And sometimes I can convince myself that I am safe.

But then one of them bashes against the door, shaking it on its hinges. And I back away in a panic, suddenly realizing that I am the one in the locked room. The demons have taken over my house and torn it to pieces, and I fled to this basement room and locked myself in to escape. But I was a fool. There are no other doors, no windows in this room. I am trapped, alone, with nothing but the sound of scratching and howling on the other side of the door.

*          *          *

Confession: I twitch violently or cry out sometimes, when something triggers the pain inside of me. It's like an electrical shock that completely surpasses my conscious mind. All I ever do is try to ignore it, push it down. I can't handle it.

Confession: I am losing the ability to speak. I want to be around people, but I can't think of anything to say. Even when the need to speak is boiling within me, I can't find the words to say anything. I am losing my voice from the inside out.

Confession: I am angry all the time. I am so full of frustration, bitterness, and aggression that 50% of my thoughts are violent lashings. So-and-so is such an idiot! Oh, you just got something you really wanted? Don't bet on keeping it. Stop putting useless inspirational quotes on Facebook! Do you think they mean anything to someone who's actually suffering? Stop smiling at me; you don't know me; GET AWAY FROM ME! And then my fury fades. And I am appalled at what I am becoming.

Confession: I don't want to admit how badly I'm doing - how terrible and mixed-up and awful and decimated I feel inside - because I feel like it's my fault.

I feel like it's my fault.

I hate feeling like it's my fault!

My fault.

My fault.

My fault . . . .

What Happened Next - Falling Apart

I'm awake again.

This is the third time I've woken up, and the sun shining through my window is too strong of evidence for me to convince myself it's still nighttime. Since it was already starting to get light the last time I woke up, it's probably creeping towards late morning now. I don't care. My automatic response is still the same.

I should go back to sleep, I tell myself. And, curling into the hidden depths of my quilt, I do.

*     *     *

I'm awake again.

Each time, it's a disheartening realization. Eventually, though, I cannot force myself to return to sleep. Twelve hours, fourteen hours . . . I can't seem to cram in more sleep than that. At some point, usually just a little before noon, I simply have to resign myself to being awake.

My pills . . . 

I roll over, reaching drunkenly for the pill box at the side of my bed. I snatch my water bottle and quickly swallow the three little pills, my body still mostly on autopilot. It's not that my brain isn't awake; it's just that it's miserable. What's the point? The murmur slouches in my mind. I feel awful.
But I'm too afraid to not take the pills. If I feel this bad with medication, what horrors lurk just beyond?

Now that I've moved, it becomes impossible for me to ignore my screaming bladder. I drag myself to the bathroom - fortunately only a few feet from my bedroom door - and return to my bed as quickly as possible. I bury myself in blankets again.

My stomach is aching, but I can't stand the thought of walking upstairs, of having to prepare food. So I pull out my laptop to distract myself. YouTube. Netflix. Facebook. Tumblr. Pinterest. Yahoo!News. Sporcle. Comics. Anything. Everything.

This is giving me no pleasure whatsoever, I notice, dispassionately. I don't care about any of this. I don't care about any of these people.

Something in me rustles, unsettled. I should get up, I think. I should do something.

I can't.

I can't. I just can't.

*     *     *

Once it starts to feel like someone is scraping the inner lining out of my stomach, I finally go upstairs to find something to eat. It's almost 3:30pm. My family is there. They're watching TV, or talking, or playing games, or making plans.

Someone is talking to me, I realize. I glance over at my sister.

"How are you?" she asks, innocently.

Why do people ask me that? "I'm alive," I tell her.

She smiles awkwardly, unsure what to say next.

I'm not being very nice, I think. But I don't care. Fortunately for my sister my mom comes in and wants to talk to her about doing something with the ward this week. They start talking about activities and who'll be in attendance, and I'm listening because I'm desperate to be around conversation but I'm incapable of participating in it. (That's also the reason I pretend to be asleep in the living room sometimes.)

I'M A COMPLETE LOSER!

The thought slams against the inside of my head, and my arm shoots out involuntarily. I frantically try to wrangle my thoughts as they continue to batter me. I DON'T DO ANYTHING TO HELP ANYBODY. I DON'T EVEN BOTHER TO TAKE CARE OF MYSELF. I'M PATHETIC! I'M PATHETIC AND NO WONDER I'M MISERABLE BECAUSE I'M SUCH A WASTE OF SPACE!

My mom notices me twitching. "You alright?" she asks.

I'm biting my tongue, stomping down the anguished beasts gnawing at my insides until they're quiet again, just growling. "Mm-hmm," I grimace. I make eye contact with her, and an understanding passes between us. I'm not okay. But that's okay.

It's weird how much that soothes me: that I can be in pain around my mom and it won't bother her.

*     *     *

Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can sneak in a nap during the afternoon, a few more hours of sweet, peaceful unconsciousness. Otherwise I'll probably go down to my room and let my eyes glaze over in front of my computer screen some more. Every so often, frequently without warning, another one of the beasts will get out and snap at me.

I have to move this week. I HAVE to. What am I going to do with all of my stuff?

I squint my eyes shut.

I worked so hard for that life, and now it's completely destroyed. I've lost everything.

I grit my teeth, balling my fists.

What am I going to do? What on earth am I supposed to do? I can't start over again!

I let out a strangled cry that's half moan and half gasp. My family glances at me, mixed expressions of embarrassment or concern or irritation - after all, this has gone on quite long enough. I want to be around them - it doesn't make me happy, but it makes me not alone - but I feel bad about it. I have nothing to give. I'm a drain and a drag, and nobody wants to be around me. I don't blame them. I haven't even showered or brushed my teeth today.

I am filthy. I'm disgusting. But I can't muster up the energy to do anything about it but hide. Besides, all I can do is clean up the outside of me. If I were to go out into the world where people are, they might want to talk to me - unbearable, unthinkable. And even if they didn't talk to me, I'm leaking despair. I'd leave trails of invisible grime all over the place.

*     *     *

Ironically, even though I spend all day trying to duck back into unconsciousness, at nighttime I don't want to go to sleep. I lay in my bed for hours, reading or drowning myself in the internet again. Alone with my thoughts, I let the morose waves wash over me again and again.

I have become a wretch, I think, distantly. I've turned into some kind of hobgoblin, hunched over, with just enough discolored skin to stretch over my bones and tissues. My hair is limp and stringy, falling over my face as I crawl around in barbaric, lurching movements. Once capable of speech, now all I do is growl and snap, staring out distrustfully from the dark confines of my cave.

Oddly, putting it into words like this - writing a story for myself, creating a world where this makes sense - amuses me. It brings a smile to my face for a moment. But then my smile collapses under its own weight and I'm left with only darkness.

Always, always darkness.

*     *     *

How am I ever going to get better?

What Happened Next - Visitation

[Note: This post continues the story from "What Happened Next - Getting Better." If you haven't read that one, I recommend doing so before proceeding with this one.]

A few weeks later, I get to talk to her.

They've set up a room for us. Two rooms, really, with a thick glass window between. There's a table and a chair on each side, facing the glass. There are also holes in the glass - just enough for us to hear each other, a circle of fifteen dots at eye level. (I've had time to count while I've been waiting for them to bring her in.)

Finally, the door in the other room opens. I lurch to my feet, leaning forward. I watch as my other self shuffles into the room - hair unkempt, trembling nervously, but no longer wearing a straitjacket. The doctor has decided that she's well enough for this trial visitation, provided she's closely monitored. The required two uniformed attendants follow her into the room, close the door, and point her toward the table. She turns to look at it and sees me through the glass. I wave encouragingly.

Slowly, she makes her way to the table on her side of the window, and we sit down simultaneously. At first we just stare at each other. It's like looking in a mirror - except that it shows me a version of my face that's hollowed-out with starvation, and darkened eyes that are deep and haunted. I find myself wondering what she's seeing in my face. I know that I'm smiling, but for some reason I'm not sure if my eyes look any different from hers.

"I've missed you," I finally say.

Disbelievingly, she jerks in a way that scares me for an instant. It's just a twitch, though. I breathe deeply, trying to remember how many times I've begged to be allowed this meeting, rather than the flush of shameful fear I experienced when I was told it was finally going to happen. "I have," I insist. "I haven't felt right without you. I feel like I'm only half-awake."

She eyes me for a moment, then apparently decides to trust me. "I feel like I'm imaginary," she says, quietly. "Like at any moment someone's going to wake up and I'll just disappear."

"You aren't imaginary," I tell her, forcefully. "And you're not crazy, either. I'm going to get you out of here."

She closes her eyes, twitching again as tears start falling down her face. "No," she whispers. "I'll hurt you. Like last time." She starts shaking with the soft beginning of sobs, and I can see the attendants starting to lean forward. I have to stop her crying or this is going to be over before it begins.

"Hey," I interject, energetically, "did I tell you I went on a date last week?"

That catches her off-guard. The rhythm of her misery interrupted, she hesitates. "What?"

"I went on a date last week," I repeat. raising my eyebrows intriguingly. "A blind date."

Success. This completely distracts her. She leans forward with her eyes wide. "No," she says, uncertain. "You didn't."

"I did."

Baffled, her face returns to something sweeter, less shadowed. "Why?" she asks, incredulously.

"It was kind of an accident," I say. And I tell her the story about the guy who asked me out via text - someone who was in my ward, but whom I'd never met before. I told her about how I wasn't sure whether he was asking me out or just trying to fellowship a new member, and that's why I'd agreed to go, but that it became obvious very quickly that it was a date when he pulled out a red rose for me.

"Red?" She crinkles her nose distastefully. "A guy you'd never met brought you a red rose on the first date?"

"Yeah," I say, laughing. "But that was the peak of the interest he showed in me. He spent the next hour and a half talking about himself. I tried to join the conversation a few times, but he bull-dozed right over me. So eventually I just got up and left."

She scoffs, "Do you think he noticed that you left?"

"I guess so," I say, "because he's been texting me again recently."

Her face is indignant. "You're not going to go out with him again, are you?"

"Of course not. You know how much I hate dating. He's lucky I agreed to meet him in the first place."

"Yeah," she agrees. Then we fall silent for a while.

"Sam's coming home soon," I comment.

"Next week," she says. "I remember."

Another pause.

"Oh!" I say, suddenly. "I've had a few job interviews."

She leans away from me slightly. "Oh?" she asks. "Doing what?"

"Well, I applied for a few building supervisor positions - custodial stuff, you know." She relaxes  somewhat. "But managing this time instead of just being a laborer. Also, there's this receptionist job I really, really want. It sounds so cool!" My excitement makes me talk faster, and I don't notice that her face is tightening. "It's like, part receptionist, part office manager, and part security. I think it would be really fun, and I think I'd be good at it!"

"Yeah, sounds fun." Her shoulder twitches. "I'm sure you'll be terrific."

Something in her voice pops my bubble of enthusiasm. "Thanks," I say, uncertain.

She's rubbing a hand up and down her arm now, up and down, over and over without stopping. "It's a good thing I'm in here, then," she says. "You wouldn't want me messing things up like I did the last time."

"Hey!" I object. "That was an accident. Neither one of us saw it coming. We were completely blind-sided." But I can see her agitation is growing, her mouth twitching with pain. Anxiously, I try to distract her again. "You know it's Octoboween, right? A scary movie every night during October?" It's a holiday our mom invented.

My other self nods, a little jerkily. The attendants who have been relaxing in the back corners of the room for a while prick to attention. I start to talk faster.

"We've already watched a bunch of movies," I say. "And I got candy corn!"

"I love candy corn," she says automatically.

"I know," I say. I work to keep our eyes locked together, trying to talk her down from the cliff inside our head. "We've watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mars Attacks!, The Woman in Black, and Hocus Pocus."

"I like that one."

"I know," I say, encouragingly. "Tonight we watched one I've never seen before called Mama. It's about these two little girls - sisters. The older one is blonde and has glasses, and the younger one has kind of reddish-brown hair with these cute bangs -"

It happens so quickly that no one is prepared for it.

I hear the sound of shattering glass at the same moment I hear my other self's piercing scream. An instant later I've been pulled out of my seat. Her hand is clenched down on my collar, blood dripping from cuts on her arm, which is still slicing itself open on the jagged hole she has - impossibly - punched through the glass. I look at the blood dripping onto me, then back up at her, frightened.

She's kneeling on the table now, hunched over in agony. Her free hand is pressed against the glass imploringly, and all at once I realize that her frantic shrieking has words to it.

"I'M SORRY!" Her wild eyes look so trapped. "I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO DIE! I SHOULD HAVE SAVED THEM! THEY'RE DYING! WHY AM I HERE? I CAN'T SAVE ANYONE! MY FAMILY . . . MY FRIENDS . . . I CAN'T KEEP THEM HERE! THEY'RE LOST! THEY'RE ALL LOST AND DYING AND I CAN'T SAVE ANYONE!"

The attendants have finally made it across the room and, forcing her arm to be still, have injected her with some sort of sedative. The grip on my shirt relaxes, and one of them gently pulls her arm back through the sharp-toothed hole. She's fallen silent, eyes drooping. She starts to collapse backward and is caught by one of the attendants.

"Sorry about this, Ma'am," the other attendant says, businesslike regret in his voice. "She caught us off-guard." He shakes his head. "Don't know what it was that set her off . . . ." He pauses for a moment, considering. Then he must decide it doesn't matter because he shrugs, collects her limp legs, and assists in carrying my other self (now fully unconscious) out of the room. The door closes behind them.

I just stand there, unmoving. I am completely shaken. There are spatters of blood on my shirt and streaks of tears down my face (Where did those come from?); I think I might be bruised from where my body slammed against the table when she pulled me forward. But all of that is background noise to the shrieks still running through my head. The echoes, the words are what pierce through my skin and get trapped inside me.

I am afraid of myself again. And furious because now I know that the doctor was right.

"Getting better" is not the same thing as being healed.

How to Treat Depression and Stop Thinking Like an Idiot

My awkward phase was basically my entire adolescence. When I started junior high, I wore boxy t-shirts and a pair of jeans to school every day. I had gained about twenty pounds of hips in middle school, but not much else was going on in the way of womanly developments, so I still looked like a little girl - with just really big thighs. I had long hair that had once been blonde, but was now some horrible color I was in denial about, and I always kept it back in a ponytail. I had glasses and zits and braces.

And I was obsessed with the idea of going crazy.

I used to talk to my friends about it all the time - though they usually dismissed me pretty quickly. Even the adults in my life (teachers, youth group leaders, parents) didn't seem to be at all interested in the conversation. But I had a question that I was fixated on, and nobody but me ever seemed to care what the answer was.

"People always say," I would start out, "that if you think you might be crazy, you aren't. They insist that insane people have no grasp of reality, and are therefore unaware of their own insanity. And that may be true." Then I would get really eager, leaning forward as I prepared to argue my case. "But what about during the transition? When a person starts off sane and then later becomes insane, there has to be some sort of transitional period during which they retain some sanity. There has to be some horrible period during which they do crazy things, but are aware of it. Where it's like they're watching themselves, unable to stop their behaviors because of the illness descending upon them, but cognizant enough to realize what they're doing."

This is frequently where I lost people, but I was pretty good at pressing forward even after my listener had lost interest. "Can you imagine?" I'd ask. "They would be so powerless! And scared, too, because they never know if they can trust what they perceive to be reality. They could never be sure if what they thought was happening was what was really happening. Wouldn't that be terrifying?" The horror of the idea would swell within me, and I'd become irritated with the dispassion displayed by my audience. So I'd go back to my question and insist, "Well, do you think that happens to people or not? Do you think someone can go crazy and be aware of it?"

Dear 14-Year-Old Self: The answer is yes. It is called depression.

I am not a doctor. And I'm pretty young, and therefore stupid inexperienced in many ways. But I come from a family where clinical depression runs wild and free on both sides, and I've experienced it at least a couple of times myself. And in my experience, a depressive episode feels like going crazy. It feels like losing yourself, as your old interests and hobbies and friends suddenly seem unimportant. As skills and talents you once had now seem inaccessible. As your very personality seems to fade away, lost in impenetrable darkness.

When I first became aware of my family's history of depression - maybe when I was 16 - my main concern was that my mother was going to go crazy. She had always been an inspiration to me, a brilliant woman with many talents and a personality that drew people toward her no matter where we went. But when she went into a depressive episode, she locked herself in her room. She spent days doing nothing at all. She couldn't stand to be around people. It was like she became someone else, like she had gone crazy and lost herself.

And she would come out of it. But sometimes it got really bad. She started to see a therapist around that time - and I, like most people who are uneducated about mental health, assumed that therapists were only for crazy people. I loved my mom, and I still admired her. So at first I tried to ignore that she was seeing a therapist, to pretend it wasn't happening.

A year or so later, though, my mom sat me and my siblings down for a serious conversation in which she confessed that she had been cutting herself. She pulled back the long sleeve of her shirt (somehow, none of us had noticed that she'd been wearing only long-sleeved shirts for months), and I was shocked to see the jagged scars on her wrists, some as thick as pencils. She told us that she hadn't actually been "cutting," but scratching, using her own long nails to make herself bleed, using the physical pain as a relief from the worse pain inside. She told us that she wasn't doing it anymore, and that she wasn't going to do it anymore, and that a lot of that was because of the work she'd done with her therapist. She tried very hard to educate us about mental health, the reality of mental illness, and the importance of taking it seriously and treating it like you would a physical illness.

I listened to her. And I tried to learn the lesson. But I only learned it in my head, just enough to apply it to other people. And that was good; it helped me to extend compassion and understanding instead of ignorant judgment. It made me nicer to other people. But in my heart of hearts, I didn't believe it. Because I'd already started, by then, to sense the void within myself; and though I denied it consciously, subconsciously I knew that I'd inherited whatever genetic flaw it is that makes you go crazy. And while I could forgive others for not being able to control their emotions and their thoughts, I believed that I was better than that. Stronger than that. Even as my mom talked about the importance and the benefits of therapy, of getting medication when you need it, I thought fiercely - I'm never going to go to therapy. And I won't let them lobotomize me with those drugs that are supposed to make me "normal." I am strong. I won't let it get that bad.

Pride is my cardinal sin. And if you hate the teenager-me a little bit, that's okay. I do, too. I was arrogant and closed-minded, and the truth is that in my heart I clearly was still being judgmental about people with mental illness. In my defense, I was 17. And I was very, very frightened.

Because 17 is the age I was when I had my first depressive episode. It was much less intense than this most recent one, but it lasted a lot longer - a slow burn as opposed to a instantaneous inferno. And once that had happened, I stopped worrying so much about my mom going crazy and started worrying about ME going crazy. To the point where watching TV episodes that dealt with insanity started to make me feel anxious. They had the eerie feeling of foreshadowing.

I recovered from that first episode and returned to my normal self - vivacious, intelligent, curious, dynamic, yet inexplicably boyfriendless - and I largely moved on with my life. I was ambitious; I wanted a lot out of life, and I worked hard to get it. I got a full-ride scholarship to college. I moved to St. Petersburg, Russia and taught English for four months as a volunteer teacher. I earned a Bachelor's Degree - something neither of my parents had done. I was successful.

But throughout that period of my life, there would be days when I felt as though there were a ticking time bomb inside of me. My whole life was a game of Russian Roulette, a stroll through the minefields, and I knew that at any moment something could set me off, and I would begin my spiral into insanity.

If you've read any of my previous blog posts, you know that that is exactly what happened. I got a job, and early into it I began to slide into a depressive episode. A massive one. I fought it with everything that I had, determined - as I had always been - that I could keep myself sane if I just fought hard enough. But in the end, having almost completely self-destructed, I finally had to give in. I went to the doctor and to the therapist with an air of defeat, of failure.

But I was an idiot. I was an idiot to think that I could cure myself just by trying hard not to feel sick.

How many people do you know who have fought off cancer by sheer determination?

That's why words like "crazy" and "insane" are problematic. They make us think of weakness, that for someone to lose control of their mind is an embarrassment and a shameful character flaw. BUT IT ISN'T. And that's what I've been learning these past two weeks.

We have control of our minds in the same way that we have control of our bodies - most of the time, we can tell them what to do; we can decide what they intake; we can manage their health. But sometimes you get hit by a car, and then your legs don't do what you tell them to anymore. Sometimes you are born to a woman with a drug addiction, and her chemicals end up inside of your body, poisoning you against your will. Sometimes your appendix ruptures for no apparent reason, and you have to be rushed to the hospital so the doctors can save your life.

We think we have control of our bodies, but that isn't always true. And when it isn't true, it's not because we did something bad or we're inherently weak. Sometimes it's because of our own choices, but sometimes it's because of the choices of others, or random happenstance, or unforeseen complications, or simple genetic vulnerability - you don't think less of a person who is allergic to peanuts!

The same principle applies to our minds. We have control of our minds sometimes, but not all the time. And when we don't, it's not because we did something bad or we're inherently weak. Sometimes you get hit by a terrible tragedy. Sometimes you are born into a family where you are beaten and unloved. Sometimes you start crying for no reason and you can't stop until they rush you to the hospital so the doctors can save your life.

I am not allergic to peanuts. My vulnerability is that I am prone to depressive episodes.

It is not something I chose. It is not something that I brought upon myself. It was written into my genetic code at birth. And most of the time it doesn't affect my life; but sometimes something happens, and I get really sick. And then I have to go to the doctor.

The doctor analyzes my symptoms and recognizes that I am experiencing an imbalance of chemicals that is causing nausea, fatigue, and an inability to focus. He gives me a diagnosis and writes me a prescription so that I can fight off the illness and become well again. Because that's why we invented medicine.

The pharmacists give me two bottles of pills, each with instructions written on them. I take them home and put them in my little pill box organizer - one box for every day of the week. Every morning, I roll over to my nightstand and pull out my water bottle and three pills for the day - a red one for depression, a blue one for anxiety, and a white one for my hay fever. (Because I do have some allergies.)

And every once in a while I go to a therapist. When I'm there, he talks to me so we can figure out how I was exposed to whatever it was that triggered this episode. We talk about ways to avoid potential "allergens" in the future. And he teaches me things that I can do in a moment of crisis - things like breathing and mental exercises - giving me the mental equivalent of an EpiPen.

And what kind of person would you expect to walk around without an EpiPen when they know they're allergic to peanuts?

I'm not sure if I've made any sense at all here. Wandering from junior high to a metaphor about EpiPens seems a little meandering, but I find that many of my journeys are less direct than I expect them to be. My main point is this:

I am feeling better. Amazingly better. And I'm even feeling better about feeling better, so all kinds of good things are going on. And as I've been recovering, I've been realizing what an idiot I was about mental health before this happened - not because I'm a stupid person, but just because I hadn't learned it yet. Well, now I'm learning it. So I'm also sharing it.

Mental illness is as real as physical illness. And it can be treated, just like physical illness can be treated. We need to let go of whatever stupid hang-ups we have over words like "crazy" and "insane," and we need to start encouraging people to go to the doctor when they need to. If it's your friend, or your family member, or an acquaintance, or YOU, don't over-complicate things.

When you get sick, go to the doctor.

And let it be as simple as that.