At 34 I finally put a name to it — Depression.
The real reason I moved back to America.
“You know that…whatever decision you make…there won’t be a wrong choice or a right choice. You know that right?”
I paused and looked away from the screen. I’m so non-confrontational that I have to break eye contact as a way of expressing disagreement.
“I do think there will be a right choice,” I said softly. “If I make the wrong choice, I’ll just end up hating that job and quitting in 2 months and I’ll be right back where I started, like I am now, and be miserable, again.”
“And if you make the right choice?”
“If I make the right choice I’ll finally wake up happy.”
“Happiness doesn’t work like that. You have to practice happiness.”
I stared out the window in defeat. I wished it were a rainy day. The sky was a solid block of blue, and the California sun was basking everything beneath it with that signature golden tint. It didn’t make sense for it to be such a beautiful day.
I also wished I didn’t sound like a broken record every Tuesday when I talked to my therapist from the Wounded Warriors Project. What should I do, which job, what career, what do I really want, I don’t want someone to tell me what to do but I think I need someone to tell me what to do. I wish I could care enough about living that I could hold on to a decent job. Any job.
But I didn’t.
The next day I got on a call with another mental health specialist from the VA. Therapy shopping is trending these days, and I wanted in on it.
“What do you want help with,” she asked.
“My career,” I said urgently. Never mind that my little sister had been murdered, my mother wrongfully imprisoned for life and my 44 year old sister had suddenly died on her birthday. “I can’t keep a job, I’m 34 years old, I’m so broke, I keep changing careers, and it’s not normal! I think I have ADHD. I think that’s why I can’t keep a job down.”
“Okay…why do you think you can’t keep a job down?”
“Because I just don’t care. I mean, at first I’ll care. At first, I’ll be so excited — like I’ll think, this is it! This is my passion, this is what I love and what I’m good at. And I give it my all, but eventually, like every job before this one, I’ll just stop caring. And I’ll stop caring to the point that all logic and reason go out the window. Does it make sense to quit when I have no savings and don’t know how I’ll pay the bills next month? No — but I just don’t care. So, I think I have ADHD, because I don’t have the executive functioning skills to reward myself with delayed gratification.”
Yeah, I definitely memorized that last part from some millennial Youtuber who’s video: “Finally got diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s and it changed my life” went viral. I don’t know shit about ADHD. But according to social media, getting diagnosed with ADHD and receiving proper medication was the best thing that could ever happen to you.
An hour and half later, the mental health counselor peered at me from under her glasses and said carefully, “I don’t think you have ADHD.”
“Why? I mean it makes sense doesn’t it?”
Why did nobody want to give me Adderall, I protested silently. I thought it was so easy to get!
“I don’t think you have ADHD because you did really well in school up until college. You were a straight A student you said?”
“Yeah. Except in Math. I just gave up on math early on. I got a D in Pre-Calc…really brought my GPA down,” I muttered irritably.
She chuckled then continued, “I think, the reason you’re having issues with work, is because, you have severe depression. You have had a series of traumatic events, just one after the other, a lot of grief and loss.”
She paused to make sure I was listening.
I made a face.
She surveyed my expression. “Why did you make that face, like you’re confused?”
“Well, I don’t see how being depressed, if that’s what I am, would affect my focus or concentration in anyway.”
“Ah okay, great question. Depression is a mental disorder. It takes up alot of mental energy. So is the use of your cognitive analysis and the mental focus you need for work. You’re dealing with so much in your head, unprocessed trauma, you’ve barely scratched the surface, and so much of your mental capacity is being used up.”
“Oh. Okay. Never thought of it that way… So what do I do?”
“Well, you’re having an existential crisis, but before we can even tackle that it sounds like the first thing you need to do is get a job, a job around other people, and get some money coming in asap. And the last thing you need to be doing is sitting at home alone in the West Sacramento suburb all by yourself. So what we’re going to do is get you in a weekly 15 week therapy session to start. But in the meantime, what about getting a job at Starbucks?”
Fakkk. Why does everyone think Starbucks is this easy low-stress part-time job you can turn to when your life is falling apart? Maybe it was different 10 years ago, or maybe only youthful strong minds can handle that kind of hectic fast-paced minimum wage environment.
Before I could verbally obliterate that corporate disgrace of a “coffee” fast-food company, my phone died. But not before we had determined the next steps of my mental health plan.
And… I did have a calming sense of peace from our call.
I think that I have been in complete denial about my mental health up until now. Now that the topic is more openly discussed in society, I can look back and pinpoint the symptoms of depression that sprouted in my twenties. But at the time, I too, thought I was simply lazy, unmotivated, and ungrateful.
“Christina you’re being lazy…” they would say. I felt so resentful. I felt like I was doing all the right things. I served my country. I was finishing college, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. But I did it, I got my degree. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. It just felt like nothing really mattered. What career could give my life any meaning?
Why did I feel like such a shitty person? Everyone had these goals, these big dreams they were working towards. I couldn’t figure out what I cared enough to work towards. If only I could pick something to love. I knew I could succeed at it, if I could just figure out what it was I really wanted. I couldn’t describe what I was feeling. There would be little bursts of Gary V like motivation, but they didn’t last. I was letting everyone down.
Now I see, back then, that I didn’t know, what I didn’t know.
So when the VA counselor said to me, slowly and deliberately, “You have severe depression”, I felt so validated.
Although, could it really be? Me, Christina — who loved to joke around and dance and spread sunshine and positivity on all the little sad people — I have severe depression?
But everything began to fall into place. I could see it all so clearly now. Pieces of the last decade of my life were interlacing like chunks of Tetris.
All the times I avoided social gatherings with people I loved just so I could sleep away the pain. They looked like they were having so much fun, why didn’t I just go with them? Because I needed to figure out my life, and I didn’t deserve to have fun when I was such failure.
All the times I misdirected my anger towards a teacher, or an employer, or a supervisor, because they were “toxic”, when really I felt abandoned that they didn’t help me, like everyone who I loved had abandoned me when they died. So instead of telling them how they hurt my feelings, and seeking conflict resolution, I sent them my resignation letter. See ya never.
Back to the present moment.
“You are not a bad person. You have severe depression.”
I feel like, for the first time since I was a child, an adult had noticed an open wound on my body, and this adult genuinely wanted to comfort me, unconditionally, for nothing in return. It wasn’t my fault I was clumsy, it wasn’t my fault I fell. All that mattered was that I was okay, that we would get this wound treated so it wouldn’t get infected, and tomorrow we could play again.
I also feel kind of robbed. Why didn’t anybody notice and tell me to get help, like, 10 years ago? Kids these days have such a head start on mental health. Talking about depression today is like talking about Herbal Life diet tea in 2009, ammirite ladies? If I had started therapy back then, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. No really, I really do have that kind of confidence underneath this goofy persona. And I would have done such philanthropic things with a million dollars!
But better late than never, I guess. And even though I feel like such a failure after 6 months of being back in America, with less money in the bank now than before I moved here, at least I am in a country where mental health services are available to me. Maybe this was the real reason I was meant to come stay with Kristina…so we could figure out how to really be happy again, together.
My dear friend Estelle said:
Chris you’ve been through so much in your life.
Any kind of trauma takes a lot of work to work through.
I’m proud of you for seeking help and being able to put a name to it so it isn’t this foreign thing out of your control
So that’s what this post is about — putting a name to this thing that’s been holding me back from living my best life. Depression.
I have a new plan guys. It’s no longer Christina’s 10 Step Get Your Life Together Plan. It’s now the:
Christina’s 10 Step Get UnDepressed Plan
This is my declaration that I want to be fucking happy. I know that I have to do the basics, like exercise daily, get sunlight, have social interaction, eat healthy, stop drinking alcohol (damn that already feels like so much). But I also need professional help, I can’t do this shit alone. Maybe I’ll try meds, maybe I won’t. Maybe psilocybin will cure the sadness, maybe I just need whole lotta sex. I’ll figure it out alongside a mental health professional.
And for you, you the reader that said “that’s how I felt, omg, yes, me too, I feel that”; for you I will keep writing about this journey towards happiness.
We deserve to be fucking happy.
