Curiouser and curiouser!

7:07 pm - Thu, Apr 19, 2012

2 notes

The Place

A bit over a year ago, I had an emotional breakdown after what I suppose had been several weeks of ookiness, although I don’t remember very much about how I was feeling before the breakdown.  I was promised by my mother that she would get me whatever help I needed.  That alone made me feel a bit better.

…Until weeks had passed, and it was clear that nothing was happening.  I tried to be patient.  I tried to convince myself that I’d be okay by myself, that it was a temporary sort of thing.  That worked for a while, until my brain spiraled back into its lovely little cesspool of depression and grossness.

So I asked for help again.  Nothing happened.  That was nice.

Meanwhile, I continued to internalize a lot of things, and I lost a lot of friends.  I got to the point at which I barely even wanted them anymore, since they weren’t helping me.  Nothing was helping.

I was suicidal for a period of time in July.  I asked for help again.  There were more promises and no results.

Junior year started horrifically.  I’d come home and curl up in a ball and start shaking.  My interpersonal relations were destroyed, and I felt no compulsion to fix them.  My former friends and I became more solidly estranged.  I managed to drag myself through several very difficult months.  I reestablished a small number of friendships.  I put on a happy face as much as I could.

In March, things got especially bad again.  I guess I just ran out of steam.  I wrote my mother a note begging for help, since I didn’t really want to talk to her anymore.  Nothing.  I started cutting myself with pins kind of a lot.  (I don’t mean, like, every day, but it was more frequently than I’d ever done it before.)  I talked to a couple of friends about it, but nothing helped as much as I needed it to.

This is actually a pretty simplified version of the past year of my life, but anyway…  About a week ago, I had an unfabulous emotional breakdown all over a friend, which was kind of terrible and messy but also, to an extent, necessary.  Because he is a beautiful person, he let me cry and drip snot all over him and then called my mother the next day.

A few days later, she informed me that she scheduled an appointment for Thursday at three o’clock.  That was today, and here is what happened.

I was an odd mix of excited and nervous for the appointment.  I was kind of worried it would be massively unhelpful, since my mother can be rather half-ass about a lot of things, and if she was dragging me to some lame place in Attleboro, it probably wouldn’t have a positive effect at all.  (It was a place in Foxboro, though.  Hooray!  Boo, Attleboro!)

We parked down the street from a wooden sign for The Place, and my mother led me past it to the door of a little house-looking building.  There was a couch, a chair, a trunk, piles of magazines and books, and a table holding a bucket of lollipops, a radio, and Oscar the Grouch.  There was also a bear.  I suppose he is also depressed.

We were about thirty minutes early, so we sat and were musically assaulted by the radio for a while until the crazy old counselor lady called us in.  The room she took us to was kind of nice, actually.  There were glass doors through which a back porch and yard were visible, and there were shelves stuffed with children’s books.  My mother and I sat on the leather couch, and Counselor Lady sat and looked at me and invited me to start talking, at which point I turned to my mother and muttered, “Why are you here?”  Seriously, though.  What the hell?  So Counselor Lady gave a little spiel about confidentiality, said that my mother didn’t have to come in if I didn’t want her to, and then sent her to wait outside with the depressed bear.

It was weird.  I kept thinking, “Oh my god.  I am here.  I am in this room.  I am on a couch, talking to a therapist.”  And then I’d have to keep myself from bursting into ridiculous laughter.

She told me to tell her about myself.  So I tried, a little, but it was strange.  I stared around the room a lot while I was thinking of things to say.  Then she asked me questions about how I’ve been feeling.  That went on for a while, and then there was a pause before she said, “Y’know what I think your problem is?  I think you have depression.”  What a revelation!  She said she had three recommendations.  She said I should try all three of them.

1. Get support from people.
2. Get evaluated for medication.
3. Try meditation or yoga.

Then she called my mother back in and asked her if there was a history of depression in my family, since I’d said I didn’t think there was.  She said that people in my father’s family have been treated for depression and alcoholism.

I almost started laughing like a maniac. It’s fucking hereditary! Yes!

I’m getting a medical evaluation soon, and I’m actually trying to be optimistic about it.  I feel like it’s the sort of situation wherein the sooner I’m on medication, the sooner I’m off it.  I hope, anyway.  I’m vegan, and I know prescription drugs are animal tested, but I’m going to try to at least be put on stuff that doesn’t contain gelatin or anything like that.

And that is my story.

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