Sometimes my sadness felt so deep it must have been inherited.
- Sweetbitter, Stephanie Danler
Before I knew sadness, I was a child. No wonder I thought it would never leave me.
Before fifteen, sadness was only a wave that rose and fell when I said goodbye to a friend, when I didn’t qualify for the race I wanted to, when I lost my favorite necklace. It surfaced and then faded.
Then somewhere along the way it inched itself into my every day and only seemed to get wider, heavier. It brought with it dread-induced panic attacks, restless hands and shaking legs, bedtime whirlpools of despair.
I thought it was chronic. A burden I would always have to bear. I think I assumed it came with the territory of growing older, that along with the expectations and responsibility now yoked across your shoulders you had to drape a weighted blanket of sadness over the top of it all, a constant pressure, another thing to push against in the pursuit of getting through the days that would only keep on coming. I left for college and it came right along with me.
A lot has changed in the last 6 years. I didn’t reach outward until 2018. Fifteen-year-old me was taught there was no support to be found anywhere but in the words of strangers on the internet. I started seeing a therapist on campus, crying weekly in her office and seizing up each time she asked a question about my mom. Soon after, I started on antidepressants, ativan for the panic attacks that would petrify me in the bathroom stalls during, in-between, and after classes.
It got better, and then it got worse. My therapist finished her doctorate and left, then my next one finished his in the spring of 2020 and I sobbed for an hour after we hung up for the last time, thinking of the times he sat on the floor of his office with me while I cried, stared at the paper torn from his legal pad with his scrawled handwriting, I am not bad. I am a good person. I drank cheap wine with my roommates and slept in a fort in the townhouse living room so we could pretend we weren’t so lonely and afraid.
It got better, and then it got worse. I graduated and couldn’t use the campus clinic. I got a big girl job that hated me but thanked me in free alcohol, which was anesthetic enough to make me stay. I lost the doctor but kept the therapist.
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It would always get worse after it got better. I think that’s why I was taken by surprise when yesterday, my doctor swiveled the monitor around to show me my scores for the mental health questionnaires I’ve filled out on each visit I’ve made since I started seeing her in April. After three years of bouncing between same-day-care clinics in the backs of drug stores, I’ve spent the last 3 months shuttling myself to and from all the appointments I should have had the past three years.
I stuttered with embarrassment the first time they asked me the questions over the phone, endlessly thankful the nurse couldn’t see my face. How often have you felt bad about yourself—or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down? “Every day,” I said. Over and over. So repetitive it was laughable. It wasn’t, but I was scrounging for levity in the knowledge that I wasn’t doing well, even if it wasn’t the worst it has been.
“How does that make you feel?” she asked me yesterday, as I blinked, nearly recoiled at the numbers on the screen that irrefutably, scientifically proved I am doing better I ever have been.
I didn’t know what to say. The last time I could recall I felt like this was over a decade ago, before high school convinced me I would never be cool enough, happy enough, good enough. And who was I then, but a child?
She even said it could get better than this, that the semblance of stability I have built from healthy habits, emotional processing, and snippets of self-compassion could be fortified. That the weight I have carried for 10 years could, in fact, be lifted.
Many years ago I abandoned the idea that my adversities would one day bear something beautiful, something useful, something I could look at and thank for the goodness it has brought me despite the pain, a goodness that outweighs the years of really, really bad.
I could spend hours debating whether my sadness has brought me beauty, has proved itself useful in the grand scheme of my life. Surely there are people who firmly believe there is a lesson to be found in each of life’s hardships, no matter how hurtful, and maybe I will become one of those people someday. But now, knowing I have really, truly, gotten better, I feel nothing but relief.
I think I have rediscovered hope, spotted an exit route in a hedge maze I was sure was unsolvable. It is something I have been too afraid to lean into for fear of it slipping out of sight the moment I lifted my hand to reach for it. Any other me would hesitate to voice it, but there is something telling me it won’t evaporate this time. Maybe it’s because it’s July and the reprieve from the heatwave has let me breathe through my ribs again. Maybe it’s because I stepped barefoot in the ebbing waves of the Pacific last Saturday and my freshly washed hair tangled from the salt. Maybe it’s because it hasn’t gotten worse for the longest time since I was a child and something about that makes me feel like I don’t have to run anymore.
Where I’ve felt better
Daily: coffee almond crunch ice cream in a waffle cone, antique mall treasures & farmers market dairy-free basil brie, open windows at the end of hot days
Media: Love Island UK (hear me out….), cherry cola by Devon Again, Shot by Hannah Cole
Words:
As it turned out, the last time but once I ever saw my mother was sitting in the Vegas airport drinking a Cuba Libre, but there you are. Everything goes. I am working very hard at not thinking about how everything goes. I watch a hummingbird, throw the I Ching but never read the coins, keep my mind in the now. - Play It as It Lays, Joan Didion
Here’s hoping the weight lifts more with each wave,
Helena
thank you so much for sharing this! i could relate to everything you wrote and it made me feel better about my mental health journey
this hit so close, maybe my favourite post from you so far <3