The last time I blogged it was February, and I wrote about writing and how I love writing and how it sometimes seems like the people and the things we love are preordained, out-of-our-control. We love them and we can’t explain why … and perhaps we’ve simply got to love them and not psychoanalyze it.
Literally a day after that post, I fell into depression. I fantasized about falling out of windows. I sat in my office, unable to work, contemplating how I could muster the courage to walk next door and tell my boss: “I’m too depressed to be here. I need to go home. Please.” I’d wake up sobbing in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.
It’s not the first time; it’s probably not the last.
This time, it was circumstantial. I was working seven days a week on a 200+ page report. I was still — unbelievably — mourning the demise of a romantic relationship eight months earlier (Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” confirmed the emotion). I was also mourning the loss of my mother.
And I was realizing how little I’d accomplished in my writing life.
In October 2014, I’d begun applying to health and humanitarian writing jobs. It was time. I was so sick of being a people manager and a project manager — the roles I’d held since 22. There aren’t many health and humanitarian writing jobs out there, but for five months I applied to ones in the Twin Cities. I didn’t even get an interview.
So here I was on this blog, waxing poetic about not psychoanalyzing why we love what we love and just loving him/her/it unconditionally … and the message suddenly felt absurdly cheery, naive. And all I felt was jaded, like the biggest failure in my writing life. And it really killed me — because writing is the thing I love more than anything, besides family.
For the first time, I sought medical help. “Moderate depression,” the doctor declared. He was slightly overweight. He had glasses, I think. He looked sad when I began to cry on his exam table, white paper under my ass.
I’m not sure if he helped, or if it was just that I turned in that 200+ page report. Or that winter turned to spring (I’m light sensitive). Or that I was miraculously offered my first full-time writing job — a public health one, no less. And that, from the first day I walked through those workplace doors, I loved it more than any other job.
In the months since February, I’ve realized that — not only is it exceedingly difficult to psychoanalyze why we love what we love — it’s also exceedingly difficult to understand ourselves, our behaviors and emotions, our impulses. How our past affected us. Some of the most difficult places I’ve traveled have been through my mind. These places are more treacherous than wartime Afghanistan.
This spring and summer, as I’ve risen out of depression, I’ve often wondered how my military service affected me. Would I be the same woman without those nine and a half years? Undoubtedly not. But how am I a different woman? How am I a different writer? How?
The other day, while walking in downtown Minneapolis, I saw a piece of trash on the sidewalk. It was just a small piece. A paper bag. A few pages of the StarTribune. But it left me unsettled. And as I thought deeper, I realized that trash has left me unsettled since 2007, since I was in Afghanistan and I was out on convoys and people hid IEDs inside trash. I recalled how my stomach would seize up every time I saw trash on the road between Afghani Province A and Afghani Province B. But, for eight years, I hadn’t really acknowledged those feelings. I finally did this summer.
I acknowledged more than that.
I also acknowledged that I’d loved a man more than I’d loved any other man. He has red hair and a tall, lean body, and a calico cat. He loves words, like me. I’d believed I would marry him.
And I acknowledge that my mother’s mental illness had turned her into a person so unrecognizable to me that it felt as though she had died.
And I acknowledged that I’d let writing — the thing I adore more than almost anything — tear me up and down.
And I also acknowledged that I’m sensitive to light and sugar. That my brain chemistry is sensitive. I probably have a perpetual serotonin deficiency. It’s been that way for years. At least since high school. Visceral reactions to sidewalk trash don’t help.
We all have our demons — acknowledged or not. Every single one of us has experienced an abusive boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, mother, father, sister, brother. A war. An injury. A rape. A fantastic fucking failure. A medical scare. That someone or something that happened to get killed crossing the road 20-feet in front of us, as we looked on, helpless to help.
So, I don’t know what the point of this post is. Self-acceptance of the mountains I climb — we climb? Liberation through acknowledgment? But finally — six months after February — it feels essential to write this.