I’ve been having a hard time conceptualizing what to write about this next series of albums. In the chronological pattern I’ve been writing in, at the current point I’m at the end of my New Zealand trip and about to come back home. Once I came back I entered into one of the longest depressive periods of my life, and the music I listened to always transports me back to that place. I’ve had worse episodes, depressive periods where I nearly hospitalized myself. But this stretch of time is something I’m still trying to pull myself out of. I’m stuck in a loop of anxiety and depression, unable to find a way out of my own patterns.
It feels easy for me to write about
everything before this time, aka before 2017. Despite the fact that 2013-2016
were also brutal for me, I feel like I’ve processed those years. This week,
while home for the holidays, I read through my journal from the summer of 2014.
I was so, so lonely and desperate and despondent. I was aching for any kind of
connection yet unable to make myself known. In one of the entries I described
seeing Jake McKelvie and the Countertops live, and being so happy I danced
until my legs cramped. I wrote that it felt wrong to be that happy. I felt like
I was betraying myself, that being depressed meant there weren’t any possibilities
for happiness or reprieve.
From 2017 to now isn’t as oppressive
or omnipotent of a depression as those previous years were. It’s like a fine
mist concealing everything around me, and I keep grabbing randomly at any ideas
or notions I thought could guide me out of the fog, though nothing works for
more than a month. Most notable in these efforts was when I fought with a
hysteric determination to move off campus, thinking that I would be less
depressed if I didn’t have to live in a dorm. While having my own space and
something to focus on so intently distracted me for a while, it didn’t solve
any of my problems.
The summer after I came back from
New Zealand, I barely spoke to anyone. I started my gardening business where I would
sit and weed in the hot sun for hours, listening to music and audiobooks. I gardened
in the morning and waited tables at night, quietly assimilating back into my
life. Once I got back to school, I felt like all of my friendships had shifted
while I was away. All of a sudden, nothing was the same. I felt unmoored and
empty. I gained about 30lbs in this time, causing an absolute tank in my
self-esteem and sending whatever hold I had on my gender presentation out the
window. I’m still struggling to climb back from this. I have nothing poetic or
nice to say about it. There’s not a nice way to package up the way I feel about
my own body and present it in a blog post with a nice, neat bow. My thoughts on
this are messy, ugly, unorganized, and raw.
2020 has been a trip for everyone,
I am not special in any of the difficulties I faced this year. Being on unemployment
and food stamps for six months, living with a constant level of anxiety, and having
to change so many aspects of my daily life are not unique experiences. I am
lucky to have been able to lean on my family, and that this period of financial
turmoil did, eventually, end.
At one point, maybe a month into
the pandemic, I was happily lounging at home, collecting the $600/week CARES
act money and appreciating not having to go into work, waiting on customers who
wouldn’t respect the COVID restrictions. I was talking with my therapist, and
she warned me that mimicking depression, i.e., staying in bed all day, not
seeing friends, not having a schedule- could cause depression. I shrugged this
off, assuming I’d be back to work in another few weeks, that this was a
temporary vacation from food service. When that didn’t happen, her warning became
my reality. Although I wasn’t really out of the funk I slipped into when I got
back from New Zealand, I fell headfirst into a new kind of depressive episode.
The two strains of depression compounded into each other with the pandemic,
lack of a schedule, unemployment, and financial difficulties providing the
momentum it needed to fully bowl me over. I felt like shit.
I’ve only started feeling “normal”
again the past few weeks. Getting a job has been a fucking godsend, because I
was fully ready to give up. Applying for over 600 jobs and getting none of them
was one of the most demoralizing things I’ve gone through. But to finally have
a steady paycheck and a set schedule every day, plus having something concrete
I can work towards, has been a lifeline I didn’t realize was so direly needed.
I’m also feeling better because I
upped my meds and started taking Wellbutrin. The combination of being alleviated
from financial difficulties while also getting the chemical boost I needed was
80% of the fix. The rest is still to come. I’m really bad at being patient with
myself. I want to rush towards everything, thinking that if I just make it to
the next milestone, I’ll have time to rest and appreciate it, only to feel like
I have to rush to the next one as soon as I get there. I am still my own least
favorite person. I still hate my body, feel uncomfortable with my gender
presentation, and generally have so much anxiety I think I’ll probably explode
soon. But I have the foundation I needed. 2020 took the rug out from underneath
all of us, but I feel like I might finally have my footing back.
This year, I got to spend New Years
with my sister for the first time since we were little. We sat in her room,
writing down our own reflections from the year. When I left to drive back to
Baltimore the next morning, we both cried. Our grandfather is in the hospital,
our parents are lonely, our lives are changed, and we have no idea when we’ll
see each other again. I live so far away from the rest of my family, and with
the entire world up in the air, it feels impossible to know when I’ll get to be
with them again. It feels impossible to make plans that won’t be swallowed by
the black hole of this pandemic. One of the reflection prompts asked what
advice I would give to myself at the beginning of the year, and the only thing
I could come up with was, “you’ll cope as well as you can.” It’s advice, a
command, and a prediction that has always been true. I have always done the
best I could with the coping mechanisms I had, and 2021 will be no different.
Anyway, more album posts coming
soon. So far, I’ve loved the way this project has opened up conversations.
People I haven’t spoken to since high school have reached out to me to talk
about my posts. A few strangers, too. I feel seen by these interactions, I feel
productive, and I feel connected. Although I still think these posts are a
shout into the void, especially when my real agenda for writing them is to get
Phoebe Bridgers to notice me[1]
and that hasn’t happened yet. But it’s really, really nice to be able to spark
conversations by writing about the things I care about. Here’s to more of that
in 2021.
[1]
When will I ever shut the fuck up about this, you ask? Hopefully soon because I’m
driving myself and everyone around me INSANE!!!
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