To Reference After The Disaster: When The Warning Signs of Depression Are Ignored

by Angeline Walsh

Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

Are you sitting down? I have some things to tell you.

***

Try to recall a moment when the panic began. (This is a trick question.) It’s not a pinpoint moment, but a years-long slow burn, simmering into a depression and now boiling over. But your therapist will ask, when did the panic begin? And this is what you should say:

“This stew of mental distress is made up of many long-gone moments, but the body and the brain do not forget. The quick-breath terror and anxiety-hot anger are committed to physical memory. A busy brain forges familiar fears.”

You don’t say it. You just nod as she tells you about yourself and you take another tissue.

***

Here’s something: most people don’t know what depression is. When you tell adults in your life that you’re depressed, they won’t understand that you have a disease; they’ll hear that you’re experiencing an unpleasant emotion. When you tell these adults that you’ve suffered a nervous breakdown, they won’t understand that you experienced a cataclysmic event so intense that it destroyed your perception of reality and triggered mental compulsions that will burn neural pathways in your brain; they’ll hear that you’re going through a phase.

You never told anyone when you held your breath. It was the summer after the sixth grade, when your hair fell out. It was evening. You lay still on your back, and you closed your eyes, and you stopped your breathing. As your heart hammered, you imagined how they’d find you, and the relief of the burden. You were so tired. (You’re still so tired.)

***

Fifteen is torment.

All-consuming, chest-heavy anguish is just one aspect of the misery, because the thing about being a depressed obsessive-compulsive teenager, you’ll discover, is that no one believes you.

You say, “I’m so tired,” but they tell you that you haven’t done anything to warrant the exhaustion. But you know: you are tired, so tired. Your body is like lead. You fall asleep standing in public.

You say, “I think I’m depressed,” and they tell you that “you’re too young to be depressed. There are people who have real problems. How can you say you’re miserable when you haven’t experienced anything?” But you have experienced years of bullying, online and at school, cruelty and ostracization from teachers and peers alike. You used to be a child with a myriad of friends who sang on stage and organized clubs with your classmates. Now you have panic attacks at the thought of speaking aloud. You don’t even know these are panic attacks because you’ve only seen panic attacks in children’s TV shows, where someone hyperventilates into a paper bag. You only know that anxiety has been your baseline for years, and that anything can tip it over.

You say, “I believe I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I came across an article on it and it describes everything I’m feeling,” and your parents tell you firmly, “No, you don’t. Stop self-diagnosing. It’s harmful.” But you know something is wrong, though everyone keeps telling you that there isn’t. A therapist tells you to practice “thought-stopping.” She tells you that each time you have a “bad” thought to pause and scold yourself, “Stop! Stinkin’ no thinkin’!” as if your thoughts are errant children instead of misfirings of an overactive brain. It doesn’t work. (You later learn that this advice is very, very bad for OCD treatment.) Another therapist tells you that you suffer from something called rumination, but that OCD is something completely different. But you know they’re wrong. You know, you just don’t know how to prove it.

The message is clear: Do not trust your own self. You are undeserving of the heaviness that you harbor, silly little girl.

***

In the autumn of your Sophomore year, something snaps. You’re crying over a pot of spaghetti sauce. It’s not the sauce’s fault. You said you’d check on it, and as soon as you’re alone with it—the familiar aroma of ground beef and tomato, the low whir of the stovetop fan, the wide-open empty kitchen, wooden spoon in hand—something breaks. It’s nothing. Your dad rushes in. What’s wrong? Nothing—that’s the problem. But oh, it hurts.

***

OCD is also called “The Doubting Disease.” The experience of the disorder isn’t cute and tidy like its nickname. The alliteration adds whimsicality to it, like an indie comedy film but without the charm. Funny.

***

What makes you happy? Just think, what makes you happy? Your mind is static. You can’t remember.

***

You built your mind’s rooms as a respite and filled them with what no one else can see, touch, or take. Every scenario you’ve imagined, every character you’ve invented or met in the pages of the novels you consume, every sweet childhood memory, all your almosts and only-ifs are collected and preserved. But the plaster is peeling, and the ceilings are swollen, ready to cave. To you, dreamy and lofty-minded, the imagined is as immediate as the tangible. There is no reality or unreality, only actualized fiction. Your fears aren’t threats; they are occurrences.

The world—your world—is collapsing.

***

The anxiety has depleted your appetite, turned your stomach to stone. Swallowing food is a struggle. All of it tastes like an afterthought. The adults in your life gush, look at you: you’re thinner, lighter. What are you doing differently?

***

One thing remains: in the dark, exhausted and wide awake, you write. The sentences are pleas. None of it is good, but it’s good for now. You think, I can still write. I am falling apart, I am fading away, but this can’t be taken from me. This is mine. The expulsion of words doesn’t untangle the mass of worry, but it does tug at and loosen it—just a little.

You remember first grade, the year you learned to read and the year you began to write: Germany, 2000. Stories were to be taken seriously. No frivolities, no excuses—each student must write one short story every morning. So you were given a notebook and commanded: write. (To this day, it’s the only thing you don’t mind being told to do.) Then, you had the world in the grip of your pencil.

In your bed, at 4 am, you have the world again, just for a while.

***

The first dosage will be small, but it’s an anchor. Sinking is no longer an option. Hold on.

***

Thoughts are not things. These are not your problems to solve. Some questions don’t have answers.

***

One day, you remember again. Maybe it’s just the SSRI, but the hope is real. It’s Springtime. It’s like living a metaphor. You don’t want to lose this feeling.

You open a fresh notebook and list anything that makes you happy, that makes you feel human: Telling ghost stories. Ferry boats. Haribo gummy bears. Lightning on the ocean. An unexpected compliment. Watching a favorite movie with someone who hasn’t seen it before. Being the last one awake at a sleepover. Keeping a secret.

***

Happiness is a doubt, like everything else. You will discover that misery is more comfortable, it’s the same each time. It knows how to settle. An old obsession leaves and a new one moves in. In between there’s unnatural stillness, your brain an empty unit desperate for a renter.

But listen to me: happiness is a byproduct of circumstances. There’s something else internal, born of hope. It requires fewer external contingencies and less grandiose displays of elation. Happiness can be stolen; joy is too close to the soul for theft.

You will learn that anxiety is not a dead weight; it’s just an accessory you carry, even on your good days. The dread never dies completely. Stop waiting for revelations. Reassurance is futile: no answer, however crystal-clear, will satisfy a brain bent on endless scrutiny. So settle into the uncertainty. A little mystery never killed anyone. The worst may occur, but it won’t be the end. It won’t end you.

***

Phantom grief is common for people like us. We mourn the divide: there was The Before the onset of the illness, and The After. You imagine a miraculous big bang of synapses and chemical reactions melding your mind into its previous self. You think, someday, all of this will be like a lucid nightmare—it was real for a small space of time, and now it’s lost to the ether.

I want to be the one to tell you this, although I wish it weren’t so: there is only The After.

***

The disorder is deep. It can’t be cut away so easily. You must be willing to get your hands dirty pulling the rot up by the roots. It’s too late to shy away from that soil, so go get a shovel.

Come down to earth picturing your worst fears unraveling. Realize the catastrophes. Heave them to the surface. They’re like ghosts, gone in the light. Some of them will follow you but keep going—I’m waiting for you on the other side of fear.

***

That’s everything for now, I think. Try not to dwell on it, okay?

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Gabriel Nathan | EDITOR: Evan Bowen-Gaddy | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman

See Related Recovery Stories: Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health First Person Essays, OCD