A Short Reflection on Depression

*Note* This story is not everyone and could be triggering, a warning before you scroll. But if you do, thanks for reading.

One minute I was fine. It was spring. I was out with the few friends I had made so far in Alabama. It was hot, because of course it was. Other than approximately three weeks in January, it’s always hot.

We were at a nothing-special local event. Children played in inflatable castles and street tacos were served. Families brought their lawn chairs out on the heated asphalt for the live music. The artist played a lulling cover of “Tennessee Whiskey”. I remember smiling then.

I had a few beers. Probably four, maybe five? Nothing crazy, but certainly over the “medically recommended” amount of one per day for a woman.

Then I got home. What happened?

Mostly everything is black. I’m crying. I don’t really know why. I fade in and take a pill. Another. Black again. Fade in and I’m in the shower. For some reason I’m sitting, water pouring over me, still crying. I don’t remember this, but I call a friend. I let them in. They call a car.

Black.

I fade back in. I’m in the emergency room. A busy floor of movement under hazy, yellow fluorescent lights. I see my friend sitting across from me, still but mostly a blur. Another friend’s there, standing near by.

“Shit.”

Black again.

I wake up. Numb.

It’s just me now and the employees at the ER. My friends are gone. I’m in a blue paper shirt and pants, and I’m not even in a room. Just up against the wall in the hallway on a bed. I sit up.

“Are you hungry?” a nurse asks me.

I nod.

My phone is gone. The nurses had taken it. I almost panic, but my friend left their number for me at the desk for when I woke up. I walk over to the hospital phone attached to the wall to call them.

I’m awake now.

I lie back down. Blank. A nurse comes by and leans next to me in my hallway bed. She asks what happened. Expressionless I say that I had been drinking, and I took maybe six anti-anxiety pills? I don’t know why. She says they’ll talk with another doctor and come back soon.

My friend arrives. They tell me I’ll probably be there for a while.

“What?”

The nurse comes back and asks them what happened. They tell her I took 10 pills. The nurse turns to me, “You said six.”

“Fuck.”

I learn the nurse is consulting with another specialist to decide whether or not I’m still a threat to myself, whether I need to be institutionalized for two or three days. At least.

“No no no. What have I done? I have to work tomorrow. I’m working on an important story.”

I ask my friend to call my mom, tell her what happened. I don’t remember much anyway. They debrief her, and then put me on the phone to speak.

“Why did you do what you did?” she asks through tears.

“I don’t know.”

I tell her not to worry, no need to come down. I’m fine.

I was fine.

I am fine. Fine enough, luckily. The nurse says they believe I’m okay to leave the hospital. I guess saying six pills worked. But I need to be monitored for the rest of the day. Like a toddler. My friend agrees to chaperone.

That entire day is a blur. I’m functioning. Talking, walking, eating, moving. But through a fog. I sleep a lot.

Then the next day I go to work. Like nothing happened. Like I didn’t just lose the will to live two nights before.

I feel lucky. I feel lucky my friends showed up. I feel lucky I had recently got a job with good health insurance, because I’m 26 now and God knows what my medical bill would have been had I not.

I feel happy I’m alive.

I feel.

I no longer feel that type of pain. I can’t explain exactly what it was or how or why, even to my therapist. It will probably take time — months, years, for me to decipher. But that will take thinking about it. And I haven’t wanted to. This if the first time in four months I really have. It happened. I wanted to move on.

I know parts of it were circumstantial. Stress, loneliness. Bad day after bad week after bad month. Part of it was psychiatric. I’d recently started a new dose of a psychiatric drug, and found out the hard way that if you start something that does not work for you then you can have a really bad few months.

But I recognized that part enough to work it out, however uneasy. Circumstances started raveling together. They’re still raveling together, but are at least tight enough to help me feel in place — secure enough.

I know I can’t continue to ignore the day. I know part of moving forward is looking at myself, and acknowledging the features and intricacies of the darkness I felt.

And I wanted to be open about who I am, and where I’ve been.

There’s often an unrealistic societal perception of what depression looks like.

But I can hold up a mirror now and see — depression can look exactly like me.

***

If you need help now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1–800–273–8255 and the Crisis Text Line is 741741.