Absently Searching

I am Afraid of Happiness

I do not let happinesses’ warm fingers caress my face like sunlight. I do not let it unthaw my soul. I trained myself long ago to believe that happiness will always be taken away one day. Too much happiness means a lot of pain is looming in the background.

The TV show This is Us, has an episode in which Randal says that the need to meet his birth-parents is like a constant ringing in his ears. Sometimes it’s quieter and sometimes it’s louder but it is always there. I have swaddled this metaphor and held it close to my heart because it encapsulates so much of what I feel. Through every fun conversation, behind every smile and vibrating in my mind amidst every giggle is the thought that I will be unhappy again. That black hole of nothingness and numbness will swallow me up once more. It has come to the point that happiness feels like a tease. It’s like a joke played on myself by depression. “Here feel something” it smirks, a frozen wasteland, letting me taste sunlight, only to wrap me and suffocate me in its cold embrace once more.

Happiness terrifies me. It begs me to trust it. It tempts me with its warmth and comfort. It tries to befriend me but I cannot take its hand.

I came to a point in my life where I gave up on trying to be happy for other people. I gave my family a glimpse into what I felt on the inside. The energy it took to keep up my facade, had escaped me. I sat on the couch for hours, not moving, staring, unresponsive as if I was brain-dead. I did this for days at a time. Moving from one place to the other just staring–not faking smiles or interest when it wasn’t there.

I had told my parents previously that I needed help. After years of silence. After years of both of us ignoring an obviously critical problem I asked for help. They completely ignored me. I don’t mean they brushed me off and told me I was fine. I don’t mean they mocked me. I don’t mean they said I just wanted attention. I mean they said nothing. As if I’d imagined myself speaking they responded with silence. I said it again: “I think I have depression. I need help.” As if they hadn’t heard me they began a new conversation with each other. I cried silently for the rest of the hour and a half drive home and neither of them said a word to me.

Once my mom got to see how little I could really care about my relationships, conversation, life, work, sleep, being awake, anything… and once she realized how much of my life I faked, she quickly went from ignoring my cry for help to believing I was not sane.

After I dropped out of university and lived at home unemployed barely ever leaving my house, my mom and I ran into the mother of one of my old friends. She asked me how I was and my mother witnessed me smile and laugh and charm her into believing my life was fantastic, I’d made amazing choices, I couldn’t be happier. I’ve never seen my mom look so scared. I think she finally realized how good I’d become at faking it. It: wanting to exist. I think she finally started asking herself the right questions: ‘How long has my daughter been fooling me? Why would she hide her true feeling from me for so long?’

Fear

Fear born within my stomach

Stretches out its arms

Tiny little twigs

That utterly disarm

It grows beyond its boundaries

Pulling at my chest

Paralyzes me for naught

So I can never rest

It pulses when my heart pumps

It inflated when I breathe

When I move it shudders

But it never leaves

It shakes my mind for thinking

I tingle when it laughs

And anywhere I try to go

It stops me in my path

Anything that calms me

It calls the enemy

Threatens my existence

Unless I swear to flee

So here I sit in silence

I stare but cannot see

Feeling naught but emptiness

Just my fear and me

The New Antidepressant: Sex

I got off the antidepressants about a year and a half after starting them. I was angry to have been put on bipolar medication with so little analysis and counselling. Though several friends I had confided in had agreed that it was a correct diagnosis, I denied it.

I didn’t need the medication anymore, I’d found the key to the happy hormones I lacked: sex.

After 20 years of having no interest in physical contact I joined Tinder, met a stranger and lost my virginity to him on our third time meeting. I’ve heard that people who’ve experienced trauma end up forcing themselves to relive it over and over again.

Sex became something I needed. Without it I would spiral into depression and experience wild mood swings. Yet, I did not remain with any of my partners long.

5…4…3…

Death is calling to me

As giggles roll through my body,

As I fail at something new,

As I look over at the nobody

That fills the whole room.

He whispers to me,

While busyness unfolds into nothingness,

And too much noise shuts the doors into silence,

My reflection growing more grotesque

As I transform from plaintive to violent.

Death sits with me,

Watches my dreams,

And I sleep in his arms,

He says we’re on the same team—

I fall for his charm.

I can cry silently in a room full of people,

Write about suicide in buildings with steeples,

Fear the highs because I anticipate the lows,

Consumed by this Giant, as the madness grows.

Death counts with me

As minutes barely pass.

Then suddenly weeks are lost,

And he’s been counting down till I crash,

And I’ve been double-crossed.

Blood

~Inspired by In My Blood by Shawn Mendes

A sudden flame of anger burns

Me up, and never dies.

The daggers that are stabbing

Me, escape me through my eyes.

A fear that freezes till I’m shaking,

I can’t steady my voice.

Fight or flight? I’m frozen,

You act like I have a choice.

Deflated lungs that represent

My heart, my mind, my soul.

I’m all warmth and smiles outside,

But inside, I’m corpse cold.

Murmurers mumble that it’s all for show,

But my heart can’t pump this mud.

How do I battle an enemy

That’s living in my blood.

I poison it with alcohol

And feel a moment’s rapture

But my guts will punish me

With physical torture after.

I soothe it with medicine,

It supplements the villain,

Puts my mind to sleep

So my enemy can settle in.

Speed up my heart with natural cures,

Like sex, adventure, friends

But I just feel more alone

When the superficiality ends.

My greatest nemesis

Overcomes my veins by flood.

I haven’t given in yet;

It isn’t in my blood.

Antidepressants

Sometimes being self-aware is a curse. It creates an anxiety around every action and decision. Some of the first memories I have involve me restraining my excitement. I didn’t want people to notice me. I remember thinking ‘people will think you want attention.’ Now I ask myself: is that a bad thing? Isn’t that a normal thing?

I remember as a child not wanting to feel joy. I associated happiness with disappointment. I thought happiness was foolish. It meant I trusted something enough to allow it to affect me. I thought I was being smart by denying myself happiness. If I didn’t feel hope I would never have that hope dashed to pieces. I was preparing myself for the worst possible outcomes.

I didn’t tell my parents I was skipping school. Eventually, the school stopped calling when I didn’t show up. I didn’t tell my parents I was staying up all night because waking up alive devastated me. I didn’t tell them that some nights, I would drug myself with massive doses of headache pills so I could fall asleep without having to lie awake in silence for too long.

I didn’t tell them I exercised at night because I was afraid of gaining weight or that I didn’t eat for days at a time or that I loved that feeling of hunger. I didn’t tell them that sometimes I would inflict pain upon myself. It made me feel like I was receiving punishment I deserved. It made me feel a physical hurt that was preferable to the mental agony I couldn’t give up on.

I didn’t want my parents to think I just wanted attention.

I finally sought help in my second year of university. I had started sleeping with the lights on because I was imagining demons in my room when I closed my eyes.

The antidepressants made me dozy and unable to focus. I was dizzy and my mind felt cloudy all the time. It was a different kind of numbness. Vegetable-like. I couldn’t hold a conversation. I was an English and History major but I’d lost my ability to read. I slept constantly. I stopped making eye-contact.

Anger and Forgiveness

“Do Not Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anger” Ephesians 4:26b ESV

Forgiveness. Often it is something I forget to give myself. I am capable of mistakes I did not believe I would ever make. Yet, in the moment they happen, the decision is so easy.

Last week I travelled somewhere tropical for the first time in my life. I got to escape winter. I hoped I would also be able to escape depression. The sunshine kept me warm and my anxieties were basking in it along with me. Silent, but ever present.

A perfectly tempered breeze came to caress me exactly when I thought I might be getting too warm. The Cubans smiled and held the same perfect warmth. Cuba made me question why I ever felt content in a country with winter.

Sometimes the person you need to be gentle with is yourself. Sometimes you must forgive your own mistakes, no matter how hard. You must do it to survive.

I went to Cuba seeking peace. I found that seeking can be dangerous when you don’t know what you’re looking for. I am curious. I want to touch, feel and experience everything. There is no sense of danger and no awareness. There is only seeking with a hunger close to starvation. I would break down prison gates to find it. It: that something I’m longing for. I broke down prison gates only to find myself locked inside the prison of my own mistakes.

Views from Ocean Vista Azul, Varadeo, Cuba

Love in Place of Guilt

It is my desire to strive to be a better me every day. I have interpreted my life experiences as a message to myself that reminds me over and over how terrible I am. I associate this guilt with religion.

However, I believe inner peace can be found in loving others without judgement. Rather than disparaging myself I wish to focus on the value of others. One message I have held onto from Christianity is to love others.

It is difficult not to judge. I hear a story of some terrible act, told not with regret, but with humour or relayed without any shame, and I think ‘I would never do that.’

Each day I am reminded that I should never underestimate the evil in myself. Never overestimate the evil in others. I continually surprise myself in the worst ways. Humility is a key component in love. Judgement often comes from the belief that I am superior in some way.

Self-love and self-acceptance are currently highly promoted. I believe loving yourself is important. I also believe that the self-love we support so strongly today is being promoted counter-intuitively.

Posting selfies constantly and seeking approval from others only drags down our self-esteem. We focus on our appearance rather than what our talents and gifts can contribute to the world. Posting on social media becomes about how many likes a photo can get. Changing how we look or present ourselves to get the highest amount of responses is not self-love.

At work, I listen to stories of people cheating on spouses. I listen to women say they’re glad a co-worker died. I listen to people saying they hate someone who, in my mind, is very similar to them. I listen to men calling women they’ve slept with, whores. While I have an opinion, my place is not to judge. Why is humanity like this? How can I display love and not judgement?

I have discovered that the best way to witness hate is to respond with love. The best way to tolerate bullying is to respond with understanding.

Kindess for all.

I Don’t Know What I’m Looking For

Is happiness so elusive?

I went to a counsellor a few years ago, after my family Doctor’s intern tried to send me to a hospital. I told the counsellor: “I don’t believe anyone is happy.”

From there, I was sent to a Psychologist. I waited for 30 minutes past my designated appointment time, in a room with people I deemed crazy and thought, am I one of them? After speaking to me for 2 minutes I was diagnosed: Bipolar Disorder. He added the medication to my antidepressants and sent me home.

My mother had emailed our Doctor to tell him I’d had a manic episode. I’d gone from hours and days of sitting on the couch staring, unresponsive at the wall, to cleaning the house, making strange jokes, and being filled with unexplained energy. I hadn’t explained it for a reason.

In a house of contained emotions, stifled sexuality, and painted on perfection, I’d discovered release. I had to keep it quiet to keep it safe.

As a 20 year old woman who’d been ‘outed’ to her Family Doctor, as a psycho, I felt betrayed once more by my mother. Creating mountains out of mole hills was her way of ‘showing she cared’ but it made me want to drag those mountains on top of myself.

“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move”
Matthew 17:20 ESV