tired plant kid

”Spatial sequence synesthesia

Those with spatial sequence synesthesia (SSS) tend to see numerical sequences as points in space. For instance, the number 1 might be farther away and the number 2 might be closer. People with SSS may have superior memories; in one study, they were able to recall past events and memories far better and in far greater detail than those without the condition. They also see months or dates in the space around them. Some people see time like a clock above and around them.” I’ve always, always perceived numbers, letters, dates, time, and the calendar as visual layouts in my mind. They’ve always been there, and they’ve always stayed the same. I can’t properly explain it, and I couldn’t build an exact model on a computer program or anything, but there’s a definite spatial perception of all these things in my brain.  ”Misophonia

Misophonia is a neurological disorder in which negative experiences (anger, flight, hatred, disgust) are triggered by specific sounds. Richard Cytowic suggests that misophonia is related to, or perhaps a variety of, synesthesia. Miren Edelstein and her colleagues have compared misophonia to synesthesia in terms of connectivity between different brain regions as well as specific symptoms. They formed the hypothesis that “a pathological distortion of connections between the auditory cortex and limbic structures could cause a form of sound-emotion synesthesia” It doesn’t matter how soft a sound is, there are just certain things (and not always specific things, like it can be just a steady thumping, barely audible, but I still will be incredibly angry at the noise, enough to keep me from sleeping [this happened last night]) that instantaneously send a shock of anger/rage/severe annoyance in me. Sometimes I’ll have to leave a room or put headphones on really loud until I can’t even hear the faintest whisp of the noise, just to calm down.  ”Grapheme-color synesthesia

fisher loves people, he thrives on attention from anyone and everyone, and clearly finds spiritual fuel in the college campus environment with its never-ending stream of people willing to pet and praise. his curiosity and trusting nature assist me in learning how to talk to people, slowly working over the walls that anxiety has built for me. perhaps his greatest strength as an ESA is connecting me with others. 

i am slow to rise but i fall so well

i am out of orbit // it's still not far enough away from you

arresting in the winter sky, a trifecta of unintentional morse code— orion’s belt glimmers across the miles. what cosmic closet did he choose it from?

in rhapsody

the stars are thousands,  bright souls reflected as you surface under moonlight  and release your warm breath. it smells of salmon.  you glide through the darkness  gentle beside your aunt  your cousins click softly  you swim always together.  they are close.  as you break the surface, scattering starlight on the waves,  you twist in the salty air and you do not submerge again.  you continue upwards.  you hear them, your family, they click and you feel their voices as you ascend into brightness cradled by the wind, guided by the stars.  you swim towards peace.  in rhapsody you leave this plane,  to deeper seas and thicker beds of kelp. 

you were so exuberant. you were so playful. you were so alive. you were bursting. if ever a being was graced with a fitting name, it was you, dear rhapsody. you were blue, you were lilac, you were a flash of ultraviolet. the waves crashed for you, the kelp floated for you, the salmon ran for you. 

I wasn’t particularly enthused to move to Laramie, Wyoming in the late summer of 2013. I had graduated high school earlier that year and was enrolled in the University of Wyoming as a Zoology student. My very existence was riddled with anxiety and depression; relocating from the lush Midwest to the dry American west was a daunting prospect. Excited as I was to start college, there was a heavy dose of hesitation.

At over 7000 feet above sea level, Laramie sits between two swaths of mountains in an arid, windswept basin. Frigid winters descend every autumn and blast the university town with arctic winds until late spring. The thawing of the ice that seems eternal is cause for celebration here; when shades of grey are suddenly replaced with the greens of the new season it can still be below 50 degrees but residents of Laramie will be walking around with brown and gold t shirts, pride for our school ever-present. As homecoming approaches, businesses of every sort will display signs and decorations warning of ‘Poke pride on premises’, and even the cashiers at our stand-in shopping mall, Wal-Mart, will don their Cowboy gear. 

This is a town with immense pride and respect for itself and the institution of education that lights up the place with its diversity and excellence. My first year at the University, while desperately difficult from an academic standpoint, was an experience like no other. I could walk to class and hear at least one other language being spoken on the way, I could attend seminars by scientists recognized internationally for their findings, I could casually pass by graduate students from all around the world as they discussed the advanced physics of engineering while I checked my phone for the dining hall’s lunch menu. 

I would befriend brilliant people with interests as varied as the clouds in Laramie’s vast Wyoming sky; the friends I made were like none I had met before. We would commiserate over chemistry before taking long late-night walks around campus talking about our lives, our futures, our goals and dreams. We would laugh raucously at lunch before meeting in the Union to study feverishly for finals. As my friendships ebbed and flowed with the ever-changing weather, so did my very sense of self.

I had applied to UW intent on studying science, improving my knowledge of the environment and the wildlife I was so passionate about. The professors I met through my time in the Zoology department would become powerful inspirations and dear friends; working with them, learning from them, I was able to explore my interests like never before. However, as time passed, my grades fell, and I looked towards the coming years, I became confused with what I wanted, and fell into a deep depression.

I took daily walks around campus and around town, getting to know the layout of my new home by foot. I watched birds in the park, strolled around the beautiful campus, visited downtown to shop, and began feeling more at home than I had in the early weeks of school. My favourite place to go was Laprele Park, almost a mile from campus, where the small lake hosted kingfishers and mallards and the dry grass attracted the large flocks of crows that roosted around town. A panoramic view of the mountain ranges that bookend the town, as well as the gigantic sky that lights up brilliant blue in the day and soft salmon in the evening was present at Laprele.  The local string of pronghorn frequented the rolling hills at the east end of the park, and I enjoyed watching their slick summer hair turn to a bright, plush coat of winter insulation. The birds, the pronghorn, they became my silent companions as I walked through rain, sun, and snow, drowning my sorrows in the windy solitude.

In this silence, under the sky streaked with high-flying ravens and the magnificent Swainson’s hawks, I wrote love letters to lost lovers, cried while cold rain drenched my clothes, and stood facing the distant hills, wondering if I would ever find the strength to summit the mountains of my inner demons. I released my soul to the Laramie sky there, a hundred times over, and the pronghorn scraped at grasses fed by my joys and dried by my troubles.  

It was during this time that the town gave me the greatest gift of all, one that would transform my life like never before. One evening I was sitting in my recliner in my lonely dorm room—I didn’t have a roommate, my own preference—and found the website of the Laramie animal shelter. It seemed foolish to peruse the faces of the adoptable dogs and cats without the ability to take one home, but as I laid my eyes on the image of a large, black and white dog called Fisher, my soul was sparked with something fierce. I rushed the mile on foot to the shelter as soon as it was open the next day, and asked to see him. The shelter worker brought him out to the play yard where I was waiting, and I could feel the ground shift. Thus began the crusade to secure this gentle, nervous dog as my own.

 Through the late-winter/early-spring snow, rain, and sun, while managing my schoolwork and social life, I walked daily, sometimes twice a day, to the shelter to visit Fisher. I spent hours and hours with him indoors and out, gaining his trust and learning from him. He was a shy, anxious soul and I found much of myself in his nervous ways. He needed time and space, and that I gave him. It wasn’t long before he curled up beside me, paw resting across my folded legs, and fell asleep contentedly. The shelter staff found this endearing as well as incredible; they frequently reminded me of how special it was for this nervous dog to trust me as deeply as he did. I’m not one to believe in fate, but—and the shelter staff and my friends agreed—our bond was inscribed in the heart of some star, waiting for our story to unfold.  

Upon learning that my mental illnesses qualified me for an emotional support animal, one that would be accepted to live in the residence halls, I began to call, write, email, and visit anyone and everyone involved in the process of approving Fisher’s adoption and allowance into my dorm. It was a long, arduous couple of weeks, one fraught with uncertainty and the most intense desperation.  Even before he was officially approved, before I signed the adoption paperwork, Fisher was inspiring me to overcome challenges in my life. With him by my side, I grew more confident, more outgoing, and my growth paralleled his. After I brought him home, he blossomed along with me into a new and brighter being. Together we walked under the late-morning shadows of the row of trees on Ivinson, maneuvered the busy weekday traffic of students rushing to class, and spent countless hours sitting on Prexy’s Pasture to the comforting din of university life. I introduced him to my place of pilgrimage: Laprele Park. The evening sun lit up the reflective strips on his support dog vest as he trotted alongside me, the long fur on his tail windswept by the breezes hinting at coming storms.

thats what happened this morning. dont get me started on college mulder/scully, im all over that 

Depression is a most insufferable of afflictions, the most disastrous of maladies. It is the manifestation of the burning core of human suffering present our species, bringing to the surface the inevitable doom that a human existence breeds. It is depression’s bastardization of this often suppressed uncertainty into an imperial agony that makes it so potent. Truly a wolf in the wooliest of sheep’s clothing, the disease is a bitter friend, an abusive lover, a rainbow made only of shades of grey. It is an ever present comfort even as it tears at the skin, caressing the soul with needles and knives. In depression, one comes to seek this terrible companionship, almost as one would yearn for the tender warmth of a more traditional partner. Depression in all its violence creates such a storm in one’s mind that only the evil that wrought such chaos can be a suitable confidant. It makes one feel so tremendously isolated, so desperately worthless, that one feels undeserving of anyone less cruel than depression herself.

Depression transforms oxygen into mud, thickening the air and making difficult the acts of breathing and moving. If one with depression is lucky enough to get out of their house, the outside world seems incredibly too bright. Everyone looks far too happy, or at least not sad enough. Time slows down while everyone else seems to be moving at lightning pace; a minute for the nondepressed seems an hour for the depressed. As time ticks by ever so slowly, one drags their body around like a heavy burden, weighed down by the growing enormity of their grief.

Depression is a disease of the mind; it builds high walls around it and one has no choice but to sit in squalor at the mercy of the hurricane of emptiness inside their head.  It cuts a hole in the heart and soul, and one can only watch sorrowfully, helplessly, as everything but the sadness washes down, down, and into some dark ocean far off and out of sight. Depression empties one completely until the only thing left to cling to—however much it hurts to do so—is the depression itself.

  “i feel unspeakably lonely. and i feel - drained. it is a blank state of mind and soul i cannot describe to you as i think it would not make any difference. also it is a very private feeling i have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. i am often questioning myself what i further want to do, who i further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. no answers, darling. at all.” -Anne Sexton

  One feels sorrowful for the loss of this sadness when, once in a blue moon, a day comes where the brightness is not as blinding, the emptiness is not as cavernous, the air is not as mired.  Addicted to the comfortable nullity, the familiar ache, one becomes quickly anxious for its return when on those rare occasions it fades for a while. Depression, in this way, is so subtly dangerous, attaching comfort to coldness and a sense of home to desolation. It builds a home for itself even as it tears its host apart.

“Depression was something that was braided so deep into us that there was no separating it from our character and personality.” –Andrew Solomon 

Depression becomes an identity. It indeed is so closely entwined with the mind, heart, and soul that there is no way to dislodge it without ripping apart the very essence of oneself.  Thus, it is difficult and nearly impossible to imagine life without depression, to be without depression. The before, the after, they might as well not exist; they are ghosts of a present full of demons. Haunted day and night by a silent assassin, life with depression is not life at all, but a conscious version of death. Dulled are ones senses, drained is ones capacity to feel anything beyond utter despair, and debilitated are ones movements. Stripped away are ones passions, darkened are ones thoughts, and vanished are all hopes.  The greyscale world seen through the lens of depression is one where the prospect of happiness, or even neutrality, not only goes to perish, but to be subjected to torment for which it seems there will be no end. 

 There is no singular experience of depression, and yet it is never gentle. It is never kind. It never allows those in its grasp to see their worth, to believe in their strength, to ponder a possible end to its torture. And yet, despite the suffocating hold that it has on its sufferers, there are so many who have fought this terrible disease, who have found meaning in their suffering. It is not an unconquerable affliction, but it is not easily overpowered. And, once one has seemingly vanquished this dark devil, there is always the threat of its return. Without warning, it can steal you away once again, perhaps even more violent than before. But-- and this is the greatest weakness of depression-- there is always light, and those who have been devoid of it for long enough will be the best at seeking it out.