Drowning in Self

When I was in my first semester in college, I became depressed.  Clinically depressed, mind you.  Not the “depressed” that every teenager moans they feel when they are sad.  It was an all-consuming succubus that sapped my energy, gluing me to the bed and making me stare off into space for hours on end, trapped in my own mind.  It caused my eyes to dart quickly across pages of books, so that reading became almost impossible.  And it was the ever-present feeling of the weight of a wet blanket draped over me like a child with a bedsheet pretending to be a ghost on Halloween. It was a black hole, and I was falling into it, not wanting to be rescued.

I recognized the signs, and although staying in my warm cocoon of self-pity was comforting, I got help.  I went to therapy.  I took the medication they prescribed.  And I tried. I made changes to my life.  I made changes to my habits – exercise, forcing myself to do things that I once found enjoyable, etc.  It wasn’t until a year after my boyfriend left me – a year spent in vain, losing weight and trying to be “fun”, in effort to try to win him back – when I moved on with my life that I finally pulled away from the clutches of the darkness.  

Looking back, I see evidence that I might have had underlying depression years before it finally overtook me.  I once read that depression is contagious.  After having depression, I understand how that it possible.  You don’t want to be helped, and when people try to help you – and they do – they get pulled in as well.  It’s like that feeling after you take a short nap, and you wake up wanting to sleep a little longer.  And then, after sleeping a little longer, you wake up and want just a little longer, over and over and over.

I’m convinced that my depression started when I was living with my mother, right after my father left us.  That’s a big change for a kid.  But then there’s the little things that wear you down.  Like when your mother sends you to the corner store almost every day to buy each of you a pint of ice cream, and she gives you rolls of pennies to pay for it.  Then you sit there with her and eat your pints of ice cream in one sitting.  And your father feels so guilty for leaving that he buys you a banana split from the ice cream place across the street from his new apartment every Sunday that you visit.  And you watch your school pictures over the next few years go from a skinny little girl that’s active and open, to an overweight hulk with 3 chins that is teased by the other kids for being overweight so she stays indoors all the time and closes herself off.  

When I was in 6th grade, and at my biggest, my mother decided that it would be a good idea to have a mother/daughter portrait taken.  To get me to smile a genuine smile, and not the robotic “cheese” smile of an adolescent forced into a picture-taking session, the cameraman told me to say “boys”.  I laughed – and inadvertently smiled – because it was absurd.  But it also embarrassed the shit out of me. Even now, when I think back to that photo session, I get embarrassed.  I eventually lost the weight – and destroyed almost every photographic shred of evidence of myself being that heavy, as I could not stand to see myself look like that – but the insecurities I developed during that time stayed with me, always.    

Right now I am watching The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu.  It’s about a dystopian society in which the few women that are able to still reproduce are forced to bare the children of rich, powerful men because their wives cannot and the population is dwindling.  They live in a rigid society, governed by religious zealots.  I find myself drawn to dystopian society movies and television shows. I believe that is because I’m dissatisfied with the society we live in.  I want the world to go back to a simpler way of life – the way life was long before I was born – where the expectations put on women were no more than to cook and clean and make babies.  Nowadays we’re expected to be men – or even more than men.  We have to constantly fight for our position in this world, simply because society has moved so far away from our old position that it is now unobtainable to most.  

The dystopian societies portrayed on television and in the movies are meant to be the worst society can become…however, in each story the dystopian society is another person’s utopia – after all, that’s how the dystopian society came to be.  And while I would never wish to live in the dystopian society of The Handmaid’s Tale, I do find myself looking longingly at the characters in The Walking Dead.  Let me say that never in a million years would I wish my loved ones in a world where we had to run for our lives from zombies trying to kill us, but I do love the freedom the characters have.  They are living their lives gathering resources: food, water, clothing, shelter – doing meaningful things.  We live our lives doing tasks for money, which in turn we use to purchase resources - I don’t find that fulfilling.  I find more joy in making my own bread than I do with making a spreadsheet.  The best part of my life is when I’m cooking for my family, or cleaning my house.  It’s meaningful.  

During my early teen years – but really during my whole life – I was heavily into video games.  My mother, being raised in the era before the video game craze, was against video games, and therefore did not buy me many – if any.  She did, however, buy me a subscription to Nintendo Power, the most awesome video game magazine of all time.  When it was time to renew my Nintendo Power, my mother – amazingly - took advantage of a deal they were running.  If you renewed the magazine for 3 years, you got a free game – Dragon Warrior III, for the NES.  I never asked for Dragon Warrior III, nor was I aware of the existence of any of the Dragon Warrior games, however, my mother recognized a good deal when she saw one, renewed for the 3 years and I got my free copy of Dragon Warrior III.  

Dragon Warrior III was a RPG – role playing game.  The objective was to kill the bad guy after walking around, talking to people and gaining experience points by killing lesser creatures.  It came with a huge fold out map showing where you needed to go and what experience level the adversaries you would face in each area had.  I loved this game.  I played the game all the time.  

Finally the time came when I would have to travel to the land where the boss of the game lived, and ultimately kill him.  I checked my fold out map to see what level the boss was and what level they recommended I be at before facing him.  I can’t remember exactly what his level number was, but for the sake of argument let’s say his level was 25 and they recommended that you be at least at level 20 before attempting to overtake him.  At the time, I was over the minimum required level to face the boss.  However, being the cautious person that I am, I decided that it would be a good idea to level up a bit more before attempting the take down – after all, I worked hard to get where I was and didn’t want to die and lose it all.  I roamed the forest area of the game, killing foes for small points.  I did this over and over and over until I had reached an experience level of 30.  Now I was ready.  I had an extra edge of 5 experience levels over this guy and my confidence was up. I made my way to the middle of the boss’ domain and faced him in what was to be Dragon Warrior III’s ultimate battle of good vs. evil.  I hit the beast 2 times and he died.  That was it. The game was over in the most Mike Tyson vs. Marvis Frazier way possible.  I overly prepared for the fight and had been too strong, and in doing so was left without the sense of accomplishment that usually comes with beating a video game to which you devoted countless hours.                  

My mother racked up huge credit card debt in order to raise me.  I, being sensitive to our monetary situation, tried to make clothing choices that were more budget friendly – like the $8 boy’s sneakers from Bradlees that I wore during grade school, and chose over and over again when buying sneakers, despite the fact that one of my friends teased me about them by calling them Bobo’s – which was a derogatory term for generic sneakers.  Of course, I was a kid.  And kids are not known for their willpower.  So, when L.A. Gear sneakers appeared on the scene with fancy double laces, fake jewels, a bow at the back and everything girly in all their high-top glory…I couldn’t resist.  I asked for them.  I asked my mother for a pair of $75 sneakers when a pair of good sneakers didn’t cost anywhere near $75.  But that’s not the fucked up part.  The fucked up part is that she said yes.  “Are you sure?” I asked, again and again.  And again, she said yes.  

There could not be two people from more different backgrounds than my parents.  My father was the first born of a white, non-practicing Protestant middle class family from Quincy that moved to a house they had built that sat upon a good amount of land for the 5 children they would eventually have – 4 boys and 1 girl - to run around without being on top of each other.  It was only a 3 bedroom house, however the basement was dry and livable and very large. When the younger siblings came along, the eldest children – now in their teens – were moved downstairs to rooms in the basement, so there was never overcrowding.  His parents – my grandparents – were a happily married couple, consisting of an accountant and a former secretary turned housewife.  They were everything that embodied the 1950’s and the family values of that era.  Both of my paternal grandparent’s families had been in America for generations.

Sarah was raised half at my house and half at her fathers’ parents’ house.  Because of this, I don’t think she ever felt like she was a resident of my house, but rather a guest.  This is evidenced by Sarah always asking if she could have a drink when she was growing up, instead of just opening the fridge and getting it.  At 3 years old, Lily has already started opening the fridge – without me telling her to.  This is saying to me that Lily feels she owns the fridge and has a right to open it, while Sarah didn’t feel the same way.  

           I got together with Sarah’s father after a breakup with my high school boyfriend.  We had been together for 4 years, taken each other’s virginity, and planned to get married at some point – at least, until he decided not to.  I had just quit college after a year and a half, my childhood pet died, I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life and I was diagnosed with clinical depression when he chose to bow out.  He tried to ghost me.  I had no idea what was happening.  He had been living with me at my mother’s house for the past year when all of a sudden he didn’t come home.  I didn’t know if something had happened to him, and with everything else going on in my life, I failed to recognize the signs that he was unhappy in the relationship.  He was my best friend.  The person I would turn to when things were too much for me – and he wasn’t there anymore. It was devastating.    

           He moved into an apartment down the road with a new buddy of his.  We kept in touch for the next year, while I frantically dieted and exercised and tried to entice him to come back.  I lost 40lbs. We occasionally slept together, which I took as a good sign that he would eventually realize that he missed me and we should get back together.  But we didn’t.  He kept me as a fuck-buddy, and when I’d had enough, I decided to find someone else. That’s when I found Sarah’s father…online…in a chatroom.  That probably should have been my first red flag, but seeing as how my self-esteem was so low, and how he complimented me up and down about my appearance – something I hadn’t felt good about in a long time – I ignored the bells and sirens going off in my head and started seeing him.  He was okay looking.  Not hideous, but not what I would call attractive.  I had convinced myself that I wasn’t meant to have a relationship with someone I was insanely attracted to, and that a quiet, domestic life taking care of a small family was an honorable, worthwhile life that I could lead.  The whole thought now feels very Sarah Plain and Tall.

           We rushed in.  I got pregnant and had Sarah.  Over the pregnancy, he showed his true colors.  He was looking for a woman to wait on him hand and foot, then spread her legs whenever the fancy struck him, which was often.  He was older than me, and came from a wealthy home.  And he tried to make me feel inferior because of it. At that point, I didn’t have a college degree.  He had two of them.  I came from the poor section of Cambridge, MA and a broken, lower middle-class home. He came from Norway, with both parents still married to each other, living in a big house they owned in Weston, MA and his father owning his own successful software company.  It was difficult not to feel like the “white trash” that he often referred to me as.