Recently, my treatment team told me I should take another medical leave, saying that they have never seen me this sad and dangerous before. My life is supposed to be good. I go to a good college and have a rabid desire to learn, the one characteristic I value most in myself. I want to learn about this world we live in: how it functions, how we micro- and macro-manage it and ourselves, how and why we trust others, use others, ignore others and listen to others. This curiosity and the opportunities presented by a small, well-respected school tell my intellect that I have the power to accomplish anything and be anything. It also tells me that the path to the good life I'm supposed to have involves forming a world of greater understanding and cooperation, and that these accomplishments should leave me satisfied and proud of myself. How frustrating then, to sit in therapy and feel so deeply that I will never be happy. How frustrating to realize that "supposed to be good" means nothing to my heart as it relentlessly pursues me with self-hate, self-pity and hopelessness.
I have suffered from major clinical depression for a number of years, recently culminating in a series of proposed suicide attempts and complete "shut downs" that left me a patient in a long-term private psychiatric hospital, thankfully still alive. I moved back to college this summer intending to graduate in June 2001, two years after I was originally supposed to walk up that podium. But despite the past few years of therapy, recent sexual assault and other unseen stresses have left me damaged and hurt all over again.
I am scared. Mental illness is intangible and illusive. The disease hides in plain sight but just beyond my reach or that of my doctors and my friends. So now I sit in the infirmary questioning the life I want to lead, the difficulties in getting there, and above all the guilt I feel for 'failing' yet again to finish a four year program that countless others have somehow been able to do. Did I miss a class during freshman orientation week that somehow taught the others how to get their diplomas?
Sitting up wide awake at four in the morning wondering how I am going to work through this absence from school, how I'm going to help myself, and I come to the conclusion that I now face my greatest challenge: learning who I am. If I truly know myself in the context of all the madness that circles around and in me, won't I be able to handle some of that chaos? On the one hand, just like with any knowledge, my intellect savors and thirsts for the experience and understands that the key to treatment is just this. However, the other hand wishes to literally push my clinical staff, friends, family and especially my intellect far, far away because this learning process of reexamining and scrutinizing my life is too painful to bear. I don't understand how to partner the two by engaging in something that hurts so deeply but that I know is ultimately supposed to help create an antidote for that hurt.
As dawn approaches here with snow and freezing temperatures, I am more calm, slightly more settled with the idea of leaving academics behind for a bit while I give my head time to catch up. It's a new day; perhaps one where I won't squeeze shut the idea of life. Perhaps today is a day I start life again with little steps, baby steps. At least for now.
