Waking Up

In the midst of the storm that took me over during the past several months, one of the most difficult things to live with has been the loss of enjoyment in things that had previously made my life so rich. I'd always mused over the self-same question that shows up on so many psychological assessments. I never believed it was actually possible until, of course, it actually DID happen. The small things like gorgeous sunny days or favorite foods, jokes on TV or in movies, the ability to laugh at myself and make others laugh along with me. More complex things like learning, conquering fears, and spending time with the people I love. All of those things are parts of the person that I am, and missing any one of them makes me feel less than whole.

I've been asked when I knew I was sick, as opposed to assuming I was in a slump that just required some perseverance on my part. There were many such glimpses of moments, and it really wasn't until my mind was able to collapse them into a coherent whole that I really knew and began to actively seek a way out. Thankfully, I've noticed many of the red flags slowly receding over the past month or so, chief among them the inability to enjoy the stuff of which life is made.

One of my favorite things in the entire world - maybe, in reality, my absolute favorite thing, if such a thing is possible to decide at 24- is to ride trains, specifically in new places, and more specifically, with my iPod accompanying the scene laid before me. If I could construct the perfect trip, I'd take trains around the world - across Europe, through the Himalayas and Siberia, bisecting Australia and through the plains of Africa. Some of the greatest memories of my life have occurred on train journeys - waking up, bleary-eyed, to the sun rising over the Swiss Alps, spotting my first windmill in the Netherlands, being consumed by the majesty of a glimpse of Mt. Fuji rising from the clouds, hanging off the side of open cars in India, summer breeze softening my face as I watch the world go by. Fatefully, my iPod somehow always picked the perfect song to go with the scenery. If the movies get anything right on a consistent basis, it's that life's just better with a soundtrack. So when my go-to perfect scenario - trains and landscapes and music and writing about all of those things - ceased its healing powers this summer in Japan, one of those many red flags arose in my mind. I may not have wanted to acknowledge it at the time, but it was there, staring me in the face, tripping up my feet and my tongue and my brain.

I haven't had the opportunity to test out a train journey since returning to the U.S., but today, I remembered music. It's occupied the middle of my mind for the past several weeks - I've missed it like I miss a good friend I haven't seen in months. (After all, my blog is titled after nothing other than a song...) I've wanted to reconnect, but there have literally been times when I've opened up iTunes, only to close it again in fear that I would still find myself unable to enjoy it like I know I do. It's been like picking up the phone to call a long-lost friend and chickening out at the last moment for fear that they will no longer be what they once were to you. But today, I remember. Today, I find myself smiling, bobbing my head to the beat like an idiot...but a happy idiot! Enjoying the upbeat songs along with the sad ones. It's almost like I can breathe a little easier. It's sort of amazing. (By the way, OneRepublic earns some major life points here - it's their just-released sophomore album, so ironically and aptly and perfectly entitled "Waking Up", that has played such a significant role in re-energizing this part of my person. Maybe it's all just a big coincidence, but there's always the chance that it's not...)

In any case, I realize in writing this that the terrible failure that I thought my attempt at "figuring out my life" in Japan had been, may have instead just been a terrifying success. Every time I've gone abroad, I've come away with some new insights into life and the world. In India, especially, my mind operated at twice or ten times its usual capacity, decluttered of the stuff of first world life in the West. I approached the trip to Japan believing this type of thinking to be a necessity for me. I needed an epiphany, and the best way I've ever known to find one is to go halfway around the world. The problem was that I didn't figure several confounding factors into the mix (Japan is NOT India, for example. There are about a dozen times more stimuli there than at home...), I pressured myself, and I failed to realize that my epiphany might not come in the form in which I expected it. I spent much of my time in Japan feeling like my head was floating in the clouds - and not the good kind. These clouds were hazy and gray and heavy on my shoulders. I returned home in much worse condition than when I'd left, my head still in a daze as I tried to compute how everything could have gone so wrong.

It hit me tonight that I DID get my epiphany in Japan - it just wasn't the epiphany that I wanted - the one that would immediately fix my problems and enlighten my life. My epiphany was that series of red flags. Spending a month with the same 5 people (myself included) as the only company magnified my red flags to the degree that they became inescapable. It wasn't what I wanted, especially as I was internalizing the atomic bomb sites or the sight of Tokyo from the zenith of the Park Hyatt or the utter wonder and raw power of Mt. Fuji's summit. But it's what I got, and I can see now, it's what I needed. Had I remained at home, carelessly slogging through life as it was, turning a blind eye to symptoms I wanted to imagine I didn't have - I might never have faced up to the reality of consolidating it all in my mind. As painful as it was, I needed to get punched squarely in the face several times. I needed other people to tell me something was wrong with me - multiple times. I needed to yell and scream and cry and drag my feet without understanding why. I needed things to hurt badly - to bleed so that I could see the red. I didn't leave Japan with some quick fix, some beautiful notion of how to cure the world's ills. Instead, I left on the brink of a cliff - one which dared me to jump, or do something drastic enough to save me from the edge. Now, I'm ever so grateful. Now, I have my soundtrack back, along with so much else.

I have a long way to go still, but where I am now is so much better than the edge of that cliff, and it's given me reason to move towards the mountains again. Hefty metaphors aside, at this point, I want to take a second to thank all of those people who have more than put up with me through all of this. You know who you are. When you're where I woke up to find myself, EVERY little thing counts, the bad and the good. I was fully capable of producing the bad myself - it was my friends who tipped the balance with the good. From enduring - and so kindly - responding to frantic emails and text messages to sitting beside me as I cried to shaking me when I needed a wake-up call and hugging me for as long as I needed - I am left without the words to tell you how much you mean to me. It's not at all extreme to say that you've saved me.

Up to the ledge, put out my hands
Get to the bones of where I'd land
Trade in my fears, trade in my thoughts
They disappear behind your walls.

- OneRepublic, "Passenger"

From "Waking Up", Nov. 2009

Lessons in Sympathy

I'll be honest. Psychology major that I was, I never really comprehended the idea of depression as a legitimate physiological illness. Like much of psychology, the evidence just always seemed a little too circumstantial for my taste. I sympathized with the large percentage of the population that at one point suffers from depression, but I never truly considered it an illness. Everyone feels "depressed" once in a while - I just figured that "depression" was a long-term case. Serotonin and norepinephrine be damned.

Then it happened to me and my perceptions have begun to shift dramatically. The difference between sympathy and empathy is everything. When you reach a state where you are constitutionally unable to control your racing mind, where you try desperately to figure out what's wrong but can't put a finger on anything specific, where you feel like you're making everyone else around you miserable, and where trying desperately to enjoy the obviously good times in life only results in more misery - when you reach that state, you know you're more than just really sad. Saying that I was sick began to feel less like a bad excuse and more like the truth that might be my only path back to normalcy.

It seems like this lesson keeps recurring in my life. You really can't ever know what someone's life is like until you've been in their shoes. Where I would have felt badly for those suffering from depression prior to all this, I still would have blamed them somewhere in the back of my head. It just isn't real - it can't be real - until you've experienced it for yourself. And that goes for more than just depression. The only thing we can really do when sympathy is our only option is to remember this and to prevent ourselves from judging situations and behaviors we can't and don't understand. It's a lesson I need to remember on a much more regular basis.

Now for the good part - in terms of all that brain chemistry stuff of which I was so suspicious as an undergrad. From the experience that I've had so far, it's true. An imbalance in those chemicals really can mess you up, just like a virus can make your head hurt and your temperature rise. Your brain CAN be sick, and restoring the balance can be enough to help bring you back to life. I'm not there yet, but I'm on the way, and feeling like I'm off that terrifying roller coaster is a tremendous relief. No longer feeling like I'm completely crazy and unable to understand why has also been crucial. And I'm truly beginning to understand the undeniable connection between the events in a person's life and her health. But more than anything, I'm learning to appreciate the beauty of feeling like myself. You never know what you have until it's gone...