Creature of Habit

The thing about coping mechanisms, addictions, and eating disorders is that even years into recovery, they still like to present themselves as your first recourse whenever you find yourself in a stressful situation.

For the last few months, I think I can safely admit that I was depressed.
Back in August, after a trip for a family wedding that, while in no way disastrous, felt extravagant and unappreciated, I began to tumble down an all too familiar chasm of anxiety.
It was partially spurred by the the use of a substantial amount of funds for the trip and my concern that it didn't leave us with "enough" to make ends meet through the rest of the year.

That's right, I started worrying about things in December back in August.

It was compounded by the relentless terrible news I saw in the media every day.

I kept worrying about how i could take care of my son, how I could protect him, how was I going to make up for the fact that I'd brought him into a terribly dangerous world where people purposefully ignored the environment, turned away the hungry and hurt from their doors, fought over meaningless social platforms, and burst into schools, concerts, and churches to murder each other. In this world, it wasn't safe to walk down the street because a nazi/terrorist in a truck could plow into you just for having the gall to protest the normalization of bigotry and hatred.

Before long I was drowning in fear. I couldn't control anything. I couldn't even financially care for my family because no matter how many jobs I applied for or freelance positions I wrote samples for, or manuscripts I sent out, I never got a bite.

My feelings of inadequacy multiplied and bred in the shadow of these fears. They began to consume my sleep, my time with my son, my relationships, my body, myself.

I should warn you. This is not a comeback kid story. This is not a "And then I had an epiphany and turned my whole life around" story.

This is the truth.

I cried every day.
I retreated from conversations with friends because I didn't want to tell them how poorly I was doing.
I called my dad every day and talked to him for fifteen minutes before hanging up because every time I thought he would say the thing that made me feel better, he was a human being and just asked me how the baby was doing, and whether I'd tried a new recipe for bread, and what book I was reading, and I couldn't fathom being a normal person who wanted to bake bread, or had the concentration to read a book, or could accurately describe how her child was, because everything was terrible, I was terrible, nothing made any sense, and I was somehow still falling, always falling, always getting sadder, more anxious, wondering if this was how it would be from now on.

And this went on until about two weeks ago.
Around the end of October, I realized I hit rock bottom.
I looked around rock bottom, and I don't have to tell you what it looked like because I think you know, but I got there, and I knew, this was a different rock bottom than the one I had reached at 28 when I decided I needed therapy, or at 22 when I looked into the ocean one day and thought how nice it would be just to smash myself to pieces on the rocks to make my head go silent once and for all.

This time rock bottom was a moment of walking to the park. A storm had just blown through, and ripped mighty limbs from trees. Our neighbor's shed had lost its roof. Power zapped out through many neighborhoods including our own. And in that morning light, after the storm, with all the wreckage lying about, the wind still very strong and wild, it was oddly warm out.

I had been crying all morning, but needs must, and I took the baby for his daily dose of fresh air and found the park deserted.

Which made sense. Anybody with half a brain was probably tucked inside safely away from all the debris.

I took the baby out of his stroller, and we went down to the ocean and looked at the waves.
They were crowding the shore, chewing at it hungrily and the sound of thousands of rocks clacking against each other was deafening.

I picked up a stone. It was round.
And I realized that the ocean wasn't responsible for rounding its edges the way I'd always believed. The ocean just bashed the rocks against each other and it was the friction of touching all those stones, tumbling about in a senseless torrent of waves, that smoothed them down and made them blunt.

And it wasn't an epiphany, but it made me think about how much I had been blaming the universe and the state of the world for being fucked up and making me miserable, when it had nothing to do with an omniscient force and everything to do with all the other people, all the other rocks, and me allowing them to smash into me over and over and over and feeling like it was out of my hands, and that I had no control over being stuck in this wave.

But that isn't how it has to be at all.

And a little voice said, "the good thing about hitting rock bottom, is that there's nowhere to go but up."
And i felt better.

It was an increment better.
It was a sliver better.
But it was the first time in three months I could remember feeling any bit better instead of worse.

So I got a job at the local coffeshop working part time so that I didn't need childcare, and I could still spend my days with the baby.


*


When describing one's life, it is easy to get sucked into the desire of fitting one's story into a narrative.
I want you all to leave off with me on that shoreline, wind-whipped cheeks and howling with renewed fervor for life, but that is not the end of my story.

It is not even the end of my depression's story, because life is too many simultaneous narratives to ever possibly fit into such a neat and tidy description: beginning-conflict-resolution-end.

So I got a part time job, and I began to work on my anxiety, and I stopped going on facebook or instagram as much, and I cut certain media outlets out of my life, and I slowly, incrementally, started to feel like perhaps there was a point to what I was doing. Perhaps it wasn't a terrible idea to bring a child into this world, to hope that there might be a future for him that didn't look like my worst nightmares.

Things like to settle into grooves, habits, and routine.

I could work at a coffeeshop in Berlin and it would be just a slightly differently nuanced version of the same thing I've been doing for the last fifteen years.

So this is a new cafe, but the same old habits.
The offensive music we save for the closing.
The pastries we fight over to take home at the end of the day rather than throw them out.
The elaborate shift drinks.
The bad jokes.
The regulars.
The terrible customers.
The mopping.
The cuts and bruises I don't remember receiving.

And I come home at ten o'clock at night, starved from the running and carrying and lifting and cleaning, and I can feel the old monstrous crutches lean into me heavily as I enter the darkened kitchen.

The same demons that always lived here telling me to eat until I want to die.
Eat because I didn't have time to during my shift.
But keep eating because I hate myself.
Keep eating because you have to go back tomorrow.
Keep eating because you're lonely, because you miss your kid, because you miss your kid but you don't want to see him right away when you get home because you haven't actually had a moment's peace.
Keep eating because you don't remember how to listen to your body, because your body is a stupid, wretched thing that you have no control over, that will fail you, is failing you, failing you constantly, every moment, even now.

So it is a small victory but an important one,
that I make a grilled cheese sandwich.
I put butter in the pan, slice up the good, homemade bread.
arranged the cheddar pieces so that they meet the edges of the bread and then press down with the spatula to get that golden toasty outside, with the hot, molten, salty interior.

I make the grilled cheese because making something to eat was also never how I used to come home from a shift.

Then I take it, and I sit down in front of the computer, and I put on a site that I can stand to read, that isn't terror infused, and I eat the sandwich slowly. I taste it. I drink a glass of water to wash it down.
When I get to the last bite, it is the best bite, the corner bit with the toastiest edge and the meltiest cheese. I savor it, and then I finish my water, and then I finish the article I am reading.

I brush my teeth, and then I retrieve my child, and I go to bed.

The smallest victory, but no less important, because it is so starkly different from how I ever sought comfort in the past.

And there is still a voice that screams:

You pig!
Bad mother!
Terrible person!

But it sounds hollow and desperate now.
There is a voice bigger than it, and it sounds like a wave filled with tumbling rocks, and all the ocean behind it, and it says,
"Good. Now sleep. You've done all that you can."

And it is enough.