I used to believe that bootstraps exist. You know, those things that hold a cowboy in his saddle – the things Republicans tell poor people to use in order to feed their kids and get better jobs. As an adjective, bootstraps can be understood as self-reliant, someone who can help themselves by using all of their own resources. Nearing the end of my time at Gordon, despite crossing the political aisle and switching party affiliations, part of me still thought that they existed. I know I am making a sociological term sound like the Easter bunny, but the question of belief is relevant. During college I didn’t understand why some people could just sleep in everyday and complain about their lack of productivity, or say that they just cannot concentrate, go to the library or do their work. While I could agree that children in low-income neighborhoods with poor school systems have no bootstraps to pull themselves up by, I believed that Gordon students really shouldn’t have any excuses. After all, they supposedly had learned how to use those precious bootstraps to get where they were! Sadly for me, I had to learn the hard way that they really don’t exist at all.

Ever since I got back from my study abroad program, something just didn’t seem right. The Global Ed department tries to warn you that it is harder to come home than it is to go abroad, but it wasn’t as if upon return I was asking huge life questions any more than I already had. Still, something was not clicking back into place the way it should have. So I started going to the counseling center to try to put into words how I was feeling. Through all the conversations about family drama, how I was raised, and middle school bullies, nothing really showed itself as a “trauma” that would cause my depression/anxiety combo. I could not explain to my counselor or to myself why I felt numb to the world. I spent my last semester of college as a very uncharacteristic version of myself—someone who never handed in work on time and who always counted on the grace of professors to pass classes.

After graduation, I started a summer job and, almost immediately, things went down hill. I would look in the mirror and not feel like my reflection was actually me. My friends said my eyes looked haunted. I began having panic attacks about the fact that I felt as though my everyday life was strangely just a story. It was as if I was in that big white room in the Matrix where I sit at a desk watching a bunch of little TVs without really doing anything. One TV screen shows my parents at home begging me to move back in with them; another shows old high school friends who are getting married and having kids. The brighter ones have new friends and some promising new activities, but I’m not actually connected to any of it. Instead, I float above it all, waiting for my real life to begin. For now, everything that happens is just a story.

At risk of referencing too many sci-fi movies, please be warned: if you are in the 5% of the population that has not seen Christopher Nolan’s Inception, then just skim over the next few paragraphs because I am going to give away some of the plot.

It was a rainy night in the middle of what proved to be a difficult summer when my friends decided to go see Inception. For a lot of fans, the story was a good one because of how detailed and intriguing it was, and because everyone can relate to pieces of it—dreams feeling like years, for example. But for most people, they really have only experienced pieces, whereas for me, the film reflected the pain and frustration I was facing in this weird, twisted summer that was making me question my sanity.

The movie is based on the concept of controlled dreaming, where people can create their own worlds within a dream. Eventually, one of the characters becomes so convinced that their created world is real that she loses touch with what true reality is, and kills herself to try to wake up from the dream. It was at this point when one of my friends asked if I needed to leave early, because he knew how fragile my own grasp on reality had become. I was scared by how much I related to this character’s dark side. I had never considered suicide.  Yet the crazy look in her eyes and desperate longing to know what is real – this resonated in my own darker places.

I have always feared mental illness more than any other disease. Cancer and heart disease, however painful and hard to understand, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia are far scarier to me. When I started dissociating from my own reality, it was this fear that caused the panic attacks. If I tried very hard to think reasonably, I could convince myself that my life was real. Most of the time, however, I really did not believe that it was. If this thought process was so cyclical, irrational, and easy to fall into, what would stop me from losing my grasp on reality and falling into the realm of insanity?

After figuring out the right combination of mood stabilizers and anti-depressants, getting a good counselor, and having my dear friends and mentors constantly tell me that I was a sane, smart person who would not always feel this way, I began to feel better. Not, however, before experimenting with different methods of self-medicating, avoidance, and self-harm. I had to acknowledge that for some reason, my mind and heart work differently than the average person’s. But I will be okay. It took people telling me that they had faith, even if I didn’t, that I could be more normal again, people giving me lots of hugs, and a couple of mornings of just calling out of work because the world felt too big and scary – and for all of that I am grateful.

I am still not out of the woods. There are days when going to work feels harder than it should, and when focusing on tasks is next to impossible – when my mind just wants to think about whether or not my surroundings are my real life or just some imaginary story that I am creating for myself. Thankfully, my boss is somewhat gracious about my spacey-ness, and I still have some good friends who can listen to my processing even though no one can really understand or make me feel more real. It does not shake me as much as it once did when I try to explain to people how I feel and they tell me I sound like a crazy person. Most of the time I can look in the mirror and acknowledge that my reflection really is my own. So I know that it is possible to feel better gradually, and that makes me hopeful for the future. I am pretty sure that my reality question will always be a part of my life to varying degrees. I hope that eventually it just becomes philosophical entertainment, but maybe it will continue to be an emotional struggle. Regardless, it will be an excuse to surround myself with people who can handle existential questions, which I am a fan of.

So how does this relate to bootstraps? What is the moral of the story? Struggling with this problem has made me realize that bootstraps really do not exist. Some people who seem like lazy slackers, whom we deem unworthy of grace, are actually people who are deeply hurting and cannot will themselves to feel better, or will themselves to be more capable of getting things accomplished. It taught me to listen to people who are hurting with an even more compassionate ear. Although their problem may seem crazy to me, it could be shattering their world, and I now have had a glimpse of how scary that can be. I have realized it is okay to be a little needy sometimes (which is a huge deal for the old individualist in me). I have even learned that my grasp on reason is even more tenuous than I once thought it was… but that’s a whole other story.

For now, I can only be thankful for what grace I am given and try to live one day at a time.

I wrote a lot of shit. It wasn’t good shit, it was just the kind of shit that you write when you’re depressed and want to feel better but can’t. I hated writing on the computer, it’s not even writing, it’s typing. It doesn’t feel natural, and there’s a little key called “backspace” that let’s you correct what you’ve written when you think you could say it better or not say it at all. I was all about the backspace.

I looked out the window a lot. The world was supposed to be inspiring and windows seemed like a good way to maintain an aloof, objective opinion of it. Most of the time I would just end up examining the inside of my brain. “Oh, this looks like a good hole to dig into.” I would dig because I thought I could fill the hole in: fill it in with confidence and self worth. Usually I would end up inside the hole, staring up at a tiny glimpse of blue sky from a hundred-foot deep, two-foot wide tunnel. When I got back to the blue sky I’d hop right into another hole.

I was in constant communication with myself. I hated people who were happy. What did they have to be so happy about? Which one of life’s great mysteries justified even a smile on any of their faces, please, please share with us. I wasn’t trying to be narcissistic; I was just trying to be logical. To me it seemed that people had to earn happiness, they couldn’t just have it. Earning happiness meant thinking about sad things, thinking about sad things meant being depressed. There’s some logic for you.

I could blame people. I put tremendous amounts of pressure on myself. I had to do something important. When I couldn’t think of anything important to do I’d try to think about what was important. These things were unattainable. When I realized that, I’d go to sleep—or further down into the void. I might find something down there.

It was always fucking freezing. Freezing outside, freezing in my house. The wind rattled the walls and whistled through the newly installed windows. Rent was $400 dollars a month, plus utilities. No point in utilities when the walls leaked and the sink was full of dishes. I missed creativity and my mind felt like the inside of a basketball. Now whenever I made something it was fucked up. Frightened and offended would be the words I would use to describe my journal entries, my social interactions, my mental stability. I regularly scared children at the places I worked because a smile looks like a grimace when it’s forced. I read about that in a book.

Books were places of safety. There were people in them, and that was good. The people were always interesting and they would talk to you. You didn’t have to worry if they thought you were smart, or funny, or if you could comfortably talk about things that you didn’t care about. When you wanted them to go away you’d just close the book. Hell yeah.

The mood swings were effortless and unprovoked. I would do anything to avoid them. When they started it was confusing. I apologized. When they didn’t stop I went to the black hole inside my brain. I hated it there, I hated it more than anything, but it wasn’t as scary as trying to explain myself and listen to everyone’s fake pity. I was a rich kid out on his own for the first time. Everyone else had been handling their own shit for years. I tried to suck it up.

My parents told me things like “You know a lot of strong, Christian men deal with depression.” I told them I knew that. I was neither strong nor Christian, and it didn’t seem to me that reading things I didn’t believe in or taking crutches called anti-depressants was really the right answer. I wanted them to fuck off and give me some money so I could drink a bottle of wine every night. Every time they told me they made steak or gone to a professional basketball game I winced. Most days I ate beans and eggs. Most days I couldn’t take a proper shit.

The conclusion of most discussions with myself was that people are concerned with the wrong things. I was very concerned with being smart. I read lots of books, sometimes six at once. It took me months to finish them. I was the humorless man. I used to watch shows like Arrested Development and Flight of the Conchords and laugh out loud about them with my brother and father and friends days after. Now I just analyzed the writing and production and told myself how easy it was to make money. I was concerned with measuring my intelligence. I hadn’t learned anything in months.

I saw sadness around me in every situation. It made me sadder. I was drunk at a bar, practicing pretending to not be drunk. I’d never get a DUI. My friends called that a “doo-E”. It was when you bit the bullet and after all six of us had drank enough beer to get a swimming pool drunk you put the keys in the ignition and drove the car home. The passengers usually split duties singing loudly or passing out. It was nice never having to worry about a designated driver.

I was afraid of rejection. I was completely alone. I’d see a group of people talking and someone would tell a joke that flopped. Everyone laughed. I felt bad for the joker. Failure was not to be taken lightly. Failure was not successful. I was so used to telling bad jokes that I didn’t care. I had numbed myself to that kind of petty enjoyment; why would I worry about jokes? “You have to earn things,” I told myself. Happiness was probably the wrong place for me to start. I should have looked somewhere between $8.50 an hour and trying not to be an asshole. I’d had EVERYTHING given to me. My parents were upper-middle class, moderately in love, never fought in front of us. They had bought me a car and an expensive education. I promptly spat on these things and declared them immoral. God just makes lonely people feel like they have a purpose. Faith is a clause that the needy accept.

I thought about the universe. It was cold and dark. There might not even be anything there. It felt a lot like my head. People talked about their bicycles, they talked about new frames for their glasses. Couldn’t they see? We had important shit to do here and it didn’t involve any of these things.

I forgot what I liked to do, it wasn’t justified. I never used to have a problem being goofy and making my own strange humor. “I guess when I stopped lying to myself I realized what was really important to me” is what I would have said about that. No one asked though, and that’s when I started feeling the need to tell. That was unintelligent.

I had people who loved me. They loved me so much it confused me. I figured they were just lying to themselves. I turned off to them. It seemed fake, or like it should have been. I used them and I told them about it as I did it. That way I was guilt free. They cried and generally stuck around. They were good people, and I knew it. Good people were walked over and I was the evidence. I did the walking.

Nothing interested me. I used to like laughing about nothing, smoking cigarettes and wearing funny clothes. I liked feeling cool. Feeling cool was being comfortable with myself. Now I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be appreciated for things that I would never earn. I’d been worshipping myself for so long and now I had decided that other people should do it too. I felt cool when I thought about how tortured I was. How nothing made me happy. Things that interested me were informative, information was useful, useful things were important. Nothing I did was important. People had graduated, worked entry-level jobs, or interned for NGOs. They had a plan, and it involved taking things step by step. They were dickheads; self-important, I’d say.

I fell out of the social loop. I didn’t miss the people–most of them–I just missed the company. It’s hard hanging out with a pessimistic dickhead that makes you feel uncomfortable.

I read maps. I loved numbers and graphs; they all had a unique feel and personality. Numbers were strange things to me and I loved thinking about them and personifying them. To my close friends I’d say, “that thing that you just said, it was a 13” or, “57 is a nice number”. Sometimes they laughed, it was nice to hear people laugh.

I’d get drunk. I was no longer a happy drunk. I was a sad, sappy son of a bitch. I still liked some things, like travel–well, local travel. I looked forward to seeing a friend in Boston because between here and there I’d get to ride the train. While I rode the train I’d be going somewhere. While I was going somewhere I’d be able to say, if asked, “I’m going to see a friend in Boston, we might shoot some darts.”

All my shit broke: my car, my phone, my computer. I didn’t need them. They were focusing on the wrong things. I’d walk back from Salem. At least it was something to do.

Music was a drug. When you find something good, you can pop in the headphones and coast until you get sick of it. My brain was the hardware, and music was the software. It didn’t make me happy but it was distracting. I’d listen to it when I was pissed off, or when I wanted my brain to wake up. The songs plucked at different parts of it. I got really into patterns. Repetition, off beats, fade-outs, I tried to identify them in other parts of the world. Sometimes it worked.

I met my friend and we drank beer while we rode around in his car and listened to music we used to like. It reminded us of the past; the past wasn’t so confusing. But things weren’t the same, he was different now–he needed to change like me, and in the ways that I had changed, and on and on. I lied to myself to keep from lying to myself.

I wanted to be a force of nature, I wanted to be a bird or a squirrel and spend my days looking for food and a warm place to sleep. I didn’t want the stupid, shitty troubles of a human. I didn’t want to know what pleasure was if I could rarely find it.

I felt better. Sometimes when I talked to myself about the right things, the wrong things went away. The sun was out, and I wanted an iced coffee.

My parents bought me a blender when I left school for the first time. My father had been anxious in the chilled aisle of Sam’s Club. Sent there by my mother, he stared fixedly at the stacked boxes of blenders.  All of similar size and purpose, he could not distinguish one product from another. He raised his left hand to push back hair from his forehead. His fingers bent the hair into a foolish wave away from his face. Though it all wilted back into place the moment his hand dropped to his side. Too frugal and easily distracted by exotic produce, my father was rarely the one to shop. The small “Smoothie Jr.” was the first blender he noticed, and, consequently, the one he bought. Though it boasted a blue florescent lid and spout dispenser, the machine soon proved itself sub par. None of the parts were dishwasher safe, and the bright lid often vibrated loose from its lock-in position. However, these shortcomings were not known the night the Smoothie Jr. arrived in our home. My father had eagerly lifted it from the packaging, and called me into the kitchen as he set it on the counter.

“You can make smoothies now,” he said, “You like smoothies.”

“I hate smoothies,” I replied. My mother, who had followed me into the kitchen, interjected angrily,

“Why are you catering to her, Walter?” Necessity forced her to keep by me at all times. And having dealt with me all day, her patience had exhausted, “She’s being a total brat. And, I,” she emphasized the pronoun vehemently. Spitting the syllable at my father, the division between them was clear, “am not going to turn the house upside to please her. You’ll eat what we tell you,” Disgust disfigured her pretty face as she spoke to me, “and that’s it. You’re barely fourteen. You have no control here.”

“Your mother’s right,” but still my father pleaded, “Look, there’s even a little booklet here of different shakes to make.” My mother rolled her eyes as he leafed through the small, white pages, illustrating his point. Her arms, which had been crossed against her chest, quickly unfolded. She thrust out her right hand savagely, condemning my father through the air,

“You are giving her way too much control!” Dismissing him, she addressed me, “Sit down and eat!” So full of fury, my mother spoke rashly. She’d forgotten the time. Dinner had already ended. The dishes had been cleared from the table, and the leftovers stored away in Tupperware. The Battle of Consumption had been fought earlier. Begrudgingly, I had eaten my chicken. Morosely, I’d twisted pasta round my fork.  Still, there was no victor. When Soren had captured attention, carelessly tossing bones from his plate to the dog, I’d left for the bathroom. Unseen and unheard, the porcelain bowl filled amidst shouts and chiding. When the clamor subsided, my parents stared, exhausted, at my empty seat. With only a tangled nest of noodles left, my plate was emptier than it had been. Instinctively, my mother looked behind her to the bathroom. The toilet flushed as my father lifted my plate and with a sweep of his fork scraped the remains onto his own. Soren placed his dish on the floor, and knew the dog would not be bothered this time.

Remembering the scene, my mother recovered her demand. Coldly she uttered the new imperative, “Go to your room.”

“Like I care,” I called from over my shoulder, as I walked away. Alone on my bed, I heard the blender whir for a moment. And then stop.

I used to inhabit a dark space: a vacuum of inadequacy. Life was too hard. There were too many difficulties that I was not in control of.  When I looked at myself in the mirror I could only see flaws staring back at me. Never measuring up to what I could be.

You are only as good as you appear to be.

Worth was found not in who God intrinsically made me to be. I thought I knew God. He knew me. I did not know Him.

Skin and bones.

My worth was only found in the numbers on a scale. It began innocently enough. After returning from a trip to Bolivia, I had lost weight from the trials of eating in a new country. But it quickly turned into much more. As I gathered my books every morning, I would I would feel nagged to eat just one piece of toast, or half of an egg, or a few crackers. My mom would pack me a meal that I would not touch. When we went out to dinner, I was an expert at rearranging my plate in a way that gave the illusion of eating. My friends never asked me why I was not eating. Then it hit me… They envied me. My self-control, my thin frame that was elegant and haunting. As an athlete, I received praise for how little fat I had on my body when we changed for practice.

Tell me what you do; I am so jealous of how good you look.

What would they say if I told them my secret was refusing to eat? My secret was that the lower the number on the scale, the more attractive I felt.  The attention fed my secret. My secret was that I was struggling with disordered eating and I was in denial.

There is nothing wrong with me.

And it was incredibly lonely. I started becoming physically ill. I missed at least one day of school every week. My stomach always ached. It begged for me to fill it, and I refused that cry of need. Long thick hair fell out in clumps in the shower. I almost passed out in class. I was irritable every day. My family could not stand to be around me. My mom would hug me and feel my hipbones and ribs protruding from my body. I am sure she feared if she squeezed too hard, I would fall away to dust. I was a junior in high school I looked like I had survived the holocaust, standing at 5’7 weighing a meager 100 pounds.  I knew I was not eating, but I did not understand why.

It is not my secret to keep anymore.

Anxiety and depression had taken root in my life in the form of disordered eating at sixteen years old. It was not until my mom forced me into counseling that I understood the depth and far-reaching implications of what I was doing. I had allowed my suffering to manifest itself in such a way that when I looked in the mirror, I saw all the hurt and ugly lies that were ever told to me reflected back. Starving myself gave me a means to control all that I was afraid to see in myself. Fear had gained power over my actions when I returned from Bolivia. I had found my elixir for disappointment.

It is not my secret anymore. It is NOT my secret anymore.

CDs aren’t supposed to skip. When played once, a phrase in a song can sound perfect: It fits in with the rest of the lyrics and adds to the overall quality. But when it is repeated after the song was supposed to have moved on, the phrase just sounds eerie, strange, or even annoying.

My mind works much like a skipping CD. It repeats certain commands over and over. My mind might tell me to do something irrational, like close the refrigerator door a second time just to make sure it is completely closed. If I try to tell myself that the act is not necessary, I feel a sense of nagging. I better do it if I don’t want my food to get warm. I force myself to go back to the fridge and close it again, even though I know it was probably closed completely the first time. I just had to make sure.

My mom noticed that there was something different about me when I was just a toddler. At regular intervals throughout the day, I would drop everything I was doing, stand up, spin three times, jump three times, and then clap three times, all in that order. Whenever my parents read bedtime stories to me, we had to read three at once. I would not allow for any more or any less.

I developed an intense fear of germs in first grade. I didn’t want to touch anything, because I knew for sure that if I did I would throw up. I didn’t go near sick kids or share drinks with others. I washed my hands several times a day. I washed them until they cracked and bled.

As I got older, OCD began to manifest itself within my academics. When I did my homework, I re-read sentences several times because I was afraid I hadn’t read and understood them perfectly the first time. I was very detailed whenever I had to write out answers, and I was still afraid that my homework wouldn’t be done correctly. It took me hours to finish; I often did homework from 3:30 PM until my bedtime at 9:00. Even then, I checked my planner several times after I had finished just to make sure I had done it all.

In fourth grade, my teacher pointed out that I had some strange habits. She noticed that, whenever she gave directions in class, I raised my hand and repeated them to her just to make sure that I had them down perfectly.

That was the year my parents decided to take me to see a professional, Doctor Cola. I liked his name. It reminded me of Crayola crayons. My parents and I told him all about my strange symptoms, and he began to ask me confusing questions.

“Are you mad at your parents for anything? Do you do this stuff to show them that you’re angry?”

“I’m not angry at my parents. I can’t help doing the things that I do. I just feel like I have to do them.”

“Of all the grains of sand on the beach, how many of them do you think represents the amount of anger you have toward your parents?”

I shrugged and didn’t understand why I basically had to answer the same question again. “None.”

My mom was becoming frustrated. “I don’t think she understands the question. Dear, you know how daddy and I like to play nine holes of golf? Out of those nine, how many of them represent your anger toward us.”

“I’m not angry,” I repeated. He thought I was just doing all of this for attention. It didn’t seem fair. Everyone was so quick to blame me.

The next time my dad and I went to therapy, Dr. Cola presented him with a pamphlet. The words on the cover were Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I had a mental disorder? Awesome! I felt special in a good way, believe it or not. I felt different, and I liked that. My dad didn’t.

Whenever I did “one of those things” that I couldn’t help, my dad would tell me to just stop. “I can’t,” I said. “I have OCD.” I liked having the excuse. It’s not like I was making it up, either.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “It’s all in your head.” And that’s true: It was in my head, but the assumption behind his statement was that, because it was in my head, I could control whether or not I thought it, whether or not I acted on my impulses, and that was the point: I couldn’t.

In fifth grade, I went to Catholic school. During one of the masses we attended, my friend, Julie, and I sat together and goofed off the whole time, as did the rest of my class. When we got back to school, my substitute teacher scolded all of the students who had misbehaved — except for Julie and me.

I felt guilty. It wasn’t fair to the other kids that they should get punished for something that we had also been doing. Whenever I do something that I shouldn’t do, I feel like I should tell someone. I try to ignore it, but the OCD always nags me.

I raised my hand. “Mrs. Muesso? Julie and I were talking in mass, too.”

The other kids began to snicker, but I thought that I had done the right thing. Mrs. Muesso wrote down all of our names, including Julie’s and mine, so that our regular teacher could deal with us the next day.

Julie was angry but didn’t want to tell me. My friend Megan asked, “Why would you do that?”

“I felt badly,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you don’t seem like a very good friend.”

When I got in the car, I had to tell my mom. I had never been in this much trouble before, and I was looking at possibly getting a demerit for talking in church. When I told her that I had ratted Julie and myself out, she started yelling at me.

“You know why you did that? Because you’re sick. You’re sick in the head.”

Later, after she wasn’t mad anymore, I asked her if she really thought I was sick in the head.

“Well, yeah,” she said. “Because you are.”

Due to this and many other events involving my OCD, I grew up feeling like I was inferior to other kids. I was annoying and pathetic. Incorporating those feelings into my daily life was a great blow to my self-esteem, and I still struggle with self-esteem to this day.

When I got to high school, the other kids started to pick on me for my Obsessive Compulsive quirks. I had taken to asking a lot of questions in class, which still stemmed from the mindset that, if I didn’t hear every word that had been said, my grades would suffer dramatically. Especially during my junior and senior years, I often had to pretend that I didn’t notice the other kids snickering behind my back every time I asked a question — and I mean every time. Sometimes I stared them down until they realized I had noticed. Regardless, I never got an apology.

Now I am an adult, and I have learned that there will always be people who don’t understand. They will do everything in their power to try to change me, but they can’t. I will still ask my roommate to close the fridge twice. I will make sure my papers are handed in without a single wrinkle. I will still obsess over my grades, and I will re-read sentences in books.

Despite the difficulties that I have encountered with my OCD, I would never choose to rid myself of it. It adds to my idiosyncrasies. It helps me to laugh at myself just a few more times and take myself less seriously. That little girl who felt special because of her OCD is still inside of me somewhere.

Sometimes I feel like I am just an annoyance to people. I feel like I should change because they want me to, because I’m not normal, and because it’s called a disorder. However, God made me the way I am. I may never know why, but I do know that he doesn’t make mistakes. Maybe the world needs to stop looking at its students as a bunch of disorders and disabilities. God made us differently for a reason. It is time to embrace diversity.

I am currently in the final stages of withdrawal. The vertigo, tremors, dizziness, headaches, and mood swings are practically gone. There isn’t any antidepressant left to seal away the noxious foreboding and emotionally crippling indifference that engulfed me so many years ago. This is the first time my system has been completely void of antidepressants since I was diagnosed with depression in the fifth grade, almost ten years ago.

I don’t know what went wrong on the pharmacist’s end, but I have had to gradually lower the doses of medication so that the more noticeable, physical aspects of withdrawal wouldn’t be as apparent to those around me. My friends and acquaintances that came in contact with me today know that I am not feeling well. They just don’t know exactly why I’m not my usual energetic self. I often lie about my condition- the medication, the symptoms– because I naturally assume my peers would not understand. More truthfully and disgustingly, I find that they do not want to. The idea of a Christian with depression is often understood as a blasphemous oxymoron.

I’m writing about my depression right now not only to enlighten those who know little about it, but also to help myself stave off the hopelessness that is beginning to settle in. I’m exhausted from the automated voice machines and the cranky, underpaid operators of my pharmaceutical company. I skipped class this morning because I had no will to get up. And as I write this, I’m struggling with the desire to just fall asleep and fade from existence.

That’s what kept me from coming to class today. Every inch of me felt heavy, and the very act of walking through my dorm looking for a classmate who could deliver my homework to my professor for me was daunting. Once I got back to my room, I collapsed into my bed, telling myself that there will be a way out of this sickness. I fell asleep quietly, but the whole time praying that God would spare me of the horrible hopelessness that embodies depression.  The hopelessness that slowly consumes every inch of your body and mind like some deadly carbon monoxide or noxious gas.

Noxious. I remember learning in Latin class that it comes from the word nox, which means night. Noxious, in regards to a gas or chemical, is the perfect word to describe how I felt throughout withdrawal:  less and less inclined to have anything to do with existence and more and more compelled to curl beneath my covers and move no more. That’s how depression sets in – it’s strong, but it happens slowly and is hardly detected until it seems too late. The worst part is that by the time you realize its hold on you, you have no desire to do anything about it.

But I am a Christian: throughout the darkness I have experienced, Christ was the light when others refused to be. The churches of my childhood did not believe in medicating anyone for mental illnesses, learning disorders, or emotional disorders. I was shunned by the members of my youth group for being medicated for depression. They refused to speak with me until I finally stopped taking my medication, which caused violent tremors, fainting, dizziness, and uncontrollable anxiety attacks. The religiously superstitious youth group leaders were convinced that I was receiving judgment from God. I eventually began taking the medication again because I hated the withdrawal. Moreover, the emotional abuse from my church peers had only gotten worse despite quitting what they called the “placebo” in the first place.

One could even say that it was the church which eventually led to my diagnosis. I also have a neurological disorder which is characterized as borderline autistic. It was much more apparent when I was younger and the members of the church, particularly my Sunday school teachers, were revolted by it. Although I was abnormally intelligent and spoke in an almost adult-like and articulate manner, I was unable to easily interact with children of my age and comprehend certain types of directions and instructions from my teachers. They were all under the opinion that any abnormality in a person was a judgment or punishment from God. My parents were treated with suspicion and I was not treated like the other children: the teachers would not allow me to hug them; when I fell and hurt myself, I wasn’t comforted but reprimanded for crying; when the other children began to tease and bully me, my pleas for help were dismissed as tattling; and, due to the teachers’ apparent dislike for me, the bullying became violent. My current psychiatrist says that the combination of emotional abuse and genetic factors were what led to the eventual diagnosis of clinical depression at the early age of eleven.

Many would see the way my congregation treated me as a reason to abandon Christianity altogether. I tried, but I never could. I didn’t want to. When I first became a Christian, it wasn’t because the church people were so welcoming and friendly or because my parents happened to be Christians themselves. Unlike all of those people in church, Christ had suffered. Unlike the parents who turned a blind eye to their own children who continually called me “Retard”, God knew the pain my parents suffered at the hands of my abusers and the indifference of their parents. God knew my suffering because his own son suffered at the hands of people who couldn’t understand love.

I look back now at the examples of “love” in my church who told me I could not love Christ because his love wouldn’t heal my depression. My pastor spoke in a gray suit with big shoulders and sparkling white teeth: he told us actions showed love and that we had to exemplify the Bible in every aspect of our lives. If we had no desire to, it meant God’s love wasn’t present.

Please do not be like the people I have mentioned. Do not be so narrow-minded to assume that having depression means I am not loved or that love is not in my life. In fact, I would say that because of my dealings with depression I know the love of God. I would not be here today, let alone still a believer, if it were for my own human wisdom.  Yet through this illness and God’s mercy, I believe I am a stronger believer than some who are older, and supposedly wiser and more experienced than myself.

My medication alone could not have gotten me through each and every day of my life, unless I was assured that there was a purpose for why I could take it. Even now, as I sit in my room, my head and body aching and screaming to remain limp, inactive, and removed from the rest of the campus, indifferent to the desire to eat, I will get up and nourish the body God has given me. I will live through tomorrow and the next and I will do so by any means necessary, regardless of whether or not my medication comes tomorrow and relieves me of the effects of withdrawal. My depression may tell me that I have no reason to live and strive like everyone else, but God gives me the strength to do so much more under these conditions.

I always felt like something was wrong with me. I was extremely shy and didn’t have a lot of friends. I was a nice person; all my friends told me so. So why did all the bullies pick on me?  Why didn’t anyone stop them like they did for other people? What was wrong with me that made that happen to me? I had no idea and thought I was fine. I was bullied a lot in Elementary school, mostly on the bus. There was one girl who would actually kick off the other bullies so she could do the job herself. Even as I walked up to give a speech at our 6^th grade graduation she made comments about everything from what I was wearing to what I said or did. In middle school they backed off but I had more problems to deal with. I didn’t mentally mature like the other kids. They all stopped wearing ‘kids clothes’ and wore more fitted and more adult clothes.  I didn’t understand it at all.  How did they know to do that while I didn’t? Why did my best friend ignore me the day I accidently wore an outfit that didn’t match? I didn’t really care or understand the change. I was saved and I had Jesus so I thought I was fine, like that’s all I need.  I also thought I looked fine with my clothes and hair. Eventually it sunk in that I was a fashion disaster because everyone was telling me that, and I became paranoid about my appearance and obsessed over trying to fit in and be more normal.

I also had anxiety about being social. I had friends, and would gladly welcome anyone, but I felt fine with my small group. Because it was all I knew, it felt normal for me to get all worked up about a party or try to get out of going somewhere with new people. I hadn’t had any other experience so I assumed everyone felt this way. Meeting new people was brutal for me: My muscles tightened and I got nervous enough to make myself have pain. Besides becoming quiet, my nervousness didn’t really show on the outside. I was dealing with all the anxiety and stress that came from just trying to have a conversation on a daily basis.  Everyone just told me I was shy and would ‘grow out of it.’

After school I would be tired. I would come home and want to go to sleep because school was exhausting. All day I’d have to do the same things as everyone else like go to class and have lunch and gym, but for some reason I’d just have a harder time with everything. I’d freak out if someone asked me to stay after school or if they wanted me to go home with them on their bus.  It was outside my comfort zone and I just couldn’t handle it. I tried to envision scenarios of what would happen to prepare myself, but my mind always worked overtime and came up with the worst situations.

I learned a few things weren’t normal about me when I shared them with friends and they told me it was weird. I was the weird girl. I became aware of everything that was wrong and it turned into what I thought others thought about me. At first I tried to behave differently to make people like me. I tried to talk more or make more friends. But when I talked to people at a sleepover, for example, they would say stuff like ‘You’re so quiet’ or tell me that the way I did things was weird. I was still the weird girl.

I hated myself. Why was I different? Why did God make me this way? Was it punishment? The person who stops getting invited places or who is left out of group activities, the person who no one wants because they are different. It wasn’t fair. Anger and sadness built up inside me. No one understood anything I was going through. They just told me to stop being shy or to make myself be happy. Did they think I didn’t want to be happy? I prayed about it and asked for help, but I didn’t feel it helped for long because the feelings came back every day. I had no outlet for my feelings, so one time I was in a bad mood and had a bad day: All the self-hatred boiled over so I grabbed my shaving razor and purposefully cut my ankle. Physical pain was just easier to deal with. I only did it a few times. I would punish myself for being shy and weird because I hated myself.  I would hit myself with the back of my hairbrush, cut my ankles and deny myself my favorite foods. No one ever found out and I eventually stopped. I think the turning point was when I took scissors and cut an ‘x’ over my heart because that was where it hurt, so I marked it with an ‘x’. I was so embarrassed by it because it was so noticeable, and took forever to go away. I also felt spiritually guilty for abusing myself. I apologized to God and kept asking for help in dealing with it or asking for it to be taken away from me.

I had been seeing my guidance counselor pretty often and she noticed something was off. So I took a test and she told me I had Social Anxiety Disorder and was on the borderline of Panic Anxiety Disorder. Social Anxiety Disorder is an abnormal amount of stress or fear during social situations that can impair ability to function in some parts of daily life. I had never heard of this disorder before. She recommended I see a psychiatrist every week to build up a ‘tool box’ to deal with life. So every Tuesday I would go see my shrink and we would talk. It was great to just talk and have someone listen, actually understand, and have answers for me. It felt like my prayers were being answered because I began to feel better. She told me that next time I was in a social situation I should focus on relaxing my muscles and that that would force my body to relax itself. It worked and no one noticed it at all. Some of her suggestions would be noticeable if I tried them, like a verbal pep talk or taking deep breaths. I tried those too before or after a stressful situation, which for me, was basically any situation. After using these suggestions, I felt more confident and less worried and judged.

When I came to Gordon I was really nervous about making friends. My La Vida crew wasn’t close at all. I was close with one person, but that’s it. My roommate thought I was crazy because I cried when my parents left. My floor had horrible community and my O-Crew never got together because the leader had scheduling issues. Eventually, my roomie got to know me. We became friends and she introduced me to some of her friends, so that I had a small group. I still had a hard time, though. Taking initiative to walk into someone’s room and just start talking struck me with fear. I needed an invitation or sign that we are real friends so that I wouldn’t be the annoying person that everyone didn’t like. I cried myself to sleep so many times and went home almost every weekend because I was lonely. I like being alone but sometimes when other people were laughing and having fun outside my window I felt sad. I tried getting involved in a spiritual life group both quads but nothing came out of it in terms of friendships.

This year is better. I live on an amazing floor, all the doors are open all day and everyone is friendly. I have the same roommate and we are good friends. I still only have a small group of people as friends and sometimes they are really busy so it still gets lonely. I am still dealing with issues like low self-esteem but it is so much better than it has ever been. I am very much considering taking a medication to help with some of the anxiety and to be more social. I just want to feel normal. I know ‘there’s no such thing as normal’ and ‘everyone is different’ and that ‘differences make people special,’ but as of now I feel the only way to be happy and have a shred of confidence in myself is to at least try the medication. People still think I’m shy and that I’m a little quirky (I like that word a lot better than weird). Some people don’t understand when I tell them I have an anxiety disorder and tell me I use it as a crutch. They don’t get it. I have always felt like this and I only learned it had a name a few years ago. I have gone on this road for so long, and I am still waiting for change and relief.

People think I’m generous, as I lay down a second piece of cheese over top bread already holding an ample portion of meat. Anxious eyes watch me as I wrap the finished sandwich in stiff wax paper. They wait for my pencil to mark an extra charge onto the translucent wrapping, fearing the indication of letters ‘c’ or ‘e m’.  When read by the expressionless eyes of the blue collared cashier, the small signs incite a further depletion of already lessoning meal points. Her long acrylic nails sound sharply against the white keys of the register, as she moves to calculate the money owed and then passionlessly swipes the student’s card. The boys wilt in front of her. Far too aware that their hunger will not stay sated, and that the heavy sandwich now resting in their hands, full of red meat and yellow cheese, may be their last. A future of peanut butter and jelly, only $1.50, inevitably awaits them.  Yet, the wrapping remains unmarked. My hand never moves towards the pencil. They smile at me, grateful and relieved, but move quickly to take their sandwich.

People think I am thoughtful, as I offer my ideas to improve their sandwiches and embellish their ice cream.

“You know what would taste even better?”

“What?” My customer, a nervous freshman, asks. She looks first at me and then back down at the glass, peering down at the four tubs of ice cream bellow.

“If you took one of the chocolate, chocolate chip cookies from over there,” I motion toward a near cart, filled with the left over cookies and confections from lunch, “and crumbled it into the ice cream, and then took fudge sauce, and then added whipped cream.” My voice rises in delight as I describe the sweet venture. My pretty customer smiles at me, “no” is evident in her eyes.

“Oh, that sounds so wonderful. But I think I’ll just have the ice cream.” I shrug amicably and slide open the glass.

“Which flavor did you want again?”

“Um,” she lowers her head to the clear planes, hopeful that closer proximity will quell her uncertainty, “um.” It doesn’t. I watch her dark head bowed toward the waiting freezer, the cold barrier between us. My thoughts return to my own creation. I’d warm the cookie in the microwave, and break it carefully into pieces over my ice cream-the flavor, a certain cookie dough. Whether I should drizzle the chocolate syrup over my whipped cream or wait to add the cream last causes me pause.

“Um,” my hesitant friend speaks again, issuing forth a valueless nothing into the air. Both, I’d drizzle the syrup before and after the whipped cream, “strawberry” she says. I wrestle with the ice cream, scooping savagely at the frozen milk and sugar. I fill her cup, wishing it were mine. She takes it, and I walk back to my station by the sandwiches.

People may think I am thin. But I am not. Nor am I generous or thoughtful. I make my ice cream, only bigger and with two giant cookies instead of one. I can’t wait for the whipped cream and syrup, and devour it without. I eat a cinnamon bagel soon afterward. Furtively ripping pieces of the soft bread and stuffing it into my mouth as I wait for customers to approach my counter. I eat the soup, adding oyster crackers with a heavy hand. I stand behind the large soda machine to eat. And watch as students pass by oblivious and as my boss, a small and balding man, walks purposefully into the kitchen. I wonder if I can even taste the food I am eating. If I am enjoying the experience, relishing the flavor as I hope others do, with my sandwiches, with their desserts.  Or am I merely granting reign to my desires? They are insatiable, it seems. My throat burns as the food returns to my mouth. Acid reflux or bulimia, I do not know which. Binge. What an odd word.  Binge, binge. Is purge any funnier?

Why, God? Why have you made me like this? I want to know why I have the guilt that comes with my learning disability. With this particular learning disability, I process information slower than usual. I am locked in my mind until I find the key that opens the gates and allows my ideas to reach the paper. My comprehension works wonderfully, but the words to express that comprehension frequently elude my grasp. Like David, I need God’s help and I cry out to Him, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?” (Psalm 13:2). I feel God’s silence, and the weight of my guilt settles on my spirit. I struggle with myself because I am frustrated and I hate being a disappointment. I sometimes wonder if there is some way I could avoid the despair that comes when the deadline approaches and I am not ready for it. There are so many voices and thoughts floating around in my mind that I cannot control or organize them all. My guilt and frustration with my disability – and the subsequent depression – all trap and torment me within my head. God appears to ignore my pain and to “hide [His] face from me,” (13:1) but He is good to me, even in my despair. He is gradually showing me not how to get out of this mess, but how to think about and deal with myself and my situation.

My exhausted anger overwhelms me, and I cry out, “God, I can’t do this anymore! I cannot meet others’ expectations of me! I can never meet my own expectations or goals! Only You can help me, but will You? Please, please help!” but He does not seem to respond. I ask Him why I have to wrestle with such unruly thoughts, and why my guilt becomes so overgrown that it chokes the joy out of me. I grow so disgusted with myself that I wage a pointless and profitless war with myself.

It starts with my attempt to ignore my depression and force myself to just sit down and write; but, that doesn’t work. Countless times, I try to shove my thoughts into a particular direction, but they usually rebel, refusing to bend to my will. I use my anger to propel me to work, but it just remains burning within me until all productivity is shriveled up in the dark recesses of my mind. Then I become even more depressed, wondering if there was some way I could have avoided this mess.

And then, in the midst of my self-torment, another voice says, “Why is it even such a big deal? It is just a paper, a homework assignment. Just do it, and give them your worst work, you idiot.” The problem is that I do not think that I can do that. I either pour all of my heart and soul into my work, or it doesn’t get done. If I am coming up with my own words, I need to come up with the right words, and that can take a long time. Words have to be authentic, because I will be confused if I’m writing something that I don’t fully grasp or believe. I need to be fully committed to it before I can make sense of it. I need to sit and think and not feel guilty that it takes so long for my thoughts to clear. I need to shift my focus to God.

Despite my despair, despite my own shortcomings, “I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me” (Psalm 13:6). This psalm has taught me that even though I suffer, I cannot escape the blessings that He has given me. Even if I pout and make myself out to be a victim who is helpless to God’s whims, He shows me how He genuinely loves and cares for me. He has given me a loving and supportive family and so many caring friends who help me grow. Even though I work much slower than other people, God is showing me how my disability can be a blessing in different contexts. My desire to sit down and really consider how words are put together can be good. It helps me retain and digest many new thoughts that I come in contact with. It helps me see homework as more than mere assignments and busy work, but as character developing trials. And through the help of this psalm, I have realized that Jesus suffered an agonizing death, not only to erase my sins, but also to free me from my crushing guilt and despair, because “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). If I remember to sing, rejoice, and trust in God (Psalm 13:5-6), then He can work through me and give me strength.