A SUDDEN SHIFT

I hate feeling off. 

 

I woke up fine. I got in a couple of decent writing sessions. Then I made the mistake of stepping outside. Immediately, my mood sank. I wanted a good cry. For nothing. 

 

I did not cry.

 

I am better able at keeping myself together now, even when I can’t shake the off-ness. 

 

It’s not just me. I sensed the sun was off, too. Something about the hue of light hitting the sidewalk wasn’t right, a little orange filtered in. I glanced up and the sun looked normal. It was the clouds surrounding it that had an unnatural grayness. Forest fire season, I told myself. There must be one with some bad air filtering this way. Early stages of any impact on the city. I hate when it gets worse, when the sun is reduced to an eerie red ball all day, when I breathe in smoky air. 

 

Stay away. Please.

 

On my way back from my road trip, I caught the smoky haze first in Redding, California, then in Bend, Oregon. Two different fires, the smokiness felt with every inhale in Redding but a distinct haze affecting skies in Bend, too. 

 

Stop following me.

 

I don’t think it’s forest fire fatigue that’s hitting me. I’m supposed to have accepted this new normal which has annually affected Vancouver’s summer skies since at least 2015. I haven’t. I’m bloody tired of the public and the politicians doubling down to fight any life changes and extra costs that may help the planet. If we treated this like a war, we’d all pitch in, we’d accept sacrifices. We’d see necessary changes to the economy. Instead, people deny the obvious. They put heads in the sand. Politicians fail to lead. Laws and regulations don’t change or are stricken by new governments, voted in to restore what was, planet be damned.

 

That could impact my mood. That could explain this off-ness. But I’m certain that’s not it. I’ve had the environment and people’s recalcitrance on my mind every day for years now. We need more Gretas. I need to be more like her. 

 

It’s more likely my mood suddenly dropped due to a personal haze, that which follows a travel adventure. I’d been gone four weeks, most of it on the Oregon and California coasts. Breezes and sunshine—the normal kind—every day. My mood usually dips after trips. But I still think that won’t hit until tomorrow when it’s the weekend and I don’t have as strict a writing schedule to occupy me. I really won’t have much of anything to occupy me. Even in regular times, I prefer my weekday work mode to the relative emptiness of Saturdays and Sundays. My travel dip awaits.

 

And so there it is. I’ve done my due diligence in scanning for causes of depression. It’s not linked to anything at all. So often, that is the case. I step out of my condo, my little protective bubble, and I realize I’m part of—or perhaps not part of—something bigger. I’m here, taken aback by a mood that can’t be explained away. Without a specific cause, it’s difficult to turn it around. I know not to fight it. Depression is a master at its own doubling down. I have to walk with it and through it. I will feel it until I don’t. 

 

I understand this is why some people may choose some sort of upper—alcohol, drugs, anonymous sex—as a temporary escape. The option of a quick, if temporary, escape may entice. I’m just not wired that way. A good thing in the long run though harder in the short-term. 

 

I’m down but I won’t go fetal in my bed. I’m not even rushing back to my bubble. (It’s already burst.) I sip on my oat milk latte in a café. I write this out, my formal acknowledgement. Yes, depression. I see you, I feel you.

 

For now, I am disconnected from everything around me. I am not liking this damn shift one bit. This is the hand I’ve been dealt for today, maybe longer. There is no other deck. I play it. 

 

Play. Funny word. Sometimes no fun at all. 

 

A DRUG DEAL GOING DOWN

The following is a piece I wrote back in the fall. It may come across as a bit dark; I suspect that’s why I didn’t post it then. Still, today a major Canadian corporation, Bell Canada, is holding its annual Let’s Talk Day, intended to shed light on mental health issues. Thirty years ago, when I interned at a mental health non-profit agency not far from L.A.’s Skid Row, I could not understand why people would go off their meds. If they do some good, why stop? Now I get it. Stigma is still part of the struggle.

I’ve been seeing psychiatrists for five years now and it still feels strange. Unpleasant even.

I had issues when I was going weekly. One doctor and I clashed. He was intent on proving I fit into a textbook model for depression and tried repeatedly to get me to confess that I was an angry person. He’d bait me with a thesaurus. After I’d share an anecdote, he’d say, “And how’d that make you feel...agitated? Huffy? Furious?” If I had any anger, it was session-specific. I eventually decided it was better to go back on a waiting list than to keep seeing him.

My next weekly guy wanted me to buy into mindfulness. I obligingly bought his chosen book on the subject and couldn’t help but scribble all my objections and skepticism in the margins. No doubt what he was scribbling on his legal pad: Resistant to therapy. After a few assigned readings and some futile attempts to incorporate mindfulness into our sessions, he lost the blinking contest. I would never become a disciple. Our sessions evolved into comfortable conversations. Too comfy, perhaps. I didn’t see myself growing. I was the same old mess. After seeing him for three and a half years, he retired last March.

The breakup seemed harder on him. He fretted over the transition for months. I regularly had to reassure him that I would be okay. I didn’t mention that I looked forward to the change. Maybe a new doctor would have a different perspective. Maybe he or she would offer new insights that might lead to improved ways of coping with my anxiety and depression. If nothing else, I knew my time would be freer. Apparently, psychiatrists who do psychotherapy are a dying—or retiring, at least—breed. No more weekly, fifty-minute sessions.

The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. My new psychiatrist sees me once every two to three months for what comes off as a random chat, never exceeding ten minutes. I leave each time with the same thought: “What the hell was that for?”

I’m certain I’m not benefiting from these brief sit-downs. (Does the chair even get warm?) Still, I have to go. It’s all come down to drugs. He’s my dealer. Today’s appointment feels especially unsavory. Part of it is the setting. My psychiatrist has been assigned not based on my needs or any matching criteria; rather, he works out of the provincial health unit closest to me and he apparently had a space. While I live on the edge of the sketchiest part of Vancouver, his office is in the thick of it. To get to the building, I walk by addicts passed out or pawning their wares on Hastings Street and then take a zig and a zag until I’m alongside the tented homeless community that has taken over Oppenheimer Park for years. The glass door of the office I enter is decorated with the message, NO NARCOTICS ON SITE. I guess the hardware store was out of welcome mats. I arrive, carrying my laptop without my version of the Linus blanket, my Herschel backpack. (At the end of my first appointment, my psychiatrist eyed my backpack on the floor and warned me about a chronic bed bug problem in the building.)

Yeah, so the stage is always set for an unsavory kind of feeling. It gets worse as I dutifully answer his left-field questions—“What’s your writing process?”; “Did you like teaching?”—knowing that the Q and A leads to nothing. He’s going through the motions and, frankly, so am I. All I want is the slip of paper that comes whenever he suddenly decides time’s up. Gimme the prescription.

The sad reality is I can relate to the people I pass on my way over. I’ve learned the hard way, through trial and serious error, that I don’t function without my drugs. Rather, I dysfunction. Grandly. I spiral quickly downward, the bubble wrap coming off what had been neatly packed and stowed boxes of gloom, doom and utter despair. I frighten myself and doctors. I get locked up.

As I fold the paper I’ve come for, pocket it and leave the building, I feel dirty and ashamed. I fret as I have so many times before, wondering what the long-term harm may be from taking these pills. I flirt with a timeline for when I may once again go drug-free, cold turkey. I’ve been stable for almost four months now. My recently retired psychiatrist told me on several occasions that I’d be on meds for the rest of my life. (“Think of it like a diabetic who needs insulin,” I’ve been told by several well-intentioned professionals.) Still, I hold out hope that maybe I’ll learn some effective strategies to work through anxiety without needing to reach for an Ativan and I’ll be able to talk myself through heretofore crippling bouts of prolonged depression without Seroquel or Abilify or Mirtazapine. But I know I’m not going to learn any strategies from my bimonthly chitchats with my current psychiatrist. And the lift I get from a current pop song like this or that is fleeting. I don’t have answers now and I have plenty of bad memories from psych wards and meltdowns in doctors’ offices. Despite the bargaining, wishing and protesting, there is only one option: I have to stay on drugs.

By the time I walk back past the tent city, around the woman on the sidewalk nonchalantly shoving a needle into a vein in her arm and dodge several zombie impersonators walking wobbly lines, I know I can’t really relate to these neighbors. I catch a couple hugging and see groups huddled together. I hear laughter, some of it with another person by their side, some of it alone, and it’s our differences that are more pronounced. They are the ones who have all the connections they need.

I walk into my drugstore, have a seat in front of a familiar pharmacist and pull out my paper, my doctor’s note that hooks me up for the next ninety days. I try to smile and make eye contact but mostly I stare at my right knee, bobbing up and down, one hundred fifty times per minute. With only a glance at the piece of paper that I slide across the counter, he knows I’m not here on account of a persistent hemorrhoid issue, a case of the crabs or the latest flu strain. Those things shall pass. As many times as I’ve done this, my face still burns.

When I return in an hour to pick up the prescription, I’ll pay for a bag of chips and a box of Walkers shortbread as well, not on account of any expected surge of the munchies; to the contrary, those items will sit untouched in my cupboard for many months. I just need to normalize the experience, like how I load up a basket of groceries when the only pressing purchase is a twelve-roll package of toilet paper. Pharmacists and grocery clerks know too much. I’ll shove the pill bottle in my jacket and go bagless on the chips and cookies. The shame in walking home and coming off as a junk food junkie is nothing.

LIVING "LITE"

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, or at least it is here. It’s probably a lot of other things. That time for May flowers, dotted with four “Caturdays” and whatever else people throw into the Twitterverse and sticks. But mental health concerns me far more than random cat photos or even the fact that May 10 is Clean Up Your Room Day. Periodically, I’ve shared some of my mental health challenges and I plan on two or three related posts this month.

Back in October, I acknowledged spending eighteen days in the psych ward of my local hospital. It was my second stay in four years, something I swore I’d never repeat. Unfortunately, I was suicidal after falling into a deep depression. I have been diagnosed as being bipolar II, meaning I have periods of depression and episodes of mania, but my mania is low-grade. That end of the diagnosis is never a worry. I like that part. I’m super productive then. I multi-task up to five things at once…and get them done! I think all my ideas are out-of-the-ballpark homeruns. And even if most of them aren’t, it’s amazing what a boost of confidence can do. Ah, mania. Not my problem area.

Alas, depression. I’d managed well after going off meds for thirteen months before hitting rock bottom again. Yes, I’d been foolish. I don’t like meds. For anything. I never take antibiotics; I won’t even swallow a vitamin tablet. I’ve apparently inherited a stubborn, I-will-handle-this-on-my-own tendency from my father. And he’s a doctor. Some say doctors make the worst patients but I’m a case for doctors’ kids being even worse.

For now I accept medication even though I recently read my file and my psychiatrist still contends I’m resistant. (The fact that I happen to forget once or twice (or more) each week is not intentional, I swear. I’m told forgetfulness can be part of depression.) We’ve been tinkering with my medications for the past seven months. Feels like we’re seasoning soup. Little of this, little of that. Stir. Too much, too little. A pinch less, a tad more. Stir again.

I figured if I complied with the meds, everything else would go back to the way it was. That’s what I’d done last time. Discharged from hospital on Friday, back at work on Monday. It wasn’t a choice. I hadn’t accrued enough sick leave from that employer. But a strong Protestant work ethic played a factor, too. (Sorry, other worthy religions. Somehow Protestants, particularly Calvinists, laid claim to hard work. Seems silly these days,…although I’m a huge fan of Calvin & Hobbes. That’s all I know about Calvinism.) I worked until everything fell apart all over again. Perhaps with an exponent tagged on the end.

Right now, I’d say my life is fairly manageable. That’s great until I think about how it’s a “lite” version of life. My plate has little on it. Maybe a couple of celery stalks and a dab of cottage cheese. Manageable and bland. I have not returned to my job as a school principal and that comes with a mix of emotions that I try to repress. I learned long ago as a teacher that I may be proud of what I do, but I’m not indispensable. Someone can take over. I’ve been doing my best ostrich-in-the-sand routine, not asking who is in for me. Somehow it’s better not knowing. What if the person drags down momentum? What if he/she exceeds anything I ever did? Yep, ostriches are my new favorite animal.

This past month, my status officially changed from “away on sick leave” to being on long-term disability (LTD). I cried when I got the news. In part, it was a relief. I’d been led to believe that, since my case involved mental health, there was a higher level of scrutiny than with typical physical disability cases. That not only incensed me but got me spinning with anxiety. My file was extensive and my doctors’ letters were unequivocal. It was suggested that there might be something akin to an interview just to make sure I wasn’t a fraud. (As if I’d fake the hospitalizations and everything else I go through.) But then, as I navigated the process, I was also advised that my case was a “slam dunk”. Gee, thanks. That felt like too much the other way. For now, LTD—incidentally, a 1970s, Jeffrey Osborne-fronted band with an awesome song I play when jogging—is my status and will be reviewed every few months (which makes me anxious just thinking about). Again, life is manageable in its current state. I realize that, as my leave extends, the chance of returning to work becomes less. Not sure how I feel about that in the long run; for now, I feel safe.

Of course, there are corollaries that come with being on leave. I have a hard time seeing school-aged children in public. Guilt and shame rise up. I’m reminded of where I used to be and what shaped a big part of my identity. I was a beloved teacher and then a principal that kids and parents adored. (Teachers were always harder to read.) One of the challenges in where I live is that there is an elementary school by the park across from me. It’s a beautiful new white building, accented with bright colors, impossible to miss whenever I look out my tenth floor window. I see kids going to school, backpacks strapped on, walking hand in hand with their parent; I hear the bells during the day and the squeals that rise during every recess and lunch. If I’m home, there is no escaping the school timetable. I’m supposed to be in that setting. I’m supposed to be working. I’m having to let go of that notion.

My week continues to feel full even if, mercifully, it just has a lot fewer people in it. I stick to a strict writing schedule seven days a week, hitting my first café as their first customer when the doors open at six in the morning. I exercise to the point of extremes six days a week. I read avidly. I’m having another go at learning French. And, four days a week, I attend support groups, psychiatric sessions and other meetings related to mental illness. I tell myself being active and being invested in my own wellness will make a difference.

I am fortunate that I don’t fit some stereotype of being curled up in bed, hidden by covers and a pillow. There are people in my support groups like that. (It’s a weird feeling going to a support group and not feeling worthy, not feeling depressed enough!) I am thankful that writing gives me purpose. I make myself write even if it may not produce anything worthwhile on a particular day or week. The fact that I have a compulsive need to exercise has created its own problems, but I believe it’s also saved me from sinking too low. I am one example of a person who deals with depression. (I like to say “deals with” instead of the more negative, victim-tinged “struggles with” or the neutral “experiences”. It feels like I have a more active role in facing the challenges before me.) I am fortunate that I can live off LTD when others scrimp on welfare. I have no family or friends here to help me so I’ve managed to reach out to formal supports. I teeter frequently but, for now, I am coping. I write this as one window into depression. There are, no doubt, many more.

WHAT TO SAY

It's the middle of the day on a weekday and I have a hair appointment. I feel myself becoming unsettled as I walk to the salon. My stylist and I live in different worlds due to age and interests so it's always a challenge to keep a conversation flowing during a cut, an ordeal prolonged by the fact I insist on getting my sideburns colored each time as I continue to battle the inevitable gray signs of aging.

I have far less than usual to discuss. I've been in hospital for close to three weeks and I'm not prepared to talk about that. I can't talk about my recent (Canadian) Thanksgiving. Again, in hospital. No pumpkin pie, no roasted veggies. And I didn't have plans for this past weekend. I wasn't sure when I'd be discharged. I'm out of practice in planning a day or any part of it. I've forgotten what it's like to have options. And, honestly, I don't have the energy.

 

I briefly debated telling my stylist I was hospitalized for depression. (Never mind the suicidal tidbit. No need to be a total downer.) But being out with one's depression still comes with a degree of discretion. To my knowledge, there isn't some well-worn chant like, "I'm down. Don't frown. Get used to it."

A disclosure to Melanie might be somewhat cathartic and might even have some educational value for her, but in my mind I went all Jack Nicholson--"You can't handle the truth!" 

Jack and I were proven right after only five minutes. She'd asked me if I was dressing up for Hallowe'en. She talked about Friday the 13^th freaking her out. She bemoaned a broken fingernail and an unsatisfied craving for sour candy. "I was hospitalized for depression" just felt out of place. So I explained away that fact I could come for my midday appointment on a weekday by saying I'd taken a leave of absence.

"Good for you!" she said. "You work too hard." And then she segued into an anecdote about how menacing the mirror at her work station can be when she has a hangover.

I'm not ready for full re-entry into society, I thought. I wanted to flee. I even momentarily longed for the grim isolation of my old room on the psych ward. But then I looked in that menacing mirror and stared down big hair and old man sideburns. I steered the conversation to near silence. I inserted a fake smile in the right places and nodded at times when the scissors weren't too close to my ears. I made it through, departing with my secret still under wraps. Turns out the experience wasn't about bringing Melanie around to some point of understanding; rather, it was a chance for me to practice tolerance. And, these days, that’s something we can all work on, no matter what we’ve endured during the past month.

FURNITURE VOWS

I suppose it’s fitting that the first thing I write on my laptop while stretched out on my new sofa is about the sofa itself. After all, it took nineteen months to arrive.

That’s not the fault of a delivery truck driver. They only made me wait four and a half hours. And it’s not because a furniture warehouse burned or a vendor went bankrupt or some temperamental maker kept fussing over the fluffiness of the seat cushions. The delay was entirely my doing…by not doing.

When I moved back to Vancouver after an ill-spent decade in Nowhereland, I gave away all my furniture other than my bed. Technically, a little cash changed hands for a few items—fifty bucks for the six-month-old $900 chair, a twenty for a $500 mirror. (Perhaps the best decision I ever made was against pursuing a business degree. I’d have flunked out of college.) I just wanted everything gone. Moving from a three-bedroom, two-level house to a 570-square foot condominium, I knew things wouldn’t fit and, besides, the size and scale would be off. (Or, at least, I think that’s what home décor folks would say.)

In truth, there was a darker reason to chuck everything I’d amassed by the age of fifty-one. I wasn’t set on staying in Vancouver. I wasn’t set on staying anywhere. I remained firmly uncommitted to life, ready to succumb to the undertow of a persistent, profound depression. I held off buying furniture in case I mustered up the guts to jump off the Second Narrows Bridge, leap from the roof of my 28-storey building or swallow a bottle of whatever pill I could track down at the recommendation of a savage Internet troll. I wanted any aftermath to be with minimal inconveniences. My parents live 2,200 miles away. Why task them with posting my wares on Craigslist? They’d first want to figure out who the hell “Craig” is and what happened to the apostrophe and space in his business name. (I wonder myself.)

But sometime in the spring, I had my own reawakening. There were breaks between lows. Sometimes I’d go a whole day without thinking about suicide. I didn’t feel good, but feeling ambivalent was several rungs above where I’d been. I started to believe I might stick around. And that’s when I dared to walk into a Crate & Barrel. Didn’t buy anything—too soon—but I found myself drifting into other furniture stores in the months that followed. Sometimes I’d get sidetracked by funky credenzas or bold prints on pillows, but I knew it all had to start with a sofa. I still wasn’t sure if I could commit.

How long do people stick with a sofa? Longer than any of my past relationships, no doubt. A decade? Two? And still that nagging thought: Who will have to get rid of it?

I put off the couch quandary throughout the summer, instead pouring any extra funds into trips—the Oregon Coast, Ottawa, Dublin. If I spent recklessly, I wouldn’t have to think again about furniture possibilities until 2017. 

But somehow, in changing jobs, I came upon a small cash windfall. I still had money in my bank account by summer’s end. And then I walked into another furniture store with a friend as we waited for a Ramen noodle place to open for dinner. I looked. I touched fabric. I surprised myself by liking two models. My friend sat on one and noted it felt comfy. I tried it out. Was orange too kitschy? Then he waved the ring of other fabric options in my face. The sales guy swooped in and mentioned a half price three-day sale later in the week. That was our ticket out the door. It wasn’t quite the right time to buy. I had time to talk myself out of it. Surely I’d have second thoughts. Maybe even dark ones. My condo could retain its open space character indefinitely. I could go longer with a clunky plastic office chair and a stool that doubled as my dinner table. The sofa was too big a decision. It had come to represent too much.

Over the course of that week, I lowered my expectations. Happiness was too lofty a goal. Feeling stable was good enough. I celebrated by going off both my meds. And then on Friday night, the last day of the sale, my workload seemed to increase as quitting time neared. My co-workers gleefully filed out while I tapped away on my computer, with the finish line for my must-do project pulling farther and farther away. I eyed the salesman’s business card and chucked it in the recycling bin.

Slowly I began to make progress with my work. I solved the snags or found ways around them. Hours after everyone else had left the building, it was my turn to begin the weekend. No plans. Just me and all that condo emptiness. Driving home, I thought of the one that got away. Sleek, clean lines, steel gray. So much better than a wooden stool. And with rush hour over, I made better time as I crossed bridges and darted by drivers with too fixed mindsets of speed limits. (Merely suggestions, right?) I began to feel that sense of elation that comes after running two yellowish lights in a row. I set my sights on getting to the department store before closing.

Yes, I wanted that sofa.

And so, just like in the movies where the doubtful bride or groom makes a mad dash to the altar, I raced to The Bay. I arrived fifteen minutes before closing. (What was the rush?!) I clomped up five escalators and marched straight to one sofa, then the other. Both decent home companions, by the decision became clear.

I choose you.

And so here I sit on my new sofa. Ironically, it’s not the one I thought I chose. Did the salesman err or did I? This is what happens when a year and a half decision gets crammed into the final moments before, “Attention shoppers, the store is now closed.” It seems fitting that I should end up with the bridesmaid. I’m not about to send it back. We were made for each other.

This extended time sitting feels right. My butt and my back feel pampered. I can even feel a nap coming on. A future day home with the flu seems like something to look forward to. But it’s more than the obvious comfort that comes with what some of us in Canada refer to as a chesterfield. From my sofa, I see things differently. I have stopped several times while writing to gaze out my window and marvel at my water view. (It’ll go away with pending condo development, but so what? This is now.) I’ve watched the November sky change countless times in the past hour. The clouds darken and then seemingly softer, white ones drift into the mix. There have even been blinding moments of sunlight, a rare sighting at this time of year in Vancouver.

I see the walls of my living room differently. I glance at the empty floating shelves and realize they should come down. I don’t need them. I don’t want them. It’s exhilarating to have an opinion. I’ll have to Google how to get wallpaper off the wall the sofa rests against. The previous owner proudly told me he ordered it from Belgium and it is classy, but it clashes. (What does that say about my style choices?) I’m wondering about my next purchase. Coffee table? Desk? Maybe I can still find those flashy pillows. It’s a lot to take in. There is so much more to do.

Seems like I might be here for a while.

...BIRTHDAY TO ME

There are people in cancer remission for whom each birthday is an extra celebration, each Christmas all the more cherished. I’m not sure I’ll ever get the point where Christmas will be pleasant again, but birthdays do have new meaning now. I still don’t celebrate. I don’t answer my phone, I don’t tell people and I cringe over the well wishes that spring from an automated Facebook notification. But I do mark the day—quietly—as an achievement.

One of the reasons I grew to hate my birthday is that it felt so arbitrary. Twelve months pass…so what? (I feel the same about New Year’s.) Maybe there are moments during any given year that are deserving of a special dinner or at least an ice cream cone based on something good I actually did. Those are the times when recognition would be authentic. Going another 365 days? Not so much.

Except now. 365 is an achievement. When I was forty-nine and a half, I was committed to a psych ward. I was suicidal. If I hadn’t been locked up, I’d have totaled my car and, if it went well enough, totaled my body. Game over.

I managed to fake my way out. The immediate crisis was over but living to see another birthday seemed utterly implausible. I tried to be gentle, coaxing myself to hang on for two more years to see if I could turn my life around but I wasn’t invested. I was stunned that I made it to fifty. Life remained bleak, recovery impossible. The only way I survived was through running away on weekends to Seattle, Whistler, Victoria…anywhere that helped distract me from a stagnant, failed existence. It was an expensive coping mechanism but at least it wasn’t destructive like turning to drugs or alcohol. I’m fortunate that I’m not wired that way.

Lo and behold, fifty-one came, too. By then I’d switched psychiatrists after sessions with Dr. 7 became combative. I acquiesced to meds. First one, then a second as well. The lows weren’t quite as long or, well, low. I went off the meds, had a setback, went back on. And now I’m fifty-two. I’ve surpassed my two-year goal. I can’t say I’m happy…that was too lofty an aspiration. But I’m not depressed. I’m stable.

Sessions with Dr. 8 have gone from weekly to monthly, in part because work is too busy at the moment, but the urgency is gone, too. My family doctor no longer insists on regular check-ins. (Has it really been nine months?) And I’ve gone off my meds again. “I’m concerned,” Dr. 8 said during my last session. But it’s Day 27 without and so far so good. I’ve come to accept that I will feel sadness more than others. I no longer fear that I may be hospitalized again. If it happens, I just hope to have the wherewithal to drag myself to a different facility.

So…another birthday. Fifty-fuckin’-two. It’ll come and go without fanfare. I have a thirteen-hour work day and then I’ll hit the gym. Maybe I’ll have ice cream on the weekend. But this birthday seems like an achievement. Each one is a milestone. While I’m far from thriving and as alone (and sometimes lonely) as ever, I get teary realizing how much I’ve fought to last this long. I still don’t feel I’ve made any social inroads and I’m still relying on travel as a way of coping. (I have three weekend escapes planned for this month.) It continues to zero out my bank account but I can go longer without furniture. It’s not like I ever have anyone over. There is a lot of work for me to do to reach a point of being invested again. But I’ve given myself the gift of time. Seems I’m sticking around. It’s not exactly “happy birthday”, but it’s a birthday. And that’s something.

COVERING UP

Seems I’ve spent too much time hiding what I read.

I remember checking out E.M. Forster’s Maurice from a Dallas library and being relieved that it was one of those old hard covers without any illustration or adornment. Title, author, that’s all. (Maybe that’s where the expression, You can’t judge a book by its cover came from…a time when you, quite literally, couldn’t.)

I wasn’t one to check out a lot of gay fiction from libraries. Fear? Perhaps. But back then I wasn’t much of a novel reader in the first place. Newspapers, magazines and way too many textbooks provided enough—too much—reading for my liking. I filled much of my free time watching hours and hours of television.  Maybe that proved to be a good thing. If I’d read even a few gay novels, I might have concluded that, once out, my social circle would consist of gay prostitutes. I might still be in the closet.

Somehow I mustered up the gumption to buy Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic while still living in Dallas. I don’t remember where I bought it. I can’t imagine twenty-three-year-old me doing it without having to take a shower as soon as I got home. No doubt, I bought a few other books—never read?—at the same time so I could sandwich The AIDS Book in between them. Maybe the cashier wouldn’t notice the word AIDS in bold letters on the cover. Maybe he or she would see the word Band and think I was a musician. But maybe not. This was 1987 in the midst of the AIDS crisis when people talked about getting it from toilet seats and water fountains. Call it an act of enlightenment that the clerk didn’t put on a pair of latex gloves just to handle the book. (I’d have remembered that.) I am certain I was red-faced and sheened in a layer of perspiration by the time my books were bagged and I rushed for the exit.

When I moved to L.A. two years later, I could buy books without embarrassment at A Different Light bookstore in West Hollywood. A gay bookstore! How wonderful to browse without having to wander away for a single Gay and Lesbian shelf in the Self’-Help section of regular bookstores. (The message I took always away was that, if you were gay, you needed help.) Still, I appreciated having a plain paper bag to take the books back to the car.

I’d also pick up a copy of Edge, the free gay newspaper of the time, whenever I was in West Hollywood. No bag to hide it from view. I was not so ironically on edge about Edge as I carried it back to my car. I worried that the wrong person might see the name on the front cover. If I folded it so the back cover was in sight, things were worse. Invariably, the back had a full-page advertisement for a gay chat line with an alluring image of buff boys in jock straps. I felt like I presented a clear target for anyone venturing to West Hollywood wishing to bash a fag.

Fortunately, I’ve evolved. But then so has society. In fact, my ability to buy a gay book—even one with a let’s-be-clear title like Two Boys Kissing—without going red in the face may be more about society’s enlightenment than my own personal comfort level. The lion in The Wizard of Oz oozed courage than I do.

I felt shame again today as I stepped up to order a Frappuccino at Starbucks. I had about an hour to kill before my appointment with my psychiatrist and I had pulled my current read from my backpack. While paying, I set the book on the counter. The barista glanced at the cover and I realized the title was in clear view with an even clearer title: Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me. I quickly flipped to the back cover. An obvious signal that I didn’t want the guy to read it, right? Well, he went out of his way to bend over and read the spine. I was momentarily mortified.

And then I regained composure and shrugged it off. So what if he saw the title? Why should I care if he concludes that I have a mental health problem? My problem, true enough, but in this context, not my problem.

Maybe there’s a smidgen of personal growth. Give it another decade or two and I won’t give a flip what people think about my books…assuming books still exist as we know them!

A NEW ERA OF NAME-CALLING

I always hated that Sticks and Stones saying. Names hurt. I’ve shaken off many as illogical: Carrot, Peepee Head, Fartface (What does that actually look like?!). I’ve shrugged off others with the merciful passage of time: Loser, Useless, Sissy. Others I’ve come to embrace: Brain, Faggot, Geek. For the most part, name-calling loses its sting as we weather the dents and dings of life.

But some names can still be jarring.

This week, I had two medical appointments on consecutive days. The first was my annual checkup with a skin cancer specialist. She went through my file and reminded me that my first melanoma was identified fifteen years ago. I remember how crushed I was to first hear my family doctor say that dreaded word on the phone: “cancer”. He sounded grave. I’d questioned the marking on my back two years prior and he’d dismissed any concern. It was only at my partner’s insistence that I went back and demanded another look. I had a series of surgeries and lesser cuttings over the next five years and I’ve kept Cancer at a healthy distance for the last decade. Most of the scars are on my back, out of sight. Fortunately, the streak is extended for the next year. No worries, no biopsies. Glad to keep Cancer at bay.

Yesterday, I had my first appointment with a gay psychiatrist, a referral that took six months to become something. Back in April, I spent nine days in psychiatric wards at St. Paul’s Hospital and, in some pathetic game of Patient Hot Potato, got passed along to five psychiatrists. After my release, I met with Number Six for a few utterly unhelpful twenty-minute sessions.

With the passage of time, I questioned whether I needed to even go through with this session. I’d reached out a little more. I’d stopped losing weight. I’d successfully avoided the darkest moments by keeping myself distracted. Mostly, I’d kept myself in a state of constant motion.

I practiced an adult form of running away—summer in L.A., trips to Ontario and San Francisco and repeated weekends in Seattle, Victoria and Whistler. In the past five months, I’ve stayed home three weekends. Even then, I could not spend much time at home; instead, I took off on a long hike, I biked 50K and I ran a half marathon—not as part of an organized event; just because.

As the appointment neared, I figured I’d just let Dr. Seven know I’m fine. Rough patch, that’s all. I’m active. I’m having fun. He’d give me a clean bill of health just like the skin cancer doctor. I’d celebrate with a double scoop waffle cone. And yet I started to get anxious. I didn’t handle the typical Sky Is Falling dramas at work with my characteristic calmness. While my sleep wasn’t any worse than usual, I was physically exhausted. I knew I wouldn’t be able Put on a Happy Face and fake him out.

The session proved to be brutal. For months, friends and family have marvelled at how well I am doing. At first, I continued to be open about my struggles, but they could not understand. It became all about them or it evolved into surface level attempts to get me to cheer up. I learned to tell them what they wanted to hear; it was easier than getting into an argument, going through another futile attempt to offer some education or experiencing another bizarre episode in which someone would “catch” me laughing, proof that I was fixed and I should snap out of it.

On the run, I’d managed to cover up my wounds. Out of sight, sometimes even out of mind. But it’s a dirty process in coming clean. Dr. Seven savagely poked and probed. I had to articulate what I felt—or, more accurately, didn’t feel. I had to explain myself. My carefully built wall shattered. He asked me if I received a diagnosis while in hospital. It sounds silly, but I didn’t recall anything. He stared quizzically with an air of impatience. By the end of our session, he declared I had all signs of MDD. He repeated MDD a half dozen times. Just so I wouldn’t forget. Couldn’t forget.

Major Depressive Disorder.

I tried to make light of things. “Is there such a thing as Minor Depressive Disorder?”

“Yes.”

“I guess that’s something to shoot for.”

Another quizzical stare.

And so I left with all the wounds scratched open and a fancy new label from the DSM-5 catalogue. It’s a condition, but it feels harsher than any name from my past. Those sticks and stones, those physical wounds, they have clear treatment protocols. The names, the mental situations, well, I’m not so sure. Apparently repression and distraction don’t solve much.

Sensing the appointment might not go so well, I frantically booked this weekend in Whistler. It’s still a lovely place, but I’m not feeling as soothed by the environment. Major Depressive Disorder. It’s a clunky name that weighs heavy.

It’s taken me aback. For the moment, I’ve become the label. Just like I shamefully identified as the loser, the farthead, the faggot so many years ago. Only this time the term doesn’t come from a bully or an agitated sibling. It comes from a professional. It’s not intended to taunt and yet I still feel just as defeated.

Major Depressive Disorder. I’m the same person I was twenty-four hours ago, but now I’ve been seared with a red-hot branding iron. Major Depressive Disorder. A new wound to go with the others. A new name to process.

Next week, I’m back with Dr. Seven. It’s a midday appointment, the only one available. I have to miss the whole day of work. But he was insistent. No delays. This name thing is serious business.