So this has been a long time coming and this is probably one of the harder posts to write I think. But while I have the courage and the inspiration to write it, I damn well better do it.
To put it bluntly I am depressed. I suffer from depression. I have for as long as I can remember. I did not have a happy childhood in the broadest sense of the idea of a happy childhood. Sure, my parents always provided for me even when it was nearly impossible to do so. I always had a roof over my head and food to eat. So, yes, I was better off than a lot of people. But in the whole Maslow's-Hierarchy-of-Need sense of my childhood, my development stopped somewhere between Love/belonging and Esteem. Okay so stopped is not necessarily the best way to describe it. But that is definitely where it got wonky. Incomplete would be better I suppose. Where and what I lacked in the love/belonging and esteem portions of the hierarchy, shaped and/or deformed my self-actualization. Hence, I suppose, is the source of the depression. (Sidebar: this is actually starting to sound oddly rational and logical, and I am not trying to rationalize how I feel here, suffice it to say I need to step away from Maslow. Nevertheless there is a diagram below for your visual pleasure.)
There were several factors that have definitely ruined my self-esteem, self-confidence, and my morality, creativity etc and so forth. Some of those being the harassment and abuse I faced at school, the abuse that I faced in the home (emotional/psychological and physical). When I was younger I didn't exactly have anyone to turn to, and certainly nobody that I trusted enough to explain any of this or help me make sense of it. My father was like a vacant room at a motel, he was there with just the bare essentials to give him the look of a father, but nothing even remotely personal. My mother was a wreck, depressed, and I suspect suicidal, but my suspicions have never fully been confirmed about that one. Until high school the friends that I had were only friends based on the pretext that if I hung around with a few people I was less likely to be physically harassed at school. Though the emotional harassment never ceased. So, I had no one to speak to and I did the only thing I knew how to preserve myself. I bottled up, hid away in plain site, and spoke of nothing. Even when I did, I felt unheard. I did, however, become an observer, and this is where my self-actualization began. I knew I was not happy, because I did not look or act like anyone else. I knew more about my family situation than I let on, I knew more in school than I actually let on. I figured applying myself would only make me more visible and thus that much more of a target. Instead I settled for being called bright, but lazy by all of my teachers, by my parents. I knew I wasn't stupid and I knew I was perfectly capable do doing every task, homework assignment, whatever was placed before me, but there was a mental block that prevented me from doing so, one that I placed there. One that I have paid for ever since, but one that has lead me down a path I never would have considered way back then.I didn't let a single person near me. I played dumb. I ran through the motions of each day and "played" the part that I felt I most fit in and thereby felt most comfortable. I did this for so long I stopped and bottled so much up that, I stopped feeling much of anything. Sadness, happiness and everything in between all felt sort of muted or filtered out by something. So even the best and worst times in my life, became something to forget. That is exactly what I did. I did my best to forget.
The other day when I was thinking about how to go about writing this, I realized, I don't remember my father moving out of the house. I don't remember the day, I don't remember if I even helped him pack. I only have some grey area of when it happened and even that could be wrong. In my memory he was there and then he wasn't, either way it didn't make much difference. The same fights happened, the same sort of odd motel-like parenting happened. It just happened at a distance, and that is what I remember and even that is all fuzzy.
The point is, I became so good at forgetting, bottling, dismissing. I didn't realize what was happening to me. I didn't realize it when I jumped out my bedroom window. I didn't realize it when I tried to cut my wrists. I didn't realize it when I tried to take swallow as many pills as I could and ended up in the ER. I knew there was a word for it. I knew that it was me. Hell, I even used it to describe how I felt, and why there was this terrible weight pressing against my cheast on a daily basis, and why there were days when I could not get out of bed, or could not sleep. There was always a disconnect between me and depression. I suffered from, I was afflicted with (however you want to say it) depression. But looking back I could never come to terms with the fact that I was depressed. I tried to create some sort of barrier between me and the term. The term carried something with it that I didn't want. This is something that I still struggle with today.
All summer I tricked myself into thinking things were looking up, things were getting better. Things were going to change. I ignored the weight. I ignored others if I thought it would help. I am still not coping with things, at least not coping well. I have overcome some of the problems I created when I was younger, but I am still depressed. It affects me and it affects my relationships.
My mother tries to help, and I know she means well. But the honest bit of it is. She cannot help me yet. I still have not reconciled her role in my childhood. But she is not the only one. My sisters and my father especially are not reconciled with either. I am making small steps, but I know I have to be in the right place first before I can finally get closure from my family. Which, I know makes a vicious feedback loop. But, I know now, deep down that I have to find myself before I can fully make my return to my family, which in my mind I emotionally and psychologically left somewhere between 45th and 42nd avenue in San Francisco. I have a lot of ground to cover there, but I know and hope that I will get there someday. But this goes far beyond forgiveness. This is about understanding. But like I said I have to understand myself.
Fortunately, I have someone who has been helping me along, whether she realizes it or not. I can safely say that I love her unconditionally, and even though she is halfway around the world. She has been my inspiration, because, she has opened up to me and shown me how she has overcome her own issues. I know she is not completely over them either, but I hope that we can continue to figure those things out together for a very long time. Deep down I know that, and even though it comes from a comedy movie it is true that, "True love is your soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another." I feel that with her and I know it is made stronger by previous hardship. I am lagging behind her, but she has been more than patient, forgiving and empathetic, and there is no way that I will ever be able to thank her enough for what she has given me and what she has done for me whether she knows it or not. But I also understand that she can only do so much, and that she can only support me on a journey that I will have to overcome on my own. I love you Rachel, and this is as much an apology as it is a profession of my love for you, because you never bargained for having to deal with my depression. But you have stood up admirably and you have been patient, tolerant, supportive, and critical at all the right times and I want to do this as much for myself as I do for you because I honestly feel that you have become part of me.
So with that I am my next step is to be as open and honest as I can, first to myself, and with all of my relationships. This is my start and I am scared shitless.
