A memory prompt written for “Creative Clusterfuck,” a memoir-focused writing seminar taught by the legendary Molly Guy.
Anxiety and depression aren’t palpable like cancer where you can see a tumor from an x-ray or low white blood cell counts. And everyone’s relationship with mental health varies with levels of intensity, creating holes in the story. Even when I hear others discuss their intimate walks with this confusing mindfuck, I am skeptical of how to respond because there’s nothing you can say to solve the problem, there are only thousands of dollars’ worth of therapy sessions where we’re taught to retrain our mind to look at certain situations differently.
“Just relax.” That’s my parents’ response when I get worked up about something. It makes it worse when I try to reason with them about why I feel the way I do. “You’re fine.” That’s a saying I hate even more. By whose standards am I “fine”? Whenever I have a panic attack that’s the best they can come up with. “Stop crying.” “Take a few deep breaths.” “Go for a walk.” “Drink a glass of water.” Or, “Where’s Will?”, my angel of an emotional support dog. But he can’t solve all of my problems by placing his paw on my knee therefore he can’t solve all of my parents’ problems either.
I am seen as being too ‘emotional’ or ‘dramatic’ instead of “my brain is wired this way so I can’t control my reactions to certain situations and you may not understand and it fucking sucks that I can’t breathe and I feel out of control right now so could I just have a second to myself.”
I’m ugly crying on my bed in my parents’ house in the room I grew up in. It’s watched over me since before I could walk. Through the nightmares, the insomnia, the passing through of good friends and bad, and enough tears to fill a swimming pool. I try to muffle my sobs into a pillow and bury my nose on the inside of my t-shirt as a tissue, clearing it with one quick swipe. My mother no longer respects my door being closed; I usually have to keep it open because she’s worried my depression will get the best of me. If there’s a knock, I know it’s my dad because he will do anything to avoid “accidentally” “walking in on me” changing post puberty.
My mom saunters in demanding I stop crying. Her methods are beyond flawed and clearly not thought through. If it were that easy would I be crying? I have given her various tools via the internet to cope with this disease of mine. Flow charts that have one column that says, “what you say” with an arrow point to a second column that says, “what you should say.” For example, her “stop crying” would roughly translate in the second column to “I see you’re upset and that is totally valid.” I suppose it’s a generational thing that the discussion around mental health isn’t that taboo now, but when are we going to stop giving adults that excuse and hold them accountable for racial slurs, distrusting gay people, and wanting to “build that wall.”
When she forgets her script or lets her own emotions get the best of her, it’s into my dad’s RAV4 I go and to the psych ward for the night is where I stay. The nursing staff is always very nice there, taking turns babysitting me and distracting me with conversation around my favorite movies or *insert any other random hobby here’s. I honestly think it’s a total waste of time and money being there because odds are I’d eventually calm down on my own, but it puts my parents at ease because during those 24 hour holding periods they aren’t the only ones accountable for my wellbeing.