TRIGGER WARNING: This article heavily concerns depression, suicide, and anxiety. It also touches on murder and injustice. Please proceed with caution if you find any of these topics triggering. Or you could just call your girl up to talk about it.

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May is mental health month and my birth month, which is why it was important for me to launch this thing this month.

Jewel said, sometime in the mid-90s, “please be careful with me./I’m sensitive and I’d like to stay that way.”¹ Well bless her little heart, says every Boomer ever as they chide my generation for being sensitive. Too sensitive or just paying attention? Pretty sure Jewel is Gen X, but you get my drift.

The Chronic

I can remember realizing that I was a depressed young person. Lunchtime wasn’t as bad as they made it out on TV in middle school, but the cafeteria was boisterous and filled with… well, everyone. Preteens of all sizes and contexts — defensive, on edge, oblivious, powerful — even in all their powerlessness.

Mr. DeMartino: Can anyone give me another example of a group using coercive techniques such as peer-pressure, chanting, and social-isolation to achieve control over its members?

Brittany: Cheerleading?

Daria²

As August and September passed of my eighth grade year, I realized the gap between the popular kids and me was widening despite getting my braces off and not being quite as awkward as I was the prior spring. I sat with the girls I kept a notebook with. We put it in each others’ lockers, passed it at lunch, looking at the latest gossip and other updated nonsense. I heard them talk about their excess skin, of other girls’ baby fat, of detailed and numerous flaws. They bitched about their teachers and mothers, homework and gym class. We fought about others’ expectations without reflecting on our own. As the school year progressed and we got closer and closer to high school, the way we spoke to each other became pointier, razor’s edge, and sitting in those plastic circles at that cruel table felt like self-mutilation.

I remember walking down the halls through a sea of Abercrombie, a brand I never owned. At almost 36, I’ve started that White Hot documentary on Netflix, and it’s triggering for me. I am realizing that my preteen brain was not conscious of the inherent racism within that company. All I knew was the way it made me feel walking down those concrete halls. Ostracized. Other. I remember thinking I must be the only twelve year old in South Carolina that didn’t want to wear A&F. I remember thinking that I did not fit in, that maybe there weren’t people like me in the world, that something was wrong with me.

When people like Robin Williams die and everyone discusses how shocked they are because of how funny he was, I just stand back and listen. It’s as if they think a sense of humor and sadness are mutually exclusive. When people take their own lives, I tend to plunge temporarily into the Swamp of Sadness (to reference The Neverending Story,² a childhood classic), but typically, I am not surprised. I think I need more than two hands to count the number of peers I know that have taken their own lives. I wish that were not the case.

Artists, writers, musicians, actors, comedians — we are all trying to relay some shared human experience, preferably with a dose of humor to wash it all down. Take Pete Davidson, for example. Well loved, quite popular, vulnerable and open about his struggle with depression — so much so that I’m pretty sure that’s what made Lorne Michaels give him more airtime on SNL. He’s funny and smart and creative like Robin Williams, and it’s not stopping his brain from poisoning his thoughts. Please, Pete. Don’t try suicide.

These people and I, people with depression, tend to be the ones who listen closely, who take the time to observe. I’m not sure if the soul of an artist can always rectify reality and their spirit. I think that’s when the beautiful die young.³

Thanks, Brene Brown

Anxiety is a whole different animal. It’s sink or swim.

You know how you’ll float if you’re in deep water and you just stay calm and still? Well living with anxiety is like that. You panic, you drown.

Thanks largely in part to my pal Brene (I don’t actually know her personally, but I hope you got excited) it’s now kind of cool to be vulnerable. Wanna open up like Pete? It’s probably good for more than just feeling like your authentic self.

Lucky for me, I’m good at being open. Yep, one could say that since the world has reopened “post-COVID” I have an oversharing issue. But hey! I am definitely in touch with myself and not afraid to tell others that sometimes, to me being human makes me feel like I’m unraveling nerve by nerve. You know the late great DMX’s “Party Up”? Yeah… like that.

I don’t have much advice here. I’m working on it myself too, you know? I think if I had it figured out, I’d be like a Budda, and I wouldn’t have to write anymore. I’d just sit looking like I’m doing nothing, but really I’d be communing with the spirit world or something awesome like that. And I’d say cool quotable stuff all the time like, “Everything is useless except laughter.” What, are you still waiting for my advice? Sure, fine: Go ahead. Say yes. Be vulnerable. Stay afloat with light thoughts. (Think Peter Pan: “You’re flying, Wendy!”). And laugh. Times are rough.

Internal monologue or crickets?

Oh Great Spirit, please keep my child asleep and my cat quiet for as long as possible. Actual words I thought in my head just now. I’ve been thinking a lot about perspective lately. Not perspective like you learn in Drawing 400, but perspective like “everybody’s got one.”

Two years ago, a friend and I found ourselves at odds with a long-time friend. It took me days after the blow up to realize it was as if we were having entirely separate conversations. She wasn’t hearing what I was saying, or herself for that matter.

It took me the better part of my life and this article by Ryan Langdon entitled “Today I Learned that Not Everyone has an Inner Monologue and it has Ruined my Day” to realize that not everyone has a narrator. I knew everyone’s different, but this essential part of me seems so… irreplaceable. Hey, at least I wasn’t alone in not realizing this. In fact, since I’ve become fascinated by Mr. Langdon’s fascination, others have started talking about this bizarre phenomenon too.

The things we take for granted in other humans.

Change in perspective is healthy. Remember that little scarring middle school cafeteria scene? I think modern women promote each other and lift each other up, encouraging this flip of the script. Under the surface, society still pits us against each other, but we’re improving. A lot has changed concerning how we see each other since my and Daria’s time lurking locker-lined halls. We’ve still got work to do.

Division Street

Today, it’s almost two years since May 25, 2020. The day George Floyd was murdered. The day after my 34th birthday. With Floyd’s life taken away at the hands, knees, and acts of complicity of an unchecked system, the world has changed even more. This system creates more injustice than any type of real justice. This system stopped working for the American people long ago. It divides us.

BLM divides us. Abortion RIGHTS divide us. COVID divides us. Fucking masks intended to protect us, vaccines for that purpose, these issues have divided us, and at times I’ve questioned the humanity of it all. I’m sure you have too.

I’m not here to get down into the black and white, cos it’s all grey to me, baby. But it’s a sick, sad world out there, and if I have to pick a side — I’ll say it again. I’m on the side of anyone who has felt discrimination for their gender, skin color, social class, or immigration status.

We need to choose our words WISER

For reasons unknown, summer 2020 felt like the first time some people were realizing the gross injustices put on our Black neighbors. Neighbors who have every right to be walking down the sidewalk, listening to music, keeping their face warm (Rest in Power, Elijah). We have a lot of responsibility. There are things you can do to help. Are we an entitled brood of privileged white folks who can’t see past our everyday luxuries enough to care about the greater good? And empathetic, educated people are against defunding the police. Why? Because they don’t understand what it means. I’ll put some of the blame on my generation (fucking Millennials again) and Gen Z. We’re the ones out here screaming all these triggering words at the world. “Cancelled. Radical. Revolution. Defunding.” If you want to freak out someone with a conservative mindset, mention defunding again. Do it. I dare you.

No, seriously. Stop it. I personally LOVE most of these terms, with the exception of cancelled, but we’ll tackle cancel culture another day. Radical phrases are fine with me; I have the words defiant hope tattooed on my body. You are compelling me closer with your talk of revolution, but you aren’t convincing the people we need to convince.

Let’s talk about the police force. A first of many conversations, I’m sure. Our current police forces (whether they wear the highway, county, or city badge) are expected to do a lot more than get criminals and keep our streets safe. Largely because we have virtually no public mental healthcare, and our tax money does not get funnelled into social services that help with issues like homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health.

There need to be trained mental health professionals employed to support these officers. Ah, here’s a chance for an explanation of defunding! Taking money away from one program for use in another program. They do it all the time, taking money away from education for the military is what I have witnessed most in my lifetime. What folks mean when they say defund the police is moving the money toward mental health training or support workers that can answer calls that frankly MOST POLICE OFFICERS ARE NOT QUALIFIED IN ANY WAY TO HANDLE. Taking money from the police force just means they can’t keep buying new Chargers, undercover trucks, and excess guns. You and I both know they have enough guns. It means screenings for police officers so we can try to weed out the Derek Chauvins from the blue bunch. It means training so that when a cop encounters a woman with schizophrenia, or a man with some compulsive form of OCD, or a person with severe autism, they don’t assume they are “being funny” or resisting arrest.

At the heart of it, and I think this is a conversation for another time, but does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Is there a personality type, say one with compassion and empathy, that would truly put themselves in the position to protect and serve over and over again? Because people that consider others tend to care about service and what it means to serve others.

You’ve got it all wrong

Sometimes your shallowness is so thorough, it’s almost like depth.

Daria

Keeping in mind that our system doesn’t serve justice or the majority of the people of the U.S., and that we’ve all got this crazy thing called consciousness, and although there’s a collective consciousness (another convo for another blog) for the most part everyone has a completely different perspective. This includes their expections for themselves and for others. And we can’t even say norms are norms for everybody — because their upbringing is not yours. Some, not even comparable.

It’s the same with the mind, especially abnormal ones, at least in this writer’s theory. No two are created equal. And the mind can be different in different states also — sleep deprivation, duress, triggered trauma, social anxiety, medicated, tipsy, drunk, under the influence of alcohol and socially anxious (a doozy), and influenced by so many different drugs, prescribed or purchased illegally. I just want you to be less likely to assume that someone is one-dimensional in the future. Not that I think the ones reading this blog are the same ones that need to hear it, but maybe someday someone outside of my social circle will take a dip into the oceans we’re plunging into on this blog.

I’m here to tell you, our weaknesses can be our strengths. Those with ADHD also have the power to be extraordinarily creative and to take on a project with laser focus. Someone like myself who is ultrasensitive might hear all the time that they need more grit, but it takes a lot of pluck to be an empath — to feel the feelings of others almost as if they are your own emotions — and in some cases the ultrasensitive mind can intuit things beyond explanation.

I guess what I’m saying is, it’s okay to have flaws. As people, as a country… What’s not okay? Sitting in self-pity and not trying to look inward at how you can make yourself and your world that little bit better. Self-pity or panic or blind rage is how we flail and drown, remember? Keep still, and maybe we can ride the waves together. Stay calm and ride on.

And when you feel the panic and anxiety creep in, remember that to live through the 90s was to acquire some of the cynicism that it took to survive the 90s. Tell yourself a joke, or watch an old episode of Daria. Call a funny friend or turn on reruns of SNL. Laugh, damn it.

You’ll float too.⁴

If you are depressed, and especially if you are considering ending your life, please consider clicking one of these two great links, call the hotline, or call a friend.
Your story isn’t over.

Suicide Prevention Lifeline Call: 1.800.273.8255

Project Semicolon

References
in order of appearance

nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Mental-Health-Awareness-Month

¹Kilcher, Jewel. “Sensitive.” Pieces of You. Atlantic Records, 1995, 9. CD.

Daria. Created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn. MTV, 1997 – 2002.

²Swamp of Sadness reference from this scene: youtube.com/watch?v=YsKu3Jh5IAs from The Neverending Story (Warner Bros., 1984)

³“What’s the Use of a Title?” by Charles Bukowski

Langdon, Ryan. “Today I Learned that Not Everyone has an Internal Monologue and it has Ruined My Day.” Inside My Mind. January 28, 2020. insidemymind.me/blog/brain-stuff/today-i-learned-that-not-everyone-has-an-internal-monologue-and-it-has-ruined-my-day/

Tompkins, Lucy. “Here’s What You Need to Know about Elijah McClain.” The NY Times. January 18, 2022. nytimes.com/article/who-was-elijah-mcclain.html

Cullors, Patrisse. “A Manifesto: 10 Rules for Life by the Black Lives Matter Co-founder.” WePresent. June 16, 2020.

⁴Words borrowed from Pennywise the dancing clown, a character out of It by Stephen King.