Depression, Etc. (#4)

WHAT HAPPENS IN HIGH SCHOOL STAYS IN HIGH SCHOOL

As the glass says, high school is "only the beginning." No, please, no. High school cannot be the beginning of my life. I can think of a lot of other ways to begin life, like maybe getting a poke in the eye. So begins my journey into high school. I was about 15 when I started and I was a real dork. I mean, I did have some very, very good friends, all of whom accepted me for who I was. And I still have some of those friends today. That, to me, is a real accomplishment. Friendship is a great gift. But, again, I was socially and emotionally inept. I had never kissed a boy, partly because I had decided not to kiss a boy. I didn't go to many parties. And the parties I had were extremely tame. I had the kinds of parties to which parents would want to send their kids. Ice cream or cake. Movies. No alcohol. The benefit of a good breakfast the next morning. I didn't want to drink at that time, which was probably a good thing for me. I was terrified to drive. I still carried some kind of a lunch box to school. And sex was out of the question. That's the way I wanted it. However, I wish now, and I think even then, that I had been more out there, that I had gotten into some trouble. Skip a class here. Sip a beer there. Something. Anything. I didn't.




My journey with depression had begun a while back in junior high or earlier. In addition to depression I was beginning to deal with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). I don't recall if I was dealing with the OCD before high school, but I definitely had it now. Some time around or before high school I used to pray, but I would squeeze my hands together so tightly that it hurt. That was like a penance. I thought that's how I needed to pay for who I was. For me OCD manifested in a few ways. If you haven't experienced OCD it can be hellish. I knew that the OCD I had made no sense. Why would I be called to the dinner table but have to look repeatedly at the same school test to make sure it had the grade of "A" on it. I would find the test, put it back in my piles of papers, and then have to look for the paper all over again. At one time I had an obsession with remembering historical facts. My family had a collection of encyclopedias at home. I would find a historical event that I thought I should know about and then read the entry very carefully. As soon as I placed the encyclopedia back on the shelf, I had to pull it out again because I was sure I had forgotten the facts. This could go on for 20 minutes to an hour, if I wanted. I felt horrible for having to carry out these compulsions. Another thing that I did is to carry just about every book home that I had for school. No, I couldn't leave them in the locker. What if I needed to know something. Sometimes my grandmother would walk me home from school and I would have a stack of books in addition to a bag of books and papers. I was angry about this. Why doesn't someone stop me is what I was thinking. It took me a long while to realize that I could stop carrying all these books home and also to find some ways of dealing with OCD.

Throughout my time in high school, I felt miserable, but I cloistered that inside of me to make it through my experience. I believed that once I got out of high school, my life would really begin, I would take flight. I was ready for the promises that college held (little did I know that this would be a challenge too). So, I worked hard in classes, actually did better than I thought I was doing, enjoyed what I was learning, and I liked most of my teachers. I hung out with my friends and listened to The Cure. I scoured Seventeen and shopped for clothes at the Limited Express. But there seemed to be a world out of my reach in high school. I still didn't feel right. Why did I feel so lousy and frightened every single day, and I mean every day. Why couldn't I just kick the feeling.

I remember that when I first began attending high school, I saw a junior or senior who was pretty popular. He had long hair and wore a Van Halen shirt to school. I wanted to be popular, or at least cool, and I thought, wow, he doesn't fit the mold of most of the high school kids here and he's cool. I bet a lot of kids felt the same way about this guy. Many kids ached to be popular and cool. High school is an ocean of vulnerability and pain.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a way of dealing with the pain I had, so I stayed in my head most of the time with my depression and OCD. Staying shut in my head is probably one of the main reasons I didn't get dates. And it got to the point where I thought, hey, I should try Not to get asked out as many times as I can. In some ways I thought I needed to keep that record. I was strangely proud of it. Now, I just feel bad for my teen self, understanding that I didn't know a different way to exist. While I was floating around in the ether, feeling very lonely, wracked with the pain of my depression and my OCD, I was becoming more acutely aware of my inner terrain, what I wanted intellectually and spiritually. That was my double-edged sword, my gift and my curse. If I had only know more about my emotional and physical self at the time, I might have been more functional.

RESOURCE OF NOTE

What To Do When Your Therapist Isn't There: A 24/7 Guide to Coping with Life on Your Own by Nina Danielson, MSW. This is one of the first books I bought when my most recent depression relaspse started. It's a great, straight-forward book for getting a depressed reader though the most basic problems, like whether to take mediction and how to handle emotional defenses. It does get into some other topics, such as codependency and post traumatic stress disorder, so I'd consider it a starter class in psychology. My favorite analogy from the book is thinking of the psyche as a peanut butter sandwich, with the id as the bottom layer of bread, the ego as the peanut butter, and the superego as the top layer of bread. When a piece of bread is too large, things can go a little haywire. I've found that analogy helpful in helping me to understand my emotions and behavior. I like the fact that the book offers a summary, warning signs, and coping strategies at the end of each chapter. Those parts serve the reader well.