Depression, Etc. (#6)

AND YOU THOUGHT HIGH SCHOOL WAS TOUGH

If college opens your eyes, it also opens the floodgates. Boy, does it open the floodgates. I had finished high school in the Spring of 1990. Finally, the college search was over, all the introductory fees paid, and I was leaving home. Well, home wasn't that far away. I was just one city over, easy enough for me to be home on the weekends, get home food, and then be back at school. My first day at college was exciting and nerve-wracking, as it is for every student. Suddenly, I wasn't at home. I had my own home now, and I was free to do whatever I wanted. Yep. Ah, yep. For the first week or so that entailed being allowed to be lonely, scared, excited, confused, and unused to kids who were so much more assertive than me. Was I in over my head? The classes were exciting, though, so I could concentrate on one area where I felt comfortable: learning.

But what I found was that learning wasn't enough to keep me afloat in college. I didn't drink, didn't want to go to parties, but I didn't want to seem like a goody-two-shoes either. So I would go with friends to some parties and feel totally out of place. How could everyone there seem so comfortable. How! Well, some of that is due to alcohol and drugs, because often those other kids were just as scared as me. And some of the kids were just plain more confident and used to milling around and flirting. I didn't have any barriers to keep me safe. I sucked at flirting. I probably tended to be pretty serious with people when I first met them. One guy I knew told me that I looked like a Nazi when I walked around campus. I don't think I was that bad. Fortunately, as good college friends can attest, I could be very, very silly when I felt comfortable. And I can have fun at a party when I want. Maybe, I seemed so serious because I was trying to figure things out, maybe I was trying to get to a class, maybe I was feeling crappy. I realized, in the end, that I wasn't into the party scene. I wished I had realized that I could loosen up, that it wouldn't have hurt me to have a little to drink, not necessarily for the drink itself or to get drunk, but for the relaxation. That comfort level, though, didn't come until after college. Along with going to parties, college was the first place where I kissed a guy. College was the first place where I stayed up way past midnight talking to my friends and eating a pizza.

College was the place where I broke into tiny, itsy-bitsy pieces. I've told you that I love to color my hair. My hair coloring fixation began in college during the spring of my freshman year when a long-time stylist asked if I would model in a hair show for her. Uh, YES! So, she did my hair, created a fantastic outfit for me, gave me hot pink heels to wear. It was so cool. One thing that I've always felt comfortable with, and am willing to fight for, is the ability to express myself through hairstyles, clothing, and accessories. Certainly, college was the ideal place for this. I was so excited to be in this show. My stylist, another stylist, a fellow model, and I were participating. To make the whole story short, I got up, twirled around, and then realized that a bunch of people were yelling at me. "Don't turn around so fast. Slow down. This isn't a fashion show." My stylist was great. She wasn't included in this yelling spree and told me how great I was. She actually won an award, which waswell deserved. Unbeknowst to anyone I totally fell apart. I couldn't take those people yelling at me. I didn't want to be good anymore. I couldn't take this. This one event itself wasn't the problem. This event was the last straw of many, many years.

When I got back to college after the hair show, I cut myself for the first time. I was in my dorm room one day, and I don't think I had a roommate at the time, or maybe she was out of the room. I found a knife, went to the dorm window, and I tried cut my wrists. However, it's not like in the movies where you cut your wrists, there's blood everywhere, and then you're rushed to the hospital. I found it wasn't that easy to cut my wrists, so I decided to cut up my arms. My cutting was not done in order to kill myself, but to ask for help and as a form of expressing difficult emotions. A side-effect of the cutting is that you end up feeling better, more relaxed, after cutting. This is why I cut my arms. I would cut like this each day and maybe drink some cough syrup. I needed the punishment. I was angry and those cuts were my voice. I would cut with a knife or scratch with a needle or anything I could find that was sharp, just maiming my arms as much as possible. If blood came out in the process, so much the better. Sometimes, in bed at night, after a stint with cutting, I felt like the skin on my arms was translucent and that I could see inside them if I stared long enough. It was hypnotic. During the day I couldn't reveal that this was going on even though my arms were hurting. And I know I looked pale. I was wearing long sleeves in the Florida weather. Someone at the department in which I worked noticed that I didn't look well, but I brushed it off as a cold. Everything came to a head when my mom picked me up one day, saw the cuts on my arm and stopped everything right away. I would begin therapy not long after that.

RESOURCES OF NOTE

Go Ask Ogre: Letters From A Deathrock Cutter by Jolene Siana. This is a wonderful, very personal book of art, journal entries, and more by the author opening up her teen years and journal to us. The book is also about her relationship with Ogre, lead singer for the band Skinny Puppy. Siana deals with horrible depression and self-injury during the 1980's. At this time she begins sending letters to Ogre. As she finds out, Ogre saves all of her letters and (this is what always tugs at my heart) returns them to her many years later. The book is painful and beautiful all at once. Jolene has a couple of sites on the web and I'm going to try to link her blogspot page to mine.

How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention by Susan Rose Blauner. What I really like about this book is the fact that it offers practical tips, such as coming up with a crisis plan before you hit your crisis point.
Another tip of Blauner's is to develop a solid list of comforting activities that you can do when things feel difficult. For instance, talk to a friend, exercise, work on a puzzle. Go down the list until you find the activity that might make you calm and prevent you from going down the drain. That's simplifying it a lot, but basically it's a type of prevention. The book is filled with all kinds of good tips from an author who as been in the trenches. I think the book good for people who are suicidal and for people who fight depression.

www.cuteoverload.com Ok, I have to list this web site. I wish it had been around when I was younger. So many times, when I've felt depressed, I've looked at one of the adorable animal pictures on this site and, somewhere down in the murky depths of my soul, found a smile. This site is like medication and is so popular now that most everybody probably knows about it already. A friend exposed me to the site and I've never been the same.

www.icanhascheezburger.com. This site has cute pictures of animals, like Cute Overload, but it adds great captions to the pictures. I think Cute Overload and I Can Haz Cheezburger go together like peanut butter and jelly.