Under Pressure

The physical pain is hardest to ignore. It’s this pressure and tightness in the center of my chest, which makes it hard to breathe and form thoughts. It almost feels like the bones and tissues are separating to create an ever expanding hole in my body, maybe a hole that will get big enough to swallow all of me in it.

Depression and anxiety run in my family. On my mother’s side, more than a few of my relatives have taken their own lives after battling lifelong mental illness. And my dad’s side of the family isn’t much better, except they’re better at hiding it. I can’t say my experience has been a lifelong struggle. My childhood was genuinely a happy one. I don’t remember crying about anything other than not getting my way.

The first time I entered a depression was when I received the news that my dad would be leaving our family’s house, most likely for good. My mom told me to come home from my best friend’s house one sunny Sunday afternoon when I was 16, and I was told to bring my 9-year-old brother to the garage to talk to my dad. He told me he was moving out, that he and my mom weren’t going to be together anymore, but of course that none of this changed his relationship with us kids. I didn’t understand why this was happening now. Just a few months ago, I had proudly told my friends on a marching band trip that my parents were still together, and still in love. I honestly believed it. The knowledge that this truth I was holding in my heart was fictitious turned my world upside down. If my parents’ love couldn’t last, what hope did I have at creating a happy home?

After a few days, this knowledge turned into a dull pain in my chest, an extra heaviness that I carried with me everywhere I went. A general attitude of hopelessness and pessimism took center-stage in my personality, and here it remains. I’m not going to say I am a depressed person because my parents aren’t together anymore, but I will say the experience has affected my abilities to emote on a full spectrum.

Throughout college, I dealt with huge bouts of depression. I was homesick, lost, and my lack of control over the future of my life created anxiety never experienced before. Before I left home for the first time, I would have bad days and get sad, but going to sleep under the same roof as my family, especially my mother, gave me solace. If anything bad happened to me, my guardian angel would save me. And she has many times. But leaving the nest means shirking the protective cocoon to create your own life.

And here I am, less than a week away from my 24th birthday, creating my own life the only way I know how: flying by the seat of my pants. For the first time in my life, I am independent. I pay my own rent (but not my cell phone bill – baby steps), I live alone, I work. And in the past I’ve been very happy. Sometimes I feel like I am an important and necessary part of my environment. My agenda overflows with social commitments. I see several friends in the course of one day. I spend time alone outdoors and I feel glad to be alive.

But other times, I feel already dead. Social commitments fill me with dread. What will I say to these people? Do I have the social skills necessary to connect in meaningful ways today? And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Of course going out to a bar lends itself to surface-level conversation, something I’m awful at. But I still blame myself for not having a voice loud enough to cut through the background chatter, or an arsenal of jokes and witty stories to wow everyone.

So I stay at home by myself. I search for the causes behind my seeming inabilities, and I wonder where my zest for life (and YOLOing) disappeared to. My friend Jess told me I should be proud that I spend so much time self-reflecting, because at the end of the day, I’m the only person I have. Maybe that’s where depression stems from. The knowledge of our Oneness. No one will be able to truly take care of me, and no one will truly understand me. It’s just how it is. And sometimes that’s okay, because the people and things I surround myself with distract me from the Truth, which is that I’m one being hurtling through time and space with no real purpose. That we’re all just thrown onto Earth without being asked to be put here, and with no instruction guide. Sometimes, that Truth sinks deep into my chest and scares the living shit out of me. But I guess it’s a good feeling, because it means I’m still here. Awake, awake, awake.