Depression and Anxiety Dress Up
It took me years — decades — to recognize Depression and Anxiety. They’re crafty bastards, especially Depression. It has more disguises and costumes than Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie. They can be invisible, too — when they’re not being overtly destructive, just dirty little liars. Then they can just be whispers.
Take Anxiety, for example: whispering soft in my ear every time I get out of my car. “Lock the door. Listen for the beep. Press the button one more time, just to be sure. Listen for the beep. Did you hear the beep? Don’t press the button again. Twice is careful, responsible. Three times is nuts. You don’t want people to think you’re nuts.”
Depression is too lazy to form a voice. It just hijacks my brain on random days — usually perfectly nice ones, thank you very much — as I go about my business, not happy or sad, just pleasantly minding my own being. “You know none of this is real. You don’t get to keep any of it. The world is going to end, anyway, so what’s the point? May as well take a nap.”
And I complain that I’m tired, that I’m exhausted, and maybe I haven’t been taking my iron the way I should, maybe I’m anemic (again). I insist that I have no reason to be so tired, really, I don’t understand . . .
But on the days that I’m thinking clearly, I can remember that arguing with these two idiots is a full time counter-melody to whatever it is I’m doing in my other life; and as any Lifetime movie will explain, living a double life is dramatic and exhausting, and it catches up to you eventually.
~~~~~
“You could drive over the edge of the bridge.”
Once in a while, Depression puts on a Gollum costume. I think it takes an especially perverse pleasure in pulling from generations of golem mythology that are embedded somewhere in the eleven percent of my DNA that is Jewish. Then, of course, there’s the eighty-nine percent of me that is simply me and likes to research all of the characters in all of the books. So there it is, Depression personified, brought to life by Tolkien and Peter Jackson.
I imagine Depression popping up between the two front seats, like an unrestrained toddler, putrid breath on my cheek.
“We could drive over the edge of the bridge.” The suggestion is a mixture of malice and fear. I reacted the first time — as one might well expect, really — with equal measures hatred and terror. I despised myself for wanting to drive over that edge, and once I started taking road trips alone, I wondered if I had reason to be afraid that someday, I really would.
As I entered my third decade of this strange relationship with Depression, I started to be less afraid of its Gollum costume. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I began to see a profound sadness underneath all the snarling.
Sometimes I’m prepared to see the big eyes slowly peek up over the edge of my seat, and I listen for the whisper. Sometimes I’m still totally startled, when on a bright sunny day filled with happy thoughts, the gray head appears out of nowhere and screeches at me, making my heart race and my hands sweat. Either way, it’s there if I look for it — the soul-deep sadness in those big eyes.
“We’re not driving over the edge,” I say. “We don’t want to, remember?”
Sometimes, it looks at me skeptically, and I have to add an amendment.
“We didn’t want to this morning, and we won’t want to tomorrow. So we aren’t going to now.”
And now, instead of continuing to scream at me, or argue with me, or remind me how much I loathe and fear my own mind, my choices, my life — it curls up quietly on the back seat with a tattered blanket and rests.
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If you’ve ever met me, you’ve seen Anxiety’s best costume. It looks and sounds exactly like me. If you knew me in the “productive” years — the years when I seemed to do it all; the jobs, the volunteering, the tidy house — you’ve hung out with Anxiety.
People liked Anxiety dressed up as me. With Anxiety wearing my flesh, hardwired into every neuron, shit got done, man. Anxiety never said no. Anxiety cleaned up everyone’s mistakes. I didn’t mind Anxiety calling the shots. There was so much positive reinforcement! So many compliments! “I don’t know how you do it all,” they said. “I don’t sleep,” I laughed.
Anxiety took up the me-costume so perfectly that even I couldn’t tell the difference. I was just thankful that I didn’t have time to think. I didn’t want to, and Anxiety saw to it.
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Depression and Anxiety love to gear up in soft black and creep in like shadows, silent and subtle. They are the most skilled of thieves; stealing pieces of my life in such tiny increments that by the time I realize it, I’m standing in a dark, almost empty room. There’s no bed, because they’ve taken sleep. My books are gone, because I no longer enjoy reading. My planner sits on the desk, with spaces just for my work schedule, and just a black pen for writing, my bouquet of colorful inks long gone. I try to remember what I used to plan for fun, and I can’t. The room is silent, because music, as it turns out, was one of the first things to go.
“Go out into the sunshine and fresh air,” everyone says, “and all of those things will be right there.” I hear their voices, on the other side of the wall.
“But there’s no door,” I try to explain. “I would love to go out, but there’s no door in this room, there’s no window. Depression and Anxiety were dressed as thieves; they took those too.”
“You’re only as happy as you decide to be,” the voices say as they drift away, tired of waiting for me to feel better, and then it’s silent again.
Depression comes in alone, all phantom and shadow, through the wall. It settles next to me, around me, and its presence is oddly comforting in its familiarity.
“You can count on me,” it whispers, soundless in my mind. “I’ll stay.”
My laptop is still on my desk, and my coffeemaker.
“Go ahead,” Depression says; and the kindness in its voice is our secret. “You know your scribbling always turns out better when I’m around.”
