Sunlight, and a cool apartment

When my depression was at its worst, I spent a lot of time in Will’s apartment. We both said it was because it was summer and he had air conditioning and windows and I did not, but the real reason is that when left to my own devices, things got worse. Solitude wasn’t a great place for me to be, because it usually meant sleeping too much, unexplained sobbing, and too few calories getting into my system. But being out wasn’t a great place either, where I had to perform a pretend version of myself that didn’t exist, where I had to be something other than in crisis. There were a couple of times, right at the beginning, where I’d be fine and out doing things, and then my mood would take a hard left and unbidden tears would start rolling out from behind my sunglasses. There’s only so many times you can blame the watery eyes and sniffling on allergies. Once, the week I finally admitted this thing was killing me, we got sandwiches and went to the park after church and watched people do acro yoga until the tears started back up, and Will bundled me into his car and back into his place, carrying my flip flops because I couldn’t be bothered with shoes. Another time we were enjoying sunshine on a patio, and in the time it took him to take a leak and return to our table, I was hiccuping with self loathing. He bused our table, took my hand, and led me across the street. I didn’t care much where we went or how we got there, but without saying anything, he stepped behind me and hoisted me onto his shoulders, and we walked the whole way back to his place like that.

See, alone was bad, but with others was worse. Will was kind of neither and also both — a sustainable middle ground when it felt like the ground kept falling out from under my feet. He’d get me back into his apartment, hold me until the tears stopped, and go about his business. Often he’d end up doing laundry between rounds of DOTA while I lost myself in a book, and those days when I was one step above comatose on his bed, he’d bundle me up with his warm laundry right out of the dryer and kiss my forehead before he went back to the computer. He situated things such that he could still reach back and touch me — stroke my hair, squeeze my hand — but was never scrutinizing me, never making me feel like I had to be anything more than I was at that moment. One ear always hung out of the headphones to listen for irregular breathing that usually meant I wasn’t okay again. I napped a lot, sunning myself next to his AC unit, feeling safer for the company and simultaneously healing in the solitude. It was okay to say I didn’t have the energy to follow through with plans, to say I’d rather binge watch an anime than go to a bar. I didn’t have to smile, or perform, or explain why, somehow, it was rational or justified to not be able to get out of bed in the morning. He gave me the immense gift of just being, and caring for me well in that space.

I understand that this sounds like I’m romanticizing my depression, that in weeping and falling over myself and being nearly incapable of self care, I found a knight in shining armor. In all honesty, that’s kind of the way I painted it in my brain, which set up a couple of landmines in my recovery. Or unburied them, because when your mental health turns into a war zone, it turns out that a lot of the munitions were already there, you just couldn’t see for all the smoke. Transitioning from being together because I needed caring for to being together because we both wanted each other’s company was rough, in no small part because anxiety and depression will make absolutely insane shit sound totally reasonable to you, and then you spend a week yelling at someone who’s really not The Enemy. Because there isn’t an Enemy, there’s immaturity and unhealth and poorly mixed brain cocktails and baggage and unaddressed issues and wrongs and hurts all mixed in with the faulty perceptions even healthy people build.

I see this now, on the other side of SSRIs and books and therapy and doctor’s appointments, and I don’t think “How romantic.” For a while I was thinking, “How pathetic,” but kept plugging through the books and appointments and breakdowns. Now, I look at this and I see Grace. I see the Grace of God (see here for why I say that but don’t identify as Christian) because it’s the only thing big enough to explain this kind of being person in my life. I see the Grace of Forgiveness because never once were the late night calls or the “please cancel your plans, I can’t stop crying” or the bare knuckle, crazy eyed emotional brawling held against me. And because I’ve managed to forgive myself for (most) of those things. I see greyness and exhaustion and misery and worthlessness being slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, eaten away by the sunshine in a cool apartment.

I don’t want to say something so cliche as “there is hope!” because there is but I know that such a bland statement has all the penetrating power into your depression as a mosquito against a nuclear submarine. Yet this Sunday, I laid in bed and napped in the sun while Will played a video game, occasionally stroking my hair or kissing my forehead. In place of grey was the soft turquoise of the bed spread, in place of exhaustion was gentle rest, in place of misery was contentment, and in place of worthlessness was wholeness.