A Memoir in Parts (AMIP): The Inmost Cave
It was the beginning of my last year in Japan, although I didn’t know that yet. I was getting ready to take a 3-month hiatus from the country and the grind that my life had become. At the time, I was struggling with a severe bout of depression that was largely situational.
Depression has plagued me off and on and in varying degrees of severity since I was around 13 or 14. Before the writing of this memoir, I had dabbled in therapy, but hadn’t taken very seriously or really even known how to approach it, and it didn’t last long. When faced with that particularly heavy reemergence of my inner demons, I decided it was time to try again.
I had my first session with an English-speaking Japanese woman remotely by Google Meets, because that’s the way many humans were still interacting in Japan in 2022. It was my first real-life, face-to-computer-to-face therapy session with a professional.
Not much happened. After going through a consent form and basic risk assessment, I gave the nice lady a rundown of my history with depression and some of the relevant circumstances of that history. She made a couple of comments about her impression so far and how we might proceed and things to prepare for the next session. Pretty simple. And yet, there was a single moment within that session that was surprisingly illuminating… And I was not thrilled about that particular illumination.
It made my insides cringe, and I had to fight the reflex to sit back in overdramatic incredulity and scoff at this extremely qualified professional’s observation of my life because how could that even be true…
She said: “It seems like you’ve been feeling alone for a long time, and that must be hard.”
I suppose many people would find that comment validating. I expect that’s how it was intended to sound. But it made me intensely uncomfortable. Not recognizing how alone I’ve felt in life and for how long. The discomfort came from acknowledging that my life had been hard.
I grew up in a beautiful, two-story red brick house in the middle of a picture-perfect upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood. We had a huge, green, well-manicured lawn lined with vibrant, blooming flower beds. I was raised among a menagerie of wild pets, piano lessons, and even riding lessons. All of our neighbors seemed to have the same idyllic lives, although the pets and posh hobbies varied.
Several of my friends were jealous of our big home and crazy pets. Some of my friends were even jealous of my happy family and our 50s-sitcom-esque wholesome relations.
In short, I was privileged growing up. And because I know I grew up privileged, because my struggles throughout my life have been more internal than environmental, I always felt like those struggles were invalid.
I didn’t feel like I was allowed to acknowledge the difficulties in my life because I had so much and other people have had so little. What are my problems in the face of real struggles?
And yet, when I go to bed at night, I am greeted time and time again by my faithful, unfailing traumas. They show up in my life so consistently and reliably that if they were my lovers, I might actually be healed of my often crushing sense of loneliness.
I really did have so much growing up. I had both my parents, as well as an older brother and sister, and all of them loved me unfailingly. I had a big house, my own room (eventually), dogs, cats, horses. I made good grades in school and I always had friends. I learned from an early age that I should always be grateful and never complain, and I took that to heart. Unfortunately, I also took that to mean that I shouldn’t have needs, and if any should emerge, I shouldn’t express them or try to defend them should they be challenged.
I guess this was a result of a number of combined influences. I was a naturally easy-going child, even as an infant. I was praised for this characteristic throughout my life. I even learned to wear the attribute like a badge of honor.
My sister, on the other hand, was not very easy-going at all. She was bossy, pushy, always wanted her way. And if she didn’t get it, she would make everyone’s life miserable with her temper tantrums. When we got into arguments, my dad’s unfailing response was, “You’re sisters, you should try to get along.”
Unfortunately, bossy, pushy people don’t try to get along. They try to get their way. It’s easy-going, quiet people who try to get along. So every time my dad told us to get along, what I understood it to mean was that I should try to get along, and I should give up whatever it is I thought I wanted to appease my sister and make everyone else’s lives easier.
Thus, I learned that my needs should always be secondary to anyone else’s and that my value is based on my ability to make everyone else happy regardless of my own unhappiness. Those beliefs embedded themselves so deeply in my psyche at such a young age that now, as I look back, I see them stamped on every memory. They charted the course for much of my life, especially my years up to university.
This was what I began to learn as I entered therapy seriously for the first time. I never met with the nice Japanese woman again, but I would find another therapist — one more constructive to my particular needs — later on. In the meantime, I began to delve into myself, to truly understand what was driving me beneath the surface. The goal was and continues to be to take ownership of what I can — and to let go of, and heal from, what I cannot own.
So I continue to dig through the layers. And all of that picture-perfect suburban life? It was like a beautiful lake of crystal glass, the surface perfectly smooth while the underside was cracking and ready to give way at any moment. And when I was about 13, it all finally shattered.
