High Functioning, Period

By Madeline Aafedt

I had finally worked up the courage to admit my secret to my first boyfriend ever. I was as ready as I’d ever be to confess to him something that I had a hard time confessing to my closest friends, but this was what people in a relationship did, right? They were honest with each other. They supported each other.

“What made you depressed?” He asked in response to my unburdening.

I stared at my phone in disbelief. He knew that wasn’t how it worked, he had to. We were seventeen, almost seniors in high school. Nothing happened that made me depressed; my depression wasn’t a scrape I acquired after falling. He knew that. Right?

“It’s just how my brain is,” I typed back. “Something with the neurotransmitter connections or chemicals.”

“Okay, smart-ass. What actually happened?”

I blinked. Smart-ass? This was too tiring. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

Being told that you’re clinically depressed is an odd feeling. On the one hand, there’s the relief of finding out the reason you’re being, well, depressed, is because you are. On the other, it’s feeling like a failure because you can’t function properly the way other people can.

At thirteen I sat across from a lady whose name I forgot the second I left the chilly metal chair in her suffocating office. She asked me questions about myself that made me want to cry, though I didn’t understand why. My friends slept peacefully on the slumber party bed we made in my basement as I was attacked with probing questions at my nine o’clock appointment. It was too early to be told there’s something wrong with me.

That was the first time I was put on medications, and I haven’t been off them since. There was a span of months between my junior and senior years of high school where I switched medications so often my body couldn’t get physically used to them. I had a perpetual headache those months, but that wasn’t the worst part. I became an antidepressant zombie; a slow-moving, slow-talking, brain-fogged creature. I snapped and I growled and I was mean to the people I loved. It was because of this that I was forced to attend therapy again.

Rather than a cold, metal folding chair, I sat on a plush armchair across from a woman named Eva who I grew to trust more than my own best friends. I was a senior in high school and left school around the same time two or three days a week: right after third period before orchestra class began, not even halfway through the day. I was too exhausted to make it any further.

It was about three sessions in that Eva’s soft and gentle voice said the two scariest words I had ever heard: psychiatric hospital.

“Don’t think of it as a negative thing,” she told me. “Think of it as a little break for yourself. A break where you don’t have to think about anything but feeling better.”

I shook my head, frantic, tears wetting my cheeks and dripping from my chin. No, no, they couldn’t send me away somewhere. I lived in a small town where the community knew your business before you did, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I was sick enough to be sent away. I was the homecoming queen, straight A’s, nicest girl in school. I was not a failure, and though I still trusted Eva more than anyone else, I began to lie to her.

“I’m feeling great,” I said to her one sunny day towards the end of May. I had finished high school and graduated fourth in my class. See? I wanted to say to everyone. High functioning. “I’m dreading leaving my mom, but I think college will be good for me.”

“Promise me you’ll find someone to see, either on or off campus.” Eva was smiling at me, but her eyes were glossed over with concern.

I gave her my most convincing grin. “Promise.”

That was a lie. I didn’t go to counseling a single time my freshman year of college, and before I knew it, I was back home for summer break.

My sophomore year of college I lived in the most “college house” of all college houses. The basement was unfinished, the window frames were rotting, and the insulation was basically nonexistent. “It’s a college house,” my dad had said. “This is how they are.”

I was unconvinced, but said nothing. My brother and his friends had lived in that same house the last two years, and they had the time of their lives. My roommates and I would too; I just needed to stop being so negative.

My bedroom was in the basement where there was little to no natural lighting, rodents in the walls, and the temperature got so low that I had to sleep with three shirts on. This was the winter of 2018, when Minnesota temperatures dropped down to -56 degrees Fahrenheit, and my skin got so cold on a walk home my legs swelled. One night it hit thirty-nine degrees in my room, and even my massive pile of blankets and multiple layers of shirts couldn’t combat the freezing cold air. I had to hype myself up before sitting on the chilled porcelain of the toilet. Showering was painful.

I began to go as long as I could without showering. Even when the days grew longer and my room became unbearably hot (no A.C., either), I avoided getting in the shower. It just seemed like so much work. Finding the smallest ounce of motivation to brush my teeth was difficult, let alone washing my hair and body. Forget getting out of bed; I quit doing that too.

Sometimes I would just lay there and stare at a wall for hours, my homework untouched. I skipped class more often than I attended, and spent all my time sleeping because it was easier to not have to think about anything at all. Was it concerning? Not to my professors. I was just another number in their class, hardly considered a real person. I didn’t matter — not to them. Maybe I didn’t really matter to anyone at all.

The guilt that comes with being depressed is almost as detrimental as the depression itself. There’s so much I should be doing, so much I’m missing out on. Everyone was always asking me, “Why are you so sad? What do you have to be sad about?” And I tried to tell them you’re right, I’m not, I’m not sad, I’m just so tired.

In high school, therapy was a threat — go or the things you love will be taken from you — but in the spring of 2019, it was me that decided to get out of bed and march up to the fourth floor of Boynton Health Clinic. I had a blood test to figure out which medication would be best for me. Without discussing it with anyone else, I applied to Bethel University in hopes of a community that would care about me as an individual, rather than being just another name on the attendance sheet.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be a high functioning person, period. No depression or anxiety tagged on at the end. It’s been so long since I was that person, I’ve forgotten what felt like. Some days I wake up, make my bed, shower. I gather the cups that have collected on my desk and bedside table, some molding, and put them in the dishwasher. Maybe I do some laundry, my least favorite chore, and read a book. I let myself think, for a few hours at least, that I am that person, high functioning, period.