Nov. 2020-Apr. 2021
*CW: Discussion of depression, self-harm, dissociation, and other mental health issues.
SECTION IV: THE HOLIDAYS
For the past two years, my father has lived under the notion that this would be the last Thanksgiving and Christmas that we spend as a whole family. He’s not talking about those directly in my orbit, but more the fragile ring that exists just outside of it. My grandparents are both in their 90s, both with enough failing health to not be above occasional trips to the hospital. In 2021, it has felt like my grandmother has spent more time being cared for than out in the public, her mind itself growing fragile. My grandfather is only doing better in that his mind is active, capable of reaching out during the few times that I’ve seen him to discuss whatever interests him.
But the holiday seasons have never been my favorite. It’s not because of the assemblage of family, but more the idea that there is a need to overcompensate. To think back to Thanksgiving or Christmas, it doesn’t feel as special usually because most of the family was in the kitchen preparing the biggest dinner of the year. At most I would make dip for the chips, mundane tasks that allowed me to be away from the crowd. Even then, the fear of eating has remained a conflict. Any accessibility to food might mean that I gorge on chips in part because they’re tasty but also because they’re there, sure to get yelled at for eating too much.
Thanksgiving felt less meaningful than usual. There was no conflict out of place, but I had no interest in anything going on. Maybe it was the first evidence of depression that I couldn’t recall a single event from that day. Even the effort of trying to not be on my phone proved difficult as I found myself escaping to a backroom to watch videos and throw comments onto Twitter. I knew even then that I was using social media as some escape, desperately trying to get some stimulation that I was missing in the moment. Every now and then I would try to rejoin the family and enjoy their company, but it was difficult. If they weren’t watching sports, they might be asleep. Given that this was the one year I had taken off from school, I had nothing worth sharing with them that could make them proud. I just sat, waiting for dinner.
I forget if it started at Thanksgiving or Christmas, but I remember sitting there during dinner and listening to the conversations. I tried to find an entry, but my father was dominating the conversation. I was at the far end, more likely to supervise my nieces than say anything of value. What I can recall is that somewhere in the mix, I began to realize how little I ate. I had one whole plate of modest proportions. I didn’t go in expecting to end there, but something in me told me to stop. It was much less than what I usually ate and under what the other adults consumed. I technically could say it was a healthy amount, but it symbolized a greater problem that I was having.
Christmas was maybe more eventful because of all-day NBA games. Getting to see Zion Williamson in the morning and The Warriors in the afternoon is always a highlight. However, that feeling emerged again that today was inconsequential. For the first time, I had failed to get anyone a gift and I lacked any creative forethought to change that. Again, I turned to Twitter that evening to see what everyone else was up to. My friend said she received clothes that were “depression chic,” and once again I found myself having difficulty not comparing whatever void there was in my mind to other people’s quote unquote success.
There wasn’t a major conflict in 2020. Everything was fine. However, certain things had happened somewhere between these two holidays that began to wear me out quicker than I had expected. By early December, I had some optimism that I might pull through – but I realize that might’ve been mania. Much like early January, I had a brief moment where I felt positive. Maybe it was a delusion, but I still noticed somewhere in that was insecurity and an underlying cynicism that was meant to be attention-grabbing. Seeing everyone else be happy made me wonder, hey, why can’t I get attention? Why does the rest of my family get to have conflicts and be the center of attention while I quietly go about life insignificantly?
Again, very little would suggest that this was true, but that was how depression began to take hold. Simple acts began to hold greater weight. The page views on The Memory Tourist were down while any self-loathing that I saw on Twitter got more attention than any cry for help. What exactly made me special? Maybe it was because I wasn’t fully being open and clear with my intentions, but slowly the mania disappeared and I was back to experiencing a lull made worse by one particular detail, the one that I had been fearing for most of the year.
My Movie Buddy had contracted Coronavirus. He was the first person that I knew to have it, and the feeling was overwhelming. There wasn’t a curve yet suggesting that it could be manageable. At most, there was the story of “the long haulers” who had side effects for months after. Given how alone I was feeling at that exact moment, I immediately jumped to the worst feeling in the world. Over the past decade, he came to be one of the most significant people in my life. He was one of the few I sincerely missed and wanted to see for a brief get-together. We had last seen each other for the first time in months for Tenet (2020), but that was a fluke. It wasn’t the start of things returning to normal.
I had no way to reach out to him and console. I did what little I could on Facebook, but again it was suggested that everybody keep their distance. With an inability to express any concern in a rational way, I fell apart over that initial evening. I think that it was a moment where the final layers of protection began to fall down. Certain desires became overwhelming. The thought of drinking to escape this nightmare felt more plausible than normal. The only thing stopping me was a lack of stable income that would make this habit work.
So instead I took to my bed, listening to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” on a loop for 40 minutes while letting every emotion out. With exception to a shower, I lacked any will to get out of bed. I stayed there, rolling back and forth, watching the hours tick by. It didn’t matter. I just stayed there, waiting for this feeling to pass. In total, I spent 17 straight hours in bed. At points, it went beyond processing everything to just asking myself why anything mattered anymore. I was losing interest in so much, returning to my obnoxious ramblings in the hope that somebody replied. Again, nobody knew how annoying they were like I did, so it was a vicious cycle of hurting myself. While what I said wasn’t necessarily damning, I do think there’s a clear disconnect between rational thought and what I was doing.
By the end of December, my grandmother contracted Coronavirus. I knew another person who did. While the thought of losing them also hurt, I think so much of my exhaustion was poured into my Movie Buddy’s diagnosis that something was lost. At night I watched news stories about thousands dying daily, wildfires overwhelming California. What optimism was there?
The closest that I came to having anything like that was The Presidential Election, which I mostly ignored. Having felt burned in 2016 by focusing too much on coverage, I did my best to ignore the debates, every hateful and boneheaded comment. I couldn’t handle it, not in a year where compassion probably would’ve won either party the spot. Instead, there was too much divide, and it shined through in the fact that almost a year later, there’s a small contingent who refuse to accept the results.
But that was a nail-biting period. In my mind, Joe Biden winning by a landslide would’ve been ideal. That is why I spent the first half of Election Night watching, with tongue-in-cheek, the movie musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967). I was expecting to go to bed with more optimism than I did. I knew that I would grow addicted to watching the slight change in numbers until a result came in. Given how close the vote was, it was one of those cliffhanger nights where the only sane thing to do was put on Lana Del Rey’s “Norman Fucking Rockwell” and try to relax.
I won’t go into everything that happened over the next few days, but there was something to be said about the feeling. It’s the gambler feeling, this uncertainty that anything could happen with just the right outcomes. That is how the election sometimes felt, and I was looking for results as frequently as I could.
Then there was the night. In common nomenclature, it was “The night Georgia turned blue.” It was unexpected, but there it was. People were celebrating, recognizing an accomplishment that hadn’t been pulled off in decades. With those electoral votes swinging in favor of Biden, everyone found some relief that results were turning for the better. I was there, desiring to take in the fun. I even joked “Remember the Fifth of November” only to have somebody correct me. What I didn’t realize was that this was the first of MANY days throughout the next five months where I couldn’t tell you what day it was. I was losing most sense of time, a detail only made worse by the fact that this happened at 2 AM PST.
I don’t know that I could blame my sleeping problems on Georgia turning blue, but it did feel like I had that problem more frequently after the fact. Suddenly I was staying up until 2 AM most nights, not doing anything productive. I turned to Tik Tok with the hope of filling that void, finding every minute-long video to be “the last one.” It became surreal not only because it was addictive, but that by 2 AM, I ended most nights on a similar strain. Much like me, there was a world out there that felt alone, doing everything to find a reason to keep going.
In between the affirmation posts was a subset of people who were more distraught than me. Thanks to my rising interest in mental health, I found myself dealing with therapy-adjacent posts. I’m talking about people who discuss their own history with depression or suicidal thoughts. Every now and then there would be a video so dramatic that you were concerned for them. Would they be alive by the time that you woke up? Once or twice I even found the dark humor side of Tik Tok where literal suicide was joked about in ways that caught me off guard. To be on this side of Tik Tok around December was horrifying because as much as there were people reaching out for positivity, I was just as likely to grow sad about a stranger that I’d never see again.
I suppose it’s responsible to end this section with a simple truth. My Movie Buddy not only survived Covid-19, but he’s doing much better. He is definitely a long-hauler with various ailments still being treated. However, we have seen each other almost quadruple the number of times since last November, and I am grateful for every chance we get to have together. My grandmother has survived as well, though she is once again in care. Of everything that qualified as miracles in 2020, I think these are the most significant.
SECTION V: DISSOCIATION
Once again, I tried to break free of depression. With the start of January and 2021, I used it as an excuse to believe the old “New year, new you!” adage. Things had to get better. In November, they had announced a new vaccine that would hopefully help to eradicate the virus, or at least mute it. While there would still be conflicts internationally, most recognizably in India, The United States was looking to be on the upswing, so long as the government could gain the trust of the public to take a vaccine that sought to better everyone’s lives. Given that people were subscribed “anti-maskers” prior to January, it was going to be an uphill battle that unfortunately continues to linger.
I grew addicted to the coverage of the January 6 Terrorist Attacks on The Capitol. It was surreal for a handful of reasons. As much as I recognized and loathed these people for destroying the very structures they claimed to respect, I had the ongoing conflict of trying to be both an optimist who believed in compassion while noticing how much I just wanted those too selfish to change a small part of their life to recognize their consequences. By this point, I had seen enough footage of nurses and doctors on the news breaking down into tears, their frustration that most of the I.C.U. were filling up with anti-maskers and later anti-vaxxers who could’ve done their part to at least slow down the problem. Where was the justice?
For me, it was also a question of why even leave the house. Before April, I didn’t even have a shot. All I had was this fear of returning to a regular life, believing that I could fall victim to a virus. I stayed strong up through January 20, 2021: Inauguration Day. I think it was in some small way a necessity to not believe that the former president would cause further conflict. In that time he lost access to Twitter and flew off on Air Force One to The Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Reality is stranger than fiction, and the past four years have fit that to a T.
I watched Biden’s Inauguration Day ceremony twice over the two days. I recognized the pride it gave me to have a president who spoke compassionately, promising a future of unity. I still want to believe that he’ll deliver on that, though frankly, the months to follow are largely a blur. I have absolutely no idea what he did in those days. While I would go on to watch the evening concert with my sister where she pointed out a fireworks display of rainbows, my moments of clarity were fading fast. I would remember things from throughout the next few months, but not a complete picture. Everything was still shut down and I still felt confined to my indoor lifestyle even though by February, The Memory Tourist was reaching a months-long hiatus.
I think I saw comfort in Biden being president that allowed me to once again put my guard down. The initial wave of depression was more subtle, mostly revolving around me spending half of the day in bed and staying up late. I was “happy,” but it was also becoming clear that I was not using my day to my full advantage anymore, or at least in a way that would be deemed productive. The best that could be said is that I spent a significant amount of time in the wake of Sia’s Music (2021) connecting with the autism community, doing everything to raise awareness for why the film was reprehensible.
Other than that, it was watching the Euphoria special on a loop. It was evenings of trying to understand the correlations of autism with traits like depression and trauma. It is true that a lot of this stemmed from finding communities on Tik Tok, but I found psychology essays to be the most fulfilling, providing deeper context for everything that I was feeling. For a little bit, I could feel like this was satisfactory, giving deeper meaning to everything that I was struggling with. I would eventually move onto LGBTQIA+ themes, exploring message boards and YouTube videos that better clarified a community that not only interested me but which I also was starting to believe that I was part of.
On some level, I do think that there’s something to be said about that moment when you’re questioning your identity. There is a lot of pain that I was working through, going over most of my 21st century and noticing how every decision had altered my perception of the world. Due to certain circumstances, people in my life were triggering me, forcing me to relive moments that caused me to feel flustered. I was more vulnerable than I had ever been, and trying to make sense of it was difficult. Trying to push past intrusive thoughts that said “I hate you” was a big hurdle because ignoring them only made them stronger. Pain. There was so much pain that came during the early days of accepting myself as demisexual, asexual, and queer because I believed I was an imposter. Without anybody to validate me, I had to ask why any of this held truth.
February was when the dissociation started. I won’t speak to everyone’s experience, but what I remember is a numbness, an unrecognizable relationship with time. It took much more effort to act like I was beyond this state just to appease others. I think it made sense given how much of the previous months were spent trying to reject things about myself, whether it be my friend’s potential death, the sense that I had Twitter friends but was alone, or just that we were coming up on a year of quarantine lifestyle and I had nothing to show for it. What I had was the work of someone who crashed and burned. Who wanted that?
Some positive changes came in this time. I found my Twitter friends reaching out when I asked for advice more frequently. They suggested that I take a day off from social media, and thus I haven’t been on Twitter on a Saturday since 2021 started. Similarly, I’ve taken the equivalent of 2-3 months off just to regroup. While the impact wasn’t felt immediately, the sense that I had less obligation to be there altered my relationship with it. Most days I haven’t been on there until the afternoon, mostly checking in with friends and various current happenings. It’s honestly amazing how much drama I’ve missed simply by being absent.
But again, that’s not how pleasantly the immediate aftermath occurred. I was dissociating and suffering one of my most suggestive states. Around this time, I also found myself relating to articles about depression, specifically around people who survived attempted suicide. I admired the clarity with which they viewed life afterward, finding more positivity in the world. I read whole essays about a person’s experience with cutting, finding the reasons for these actions striking. She would also talk about her experience with anorexia, which is a fascinating recovery story that included a very startling passage. Without any ill-intent, she contemplated if she was asexual because of how limited dieting took away her energy and sex drive. Again, this is the work of an author who is healing, and there was something that amazed me, making me see the possibility of change for the better.
Certain details were a bit triggering, even if I chose not to believe them upon initial viewing. She showed her progress through photos, and I simultaneously was impressed with her ability and energy to get better, but also a bit jealous. In my depressed state, I was wondering what I needed to do to gain any attention. I didn’t want to do permanent damage. I just wanted to feel pain. It had been months since I had a meaningful hug. I felt so disconnected from the sense of touch that it bothered me. I struggled to cry and it made me feel like a monster though, oddly enough, not enough to cry.
It didn’t help that some of my only contact with humanity around this time was a series of online classes. I started CSULB and had to attend via Zoom. For my second class, I felt triggered on the first day by a teacher who suggested that every student should have a loved one and purpose by the age of 30. Being 31, it felt like an unintentional dig. I recognize that he was also disheveled because his father had died and pandemic culture was bothering him on some level. Still, for that initial day, I became overwhelmed by the amatanormativity. I had struggled to feel any significance in my life at that point and that definitely threw things off even further.
My other class was easier to deal with, if just because it was a creative writing class that was geared around expression. While I would argue every story I wrote is regrettably lacking, they all had similar criticisms from peers. I had a lack of understanding around time, struggling to build a greater sense of purpose in my narratives. While I did a good job of interacting and taking feedback, serving as the one bright spot in my first semester, it did feel like one of those moments where the struggle began to feel obvious.
These classes were often the only thing keeping me going. I had to find ways to wake up and get to class every day. However, comparing that with my draining energy was difficult. There were days where I would be in the shower preparing for the day ahead and I had to push myself, motivate myself to actually show up, and just appear as a little box in the corner. This was the most noticeable way that I was falling apart because for some reason I just couldn’t sometimes. Once or twice I cried while I punched and slapped myself, doing everything to find some purpose. At one point I even lacked the will to read and took to YouTube to listen to an audiobook just to try and jog my brain.
Why were so many of the people I talked to on a daily basis not feeling real? I had family that I saw, but most of the bigger world was growing disconnected from myself. It was hard to fully respect the stakes of this moment, especially when I had no idea what 2021 was going to look like or why anything mattered.
It should be noted that I have not felt suicidal. What I’m about to say is not the result of some deep pit of despair, but just a significant struggle. Because I was dissociating, feeling a lack of personal worth, I was scared and trying to do everything to escape it. The most noticeable way to achieve that was to inflict pain. Ever since my early 20s, I have used punching and slapping as convenient ways to do this. I usually did it to my jaw, in some ways symbolic of my belief that this punishment was some act of what I said. I didn’t want to beat my brain because I understood the value of being smart. Most times it was my hand while once or twice it was something else like the side of a laptop. Still, it wasn’t feeling like enough this time.
After months of repressing those urges to act out, I finally did it. The punching and slapping were there. Starving, or at least decreased food intake, was present. I also took up whipping myself with any object like a clothes hanger in hopes that the pain would pull me out of this spiral.
The final frontier eventually came when I decided to cut myself. There was always something scary about it because the media painted it as so dangerous and, in some circles, selfish. Again, I only wanted to get a brief feeling of pain, believing that it would free me of dissociation. It did, but it produced something more addictive. Now whenever I was stressed, I would cut. It was rarely anything above a small prick, enough to produce pain whenever I rubbed it. This lead to me wearing long sleeves (which given the weather wasn’t terribly abnormal). Still, there was something unsettling about the idea that I’d be sitting by a pair of nail clippers and think that it would solve my problems.
I became the cliché that I couldn’t tell you where all of my cuts were or when they were from. While my arm doesn’t look like the more conventional razor blade approach, my upper arm now has discoloration, small specks that show where scars used to be. I think of those nights when I would put on a film but grow so distracted by inner turmoil that I chose to hurt myself instead. It felt justified, but at the same time, I recognized how this wouldn’t solve problems. I just needed that receptor of pain to remind myself that I felt anything.
Attempts to stop carried over into April. I did it 16 times at least, and thankfully most have healed and disappeared. However, the journey there was difficult. One stressful conversation could result in me opening up a wound, sometimes literally. The intrusive thoughts were growing more critical. I’d punch myself in the shower, trying to force myself to get to class and act like everything was normal. There was one day where I had a breakdown simply because I repeated the words “I love you” over and over, trying to break some toxic ways of thinking. It was clear what I wanted to hear, and not enough people (or my projected version of who I wanted in my life) were giving me that.
It is true that having a vaccination helped change my mood. Part of it came with the self-conscious belief that the nurse would see my arm as she injected and wonder what was going on. By then, I had been clean a few weeks and most had healed, again more pricks that at worst looked like cat scratches. Even then, the road there was difficult because I was the last of my main family to receive it. It was another small way that I felt insignificant. My sister proposed that because of my personal health that I could get it earlier, but that only made me feel worse in a different way.
April 26.
I wouldn’t say that this is when my depression ended, but the parabola began to dip back up to something more positive. If it wasn’t my low, then it was close enough. The week before I heard that my friend Dorian had passed away from a drug overdose. I was overwhelmed enough by it that I cried for a day. I would start working on this piece about him that in itself was helping me to heal. Having written out everything that bothered me over the past few months, it only felt right to try and address the impact he had on me. The most significant to this piece was that during 2010 when I was in desperate need of company, he was there and helped me through a hard time. His absence in light of where I was in 2021 felt devastating.
There were a handful of obstacles that lead to April 26 being my worst day. I had a relapse on April 23 that caused me to cut after almost 10 days of being clean. This was spawned from an argument that I found irrational and accusatory, but ultimately hurt me on a deep level, that I failed as a person. Carrying that to April 26, I ran into a third variable that ultimately destroyed me. I overslept. I missed class. Being critical, I took to the familiar routine of punching myself, abusing my body until I felt the sensation pass. I proceeded to cut my arm in such a way that has remained. Whereas most marks have faded over the months, this one remains textural, a bump on my arm.
There was something in that moment where I just recognized how bad things had gotten for me. With light ahead, I could see the potential for the summer months to be eventful. However, for that moment I noticed how much my body ached from lacerations and starvation. My jaw hurt for a few days. I couldn’t keep living this way. I needed to make a serious effort to change for the better, even if somewhere deep down I still felt a bit isolated.
I have had relapses a few times since, but they’ve become less frequent in the months since. They also aren’t nearly as damaging, more scratches than skin-piercing. As I look at my arms, I am aware of what those months meant to me and am grateful to have survived. I rub my one scar from April 26 every time I feel that sense of isolation, recognizing how it marked both the culmination and turning point in my journey. One can only take so much abuse, and I am thankful to be on the other side. This isn’t to say that I have lost certain negative thoughts, but after months of darkness, I found myself coming to certain revelations.
I was, in a sense, almost free.
to be continued...
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