March Madness

A few nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night with the sudden urge to scroll. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. However, I recently turned my iPhone into a “dumb phone” - a.k.a. I removed everything stimulating and distracting from it, even Safari, so instead I opted to look through the Libby app, which lets me rent e-books from my library and delivers them instantaneously to my Kindle. In my quest for the next book I would invariably only read 30 pages of, I found The Yellow Wall-Paper.

Written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it’s technically a short story, only spanning 38 pages. I figured I could manage eight more pages than I usually read. On Libby, it’s listed under the “thriller” genre, which is a stark contrast from my normal book choices, but I was curious to see what the story was all about. And again, it’s only 38 pages. Laying in the darkness while my boyfriend slept soundly beside me, I began to read.

What I realized as I continued on, is that the book is not merely a “thriller,” but a poignant view on women’s mental health towards the turn of the 20th century. Our main protagonist is swept away by her physician husband to a run-down country cottage after the birth of her first child, when she begins to suffer from “hysteria.” Her only entertainment is staring at the yellow wallpaper in her attic room; imagining it moving and contorting, sometimes even seeing a woman inside of it.

“John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.”

“I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.”

I was floored that this piece of literature was written in the 1800’s. How was it possible that women have been suffering from mental health issues so clearly for so long, and yet they’re just now starting to be acknowledged? I clicked off my Kindle and laid in bed, finding myself trancelike, staring at the ceiling in the same way the protagonist became entranced by the wallpaper. The first trickle of morning light began to peep through the blinds. My partner was still asleep, unaware of the soul transformation I had gone through in a mere hour or so.

It’s March now. The first blooms of spring are beginning to burst in screaming color, and most days are chilly but pleasant in the afternoons. Just one year ago, in March, I experienced my own bout of “hysteria.”

I’ve waited to write about this time of my life because it never seemed quite like the “right” time. I felt as though it was somehow incorrect to write about what I was going through if I wasn’t fully recovered from it. How can I view myself clearly if my lens is still distorted? People often write memoirs about their experiences with mental health crises or difficult seasons of life after they’ve come out of the bottomless pit. Some days, I feel like I’m still there, but I have a desire to share and shake off the shame that so often accompanies those living with mental health disorders. I’d like to peel away the yellow wallpaper.

. . . . . . .

In early 2023, I was struggling. In an attempt to hopefully get myself under control, I bought a red Moleskine journal and committed to writing as much as I could. I had always loved journaling, but with the stress of a 9 to 5 in the entertainment industry on top of everything else life throws at you, I hadn’t been on top of my game. I felt it was time to set some non-work related goals. Maybe that would make me feel a sense of ease. The following are some of my journal entries from that time:

January 11, 2023: Goals for this year: attend an ACA meeting, go to a faith group meeting, do EMDR in therapy, release EP, save more money/come up with budget.

January 19, 2023: The past few days have been hard. I have been mulling over how much I want to quit my job. Everything feels unfamiliar and unsafe. What would I do? Could I make enough money to pay my bills? The questions and anxiety are all endless.

January 25, 2023: Everything fell apart yesterday. I broke down. I had a nervous breakdown. I sobbed and laid on the bathroom floor and thought I was going to be sick. My life feels like it’s falling apart. I just want this all to go away. Do I hate my life? I’m just so anxious all the time. I need to quit my job but I’m unsure of what to do next. How do I get out of this situation and what do I do once I’m out of it? I’m in therapy, I’m medicated, this is not supposed to be happening.

February 2, 2023: More hard days. Ever since my breakdown last week, I have been really struggling. I have no clue what to do. I haven’t showered in 3 days. Everything is just so hard. I don’t care about work, I don’t care about my appearance, I don’t care about anything. I start to feel so numb and checked out and then I fantasize about running away or living in the woods or something and my anxiety creeps in and I freak out because I’m just stuck. I’m stuck in a plane, I’m stuck on the freeway, I’m stuck in my job, I’m stuck in my life! I’m working myself up over nothing — I’m literally sitting here with my heart rate increasing. It’s hard being depressed and anxious at the same time.

Around this time, I began struggling immensely with traveling and feeling stuck. For years I had struggled to fly, but had mostly kept that in check with a Xanax prescription and noise-cancelling headphones. By the start of 2023, it was morphing into much more than just flight anxiety. I could no longer drive on the highway, which meant adding an extra 20 minutes to my commute to and from work. I drove through unsafe parts of Nashville daily to avoid taking the interstate, and called off plans with friends so I didn’t have to drive around town.

At the same time, I felt my performance at work slipping. I was disinterested in the hustle of staying after hours and pouring myself into something that I ultimately felt like was not contributing to any greater good. On a few occasions I tried to reach out to upper management, and while they tried their best to be helpful, I worried that I couldn’t be completely honest with them about my condition. Would they fire me? Would I ever get hired anywhere else? What would I do? How would I survive? And flying was absolutely out of the question.

On March 5th, I had my first session of EMDR with my therapist. I’d heard great things about it for years and I was excited at the possibility of having a “breakthrough” in my anxiety. I wanted so badly to be fixed. To be under control. To be the person I felt that others needed me to be. For the first time, I felt like there may be hope and a cure. For those unfamiliar with EMDR, it stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. The process of the therapy is in the name. Essentially, it involves moving your eyes a specific way while a therapist prompts you in bringing up traumatic memories. The memories can differ throughout the sessions, but they’re likely significant enough to be causing you distress, even if not fully realized in your conscious mind.

My first session involved the memory of a car crash I was in during 2020. A semi-truck merged into me on the interstate, not seeing my car. I spun out in the middle of I65, like something from a horrible movie. It seems sort of obvious now that my inability to drive on the highway was a direct result of this accident, but I was more focused on beating myself up over not being able to do what I used to be able to do so effortlessly. Trauma often lives right there under the surface, begging to be seen. It’s amazing how it all makes sense looking back, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

March 5, 2023: …I thought about spinning out in the middle of the interstate, feeling out of control and incapable. My therapist sat in front of me and tapped my knees with the end of her pen for short periods of time. After each succession, she would ask what came up for me. This repeated over and over. Immediately when she started tapping, I felt a lot of sensations. My eyes started moving back and forth, my palms got sweaty, and I started to get very nervous. Eventually, I started feeling like I wanted to laugh, and I had no clue why. I tried to suppress it and my therapist asked if I was holding anything back. I told her I felt like laughing but could not understand why. She encouraged me to just let it out and laughed with me. I kept feeling like she must think I’m crazy. After some time, the panic and laughing subsided, and I started to feel very numb. Almost paralyzed. … I felt astounded by how my body brought up all these physical sensations. I’m thankful to get back to an awareness of my body. My next session is in a few days, so I will be sure to journal again after that.

My therapist did warn me that sometimes things can get worse before they get better with the EMDR processing. It’s incredibly difficult to bring up old trauma stored in your body, and it can do strange things to you in the direct aftermath. I tried to take it easy most days after my sessions, but my job was still demanding and I felt myself crumbling to new lows. It was impossible to be social, to be functional, to be normal. During lunch breaks at work, I slept in my car, and I generally made no attempts to converse with any of my coworkers. I’m sure I seemed restrained and sulky. I didn’t try to correct that impression.

Things came to a head in mid-March. I wanted desperately to go home, back to North Carolina, and get away for a bit. But how was I going to get there? I couldn’t fly or drive. Again, I was stuck. Eventually, I plead to my Mom to come get me, in any way she could. Asking for help felt like the most embarrassing and shameful thing I could do. The facade was cracking and I had made it obvious to my family that I was not in fact, keeping it under control.

My Mom, of course, came. But I could not stop the feelings of shame from welling up inside of me. All I could think is that she must be so confused and annoyed that her 23-year old daughter can’t get on a simple 1 hour plane ride or drive home as she’s done so many times before. Also worth noting is that my Mom was once a flight attendant and also travels extensively for work. I knew I seemed crazy to her.

But again, she came. Without much warning, I told my boyfriend goodbye, and left for the long trip back to North Carolina, unsure of how long I’d be there or what exactly I was going to do about my whole situation. We stopped every few hours along the way, as it had become even hard for me to ride as a passenger on the highway. We made it home at around 9pm, after 12 long hours on the road.

The only pictures I took on our roadtrip.

The plan was to work from home for 2 weeks or so, or however long my work allowed. On my lunch breaks, I’d go see my psychiatrist with my Mom to get my medicine checked out. Hopefully, I would be fixed within a few days. I could take some much needed time away from Nashville, see my family, and get back to myself.

Things proved not to be so simple. On my second night home, I had dinner with my grandparents at their house. We sat around the living room with TV trays and plates full of salmon patties, my grandfather’s specialty and one of my favorites. But I was unable to eat, or really even make conversation with them. The news came on the TV, inevitably discussing something distressing, and I began to sob. Again, I was not keeping it under control. I had not shown this side to my grandparents, and I hated feeling like I was worrying them. The world felt scary and full of unknowns and I couldn’t keep myself together, much less face the seemingly pressing societal problems around me, which beckoned to be wrestled with and solved.

After awkwardly trying to explain my crying, which apparently came out of nowhere, I excused myself and walked back to my Mom’s house. She was away that night on a business trip, but I could not bear to be alone. I called my godmother, who I knew had gone through a similar situation, and asked if she might be able to come over. I was in tears again by the time she arrived, feeling manic and numb at the same time. We talked for a while about what was upsetting me, but I didn’t really know. Everything just felt wrong. I was terrified and too tired to speak or analyze my thoughts. She laid down with me in my bed, and slept with me the whole night. I felt defeated and childish, but relieved to have someone there.

The azaleas were blooming. The mourning dove cooed.

The next morning, we visited my psychiatrist. My godmother came along for moral support. It had been a while since I’d seen this doctor in person, as we’d normally just do 15 minute check-ins over the phone every few months to see how I was doing on my medicine. When I was called back to see her, my “support team” came with me. I let them do most of the talking. I couldn’t answer the question, “What’s been going on?” myself. I did not know. All I knew is that I felt like I was imploding.

Tears streamed down my face effortlessly. My mother remarked how I’d been crying all day, pretty much everyday. The three of them, my Mom, my godmother, and my psychiatrist, looked on at me like I was a sad puppy. I was relieved to be there, to be getting some sort of help, but I was up to my ears in shame for getting myself into this situation. My psychiatrist recommended we switch from Zoloft to Prozac and gradually up my dosage throughout the next two weeks. Another visit was scheduled for a week later to see how I was reacting to the medicine change. With that, we were off.

As the week rolled on, I found it increasingly more difficult to do my work, and I worried that I wouldn’t actually get any better if I spent all my time at home on the phone and computer, constantly plugged into what I felt was causing the stress in the first place. I set up a virtual meeting with my HR manager, where I told her flat out that I needed a break. I didn’t know if I had any options beyond just quitting outright, but I wanted to discuss it further. I learned that with a referral from a therapist, I could apply for a Federal (unpaid) Leave of Absence. It felt like the obvious choice. Within a few days, I was approved, and so my two month-long mental health sabbatical began.

I slept, a lot. I went everywhere with my Mom. I sat with my grandparents when she was at work, making sure to avoid the TV. My sister and nephew came into town for a few days, and it seemed like things were looking up. We raked pine cones in the yard, went to all my favorite dinner spots, and watched trash reality TV. My sister made us Eggs Benedict and we played a lot of board games. I frequently lost. Although I was beginning to feel a bit better, I still viewed myself as a walking zombie. Still constantly anxious about everything and everyone around me; still mostly paralyzed. Constantly unsure what I would do when April ended and I had to return to work. Would I be in the same position, yet again?

Thankfully, I tried to keep myself busy and focus on the present. My boyfriend flew down for a few days towards the tail-end of my trip home and he would drive me back to Nashville. I had no plan for when I returned, but I had time. Regardless, we spent the last few days gallivanting around Wilmington. We drove around the beach, walked downtown, and on our last night, attended a play. The next morning, I hugged my Mom goodbye, and we traveled back to Nashville.

April 10, 2023: It’s hard to believe it’s already April; already spring. The trees are blooming in the courtyard and the weather has mostly been pleasurable and breezy. The birds are chirping in unison at full volume early in the morning, and it carries throughout the day. I see robins, Carolina wrens, bluejays, and cardinals often. I know that this season is somehow helping me heal.

About three weeks ago, I hit a breaking point and asked my Mom to come get me and take me home. I kept thinking about the song “Over The Hill” by John Martyn: “there’s just one place for a man to be when he’s worried about his life, I’m going home, over the hill.” So my Mom came and drove me 12 hours through the mountains to go home. I battled anxiety and relied on Xanax to get me through the last 2 hours. But we made it. The first few days were hard.

May 1, 2023: I got sidetracked with my last entry and forgot to finish. It’s a few weeks later, and it’s also the last week of my break. It’s difficult to sum up in words this period of my life. I don’t want to be too dramatic, but at the same time I realize that this was truly a big event. I’m proud of myself for standing up for my own needs. I think I’m learning that denying them is deadly. My decisions may not make sense to some people, but at the end of the day, I have to do what’s right for myself. I am the only one who is living in my place everyday. I get to decide the best thing for me. It’s equal parts scary and freeing.

Once back in Nashville, I spent the majority of my time taking walks and volunteering with a local non-profit that teaches horseback riding lessons to kids with disabilities. It felt like doing something outside of myself and my problems helped me stay present and sane. I was still deeply anxious, but I was thankful to be alive. In mid-May, I went back to my old job, and within two weeks, put in a letter of resignation. It was time to leave. I had no plan, no other job lined up, but I had enough in savings and some help from my family to get me through at least a month. That was enough for me.

Leaving the security of a well-paying job — and on the surface, an impressive position — was not easy. I wrestled with what it would look like for me to go back to a job in customer service, like ones I’d had throughout high school and college. I wanted deeply to pursue a career in music, my own music, but I knew I needed another source of income. Within a few weeks, I got an interview with a local boutique clothing store that I liked and I was offered the job. From an outsider’s perspective, I’m sure it seemed odd to leave a 9 to 5 in a coveted industry only to go work in retail. But an outsider’s perspective is sometimes irrelevant.

. . . . . . .

I look back on last March, and the year as a whole, and I often don’t know how to explain it to myself or others. Maybe it’s the internalized stigma in asking for help and in not being completely “together” that makes it hard for me to see the progress I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned in the last 12 months. I am often still in the folds of anxiety, going about my days with my head underwater. I am still in therapy, taking medication, journaling, working, and trying to pursue my creativity in an honest way despite it all. What I’m sure of, however, is that I am allowed to exist and express my emotions, and that isn’t at the expense of anyone else. I’ve spent so many years of my life thinking that by occupying my own space, I am taking room away for others, but that is far from the truth.

I have been locked in the attic with its rotting yellow paper. And I am ready to climb the ladder back down.

Songs I Listened To While Losing My Mind:

This is the first of more blog posts to come.