Having a camera installed in your phone, and a phone that you carry with you wherever you go, has led to an overabundance of photographed moments. I can snap something frame by frame, then drop it in my computer's photo log or post it online to share with people. I'd almost forgotten what it was like before the first iPhone, when we had to carry cameras, develop film, and really consider if something was worth preserving for all time in an album.
It makes me a little wistful that I don't have more pictures from my teen years, or college and immediately after. There's this period of about 10 years when my parents stopped being present for everything, camera in hand, and I started making an effort to record my own moments, a period when it's like I almost ceased to exist. Because that's exactly what happened.
For a while, I was so busy and loving my life so much, that I didn't stop to consider if I'd want pictures to remember my friends and the places I went to and the things I did. But when I left home and started college, there was a different reason for the lack of pictures. It started so slowly, came so naturally out of my loneliness and sadness, that I didn't see it for what it was. Life had disappointed me, the religious bubble of my youth had burst, nothing was going the way it was supposed to. I had a really hard time making friends in college, and my roommates and I were more frequently bickering than enjoying each other's company.
So yeah, I didn't seem to have much of an appetite anymore. I lost about 15 pounds, which was probably due to all the walking I did and my fear that I would run out of money on my food card, and anyway, didn't most people complain about gaining weight their first year of college? And, obviously, since I wasn't at the school I wanted to go to, my classes weren't as interesting as I thought they'd be, and sometimes I'd just stay in my room and watch old episodes of SNL on Comedy Central, because I hadn't been allowed to watch it before and no one else was in the room in the middle of the day, so I could have the TV to myself. And what started out as an occasional thing turned into an almost every day thing, and then it wasn't just the afternoon that was hard to get through, it was waking up every morning that was hard, so hard that I'd just turn off my alarm and pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep. This wasn't the kind of thing one took pictures of.
I began to lose track. How many classes did I skip? What assignments were due? When was the last time I left the room? Had I showered recently? Had I eaten? Before I even realized it, I had become a stranger to myself, changed from an overachiever to someone who flunked a class and was facing academic probation. (And honestly, it is a testament to my ability to just wing it in school that I only failed ONE course that year, and scraped together Ds, Cs, and maybe even one B in the rest, because my attendance was almost non-existent.) It had almost been better to be numb and unaware than to be burdened with the reality that something was seriously wrong with me.
The turning point came on a Sunday, as I lay on the couch watching TV. Those of you in the mental health field may already have figured out what was up, but it took me watching the little eggs (or were they rocks?) in an animated Zoloft commercial to diagnose the problem: I was depressed. It was a word I was familiar with; in teen girl hyperbole, everything was so depressing. As in, "Ugh, I missed last night's episode of Daria, I'm so depressed," or "All my friends are going to Homecoming and I don't have a date, my life is so depressing!" This was something completely different. I couldn't shake it off, I couldn't eat a chocolate bar and go to the movies and feel better the next day, I couldn't even put forth the effort to contact a doctor or a counselor or someone who could actually help me. I was stuck. I was empty. I was lost.
I got back home after finals, and I spent the summer fighting for my life. I finally made an appointment to see a professional, who spent the next ten weeks talking with me about everything that had led to my condition, who gave me breadcrumbs to find the way back to engaging in life again, who told me I was going to be okay eventually. I believed her, and I'm grateful to her for intervening when I needed it most. I also went to summer school. I took a few classes at a local extension of my college, guaranteed "easy As" to get myself off academic probation. And, even though I went back to school much stronger and much healthier than I'd been the year before, I never told anyone about my Secret Summer, my diagnosis, my dark night. I let people make assumptions that my grades had dropped because I was having too much fun, although anyone around me, had they noticed or cared, would have known that was a lie.
Not only was I ashamed of my depression, I also struggled for a long time with the why of it. Was it just a coincidence that I walked away from church, decided to stop faking being good, and basically told God that I was done with Him, and then fell into a deep depression? Did my lack of faith make me lose my whole self?
Rejoining life wasn't easy. I had to build up my attention span again; after almost a year of not reading anything, making myself sit down and focus on textbooks was hard. I had to be vigilant about my mental health. Depression was like waves at the beach, lapping up on the sand, trying to lure me back in. Each day, I had to choose action, health, getting out of bed. But the biggest change was in my mind and my heart. I'd been so certain the year before that I knew everything I needed to about life, about my future, to the point of thinking I was above counsel, advice, friendship. Now, I saw that I knew nothing. I was truly a blank slate.
It took me years to stop thinking of the depression as a failure, a set back, a personal short-coming, and realize that it had actually been a gift. In no way am I advocating that depressed people should be thankful for what they are going through; I wouldn't have been able to enjoy anything at that time, even if I'd been instructed to. I am only saying that for me, with many, many years of distance, I can see how necessary that emptiness was to my future. I needed to shake off warped theology and negative reactions and see the world differently. And I needed something drastic to do it. So, as weird as it sounds, today I am glad that I went through this difficult time, and I'm a better person today because of it.
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