I always knew I was depressed, but I didn’t recognize my own anxiety. I thought everyone’s body was like a clenched fist, that everyone had a knot of fire between their shoulder blades. The odd person that’s rubbed my back used to say, “Wow, your back muscles are so strong.” Now it’s “Your back is so tight, it's like rocks.” I’m literally crushing my own spine with stress.
I didn’t want to be “on the spectrum.” I wanted to be normal, to be like everyone else. As a schoolchild I wanted to not be gifted, to not have any potential up to which I must live. It hurts when people look at me, especially in a crowd. I can feel your eyes upon me, observing my tears and distress, thinking, “What’s wrong with her?” It’s easier to hide. I can hide in many ways: by not leaving the house, for one. As a child I hid by always having my nose in a book. It might have looked like I was in the Albert Harris Middle School Cafeteria being picked on by my peers but really, I was on Prince Edward Island, picking flowers with Anne Shirley. I was making a feathered cape on the Island of Blue Dolphins. I was pouring molten pewter with Johnny Tremain.
The “hole in the page,” as Stephen King calls it, has gotten harder to find as I age, as my imagination becomes brittle with overuse. But I still hide in Westeros, or in Anne Rice’s New Orleans. I still hide with Anne Shirley, roaming through fields in the PEI of a vanished age.
What does it feel like? It feels like my mind is a tired little bird, fluttering with exhaustion, looking for a place to perch. But every place I might alight—the past, the present, the future; my family, my child, my friends—there aren’t friendly branches, but razor-sharp dangerous shards of rusty metal, of dirty glass.
It feels like my head is full of squirrels, running furiously on squeaky exercise wheels, and each one is marked, my career, my relationships, my survival. The squirrels don’t ever stop, the wheels whir relentlessly, but they never go anywhere. It’s just wasted action.
It feels like I am on one side of a thick, sturdy pane of ice. I can see all of you on the other side, going to the movies with friends, fixing dinner together, celebrating birthdays, grocery-shopping companionably. Watching your children graduate from high school, or go on their first dates. But no one can see me, or hear me, as I scream and pound on the barrier. It’s like I’m not even there. There’s my daughter, nearly unrecognizable at 18, walking to her next class at college. She can’t see me either. Do I even exist?
Sometimes it feels like I am losing the thread of reality. All of this, after all, is only happening in the two pounds of fat between my ears. So what is real? If matter is mostly empty space, what am I really looking at, what are my “eyes” showing me? Sometimes I am afraid, when I sit down, that the chair won’t be there. When I take another step, the ground will dissolve under my feet. And my movements become guarded.
And then I wonder, what if I did “go crazy?” Would that be better? Why fight so hard? Insanity seems like a roaring waterfall, that’s just ahead. I swim and swim with all my might, but it’s only enough to keep me from going over. I’m always fighting hard to stay on the edge. Where is the still, small pool where I can rest?
Right now everything is up in the air, chaos: where am I going to live? How am I going to live? Do I even deserve happiness? Until I get settled again and on my feet, it’s hard to effect personal growth when your concerns are about survival.
Sometimes the pain is physical. Sometimes the losses hit me—my daughter’s whole childhood, from the first day of kindergarten to her high school graduation, stolen from me, irreplaceable. And my whole body hurts; if I’m standing up, I might crumble to the ground. I might wail senselessly. See my tears; they fill the whole night sky.
The whole night sky.
I’m not looking to y’all to fix me; I’m under a doctor’s care and in therapy. Writing about this stuff helps me to get it out, smooth it out, clean it up, and pack it away forever, hopefully. And I’m writing for my daughter, my granddaughter, my great-granddaughter—so they know I was here. I existed. I was worth knowing.
If you want to help, I’m trying to raise enough money to fix my car and move to a new place. Diaries about that stuff are linked above and my PayPal is leannemnorth at gmail. But your good wishes are even more valuable. Thank you for being my community.