She didn't outright forbid it, but I could tell she wasn't pleased.
It was the same reason she objected to Wintergirls and Little Bee and Speak.
After all, letting her daughter read books about depression didn't quite jive with her firm belief that I was over mine, and could now just get on with life.
The thought that maybe my illness was more than temporary didn't seem to have occurred to her, or, if it did, it seemed to have been speedily relegated to the category of 'binding Satan in the life of my daughter'. Never as something which was an integral part of me, something that begged to be accepted and loved just as deeply as the rest of me.
And since, to quote Cassandra Clare, 'it was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone', I found myself sitting crosslegged on my bed, of a Saturday afternoon, Prozac Nation in my hands.
Two pages into it, I am physically doubled over and gasping for air. Somehow she took the deepest essence of how I felt on a daily basis, and condensed it in such a perfect way that it felt like a sucker punch to the stomach, knocking all the breath out of my lungs.
"And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal. I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, I just can't feel it"
Sixty pages in, and I am curled up in a fetal position, in the corner of my bed, tears streaming down my face, while small gasping whimpers escape my mouth, much against my will. I am covering my mouth with both hands, trying to hold back the screams.
"He loves her so much. The whole song is about how he's come to take her to the hospital, to rescue her from suicide. I start as if on cue to cry. I am so caught up in the idea that nobody would actually try to save me if I were to slit my wrists or hang myself from one of the rafters in the bunk. I can't believe anyone might care enough to try to keep me alive. And then I realize that, yes, of course they would, but only because it is the thing to do. It's not about true caring. It's about not wanting to live with the guilt, the insult, the ugly knowledge that a suicide took place and you did nothing"
I really don't remember the last time I had such a strong visceral response to a book. If I had to say, I would pick Ender's Game, and being in tears, shaking, because of his nightmare which was mine, and how does the author know that?
I spent half the book in tears because "oh my gosh, how does this woman know me better than I know myself?!" and the other half literally pounding my head against my bedpost, wondering aloud, "What on earth is wrong with this woman?!"
Because, if I'm honest, while she sheds a good deal of light on what it's like to live with depression, half the time, hers just sounded like she was doing it for attention. The book seemed to imply that, to a degree at least, she believed that her depression at least in part, was not organic. It began as an attempt at a different persona, and then changed her brain chemistry over time. And while I admired certain aspects of the story, and am deeply in awe of her writing skills, I have little patience with attention-seekers, or those who use depression as an excuse - the ultimate catch all for why their personality is so difficult.
Perhaps this is because my life is a constant struggle to never become like that. Perhaps because the few times I have opened up or told someone how I was feeling, I was dismissed as attention seeking, weak, and overdramatic.
And while I am not dismissing, and never would dismiss, her problems as illegitimate, truth be told, she seems like she has a whole lot more than just depression wrong with her. For instance, she seems, manipulative, narcissistic, and borderline. And I don't say that to judge. At all. I only say that because it highlights some of my frustrations with the book, because not all people who are depressed are like her, and depression is not at all fundamentally selfish.
I only say she sounds attention seeking, because I would never ever ever tell anyone that if I died, my blood was on their hands, especially if that person was doing all they could to keep me alive, which is exactly what she said to her therapist.
I would never use my depression as manipulation - as a tool to be wielded at will, depending on my mood, and especially not against my friends. I would never use it as an excuse, a punchline, a get out of jail free card. An, 'I'll kill myself if you don't - '
And I would definitely not tell just anyone if I was feeling suicidal, which she seems to have no compunctions about doing.
But this book gives me mixed feelings, because I can relate to her so much, on so many things, in so many ways, on so many levels.....
"Whenever I talk to anyone I care about, I am always seeking approval. There is always a pleading lilt to my voice that demands love"
It's true. I admit it. I want so badly to be wanted, to be loved for simply me.
Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a huge HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead"
Literally. All the time. And the fear that 'my heart is like a stallion, they love it more when it's broken' is real. I am terrified that if I do not need the ones I love, they will cease to love me anymore because they will feel un-needed and walk away
But I also strongly disagreed with some of her conclusions, the big ideas of the book, what you walk away with.
"That's the problem with reality; that's the fallacy of therapy. It assumes that you will have a series of revelations, or even just one little one, and that these various truths will come to you and will change your life completely...but the truth is that it doesn't work that way"
But what if it does work that way. What if, in actuality, the truth will set you free, and does set you free. That doesn't mean we never struggle again, because Lord knows that isn't true. But the truth does change everything.
She also says that,
"If you were to find a shattered mirror, find all the pieces, all the shards and tiny chips, and have whatever patience and skill it took to put all that broken glass back together so that it was complete again, the restored version would still be spiderwebbed with cracks, it would still be a useless, glued version of its former self, which could show only fragmented reflections of anyone looking into it. Some things are beyond repair."
And I lean my head back against the headboard with a sigh, because all I can think is "no". Because I used to believe that, and still struggle not to believe that. I used to believe that once we are destroyed and broken in certain ways, we cannot be fixed. That we never again can be the person we were before. And in a sense, no. I will never go back to the wide eyed innocent I was before.
But I have learned, and grown, and loved and lost, and gained deeper understanding and insight, and God has shown Himself oh-so-powerful on my behalf, and in His hands I am not broken.
In His hands, we are not broken.
The world may break and damage and wound. But He heals. And He makes better than before.
The book concludes with the author heavily medicated for some sense of normalcy, unable to maintain a steady relationship, and, ultimately, I came away with a dark sense of hopelessness. A sense of, 'well this is what it is, and it isn't getting any better, so, I'll just deal with it as best as I can', and an indictment against the American medical system of pill-pushing.
And while I am under no false illusions about the nature of depression, I refuse to accept that that is how my story will end. I refuse to believe that I will live a wasted, wasteful life, manipulating those around me, absolutely devoid of self control, and seemingly proud of aiding the glorification and romanticization of 'difficult women'..or the romanticization of depression, for that matter.
I know the future will be hard. It has been hard already. But, instead of resigning myself to it, I am resolved to fight harder.
I want to live and love and grow and learn and fall deeper in love with Jesus and marry someone wonderful and have lots of children and climb mountains and watch sunsets and swim in deep waters and sail on stormy seas and I want a beautiful, rich, and full life.
And I absolutely refuse to believe that I am broken beyond repair, because my God makes all things new.
I refuse to believe that this is as good as it gets, because He has promised better, if not in this life, then in the life to come.
I do not want a life like hers.
I will fight to the bitter end, but I refuse to end up like her.
And so help me God, I never will.
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