(There’s no place like?) Home for the Holidays

The holidays are a stressful time, and that is a fact.  Whether you are the type of person who starts listening to Christmas music in October, or that dude who procrastinates on gift-buying until Christmas Eve, there is a good chance that you are going to end up clammy with an elevated heart rate and shifty eyes at some point throughout the festivities.  So if even the most well put-together people are prone to holiday breakdowns, where does that leave the *ahem* less mentally stable?  I’ll tell you.  We are constantly one plum pudding away from a holiday meltdown.

Now the holidays are over.  The tree is down, the leftovers are long gone, everyone has returned to their respective homes, and I spent two consecutive days in bed.  I’ve given myself time to decompress from the holiday season before beginning this post.  If I hopped right into it, I know I would have concocted a long ranting post about all the flaws I perceive in my family.  While this might still sort of be the case, hopefully it will also have a constructive and self-therapeutic slant.

For me, family is stressful.  And without going into a long-winded post about my life history and family dynamics (that’s a post for another day), I’ll just say that my family has always been the driving force behind an undue amount of the stress in my life.  Around the holidays, the stress used to be sort of like this: ‘Oh, everyone gets so crazy when we’re all together.  Let’s bond over inappropriate dinner conversation and my grandmother’s idiosyncrasies!’  This year was the first time that it was like this: ‘Hold on, I think I need to take a minute to quietly break down.’

With all the things I’m dealing with right now, I knew I would have to tread lightly this holiday season.  I came up with a few lines to give when the inevitable ‘So what are you doing with your life’ questions arose, and polished my non-stick surface in preparation for the tough situations that would be thrown my way over the coming weeks.  In short, I did what I could to make things easier for myself.

Since I’ve just recently left school, I knew that I would have to answer several of the ‘what’s next?’ questions.  While I would like to truthfully answer some of these questions, (No, I do not have a job right now.  Yes, I have my own personal reasons for not having a job secured the minute I set foot back on US soil.  Yes, I also have my own personal reasons for still not having a job almost two months after returning home.  No, I don’t want to discuss anything with you, because it would be uncomfortable for me and you wouldn’t understand even if I did.) that’s really not possible with my family.  In their wonderfully tiny, black and white world, mental illness, or anything relating to mental health, is an urban legend.  There are strong people who know what they want in life, and then there are lazy people who want handouts.  End of story.

And surprise, surprise, my defenses were under siege every single day I spent with my loved ones.  I felt on edge and way more defensive than my usual ‘I’m depressed but trying to hide it’ facade permits.  Things that usually wouldn’t have bothered me had me tensing and biting my tongue.  I was forced to flee into the bathroom on more than one occasion to fend off a panic attack through some strategic deep breathing.  I’d like to think I put up a valiant fight.

The worst part of the holiday, however, was that one relative who asks extremely personal and prodding questions.  This tactic, which is usually annoying, was just short of devastating this year.  Remember?  The ‘I’m depressed but trying to hide it’ facade?  That facade involves more than just glossing over my current feelings of worthlessness and general regret.  It’s trying to keep a lot of things that have happened over the past year away from my less-than-understanding and pretty solidly fair-weather family.

I should have known that my prepared response would crumble like a house of cards when faced with my annoyingly persistent aunt.
Ambiguous family member: So what are you doing now?
Me: -just a tiny bit forcefully- Enjoying the holidays with my family *hideously faked smile*
Ambiguous family member: -gets the hint and leaves me the hell alone-
Some of the conversations I had to endure were pure dinner-time torture.

And if the invasive questions weren’t enough, I realized something even more draining after the conversations were over.  My aunt has always been insensitive in her questions.  She has always delved into topics that agitate me, it just never was as jarring because I didn’t have as much to hide.

Rewind to my high school days- I really REALLY hated high school.  Anyone who tries to get to know me on even the most superficial of levels will probably suss out that I hated grades 9-12.  Thus, it was always a topic at holidays.  Things that I thought were unfair, too much stress, the absolutely atrocious school I attended…it was no secret.

Now fast-forward to the present.  My youngest cousin was bemoaning high school.  I offhandedly mentioned how I hated high school (old news, right?) and told her that even though she may hate it, it won’t last forever and college will be better.  My aunt then had the balls to say ‘Oh, you hated high school?  I thought you loved it.’

So, the moral of this story?  My insensitive asshat of an aunt will spend entire meals dissecting my personal, professional, and academic life, and then will proceed to forget all the traumatic topics she dug out of me.  This is super frustrating and unbelievably hurtful to someone who struggles to feel like she’s worth anything and has a hard time remembering that the people around her actually take notice of the things she says and does.

That was the major nuclear-family-blow I sustained this holiday.  It was exacerbated by the (long-standing and often-practiced) fact that the rest of my family totally and completely disregards everything that my mom and I say and do.  This is nothing new, but it’s hard to cope with on the heels of being near-flayed in front of everyone close to me for absolutely no reason at all.

There are several reasons that this holiday was a tough one for me and there are several reasons why I cannot articulate this to my family.  Prior to this holiday season, I was away at school for 14 months.  I missed two Halloweens, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  My family missed out on both my 23rd and 24th birthdays.  When I wasn’t sure the exact date I would be returning home, I told everyone, I’ll be home ‘for the holidays.’  I didn’t know if it would be just a quick stop home before starting my new and exciting international job, or if I would be home for good.  But I was vague about my intentions and I promised that I would be home for the holidays.

The last few months I was away, a few family members knew that I wasn’t exactly 100%.  They didn’t know anything specific, and they certainly didn’t know how bad it actually was, but they knew something was up.  The sentiment ‘It’ll all be better when she’s finally home’ spread rapidly among those who knew.  And that’s one of the problems.

Everyone was waiting with baited breath for me to come home and enjoy the happiest time of the year with those closest to me.  But people who don’t have intimate knowledge of things like depression don’t know that there isn’t such a quick fix for our problems.

So while Perry Como will continue to sing that there is no place like home for the holidays, I will remember what I’ve been through, look at the people around me, and continue to politely be unconvinced.

All the best,

Rebecca

New Year, New…something, I guess

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles. -Charlie Chaplain

So it’s 2015.  If I had to describe 2014 in one word, unfortunately, that word would be ‘depression.’  Depression isn’t necessarily something new to me, but having an episode last longer than a year…longer than 6 months even, that is new.

In high school, I realized that I had definite periods of ups and downs.  I started seeing a therapist (at the recommendation of my family doctor- migraines were starting to rule my life and they thought some therapy wouldn’t be amiss) my senior year of high school.  Overall, I think she did more harm than good, and I ended my two-year stint with her by studying abroad in (read: running away to) Australia.  I thought that getting away from everything was what I needed.  In a way, I was right.  Being away gave me a new perspective on things.  It helped me to realize that I actually enjoyed the subject I was studying.  When those 5 months were over, I knew I wanted to travel, and I was happier than I was when I left.

I finished college and all was (mostly) well.  I decided on grad school and then decided on grad school in England.  I was so excited.  Looking back on the shambles of the last year, I think that’s the saddest thing- the absolute and total excitement I felt about moving to another country and studying a subject that I thought was the most fascinating thing out there.  It’s hard for me to pinpoint when things started to go wrong.  It’s even harder for me to say what it was that went wrong.

This blog tracked my progress until November of 2013.  After that.  After November is when things started to go downhill.  What I thought was a bit of homesickness and holiday melancholy turned into more anxiety and self doubt than I have ever experienced.  Then, in March, my grandmother died.  I don’t doubt that the way my family handled this situation was some sort of breaking point for me.  The short and simple of it is this.  I came home from a day in London and got on Facebook to find out that my grandmother- the only real tie I had left to my dad’s side of my family- had passed away.  I’m not trying to say that my grief is any more important than the grief of her children, but I would have liked to find out some other way than a generic ‘We’ll all miss her so much’ Facebook post with a few pictures thrown in for good measure.

I wasn’t 100% before this happened, but everything went downhill from there.  I knew that I was in trouble, so I tried to get help from the university.  After a quick evaluation where I discussed my nebulous thoughts of self harm, I was put on a two-month waiting list.  In the course of those two months, I think I fell beyond reasonable help.  I tried valiantly to keep a front, but even that was difficult.  There were entire weeks when I didn’t leave my bed.

Therapy started in July.  My therapist’s name was Louise, and while it took a while for me to figure out how to trust her and open up so she could help me, she probably saved my life.  It was a rough journey and I saw her weekly until November when I traveled back home.  While the sessions were helpful in the big picture, when it came to things like my self-esteem and my academic endeavors, it was too little, too late.  My coursework was doomed, my mental state was in tatters, and I was still falling.  The lowest of the low was three incidents of self harm in August.

I’d like to think that I’ve been steadily progressing since then, but really, it’s hard to say.  I have a lot I need to work on and I have a lot I feel still needs figuring out.  In many ways, I feel like it’s one step forward, two (or three, or five) steps back.  I’m trying.  That’s all I can definitively say.

Now I’m home- that’s about all I know.  Hopefully, the blog posts that follow will show my steady upward progress, a job that I don’t hate, and maybe even some healthy hobbies/friendships/things that normal people do.  Keeping that in mind, I’m not naive.  I know that there will continue to be ups and downs.  I know that my life has been fundamentally changed and I will have to proceed accordingly.  So if you’d like, stick around and help me to see where things go from here.

In many ways, 2014 was an awful year.  I’m hoping that 2015 will be better.  I’m hoping that I will find that something, whatever it is, that I need to keep me going.

All the best,

Rebecca