Category Archives: Thirty Cures in Thirty Years

This is an excerpt from a memoir I’m currently writing, Thirty Cures in Thirty Years: A Depression Survival Story. It is a lighthearted book about the heavy work of mental health. For updates and availability info, subscribe to the right.

***

When I was in the fifth grade, I checked out the same book every month for the entire school year. Some months I read it little by little during free reading hour, but other months I just kept it in my desk, comforted by its presence and pretending it was mine. When I did read it, I scratched the edges of the pages compulsively—a comforting habit. As I did this, some of the paper would flake off under my fingernails, and I would flick it to the floor, then start scratching again on the next page. By the end of the year, the book was in a sorry state of repair.

The book was called The Bears’ House–Marilyn Sachs was the author–and it was the first great book I ever read. Years later, I discovered that I hadn’t understood the book; clearly, the mother was severely depressed and the children were severely neglected. Sachs’ masterly subtlety and her use of the first person limited point of view meant that she never used those words. Instead, she perfectly captured the loneliness of a child who had no friends and who ran home from school every day at lunchtime to feed her baby sister Kool-aid from a bottle as her mother slept through the child’s cries.

But it didn’t matter that the subtler aspects of the book’s substance escaped me. I didn’t read it because of the plot; I read it because it was sad, and because I liked the main character. Her name was Fran Ellen, and she was always alone, and it didn’t seem strange to her to be that way.

Somehow, that made me feel less strange, too.

By the end of that school year, when I had to turn the book in for the last time, much worse for my having loved it, The Bears’ House was more than a book to me.

It was an education, and a friend.

***

That year, I gave up on going to the playground where my aloneness might draw attention. Did I reject them first, or did they reject me? Maybe it was a little of both. At recess and at lunch, I would wander the halls or apply lip gloss in the girl’s bathroom, killing time by sitting on the white-painted radiator by the obscured-glass window that would have offered a view of the playground and the other kids.

Other times, I would sit on the concrete steps on the side of the school building, around the corner from the schoolyard. They were comfortingly solid and hidden and I don’t remember anyone ever finding me there. And other than a few moments of sudden joy, or satisfaction, or a spontaneous feeling of confidence brought on by some special circumstance, that is who I was back then: the girl sitting on the back steps, alone.

***

One afternoon that year, I returned from recess and joined the line at the drinking fountain. Standing there, waiting my turn, I started crying. No precursor. No inciting incident. I was just … crying. No one in line behind me said anything.

Soon, Natasha walked by. Natasha, my almost-friend–the only person in school I suspected might like me. She was different, too, but in a different way. She was a confident tomboy with an attitude. Seeing my tears that day, she had the decency to stop abruptly and ask me if I was okay.

I appreciated that. Someone noticed. I existed. But when I didn’t respond, she added something to her query: “What’s wrong? Is it … the drinking fountain?”

The drinking fountain? Natasha. Don’t you see that my problem is bigger than that? I’m not a little kid, crying because she’s thirsty and the fountain doesn’t work. I’m suffering here.

I didn’t say any of this to her, though. I didn’t know how to say it, and she wouldn’t have understood. I simply shook my head in defeat, and she walked away. Her comment incited enough shock and embarrassment in me that I was able to suppress my tears, drink some water, and return to the classroom with the rest of the kids.

I went on with my day as if nothing had happened, but something had happened: I’d been confronted with a hard truth. People didn’t feel the way I felt about life. They didn’t see the despair in it all. My perspective wasn’t understood, and I wasn’t, either.

Maybe I never would be. Maybe I was a tragic figure, like people in books. Maybe I was destined by God for suffering.

But that wasn’t all bad, was it? At least I was special. I had depth. That much I knew. I had hoped that Natasha saw it, too, but it seemed she didn’t. “What’s wrong?” she had asked. Didn’t she know that everything was wrong?

The whole world is wrong, Natasha. The other kids. The grownups. The unfairness. The bleakness. The suffering. The drinking fountain, Natasha, had absolutely nothing to do with anything, but if it did, it probably sucked, too.

Natasha doesn’t cry like this, ever, does she? Not ever. Only I feel this way.

Why didn’t a teacher see me cry that day? Or another day–one of the many? Why didn’t they notice I had stopping going to the playground, that I spent every recess hiding in the bathroom or on the side steps? Why didn’t my mom wonder why I never asked to bring a friend home from school?

I will never know.

***

My fifth grade teacher was a kind and insightful one, and looking back I see her efforts towards me were more effective than I then appreciated. She made small talk with me–even confided in me about small things–and tried to make sure I felt included. For group projects, I was placed with the weird kids, including Natasha, and every once in a while I found myself accidentally feeling confident.

For the first few months of the new school year, Natasha and I were buddies. We passed notes during class and occasionally I would even join her on the playground at recess. She and I and another girl, Sandy, knew each other from the year prior, and the other girls in our combined fifth/sixth grade classroom were a year older (our struggling Catholic school had only a handful of students per grade). And so, it seemed natural for us to attach ourselves to each other–at least, it did for a time.

It wasn’t long before the beautiful Sandy was drawn into the older girls’ clique, though. It was hard to watch, but I’d expected it. The leader of the sixth graders was the school’s most popular girl and child model, Freya. She collected admirers. No one was safe. As I made no attempt to ingratiate myself with her (I knew a losing battle when I saw one, and besides, she was an asshole), she went after everyone around me instead.

Now it was just Natasha and I, and I began to wonder how long she’d hold out. We hadn’t experienced the gravitational force that was popularity yet. Could we just ignore it, much like we ignored the boys?

Already imbued with the hubris of religion, I saw the rivalry as good against evil. Which is why it was so hard losing Natasha to the other side.

***

It happened quickly. One day, in the girls’ bathroom, as I sat on the radiator, killing time, Natasha made a dramatic entrance.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said.

“You have?”

“Yeah. I wanted to play. Have you been in here the whole recess?”

I nodded my head.

Looking for me, I knew, was Natasha’s way of siding with me–at least temporarily. Lately, things had been coming to a head. So rather than joining her, pretending I was okay, I gave expression to what had been on both our minds.

“You can’t go back and forth,” I said with the conviction of the utterly wrong. “You can’t just hang out with them and then me and then them again. You have to choose.”

It was kid logic. So of course, Natasha saw its sense immediately. She agreed to choose, but said she’d have to think about it first.

Towards the end of that day, during a short break between lessons, Natasha came up to me and abruptly said, “Hey, Mollie. I choose you.” 

“Really?” I asked. 

She nodded, businesslike. I sensed that she had convinced herself it was the right thing to do.

I smiled, and till the end of that day, we were best friends. Then, the next day, Natasha spent recess with Freya and the others. 

Later than day, she found me again. With a touch of defiance, she said, “I just wanted to let you know, in case you haven’t already figured it out, that I changed my mind.”

I nodded sadly, but I understood. This was never going to go my way.

I was no fun.

***

With my support system at school pared down to one person–my teacher–I needed additional ways to prop myself up. The good-versus-evil story that had given me legs in my conflict with the popular kids was a great candidate, with handy evidence: these people weren’t even real Christians. I was good, and they clearly were not, and so it was just as well that we didn’t hang out.

I didn’t want to be friends with them, anyway.

“They’re bad influences,” my mom told me. “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.”

It was scripture.

And so, by the time I got to the sixth grade, I wasn’t just a loner.

Now, I was a snob, too.

***

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This is an excerpt from a memoir I’m currently writing, Thirty Cures in Thirty Years: A Depression Survival Story. It is a lighthearted book about the heavy work of mental health. For updates and availability info, subscribe to the right.

***

When I was in the first grade, I had a best friend. Of course, there wasn’t much competition for the title. My other friend, Joanne, had, in an act of great disloyalty and performed with great indifference, moved away several years prior.

Sydney was petite, blonde and unarguably pretty, made prettier next to my less graceful figure and plain face. I was shy—terribly shy—and she was … well, normal. We wouldn’t have been friends in school.

She was my neighbor, and our 1980s-era parents didn’t drive around to playdates, so in a way, she was stuck with me. In summers especially, we played together nearly every day, even though it was clear that at times, I annoyed her terribly.

I followed her around. I copied her, as kids do. She was the alpha to my beta. Yet, in those simple days void of personal reflection, the strategy worked pretty well. Most of the time we had fun together, choreographing backyard dance routines and teaching ourselves how to do cartwheels. We remained close, until one day in the summer before the second grade, she announced she’d be moving—in a week.

Other than events whose significance I wasn’t aware of at the time of their occurrence, this was my first defining life moment.

Our last playdate came. We spent it in my backyard. I don’t remember what we did, but there was a swing set and, if I recall correctly, clear open skies. Maybe we swung side by side, noticing the beauty of the day without noticing we were noticing. Kids do that, too. Before her parents arrived to pick her up and whisk her off to their new city, we discussed how we would say goodbye.

“Will we cry?” we wondered. “Will we kiss? What will we say?” But when, all too soon, her parents beckoned her to the car, the moment wasn’t as sad as it was awkward. Not knowing how to express our sadness, we quickly hugged and said goodbye, and after she left, it wasn’t sweet sorrow. It was just sorrow.

My best friend, my only friend, was gone.

***

A few weeks after the move, I got an unexpected letter. It was from my summer camp counselor who had heard that I wouldn’t be attending camp that year.

When my mother came to read it to me, I was in the backyard on our swing. I wasn’t swinging now, though. I was staring down at the ground, noticing how the gentle movement of my feet traced lines in the dirt.

The first thing I noticed when my mother interrupted my thoughts that afternoon was the uncharacteristic timidity of her voice. Was she … embarrassed? Why is she embarrassed about a letter? I wondered. This must be a pretty big deal.

It was from Mrs. White, she said. She gave me the already opened letter.

“I know it’s sad when a friend moves away,” I read silently. “But I hope you’ll change your mind and come to camp anyway. We want you here.”

The letter was nice. But my mom’s awkwardness as she handed it to me made me wonder. Did Mom feel sorry for me? Did she think I was sad or something? Had she discussed my feelings with other people?

Am I sad? I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it till then.

“So what do you think, Mollie?” Mom asked gently. “What should I tell her? Do you want to go?”

I looked back down at the ground, missive still in hand. “No,” I told her. “It’s not that much fun anyway.”

Mom didn’t press the issue, and I was glad for that. She returned to the house and I returned to my thoughts.

I am sad, I realized. I’m not crying. I’m not physically hurt. But I am sad, and people can tell. And it’s not just right now.

I’m sad a lot.

It was true. And to me, it was a significant realization.

I was sad, and other people could see it. They knew.

***

When my father, who suffered from depression much of his life, would describe me as a baby, he’d say that I often had a “worried, thoughtful expression” on my face.

“There was a little wrinkle between your eyebrows,” he’d tell me. “You were so cute.” Maybe to my father, my seriousness was a sign of intelligence. Or maybe he appreciated that I took after him.

Either way, I wonder: did I already understand what I was getting myself into?

I was a serious kid. Maybe … a bit too serious? In pictures from young childhood, I see genuine smiles, but I also see contemplation, confusion, chronic boredom and unanswered questions.

My mom called me “sensitive,” but I knew the label covered up something else–something bigger. I’d been lonely for a long time, and now my one friend was gone. There would be no one to fill in the gap that she left–not for a long time.

***

One afternoon before I was yet school age I sat in our living room, re-reading the handful of children’s books we owned. Where was Mom? She might’ve been on the phone. For hours on end, she would gossip with her friends from church and Avon (a Mary Kay-style multilevel marketing company) while my older brother, younger sister and I would watch television and play outside. In later years, as her own depression grew, she gave up all three pursuits: makeup, church, and friends. For both of us, our social lives were a reflection of our sense of well-being.

On our eighties-chic light blue carpet, I spread out the books and studied them, one by one. Then, bored of the activity, I lay quietly and thought. Recalling saying goodbye to my brother that morning as he caught the bus for school and wishing for someone to play with, I had a strange thought: Is something wrong with me? What if I’m … retarded? That was the word we used then for people with Down Syndrome. I tried on the idea, slowly turning it in my mind. What if I’m retarded and no one wants to tell me because they’re afraid it will hurt my feelings? It was my first thought experiment.

After considering the evidence, I assured myself it couldn’t be true–my mom always told me I was smart and praised me for teaching myself to read at age three. So why did I feel so different? And why didn’t I feel good and smile a lot like the other kids? And what was I feeling, anyway? I had so few answers, and so many questions, most of which I didn’t even know how to ask.

And who would I have asked, anyway? What would I have said? Throughout childhood, the idea of confiding in someone about a serious personal difficulty just never occurred to me. I was different, I figured. I’d always be this way.

No sense in making a big deal about it. 

***

Other early memories corroborate the narrative of myself as a fundamentally lonely, withdrawn child: The time I relieved my bladder at my desk because I was too shy to raise my hand and ask to use the bathroom. The times I excitedly reorganized my bedroom and carefully planned my outfit for the rare playdate my mom set up for my sister and I with the kids of one of her friends. How many of these were there altogether? Four? five?

One day at recess (was I in the second grade?) a boy pointed to my feet and said, “Don’t you need new shoes?” He was right: the soles had completely worn through and one of them flapped a bit, separating from the fabric uppers, as I walked. I liked those shoes. I was comfortable with them, and I hadn’t even thought to ask my mom for another pair.

One Christmas, I received the present I’d been hoping for–a talking spelling computer. When I tried to use it and realized that, right out of the box, it was broken, my mother told me she would replace it as soon as she could. I nodded a reply, but somehow I knew she never would, and she never did.

One day in the third grade I cried in class, devastated, after being scolded by the German nun who had taught that grade at our small Catholic school for as long as anyone could remember. I had reversed the i and e in the word “friend,” and the teacher’s severity was not only embarrassing–it was a betrayal. Though the kids didn’t like me, the teachers always did, and being humiliated by her felt like losing an ally.

Often, basic tasks of self-care went undone. There’s a memory of my mother frantically insisting that my sister, brother and I brush our teeth before a rare dentist appointment. I was a bit annoyed by this, and also a shade doubtful: Why are we brushing them now? It’s too late, Mom. He’ll figure it out.

I didn’t brush my hair regularly, either. When finally my mother decided things had gone too far, she wet my hair with No More Tears shampoo (a splurge of a purchase that she showed me proudly) and worked through the knots one by one.

To her disappointment, there were tears.

***

The last time I remember being truly happy during my youngest years was when, a year or two after her move, Sydney came to town and visited for an afternoon. We played in the living room, hanging various important documents all over the walls of our “office.” But what I remember the most is the pit-of-the-stomach sadness I experienced when her mom finally said she had to go.

Sydney and I begged for ten more minutes.

“Ten more minutes,” her mom told us. All too soon, she came back. Then Sydney left, and it was over.

I didn’t know when I’d play with a friend again, but I guessed it would be a long time.

I guessed right.

In that moment, something inside me broke, and though it healed, I was never quite the same. From that moment on, I was no longer a child.

I no longer believed everything would be okay.

***

I wasn’t right about that, exactly; eventually, I would be okay. But it would take a long time to get there. In the years to come, I’d try numerous remedies for my lifelong chronic depression, and though they wouldn’t all work, some would.

Have I tried thirty cures in as many years? Or have there been more than that? Either way, for me, self-improvement has been a lifelong job. Fortunately, it’s a job that I have since figured out how to do–most of the time. And it’s a job that I like most of the time, too.

Anyway, mental health, I’ve learned, isn’t free for anyone–even for people who are naturally cheerful.

It’s always earned.

There are no exceptions.

***

As an undergrad, I majored in English and History, specializing in ancient Greece and Rome. A few years ago, I revisited some of the authors I might not have fully appreciated as a twenty-something. This included works of stoic philosophy like The Trial and Death of Socrates (the trio of dialogues individually known as The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo), Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. Other authors I read or reread around this time echoed some of their themes: Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau. Augusten Burroughs. A guy named Mark Manson wrote a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and it was every bit as profound as the title suggests.

By this time, I’d been a self-help writer for about fifteen years and a mental health counselor for about five. Many of my books and stories coalesced around the themes of depression treatment and of the mental fortitude such a disorder calls for. What do I most want to say? I’d often ask myself, as all writers do. What is the one thing I want everyone to know?

Inspired by my recent reading, the answer came easily: I want to help people see themselves as survivors, not victims. To take responsibility for their mental health–to see it as a job.

And here, now, was Socrates: “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

And here, now, was Seneca: “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

And here, now, was Marcus Aurelius: “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

I’m a stoic, I realized. I just didn’t know it till now.

And so, this is a book about depression–my depression, specifically.

But it is also a book about survival.

***

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