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.
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Though my on-campus jobs served me well for several years, eventually, the lure of the food service industry became too great to resist. A job with tips: to me, this was success. So when I was hired as a busser at a cool downtown Asian fusion restaurant with some of the best food in my hometown, I felt pretty good about myself. I had already maintained paid work for more years than either of my parents had during my life–maybe even more than both of them combined. Now, I was making more money than they’d ever made, too. They were happy for me. If you can make it in a restaurant, they felt, you can make it.
They were not wrong about this.
Several months in, my manager stopped me mid-stride (as a busser, I was always mid-stride) to ask me an unexpected question. “Would you like to try out being a runner?”
I hesitated. A food runner. An expediter. Was she serious? This was big stuff. Food runners carried huge trays in one hand and a tray stand in the other. They actually spoke to the customers. It was one step away from being a server, and I didn’t know if I was ready. I’d just barely gotten over the shakes when approaching tables to refill water glasses.
My mind said no. But my mouth knew better. It knew I wanted the higher payout that came with the role.
“Sure,” I said, and when I brought my first tray out, I didn’t drop anything and no one seemed to notice my trembling voice. It was a party of six and I have a vague memory of a woman’s kind smile. After that, I knew I’d be okay.
The achievement was minor, but like saving your first few hundred dollars, it’s the early steps that make the later ones, like owning a house, possible. [fix that sentence] A few years later, I was promoted to server and even my lifelong shyness habit couldn’t survive seven years at a restaurant. Though I still wasn’t a cheerful person, I was at least a more comfortable one now. And for the most part, I was the same everywhere I went now–church, school, home and work. [fix that sentence]
It had taken a long time, but finally, I was myself.
A handful of years later, I came across the quote that became mine–my favorite quote forever, or at least for the coming two-plus decades and counting: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” It’s from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called “Heroism,” and when I read it, I immediately understood. Afraid? Do that. That’s what the hero does, and that’s what I wanted to do, too. I suspected that if I was going to actually become the person I wanted to become–the person who matched the mental image of my future badass self–I’d have to woman the fuck up. Reflecting on this today, I wonder how my life might be different if I’d never read it. Thank you, liberal arts education. I definitely never got advice like this in church.
Many years later, when I was in grad school studying to become a mental health counselor, I learned about exposure therapy, the practice of facing a fear until your brain is fully convinced of its safety. “Always do what you’re afraid to do” wasn’t just good advice, it turned out. It was also really good therapy.
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“If nothing changes, nothing changes.” Alcoholics Anonymous members everywhere. If there’s a more stoic organization in the world, I don’t know what it is.
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Inner peace is hard. Reading about it isn’t. Get The Power of Acceptance: One Year of Mindfulness and Meditationby Mollie Player at your preferred book retailer today.
