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.

***

“What can I say? I’m depressed. You gotta do what you gotta do.” This was the first joke I made about my depression. It was also the first time that I self-identified, out loud, as a person with this disorder, and if doing so wasn’t actually a treatment attempt, it was at least one step closer to one.

I made the comment on a Saturday afternoon during the eighth grade after bringing a large stack of Peanuts comic books home from the library. Comics weren’t usually my thing, but recently, I’d branched out. While stacking the books next to the bath, preparing for a bit of escapism, my mother commented good-naturedly on my odd reading selection. Feeling a bit defensive, I spontaneously divulged this painful fact of my inner experience.

For the first time, I told someone I was depressed.

Recalling her reaction now, it seems a bit … inadequate. She laughed. Not a mean laugh, just a shoulder-shrugging kind. And there was something else, too, in her reaction that day. Was it helplessness? Or fear? Maybe, too–yes, definitely–there was relief.

Of course, looking back, I see that she could have done more for me that day than to simply acknowledge and reinforce my acceptance of the pain I was experiencing. Some follow-up, at least, would have been helpful, but alas, this was not to be. Due in part to her spiritual beliefs, and in part to her make-do small-town upbringing, she didn’t believe in counseling or medication; she believed in God’s power to heal, and in our power to believe harder and do better.

Mom wasn’t skilled at confrontation or open dialogue, either–any uncomfortable conversation was almost palpably painful for her. She embarrassed easily and passed on this trait. Which is why I sensed that my newfound ability to joke about my problem brought her some relief.

She wouldn’t have to be the one to say it first.

Her laugh told me something else, too: she already knew what I was going through. How long had she known? Who can say? But one thing is certain: the fact of my depression did not surprise her that day. Only my admission of it did.

So now, I knew that Mom knew I was depressed, and she knew that I knew that she knew. The knowing didn’t help, though; it contained no hint at next steps for either of us. Maybe she talked to a friend.

Maybe she prayed.

I never felt resentment of my mom for her seeming helplessness in this difficult parenting situation, though. During my bath that day, I even noticed some relief of my own. A joke. A joke helped. Note to self: this isn’t a disaster. Mom’s laugh told me that she understood, at least.

And that was something.

***

“Remember that you are an actor in a play, of such a kind as the playwright chooses … If it be his pleasure to have you act a poor man, a cripple, a ruler, a private citizen, play it naturally.” Epictetus.

“Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.” William Shakespeare.

***

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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.

***

On a fair-weather day towards the end of my seventh grade year, I sat alone on the schoolyard bleachers as Freya and the other girls in our class huddled nearby. Though it was our second week of softball P.E., not much softball was being played; the games we preferred were more subtle.

Suddenly, one of the huddling girls, Janice, walked over to me. The action jarred me out of my boredom and mental fog.

Why is she coming over here? I wondered. Is she going to talk to me? And what’s that in her step and in her jaw? Defiance?

“No, thanks,” I said. I returned her defiance, but mine was topped with embarrassment instead of friendliness. Still, there was power here, I told myself. It wasn’t often I got to reject others before they rejected me first.

“Do you want to join us?” Janice asked. It wasn’t a peace offering; it was an accusation. Albeit with a thick layer of hearty good cheer over top. I felt the sound of a ball connecting with a bat, but I didn’t hear it. The kids on the field were just standing around.

Besides, what choice did I have? I had to tell her no. I’d taken my stand against the clique long ago. Changing my mind now would be impossible; the script had already been written. They were Them, and I was just me.

But Janice didn’t leave it there: “What do you have against us, anyway?” she asked. “We never did anything to you. You just think you’re better than us.” 

It was a fair assessment. I did think I was better than them. This war had never been theirs. It was mine alone.

I glanced at the nearby huddle. Every girl was staring at us. My accuser waited a moment for a reply that never came, then rejoined her friends. And then there was a moment that I didn’t appreciate at the time: Freya’s voice reached me. She said, loudly, “Don’t bother her, Janice.”

Maybe Freya wasn’t so terrible after all.

Maybe Freya was just popular because she was cool–not because of some deep character flaw. Later, she would compliment me on my beautiful, thick brown hair during a classroom exercise about self-esteem. But on the sidelines of the softball field, I didn’t–couldn’t–reach any of these mitigating truths.

I merely sat alone, humiliated.

Murmurings and glances from the direction of the group flowed over me, and as was my habit, I focused on simply getting through the next few minutes, one minute at a time. Not long afterward, we were called back inside to class, and I walked alone, trailing further behind the others than usual.

The anger that followed lasted several days at least. I might’ve called it “righteous indignation,” but it was wasn’t; it was powerless rage. I catalogued every possible rationale for my dislike of these prepubescent ladies. They were sinful. They were shallow. They’d rejected me, too.

In time, though, I found my way to the truth of the situation. They were right; I was the problem. I was the one who aggressed first, and what’s worse, I wasn’t good at this. When they finally returned fire, my line quickly caved.

Self-awareness, however, brings consolation prizes. Mine was a moment of clarity that happened not long after this incident.

***

Memories are strange. In some, sensory details feature prominently, while in others, only disembodied, timeless thought remains. One of my most meaningful recollections is of the latter type. It happened sometime during my middle school years.

There is no setting. No plot, really, either. I was probably in my bedroom when it occurred–but which one? I do remember the rough sequence, though–the thought that led to the next thought and then the one after that, till finally culminating in a momentous life decision.

Thought one: I’m a sinful person. I knew that one was true; I hadn’t been going to church all those years for nothing. Besides, there was the way I treated the other kids at school. I hadn’t been quite fair to them, had I?

I had my flaws. But according to The Way Things Were, flawed people could never be happy. That, then, was my second thought: Sin causes guilt. Which was followed by thought three: Guilt causes depression. Or maybe, Guilt causes God to withdraw His presence and favor, leading to deep and abiding dissatisfaction. Something like that.

It was that thought–that third one–that everything hinged on. It felt so true–so immutable–at the time. Looking back, I want to kick myself, or haul myself off my bed and through a window, then into some other life, just for thinking it.

Guilt. It was my Achilles’ heel. For many years, it caused me to suffer. And, as it turned out, unnecessarily. Until I let go of the idea that I was perpetually guilty of something (something …), my ability to discover helpful solutions was nearly nil.

You can’t find a solution when you have the wrong problem.

It led, logically, to thought four: If I want to be happy, I have to be perfect.

Then, thought five: I cannot be perfect.

What was the way out of this predicament? As I remember middle-school Mollie’s sadness about the inevitable and ongoing pain of life due to humanity’s sinful nature, I see that it was desperation that led to the next steps of my thought ladder.

Thought six: I can, at least, be more perfect than I am now.

Thought seven: But how? I have to be honest with myself about my failings. No matter what. If I don’t know what my sins are, I won’t be able to repent and change.

And there it was: the turning point. The first thought on this long train of thoughts that hinted at a solution, a way through. I couldn’t be perfect. But I could improve. And the first step to improving was brutal honesty.

Thought eight: It’s difficult, being honest with yourself. Admitting that you’re the one who messed up. But if I do this one thing, and do it consistently, I at least have a chance of someday feeling good.

Thought ten: I won’t always do the right thing. But I will always tell myself the truth.

It wasn’t a casual decision. It was a solemn pact. Brutal honesty would be the first guiding principle of my life. The idea was a sequoia of wisdom on a landscape otherwise barren of thriving, solid ideas. It showed that I trusted myself to not crack under the pressure of self-knowledge.

It showed that I knew I could do hard things.

***

“Be strict with yourself and forgiving with others.” Seneca.

“Everybody has to lie. But you pick out somebody you never lie to.” Ernest Hemingway.

***

Marriage is awesome … most of the time. Get Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby: A Self-help Story at your preferred book retailer today.

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.

***

Throughout my school years, while physically in school, I deftly maintained my loner status. In other places, though, things were changing.

When I was in the sixth grade, our family switched churches, and Lulu and I started attending a youth group. To our great and lasting relief, we became instant friends with the small cohort of fundamentalist Christians who were around our age, including the mature, well-spoken Judith who was a year older than me and became my best friend. We talked about everything–finally, I got to really talk–and since youth group met on Wednesdays, we saw each other and the rest of the group twice a week. After years of loneliness, my sister and I finally had kids to invite to our birthday parties, to go camping with in the summer, and to pass notes with during church.

We had friends.

It was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. Religion wasn’t all bad for my mental health, then.

But it wasn’t all good, either.

***

Though still managing my depression with food, books and baths, I now had access to more potent potential cures: spirituality and friendship. Church gave me hope. But there were strings attached. My religious community provided me with a place where I could be my best, most confident, most outgoing self, but it also gave me a … problematic … worldview.

With an increased focus on religion came an increased feeling of guilt: I feared the wrath of God if I listened to non-Christian music or had a crush on a boy. Everything, it seemed, was sinful. The good news: if I could just stop sinning forever, I would likely be happy.

***

The church was a confidence booster for me, and my mom must have felt the same way. Along with providing her with new connections, the community strengthened a central part of her identity. She was a prophet, she declared soon after we attended our first service. And we believed her. And maybe she was.

One day, when I was eleven or twelve years old, she told my sister, brother and I that she’d had a vision of our new home in the country. First, though, we had to build it. But no worries: God would provide. She wasted no time getting the project underway.

As she researched land, contractors and blueprints, she also sold our childhood home. Then, the summer before my eighth grade year, after some months of living in friends’ basements and extra spaces, we bought an intermediate house in a different part of town. The house wasn’t as nice as the one we’d grown up in, but no one complained: it was located less than a block away from my best friend Judith and her younger sister Anne.

For the several years that we lived in that house, the four of us girls were inseparable. We baked cookies, watched scary movies, jumped on the trampoline, shared secrets–all of the things I always wanted to do with friends. At home and at church, I genuinely liked the person I was becoming; however, school remained difficult. As I entered the building each day, I also entered a fortress of shyness and sadness.

And until 3:15 p.m., I couldn’t escape.

***

One warm afternoon during the summer before sixth grade a friend of my mom’s went on a cleaning spree. Thinking of Mom’s two preteen girls, she brought us several large boxes of discarded magazines.

“Magazines!” Lulu and I said. Lulu was just a year younger than me, and we had both arrived at the age of crushes and self-consciousness. Though normally my mother forbade us from reading teen magazines, she couldn’t resist the free gift. Lulu and I brought the boxes out to the front lawn and dug in.

It was a treasure trove. One by one, my sister and I plowed through the magazines, skimming, reading, skimming again. The older girls in the pages and their daily concerns (lipstick shades, celebrity updates) fascinated me. I wanted to be like them. Of course I did.

It might’ve been my second time through the boxes that I slowed down enough to read a different kind of article–one of those socially conscious offerings that the editors seemed obligated to include at the rate of one per issue. It was about a girl who had been diagnosed with depression and was now receiving counseling and other support. In large print, there was a callout highlighting her moment of truth: “While riding on a bus one day, out of the blue, I burst into tears. And that’s when I realized I was depressed.”

My first thought: Ha! Crying on a bus? That’s not depression. That’s just … crying. I cry all the time: on the bus, in the car. Sometimes, secretly, I cry during class. She did it once, and suddenly she has a serious mental disorder? You’re not selling me on this, folks.

Depression wasn’t crying. Depression was not getting out of bed. It was losing a job, or attempting suicide, or becoming institutionalized. Anything less than this seemed a bit … dramatic. Anything less was just the pain of life.

Then I read the article.

Thank you, mental health educators.

The realization came slowly and by degrees. Isn’t it like that sometimes? At first, I filed the article in my head under “teen magazine’s weak attempt at a public service announcement, the one most girls skip on their way to the advice column.” Later, my internal dialogue shifted: If she has depression, then I definitely do. But clearly, that’s ridiculous. Then (how long did it take?), eventually, there was another quarter-turn: Oh. Maybe I do have depression. That would explain a lot, actually.

Maybe I have depression.

I have depression.

I wasn’t a martyr or a tragic figure. I wasn’t destined by God to suffer. I was a normal person whose emotional needs weren’t being met. The understanding that eventually dawned did little to solve the problem. But knowing was at least a starting point.

***

My first purposeful attempt to treat my depression was … inadequate, to say the least. It took place on Thanksgiving day of my seventh-grade year and was inspired by, of all things, a long bath. Even at that young age, I had begun seeking comfort in baths on a regular basis, outlasting the water’s heat in an attempt to remain in that place of comfort as long as possible. When I recall the experience, it’s not the tongue-in-cheek remedy that I drafted that stands out the most; rather, it’s that I remember the occasion at all.

I have only thirty or so clear, specific memories of my childhood home, and most of them deserve to be remembered: nighttime fears. Christmases. Punishments. The day I discovered my grandmother “acting funny” on her favorite chair in the family room in the midst of her fatal heart attack.

I remember my first phone call, made on our wall phone in the hallway nook. It was to Sydney after she moved away. I asked if her favorite color was still our favorite, purple, and she told me that she’d switched to blue. I also remember particularly enjoyable afternoons with my sister, playing post office and coming up with dance routines.

But why do I remember this experience–this simple bath? I remember it because it was important. That bath was the first time I purposely and knowingly considered how to manage my depression, and without the benefit of the internet, grownup involvement and proper mental health care, options were limited. Which is why my plan involved turkey.

The day of the bath I soaked for a long time, and after getting out, I lay on the bed. The familiar, welcome smell of my mother’s turkey dinner–now nearly done–came over me, and I realized something: I felt pretty good.

I feel … good, I thought. Better than I had in recent memory. Elevated to humor, I decided, half-jokingly, to create a recipe for treating my depression right then and there. I might have even written it down.

This was that plan: Step one: Get a turkey. On a day off from school, put it in the oven. Step two: Once the smell of the turkey starts to fill the house, draw a bath. Step three: Get in the bath, and stay in it for two hours. Then drain the bath fully while you’re still in it. Listen to the water as it slowly leaves the tub, and notice your state of complete relaxation. Step four: Get out of the tub and lay on a comfortable bed until dinner is ready. Step five: Eat the turkey.

It wasn’t a Turkish bath. But it was a bath with turkey. Maybe it was just crazy enough to work.

It wasn’t. But other crazy things were. And though I didn’t find out about them till much later, at least now I was taking action. I wasn’t just accepting my lot in life as I had for most of my childhood.

I was starting to make plans.

It was an inconvenient strategy, but it was important. It was my first.

I had no idea how many more strategies–both successful and not–were to come.

***

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” Confucius.

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” Lao Tzu.

***

Marriage is awesome … most of the time. Get Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby: A Self-help Story at your preferred book retailer today.

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.

***

Marriage is awesome … most of the time. Get Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby: A Self-help Story at your preferred book retailer today.

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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