Crazy talk

Being crazy: It's the thing you know only happens to other people, until it happens to you.

I'm crazy.

It's not the kind of crazy where you wear funny jumpers and own ten cats and mutter to yourself as you knit tiny sweaters for destitute hamsters, it's not the kind of crazy where you run around the streets naked but for a long beard while mothers shield their children's eyes, it's not the kind of crazy where you go bungee-jumping and sky-diving.

It's the kind of crazy where you think life is normal sometimes and the rest of the time you don't have the strength to do anything. The kind of crazy where you know for a certainty you're a failure and sometimes you don't even know who you are. The kind of crazy where you have to keep yourself from breaking down and crying during class or during dinner or because someone said your hair was cute.

It's the kind of crazy you don't see for years and years and years, the kind of crazy that grows like a black hole but somehow stays unnoticed until a feather tips the balance.

My feather fell very, very slowly for a month and a half, and then everything collapsed.

One night, I just found myself tossing and turning in the middle of the night, sobbing, my head full of thoughts I couldn't deal with, sobbing, unable to remember my name or why I existed, sobbing, with a bottle of very strong pain medicine in one hand, sobbing, trying very hard to do what I knew was something incredibly stupid.

I didn't do it. Instead, I got up and made a cup of tea, and that mug full of water was the most important thing in the world for the whole trip down the hall to the water fountain and back.

I saw a therapist, I talked to my friends, I tried to fix things.

In the past, being depressed was all right. Being depressed was only a minor down, something I could get out of by playing the Glad Game and taking a little break.

This wasn't anything like that. This still isn't anything like that.

This is like a hole you can't get out of, a hole you don't even see the walls of because you can't even see past the crushing oblivion that is everything you try to think of. There is nothing in the world worth living for, there is no love, there is no happiness for you, you are worthless, you are stupid, you shouldn't even be here.

For the longest time, I couldn't write. Couldn't muster up the energy. Sometimes I'd think of the words without writing them down, sometimes even words were too hard to think of. It was better to just sleep.

I'd like to say that I know the cause, I'd like to say that it's over now, I'd like to say I'm completely cured, but I can't.

What I can say is I know the feather, I know the worst is most likely over in great part, I know I'm on the way to someday being cured. It's not much, but it's a start.

The greatest problem is that it comes and goes. Today was a beautiful day, but two days ago I was sure I would never have the strength to come back to school after a week of holidays because I wasn't good enough, because I couldn't hack it, because I was terrible at everything I did.

Tomorrow may be a great or a terrible day. There is rarely a middle ground.

Some things give me hope. For example, there are three children's books I've wanted to reread sitting on my desk, there is the finished take-home exam, there is the list of things I have to do and the schedule I've made for myself to do them, there's the class trip to the sea next weekend, there's the fact that you, readers, keep on commenting here and worrying about me when most people really couldn't care less.

Some things make me quake in fear. For example, there's all the math homework I think I understand but really just looms like a mountain I can't climb. There's the Cell Bio that seems ridiculously easy but somehow bores me to actual tears during lecture and trips me up on silly mistakes. There's the emails I have to answer, the appointments I have to schedule, the things I have to plan and organize.

I really want to say that I'll be all right. That it will pass and I'll get better.

But when you think one day that everything is done and over with and the future looks bright, only to be run over by a train, there's not much you're certain of.