Every Day

I want to say more, but don’t know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable nighttime conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there’s no light in the room. I think of the rare jackpot nights when I ended the day at a sleepover or sharing the room with a sibling or a friend I genuinely liked. Those conversations could trick me into believing I could say anything, even though there was so much I was holding back. Eventually the night would take its hold, but it would always feel like I was fading to sleep rather than falling.

“Good night,” I say to James. But what I really feel is goodbye. I am leaving here, leaving this family. It’s only been two days, but that’s twice what I’m used to. It’s just a hint—the smallest hint—of what it would be like to wake up in the same place every morning.

I have to let that go.

Day 6005

Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over.

I know how wrong this is.

When I was a child, I didn’t understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldn’t comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite—I’d be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didn’t have access to the body’s emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology.

It is a hard cycle to conquer. The body is working against you. And because of this, you feel even more despair. Which only amplifies the imbalance. It takes uncommon strength to live with these things. But I have seen that strength over and over again. When I fall into the life of someone grappling, I have to mirror their strength, and sometimes surpass it, because I am less prepared.

I know the signs now. I know when to look for the pill bottles, when to let the body take its course. I have to keep reminding myself—this is not me. It is chemistry. It is biology. It is not who I am. It is not who any of them are.

Kelsea Cook’s mind is a dark place. Even before I open my eyes, I know this. Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other. My own thoughts try to assert themselves within this noise. The body responds by breaking into a sweat. I try to remain calm, but the body conspires against that, tries to drown me in distortion.

It is not usually this bad, first thing in the morning. If it’s this bad now, it must be pretty bad at all times.

Underneath the distortion is a desire for pain. I open my eyes and see the scars. Not just on the body, although those are there—the hairline fractures across the skin, the web you create to catch your own death. The scars are in the room as well, across the walls, along the floor. The person who lives here no longer cares about anything. Posters hang half-ripped. The mirror is cracked. Clothes lay abandoned. The shades are drawn. The books sit crooked on shelves, like rows of neglected teeth. At one point she must have broken open a pen and spun it around, because if you look closely, you can see small, dried drops of ink all over the walls and ceiling.

I access her history and am shocked to realize that she’s gotten this far without any notice, without any diagnosis. She has been left to her own devices, and those devices are broken.

It is five in the morning. I have woken up without any alarm. I have woken up because the thoughts are so loud, and none of them mean me well.

I struggle to get back to sleep, but the body won’t let me.

Two hours later, I get out of bed.

Depression has been likened to both a black cloud and a black dog. For someone like Kelsea, the black cloud is the right metaphor. She is surrounded by it, immersed within it, and there is no obvious way out. What she needs to do is try to contain it, get it into the form of the black dog. It will still follow her around wherever she goes; it will always be there. But at least it will be separate, and will follow her lead.

I stumble into the bathroom and start the shower.

“What are you doing?” a male voice calls. “Didn’t you shower last night?”

I don’t care. I need the sensation of water hitting my body. I need this prompt to start my day.

When I leave the bathroom, Kelsea’s father is in the hallway, glaring at me.

“Get dressed,” he says with a scowl. I hold my towel tighter around me.

Once I’ve got my clothes on, I gather my books for school. There’s a journal in Kelsea’s backpack, but I don’t have time to read it. I also don’t have time to check my email. Even though he’s in the other room, I can sense Kelsea’s father waiting.

It’s just the two of them. I access and find Kelsea’s lied to him in order to be driven to school—she said that the route had been redrawn, but really she doesn’t want to be trapped in the bus with other kids. It’s not that she’s bullied—she’s too busy bullying herself to notice. The problem is the confinement, the inability to leave.

Her father’s car isn’t much better, but at least there’s only one other person she has to deal with. Even when we’re moving, he doesn’t stop exuding impatience. I am always amazed by people who know something is wrong but still insist on ignoring it, as if that will somehow make it go away. They spare themselves the confrontation, but end up boiling in resentment anyway.