Broken People Do Broken Things

My one tip for getting through

One of the ways I cope with stuff is painting. I thought it would be fun to share this because today is the full moon.

CW: Depression and mental health issues.

Editor’s Note: I am feeling much better. I waited a few days to publish this to make sure I was truly on the mend. I’ve also been working on getting my resources in place. 🩵 As always, if you need help with Depression or mental health issues, reach out to your doctor or head to the emergency room. If you are in a crisis, call or text 988.

Depression took me down last week - the kind that feels like an acute sickness.

I wish that when this happened, I could be a woman in an old novel and go somewhere and take in the sea air. There is something that feels dignified about wearing a high-collared dress, and carrying a parasol while staring at the shoreline from atop a jagged cliff.

But instead, I did the old novel alternative and took to my bed, which doesn't feel dignified at all.

This started happening earlier and earlier in the day as the week progressed - the going back to bed - and I tried to hide it from everyone.

I’m always scared to show when depression is winning.

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I remember a couple of years ago sharing something that my doctor said - that I’d been dealing with some level of depression since I first met her. At that point, I’d been seeing her for 3 or 4 years, I think.

I admitted this in a group I was part of at the time, and a caring acquaintance was quick to say that that wasn’t OK. She said that my doctor should do something.

My doctor has done a bunch of things, though.

So I’ve come to think of my depression as a chronic illness that flares up sometimes, like eczema.

It’s not that the meds don’t work.

It’s not that I haven’t dealt with my shit.

And it’s not that my doctor isn’t trying.

It’s that sometimes, something goes wrong, or a lot of somethings go wrong, and maybe also the sky is gray, and it’s too cold to sit on my porch and all the chipmunks are underground anyway, and suddenly, I’m drowning-drowning-drowning, and I’m also ashamed.

That shame is what Buddhists call the second arrow - the one we point back at ourselves.

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I think many of us were taught to see issues like anxiety and depression as problems that most people deal with from time to time, and the strong people rise up and fight by running 5Ks, or if things get particularly nasty, they’ll bend and take a low dose of a pill that they try to get off of as quickly as possible.

I saw dark mental illness as a child, and I learned it was something that should be kept secret at all costs.

There wasn’t talk of treatment, because there wasn’t a problem - except that my child self knew that there was.

My generation, and I can’t ever remember which one that is, has done a lot to destigmatize mental health issues, and yet a lot of us are still carrying around our factory settings from childhood.

I, for one, am scared of scaring my kids.

They’re adults now. Yesterday, I overheard them talking on the phone about filing taxes.

But my factory settings tell me that seeing a sad person having trouble functioning is scary, and that it isn’t OK to talk about it.

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That’s the difference, of course.

I DO talk about it.

I've already called my doctor. And my kids know that I struggle sometimes with anxiety and depression (and a neurodivergent-menopause brain for spice).

They know there are resources and that I always want to get better again.

And so it’s different.

But depression lies, and it’s loud, so sometimes, I forget all of that for a couple of days or weeks, until I wake up early one day and suddenly things feel a bit clearer.

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One of the hard things about depression and anxiety is that sometimes they are just baseline illness, and sometimes, they are temporary states.

And of course, like with so many things, we’re not always good about language around this stuff.

Being so depressed because Chipotle forgot your guacamole or being so anxious before a date are not the same as having an actual illness. One of the major differences is that when you have actual DSM Depression and/or Anxiety, bad patches can seemingly come out of nowhere.

How do you fix that, exactly? How do you know where to start?

Sometimes, Depression and Anxiety can be triggered by an event though, and they call that an Episode, as in “I think you are experiencing a depressive episode triggered by X.”

And then, there’s the kind of anxiety or depression that comes along because a few things are going horribly wrong at once, or you know, you’ve got your own problems and ALSO, you’re watching your country’s foundation crumble.

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I’ve had a couple of friends share with me that they are dealing with Democracy Depression, or rather, Democracy Dismantlement Depression, and I understand how they feel.

It’s a really scary time to be an American, and yet, I don’t know how much this has contributed to my own current depression.

My saving grace is that I grew up seeing narcissism in action, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that two narcissist can’t actually be buddies for long. At some point, they’ll inevitably turn on each other, and get distracted by that for a while, and maybe we’ll all get a deep breath.

(The cracks are already there, and every narcissist needs a scapegoat.)

And so while I understand the current fear, and acknowledge that it’s absolutely real, I think the harder part is the feeling of helplessness.

The empathetic ones are outnumbered right now. The sensitive side is losing. The carers are carrying too many things at once.

And there is no path, no clear direction; no way to undo what’s being done every single day, for no other reason than wait for it … mental illness.

And then that’s hard.

We don’t want him to have our thing!

But not to worry, his thing is different.

Our thing is about caring too much about people, and his is about caring about him.

He’s certainly not worried about how his behavior is impacting others.

Don’t you feel better now?

Me neither.

So let me share one hard-won tip, that maybe you’re doing already, but just in case:

Stop trying to make it make sense.

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I know this is hard, because we all feel very helpless right now. And so our brains try to unravel it all and then shape the data into a graph or something.

We seek order - we can’t help it.

This is why you currently feel a desperate need to organize your pantry.

We can’t deal with this kind of chaos without trying to set it right.

And we’re starving for some kind of path - maybe a place to send money, or a person to support.

(What ever happened to that Beto guy?)

We want to be able to do something good to outweigh all the bad, and yet the bad is so arbitrary and capricious right now - it’s a Jackson Pollack of Awful, and where do we begin putting the paint back in the can?

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Please know that I’m not saying we should give up.

There’s a fine line between helplessness and hopelessness, and I don’t want us to accept the latter.

I’m just saying that a lot of us are struggling right now with our mental health, and a sure path to worse is trying to make any of this make sense.

Instead, I think we need to remind ourselves every day that broken people do broken things.

I’m not sure if they want to hurt people, or if there is True Evil or if they are just sick and acting from a sick place or all of the above, but for the sake of time and clarity, let’s stop trying to sort that out too.

And I’m not saying accepting this idea - that broken people do broken things - will make any of this feel better, but this is the only strategy I have for keeping it from feeling worse.

Besides, the current political chaos is meant mainly to overwhelm us and create a feeling that nothing we do will be close to enough.

Don’t believe it and don’t believe him.

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I’m going to wrap this up by saying what therapists have been saying since 2016 - maybe don’t watch so much news.

But then do we even have “News” anymore?

So then it becomes maybe just don’t look at your phone ever again, but also, stay informed!

So we’re back to there not being easy answers.

I will say that as soon as I send this to you, I am going to take a shower and clean the blender, because those small acts won’t change the world, but they will change how I feel just a little (cleaner and nourished by smoothed kale) and that changes how I am able to view the world, so maybe those little steps are bigger than I think.

And I will say that there are times when it’s OK to give in and give up, not on the world or each other, but on figuring things out, and definitely on re-organizing your closet.

I know we just want to fix everything. I know it all feels terribly desperate. And I know we’re all carrying a heavy fear.

But none of that is wrong or bad.

We are not wrong or bad.

YOU are not wrong or bad.

And I truly believe that taking care of ourselves, however that looks, matters right now.

The time will come when a path is clear.

And we need to be healthy and ready in order to help set things right again.

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“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

P.S. I shared more Tolkien inspiration this week here.

🌕 P.S.S. Full Moon Today! My journaling practice of using the energy of each full moon as a time to let go has been incredibly helpful for my sanity. You can learn more here.

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