Depression & Anxiety - A Compilation Track

Trigger Warning: Proceed only if you are comfortable with potentially sensitive topics.

This is not psychological advice, service, or prescriptive treatment for anxiety or depression. The content related to descriptions of depression, anxiety, or despair may be upsetting or triggering, but are clearly not exhaustive. If you should feel symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, please seek professional mental health services, or contact (in Kitsap County) Kitsap Mobile Crisis Team at 1-888-910-0416. The line is staffed by professionals who are trained to determine the level of crisis services needed. Depending on the need, this may include dispatching the KMHS Mobile Crisis Outreach Team for emergency assessment.

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I take a break to sit in my car. I didn’t know this was ‘a thing’ until I said it out loud jokingly to an acquaintance, who quickly moved to affirm me. My key turns the ignition. I blast heat. For a few minutes hot air washes over me until it’s drying – stretching the skin of my face. I rotate the key to turn off the car. Like a fine-tuned sound track, anxiety plays through my body. Whether it’s the election, abuse, home, work, family, or community, anxiety ignites – an entire system running indefinitely. This is my collection, compilation – my sound track.

A digital clock blinks at me. How long have I sat here? Not long, maybe a few minutes.

Shit. It’s going to be a while.

Depressed. Anxious. Almost all my work is invested in liberation, paths of healing, body regulation, and even hope. The cold hits my body as it replaces the car’s heater.

Six minutes.

I can cope. I can regulate. I can do this.

I don’t believe it.

Sitting here, exhausted, wiping snot from my nose, the clock’s digital numbers are too damn slow. Tasks, not including the immediate daily items, pop in and out of my calendar like fleas nipping at my skin.

Seven minutes.

I push myself to close my eyes.

Roll film.

He sits in at the oval, wooden table, fresh flowers cut in the center, sipping coffee. She rhythmically rolls out flour tortillas, flipping them with her bare hands on the cast iron skillet. My grandparents had clever quips, things they lived by – paired with their routines of living. It all cradled me with deep, warm, calm imperfection and presence.

Their way of speaking as important as their quips. If I give you details – phrases, you’d get distracted. Tone and feelings are primary, here. Feelings I remember: sad, humor, giggles, sliced thin truth, clever melancholy, thick sadness. Regular, complex meaning making, rocking me easily with giggles and lonely truths.

All of that in one-liner feelings.

Eight minutes, 23 seconds.

I can cope, regulate. I can do this. Shut your eyes.

Last week I found myself in an Airbnb, alone. I pulled back the covers for fear of dirt on those spreads. Pillows plumped. Curled up on my side, hand beneath my cheek, tears poured. I exhausted myself driving from place to place; shadows of beautiful memories and painful ones which haven’t disappeared, narrating our meaning. My sweet boy running, grinning. The bathroom stalls at a park with kids slamming doors. A first pregnancy test bought in a Walmart. Kids on swings, jumping and counting. Tennis balls hitting against the wire fence. Yelling unsuccessfully at four bike riders whizzing through trails, “Slow down!”

Crying. Crying while walking familiar streets. Feeling alone in a small town.

That feeling is everywhere.

Tears swell again and again.

People often ask me, “Why are you still here?”

Here, meaning where, exactly? Do they mean, my physical location, or as an existence?

I wish my grandpa were here.

Draped in sweaty clothes – don’t fight these feelings. I still coach myself like I can win at this. Feelings my abuelos understood in their bones. I carry those: lonely, unwanted, unwelcome, impossible, joyful, pain, smiles, giggle, jokes. Society, therapists, teachers, friends – we diagnose anxiety, depression and stigmatize the mere existence of feelings. However, acceptance is trending. Feelings are trending. Yet, we dissect ourselves. This system and society are built to keep us isolated, or vulnerable enough to feign movement.

Coaching is useless. I re-work, re-word, re-vamp, re-vise everything I say many times. I need a clean sentence, which makes sense to me and you.

Don’t worry. You don’t have to join me here.

My grandpa shares a story to humanize me. He whispers about unscrewing tops of coke bottles he is supposedly selling. Yes, he wants some sips himself, and re-fills them with water, replacing the tops just as they were. His sheepish grin, light chuckle accompanies us. To you, he is mischievous. He’s re-learning Spanish, he says. He’s trying to be a good son – also to live outside of rules someone else constructed. I know the burden of a story, its unkept edges.

Nine minutes, 15 seconds.

Are we fulfilling expectations? Enough pain? Happiness covering for despair? Abuelo masked pain. His story, success. For us.

I am in those spaces indefinitely, too.

I don’t know what you want to hear. Reports? Laughs? Medleys of joy? Or, aches healed miraculously?

And maybe I am a fuck up, haunted, like him – always sad, rocking someone, recounting mischief.

Ten minutes.

Five more minutes of rest. I’ve said too much to you in this car.

The car door swings open. I push my legs out. I reset the tapes.

Is there a pause button on this compilation track? There wasn’t for my grandfather. And, there isn’t for me.