Ugly Depression

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there is this kind of "Cute Depression" concept out there. Like, the "depressed gf" memes. Here are some examples:

This... kind of pisses me off? Like, this isn't cute. Or really accurate. Like, maybe if you mean depressed as the mood state but not the disorder and people conflate the two. Anyway, all of this is to say I so don't have "cute" depression.

My depression is ugly. It is a saw-toothed monster dripping in a mixture of phlegm and disease. It is a haunting presence draped over my shoulders, weighing me down like lead. It is noxious air poisoning my lungs with my every waking breath. It is a shrill voice both whispering and screaming in my ear to kill myself. It is hideous.

In the grips of depression I will isolate and denigrate myself out loud. I will stop showering, brushing my hair, drinking anything remotely hydrating, or eating anything nourishing. I will smile and not feel it any deeper than surface level. I will fantasize about the sweet embrace of death taking my pain away. I will convince myself that the ones I love will be better off without me.

It's.

NOT.

Cute.

This needed to leave my body. I'm okay. Better than, actually. Productive. Peaceful. But I have depression, and it's ugly.

The Friend I Never Knew

I've had a rough and confusing go of it in the last week, and I wasn't even aware of why. Today I went to my EMDR therapist and put the pieces together. I had been looking for a book in my pretty respectable book collection when I stumbled upon this:

In eighth grade, my delightfully eccentric Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Jones, had us engage in a semester-long project to have a story printed and hard-bound for each of us. This one was mine. I remember being disappointed in how it turned out because the pages were out of order, making it difficult to read, but I figured it out.

Anyway, finding this book brought up a lot of feelings for me. As you well know my childhood was pretty traumatic and by the time I wrote and published this my mom had stopped physically abusing me. I still hadn't told many what had happened let alone an adult who I knew would have to tell someone and risk my family's safety and security. The result was that, as I paused to read this last week, I was struck by how much I had mixed fiction and non-fiction, fact and lies. It's hard for me to parse out entirely what was true and what wasn't. Maybe I'll save that for another time. I don't have the energy right now. I also don't have the energy to fix mistakes I made while transcribing this. But I ended up feeling like I still couldn't trust my memory of my childhood. Some things simply don't fit, and yet I have a distinct impression that some of these things happened.

I tried not to change any spelling errors or formatting problems or (ugh) the painfully saccharine prose and ending, but boy did 13-to-14-year-old me have a lot to learn about writing. I even included the dedication: 


Dear Mom,
You've always been there for me, pushing me and guiding me. You've always helped me when I was in need. It's about time I gave back. I'll never be able to pay you back. This book will kind of be a down payment until I can find a way to pay the whole lump sum. I really hope you'll enjoy it. I love you always and forever until the end of time.
Your Daughter,
Amanda Taylor

Dedicated to My loving, giving, and hard-working Mom
Chong Taylor
I love you forever!

Tears of frustration filled my eyes as I messed up on "The Kuku Waltz" once more. I glared at the music in hate, the notes slightly blurred from those stubborn tears. There was silence as my piano teacher stared at me, carefully studying my shiny eyes, my upset frown, and my crestfallen face. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't concentrate. All the problems, everything that was going on, was ruining every prospect of my life.

"Amanda, is something wrong?"

Still I stared at the piano, refusing to make eye contact. Duh! No, I'm sitting here, about to cry because everything is just perfect in my life. I bit my tongue and fought the urge to just yell, "YES! Yes! Something is wrong! Nothing is right! Yes!"

I fought down the urge and barely breathed, "Yes."

There was another brief silence in which I tried desperately not to blink and choked down the oncoming tears. She finally spoke, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It's just..." my voice trail off as I tried to find the words for my anger, sadness, and suspicion, "I'm just having some problems right now." My throat ached as I tried to fight off my latest urge, which was to spill my guts to this lady, my piano teacher, Debbie. The more I fought it, the more I could feel the stress enlarging within myself. Again, I bit my tongue in effort to stop myself. "No, you're not going to tell her. Don't tell her. She doesn't have to know, she can't do anything to help it," said a small voice in the back of my head.

For a minute, I thought I had won, until she said, "You can tell me."

I was temporarily unprotected as I considered telling her everything. Instead, I took a blind swing at my opponent inside me. "I'm just having some problems with my friends, my family, and my self esteem," I said, hoping that was enough for her to leave me alone and forget about it, but what I had just said was the truth, but not the whole truth, but the truth.

As my piano teacher observed me again, I thought to myself, "What am I fighting? Am I fighting for the right thing? If I am, how come it hurts so much?" I felt a single tear hit my hand, it was then that I noticed that my cheeks were wet from the multiple streams of sadness flowing, I was crying. I was furious at myself for crying. Why was I always so sensitive? I never wanted to cry in front of her, but it was too late.

"Okay, Amanda, today's lesson is over," said Debbie.

I got up and grabbed my piano books, brushing away newborn tears with the back of my hand.

"Listen, Amanda, maybe you should talk to your mom about this," she said.

Is she joking? Talk to my mom? Is she insane? I've never had a real talk with my mom. I guess I kind of feared my mom. Even if I wanted to talk to her, she was always busy sewing or at work or at church most of the time. "I'll try," I said, slipping on my flip-flops.

I walked out her apartment and through the parking lot that separated her apartment complex from mine. Normally I thought of the closeness of the apartments as a blessing, but now I thought of it as a curse. I needed more time to think. How could I explain this to her? There was no other reason as to why I would be coming home early from piano practice. I would have to tell her the truth.

When I open the door to my apartment I heard my mom on the phone, I froze in the doorway. Had Debbie called my mom? "No silly, you know your mom is always on the phone with some friend, don't worry about it," whispered the voice in my head, but deep down, somewhere within my soul, I knew who was on the other end, I knew it was Debbie telling my mom what happened.

I knew better then to interrupt my mom when she's on the phone, whether or not it was about me. I put my books on my old wooden piano and sat down on the equally old bench. I played a few notes. Normally the notes felt so alive to me, even coming from this old piano, but now the notes sounded flat, dull, old, and musty, just like the piano. I tried putting "arm weight" in my notes, which is a method my piano teacher teaches all of her students. It relieves tension and gives grand sound to every note you play. I played middle "C," even then the notes seemed dead. Why? The music used to be so perfect and alive, even if I did make mistakes, all the notes were beautiful. Why had all that changed?

I heard my mom end her conversation and hand up the phone. I summoned every ounce of courage left inside my body and took a deep breath. I stood up and walked down the hall to my mom's room. The hall seemed to be so long, now keep in mind I live in an apartment and the halls really aren't that big. The very walls seemed to give me pity, pity that I did not need and did not want.

After what seemed like forever, I was right outside my mom's room. I took another deep breath and said, "Mom, Debbie canceled the lesson."

She reached over and turned off her radio, which frequently played as she was doing her sewing. My mom pointed at her bed. I sat down. "What happened?" she asked.

I felt betrayed, "So Debbie had called my mom," I thought to myself.

My mom waited patiently as I sat there, staring at her eyes, my own glistening again as tears threatened to fall. "I don't know. I'm just having so many problems now," I said look out her window, which was covered by bushes, the sunlight barely showing over them. I did not want to look at her straight in the eye, I knew that I would break down and cry.

She looked down at the pantsuit she was mending; I think she got the hint, "What kind of problems?"

"Well," I searched my mind for my biggest cause of stress, "my friends. Everyone's fighting, nobody wants to get along. Sara's fighting with Lynne, the rest of my friends just seem distant to each other, I just want everything to be the same again."

"Well Amanda, I understand," she looked up at me.

"You do?"

Yeah, Amanda, I know teenagers, I was one, friends mean a lot to you. This is the time where everyone's changing and they won't always change the way you want them to." I don't know why, but for some reason I really couldn't picture my mom, my hardworking, loving mom, being a teenager.

"But... why?" I asked, avoiding her glance once again.

"Amanda, listen, you're changing, too, your friends might think the same things as you do," she said, not completely ignoring the pantsuit, "It's just the way it is," she said.

Well that was all fine and dandy, but I still had something else bothering me.

"There's something else wrong too isn't there?" she said, do you notice noters seem to always know in these areas?

I nodded in response, "I just don't like who I am," a single tear weaseled it way out and ran down my cheek.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice full od concern.

"I think I'm fat and ugly," I said, a few more stray tears falling.

"What?" my mom exclaimed, "What would make you think that?"

"I don't know..."

My mom waited patiently, she knew I did know.

"It's just that, when I compare myself to my friends, I feel so different, like I don't belong," I said, more tears steadily winding their way down.

"They accept you, right?" she asked, again looking at the pantsuit, I had a feeling she couldn't bear to see me cry.

"Yes," I replied.

"Then why would you feel like you don't belong?" she asked. She made her point, if they accepted me for who I am, then why did I feel this way. They were also always telling me that I was beautiful and I was not at all fat.

"It's not only that. You know when you say I'm fat? It doesn't help much."

She stared at me in shock, "Amanda, I was kidding, I thought we were just joking around."

"I know I know, but it doesn't exactly help how I feel," I desperately tried to shorten the tears, holding the stress inside once more. I really didn't want to cry, "And there's one more thing. Whenever I do the slightest thing wrong, you yell at me and make me feel so bad. I always feel like I'm not good enough for you."

"Not good enough for me? Amanda, do you know how much I tell my friends and work and at church how you're so pretty, and how much you help me? I tell them that your growing into a very pretty young lady, and that you help me around the house, with the dishes, and the laundry, and with Steven" she said, again ignoring the pantsuit.

I stared in shock, I never knew this. Of course, I always heard my mom talk in Korean to her friends but I never understood what she was saying exactly. Sure I could pick out a few words and my name, but I never fully understood what she was saying. I guess I should have known. What kind of mother doesn't brag about her kids? Why would she say anything bad about me? If she said bad things about me, then that would mean that she didn't raise me right. No parent wants to look bad. It all made sense.

"I just never tell you. I don't want to have a conceited daughter. 'Oh, I'm so pretty,'" my mom pat her hair as she imitated a conceited stuck-up person, "I don't want a daughter like that."

I nodded, "I know."

"And about your friends. You're looking for a lot of friends, Amanda, that's no good. Look for quality, not quantity. A few good friends is better then a lot of bad friends."

"I know," I whispered again, my voice scratched and my throat raw from unshed tears.

"Amanda, look at me."

I looked up at her eyes, noticing they were glistening, too.

"Listen, don't worry about your friends. If you have no friends in the world, you'll still always have me. I have no choice, I can't leave you. You can tell me anything. I don't promise that I won't be mad, but I don't want you to lie to me. I can promise to try. I can try to be fair and listen to you. Friends can turn their back on you whenever they want, I have no choice, I'm your mother, and I love you, no matter what you do, I'll always love you, you know that," my tears were just on the verge of spill at my mom's inspiring words.

My mouth was clamped and my lips were dry as I stared at my mom, not in shock, but in love and understanding. I didn't say a word, but I think that expression said it all.

"Come here," she said, extending her arms. I stood up and fell into her arms, weeping like a newborn. There was a difference in the tears though. These were tears of happiness. I felt like a little kid again, clinging to her mom and crying. I felt a tear on my shoulder, that's when I noticed my mom was crying, too.

I felt shock for a few minutes. My mom very seldom cried, and almost never in front of my. It was official. The wall between us had been torn down and made way for a new way of communication. No longer would I have to keep these feelings inside. No longer did I have to worry about not being food enough or not understanding. I can truly say that at that moment, no child or young adult in the world was as happy as I was.

We pulled away and my mom wiped away the few tears she had shed. I used the back of my hand and my sleeve, crying my face.

"I love you, okay?" she said.

"I love you too, mom," I smiled, and she smiled also. It's one of those snapshot moments in my memory. This was the first smile we exchanged in our new understanding of each other, paving the way for many more.

I walked out, more less floated, out of my mom's room to my room next door. I felt virtually weightless. All this stress had been weighing me down, but now that I let it out, everything was going to be okay. I flopped down on my bed, just thinking. I felt so at peace with the world.

I pulled up the covers and lay there, thinking of nothing in particular. I've never felt so happy in my life. I just knew everything would be all right. I had new confidence within myself. Life would go on, I would be okay.

I couldn't wait to go out into the world, to school, to church, just anywhere, in this new way. I loved who I was now, whether different or not. I was Amanda, and I was proud. Mean words and harsh thoughts were not a part me, at least not for a while. I just wanted everyone in the world to be as happy as I. I kind of predicted how close my mother and I would get. I knew we would. I just knew it. Yeah, sure, maybe I wouldn't tell her everything, but I knew it would be very few things, if anything, that I would keep from her.

After about a quarter of an hour, I decided to go outside to see the world in the new light. I could hear the happy little children splashing around and laughing, calling, "Marco" and "Polo." I smiled to myself, praying that those children would someday be able to be as happy as I was at that very moment.

I looked up at the clouds. You know that game little children play? Looking at the clouds and determining what they look like? Well, I guess I was playing that myself. I had never played this game as a kid, but now the clouds seemed fun, exciting, beautiful, and alive. Everything seemed that way.

I sat up, "Wait, if everything's alive again, then that means..." I didn't even wait around to finish the thought.

I got up and ran to my house and to the old, musty piano. I sat down on the piano bench and took out the music to "The Kuku Waltz." I played the music with "arm weight" and with spirit. I made a few little mistakes along the way, which I knew I'd fix eventually.

When I finished with the lovely chord at the end, I smiled again. Hey, it wasn't perfect, but the music was alive once more.