Fighting Off Depression

We're living in a weird time. I started out counting our lockdown in days, then weeks, and now we are slowly beginning the second month and it is all more of the same. I've been doing a pretty good job lately of keeping my anxiety, ADHD, and neurodiversity in check-- I know what I need for myself and my mental well-being, and to the best of my ability, I accommodate. But a few days ago, I entered the battle of depression.

I never understood the term "fighting illness". I never liked the idea that someone loses a fight because they are not strong enough to battle any longer, and yet, it is the best metaphor I can use right now. Because I am not depressed, or slipping quietly into a depressive episode. I am strongly, bravely, and exhaustingly, fighting. 

My body and my mind wish to go quietly. I found myself crying for no reason, breaking down because my mind had nothing left to give. A gray cloud of depression very much hung over me, surrounding me in fear and sadness and overwhelming darkness. But my spirit fights on.

One of the most profound moments in my depression journey came a few months ago, before the pandemic, before the lockdown, when life was still so normal. 

Real Time Anxiety Attack and Recovery

The following is a real time account of my thoughts/stream of consciousness as I recover from a major anxiety attack:

I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared. These were the only thoughts clouding my brain this afternoon as I lay curled up alone in my bed, shaking under my covers, in the middle of the first full fledged anxiety attack I'd had in months. Even now, as I have pulled through it, I keep reminding my breath to slow down, remind my heart it's still beating, tell myself I am moving through the fear.

I've been doing really, really well for the past number of months. I haven't posted much on this blog, as you may have been able to tell, but I have been doing really well. I have my own apartment in Berkeley. I have a job teaching preschool that I love so much; I look forward to going to it every day. I have a therapist and a medication schedule and a gym and a fridge full of healthy foods I cook myself. But just about a week ago, it all started crumbling around me. Between coronavirus, worldwide anxiety, and the news cycle, it hit me like a freight train all at once.

This too shall pass. I tell myself this during this shaky moments, when uncertainty is all around me and I am still struggling to pull myself together. This is just another bump in the road. I've been through obstacles far greater with much less hope.

I smiled. I just smiled. It was spontaneous, but I can feel the anxiety releasing more and more every letter I type. I am listening to an acoustic playlist as I write this, and I suddenly recognized an Ed Sheeran tune ("Thinking Out Loud"). I remember how much my sister loves Ed Sheeran, how we'd listen to it on long trips in the summertime. She's coming home. I'll get to see her soon.

The guitar strums at a nice beat through the screen and I smile with tears in my eyes. There are tough moments, but I am here. For every scary, paralyzing afternoon I spend watching the sunlight fade away from my window, I know I will come out. I know the nights are dark and sometimes scary but the morning light can be the best cleanser.

My shoulders unclench, slowly. I remind myself this is a process of uncurling myself, letting go of the darkness surrounding me. I have found a bit of light to clear up the panic, and it is stitching me back together.

I smile again. I think about cute, feel good videos where toddlers meet their celebrity crushes. About happy things, scented candles and sticker filled journal pages. I will get through this. Not just this anxiety attack, but the ones that will return again and again, a boomerang shattering me into a hundred pieces. But I am stronger than I ever was, and each day I grow stronger and braver.

Anxiety is not just being nervous for social situations or stressing about lost items, although it is that too. There are days and moments like these when it is truly debilitating. But I have my community around me, digitally, and I have love and support from everywhere.

I am smiling now. And that makes up for all the tears.

With love and strength,

Rivi

Some links:

The instrumental playlist I'm listening to: https://youtu.be/_UucPr2M-qU

Cute Videos: 

Adam Levine's New Girlfriend (Toddler meets Adam Levine on The Ellen Show): https://youtu.be/k3aAl92_VDE

Jimmy Kimmel Surprises Bieber Fan (2010): https://youtu.be/AKEQwvaYI_k

Dear Past Me, Dear Future Me

As many of my readers, friends, and family know, I am a mental health advocate with lived experience. I suffer(ed) depression, anxiety, a misdiagnosis and overmedication, ADHD, and other issues connected to those diagnoses. 

It's been a while since I've written about this, been a while since I wrote on this blog at all. Maybe part of me was afraid to reengage with the demons of my past for fear they may return to haunt my present. But that is far from the truth. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

And so I would like to take this time to write a letter to my past and my future self, and any other individuals out there who might need these words. This one is for us.

Dear soul, dear person, dear lovely precious star of light,

Hello. It's me. I don't know who I am to you, or who you are to me. You might be a friend of mine from high school or college, someone I shared awkward glances with from behind my tortoise shell glasses. You might be the child of a friend of a relative of my mom's, and maybe this blog has spoken to you because you too are feeling hopeless. But you are reading this, and in this moment, we are connected. It's me. I'm here. 

Life Updates: September 2019

Alright, it's been a while since I've posted. A lot has happened. A lot has changed. For the sake of clarity for future posts, let's talk about my life.

I started this blog because-- actually, I'm not quite sure why I started this blog. I liked writing, I liked sharing stories of my life in (and now post) college, and I wanted to share that with whatever small audience I might have who was also interested. This blog has given me a lot of closure for certain aspects of my life, such as what I call "the dark years" in high school when I suffered severe mental illness and misdiagnosis (full post here)

I want this blog to be a place where I can share my truths and my life, the good things and the tough stuff. Here's a little of both, in the last couple months.

Suicide Prevention and 13 Reasons Why

My thoughts regarding the Netflix edits around the season one suicide scene

Trigger Warning: Depression, Mental Illness, Suicide, Self-Harm

  

Note: I will be discussing very heavy themes such as suicide, self-harm, and mental illness. Please always remember to take care of yourself and know that your mental well-being is more important than any article or written piece

I was honored to write a guest post for the prominent news site HuffPost, where I shared my thoughts regarding the first season of the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why". Here is the post, I highly recommend reading it prior to this updated thoughts post.

I did not watch any farther than season one. While I had originally enjoyed the series, the more time I spent reflecting on it the more problematic it became. Not only because a lot of the topics covered in the show were triggering for me personally, but because the manner in which they were tackled was problematic to say the least.

Ahead of the season three release, Netflix opted to remove a controversial and graphic scene from the first season, depicting the main character's suicide act. This was seen by many, myself included, as too little, too late. The weeks and months following the Netflix release led to an increase in the teen suicide rate, as well as an uptick in searches with keywords relating to suicide. While it is important to note that correlation is not causation (i.e. just because these tragedies corresponded with the release does not fault Netflix for this) and there are likely many other variables leading to this result. However, the correlation cannot and should not be ignored.

Here is my honest, straightforward, personal opinion on the series, as a psychology major, a mental health advocate, and a suicide survivor:

Stop. Don't watch it. Don't let your kids watch it. There are better shows and better movies to spend your time on. The series as a whole is depressing, tragic, horrifying, and glamorizes mental illness and suicide.

No Going Back

Every so often I will feel the itch

The regression, reminder of time

gone by. I will remember what

it was like in the dark days, before

I knew what it meant to see light.

My fingers crawl to the phone, wishing

I could text my mother, call my father.

Hear the love and care in their voice,

when they tell me I am doing good.

I do the little things to reach accomplishment;

arrive early to my flight, despite 

having ADHD. I make friends with flight

attendants, despite my social anxiety.

I live every day because I am here,

and part of me wonders if I'm supposed to be.

Rebecca died a long time ago. I killed 

that part of myself, so I could move on,

move forward, be reborn. A better version

of the me that used to be.

See, that's what no one tells you, when

you feel as though you're out of options.

You don't have to kill yourself to be reborn.

You just have to know you are worthy 

to keep moving forward.

I haven't written poetry, not in a long

time. I miss the way my fingers curve out 

beautiful symbols and meaningless tales.

I wonder if the poetic part is still

here, trapped somewhere beneath 

my pressed down darkness. 

We keep a part of ourselves, so we can learn. 

We remember so we may move forward, one foot

in front of the other, knowing we are making

a change, and knowing there is 

no going back. No going back to the 

dark places. My demons have shriveled up,

curled back into a cave, a faraway place

that has no place in my soul. Today,

the light outshines the darkness.

I made it this far.

I will make it farther. 

There is no going back.

Rivi D

July 2, 2019

How Good It Can Feel to Feel Good

Recently, I have been taking mental note of times when I feel good. Not just okay, not just fine, but truly, genuinely, good.

For me, these moments can be fleeting, but I am grateful nonetheless. They are afternoons of winding yarn and listening to a fantastic new audiobook. They are times when I feel inspired by a new project or plan. I am setting up a life for myself in Berkeley, CA, so in August I will be moving there. Thinking about that, planning my move, looking for apartments, and setting up job interviews and opportunities-- all of this gives me joy and fulfillment.

For quite some time now, I have been feeling down. Not clinically depressed, not panic attack level anxious, not the struggling dependence of ADHD, but just somewhat off. I didn't realize it fully until recently, and not until tonight, as I am writing this, am I recognizing the complexity of what I have been going through.

Social media will have you believe I am knitting up a storm of beautiful projects while laughing with my family on the weekends and holding it all together working part time at a local preschool. But that was hardly the case. Because life is never how it is on social media.

The Hygge of Singing the Shema

My Nightly Tradition with Nonny

My grandma on my mom's side, who I call Nonny, calls me every night to sing the Shema. When I was growing up, my parents would sing the Shema and "shelter us" song to my sister and me, and recently Nonny and I have continued the tradition nightly. We talk about our days, catch up, and recite the Jewish prayer.

This tradition started a few months ago. I live in Claremont, and my grandparents are only about an hour's drive away (which, to be fair, can greatly depend on LA traffic). I liked the idea of visiting my Nonny and Poppy, my maternal grandparents, about monthly. This slowed down a bit once I started teaching at Kiddie Academy, but I did get to visit them this past weekend.

A few months ago, when I was visiting them, I recited Shema with Nonny and we exchanged thoughts about what we are grateful for. It was a nice little thing to do before I slept and made me feel a type of familial comfort I hadn't felt since living on my own.

Sickness and Health

For the past two weeks, I have been pretty sick. It's what my supervisor at the preschool calls "preschool-itis", basically guaranteeing that the ridiculous amount of germs and illness we teachers come into contact with on a daily basis will make any new teacher come down with the all too common cold.

I'm not perfect yet, but I'm pretty close to getting back to full health. For the past couple weeks, I have been coughing, wheezing, going through phases of complete voice loss, and other symptoms that made my daily life miserable. There were good days and bad, and it was especially rough to manage it all alone since I didn't have my parents to take care of me.

I honestly never thought I'd say this in my life, but I am so grateful today to be at the gym. I know, I know! It's crazy coming from me, but it's true. I'm finally back into my comfortable routine of walking the quarter mile uphill to the Claremont Club (my local health club/gym) and sitting myself at the cafe to write out a blog post before getting in a workout. It's strange, but I am so grateful to be back.

I'm a preschool teacher!

I come from a family of educators. My dad is a college professor in American Jewish studies, and my mom has taught and subbed in elementary school for as long as I can remember. When my sister and I were growing up we had a little playhouse outside we converted into a mini classroom, complete with an old fashioned desk, a chalkboard, and dusty, cobweb covered workbooks. I was always the teacher and Shayna was my student (other than the times she wanted to be the cleaning lady). The schoolhouse was later converted into a chicken coop, which was later donated along with the chickens when I left for college. But some of my fondest memories stem from my aspirations to emulate my parents, to teach, empower, and engage.

Around September of this past year, I was enrolled in a graduate program for developmental positive psychology at Claremont Graduate University. I tried to convince myself this was a good fit, that teaching would be too draining and I wanted to work in research or the clinical practice. After a few emotional days and what I would consider a full breakdown, I decided to reexamine my choices. (For a longer description, see the full post)

I majored in psychology at Pitzer College and managed excellent grades and strong extracurricular activities. My main work experience came from the Autism Center at Claremont McKenna, which led me to the graduate from at CGU. What I discovered while at CGU was that while I loved working with the kids and engaging with behavioral psychology concepts, the research, academics, and statistics were not suited for me at all.

So I took a break, a gap year if you will. I had rented an apartment in Claremont and my lease lasted a year, so I stayed. I decided to try and find my path.

One reason I love my apartment in Claremont is the proximity to Starbucks. There's a small shopping center about 500 feet from my door, which includes the Starbucks I went to on a regular basis in my undergraduate time. What I also found was a daycare/preschool called Kiddie Academy, right next door to my favorite Starbucks, just a stone's throw away.

My mom encouraged me to apply, but I was hesitant. I was convinced teaching would give me burnout, a defeat even more intense than my breakdown from the psychology master's program. But here's the thing about burnout:

It's harder to burnout when what you are doing lights you up.