Mental Health and Butter Dishes

Hi friends,

Touching in with you at the end of May. As I’m sure some of you already know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It is fitting, then, that I write a newsletter on the very last day of this month. This is because all month, I’ve wanted to write a newsletter, and all month, my depression has told me that I can’t. I haven’t had anything to say. It would have felt inauthentic. Am I a living, breathing example of why a month like this might exist? Perhaps.

I picture the personification of awareness months, in all their earnestness, screaming at the people they aim to raise awareness about. They yell: “JUST BE HAPPY, MAN! WE LOVE MENTAL HEALTH, AND YOU CAN FIND IT IF YOU TRY HARD ENOUGH!” And all the depressed people around the world hear it collectively, muffled, from under their duvet at 2 pm (when they’d gone for a “nap” at 12) and roll over to put their eye masks back on.

Growing up, I was worried that I would become a depressed person because I have mental illness in my family. I worried that I would become an addict and alcoholic because I have it in my family, too. Mostly, I just had anxiety (hence the worrying). And I dabbled in those other things. I spent so much of my teens and twenties attempting to self-regulate. After being weighted down with a touch of medical trauma in my late 20s, shit got real — it became essential to take care of my mental health. I would not survive otherwise.

Now, as an adult, I am currently experiencing depression (the adolescent worrying did not save me from it!) Though I’m not worried anymore, I am aware that it’s here with me as a (mostly unwelcome) companion at this moment in my life. My depression has told me this month that I have nothing to write about, and there is nothing for me to turn my hand to — that perhaps I should just give up. Be quiet. Pack it all up. It has told me many lies over the past couple of years.

It’s also inconvenient. There have been full weeks over the past few months where I’ve cried every day. Are you serious? Do you know how annoying it is to cry every day and not be entirely sure why it is you’re crying? There have been full weeks in which I haven’t been able to get through the day without feeling like I’m carrying a 10 lb weight on my back, the fatigue so heavy, my body so tired. Every day (really every day), I have to spread soft butter onto a cracker because it’s the only thing that jolts me with a dose of temporary dopamine. I don’t think that speaks to depression symptoms as much as it speaks to an unhealthy relationship with butter and a recent discovery of the virtues of a butter dish. It is tiring for me, and it’s tiring for the people around me — who sometimes know how to help and sometimes, most likely, feel helpless to know how to help.

In turn, a great many friends, family, mental health professionals and doctors have suggested I go on antidepressants. I haven’t wanted to do that yet. Others have told me not to go on antidepressants. I haven’t wanted to listen to them, either. I have no moralistic viewpoint on the subject. It’s just that each time I consider it, I remember my experience with medication in my 20s. The first: too many years on a medication that actually did nothing to help me. Then: a dalliance with an SSRI that made me feel like I was on ecstasy and had me chainsmoking cigarettes all day. Though I loved ecstasy for a time, it’s not a great vibe at 10 am on a Tuesday.

I managed my mental health for many years through exercise, meditation, regular acupuncture appointments, diet, and sleep. It’s a lot of work and requires time (and money), which I haven’t had much of lately. I accepted long ago that it takes work for me to stay at a baseline level of “normal,” though I’m not sure what normal means (I just can’t think of another word for it). I’ve also accepted that we are constantly responding to our environment — and the environment we’ve all been in for the past few years has been, at times, difficult (to put it lightly).

I wanted to write something honest today about mental health because I think it’s really easy to say something about raising awareness without talking through any details. Sometimes it’s just really fucking hard to be alive, and attaining mental health is a long and winding road for some of us. It just is. And I think that’s ok. It’s ok to keep trying and to take as much time as you need to figure out what works for you. I know there will be periods of my life when I will feel better because there have already been periods of my life when I have, in fact, felt better. In the meantime, I’ll keep showing up — even if it takes me a full 31 days to get there.

With love,

Nora x