My very bad, no good 2022

As the new year approaches, we all have a tendency to look back, take stock, learn lessons, appreciate the year that is coming to a close. In this no-man's-land week between Christmas and the new year, when time is meaningless, food calories don't count, and we all forget our own names, I'm taking stock of my 2022. 2022 was the worst year of my life. So here is my farewell, my good riddance, good bye... but my gratitude for the lessons.

I have a theory that even years are cursed. Bad things always seem to happen in an even year, when I'm an even age. The reason behind this curse is definitely because I'm an odd baby: my birthday is 9/19/1989. Except for the intrusive 8, that odd combination seems to protect me somehow. Some of these events are a bit too personal to talk about openly, but I do want to talk about the Big Bad Thing that happened to me this year, in 2022, while I was an even 32 for 9 months out of the year. 

This is going to be a post about mental health. This blog has been tumbling around in my head for at least a month, as I've been slowly emerging from the fog of what happened to me this year. I wanted to share my experience for one huge reason: hearing other people's stories about their struggles with their mental health has immensely helped me not to feel so incredibly alone, and like such an incredible failure. I want to put my story out in the world to help even one other person feel seen and understood. Sharing on a public forum means that anybody has access, which, as a university teacher, means that my students could see straight into my personal life. But I've decided that I'm ok with sharing this little part. Maybe when all us neurotic little Millennials were in college and our professors had been open about not only the struggles with but the existence of mental health, maybe we'd be doing a little better in our 30s and 40s.

I'm not exactly sure where to start, since my struggles didn't start in a vacuum. I am the way I am because of the previous 31 years of conditioning, habit-forming, learned behaviors, value development, experience. My "thing" is that I'm a people pleasing perfectionist. But that doesn't mean what you think. I am NOT an A-type, ambitious, competitive person. It means that I try to twist myself into the version of perfection that everyone else around me has in mind about me. And it means forgetting, and even obliterating what I want for me. I've had a lot of conversations lately about what I truly want in my life, and it mostly involves doing the job I love (teaching) and coming home to a cozy house or apartment and doing my real life's work (knitting). I'm the homebodiest of homebodies. Going out, committing to plans that disrupt my teaching/knitting homeostasis, getting texts/emails/calls all stress me out. Basically, I like to be able to control my surroundings and I need ample time to recharge from the incredibly draining job of teaching. So you can imagine that subconsciously trying to twist myself to meet the expectations of others — a futile task for the healthiest of minds — has been slowly chipping away at my sanity and my sense of self for years.

I'm still working through how who I am affects how I am affects how I relate to others. Even writing that sentence seems a little idiotic, because how could anyone have that equation figured out? My therapist often scolds me for delegitimizing myself and for throwing away my thoughts and emotions as possibly "unproductive." So, here's mental health thing #1: if you have a feeling, if you have something that nags at you, then it's never unproductive to at least identify and acknowledge it. In any case, up until about May of this year, I thought I was functioning at a pretty high level, and that I had solved the aforementioned equation, and everything was coming up rainbows for Emily.

Then, in this even year of 2022, it all finally came to a head, and I broke. I broke, and I broke my brain.

In June, I went to Sweden for a week for a thematic school related to my doctoral studies. I'm not going to go into the details surrounding why, it's not super relevant to this post, and I'm honestly still working through the trauma of it all, but this was when I broke for the first time. It manifested through anxiety-induced insomnia. I went for 72 hours without a single moment of sleep because my anxiety was so unfathomably through the roof that my body literally couldn't cope. I've always been a really good sleeper, and I need something like 9 hours a night to be able to function, so 72 hours without sleep traumatized me. There is a reason sleep deprivation is used as torture. 3 nights and days of heart pounding, adrenaline coursing through me, my eyelids drying out and feeling like sandpaper, brain fog, extraordinary physical fatigue, stupor, feeling drunk... all while I was attending and participating in days full of seminars and discussions about modernism, and psychically punching myself in the gut for failing so miserably to be a functioning human being. It was torture.

I regained my ability to sleep for about a week and a half following my time in Sweden, but then I got a head cold during the last week of June (my first week of vacation, of course). I couldn't get comfortable one night, and so I couldn't fall asleep easily. By that point, my body had acquired a new learned response: can't fall asleep right away? Heart pounds, adrenaline rushes, NO SLEEP PANIC PANIC PANIC. This time, the experience was drawn out over several weeks. I'd get maybe 3 to 4 hours of sleep if I was lucky. But something else happened this time, something new that perpetuated the issue. I still don't know, after countless visits to the doctor, specialists, getting literal liters of my blood drawn, why, but I broke something in my gut-brain chemistry that makes it so that sugary foods keep me awake at night when before, I could eat an entire tub of ice cream at 11pm and fall straight asleep. 

The entire summer was battle after battle with insomnia, anxiety, fear, and paranoia about if what I was consuming would keep me awake. At the lowest point during this episode of insomnia, my brain was in such a fog, my anxiety and encroaching depression were so bad that when I looked in the mirror, I did not recognize my own face. Imagine that for a moment. I'm not being hyperbolic. You know your own face better than anything else on earth. You've memorized and recognize every curve, every mole, every pore, the shape and color of your eyes, the weird eyebrow hair that grows in wonky, your chapped lips, the wrinkles emerging in your smile lines and at the corners of your eyes, your hairline, your cheeks, the hollows deepening under your eyes, your nose that is a little too wide, your janky tooth that travelled out of place because you never wore your retainers. Your face is you. If you don't recognize it, it's terrifying.

Towards the end of the summer, I was doing marginally better, but the stress of starting the new school year, of knowing that I had to be "on" and rested during the day, yanked me back into overwhelming anxiety. Finally, after trying to overcome everything on my own, as I thought I should, I went to the doctor in September. I was prescribed a really powerful anti-anxiety, to be taken only as needed if I couldn't sleep. The problem was, my sleep anxiety had turned so bad that I could only sleep if I took a benzo. Since one of my bad behaviors is to obsessively Google everything, I knew the risk of addiction with benzos is very high, so this induced intense shame and even more fear and anxiety. I was failing. Me, the people pleasing perfectionist, failing on a massive level to be a normally functioning human. By October, I felt like my life was crumbling around me, and it was all my own fault. I had failed to pull myself out of the anxiety funk, and I experienced the most frightening depression. 

We toss around these words "anxiety" and "depression" so lightly that the slightest stress and a mild dour mood get categorized as such. I've done it, you've done it, we've all done it. But I believe now that I was experiencing a true chemical imbalance, that my brain was fundamentally broken by the trauma I suffered this summer. I felt such deep, profound shame about what I had done to my own body, while at the same time losing any confidence and trust in my body. This thing that our consciousness inhabits is the only constant we'll ever know. If it breaks, worse yet, if we break it, what then? It doesn't get replaced, there are no second chances if it gets broken beyond repair.

The worst, lowest point was a Wednesday in early October. In French, they ask you if you have "des idées noires" or "black ideas" to ask if you're having suicidal thoughts. The first time my doctor asked me that in July, I said no. But by October, my thoughts had turned black. Abject fear and shame of potentially becoming hooked on powerful anti-anxiety meds because I was becoming absolutely ruled by crippling anxiety. Fearing that any night could be a "bad night" and I'd have to go teach the next day like everything was normal. Severely limiting my food consumption habits, paranoid that any hidden sugar would call up the little demons that kept me from sleeping. I stopped planning for the future. I stopped committing to anything. Making plans for next month, next week, even tomorrow vanished, replaced by a very tenuous grip on right now. I thought, if this is my life now, if this is how it's going to be, then I don't want to be. Surviving, not thriving. But barely even surviving. 

You have to understand that sleep deprivation is cumulative, and does exponentially worse damage on your body and brain each time it happens. I suffered unbelievable brain fog, I couldn't remember simple words, I had almost zero concentration. All while working full time AND trying to advance in my PhD. I would try to work the day after a bad night, and I would come back to that work a week later, and it would be filled with spelling errors, nonsense, confusion and trash. I had a hard time forming complete sentences while teaching. I had to use all of my energy to concentrate while riding my bike home from work. It's a small mercy I didn't get into any accidents. All of this compounded the shame I felt. I thought that I should be able to fix myself. I thought I was trash because I couldn't control the chemical imbalance that kept me locked inside a shrouded cage of anxiety at the bottom of a dark and lonely pit. 

Finally, I was having a conversation with some dear friends about it all, and they asked me if I hadn't considered going on antidepressants. Honestly, I hadn't. I already felt shame about the anti-anxiety meds, so going on something long term felt like openly acknowledging that I had lost to this beast gobbling me up. But I did some Googling (obviously), and I had some more conversations with people I trust. I thought that at that point, I had nothing more to lose. I went to my doctor, yet again, and this time, with shame gnawing at my stomach, reddening my cheeks and making me tremble, I asked for a prescription for antidepressants. He warned me that antidepressants are not an immediate fix, and so I was also prescribed Xanax to help me in the interim while the antidepressants kicked in.

I wish I could say that a week later, I was all better, the antidepressants worked like a miracle, and I had my life back. But this isn't how we survive trauma. I had so fundamentally learned that I couldn't trust my body, that even after 9 weeks of being on antidepressants and going to therapy regularly, I'm just barely emerging from the abject fear that had constricted me. Every night that I sleep normally feels like a miracle, which I wish it wouldn't because that puts so much pressure on me to repeat the miracle. I still have flashbacks to the Bad Times, little nightmare memories that I've otherwise blocked out that suddenly invade my body inducing a cold sweat. But 9 weeks on, I'm finally starting to feel like myself again. The medication I'm on quite literally saved my life. I didn't fail: I asked for help, which takes a different kind of courage that we aren't really taught. It tacitly implies that you couldn't do it all by yourself, which to me was the very definition of pathetic. But that is flawed thinking. 5 years ago, I had a double ear infection, and the ENT prescribed me super antibiotics. I never batted a single eyelash at asking for help in that situation. This was no different.

Finding a therapist to see every week in person has also saved me. I speak to my therapist in French, which is kind of a surreal experience. Speaking about myself and my situation in a foreign language makes me feel sort of detached from it all, like I'm looking down on myself from a bird's eye view. I'm starting to be able to see the big picture again, to pick up the shattered shards, sand them off at the edges and gently place them back in line. I think since it all broke, the picture has changed slightly too. And I've needed help putting myself back together since I don't have the front of the puzzle box to my own psyche. The whole process of undoing myself and rebuilding myself is violent, and I think I've only emerged from 1 session in two months without having ugly cried on her couch.

So why did this all happen to me? I've never had any problem with other people going to therapy or with other people taking antidepressants, but I've always thought I should be strong enough to deal and cope and process on my own. I used to marvel that I'd made it 30-something years basically un-medicated, like woohoo, look at the well-adjusted Millennial! But I put so much pressure on myself, I twisted, contorted, molded, and perverted my identity so much to fit other people's expectations of me that my brain finally screamed STOP. A body and a sense of self can only be pushed so far before it all shatters. Stepping on those broken pieces punctures and pierces you, and you can't even sweep it all up and put it back together because you've lost all sense of the big picture. Little by little, over the years, I've been losing what it means to be me, and when my inner self started to fight back, it broke me. It also didn't help that I almost lost my job this summer because I almost didn't get my visa in time to sign my new contract. When it rains it pours.

Let's be clear, at the end of this post, but nowhere near the end of this journey: acknowledging the problem, asking for help, reaching out and being vulnerable to a confusing healthcare system are not signs of failure. One more time for the people in the back: asking for help is not a sign of failure. I'm not telling my story for pity or sympathy, but for the sole purpose of urging YOU to get help if you need it. I'm nervous about exposing myself so blatantly, but I also can't stop thinking about how helpful it has been to hear other people's stories. I am not a failure, and you are not a failure. Modern medicine is a miracle. Happy 2023, let's have an odd year.

You can't go home again.

Inspiration strikes within me at truly the most inopportune of times. When I moved to France 7.5 years ago, I started this blog as a way to document my burgeoning expatriate life. This has gone more or less by the wayside, as expatriate life slid nearly unnoticeably into normal life. What's the point in writing about normal life? There's nothing special in that, everyone's doing it. Apparently I just do it with wine, cheese, and croissants. (I'll tell you a secret, I've eaten about 5 croissants in the last 5 years. French carbs count just as much as American carbs). So I've stopped writing, stopped noticing the little culture shock moments, stopped reaching into the depths of my discomfort. I'm established enough now that my greatest source of culture shock usually comes when I go back to the US. 

Writing takes a non-narrative form for me these days, in any case. Writing emails to colleagues, writing lesson plans, and the big one: writing my thesis. Inspiration struck me at the worst moment yesterday. In the midst of leisurely sipping my Sunday morning French press, a clenched fist suddenly gripped me by the gut and told me to STOP and go write a presentation. It's about my research, which I'm truly passionate about, but ughhhhh, I have to write in academic-ese, and it honestly makes me feel queasy. I feel hemmed in by the structured blowhard language of academia. Little room for narrative, and an expectation for a certain vocabulary that just makes me want to sink into the ground and pull a rock over my head. Still, I persevered and banged out that presentation in no time flat, excitedly turning to my ever-patient husband and exclaiming entirely out-of-context points I was making, conclusions I was drawing. But at the end of 1000 words, I felt uneasy. For one thing, it's terrifying to make claims and then plant yourself in front of an audience and purport to know anything about anything. But mostly, I've felt this need to express myself that I much too often push to the back of my mind for fear of letting go of the control I so tightly grasp every waking moment. So when inspiration struck tonight (an hour before I should go to bed on the eve of an early morning), and I felt an unearthly force pulling me towards the keyboard, I obeyed. Write, write, it whispered. NOW. So I'm writing.

I've been feeling that uneasiness pretty frequently lately. Every second of my life is usually structured, controlled, planned. If I had my way, every second of your life would be according to my structure, control, plan. When I feel like I'm going to start spiraling (which is more often than I like to admit), I open my Google calendar app and stare at all my obligations for the coming day, week, month. It soothes me to orient myself in my own personal narrative. I obsess over small details, other people's forgetfulness plagues me, inattention, forgotten responses, last-minute nonchalance all chafe at my need for the plan to be executed as was agreed upon. Even if no one actually agreed. I am what you might call the freakiest of control freaks. (I am also a highly anxious introvert, so seeing a notification for that agreed-upon email response also makes me slightly nauseous.)

All that need for control can also tend to give one angina. So I've developed mechanisms over the years to deal. It used to be that I called my Dad in blubbering tears ranting that my whole world was ending because of this, that, and the other thing having gone off the rails. And I mean, I called my Dad, because I was in college and still could. not. deal. So my ever-wise Dad finally told me senior year, as lovingly as possible, to cut that shit out. I had to learn to develop healthier coping mechanisms. All this came at an unfortunate time, at the end of college, more years ago than is seemly for a lady to count (11 years, there I counted). I studied music in college, I'm a musician down to my littlest molecules. The creation of music had been my inborn coping mechanism. When I was a kid, even a teenager, I never considered this fact at any greater scale than just what I had to do in my day to day. I had to learn fingerings and bowings, then I had to learn and memorize texts. I never had stage fright because as a consummate control freak, I learned my music so inside and out that I never even offered to perform if I wasn't 1000% ready. Looking back, I probably missed a lot of opportunities, not because of any unwillingness to present any less than my very best, but because of my abject terror of making a fool of myself in a public space. But I loved it. I loved performing, relishing the harmonies, the sweet progressions, the subtle taste of French vowels, the crispness of German. I loved creating a narrative for myself to help memorize the words. I was implicated in the experience, nothing less than my whole body had to be fully present in order to get on a stage and convince an audience that they too were watching the sun rise over a misty lake on a cool August morning... 

Anyway, once college was over, that was pretty much it for the music making. My creative outlet had evaporated. Obviously I can open my mouth at any time and sing, but it's not the same. 

Time passed. I had a brief stint in corporate America that dissatisfied me to distraction. I made the foolhardy decision to move to a foreign country where I barely spoke the language and had zero job prospects. But it all fell into place. Jobs, apartments, degrees, marriage. And all of sudden, I look at myself in the mirror, and I'm... not young. 

You know how when people are trying to get to know someone new they might ask, oh, what kind of music do you listen to? I always kind of shrug and vaguely say, "classical music," knowing full well that besides middle to late Beethoven, I don't particularly like the classical period, but it's the easiest term to convey what my tastes are. People often assume I like opera too since I'm a singer. I don't. Honestly it bores me to tears. All that said, though, I have to admit that I rarely listen to any music at all. I definitely don't listen to music past about 1950. I horrified my friends a few weeks ago by admitting that I listen to... podcasts... when I work out. But I don't—can't—listen to the music I love if I want to make it through the day. That has become my unfortunate coping mechanism now that I don't need to call my Dad in tears every other week. I've found other creative outlets (cooking, and do you even know me? of course knitting), but my first love, my first identity has been left neglected, nearly abandoned.

So when I stare at myself in the mirror, finding new cracks and crevices, new little spots and folds, when I tell myself to take a walk and cool down from something that angered me and would have sent me spiraling 11 years ago, when I feel like an absolute fraud, even when I think I have a good idea, I'm constantly pulling further and further away from that 21-year-old kid who was just starting to realize that she didn't know everything. I have become a different version of myself. A version who no longer listens to the music I love because it's just too difficult. It brings me back to a warm, light, cozy childhood. It brings me back to a home that no longer exists. To versions of my parents who no longer live there. To the warm patch of sunlight that streamed into my window deep in mid-winter, where I'd perch on Sundays and finish my homework while taking in that pervading, but not-yet-known-to-be-precious scent of Mom's sauce cooking. Back to the version of me that only worried about the grade I would get on the math test, who only worried about if my crush would talk to me the next day, who only wanted to get that solo in the next concert. That version who had untold possibilities in front of her, youth, foolhardiness, something unstoppable, but very often something stopping her. That music brings me back to sitting on the bus, alone, with only my Discman for company and protection. Listening to the same violin concerto CD every single afternoon for an entire year. Warding off any attacks from bullies. Cocooning me in that sacred intimacy, allowing me safe passage from uncertainty to home. 

Home. 

That music transports me to a version of myself who wanted only to please, to do the best, not to be the best, but just be allowed to shine in the brightest way I knew how. A version of myself that I didn't know or appreciate at the time, who wouldn't know me now. It's not that anything about my current version has it especially hard, but I'm a replacement of myself all the same.

Now, I find myself with an armor pulled over me. I'm wise enough now not to let that armor get pierced very often. So I can't listen to my music. I write academic papers so I don't have to try and potentially fail at writing what I would truly love to do, personal narrative, essays. I shield myself in organization and order so I don't fall apart at the seams under the minute-by-minute realization that I cannot go back. 

There is a bittersweet pain in getting older. It's not the pain of finding wrinkles or gray hairs. It's the discovery that 10 years ago, instead of being a little kid, you were a full adult. It's the mix of awe and horror and heart-bursting love that your childhood best friend is now a mother. It's not the regret of lost time or decisions not made or paths not taken. It's something subtler, more forlorn, something that makes me stop in my tracks, arrest my carefully laid plans, and ruminate on who I am as a person, and what has made me that way. 

And I turn to my first coping mechanism for just a moment. I listen to my music. I can reach deep back inside myself, reach across that chasm of years seeking to caress, to hold, to embrace that small, forgotten version of myself that I still am. Despite myself. Because of myself.