“Everyone’s depressed,” my mother said when I described the oppressive fear and weight on my legs that made walking unbearable. I was 32 years old, living in the icy, gray city of Buffalo, New York, slogging through a dreary English PhD program. My bed was my world, the only place I could drift off to for a quick sleep.
“No, Mom,” I said, “I don’t think people are depressed.”
I saw evidence of this at a winter street fair: a man carrying a baby in a front holster close to his chest, the baby in a winter starfish-like white winter jacket, the man absentmindedly holding the baby and kissing the top of its head, the pure blue waters of peace in the man’s eyes.
I knew that man was happy. At that moment, on that day, in that world, for that man, being alive was a happy thing.
“They’re depressed,” my mother insisted. “They’re just hiding it.”
My mother, a high-strung Irish-American from Boston, believed that life’s difficulties should be endured without complaint. She had survived a difficult childhood in which her stepfather would come into her room in the middle of the night, and when she told her grandmother about it, she was told she “just imagined it.” As an adult, my mother saw no need to dwell on such things.
She was kind to me. When I was a child and feeling down, she would pour me milk tea in a ceramic cup and invite me to tell her my troubles. The taste of her affection comforted me. But even then, she tried to drive away the emotions. Nothing is as bad as it seems, right? Once teatime was over, one was destined to go on with one’s life.
“I don’t want to believe that everyone is depressed,” I said.
“Well, that’s true,” she insisted.
But I shook my head. Hope was the talisman I held onto to stay alive.
My problems began at the University of Vermont. It hit me like a cold. One minute I was walking to class in the bright snow and having light-hearted conversations with friends. The next I was in bed in the fetal position, mute, sleeping for 20 hours at a time, waking only to raid my roommate’s stock of Cheetos and Ring Dings. My mother was terrified, and called the dean of my college and demanded something be done. I was sent to counseling.
In my 20s, the sadness returned as a mild feeling of numbness. My mother and I were sitting in the car watching the sun set over Lake Champlain, staring at streaks of pink and gold as if trapped behind glass.
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” I said, “but I just can’t feel it.”
“You can choose to feel,” she said, sipping tea from her thermos.
It followed me when I moved to Buffalo. As I sat in my drafty apartment, trying to write my dissertation on a sunless day, I heard a drum-like voice reprimand me. You are a loser and you have always been a loser. You are too fat and ugly. You won’t be able to do it. If you tried you would be publicly humiliated.
These thoughts felt like tiny scorpions stinging my heart, and I fantasized about opening my skull and applying ointment to my brain to dull the pain. Along with the lows came fragile highs of nervous anxiety and a buzzing like electricity that told me something catastrophic was about to happen. The thought of death was constant. I weighed my options carefully and sought slight solace in a plan.
But what about my mother?
“You are my life,” my mother said to me for the first time when I was three years old. And she repeated those words so many times that they etched themselves in my consciousness. As an only child, I knew it was my duty to continue to live for my mother. I was to be an ambassador of happiness.
“Maybe it’s just our family,” I finally told my mother. “Maybe it’s just everyone.” In our family I’m depressed.”
I’ve thought about this before. Irish melancholy is romanticized but for my family it was a raw truth. Drink was the main antidote. Amid the gaiety and wit and rowdy fun at weddings, a thread of sadness ran through us.
We all wanted cures: medicine, jobs, food. But we didn’t want doctors or prescription drugs. Those were taboo. They were available only to those locked up in Mattapan, one of Massachusetts’ cruel psychiatric hospitals that was closed in the 1970s after a shocking documentary about it was aired.
“Maybe so,” my mother said, finally acknowledging that there was a thread of darkness running through our family.
Because she knew the way. She knew the numbing pain of hanging out the laundry when a black dog is at the door. In the 1960s she bought a red Karmann Ghia. She always drove too fast. What had she left in her rearview mirror? Her stepfather? Her parents’ disappointing marriage? Her failed dream of becoming a writer?
“Your problem is that you’re not problematic,” she said when I was in Buffalo and echoed her pep talk. I was in a state of distress and I could see that she was afraid.
I stopped asking her for help. In my 40s, I started seeing psychiatrists, tried medication and meditation, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now it explained the strange bouts of euphoria I had when I bought 14 pairs of shoes online and hid them in my closet from my boyfriend. I suddenly understood the periods when I couldn’t sleep, when I’d stay up all night writing, convinced I was writing the Great American Novel, only to realize later that the pages were disjointed and incoherent.
The medicine worked. I began walking to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden every spring to see the flowers bloom: first the purple crocuses, then the red and yellow tulips, then the pink cherry blossoms, and finally the miracle lilacs.
I am recovered from an eating disorder that has plagued me since I was 14. I never told my mother about my diagnosis because I was scared of her reaction. I imagined in our conversation that she would shake her head and say, “Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”
My mental illness is a balancing act that requires constant maintenance. I sleep well, take daily walks, stay in touch with friends, and am honest with my doctors. But sometimes I tire of staying alert, stray from my usual routine, and fall back into depression. It’s that all-too-familiar feeling of going to bed again wrapped in the robe of depression. For years, I kept a stockpile of pills in my drawer. Just in case.
One evening, over a few glasses of wine, my mother and I relaxed and shared our truths. Our relationship improved once I stopped treating her as my therapist.
“I have a favor to ask,” she said slowly.
I had no idea what was going to happen.
“If you decide to do it, if you’re really determined, I have one last request for you: call me.”
It had been years since we had talked about anything like this.
“I know how bad it can get,” she said, “and I want you to call me. And if after we’ve talked about it, you still want to do it, I’m not going to try to stop you. It’s your life and what you do with it is up to you.”
In that moment, I was overwhelmed with relief. My mother had finally acknowledged that what I was experiencing, what I had always experienced, was real. By making this request, she had placed a phone call between me and death.
With those six words, “Please call me,” I felt like she had given me life back. I had stopped so many times, worried about what my death would mean to her. But I never had any desire to live for myself.
This conversation changed me, but it didn’t completely transform my relationship with my mother. I was still afraid to tell her about my diagnosis. When I casually mentioned it one day, she was met with silence.
My mother believed in the power of willpower to banish bad thoughts. She came from a different generation, one that didn’t carry emotional conflicts alone. I watched her bear the abuse of her childhood in silence. I watched her grieve when my father left home. And I watched her rage, but never cry, as dementia slowly took hold. Her approach was a mindset of strength that never asked for help. Her approach was not my approach. But she broke the silence between us and told me things that should never be said. And that saved me. As I learned in my recovery, “Our illness is only as heavy as our secrets.”
My mother passed away three years ago. I no longer have any promises to keep. Instead, I have new promises to make to myself. I am fiercely determined to live, and I sound the alarm whenever my resolve weakens. I learned how to sound the alarm myself. I learned my capacity for fierceness from my mother.
Julia Ann Miller is a New York-based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, and Smithsonian. She has performed in storytelling venues such as Stripped Stories and Speak Easy. In her essay “Share a taxi and a toe” was read by Greta Gerwig on The New York Times’ Modern Love podcast. She is currently working on a collection of essays called “My Life in Cake.” https://julia-anne-miller.com.
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