Big Shiny New Year: how a party about new beginnings set the tone for a spectacular collapse into depression

The last few months of 2013 were a horrible, terrifying slide into Major Depression. I tried all the tricks, followed my treatment plan, and still nothing. I wasn't eating, I wasn't smiling, I wasn't even able to laugh. It was pretty darn bad. So imagine my surprise when my friend P from church invited me to a dinner party on New Year's Day. He said no one would pressure me and I could hide in a corner if I wanted to, but that we would play games, and I would have fun. So, for the first time in my life, I went to a New Year's party. I was really looking forward to it!

We played a super hilarious game called Braggart (I think that was it, anyway) with cards where we made up stories and then stole the good bits of other people's stories. Everyone was so entertaining, and I had fun. I felt like I hadn't had the chance to even pretend to be happy in so long.

It was a very cold day, thirty below freezing or so, but the condo was toasty from cooking and company. While I was doubtless the boringest, wort guest ever (hello crippling depression), I was happy to be there. It was especially nice to be out of the house and away from my parents on the first day of the new year. New starts and all that.

As a thirty-year-old paying rent, I knew I had every right to go and and do whatever I wanted to do, even if I was still living with my parents. But, in some sort of bizarre quest not to be a total bitch, I did try to be considerate of them. So I told my mother that if I didn't call by the 9:00 train I'd be taking the last one of the night. I'd also arranged with a friend that if something went horribly wrong I could stay at his place. I had this shit under control.

Because I think it's rude to have telephone conversations while you're at a dinner party, I turned my phone off and left it in my bag by the door. To be honest, I also didn't want to risk having everyone find out that my mother still checks up on me - that my own family doesn't think I'm capable of running my own life, that my mother still treats me like a child. Even though I was sick, it's not like I didn't have my shit together on this one.

But I hadn't counted on my mother waking up at 10:00 pm and deciding it was too cold for me to walk home, and single-handedly scrapping my entire plan. She texted me a couple of times, and of course when I didn't answer because my phone was off, she started calling and leaving messages. Not one to be put off by the fact that I was obviously still having fun with my friends, and was an adult fully capable of taking care of myself, my mother put her detective skills to good use and somehow located the phone number of the place I'd gone. She then proceeded to call them and ask for me. The second I heard their phone ringing, I had this cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, and started feeling lightheaded and disconnected, like a deer caught in the headlights. I knew - I just knew - what was happening. And I so wasn't prepared to deal with it.

Once our host figured out that the person on the phone wanted to talk to me, he handed over the phone. It was obvious that he was as taken aback and embarrassed as I was. Since there was nowhere for anyone to go, everyone got to listen to my half of the conversation.

Like talking to a two-year-old, I kept my voice calm and level, speaking clearly and simply. I told my mother that everything was fine, and reminded her that I'd already told her about my plans and there was no need to be calling. But it was no use. My mother was already in a full-throttle fit, yelling at me that I should have answered my phone, and insisting that I had to take the metro home immediately so my father could pick me up in Laval and drive me home - it was absolutely too cold out for me to walk home from the train the way I'd planned. Never mind that I've spent my whole life weathering cold winters, or that I was capable of making my own decisions, or even that being a renter in my parents' home didn't give them the right to control my life. She'd made a decision and wasn't about to be mollified or dissuaded or derailed.

So I gave in. I 'okayed' and 'fined' until I finally got her off the damn phone. Then, of course, I had to explain to my hosts that I was leaving because if I didn't give in to my mother's irrational demands she'd be having a fit for hours - maybe even days - before I'd finally be able to calm her down. That I'd spent my whole life hostage to her moods and didn't know how to stop giving her what she wanted, even though I knew that just made things worse in the long run.

Everyone was incredibly nice about the situation, telling me that it was alright, but for me it absolutely wasn't.

I felt completely humiliated. My mother had embarrassed my in front of everyone by treating me like a child in public.  I felt ashamed that people knew that this is my family, this is my life, that I wasn't allowed to be a grown-up. I felt deeply ashamed at having allowed this to happen, at not having kept my phone on because I know how my mother is. As I bundled myself up and left I felt so small, and so hurt, knowing that my mother would do that to me just to make herself feel better, that she'd cost me a chance at friendship and that I'd probably never be invited over again (and, of course, I haven't been).

As I rode the metro, the shame started to fade and be replaced by anger. Rage, even. How could she do this to me? It was completely inappropriate! I felt so, so angry! By the time I got to Laval, this too had faded, and I just felt weary. Weary of the life I was living, of the way people treated me, of being depressed. When I got to the car, my brother was there, too, and it turned out that everyone in my family thought I was wrong and should have had my phone on, and needed to do what my mother said. I felt so betrayed: I felt like no one in my family ever protected me from anyone else in my family, and I was all alone. I wanted to cry.

The next day, I went to work and realized that someone had to make the first step in repairing this mess, since my mother had decided she was still pissed off and not speaking to me. On my way out of the office, I texted her to say that, while I understood her perspective, what she did was unacceptable and I wouldn't tolerate it, and that she was never to do that to me again. She totally flipped out, telling me that I  was the wrong one, and everyone knew it, but that I'd find a way to save face with my friends, probably by lying to them and saying that she had a serious mental illness.

I couldn't take it. I just couldn't. It was such a hurtful and personal attack. I saw that she didn't understand how I was feeling at all, and didn't want to. She didn't see that there were boundaries, and I apparently wasn't able to enforce them. I was so unhappy, and so sad, and I didn't want to go on struggling so hard against my pain for nothing, just to be shot down. So I went straight to the store and bought my favorite cutting knife. I hadn't owned a serious knife like this in years, intended only for this, to hurt myself, to open my skin, to cut myself wide, to end my life with precise incisions. I felt like, even in this, I was giving my control over to someone else, and I didn't know how to get it back. I just knew that this was one straw too many - one weight too much - and I couldn't stand against the tide anymore.

When I told a shorter version of this story in my DBT therapy group as an example of an invalidating environment, there was an audible intake of breath and one 'eiiigh' when I got to the part about my mother phoning the party host to make me come home. In the back of my mind I'd always been thinking that I'd overreacted, that the situation wasn't that bad and that, really, I was the one in the wrong; since I'd made a mistake, I deserved to be punished by being humiliated. Sharing this story, I felt for the first time that maybe the way my family treats me, and has treated me, is not okay. It's really not okay. And maybe it's not my fault. And maybe that makes it okay to stand up for myself.

But I Get Up Again: Being Willing to Start Over (and over, and over, and over...)

In the face of disaster I tend to be pretty resilient: I stay calm, I do what needs to be done, and I get through it. Car accident? Okay: give a report, talk to the firemen, call the people who need to be called. Lose your job? Alright: get your paperwork together, visit the relevant government agencies, fill out all the forms, take advantage of every available service, and work out a job-seeking strategy. These things aren't disasters in the sense that a volcano or genocide are, but they did derail my life in some significant way. I somehow managed to cope with them, mostly because I knew I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and couldn't afford to let myself go to pieces.

Having said that, I have a remarkable capacity to catastrophize my failures, setbacks, and lapses as if they spell the end of the universe. Felt really down and ate too many muffins? I am going to be fat and disgusting forever. Sliced your arm up with a box-cutter? I will never be able to stop hurting myself and I don't deserve to live. Perform poorly on your monthly production report? I am terrible at my job and am going to get fired because I always fail at everything.

This is a truly spectacular skill because I know in my logical mind that these are not insurmountable obstacles. Bad stats this month? Lots of people get bad stats and so far no one has actually been fired. Eat all the muffins? Being fat isn't the worst thing in the world, and maybe right now you need the distraction more than being thin. My failures are also not necessarily as real as I think they are: actually, you only missed one of your targets, and although you've gained weight you're not really obese yet. 

And yet...THIS IS THE END OF THE UNIVERSE AND I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO COME BACK FROM IT.

My emotional mind is completely haywire with feelings of inadequacy, of worthlessness, of despair, disappointment, and the nagging conviction that I am bad. I feel like this is the end of the world because these are things that have gone wrong because of me, because of what I've done and haven't done, and I know I'm at fault. I know I'm failing myself and my own values. And I tell my history to myself in a narrative that flows from one personal failure to the next, weaving a story of falling, and falling, and falling again. Is it any wonder that I take every mistake as a sign of the inevitable apocalypse when I carry around an autobiography of my own ruin that I reference at every wrong turn?

Somewhere in between emotion and logic lies the mystical country of the wise mind where the two come together and create a space of integrity, self-awareness, and personal growth. 

All the muffins in the universe ended up in your stomach? Okay, so you did something you aren't proud of because you were trying to make yourself forget how bad you feel. Maybe you chose this particular thing because you watched your mother do it all your life. And yes, you're feeling like you've given up on your values because you behaved in a way that doesn't belong to you, that doesn't fit with who you are, and that is really just a new way of hurting yourself, of punishing yourself for having needs, vulnerabilities, and desires. 

Tomorrow, you can act differently.

You didn't get the greatest results in your production this month? Okay, so you're disappointed because you didn't perform as well as you have in the past. But you've been doing a different job more often and aren't getting as much practice as you used to. Most of your results are still above target, and you haven't suddenly become a slacker. You always do your best. Just because you grew up being told that only excellence is good enough doesn't mean this is actually true. Maybe you feel uncomfortable because your standards are unrealistic and prevent you from having to acknowledge that you're actually doing well.

Tomorrow, you can learn to value yourself based on something other than the worth which authority figures convey on you.

The truth is that everyone makes mistakes, and everyone messes up, and everyone behaves in ways that make them wish they could have a do-over (or some sort of time-travelling car). But not everyone thinks their slip-ups are the end of the world. And not everyone falls down and thinks to themselves there is no point in getting up off the floor because I will never, ever be able to do better than this. Not everyone says to themselves that they might as well keep going the way they're going or doing what they're doing because they're obviously trapped by it and can't get out. I do. But maybe I don't have to. 

I think there might be steps involved with this. Also, I just like using the bullet list button in my blog text box :)

• Acknowledge that you're having feelings about what went sideways (I am feeling disappointed because I got blood all over the floor again)
• Look at what happened and put it into a realistic perspective (I did cut myself. But that doesn't make me a failure, and that doesn't make me irredeemable, and that doesn't mean I don't deserve to live. It means I am in pain, and I made a mistake)
• Don't use your mistake as an excuse to make more mistakes (I soaked through a bunch of paper towels with my blood, but that doesn't mean I can keep going until the whole roll is gone. Just because I chose this one minute ago doesn't mean that I have to choose it again now)
• Have realistic expectations about your behavior (I started doing this a long time ago, and that means it will be a difficult habit to break. There will be setbacks. But that doesn't change my goals or my values or the fact that I am moving forward)
• Understand that the powerful dialectic between what you feel and what you know is offering you a precious opportunity to discover what you value (I really, really want to tear myself apart with my bare hands because I hate myself so much that I want my insides to be on my outsides so the pain will finally stop. But this isn't how people should be treated, and I am a person. I want to learn to love myself and take care of myself, so I can live a life worth living. The discomfort I feel as I'm trying creates a space where I can find a new way, and opens the path to change, and growth, and newness of life)
• Accept that the way you want to live may never be easy for you. It may never come naturally to you. It may never be automatic for me not to fantasize about knives when I'm hurting so badly that I can't find the words to express how much I feel like I'm dying inside. And yes, that sucks. And yes, that might be something I have to deal with for the rest of my life. It might not be fair. But it is the reality. 

It might never be easy. But that doesn't mean it's not worth choosing to get back up and start again, every day, even the days after I've messed up. It is still, always, no matter what has come before or what might come after, worth choosing.