I started therapy. I didn’t hit rock bottom though. This is an important detail to emphasize because I think most people assume you start therapy due to a catastrophic low. My situation is a little bit different. I think my life has been spinning in circles for a few years now. It feels very Sisyphean. I’ll push a rock to the top of the hill and it will hold its balance for a few seconds. I’ll enjoy the view, get some fresh air, and then just as quickly as I’ve taken my breath, the rock starts rolling back down.
It’s funny, trying to explain that I didn’t hit rock bottom while using a metaphor that involves a rock rolling to the bottom. But I promise this is not the case. It’s kind of the opposite actually. The thing is, I made it to the top of the hill and I enjoyed the fresh air and the view a little too much. When the rock slid back down, I decided I was sick of hanging at the bottom of a hill. My senses had changed. I wanted life to be smoother, a little softer.
My therapist seems particularly concerned with my formative years, my relationship with my parents, and whatever the fuck happened in Ohio. I buried those years in layers of dirt and left them behind, but she is curious and has been gently unearthing them. I think she’s the first person to take a detailed look at my younger years. Most people nod and listen in passing, but it’s an entirely different experience to have someone run a scalpel through those memories, to dissect what happened.
There’s a pretty crippling cycle of depression that lives at the heart of my life right now. I think I’m fine. I wake up, I go for a walk, enjoy the fresh air, and then slowly, bit by bit, my thoughts start to turn down precarious alleyways. Eventually I find myself fumbling through a black fog. Earlier today I watched my thoughts fall off, and my body started sinking with them. I went to soho to look at clothes and caught my face, frozen and long, staring back at me from a mirror. There’s something inside of me that I’m not seeing.
Jung writes well of depression and likens it to a woman in black. He says to invite her into your home, treat her like a guest, and listen to what she has to say. It’s weird. Since my life in New York started settling down, and in a way that has been positive and healthy, my younger years have been flashing inside of me. Last winter I had darker, more intense memories resurface. Recently I developed a weird craving for horror films. I want to watch Jeepers Creepers, Silence of the Lambs, Nightmare on Elm St. I’m not sure where this is all coming from, but like the plot of a horror film, what I thought I had left for dead and buried, seems to be very much alive.
a soft death 