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I was twenty, and I was depressed. Standing in the living room alone, cordless phone smashed to my ear on an April Monday at 3:00 P.M.
“KJHK, this is Mark with Metal Mondays.”
“Hi. I’d like to request a song.”
“OK, what song?”
“‘Thong Song.’ Give me some of that Spring Break flavor.”
“Stop fucking calling me.”
I’d been depressed before, but this was different. Better. And much worse.
It was better in that, as far as I could tell, I was acting normal. I was still going to class, still working. Playing soccer, spending time with friends. But this was also the first time in my life I was scared of myself. Thinking the type of things, objectively, I knew I shouldn’t be thinking. Dark thoughts in the daylight. Darker ones at night.
Last year had been manic. Not clinically manic (which I’ve never been), but manic, nonetheless. The bright, glittery newness of my suddenly autonomous world. A series of dorm-life highs, late nights, open mics, explorations and adventures. COLLEGE, in fucking capital letters. Like the t-shirt.
Sophomoric, I moved into an apartment with three friends. Calling in to the college radio station on Metal Mondays was Adam’s idea, but I was the only one who had the guts to go through with it. We all stood together in the living room, a September afternoon, holding in our laughter, while I dialed the number. I can’t tell you why we chose “Thong Song.” The DJ squawked at me, something expectedly outraged about respecting the format and the genre. “What’s more Metal than Sisqo?” I asked. He hung up.
We made it through the fall semester unscathed, four people living virtually and sometimes literally on top of one another, with a rotating cast of friends who came by to do typically college, arty things. Drink. Watch documentaries. Feel important. I made the call to Metal Mondays around my roommates two more times. It was funny, but not funny enough that I wanted to do it every week.
In January, I turned twenty, and school started again. I hadn’t been anything but happy for over a year and a half, and I felt like I may have finally outgrown my depression, which, in its sourcelessness, had always felt silly and childish. It would be the first of many times in my life I’ve incorrectly made the assumption.
The sadness came back in early February. Walking home from class. On the steps behind the Chancellor’s house. In the past, depression had crawled up my leg like a vine. Small tendrils of unhappiness that hindered my movement, grasping calm and insistent at my arms and torso.
This time, it was a fist. I sat down on the curb and cried. The cobalt blue gel-case on my iPod was electric in the sunlight. It was unseasonably warm and would be for two weeks.
I started crying a lot. In bathrooms, mostly. Between classes or at work. Occasionally late at night. I borrowed a needle from Angela and carried it in my wallet, sliding it into the the meat between the index and middle finger on my left hand whenever I felt like the crying just wasn’t going to stop.
The sadness had a voice. It would talk to me, casual and indifferent, cutting, almost cruel, but never opinionated or suggestive. It was observant in a way that verged on objective. Horrible, but trustworthy. Conscience without kindness. We would sit together and read through my journal. “This is immature,” the sadness told me. And it was right.
The first Monday in March, I found myself listening to the radio after I got off of work. I picked up the phone without thinking and called.
“KJHK, this is Mark with Metal Mondays.”
“Hi. I’d like to request a song.”
“You like to make other people unhappy,” the sadness told me, after the DJ hung up. And it was right.
I started stealing from the grocery store on Mass Street. Saying shitty things to people I didn’t know. Throwing apples at cars that drove too fast down Kentucky. Calling the radio station every Monday, faking voices so that the DJ wouldn’t hang up on me outright.
“OK, what song?”
“‘Thong Song.’ Give me some of that Spring Break Flavor.”
CLICK.
The crying didn’t stop. Sitting in the bathroom at work, I poked the sewing needle into the space behind my left kneecap, until only the eye was visible. I dared myself to let it sit there. Then pulled it out. “The pain makes you feel important,” the sadness told me. And it was right.
I stole scissors off a desk at the paper, the blades gummy and dull from cutting packing tape. I split the handle and used the halved sides to methodically scrape the skin off the back of my right calf in layers. I punched myself over and over in the thigh as hard as I could, waited for it to bruise, then poked the bruise with the needle and squeezed. I took 50 ibuprofen and was disappointed when nothing happened except for mild diarrhea.
The sadness and I talked a lot about suicide. What ways were clean, what ways were showy, what ways were statistically successful, what ways were off-limits thanks to famous people, and what ways were the just cries for help. “You keep thinking about suicide because you think it makes you interesting,” the sadness told me. And it was right.
I stopped sleeping, sometimes for days. I cleaved to the ritual of class and work and exercise. Crying and punching and scraping. Crashing on the weekends. Calling the radio station on Mondays. The needle in my wallet.
The second week of May, I went to the student health center after class to talk to a doctor. I hadn’t slept in four days and my left big toe was infected. The week before, I’d removed an ingrown toenail with an exacto knife I stole from the pile of art supplies in Johan’s room. The doctor gave me antibiotics for the infection and a referral to a counselor. “You don’t want to talk to her,” the sadness told me. And it was right.
The insomnia eventually broke me. The Friday after I went to the doctor, I fell asleep at 1:00 A.M. and didn’t wake up for 17 hours. Missed class. Missed work. I assume I got fired; I never went back. Saturday night, Adam slipped a note under my door. Sunday morning, I opened it. Next door. If you want to talk. “You don’t want to talk to him, either,” the sadness told me. And it was right.
I lay in bed, window cracked, listening to the radio. Tallying songs I knew and didn’t know side-by-side in my journal. I practiced things that felt important. Holding my breath. Screaming without making a sound. Pulling hair from my thigh. Throwing a coffee mug into the air and letting it fall with dull thud on my ribs. Only getting up only to tricklepiss brown urine into the mouth of a Diet Coke bottle. Eventually, more sleep.
The gray Monday dawn and the small gossip of field birds woke me. I had been in bed for 78 hours.
In the soft morning light, the sadness looked beautiful. Sitting on the carpet next to my closet, silent, leaning forward, its knees drawn up to its chest. It hadn’t spoken since Sunday. I looked at it questioningly, but it stayed quiet. It just raised one eyebrow and shrugged, as if to say “You don’t even know what you want to ask.” And it was right.
So I got up.
I wish I could say there was more to it than that. That the timing was better. More serendipitous. More movie-magical. Or that I understood the why. But this actually happened, so it wasn’t, and I don’t.
Depression doesn’t work that way. At least, not for me. There is no almanac for my sadness. It can be tracked but not predicted. A tornado on the plains.
Seven days later, I was sitting on the sticky green vinyl of a chair in Papa Keno’s. I had cried a few times that week, but not as much. The scrape from the scissors on the back of my leg was starting to heal. So was my toe. I’d even talked with Adam.
I was spitting out a bite of too-hot pizza when I heard it coming through the speakers. The opening strings. I looked at my watch. Sisqo’s voice. 2:00 P.M. “Thong Song.” At the start of Metal Mondays.
He only played the first 30 seconds. But it was enough.
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