by Dave Hill
Adding to all this weirdness, of course, was my mother, who struggled to understand what was going on with me. Hoping to knock out the problem, she showed up in my room one day with a rosary in her hand, a not entirely surprising Catholic-lady move.
“This will help,” she assured me before pressing it in my hand and patting my head.
“But Mom, my therapist says I have OCD,” I told her. “I really don’t think reciting a bunch of Hail Marys and Our Fathers over and over again is a good move for me right now. It’d be like throwing water on a drowning man.”
“Says who?”
“Says me mostly. But I bet my therapist would agree.”
“Just hang on to it anyway.”
I appreciated the gesture, but at the time the only thing the rosary definitely helped with was confusing the cops when they pulled me over a few days later ostensibly for running a stop sign but ultimately to search my car for drugs. My hair was long and I looked like hell so I guess they decided to just roll the dice and hope they found something to bust me for. (In case you’re wondering, aside from the rosary, they did find plenty of drugs, but that’s only because I had started taking my Zoloft prescription with me everywhere.)
Run-ins with the cops aside, I slowly began to settle into my new life as a mentally ill person living with his parents. On the surface, it didn’t seem all that bad. I dragged myself out of bed at five thirty each morning, unable to stare at the ceiling any longer, and sat in the kitchen waiting for my parents to finally come downstairs by seven o’clock or so, which felt like an eternity. Then I’d watch them eat breakfast and I’d pretend to do the same with an old piece of toast or whatever they happened to push in front me. After that, I’d usually go back to staring at the ceiling in my room for a few hours before retiring to the Barcalounger in the family room to watch television until midnight. Then I’d go upstairs to toss and turn for a few hours before starting it all over again the next morning. From a distance, it probably just looked like I was on a shitty vacation.
“Blanche was up to her old tricks again last night,” I’d say to my mom in passing.
“Yeah, well she’s nothing but a tramp if you ask me,” she’d respond.
“The biggest, Mom. The biggest.”
Aside from my steadily dropping weight (a bonus in my case as I had been on a strict Ben & Jerry’s diet in the months prior), the only outward sign that something was seriously wrong was my clothing. Depression, anxiety, and OCD had rendered me a sartorially challenged individual. Suddenly, an old button-down shirt and a moth-eaten sweater vest I’d found in a garbage bag in the attic seemed like a perfectly reasonable ensemble to not only wear every day, but also to sleep in at night. My mother capitalized on my compromised state by talking me into wearing almost every article of clothing she’d gotten me for Christmas over the past ten years or so.
“David, remember those gray and tan wool slacks I got on sale for you last year?” she’d ask. “I bet they’d look great with that maroon turtleneck and your high school letterman jacket.”
“Anything you say, Mom,” I’d mumble.
I was so defenseless, she probably could have talked me into putting on clown makeup. Still, I was so caught up with my own thoughts I no longer recognized the importance of personal flair. As a result, photos of me from this period remain perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.
Meanwhile, my therapist, Mark, had given me some homework to do. As he explained it, my OCD had kicked in as a way to deal with my anxiety. OCD and anxiety teamed up to cause my depression. To help me better understand things, Mark wanted me to pick up a book on OCD called Stop Obsessing! and read a few chapters before we met again.
“Do you have a book called Stop Obsessing!?” I asked an employee at the local bookstore.
“I’m sorry,” he told me. “We don’t have it at the moment.”
“Do you have a book a called Stop Obsessing!?” I asked him again two seconds later.
I don’t think the guy at the store found it very funny, but at the time I thought it was pure gold. And possibly a sign that the regular me was still in there somewhere.
I had also begun to subject myself to daily “worry periods,” something both Mark and that OCD book I finally got strongly recommended. The worry periods were designed to help me gain some control over my obsessive thoughts, the nature of which seemed to change on an almost daily basis. One day I might be convinced I’d gotten mad cow disease from a corn dog, the next I’d worry that I might accidentally stab my entire family with a wayward butter knife at the next holiday gathering2 or perhaps do something else that would make it so there was no way in hell anyone would ever give me that bagboy job I still hadn’t entirely ruled out. And while I never developed physical compulsions, I had a habit of creating mind exercises to try to distract myself from my obsessions. One of my favorites was to type out the lyrics to classic rock songs in my head. I’d picture the keystrokes on the typewriter and everything. Ridiculous maybe, but that’s the name of the game when it comes to OCD.
Each worry period consisted of locking myself in a room at the same time each day for between twenty minutes and an hour—depending on what I thought I could handle—and attempting to do nothing but sit there and think the darkest, most apocalyptic thoughts possible about whatever was terrorizing me the most that day.
“I am definitely going to be kidnapped by Shriners,” I might tell myself one day. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I heard one of those tiny little cars pull into the driveway just now. There is no escape. And I will be forced to wear one of those weird hats.”
No one suggested I pull my hair, send everything on top of my dresser crashing to the floor, or scream “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” the whole time, but some days I would throw that stuff in anyway just to make it my own.
The idea behind the worry periods was to embrace the hopelessness, to really let it make me its bitch for a while. And, by assigning a designated time to freak out about something and then try to do nothing but freak out about that one thing only during that designated time, I would eventually get to the point where I would no longer get so worked up over some bullshit or another that I’d find myself rushing to puke in the bathroom of a Jewish deli down the street from my parents’ house before my corned beef and latkes had even shown up to the table. It’s just hitting me now that it was all a bit weird. Even so, the worry periods were surpisingly helpful. Supposedly brain scans of people who have undergone such therapy have shown that you can actually change the physical makeup of your brain if you do it long enough. Sometimes I wonder if I could use similar techniques to physically alter myself in other ways. The possibilities are endless.
After a few weeks of pills, therapy, and worry periods, I decided to take my own additional steps toward a better, less deranged tomorrow, the biggest of which was to get a job. Mental illness or not, the thought of working for the man had always given me reason enough to be depressed. But—given my druthers at the time—I would have just lain in bed all day biting my toenails, drooling on my pillow, and practicing my heavy breathing, so I figured having to show up for a job might keep me from doing that so much.
Partly out of convenience and partly so I would feel extra bad about ever calling in “sick,” I gave up my part-time-assistant-manager-at-the-grocery-store dreams and instead took a job working for my friend Tony’s dad’s landscaping company. I never thought of myself as a wimp, but I also wasn’t the first guy you should call if you needed a giant wheelbarrow full of gravel pushed up the side of a steep hill. I figured struggling with that sort of thing as well as any lawncare equipment I’d be asked to handle would help distract me from whatever was happening in my head. After all, it’s hard to give neurosis the attention it screams for when one false move could send your big toe flying into the pachysandra. My plan worked, too. Never underestimate the healing power of a Weedwhacker. And don’t even get me started on a leaf blower—it is the hammer of the gods.
Despite all the therapy,
the Zoloft, and even the leaf blower, it was still a long time before I felt like I was no longer at risk of changing my name to Sparkles and moving into a group home where I’d be required to wear pajamas, mittens, and a helmet at all times. Fortunately, I never really felt suicidal. Sure, there were plenty of days when being dead had its appeal, but when depression is at its worst, suicide, for many people (including me thankfully), just feels like it would take way too much time and energy. Getting yourself to change the channel on the television is hard enough. Who has time to go to the hardware store or CVS for death supplies? It’s just too much of a scheduling hassle.
Gradually, however, as promised by the medical community, I started to experience tiny windows of seminormalcy where I’d not only have renewed interest in things like ice hockey, girls, and heavy metal but, perhaps more important, restored hatred of things like jam bands, people who wear sweatpants on airplanes, and the unpredictable coming and going of the McRib.3 These windows got bigger and bigger over time, too. And while I would occasionally find myself seemingly back at batshit crazy square one, it didn’t take quite as long to start feeling better again. It was kind of like being the pilot of a shitty airplane—the ride never quite felt smooth, but as long as I kept the engine running it seemed like I might be able to keep the thing in the air awhile longer, even if it meant coughing from fumes the whole way. My outfits slowly began to improve, too.
I was also able to get my OCD under control in a few months and all these years later it seems to only really make itself known in the form of me checking to make sure I locked my apartment door a little more often than I would like. But it took a good five or six years before I felt like I really had much of a handle on any of that anxiety or depression bullshit. It still pays me a visit every once in a while, usually after a perfect storm of stress, travel, lack of sleep, and a few too many open bars knocks me on my ass just long enough for it to show up like that annoying relative all over again. And, as unwelcome as it is, at least it comes with the surprising side effect of making real life problems like death, restraining orders, or the advance I got to write this book not necessarily any less upsetting, but, by comparison, refreshing in their tangibility. Also, like most things in life, it doesn’t take long to find others familiar with experiencing an occasional case of the crazies. After all, Norman Bates was right: “We all go a little mad sometimes.” It’s nice to have someone you can call to talk you down from the proverbial or literal ledge and for you to be able to do the same for them.
“Hey, it’s Dave,” I’ll say over the phone to a similarly afflicted friend or relative.
“Hey, Dave. How’s it going?”
“Not too good. I think I caught herpes from the StairMaster yesterday.”
“Again?”
Despite what all those made-for-TV movies, sappy commercials, and other things that don’t skimp on having sad piano music in the background might tell you, I don’t think dealing with depression makes someone a “survivor.” There’s only two groups of people in the world deserving of that title and one of them is Beyoncé. People dealing with clinical depression don’t deserve any special treatment, either, at least not any more than someone with a bad case of the flu, chronic back pain, or even two broken hips and a third testicle. But they do deserve the same acknowledgment and insurance coverage that all those other people get, no questions asked. (Even the three testicle guy. You’d think he’d be bragging instead of complaining but whatever.)
What the person suffering from depression doesn’t deserve, however, is pity. Not now, not ever. Unless, of course, that pity ends up leading to sex, in which case I’m all for it. In fact, I’m sitting here right now and I feel absolutely worse than ever.
Northeastern Ohio Velvet
When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, my favorite thing about Christmas was Santa Claus, that mysterious and bearded old man who traveled the entire globe in a single evening, breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night, eating whatever food might have been lying around, and leaving behind gifts of all shapes and sizes, some of which weren’t exactly what the recipient had asked for,1 but whatever. And despite his on-the-go lifestyle, Santa still found time to sit in a big armchair and pose for pictures for hours at a time at the department store down the street from my house. I could go there, sit on his lap, and tell him exactly what I wanted for Christmas each year until he pushed me off his lap and signaled for the next kid in line to come over.
I realize my affection for Santa Claus didn’t make me unique. Still, I was pretty sure I was the only kid who really “got” Santa Claus. Even so, as eventually happens to us all, one day I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t “real.” Rumors already had been percolating for a few months in the second grade when I happened upon my sister Libby in my parents’ bedroom. Libby was just three years older but for some reason was allowed unsupervised access to the Scotch tape and scissors, wrapping a gift I had very specifically asked Santa for that year. Libby seemed to have her mitts in just about everything, so it didn’t raise that much of a red flag with me at first. I just assumed Santa had farmed out some of his busy work locally and my sister, an overachiever, seemed as likely a candidate as any. (My mom did that sort of thing with Libby all the time. Why should Santa be any different?) Libby, however, gave me too much credit, and assumed the jig was up.
“Sorry, David,” she said while putting the finishing touches on wrapping up an Evel Knievel stunt cycle. “There’s no Santa Claus.”
She tried to soften the blow by telling me that what really mattered was the spirit of Christmas and also some of the Jesus stuff we learned in school. It was a lot to take in, but in the end I figured, whatever—I’d still get all the presents and sit on the lap of some guy dressed as Santa Claus once a year. Everything would be just fine.2
But regardless of whether or not Santa Claus was real, I eventually learned that there comes a day when some people think you’re “too old” to be sitting on Santa’s lap. (The reasons for which I struggle to comprehend even as I type this years later.) And it was at this point, I guess by the time I hit my twenties or so, that I realized if I still wanted to experience the magic of Santa Claus each holiday season, my only choice was to simply become Santa Claus. To let the student become the goddamn master.
And so I made that my goal. Unfortunately becoming Santa Claus wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Most of the guys playing Santa at the mall, for example, hold on to that job like it’s a pair of season tickets to the Yankees behind home plate. But my time finally came during the holiday season of 1996 when I was living in Cleveland. Some friends were organizing a Christmas fund-raiser for the local public theater and insisted that I come. That’s when a lightbulb turned on in my head.
“Sure, I’ll come to your party,” I told them, “but only if I can be Santa Claus.”
“We already have a Santa Claus,” they replied.
“I said I’ll come to your party, but only if I can be Santa Claus,” I repeated while staring straight ahead into the distance.
It was a bit harsh, maybe, but playing hardball paid off because, as fate would have it, my friends had just replaced the theater’s Santa suit and the old costume was still lying around somewhere. So they eventually gave in and suggested that I could wear the old Santa suit, and be more of a roving Santa, the kind that just gives people a quick Santa fix on their way to the bar or restroom, while the jerk in the new suit would sit and pose for pictures and stuff. It wasn’t exactly the Santa debut I had hoped for but I knew this was my shot, so I accepted.
“You won’t regret this,” I told them as I marched away.
I swung by the theater a few days before the party to pick up the costume. It didn’t take long to figure out why they had decided to replace it. It was an old, red velvet suit with white trim that was so soiled and matted you’d swear it had been ripped from a corpse, a World War II bunker, or both. There were innumerable holes in it—presumably caused by an attac
k of some sort—and the beard had turned a urine yellow, seemingly half from age and half from whatever Santa got up to on break. And the smell—it told a story, a story I never wanted to know. It could kill crops.
Despite its compromised state, the Santa suit instantly transformed me as soon as I tried it on. No longer was I just some guy from Cleveland named Dave who might still live with his parents. Instead I was this magical, jolly, glowing Santa Claus, the kind of Santa everyone would want to be around, the kind of Santa that lady had absolutely no good reason to yell at for changing his clothes in the parking lot.
The big fund-raiser was still a couple of days away but I had a few Christmas parties to swing by before then, so I figured it might not be a bad idea to take the Santa suit for a little test drive. And I was glad I did because here’s what I learned pretty much instantly: being Santa Claus is awesome. I felt dashing, bold, and really, really warm all over. As I got into my mom’s car with the suit on, I could only imagine the kind of electricity Santa, the actual Santa, must feel every time he hops into his sleigh, grabs those reins, and tells those reindeer to hit it. And don’t even get me started on what it’s like to watch a fellow driver slowly discover Saint Nick sitting there next to him at a stoplight. I’ve never gotten around to smoking crack, but I doubt it could be much better.
My first stop was the house party of my friend Pat’s brother. I parked my car out front and slowly walked up the driveway, bracing myself with each ice-crunching step for the awesomeness of what was about to happen.
“Merry Christmas, everybody!” I bellowed as I walked through the front door.
“Santa!” they all cheered.
Every man, woman, and child in the place lit up with excitement at the very sight of me and it felt great. Really, really great. It was like I was Superman, Big Bird, and Barbra Streisand all rolled into one—everyone wanted to be around me, pose for pictures with me, and even sit on my lap. The rush was incredible, like getting a prostate exam in the middle of a roller-coaster ride at a women’s prison—the kind of thrill you never see coming in a million, trillion years.