I was overwhelmed. Ma had begun spending every hour of her day curled up in bed, yanking at her hair and sucking on her thumb. She had devolved into a wordless, infantilized victim, and I had no idea how to help. During one visit, I discovered her entire body was now ravaged with bright red bedsores.
Was this my fault? Did I really abandon my own mother? Maybe if I hadn’t gone to college, if I had stayed home and gotten a full-time job, she wouldn’t be so broken.
That was the night my random crying fits began. While showering I spaced out and found myself crying in a ball on the floor of the bathtub. Throughout the school week all I could think about was the sight of those bedsores. My mother’s body was beginning to fall apart along with her mind. I called Erica, hoping she could help alleviate some of the burden.
“She’s just being dramatic. Like she’s always been. Don’t fall for it, AJ.” She was in a rush to head out with her sorority friends and couldn’t talk long.
I was filled with rage and envy. I was so mad at her for writing off this ordeal as an act, as if I was wasting my time worrying. But I knew in my heart something was deeply wrong. I was also painfully jealous. Erica was enjoying the college experience and had been for two whole years. She was finally getting to act her age, and though she deserved every second of it, I was envious I couldn’t. I had grown increasingly isolated, every second spent only on schoolwork and momsitting.
I felt a crying fit coming on and hid inside the bathroom so my roommate wouldn’t see what a mess I was. Running the water, I collapsed onto the bathmat, while simultaneously making a mental note to yell at my roomie for never vacuuming. I felt helpless. There was no way I was strong enough to save my mother on my own. But why did I always have to be strong? For once, I just wanted to fall apart and have someone else pick up my tiny pieces.
I felt so alone. I wasn’t experiencing life the way other freshmen were. I could no longer take jobs on student films or attend club meetings, let alone spend time partying with my roommate. I was too busy mom-ing my mom.
Eventually, I became too busy to even sleep. With so much responsibility on my shoulders, my mind raced at night trying to find solutions. My insomnia returned stronger than ever. Some weeks I would spend a consecutive forty-eight hours awake. A fun side effect was once falling asleep while sitting at my desk in class. My giant melon of a head just crashed forward, forehead first onto the hard surface in front of me. My classmates’ amused gasps woke me up.
But insomnia felt like a minor quirk to my personality. For the most part, I felt like I was doing my best to keep it together. I did begin exhibiting some odd behavior, though, besides face-planting in class. One afternoon I prepared to walk downstairs to the cafeteria to pack up a plate for the day. My financial aid package didn’t provide me with a generous meal plan, only allowing me to swipe my card ten times a week. With no money to spend at the grocery store, I would have to make every trip to the cafeteria really count.
I would, naturally, get a take-out box because hungrily eating alongside hundreds of rich kids started to make me nervous, like every eye was fixed on me. Like every nose could sniff out the scent of poverty on me. I would ignore the judgmental looks as I piled three meals’ worth of food onto one plate and scurry back upstairs to the safety of my dorm room. I would store the extra food in my small refrigerator for dinner that night and eat at my desk where no one could make me feel small.
One day as I readied to make the trip downstairs, I stopped as my hand reached for the doorknob. I pulled it back and sat on my bed. Do I really need to eat today? There were so many people downstairs, so many eyes that could burn into the flesh on my face. I thought about how hungry I was and decided, Yes, of course I need to stock up on food for the day.
So I stood up, walked toward the heavy metal door, reached out for the handle, and immediately jerked my hand back. Turning around, I walked back to my bed and sat down. I crossed my legs and began to shake them. Maybe I didn’t need food after all. It’s just food. It just fuels your body and gives you energy and…Oh God, am I really going to starve myself to avoid human contact?
I rushed the door, motivated to kick myself in the ass and stop acting so ridiculously, but as I reached the door I was frozen with fear. I could not, for the life of me, find the strength to open the door and enter the world. I was safe in these two hundred square feet of isolation. Opening the door meant seeing people, talking to people, being judged for scooping too much mashed potatoes onto my plate, listening to the card swipe guy tell me to smile more, walking past the lobby’s security guards who probably thought I was a loiterer, and Son of a bitch, I can’t breathe!
And so, over trying to decide to turn a door handle, I had another panic attack. Except this time I had no nebulizer to strap on my mouth, and no one around to calm me down. I turned the shower on as cold as possible and jumped in fully clothed. After a few freezing minutes, I had everything under control.
A few weeks later, while running to get to a class on time, I stopped in my tracks, distracted by a poster pinned to a bulletin board. DON’T JUMP! the poster implored. It listed the names and numbers of several school counselors who were available if anyone needed someone to talk to about their problems.
At the time, NYU had tragically lost several students to suicide. Over the past few years, almost a dozen students had jumped from their tall dorm room windows or over the railing in the high-rise library to their deaths. As a result, all the dorm room windows had been configured to only crack open a few inches, and the library railings had been barricaded. It made for a somber reminder of how stressful college, especially in a busy city, can be for some kids.
As I read the poster I thought of my mother. I wished I could find someone for her to talk to. But if I couldn’t convince her to seek out help, maybe I could seek it out for her. Maybe by just relaying my mother’s problems to a counselor I could be given advice on how to help her. Jotting down one of the phone numbers, I felt a small sense of excitement. Perhaps I had found the answers I was looking for.
—
Sitting down with a counselor for the first time was an awkward experience. I had talked to a guidance counselor in high school, but that was primarily about applying to college and why there were so many curse words in my poetry. I had never locked eyes with someone who was so interested in finding out what was bothering me.
In a way, I felt like I was ignoring everything my parents had taught me. We weren’t supposed to reach out to anyone for help. We weren’t supposed to admit there was a weakness inside of us. I felt like I was betraying my mother by exposing her secrets to a stranger. But I didn’t think I had any other option.
I kept trying to explain that this visit wasn’t really for me, it was for my mom, but the counselor didn’t seem to pay that any mind. Instead he kept asking me questions about myself. “How does that make you feel?” “What do you think that means?” “How is this affecting you?” I told him about my panic attacks and my insomnia, and I mentioned the sporadic crying but tried to explain that these were all just normal reactions to stress.
“They’re not normal,” he plainly put it. “I think you’re experiencing depression. I would like to refer you to a psychiatrist.”
I almost stormed out. How dare he assume I was broken. I was just trying to help someone else who really was falling apart, and maybe I wasn’t handling it so well. This guy had known me for an hour’s time and wanted to deem me crazy.
But as the session went on, I began to actually listen.
“Depression is not something you choose. It is a chemical imbalance, which can sometimes be hereditary. If your mother is indeed experiencing these symptoms, there’s a chance you can be prone to them as well.” He was so calm and matter-of-fact. I was a smart kid, but somehow I hadn’t connected those dots. With certainty, I had decided my mother was experiencing some sort of mental illness. But if I would’ve taken the time, I could’ve noticed my own reflection in my mother’s weary eyes.
“If you have a deep cut, you go to a doctor and get a stitch. If you have a cold, you go to a doctor and get medicine. So what makes having something wrong with your brain any different?”
No one had ever explained it to me like that. So simply. So nonjudgmentally. I felt like an idiot for wasting so much time being too ashamed to recognize what was happening in my own head. For so long I had denied what I was feeling out of fear. I didn’t want to accept that something could be wrong with me. I didn’t want to feel different. All I needed was for someone to explain that there didn’t have to be any shame in taking care of yourself.
But now I needed to figure out where to start. Convincing my parents to see a doctor would be an uphill battle. Convincing myself was even harder. But nevertheless, I made an appointment with the psychiatrist he recommended. I was terrified of what other dark spots on my brain this doctor would shine a light on. But the school was willing to pay for the sessions, and getting free treatment seemed like an offer, no matter how terrifying, I couldn’t refuse.
IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE
The first time I went to see a psychiatrist I was dressed like Carmen Sandiego and was just as determined to not be found. Walking into the waiting room, wearing a hat lowered so dramatically it covered my eyes, I was on edge and deeply embarrassed. What if I saw someone I knew? Would that mean they were crazy too? Should we politely ignore each other? Or was there some sort of existing acknowledgment in the psychiatric community, like a gang sign we could flash to each other? Maybe it was pointing to the side of the head and making a circling motion with the index finger while crossing the eyes.
I was sure the office receptionist, growing numb to the revolving door of Nutter Butters, was greeting me with apathy. When she handed me a clipboard without making eye contact and robotically instructed me to “Fill this out and give it to the doctor,” I instead heard “Oh, great, another Looney Tune. Is Nurse Ratched on call today?”
Trying to get a lay of the land, I scanned the empty waiting room, reading every cheesy advertisement for antidepressants. Once I get this depression under control, I’ll finally be able to jump rope in an open field, I thought. Between the cold receptionist and the overwhelming amount of trite “Life is better on drugs” flyers, I wanted to bolt. But entering the psychiatrist’s office, decorated in soft white tones, potted orchids, and two plushy couches, I calmed. Noticing a box of tissues resting on a coffee table between the love seats, I snorted, thinking it was sort of presumptuous and honestly a little vain to believe each patient would fall into a sobbing revelatory mess in his company.
The doctor entered the room with a smile. He was warm and welcoming, which, considering how the nerves I was feeling made my body uncontrollably shake, was clearly essential.
“How would you describe your family?” was the first can of worms he asked me to open. I thought about the question for close to thirty seconds, opened my mouth, and immediately imploded in tears. Perhaps I would be in need of that tissue box after all.
For the next forty minutes we discussed my unconventional upbringing and the pressure I was still feeling. Going to a school counselor, though helpful, had ultimately felt like a sterile, clinical experience. “You are sick. Go get help” was the essential theme of the visit. And that was what I was expecting out of this session as well. But something about being in a cozy room across from a person who genuinely wanted to help was surprisingly comforting.
The psychiatrist suggested I see a therapist to continue exploring all the feelings that were bubbling beneath the surface. I hadn’t realized that a psychiatrist’s main focus is diagnosis and treatment. I would have to move forward with a therapist if I wanted to focus on sorting out my muddled mind. He officially diagnosed me with depression and wrote a prescription for antidepressants.
Leaving his office, I felt a sense of relief. I had a tangible enemy to fight now. This was probably what my mother was suffering from as well. And though finally having some answers made me feel ten pounds lighter, I was brought back down to earth by the impossibility of my next steps. It was hard enough having to walk into one cold office and bare my goose-bumped soul, but having to do it for the third time with a whole new medical professional was a lot to ask of someone just starting to experiment with treatment.
Even more terrifying was the small plastic bottle I picked up from a corner pharmacy. The tiny pills rattled around inside of it like a musical instrument. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being medicated. Having a father who had been arrested multiple times for drug possession, finding only Budweiser in the fridge while my stomach growled, and witnessing firsthand the scary altered states of users had made me resentful toward any kind of drugs and alcohol. At the age of ten I had promised myself I would never touch them, and at eighteen I had stayed true to that promise. But could a prescription given by a medical professional, a stitch to an unseen wound, be thrown into the same category? I wasn’t sure.
Tackling the easier task first, I made an appointment with the therapist the psychiatrist had recommended. And thank whatever god might be real that I did.
First of all, the therapist’s receptionist was much kinder. The waiting room was decorated with hilarious inspirational art, not unlike the “Hang in there!” kitten-holding-on-to-a-tree-limb poster I have as my laptop screensaver. The therapist was quirky and sweet, and again, I felt safe.
Giving therapy a chance was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I had never had someone’s complete focus and attention before. I had never been asked how I felt about being in the situations I had been dragged through in life. For the first time I felt like I was allowed to break down. I didn’t have to be the strong leader of the Mendez clan. I didn’t have to hold everything together. I handed the reins over to someone else and allowed myself to melt into an almost euphoric defenselessness. I found the one place on earth it was safe to let my guard down.
The therapist suggested I start a journal. Each week he planned on giving me a different essay assignment I would bring into the office to read aloud. He said it would be like an exercise for my emotions, which were apparently a little pudgy. The homework ranged from writing “a letter to my past self,” to “a letter to my future daughter,” to “a list of things I wish I could yell at my mother,” to “a list of things I am ashamed of.” At first this seemed just as corny as the inspirational quotes framed on the wall behind him, but I actually came to find them surprisingly helpful. I also enjoyed cutting out letters from magazines to tape a hodgepodged “DIARY OF AN UNFIT MIND” across my journal’s cover like a serial killer. It felt good to connect to writing again. Filling an empty page had always been my own form of therapy, except now I was the subject. After a few sessions, I could feel myself growing calmer and stronger. It was almost too good to be true. Would it be this easy to fix my mother?
“Is this all it takes? A self-help journal, some cry sessions, and one day I’ll wake up feeling normal?” I asked the kind-eyed man sitting across from me.
“That’s a loaded question. I’m not sure how you want me to answer it.”
“Lie to me.”
I thought therapy would not only help me, but more important provide me with a convincing argument to take back to my mother, persuading Ma of her need for treatment. I would find a way to fix her before she was too far gone.
But soon I would realize I was too late.
“You need to come home,” Erica frantically said the second I picked up the phone. “Ma overdosed.”
Shame is the one thing that prevents us from walking through a supermarket stark-ass nude when we feel like we’re having a really good ab day. It is what stops us from telling even our closest confidant of that sex
dream we had about Hilary from Love It or List It. And though shame can protect us from extreme embarrassment, it can be detrimentally inhibitive. Personally, I lost all my shame the second I had to participate in a limbo contest on international television. And since then there is not a damn thing that has the power to embarrass me. I am in charge of my own shame. In the interest of full disclosure and proving myself right, here is a complete list of things I should probably be more embarrassed about, or at the very least have the good sense to never tell anyone.
1. Chopsticks are beyond my comprehension. No matter how hard I try to master them, I always end up looking like an arthritic victim of an arm-wrestling accident.
2. Swimming will surely be the death of me. I can’t swim because during my formative years the only pool available to me was a public one our local newspaper proudly described as “back in business now that police have recovered all hypodermic needles.”
3. I was the first in line at my local theater to see Pokémon: The First Movie on opening night. While wearing an unlicensed knockoff Pikachu T-shirt. I was also first in line to see Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie, while wearing a “blue eyes white dragon” glow-in-the-dark T-shirt. Because I’m a grade-A gangster.
4. I believe technology has a vendetta against me. It’s mostly just the automatic stuff, e.g., auto-flush toilets, motion sensor faucets, sliding doors at the supermarket entrance. I am convinced that they purposefully refuse to acknowledge my existence and that they receive a perverse pleasure out of making me feel like an idiot and/or Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.
Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules Page 10