My father’s death didn’t affect me the way I thought it might. I didn’t feel relief or sadness or even happiness. I felt nothing. Not numbness, but simply nothing at all. But in hindsight I might have been fooling myself, ignoring the pain his death really caused me. Our last chance to make things right had passed, forever, which might have affected me far more than I let on to anyone, including myself.
I continued to blame myself for our dysfunctional relationship—and the one man who might have convinced me otherwise was now gone. As my depression deepened, my long-dormant impulse to cut or burn myself resurfaced. Freud used to say depression was anger turned inward against yourself, and my response to my dad’s death might have been proof.
I also had suicidal thoughts pop up again while I was driving. I could hit a tree or a lamp, I thought, or drown myself in a roadside lake, and that would be it. What made things progressively worse was that I wasn’t doing anything to address these issues: no therapy, no medication, no acknowledgment that I was doing anything but gliding along, leading a perfect life.
By December of 2009, a few weeks before Christmas, my façade finally cracked under its own weight. I went to see our family doctor, Dr. Michael Gerdis, for a checkup. He’d known me for almost two decades, so as soon as he saw me he didn’t need medical tests to know something was off.
“John, you don’t look right.”
I didn’t pull any punches. “To be honest,” I said, “I’m feeling kinda down.”
“In what way?”
I thought about it for a moment, then decided to tell the truth. “I really don’t feel like going on.” Even I was a bit surprised to hear those words come out of my mouth.
He looked at me carefully. “You realize that when you say that, I should send you directly to the hospital.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You promise me you’re fine?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t satisfied. He left the room and returned with a slip of paper. “I can tell something isn’t right, so I want you to visit this place, Westchester Medical Center, that has a psychiatric unit. Promise me you’ll go.”
I promised I would. As soon as I left his office I went directly to the WMC, met with a social worker, and told her the same thing: “I don’t feel like going on anymore.”
I wasn’t saying I wanted to kill myself. I was saying I was worn out. I didn’t want to keep doing this: waking up every day, already tired, constantly struggling to keep going, with little hope I’d ever get much better. It was exhausting, with no end in sight.
Hearing me say this, she summoned a psychiatrist, who asked me a lot of the same questions. Then he asked a new one: “Do you feel like you’re a threat to yourself?”
“No.”
“But you’ve just told two professionals that you don’t feel like going on.”
“I just don’t feel like doing this anymore,” I repeated. “I’m tired of this.”
While the doctors stepped outside to consult with each other, Wanda arrived to see me. We sat by ourselves for about an hour, not only talking about why I felt so sad but also discussing the normal husband and wife subjects: the kids, their school, all their activities.
Like many spouses of depressed people, for years Wanda had understandably tried to fix my problems with many approaches, including cheerleading: “Go out and tell yourself today is going to be a good day!” or “Think of all of the wonderful things you have to be thankful for!” She had all the best intentions, of course, but with depressed people this approach rarely helps, and sometimes it can magnify the problem. Not only do you still feel horrible, but you also feel guilty about feeling horrible. You think, “It sounds so easy. Why can’t I do it?” When Wanda realized that didn’t work, she learned to ask what I wanted, which was usually not much more than to be listened to or held. She is great at both.
When the psychiatrist came back he said, “I want you to go to the Westchester Medical Psychiatric Ward at Mt. Sinai and check in.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We want to have you under observation for a while.”
“Why?” I asked again. I wasn’t going without a fight. “I feel fine.”
With that, the psychiatrist turned a little tough. “John, all I need is two doctors’ signatures to have you admitted: mine, and the admitting physician’s. If we do that, then you’re committed, and you can’t be released without my say-so. Or you can admit yourself and sign yourself out whenever you like. So you have a choice: I can admit you, or you can do it.”
You might think, given those choices, that I’d jump at the latter and admit myself. But I wasn’t so sure. I sat in silence for a while, wondering if perhaps it might be best to have the doctor admit me so I couldn’t sign myself out until they thought I was no longer a danger to myself. After mulling it over I finally concluded it was best for me to admit myself.
Wanda remained extremely calm throughout, one of her many strengths. She knew that overreacting only made things worse. We drove straight to Mt. Sinai and started filling out reams of paperwork at the front desk. By the time I headed to my assigned room it was almost midnight.
Along the way I encountered some interesting hallmates. One guy on our floor was constantly screaming at the nurses, who kept telling him to get back in his room. Some guys were walking around like zombies. Other guys were just screaming at who knows what. I also heard a lot of strange sounds, things I couldn’t even identify.
I was thinking I’d be getting a nice private room. But when I opened the door I discovered I had a roommate. It was so dark that I never got a good look at him, and I had no idea what he was “in for,” if you will. I knew he couldn’t be an axe murderer because they had a different place for dangerous felons. But I imagined he could be a potential axe murderer, and I could be his first victim. All night I was thinking, “This guy is gonna kill me.” I’ve been in a lot of tough situations, but my first night in the psych ward was an altogether different kind of challenge. I didn’t sleep a wink.
The next morning I saw the guy who had been screaming at the nurses. He was now standing in his doorway, because they didn’t allow him to go any farther. So there he was, leaning against the door jam, glaring at the world and cursing any nurse who walked by. And that’s when I was hit with the scariest thought of all: in the eyes of the doctors, these were now my peers.
Bernie came to visit me my first day. He’s seen me in a few hospitals and tends to take it in stride, but his expression that day told me he was almost as unsettled by what he saw as I was. After a good look around he whispered to Wanda, “What the hell is John doing in here?” He knew my doctors thought I needed to be observed, but he was convinced this was not the place.
After two days on the floor—which had only served to make me more anxious, not less—Wanda discovered a special wing. For $1,200 a day, on top of our coverage, I could get a private room in a wing with only a dozen patients and as many nurses and doctors. I was grateful we were able to afford it. I also thought about those who couldn’t afford it and were stuck on the original floor—not to mention the thousands more with no coverage at all who are probably living on the street.
The private room was a big improvement, but I was still in a psych ward. When my girls came to see me it was very disturbing for all of us.
My depression quickly got worse. I used my laptop to read online, do my homework for the coming weekend’s games, and write down whatever was on my mind. But they wouldn’t let the patients use a power cord because they were afraid we’d hang ourselves with it, so I could use my laptop only as long as the battery lasted.
I wanted to shut my door and be alone, but they didn’t let you do that either. They hung a towel over all the patients’ doors so we couldn’t shut them.
The floor had lots of rules too, such as mandatory group therapy meetings four times a day and no eating your meals by yourself. You had to sit at least two to a table, with nurses joini
ng in to encourage conversation.
I wanted no part of any of this. The first two days the nurses had to come to my room and make me get out of bed for every meeting—and they were relentless. After being dragged out of my room the first couple of days, I started cooperating. I realized that if I was going to be depressed, I’d have to be depressed sitting with a bunch of other depressed people.
During our group therapy sessions about a dozen of us sat in a circle of chairs. The doctors started the morning session by asking, “Is today a good day?”
Then we’d go around the circle and give our answers. “No, it’s not,” someone would say, followed by things like,
“I only slept two hours last night.”
“I’m worried about my kids.”
“I want to get out of here.”
Others would say, “Today’s a pretty good day. I got a good night’s sleep.” Simple stuff, but it made you open up, bit by bit, even if you didn’t want to.
For my first two days in these sessions I said the bare minimum. I simply didn’t want to be there. I didn’t think I was in the same boat as everyone else, and I wasn’t comfortable telling my story in front of strangers. I was also afraid that people would recognize me, betray my trust, and publicize my problems, and then the world would think I was nuts. That could make my work—and my life—that much harder.
I consider my bosses at ESPN to be enlightened, caring people. If I told them what I was going through, I’m confident they would have protected my privacy and done everything they could to help me. But I still was too embarrassed to let them know I was dealing with serious depression. So I told my supervisors at ESPN that I was in the hospital for my diabetes, which gave me more incentive to get out soon before I had to blow my cover.
For all these reasons I was content to listen to everyone else, some of whom had been there far longer than I ever planned to be. When I heard them tell their stories, and all the difficulties they’d had, it was hard not to be moved by their struggles.
One guy, probably in his seventies, was trying to quit smoking so he took some medicine a doctor had given him, but it turned out to have the unfortunate side effect of throwing him into suicidal rages. He seemed like a gruff, good-hearted guy who loved his grandkids, but now he had some serious issues he’d have to work through to get back in their lives.
Another guy, in his midthirties, had just had a baby. He seemed like a simple, nice guy but completely docile, as if he’d quit fighting. When you talked to him it was like no one was inside. I soon learned why: he was there to receive electroshock therapy—one of the last resorts for people suffering from depression.
At my lowest points some doctors had suggested shock therapy to me, and I’d always said, “No, I don’t want that.” It raised a lot of fears in me, some rational, some less so. I was afraid I would never be the same person, and my family wouldn’t be able to connect with me. I also feared I would not be able to do my work, and that the difference in me would be obvious on camera.
The experience of another patient, a woman in her sixties, confirmed my fears. On my second day she told us she was about to go for her first electroshock therapy the next morning, and she was scared. So scared. She wasn’t in tears, but you could tell she was on the verge.
The next morning when we joined our group she was just coming back from her first treatment, and she had that same glassy look the young father did. During our afternoon session she just kept repeating, “I have a terrible headache. A terrible headache.” That settled it for me.
Even when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, that your situation is as bad as can be, you don’t have to look very far to find someone who has it worse. And if you can’t, you need only visit your local psychiatric hospital.
On my third day the doctors determined that my medications weren’t working for me, and changed my prescription. That was a little scary, but the results from the new medication were encouraging.
By that day the psych ward had finally worn down my resistance. You had to say something in each session, and you had to eat with each other too. Unless you were completely antisocial, it would be pretty hard not to open up eventually. That morning, a few of the folks in our group who knew who I was asked me how I ended up there. Unlike other people, however, they didn’t ask why I wasn’t happy “with all I had.” They knew what depression could do.
With this prompt I began talking in the meetings, starting with my childhood. After I spelled it out—the verbal and physical abuse and the lasting effects—they understood.
There was a lot of give-and-take in these meetings, a place where no one dared mount a high horse, and celebrity status didn’t count for anything. We became more comfortable talking with each other, sharing how we felt, and actually feeling some kinship. Maybe the rules kind of forced us to be friends, but after a while we really were. I was even willing to concede that we were all in very similar boats.
The next morning, my fourth on the floor, I met two new patients at breakfast. One was a young woman in her early twenties, whom I’ll call Abby. She was a little heavyset, and she felt bad about her weight, among other things. Her parents had pushed her to go to the ward, and her doctors had committed her.
The second new patient was a lady in her late forties, whom I’ll call Colleen, a very attractive, middle-aged mom with three adult children. In the course of our sessions she would tell us her children had given her a sense of purpose, and now that they were gone she was having a very difficult time figuring out what was she going to do. It sounded like her husband, a successful businessman consumed by his work, didn’t understand what she was going through, and it wasn’t clear if he was even trying.
The three of us bonded immediately, perhaps because we were the newest patients in the ward, starting our “sentences” at about the same time. But mere coincidence didn’t explain all of it. All three of us had plenty going for us on paper, but we’d each hit a wall, and we were probably more open to each other than we’d normally be because of it. It shows you how little demographics actually matter when it comes to really connecting with another human being.
Colleen, the mother of three, was a talker! Just nonstop. If you didn’t know she was in the psych ward, you’d would have never thought she was depressed. But if you understood depression, you could see it in her, something about the way she talked. Underneath all her extroverted energy, her heart was breaking—almost as if she feared that if she stopped talking, she’d start crying, so she drowned out her worries with words.
Colleen’s children had all done well, and she was proud of them. But when someone tells you too many times how great things are, you know they can’t be that great. Shakespeare got it right: she doth protested too much. When her kids moved out, Colleen lost a piece of herself—which perfectly described my greatest fear.
But Colleen was still funny in the meetings because she was so inquisitive. “What is that like?” “Really!” “How do they do that?” She was a spark plug in a place that could use one, and just a very likable person.
Abby, the twenty-two-year old, latched on to both of us, perhaps because she was looking for validation from some kind of parental figure. She was very sweet and very bright. With Colleen and me she could be funny too. But she was also hurting, and it wasn’t hard to understand why.
Her room was right across the hall from mine. Because the towels kept our doors from closing all the way, I could hear her call her parents every night before our bedtime. You could tell from the way she was responding that her parents were arguing with her.
“Mom, Dad—I’m trying, I’m trying! I know, I know. Yes, you’re right—you’re right.” The calls never went very long before she’d start crying.
After those calls she would walk out of her room and go to the computer station, which was just outside her door. After hearing these conversations two or three nights in a row, then watching her go to the computer station, I left my room to sit next to her and ask if she was al
l right.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “But if you want to talk, we can.”
When the same thing happened the next night I spoke to her again.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she repeated. But perhaps because I have two daughters about her age, my instincts told me I could press her a bit this time.
“No, you’re not,” I said softly, not as a correction but as an invitation to talk. That’s all it took to open the floodgates.
“I went to a good college,” she told me through her tears. “I did very well. I’ve always done very well. But I don’t like the way I look. I don’t think I’m a good person.”
Hearing her declaration was like sticking a dagger in my heart, as if someone was repeating my own thoughts, fears, and dark secrets, and shoving them right back in my face.
With Abby I knew exactly what to say because I felt the truth of it, and I probably wished someone had said it to me when I was younger. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with you,” I told her, then I repeated it: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. I have only known you for three days. And I know that you’re a good person, a caring person, a fun person, and you’re somebody I’d like to have for a friend. I hope that when I get out of here we stay in contact.”
She looked me in the eyes when I said this. This seemed to get to her. I knew how she felt. What I said probably couldn’t counteract two decades of her parents’ messages to her—intentional or otherwise—or what she had internalized all those years because of it. But I also know it can feel pretty good when someone you think might know something says, “You’re okay.”
She seemed to search her emotional memory for the appropriate response, as if she couldn’t recall how to react when someone gave her a sincere compliment. She finally settled on, “Thank you,” and she meant it.
I like to think I helped her in some small way, and I know that trying to help her helped me too. It was like I was talking to my younger self, giving her the support I wished I’d received. I suppose that was the point of our endless group therapy sessions: some of the best help we received came from each other.
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