My Own Personal Bell Jar
All the content warnings. I'll be talking about depression and suicide and sexual assault and child abuse. Please don't read if this will trigger you.
Last year, when 13 Reasons Why came out, lots of people were talking about this fucking show and saying just assbackwards things about depression and suicide. While I refused to watch that show (and still do), because it sounded way too close to my own teen experience, it also sounded like it got a lot wrong. It sounded like it didn't understand how suicide ideation works. And it was, as were many of those I know who talked about it, callous and capricious about such a tenuous topic.
Back then, I started a post about my own experiences and I never finished it. Other things came up and I moved on, let it sit in the back of my closet. Then, last week, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain died, and the subject reared its head again. Again, people weren't understanding.
For lots and lots people, depression is chemical. The chemistry in their brains lies to them and tells them all sorts of things that make living life a struggle. I have struggled with depression, but I cannot relate to what life must be like for them, as my depression was due to trauma.
I don't know what brand of depression plagued Anthony or Kate. Could be chemical. Could be that medications could have helped them survive, but I don't know that. I won't speculate on that. What I want to do today is share something that I've rarely told anyone outside of a therapist's office: when I was a teenager, I battled severe PTSD and I attempted suicide.
It's so complicated, I rarely know where to begin. There aren't a list of reasons why; more like there was my life swirling around me, abusing me, and I was trapped in the center and I saw no way out.
Up until my teens, my mother was physically abusive. She was also emotionally abusive and manipulative, as one would expect from someone with a personality disorder. So, in a VERY brief nutshell: the backdrop of my childhood was abuse and confusion. My normal was trauma. My normal was fear. I walked on eggshells, but those eggshells were my whole life.
I'd lived as the daughter of a stage mother, with multiple dance classes and voice lessons, and theater productions. I was to be her little star and I was exhsuated in the effort.
Then my mother became physically disabled, in a sense (I can't get into her probable Munchausens syndrome or maybe hypochondria) and should couldn't hit me anymore. So she became two people:
And the activities all but ended. The dance classes. The voice lessons. She didn't have time or energy to force me to perform anymore. What was I to do? My whole purpose, however involuntary, was gone.
But, more than that, my world shifted. Not for the better, not even necessarily for the worse, but it shifted. Everything was different. My eggshells that I'd previously danced across became knee-high mud that pulled me under.
Oddly, I missed the physical pain. I missed her constant attention, as negative as it was. It had been my normal and my normal was suddenly gone.
Then my dad slipped into his own depression. Previously, despite his allowance of my mother's abuse (and she abused him too), he was my only rock, my only port in the storm. Then he suddenly wasn't. He won't talk about it, but I suspect he felt he couldn't care for his family, between my mother's madness which he couldn't do anything about (I CANNOT even begin to get into that) and all her medical bills which he couldn't pay, he lost his pride. He was a fire captain, so he spent most of his time at the station. Meaning I was mostly alone with this woman who was either cruel or catatonic.
I was completely confused and alone. I had friends, and my best friends were the only thing good in my life. But teenage girls cannot be expected to save other teenage girls. We're all dealing with our own demons at the same time. Girls, you are not responsible for the lives of your friends. Love them. Lift them up. Be there for them. But their lives are not in your hands.
Then my boyfriend assaulted me. He didn't rape me, but I think he was considering it. He'd hit me and held me down and stared at me with such contempt. Then he left. I guess he chickened out.
The next day, he broke up with me. Not that I'd necessarily considered staying with him, but, as he told me he wanted a girl who would have sex, I blamed myself. Most girls do, don't they? We're conditioned to live at the whim of the male gaze.
I didn't tell anyone about that until I told a therapist 10 years ago.
So you can imagine my brain at the time. It was a swirl of darkness. I felt like I was screaming my pain into the world and it seemed that nobody noticed. I wrote a scene for drama class where a girl stabs herself. Instead of thinking, "RED FLAG," I got an A on that project.
Oh and did I mention? I became fairly obsessed with Sylvia Plath, not the best choice for a depressed teen girl. Her pain was my pain, her life my life. I felt like I lived my own Bell Jar. Death sounded so inviting, to be freed from all that pain, from the swirl of trauma that haunted me day and night.
I no longer slept much. I stayed up all hours, like a bat. I wrote poetry furiously. I sat alone on the floor of my closet (literally my closet. I didn't even know, yet, that I was bisexual) and thought of all the ways I could die.
In later years, friends say that they remember me as funny, as hyper, as weird and loud and gregarious. I'm sure I was those things, but I don't remember that at all. All I remember is darkness.
And I wanted two things equally and simultaneously:
Last year, when 13 Reasons Why came out, lots of people were talking about this fucking show and saying just assbackwards things about depression and suicide. While I refused to watch that show (and still do), because it sounded way too close to my own teen experience, it also sounded like it got a lot wrong. It sounded like it didn't understand how suicide ideation works. And it was, as were many of those I know who talked about it, callous and capricious about such a tenuous topic.
Back then, I started a post about my own experiences and I never finished it. Other things came up and I moved on, let it sit in the back of my closet. Then, last week, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain died, and the subject reared its head again. Again, people weren't understanding.
For lots and lots people, depression is chemical. The chemistry in their brains lies to them and tells them all sorts of things that make living life a struggle. I have struggled with depression, but I cannot relate to what life must be like for them, as my depression was due to trauma.
I don't know what brand of depression plagued Anthony or Kate. Could be chemical. Could be that medications could have helped them survive, but I don't know that. I won't speculate on that. What I want to do today is share something that I've rarely told anyone outside of a therapist's office: when I was a teenager, I battled severe PTSD and I attempted suicide.
It's so complicated, I rarely know where to begin. There aren't a list of reasons why; more like there was my life swirling around me, abusing me, and I was trapped in the center and I saw no way out.
Up until my teens, my mother was physically abusive. She was also emotionally abusive and manipulative, as one would expect from someone with a personality disorder. So, in a VERY brief nutshell: the backdrop of my childhood was abuse and confusion. My normal was trauma. My normal was fear. I walked on eggshells, but those eggshells were my whole life.
I'd lived as the daughter of a stage mother, with multiple dance classes and voice lessons, and theater productions. I was to be her little star and I was exhsuated in the effort.
Then my mother became physically disabled, in a sense (I can't get into her probable Munchausens syndrome or maybe hypochondria) and should couldn't hit me anymore. So she became two people:
- She became addicted to pain medication (and a slew of other drugs, which, honestly, I couldn't begin to list). Thus, she was passed out cold most of the time.
- When she was awake, she got meaner. She became crueler. She couldn't beat me physically, so she beat me emotionally.
And the activities all but ended. The dance classes. The voice lessons. She didn't have time or energy to force me to perform anymore. What was I to do? My whole purpose, however involuntary, was gone.
But, more than that, my world shifted. Not for the better, not even necessarily for the worse, but it shifted. Everything was different. My eggshells that I'd previously danced across became knee-high mud that pulled me under.
Oddly, I missed the physical pain. I missed her constant attention, as negative as it was. It had been my normal and my normal was suddenly gone.
Then my dad slipped into his own depression. Previously, despite his allowance of my mother's abuse (and she abused him too), he was my only rock, my only port in the storm. Then he suddenly wasn't. He won't talk about it, but I suspect he felt he couldn't care for his family, between my mother's madness which he couldn't do anything about (I CANNOT even begin to get into that) and all her medical bills which he couldn't pay, he lost his pride. He was a fire captain, so he spent most of his time at the station. Meaning I was mostly alone with this woman who was either cruel or catatonic.
I was completely confused and alone. I had friends, and my best friends were the only thing good in my life. But teenage girls cannot be expected to save other teenage girls. We're all dealing with our own demons at the same time. Girls, you are not responsible for the lives of your friends. Love them. Lift them up. Be there for them. But their lives are not in your hands.
Then my boyfriend assaulted me. He didn't rape me, but I think he was considering it. He'd hit me and held me down and stared at me with such contempt. Then he left. I guess he chickened out.
The next day, he broke up with me. Not that I'd necessarily considered staying with him, but, as he told me he wanted a girl who would have sex, I blamed myself. Most girls do, don't they? We're conditioned to live at the whim of the male gaze.
I didn't tell anyone about that until I told a therapist 10 years ago.
So you can imagine my brain at the time. It was a swirl of darkness. I felt like I was screaming my pain into the world and it seemed that nobody noticed. I wrote a scene for drama class where a girl stabs herself. Instead of thinking, "RED FLAG," I got an A on that project.
Oh and did I mention? I became fairly obsessed with Sylvia Plath, not the best choice for a depressed teen girl. Her pain was my pain, her life my life. I felt like I lived my own Bell Jar. Death sounded so inviting, to be freed from all that pain, from the swirl of trauma that haunted me day and night.
I no longer slept much. I stayed up all hours, like a bat. I wrote poetry furiously. I sat alone on the floor of my closet (literally my closet. I didn't even know, yet, that I was bisexual) and thought of all the ways I could die.
In later years, friends say that they remember me as funny, as hyper, as weird and loud and gregarious. I'm sure I was those things, but I don't remember that at all. All I remember is darkness.
And I wanted two things equally and simultaneously:
- I wanted to be loved and seen. I wanted to feel valued and of worth.
- I wanted to escape. I wanted my pain to end.
And so I took a handful of my mom's pills. Lucky for me, it's nearly impossible to die from what I took. I slept for several days straight and, when I awoke, nobody had noticed. Nobody noticed that I'd almost died, that I'd tried to die. I didn't gain either of the things I'd wanted.
I don't remember why I didn't try again. Maybe I'd learned that I wouldn't receive escape or love by leaving my life. Maybe I was just too scared.
I don't know.
I don't know how I even survived after that. I've told my therapist as much. I just did. I just pulled myself into each day until I found reasons to live. I found other ways to escape, first by graduating high school and moving out, and then by finding things I loved and had purpose in, like community college and dancing again, and learning I was a writer. Years later, I found therapy and learned I could estrange myself from her.
There have been setbacks. Like when I was in my twenties, I lost a boyfriend to PTSD and suicide after he retuned from Afghanistan. That was a hard blow. I ran from that like a cat escaping a fire. I hurt for him, but I was so scared that I'd be trapped in that bell jar again.
Battling my PTSD will be lifelong. I can't ever expect it to just be fixed, like POOF! I'm all better. No, it doesn't work like that. It will always be with me, my trauma, like a chronic illness. But it's up to me to keep battling it if I want to heal.
But every year, I get stronger. I look back on those years with such sadness, but also pride in myself, that I was the one who ultimately saved me.
Friends, I know that depression feels like screaming in the darkness and that you feel like you can't pull yourself out of the mud, but you can. Every day, just surviving is an immense coup. Be proud of every day that you keep doing the things. And know that, even if you don't see it, you are loved and valued.
You can live. You can. And I want you to.
Call 1-800-273-8255
Available 24 hours everyday
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