An Anniversary of Sorts

September 21st is an anniversary of sorts for me; today marks two years since I hit rock bottom: the two year anniversary of my would-be death day. 

As someone who has grappled with depression for the better part of her life, “blue periods” are nothing new…neither are the fleeting thoughts of, “Perhaps it would be better if I just wasn’t around.”  I assumed (whether I was ready to admit it or not) that these dark moments were universal and everyone experienced them.  It was only after the 21st of September 2023 that I came to understand that wasn’t the case.  But more on that later.

By coincidence, September 21st is also the anniversary of my arrival into the UK.  I hadn’t been thinking about that when I booked the tickets – it had more to do with when I was able to officially move into my housing.  As my good (read: best) friend Melody and I took off from Chicago one year ago, raising our glasses of wine to the coming adventure, I was also thinking of how far I had come since the previous year – and how much more I had to do.

Many things led to my version of rock bottom on September 21st 2023 but possibly none more than the new medication I was on.  It affected me in various ways including profuse sweating episodes, insomnia, severe depression, and more.  (For the record, the medication in question was called Atomoxetine.  I expect it works for some people, but it definitely did not work for me.)  To add to the mess, I had recently acquired a brand new hyperfixation (again, nothing new for me) and I was drunk.  Not just a little drunk – I was plastered.

I was home alone and had just purchased a bottle of chardonnay (Kendal Jackson, of course) with the hopes of writing a bit before going to bed at a respectable hour (I had work at Starbucks the next morning, afterall).  Like most drinking episodes, it started off merrily which prompted me to drink more.  I was in love with the warm and fuzzy feelings of life and intoxication; I didn’t want the party to end.  But there’s always a line, isn’t there?  There’s always a point where the good feelings slowly begin to sour until they morph into despair…at least for me.  Still home alone and trying desperately to find the good feelings wine had afforded me, I kept drinking, eventually finishing the whole bottle.

This is where my hyperfixation came into play.  The story goes that Pablo Picasso had many “muses” over the course of his lifetime, often using them as the catalyst and model for his work before discarding them when he didn’t find inspiration in them any more.  Obviously, I don’t agree with his methods, but the fact remains that an artist can’t always help where they find inspiration.  I’ve lived long enough (and written enough) to know that I have followed a similar trajectory as Mr. Picasso.  The only difference is that my muses don’t know who I am.  

I’m not saying that every play of mine was written specifically for a certain person or with the hopes of having so-and-so play a certain part.  (Cafe Mocha Murders was created out of sheer resentment after so many people told me that they were only interested in murder mystery comedies so I threw my hands in the air and declared, “Fine! I’ll write you a murder mystery comedy!”  In the end, I really enjoyed the process and the piece, but that’s a story for another time.  Anyway, where were we?)

What does happen with my work is that a certain someone is the impetus for an idea: one example is that the original inspiration for the character that would become Václav in Summers in Prague was Benedict Cumberbatch.  I was about twenty-two and imagining (daydreaming about) what a night in Prague would look like with Mr. Cumberbatch.  That led to an idea which led to another idea which eventually became the show we all know and love today.  (If you don’t know and love it, please go purchase a copy off my website or find it for free on New Play Exchange.) ;)

That is how my hyperfixations usually work: a beautiful man plus a silly daydream plus a spark that takes me down a certain path to create a certain show.  Perhaps other writers have a far more intellectual approach to finding inspiration, but that’s how it gets done over here.  

Yes, I often pined for these hyperfixations and, yes, there was the occasional episode of ennui upon remembering that this beautiful man didn’t know who I was, but these affairs were short-lived.  However, beginning in 2020, things got quite tumultuous.  It was becoming increasingly harder to separate the fantasy from real life or exit the world where I was walking around Prague with one of these muses.  I now have the wherewithal to know this sudden shift in my my mental health had a lot to do the pandemic (and assuming that the theatre was dead), turning thirty (I thought I was over my quarter-life crisis), and the death of my father (which was incredibly shocking to everyone in my family).  Unable to recognize exactly what I was going through, I simply lived in the wild rapids of my emotions: feeling ecstasy instead of mere happiness and despair instead of simple sadness.  This also made my “love” for my hyperfixations more intense.

I only really began seeking help (outside of my monthly therapy sessions and established  antidepressants) because of issues with my hearing.  To make a long story short, I have long had issues hearing people in conversations, especially in crowded rooms, and assumed that I was experiencing hearing loss.  A meeting with an audiologist, however, showed that my physical hearing was perfectly fine, and then a discussion with a coworker put the idea in my head that perhaps the problem was about my brain processing the information rather than my ears picking up the sounds.  I got a referral from my general practitioner and finally got to meet with a behavior specialist who concluded that I had ADHD and promptly put me on Atomoxetine.

…which brings us back to September 21st 2023. 

I was drunk, despondent, and heavy on this medication that was wrecking havoc on my life.  Now, for whatever reason, I had not yet concluded that Atomoxetine was the cause of all my issues: I had only been on the medication a couple of weeks and chalked the sweating up to the changing seasons, the insomnia to stress, and the depression to my general disposition.  The following incident would put things into focus for me.

In this incredibly vulnerable state, I did something incredibly stupid and Googled my latest muse.  I knew that he was in a relationship with someone, but it was that night I learned that she was significantly younger than him – younger than me, even.  And that became the thing that broke me.

I was thirty-three and struggling to achieve (what I thought to be) any real success with my writing.  I felt old – as though I had somehow wasted all the best years of my life.  I should be farther ahead.  I should be better.  I should be younger, skinnier, blonde, beautiful, and the mother of my muse’s children.  I should be her.  But I wasn’t.  I was fat, ugly, struggling writer me.  I had often bemusedly asked the question, “Why bother?” but that night, it became real.

I wanted to die.  It all hurt too much.  If he couldn’t love me, what was the point of it all?  I once had promise, but now all I had was debt.  I once had people telling me that my work was so good, but now all I had were people asking me if I still worked at Starbucks.  Someone else already had everything I could ever want so why should I keep trying?  The hurt was unimaginable and crippling.  I laid in my bed, unable to move, unable to cry, feeling like I was being swallowed by the sea.  

What was the fucking point?

I contemplated the ways I could kill myself but quickly concluded that I didn’t really have the means to do it.  It was the only time in my life I’d ever desired to own a gun, and had I actually owned one, I would not be here now.  I feel very strongly that had I had access to a firearm that night, I would have killed myself.  

The best I could do was hurt myself…so I lit an incense stick, blew it out, and then peppered my skin with the hot end.  Once it went out completely, I’d light it again, and go back to scorching my legs and my arms.  (Why I didn’t just use the match, I don’t know.)  To this day, I don’t know why the act of self-harm seemed to help.  I don’t think it’s something that I can explain logically because it’s not a logical sensation; all I can say is that I was hurting so much on the inside that I wanted to hurt on the outside.  Somehow that would make it better.  

There are still scars on my leg and a large one on my hand from that night.  If you look at my hand just right, you can still see the tiny marks.  

So how did it end?  What pulled me back into the light?  

Melody still wasn’t home yet but even if she had been, I don’t think I would have been in the right mind to have discussed this breakdown.  I was being tossed about in the frantic waves of my mind, thrown back and forth between complete despair and believing maybe I would live through this.  By this time, it was well past midnight and I had to be at work in a few hours.  During one of my high points, I quickly messaged my friend Lauren to ask if she had time to chat the next day because I was going through a rough patch (understatement of the century), but almost immediately I fell into another low point and promptly deleted the message.

This is where it plays out like a dark comedy because I was slowly sobering up and with no means to actually kill myself, I said, “Well, may as well go to bed.”  I took a shower, feeling more vulnerable than ever, laid down in bed, and cried myself to sleep.  The next morning (after maybe two hours of rest) I wrapped my hand in a bandage and told everyone at work that I had burned it while cooking something in the oven at home.  I was an old pro at traversing dark points, but even I knew that this was new territory; somehow this was the point of no return.  I don’t remember a lot of work from that day; I’m sure I was just going through the motions and more morose than usual.

I was on my break when I realized that Lauren had messaged me.  She’d noticed that I’d reached out to her, asking for help and then noticed that I deleted said message.  The time between me actually sending it and me deleting it couldn’t have been more than a minute, but somehow Lauren still saw it.  Call it a technological fluke, call it divine intervention, call it drunk Deanna’s conception of time being a little skewed…either way, Lauren was involved now and worried. 

And that’s really what got me started on the journey to getting better.  Lauren saw the message and reached out.  I called her after work and then called my therapist.  Later that night, I had a serious chat with Melody and showed her my wounds.  During these talks, I realized just how much I had been lying to people, especially in regards to my mental state.  Prior to Lauren actively reaching out, I hadn’t considered bringing Melody into the discussion (because I didn’t want to worry her or maybe because my anxiety was telling me she wouldn’t care).  

All of these conversations were difficult to have because it forced me to acknowledge that I had a problem: with parasocial relationships, with depression, with my current medication, and with my own self-worth.  It was incredibly embarrassing to come to terms with my issues because obsessing over a celebrity is not something that a thirty-something-year-old woman does.  But it is.  Here I am.  

It’s also difficult because admitting that what this “muse” and I had was nothing more than a parasocial relationship meant stripping away all of the fake romance I’d built around him.  I love love.  I love true connections.  I love good romantic stories about people genuinely helping each other and forming amazing teams and then doing some kissing.  I love that.  And I want that – with every fiber of my being.  A large part of me still doesn’t want to acknowledge that it’s a mental health issue; I want it to be real.  I want him to be the answer to all my questions even without having ever been in the same room as me.  This particular hyperfixation still follows me – even though most of my muses only last about a year.  This guy, however, won’t let me go…or maybe I refuse to let him go.  

I’d love to say that it’s gotten easier, but it just gets different.  My therapist tells me all the time that healing is not linear, and I have had my fair share of weak moments.  There have been arguments with people I love, angry phone calls, and more drunk nights where I fill my journals with angsty poetry.  The best medicine for it all has been the real world: finding the beautiful things that make up the real world.  They aren’t grandiose trips to far-off places with a charming man who can’t take his eyes off of me, but they’re late night chats with friends over a bottle of Shiraz, they’re waking up early and seeing the giant moon illuminate the clear sky, they’re getting smothered in hugs from my nephews, they’re hearing genuine people give genuine feedback on my work…they’re looking down at my hand, seeing my scars, and knowing that I survived.  

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