Fifteen years ago, I broke up with my very nice boyfriend and plunged headlong into a dark depression. I loved Marc but had known from the beginning that he wasn’t the man for me.
I still believe that breaking up was the right move, but I chose a bad time to do it. I was between jobs and felt adrift. I was applying for a more permanent immigration visa (I’m from Canada – and, yes, Canadians need visas too) and it was a stressful and expensive process that made me question my legitimacy. I was on shaky ground emotionally and financially. Marc tried to persuade me to get married to stabilize my citizenship, but I didn’t want to. That’s how clear I was that the relationship needed to end.
I just didn’t realize that by breaking up with him at this unsure moment in my life I was essentially cutting the guy wires of my mental health.
It was a terrifying time, and even today I’m very glad that I came through it alive. I’m often amazed that I feel a basic sense of contentment about my life now. It could easily have been otherwise.
All of this came rushing back to me last Saturday. In the wake of Anthony Bourdain’s death the day before, my Facebook feed was flooded with stories from friends and acquaintances expressing their struggles with depression and very close calls with suicide. I had no idea there were so many people like me all around. It felt like the beginnings of a #metoo moment for those of us who have spent time in this frightening landscape. After reading so many stories of people struggling to feel acceptable and worthy, what had seemed like an outlier experience started to seem more ordinary than remarkable. So many of us have #beenthere.
I noticed that the stories in my Facebook feed were from people who had otherwise done well in their lives. They had completed college; they had careers and families; they had traveled. Some of these people I knew outside of Facebook. I would have never guessed how much despair they had lived through.
One acquaintance, Marni Sclaroff, a yoga teacher and mother in Reston, Va., posted a photo of the scars on her wrists where she cut herself for years, starting at age 15. She was also hospitalized. “My depression was existential,” she wrote, adding that she came from a supportive family. “I remember, in first grade, struggling to understand what the point was.” To read more from JOELLE HANN, click here.