My Name Is Iden | Back up, one step at a time
- Published: November 15, 2024
I haven’t written for a while.
I had told myself that I was finished writing. Here’s the hard thing about that: I like to write. I didn’t stop because there was something in that process that I found unpleasant. I stopped because I was sad — deeply sad.
I have seen a lot, been through a lot, struggled a lot. I know I’m not the only one — not even close — but I get tired. That day I was tired, tired of trying, so tired that I gave up, and not just on writing.
That day I gave up on everything.
I had convinced myself that writing wasn’t worth the effort. Nothing was. I couldn’t think of anything that was worth saying, beyond: “Nothing is good and nothing matters.” Who wants to read that?
So I stopped writing. I stopped going out. I stopped talking to my friends. I stopped doing all the things that I loved, and I started taking drugs. And drinking. And hurting myself. And crying. I did a lot of crying.
Depression is a difficult, dangerous beast to battle and that fight is an exhausting one. Life requires energy. Friendships, romances, careers, children, writing and creating all take effort, and when you are depressed, that energy isn’t there, and that effort just doesn’t feel worth it.
That was where I was. None of that seemed worth the struggle anymore. I was too tired. Living was not worth the effort. I believed that — I really did — so I quit. I gave up. I stopped putting out that effort and, little by little, step by step, I stopped living.
It was Thanksgiving. I had eaten nothing. I was alone. I was naked, with razor cuts in various stages of healing all over me. I was drunk and I was vomiting after accidentally overdosing myself with methamphetamines.
That’s a violent brand of puking. I was exhausted, and sweaty, and the cold tile felt nice on my face, so I went to sleep there on the floor. I stayed that way until my family came home. That night was my last night using. I had spent more than 15 months letting myself fall. Now here I was, and I couldn’t get any lower than that floor. I couldn’t — because the next step down was suicide, and I had made my wife cry enough.
Now it’s November, and I am writing again. Today makes nearly a year since I woke up shivering next to my toilet. My last cuts healed more than six months ago and today I went for a walk. It took effort. It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, but still, it took effort.
I didn’t have a destination. I just walked until I found myself sitting at the bottom of the stone staircase that leads into Glen Helen. I wasn’t there long before a group of hikers came into view. It was a trio of friends, older than me, maybe in their late 50s. They looked like, perhaps, they were not the sort of folks who encounter a lot of ups and downs in the course of their day-to-day. They reached my perch at the bottom of the steps. The descent had clearly been more of an ordeal than they’d expected and they were all expressing relief that it was over.
I greeted them and advised them to enjoy their rest, because soon enough they would have to go back up. That thought seemed like a new one to them. They looked at me, dismayed — one even looked a touch panicked.
She asked me: “How do we get back up?”
I nodded to the stairs, and said, “The same way you got down. One step at a time.” Then I stood, said goodbye, and began climbing.
When I got home, I was sweating. I went to the bathroom. I felt the familiar coolness of the tile floor. I thought about steps, about how it is hard work to live, and that, while some of us will encounter more staircases than others, sooner or later, we all will find ourselves on one.
I am not “cured” of my depression. There are struggles that will be mine forever, and there are days when I am feeling absolutely defeated by that.
It takes a lot of energy for me to stay away from the drugs and the razors. It takes a lot of effort to call my friends, to go for a walk, to eat, to write. But today I did all of those things. All of them. And they were worth it.
If you, or someone you love, is struggling with addiction you can find resources here: http://www.recoverywithinreach.ohio.gov/crisis.help.
*The author is an artist and writer. She lives in Yellow Springs with her wife and three children. You can follow her work at http://www.mynameisiden.com.
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