Three Books and a Notebook

It’s Mental Illness Awareness Week. And October is Depression Education and Awareness Month. September seems to stand out for more people, being Suicide Awareness Month, but I don’t follow the crowd. And it’s my personal opinion that you treat the cause, not the result.

So, since depression IS an invisible illness, I’m going to focus on mental illness this month.

Not a comfortable topic for some people. But 100% a vital subject to cover.

“Your package came.” Tim lifted the blanket from my head to slide a box in front of me.

I wiped my eyes. It took a moment for his words to penetrate my fog-shrouded brain. I focused on the return label, images of previous bookish delights dancing in my memory. Hurriedly, I shoved the package away. “I didn’t order anything.” Why would I? I wasn’t contributing to the household income. Despite his constant reassurance that I was welcome to pick up anything I wanted, the guilt complex weighing on my shoulders had enacted a permanent block.

Our weekly trips to the grocery store resembled a twisted parody of shoplifting. I waited for him to look away before sliding cheese slices, crackers, and chocolate cookies into the cart, burying them among our culinary staples. Then I winced as the cashier bumped them over the scanner, the beep as incriminating as a security alarm. He noticed yet refrained from commenting after the second week. “Our finances are okay” lost all meaning around the tenth repetition. My stubborn brain refused to process the words.

Depression latches onto the worst emotions. When the shadows lurking on the periphery of a person’s thoughts sense weakness, they start building, growing to overtake every corner of the mind. That momentary twinge over a bottle of chocolate milk morphs into complete culpability whenever any words regarding money or budget surface. And I pummeled myself twice as hard for that lack of a paycheck. Within a month, my body started panicking over the tiniest details.

Such as the delivery of an unexpected package.

The level of calm Tim exuded bordered on sainthood. “It’s addressed to you.” He pushed my dwindling stock of tissues under the blanket along with the offending box. His hand found my head through the cushioning fabric for a brief moment. Silent reassurance or quiet exasperation? After so many weeks trapped in the endless maze of my thinking, I was afraid to ask.

I stared at the Amazon logo. My name appeared in clear block letters beneath, daring me to claim a misdelivered parcel. Confusion replaced the despair serving as my constant companion. A late birthday present, maybe? That was possible. I loved my baby brother, but he constantly failed to remember dates. Perhaps he’d glimpsed the calendar, realized his mistake, and jumped on my Wish List.

Pushing to a sitting position, I scraped a nail down the tape seam. As I pried the box open, the blanket settled into a cowl around my neck. Lifting the obligatory plastic air bubbles aside, I stared at the contents. Perceptive as all of my siblings could be, none demonstrate THIS level of awareness.

Three books sat inside: 2020 Writer’s Market, Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business, and Writer’s Digest: Guide to Magazine Article Writing. The packing slip lay flattened at the bottom, and my fingers shook as I retrieved it. The single sentence echoed in a cheerful voice through my head:

Now you don’t have any excuses. START. - Jean

I placed the books in a semicircle around me, the glossy covers reflecting unwanted sunlight into my face. Without thinking, I pushed the blanket aside. At my feet rested a battered spiral notebook. Amid angry notes to myself—half scribbled out to disguise the negative sentiments—lay the beginnings of an insane plan. Tentative hopes in slanted script, daring to take their first breaths.

The college-ruled lines contained the mad imaginings of my brain in the few moments when my depression chose to sleep.

I flipped through the pages, barely recognizing my words. As if endless shadows and hissing laughter weren’t enough, depression stole my interest in the world.

Once upon a time, sentences flowed from my hands. I spent days, weeks lost in the magic of setting ink to page, the sound of a pen skating over clean paper the most enthralling music in the world. Loved ones chased me from my imagination to eat and sleep.

But trapped between the fingers of my right hand rested three pages of fragmented notes. All that existed from two months of endless free time.

And in the final margins, five thready lines, written so small I could barely read them. As if I’d subconsciously tried to hide them from the monster dominating my brain. My one lingering dream, constantly thrust aside for practicalities; the single lodestone contained within the pages of the notebook, unearthed every time my depression swallowed my existence.

I fumbled for my phone, pulling up Messenger. The faithful green dot glowed beside Jean’s face. Autocorrect saved my jumbled typing from dissolving into gibberish as I sent my accusation. “What did you do?”

The infernal bubbles danced on the screen—tantalizing far too long for the resulting message.

“Gave you back the confidence you misplaced.”

I stared at her words. Slowly, my fingers scrolled back over the past two months, retracing our conversations. I stopped the week after Christmas, settling on my first confession.

“Resignation” sounds fancy. But unless you’re in your advanced years, everyone understands it for what it is. And if you’re predisposed to feelings of worthlessness, you add “failure” behind it. It’s the only F-word your mind accepts.

As everyone celebrated the holidays, looked forward to the new year, and offered me words of encouragement, I heard the same thing repeated over and over in my inner ear, “Failure. Failure. FAILURE.”

Confessing my inability to accept the end of my career with any grace wasn’t in the cards. So I did what any self-respecting depressed individual surrounded with smiles, tinsel, and constant party invitations would: I plastered on a cheerful smile, buried my negative self-talk, and echoed every platitude I heard.

Jean was the only person who heard the truth. Thousands of miles away, seeing words on a screen, she witnessed my breakdown. The irony escaped me as I wrote to someone who knew and loved the word choices, sentence structure, and imagery I employed to convey everything from imaginary worlds to daily emotions.

“Jean, I’m not okay. It’s getting harder and harder to smile for everyone, agree that I believe this happened for a reason—a positive reason. The only thing I feel for certain is that I’m a failure, worthless in every way possible. I’ve let everyone from my family to my friends to myself down. How am I supposed to contemplate looking for another job, knowing I’m nothing? That I have nothing of any value to offer another employer? What if this is the Universe telling me I will always fail? Never going to amount to anything?”

The lone cry for help never escaped my lips, but it flowed from my fingers. The same silent screams that filled notebooks wedged into crevices on the shelf. Identical words poured onto pages and hidden from prying eyes. Now, the sentiments stretched over an invisible line, striking a crucial memory in the one person I felt safe enough to confide in.

Among Jean’s frank assurances that my thoughts were unfounded, she slid a single idea in front of my eyes: “Have you considered writing again?”

How to convey stunned, appalled, scorned, intrigued silence over a text message?

 My writing—the refuge of my sanity during overtime, arguments in bad relationships, and every change of course throughout my life—lay forgotten in the dusty notebooks and buried USB drives around the house.

The previous fall, participants in the writing workshop sensed my lack of commitment, smiling indulgently and passing me over in their invitations to further writing groups and discussions. They traded business cards and flaunted first-name connections with the moderator, leaving no doubt about my amateur status. My two anthology publications squirreled in the attic shrank in importance; little more than self-prepared manuscripts designed to impress the critique group’s friends and family.

I walked away with a clear message: Writing was an impossible dream, resigned to my worst depressive fugues; waiting in the brief moments when the shadows slept, granting me a chance to breathe.

Wanting someone to agree with my low assessment of her idea, I mentioned Jean’s thoughts to Tim. We were a month into my unemployment; I expected a gentle admonishment to think rationally. The shadows in my brain craved his rejection. Someone—someone CLOSE—needed to chime in with the daily brow-beating and provide a louder auditory voice.

“Why not give it a try? What do you have to lose?” His encouraging smile inflicted more pain than the anticipated denial.

Everything fragmented, leaving me unsettled. Two people—one I’d agreed to consult with and trust for the remainder of our lives, and one I turned to whenever I felt lost—considered the leap toward an impossible dream reasonable, even RATIONAL. But my mind continued to circle and cling to the word “failure” as a perverse lifeline.

I spent restless mornings on my laptop, researching a writer’s life. Careful remarks appeared in my notebook amid the daily scribblings of my life’s shortcomings. The more words inked onto the page, the more conversation I engaged in.

Fear coated every sentence, but speaking at least replaced my silent tears.

“What do you have to lose by trying?”

Jean’s final taunting message before the box’s arrival left me agonizing for hours in front of the mirror. The words felt pushback from the demons in the corners of my mind. Did I want the list alphabetically? An opportunity for failure, for one more spectacular swan dive into infamy, gaped in front of me. I stared, struggling to find a response, something she wouldn’t skewer with patient logic the moment my fingers left the keys.

Setting the phone aside, I picked up the books, skimming the contents. “Confidence” and “trying” tangled in my brain amid such words as “agents,” “ideas,” and “publications.” From the depths of my mind, beneath the weight of guilt, false messaging, and exhaustion, my imagination blinked open cautious eyes. At my knee, the impossible notes tucked into the margins of the page stretched connecting points into a mad constellation.

The tips of my fingers tingled, begging for the touch of a pen, the click of a keyboard.

“Why?” Depression’s hold weakened, demanded a final cry of incredulity. I needed Jean’s logic, the reason for her insane action.

I read the smile in her words, heard the soft tone of her voice. “You have the drive, the ability, and the talent. All you needed was a kick to remind you where you misplaced your confidence.”

My vision blurred with fresh tears. I gathered the books and notebook to my chest, muscle memory relaxing into a familiar pose.

A hand settled on my shoulder, Tim’s weight joining mine on the bed.

I glanced up at him, my lips trying to remember a smile. “Look what Jean sent me.”