Bubbles, Needles, Poop and Other Related Things

I woke in my college dorm room my junior year and lay still, unable to force myself out of bed. It was five in the evening and I had slept all day. My teeth were unbrushed, my hair and body unwashed and I hadn’t eaten. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The deep darkness in my mind won out and I let myself sink back into a restless sleep. I succumbed to one darkness in order to escape another.

I have been on depression medication for over 20 years. That is half my life. What is strange is that if you met me casually, or even in the not-really-an-acquaintance, but not-really-a-friend bracket of people in my life, you would still never guess. Then there are those that know the “gut-wrenching, curled in bed, can’t eat, can hardly get up to brush my teeth” me. These are brave souls. I mean, you have to be brave to get that close to someone who hasn’t showered in who knows how long, and let’s not forget the teeth.

Depression is ugly. You will be doing fine one day and then it can take your legs out from under you the next. It makes you not know yourself anymore. It convinces you that you can go off your meds and be fine. During those times, I’m like a toddler, albeit with wrinkles, creaky joints and hair dye, who insists, “No! By self. I do it!” And I do, for awhile. Until, I don’t. That’s the funny thing about control. The more I vehemently insist I have it, the less I actually do. Most of the time, I am okay now, but I have to constantly assess where I am with it. I have medication that needs to be adjusted. I go to therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. Most importantly, I have a husband who loves and supports me through the roller coaster.

Our society attaches so much shame to depression that I hid mine as best I could for years. I think most of us do the same; hiding, I mean, in one form or another. We are all walking around surrounded by our giant bubble suits to keep anyone from getting too close to the truth. Your bubble suit may be a breaking marriage, addiction, anxiety, illness, anger control...there are any number of things we hide. We live our lives bouncing off each other’s suits, smiling and laughing politely, thinking our hearts and souls are protected.

One day, I got tired of the bubble suit. I got tired of society telling me I had to have it all together. I decided the world didn’t need another woman feeling forced to pretend to be perfect. I decided to pop the suit. I stood up, naked, as it were, and told people the truth of my struggle. Granted, my standing up is not that impressive. I am only 5’2”, after all, but I make up for that deficiency by being loud. I can be very, very loud. Even now, when I tell someone that I have clinical depression or that I go to therapy, I get incredulous and awkward glances. “Did she really say that out loud? Here? In front of God and everybody?” I even see fear in some eyes. As if my sharing my thing means they will have to share their thing, whatever their thing may be. But why not? Why continue to live in your bubble suit when sharing your thing might help someone know they are not alone, while also dispelling the shame we think we have to carry? What if we all quit putting our bubble suits on every morning and just lived life, in both its ugliness and glory? The funny thing about bubble suits is that you can’t hold hands and walk together when you have one on. You just bounce off each other with a fake smile and an “I’m doing good, thanks!” Then you’re careening away to the next bounce off interaction.

There was a time in my childhood when every room in our house, excluding bathrooms, was carpeted. For a period of several weeks, my bare feet found every pin and needle that had ever been dropped on those floors. Not my siblings’ feet, and at the time there were five of us total kids, so that is eight other little feet that could have picked up one of those little daggers, but no. It was always mine. It became a joke that if there was one lost pin or needle, my feet would find it eventually. But that carpet. That carpet hid those little suckers and I had no warning or glimpse of light off the metal. It just got me by surprise every time. I’ll be kinder and give fair warning that this book of essays may be a needle that just might pop your bubble suit. Then you can freely stand up in your birthday suit.

My mom likes to tell the story of when she was pregnant with me and my twin sister. The doorbell rang and she opened the door. She was in her third trimester. She is only 5’3” and she was round. Very, very round. The salesman at the door doubled over laughing. He couldn’t even get a word out for a long, awkward period of time. Once he did, my mother bought not a thing.

When she went into labor, I was supposed to make an appearance first because I am the bigger and taller twin, but I got my arm caught. They had to get my sister out and then go back for me. I was stuck for forty minutes. My mother says that it was the longest forty minutes of her life. She teases that she should have known then that I was going to be a little troublemaker. Start as you intend to go, I say.

My twin sister was named the day we were born, though the hospital still put tags on us that said Baby A and Baby B. My parents didn’t name me until they were leaving the hospital. Like, almost out the door. I imagine it went something like this, “Oh, yes, we do have this second baby. Guess we should name it. Hmmmmmm, what do you think? Carmen? Sure, that sounds good, let’s go with that. Oh my, here’s our ride.”

They named me Carmen. Carmen. A child whose ancestors hail from western Europe. Trust me when I tell you that I am the whitest Carmen you will ever meet. Growing up in the eighties, I had kids compare me to Carmen Sandiego, and since that was a fun computer game I was cool with that. Though, really, it was the hat and trench coat and spyishness of it all that I loved. Even then, I loved to pretend there was something subtle about me. When I moved to Europe as a teenager, the kids there compared me to Carmen, as in Carmen the opera. Great! She could sing and dance! When I moved back to the States for college, college guys liked to make the comparison to Carmen Electra and I was decidedly not cool with that. I guess I should be grateful, though. A friend of my parents wanted them to name me Candy, so then I would have started out life with a stripper name. I apologize to all Candys everywhere.

As we grew, my twin and I did truly get up to mischief. My mom informs me that I was always the instigator, which remained true throughout our growing up years. We would be put down for our nap and, as soon as she left the room, I would climb from my crib into my twin’s crib. We would laugh and giggle and talk our twin language to each other. And sometimes poop, because we knew Mom hated changing our poopy diapers.

I tried to come up with something not too gross involving poop and bubble suits, but no matter which way I went with it, it was disgusting. See? You’re thinking about that right now. The truth is that depression is poop. I’ve tried to stop it by self-talk or going off medications so many times, but nope. I’m stuck with the poop, and all I can do is clean up after.