A Natural Depression

It was near the end of my sophomore year of high school when my dad took me to see a psychiatrist. I was not too thrilled about this. I didn’t like the idea of my parents thinking that I'm crazy. He assured me that this wasn’t the case but I was still pretty paranoid. I couldn’t help but wonder what I had done to make them think I needed help. I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t think he would tell me. Sitting in the lobby I looked around the place, and each wall had a painting of some sort of flower on it. Probably to lighten the mood since waiting in a place like this produces a gloomy atmosphere. My dad talked to the receptionist and there wasn’t much of a wait, the psychiatrist came out almost immediately and introduced himself as Dr. Belnap.
He directed us into his office and had us sit down. I took the little brown couch against the wall, and my dad sat on the matching chair to my left. Dr. Belnap sat on a wooden chair to my right. He sat with is left ankle perched upon his knee, shaking his foot, exposing a blue sock as his same colored pant leg moved up. Behind him was a wooden desk covered in picture frames, work papers and a name tag. On the wall behind it were his diplomas, there were so many that there was barely any white space showing between them. The other walls were bare, except for the window behind my dad, and another one on the wall across from me.
The sun shined in through the window, lighting the room with a natural sort of glow. And although the windows were open, the air in the room was stuffy and had an almost sweaty flavor to it, as if he had brought in his dirty laundry and let is sit for a few days. After we were all settled into our surroundings, he told me that he was going to ask me some questions and that I should answer them honestly. Not really knowing what to say, I nodded and allowed him to begin.
The first question he asked was, “Do you drink?”
“No,” I replied. I thought he would take that answer and move onto the next question. Instead, he asked the same one, only in a different way.
“Ever?”
“No.”
“Sometimes?”
“No.” I was starting to get annoyed with him. How many times did I have to answer the same question before he would leave me alone? He finally moved on, but he used the same format for every question he asked me. He asked about things such as: smoking, drugs, having sex with boys, having sex with girls, cutting myself, depression, and insomnia. Basically, anything related to “teenage angst”. I got more and more irritated with every question, and I tried to let him know this by answering every one with a glare and a hint of anger in my voice.
When the interrogation finally ended, he began to talk to my dad instead, asking him about my habits and social life. He told him that I was always depressed, very combative, and didn’t have any friends. That’s when I budded in. “I have plenty of friends; you just haven’t met any of them.”
“Oh, I thought Kolynn was your only friend.”
“No, there are others.” I said it in a more sarcastic voice than I had intended, and it made Dr. Belnap laugh. He had been taking notes on his clipboard throughout the entire session, and eventually told us what he had been looking for.
“Well,” he said, “She either has depression or she’s bipolar, and I don’t think its depression. And if we start her off on the medication for that, it would be harder to get her off of it if it turns out to be something else.” Medication? I knew it, they thought I was insane. I felt slightly betrayed; it seemed as though my dad had lied to me. I suddenly got really sad and looked down at the floor. I didn’t even know what bipolar was, but Dr. Belnap said that’s probably what it was. Then my dad chimed in by saying that he was bipolar from his dad’s side of the family. He hadn’t been diagnosed with it until just a few years before, and after talking to his dad he found out that it runs in the family. That seemed to clarify that I was also bipolar.
“What does that mean exactly?” I asked. They told me that it is a manic-depressive illness that causes dramatic shifts in a person’s mood. For example, one could be euphorically elated one minute, then be completely depressed the next. Some symptoms include: increased energy or restlessness, irritability, aggressiveness, inability to concentrate, spending sprees, less or more sleep than needed, and denial that anything is wrong.
He gave me a prescription and sent us on our way. It was a drug called Lamictal. It was supposed to help stabilize my mood and make it straighter, rather than it going up and down like a rollercoaster. It came in the form of flat, blue pills that had to be cut in the middle, one half taken in the morning and the other at night. Our pharmacy was through Walgreens, so they would fill the prescription and handle refills when I ran out. The hardest part was remembering to take them every day.

When I was fourteen I began to show more aggression than usual. One night I had spent the whole day cleaning the house with my family. After all the work we had done, we were all supposed to go out to dinner together. My step-mom looked at what I had cleaned, but she didn’t find it satisfactory by her standards. This wasn’t surprising; she never liked anything I did, and she always looked down on me. Her fat face would puff up and she’d glare at me with her cold, blue eyes. And the phrase, “You’re grounded” would always follow. So, it wasn’t a surprise when she told me that I couldn’t come with everyone and that I had to stay home and finish the job.
They left soon afterwards, letting me know beforehand that they would not bring any food home for me. I returned to my chores, pouring soap into a bucket, and then filling it with warm water. I grabbed a sponge and threw it into the water. Picking up the bucket, I walked over to the hallway and set it down. My chore was to clean the walls, and make sure there was no dirt left upon their white surface. I sat down, thinking it would be better to start from the bottom and work my way up. As I wiped down the wall, for the second time, I was suddenly filled with intense anger. It wasn’t fair that I should be left behind to do a chore I had already done. My hatred for that woman grew to the point where it could not be contained. Choosing the wall as my target, I kicked it with the flat of my foot. It held, and I gave it a second kick. Three times the charm, and as fate would have it, my foot broke through the wall and little pieces of it fell to the floor. When my family returned, I showed them the hole.
My parents were furious, and once again I received the death glare from my step-mom. She sent me to my room, then after about fifteen minutes she came in and lectured me about responsibility. I stared at the floor throughout the entire thing. I knew what I did was wrong, and I felt really bad about it. But at the same time, I felt a little bit of satisfaction from seeing her so worked up about this. My dad eventually joined us, and he said that he would fix the wall, but I had to pay him for his labor. I ended up only having to pay $10, and I was grounded for a week, small price for making them twitch. After a while, they realized that this behavior is strangely uncharacteristic of a normal, teenage girl.

My sister and I used to go grocery shopping with my dad all of the time. We would battle over who would get to push the cart. She would make funny faces at me, her emo haircut falling over her eyes, losing some of the effect. She was about an inch taller than I am, and a little rounder, but I was still able to take her down at any time. We would giggle as we poked each other in the side, doing our best to dodge the other’s attack. My dad would usually get fed up with our shenanigans and say, “I’m pushing the cart.” His tone would be very taunting, and he’d look at us, smile and laugh. Then, with would be sad faces, we’d follow him around the store.
We always had to keep a close eye on him. He had a habit of picking up things we didn’t need and couldn’t really afford, like cookies, chips and other junk foods. He’d throw them into the cart, and then go back to looking at the shelves. When his back was turned to us, my sister and I would grab any unnecessary items he had picked up and put them back on the shelves from which they had been removed. Every now and again he would get something past our radar, but he never seemed to notice when some of the things he had put into the cart were missing when we got home and put the groceries away. He seemed like he was just another compulsive shopper.
Some years later, I came in possession of a debit card, and the wonderful world of online shopping was suddenly open to me. Every site I went to seemed to have something I wanted. I would have killed to have a Sephiroth action figure, t-shirt, keychain, wall scroll, his sword, and even a lighter. He’s so pretty, with long, flowing white hair, big green eyes, black boots and trench-coat, and a very long sword. It was very hard to resist the urge to buy everything having to do with my favorite Final Fantasy character. But I remembered my dad, and our trips to the grocery store, and how he would spend money carelessly for no other reason than he was in a good mood. I turned out the same way, spending money here and there just because I feel like it.

I had gone to bed at one in the morning. Two hours later, I still lay in bed just as awake as I had been beforehand. The scarlet numbers of my digital alarm clock ticked slowly forward. It was unusually hot in the room, though the window was open and a steady breeze blew through it. The moonlight that crept its way through the crack in the curtains illuminated the random objects on my desk. My laptop, turned off and closed, lies in the center. A box full of books stands behind it to the right and to the left a CD player with a miniature Jawa standing on top of it. An array of anime action figures stand guard around the computer, the most fierce being a Tonberry, a tiny lizard creature holding a lamp in one hand and a knife in the other. I saw all of these things and memorized their positions as I stared at them for endless minutes.
It’s like this every night. My mind refuses to shut off, and I become more and more restless. That night I was particularly frustrated with my inability to just go to sleep. I rolled over several times, shifted my pillow and fixed my blankets perfectly around me in an attempt to get comfortable. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not get to sleep. Eventually, I grew so angry that I burst into tears, and when I start to cry I can’t stop no matter how hard I try. For the next hour, I sobbed into my hands, my pillow, blankets, even my ratty, old, pink bunny; a relic from my childhood. There was no one to hear me or offer any help, since I had a single room in the dorm. The bunk bed was still in tact, and I preferred to sleep on the bottom bunk. The spare mattress was held up by three wooden boards placed horizontally above me.
It was four o’clock when the rage was so overwhelming there was no longer any way for me to hold it inside of me. Looking up at the boards, I balled my hand into a fist and with a scream I hit one of them as hard as I could. Feeling slightly better as the glorious pain rushed through my hand, I hit it again and again, embracing this release from the agony inside as it sank into my hand instead.
Suddenly, my stomach twisted and longed to dislodge its contents. I felt the blood leave my face as it raced to my feet, and I was very short of breath. Jumping out of my bed I landed and immediately collapsed to the floor, gasping for air and choking on it. In my haste to divert the pain inside to something on the outside, I forgot to think about what would happen afterwards, and I had unwittingly sent myself into shock. I was scared and I knew I needed help, but my door was locked and I knew that nobody would find me. Somehow I stood up, grabbed my keys and headed for the door. I made it outside of my room and into the hallway before my vision went black and I fainted. When I came to I started to hyperventilate, breathing in and out very quickly.
The whole time I kept thinking, “Someone will find me and help me.” When I finally had enough strength to move, I lifted my head and looked around the hallway. It was four in the morning, everyone was asleep and every door in the hallway was closed. No help would come, I was completely alone. I wanted to call out and force their help, but all that came out of my mouth was a gasp as I choked. With nothing else to do I laid there crying until I could stand again.
I spent the next hour downstairs in the kitchen, icing my hand, hoping the swelling would go down enough so that nobody would notice the next day.

Standing in front of the water fountain, I hold the circular case covered with letters to represent the days of the week. Opening the slot labeled “M” I remove a blue pill and hold it in my left palm. Looking at it, I wonder how much it will help me today. Will my mood be stabilized as was promised me when I began taking them years ago, or will I break down randomly as I have done so many times before? Perhaps I’ll become so happy that I say things that I shouldn’t without even thinking about it first. I only know that I hate being this way, always much more moody than any normal human being should be. If this will release me from that, even for a while, then it must be worth taking. Leaning over the fountain I fill my mouth with water, drop in the pill, and swallow.