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More Interesting Things

The bottoms of the little creature’s feet were rough, as if they were covered in the tips of hazelnut shells. This was a thing it didn’t much like about itself. If it could have gotten some kind of procedure to fix its feet—surgery, maybe, or even something more temporary like a medical pedicure—it would have done it, but it wasn’t sure that it had time or money and besides, it didn’t even know if such a thing existed. Sometimes, just as it was about to fall asleep, the creature would feel the skin on the soles of its feet catch against the smoothness of its bed sheets (especially if the sheets had just been laundered), and it would wince.

Today, the creature was hurrying to work. As it scurried down the sidewalk, the petals on its back fluttered in the wind. The delicate, podlike lashes around its wide eyes blinked, keeping the debris of the city out of its face. The creature was carrying a stack of important documents. It wore a backpack and a satchel and was almost indistinguishable underneath it all—it must have looked, to passersby, like a worried fire hydrant. It didn’t wear much of anything, being covered in bright, yellow feathers (unlike poor, naked humans) but it wore a pair of dress shoes to the office—not because of its horny soles, but because it was afraid of the condensed exhaust and glass dust on the streets around its place of business. These dress shoes protruded from the bottom of the moving stack of bags, papers, and glittery fluff that was the little creature.

Rounding a corner, the creature caught a man staring at it. It was aware of its unusual appearance—how could it not be—but sometimes, it also caught people staring deeply into its eyes, which were a swirling, flaming mash of reds, like the palette of an indecisive stop sign. When the creature looked deeply into another person’s eyes, it could see an awe and an uneasiness there that made it think that it might be more powerful than it itself suspected. It wondered what this power could do. Sometimes it felt that, being an extraordinary creature, it should be trying to do more interesting things with its life. It knew, at the very least, that it should be asking for a raise.

The creature was so distracted by the staring man and its own racing thoughts that it didn’t see the bicycle coming around the corner. It was knocked onto its back, violently. Its papers were scattered through the intersection. As it went flying inconveniently through the air, it heard a small child on the sidewalk yell, “Mommy, what is it?” As it landed, it heard the cyclist yell, “Oh shit!” It could see the reds of its own eyes. It hoped to God it didn’t die before it had the chance to do something about its feet.

word “More Interesting Things,” by Charlotte Joyce Kidd

colour, “Lemon Bear,” by Mi Ju

Meet our new editor!

Meet our new editor, Leah Mol!

“I’m so excited to be taking over for Liam as an editor at Word and Colour. He’s done great things in the position, and I’ll take that as inspiration to work hard and keep publishing art that speaks to social issues and helps fight against oppression.

I’ve been working as a writer and editor for almost ten years, across a variety of platforms, and have always found that creative work speaks to people about social issues in a way that literally speaking to them doesn’t. Reading literary fiction improves empathy, making it easier for people to connect to one another. Communicating empathy is something I’ve always strived for in my own writing, and I’m so excited that I’ll be editing on a platform that encourages this kind of work. Fiction is priceless when it comes to developing a social conscience.

Over the past few years, Word and Colour has published amazing art alongside thought-provoking, beautifully written fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and I’m looking forward to continuing that tradition.”

Read Leah’s past prose at the journal

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Magdalen Laundry

The now empty halls
a Dublin asylum
on Lower Leeson Street
you did what they said
carry the “fallen”,
Keelia, birthing a daughter
treated as defiled.
1941, aged 16,
there was no time to say goodbye

behind monastic walls
a bedroom, a cell
iron-barred windows
in each dream walking along:
“Ma, where am I going?”
but always wake up crying
bear pages of thick ledgers:
“You disgraced us!”
Unpaid workhouse

shapeless, long brown dresses.
The sound of hand-scrubbed linens
if you listen you can hear
the abbess and the nuns

on cold winter mornings
face shrouded in black veils
girls marching to six o’clock Mass

beyond, the ordinary, everyday world.
Pruning of an old mulberry tree.
Shrews, and lizards,

the nameless.
I was known as number 26.

these words by Ilona Martonfi were inspired by the colour of Alison Gildersleeve

on park access in Calgary: “Green-Space”

1.5 million pounds of soil raised

to the 4^th floor of Calgary’s CORE

shopping complex supports an inner-

city oasis. The Devonian Gardens

are open publically during mall hours.

Oil executives employed nearby

visit the green-space on lunchbreaks,

eluding the paupers of Stephen Ave.

in +15s returning to work.

As children we attended summer camp

at Lindsay Park Sports Centre,

belayed each other up its rock walls

shouted chicken on the high dive.

Kids today learn to play water polo

in a pool named by Talisman Energy.

Since 2002 the City of Calgary has

sold naming rights to the company,

20 years for 10 million dollars.

Fish Creek Provincial Park is the largest

urban park in Canada, abutting the

Tsuu T’ina reserve in the southwest.

Roughly 12% of the city is stewarded

by Parks Calgary, the highest ratio of

green-space per capita in Canada.

Rumors of a horse found dead

in Sikome Lake are merely rumors,

but a person did drown in its weeds.

Within the cemented waterways of

Century Gardens a man offers me

beans from an unlabeled can. He was

bitten on the leg by an unleashed dog

and chased into the park by police.

Concealed behind a bench and a

juniper bush, each donated by the

Devonian Group, we leave him sitting

in darkness atop the Brutalist landscape.

Later that year a decentralized dance-

party develops in Century Gardens,

culminating down the road under the

spotlights of Millennium Skate Park.

Despite the armed chaperones, shouts

emanate from a parking lot around

the corner at Mewatta Armoury. I try

to tell a girl she doesn’t have to go with

the guy gripping her by the shoulders.

Public gardens in Calgary are closed

from 11 pm until 5 in the morning.

When cops caught us hallucinating

after midnight in South Glenmore Park

(you in my driver’s seat, our drugs

on the passenger floor), they left

us with grins and a warning.

We were two blocks from where

I taught you how to drive a stick-shift.

After ditching my red Ford Ranger in

the grafittied enclosure for road debris,

we climb the dam on Elbow River. A

glassy reservoir reflects streetlamps

to the West as the artificial cliffs arc

down in the East. The capacity of these

sloping concrete channels have been

exceeded but twice, causing damage

to the riverfront properties.

All the black squirrels in Prince’s Island Park

will follow you along a path at dawn.

It must be a cold summer’s day

before cyclists and yoga seminars

arrive to claim the green-space.

Watch deer and geese retreat downriver

from a window of the Route 3 bus,

I’ll greet you soon in Votier’s Flats

with a cold 6-pack of beer.

these words by Kyle Flemmer were inspired by the art of Allison Gildersleeve

Read, “I drifted with you”

You took a piece of the sun and flew with daylight on your back. It was not heavy, but warm and you felt it there as you coursed through the skies, lighting my way down deep dark rivers. I did not know your people but I could see them flying with you above, in formation. I drifted with you, following your ways, assured that your pathway was right.

I drifted with you

We did not talk. You were too high and I was enamoured with the symphony of sounds coming from rushing waters beating against soft rock on the bottom of the riverbed.

I drifted with you

We did not talk. I could feel you carrying the emotional burden of sunlight. You could not fade or falter and it was wearing on you, yet you remained steadfast.

I drifted with you

We did not talk. I laid back, still, my head cradled in the mass of my thick dark woolly hair that hung well below my shoulders. Beneath the canopy of trees, underneath walkways and the shade cast by all manner of things, I acknowledged that the shadows separated me from you and the sunlight you carried. The shadows were dark and cold and I did not like even the briefest moment in their presence.

I drifted with you

We did not talk. We did not need to.

I drifted with you

I laid down in a vessel of my own making and followed you, laid underneath you and greeted you with my eyes. I stared straight at you despite the glare and the heat and consumed your every move. I measured your laboured breaths and dipped my hands in the cool rushing waters to remind myself that I was real. I was flanked by angels, dark and stoic, gliding alongside me and I felt safe.

I drifted with you

You took a piece of the sun and flew with daylight on your back. You carried it for me during the darkest hours because I could not bear the burden of love and light. You held it there above me, out of arms reach so I could not pluck it out of the sky. You coursed a path for me to follow and allowed me to rest in the warm presence of peace and assuredness. You did not say words; there were none. You amassed an army of lovers just for me and when the shadows appeared I endured them knowing you were there on the other side of midnight.

I drifted with you

these words by Cora-Lee Conway were inspired by the colour of Owen Gent

following the toy

As Anne watches the toy spin slowly in the microwave, she thinks about where she and Augie will go. We could go to Vancouver, she thinks. Walk in Stanley Park and sit by the water. She’d been to Vancouver once, before she got married. She watches the toy spin and thinks about the ocean.

Their first night at the shelter, Anne woke up wet, Augie pressed into her side. “It’s too dark,” he said. They got up and Anne changed the sheets. She took the toy out of the backpack—it was one of only a couple Augie had been able to bring—and he clutched it to his chest as he fell asleep. Steven had given him the toy, not for a birthday or for Christmas; he just came home with it one day. It had been a good day.

The next morning, she found the tracker in her purse, in one of the side pockets she never opens. It was small, a little bigger than a dollar coin. Steven has touched this, she thought. He bought this little thing and turned it over in his hands and slipped it into her purse when she wasn’t there. She dropped it on the ground and smashed it with the heel of her shoe. She heard it crack, felt it flatten beneath her. She experienced a moment of relief before the panic—if there’s one, there will be others, she thought.

She dreams about the toy, but it looks different than it does in real life. She wakes up wet, with sweat in all the places. Augie is fast asleep beside her, a baby bird in a nest. She sees the toy in his arms and tries to think of how it looked in the dream, but all she can remember is that it wasn’t the same. And that’s the terrifying thing.

The fire isn’t huge, but it’s a fire. She thinks about how upset Augie will be. She’ll come up with an excuse. We’ll have to leave again, she thinks. The microwave sits on a wooden table, which is turning black as the flames eat. The microwave door hangs loose on a hinge. We’ll always be leaving, she thinks.

these words by Leah Mol were inspired by the colour of Teodoru Badiu

Love, left

Missed connections. Failed romances. Lost loved ones.

I’ve known too many people who’ve left.

Too many people who have been reduced to nothing but incoherent memories.

I have loved—deeply, intensely, purely;

these loves are now strangers.

– the many faces we wear

these words by Fiona Williams were inspired by the colour of Teodoru Badiu

The Accordionist

This is the memory: the grandfather sits in a chair in the kitchen, accordion on knee. He shuts his eyes and squeezes the instrument. A foot makes a beat. A crescendo fills the room, reaching for a climax that is always somewhere else. The floors shutter, the foot beats wilder. It is a miracle the chair does not break, that pictures do not fall from their hooks. Around the kitchen people dance and sway and laugh drunken laughs as the old man’s fingers dance an automatic dance upon the keys.

But in the grandson’s memory there is no music. Only a wheezing of air: the accordion desperate for breath, a gasping animal in his grandfather’s hands. Because he can never remember the music, he wonders if his grandfather ever really played the instrument—but the details are clear: the way the floor shook, the way the old man raised his knee, and the way he squeezed his eyes so tight that the unheard music became a thing extracted from the instrument’s wood, leather, and metal. Like a splinter squeezed from a finger. It is the very lucidity of the image that makes him doubt his recollection.

But that is the memory and this day is the present. And on this day the accordion rests next to the deep freeze, already aware of its ascent into that magical category of things-once-owned-by-people-now-dead. This day: two days after the grandfather’s death. The same house, located at the end of Vicky’s Close, named by the grandfather in memory of his mother. The dead remembering the dead.

The grandmother sits in the kitchen and the shadows of people enter and depart, wishing her well, bringing her food, offering condolences like cheese on a platter. She clutches a cane with knobby hands. She is 92 and she will be dead in eight months. She is thinking about the price of bread at the Co-Op, the way shadows have their own moods, and how violent men seem to love their mothers so.

And the grandson thinks about how violence expresses itself in the most mundane of actions. He thinks of how when he was young he sat in the chestnut tree outside and watched his grandfather close the curtains and turn all the taps on so that from outside the house rumbled with the gushing of water through pipes, concealing the echoing thud of belt against skin, a sound innocently mistaken for the swatting of flies. Later he will associate running faucets and the shadows of mid-afternoon with his grandmother’s bloodshot eyes and tension-stooped back. Blood and screams and broken bodies are banal compared to a tap left running, to an elongation of shadow on a kitchen floor.

The grandmother stares at the accordion and at the grandson and they both wonder if any music ever came from that instrument or if it really was just a wheezing, gasping bag all along. She thinks about a previous self, one vaguely resembling her own, and a black pit of seven decades opens up between that self and this one. She gasps and her face crumples and this loss of control lasts for two and a half seconds, but it is long enough for the shadows to notice. They think she is missing him and they offer more embraces.

‘Open the curtains,’ she says, ‘It’s a shame to waste such light.’

these words by Michael Warford were inspired by the colour of Teodoru Badiu

On Mental Health: “Where Do I Even Start?”

TW: self-harm, suicide

R: Ok. So, you need to talk to them about your mental illness, right?

Finn: Basically yeah, but I don’t know how. I keep starting but none of it feels right.

D: If you wrote more often, maybe you wouldn’t have that problem.

Finn: I — I know.

R: Well, what do you have so far?

Finn: I started with what I did when I was eleven…

[D scoffs]

[Enter A and SC. Both sit. A fidgets. SC smiles sheepishly and rubs A’s back.]

R: It’s okay. You need to start somewhere, right?

[SC whispers inaudibly]

Finn: Ok.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, and submerged myself in the water. It always looked a little gray in the tub. My weak limbs wallowed in the sway. One hand pinched my nostrils closed and the other floated somewhere around my stomach. I stayed this way, swaying, until the pressure pushing against my clavicle and filling my head began to pulse. Each time, I tried to hold it a little longer, savouring the feeling of expanding nothingness as long as possible, before my bodily instincts overrode my desires and I emerged, gasping.

I was 11. I didn’t know what ‘suicide’ meant.

No one ever knew about my bath time game —

A: Are you… are you sure you want to share that? If you tell them about that, they might think you’re weird. Or that you’re making it up. Or that you’re like really messed up. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a better way.

Finn: I know. You already told me that. That’s part of why I stopped.

A: What?! Oh no! You can’t stop! If you stop, you’ll never get it done!

D: Why does Finn not finishing something come as a shock to you?

A: Ok but they have to. They said they would.

R: Ok. Calm down folks. If we devolve into the two of you tugging at each arm again, they’ll never get anything done.

SC: [quietly] Finn, you should listen to R.

Finn: Ok. I’m trying. I promise I’m trying.

SC: I know you are. You’re doing great. I really liked your story.

Finn: Oh. Thanks.

D: I mean, you could have started the story at an even earlier place.

A: No. I don’t want to talk about THAT.

R: I agree with A on this one. I think that story will make a lot of people uncomfortable.

SC: I think Finn can talk about that if they want to but they don’t have to, either.

Finn: Maybe later.

R: Did you have anything to add to what you were saying earlier?

Finn: I mean, I guess. Not really, though.

R: What about what happened the fall before last?

Finn: Yeah. I guess I could start there. It’s kind of a blur, though. I can’t necessarily think of a particular event.

SC: That’s ok. You’ll find one as you go.

Finn: Ok. I guess it started in September. 22 going on 23. I guess by 22 going on 23, I’d accepted my lot, I’d accepted that these damn pills would never work and I’d never really amount to much — just like she said.

A: Please don’t talk about her.

D: Why? She was right.

R: Finn, just keep going.

[SC nods]

Finn: Ok.

It was barely September when the depression started hitting a little harder than usual. The echoes of summer heat reverberated through the window and made me sick. My eyes never quite opened before I dragged myself to the shower. I told myself it was only the newness, the change, moving out, getting used to graduate-level seminars and work. I took my useless pills to ward off the buzzies, the little electric shockwaves running from nerve to nerve when your system hadn’t gotten its juice, and dragged on.

Never take Paxil.

Never Take Paxil.

Never

Take

Paxil

I joined the editing team of a graduate creative journal. I was working as a teaching assistant. I had a research assistantship. Things were okay. I was busy — overworked, maybe — but nothing unexpected for a graduate student.

The exhaustion, however, only got worse. Periods of being suicidal. Waking up wishing I hadn’t. Feeling heavy in a foreign body. The slight relief of vertigo when getting up too fast. Resigning myself to draping my limbs over the side of the bed, letting my weight slowly slip me onto the floor, plopping into a contorted heap. All of these were normal when they took up a couple days here and there every few weeks amidst the lull of monotony, the drag of being. Slowly and all at once, creeping just enough to go unnoticed, a few days became a week, became a month, became my existence. The depression whispered to me that it was my own fault, that I just couldn’t keep up because I wasn’t enough. It almost replaced the voice that had been my mother’s — but this time I couldn’t barricade the doors, couldn’t turn up the music until she removed the fuse. It wasn’t until December that I noticed anything was wrong.

“Hey, boo. I think you should get up now,” Joon coos, sitting at the edge of the bed.

There is a day’s worth of sleep in my eyes; I barely pry them open, groan “hhhhnn.”

They try to smile, curling their lips in and pressing them tight. The pity pools in their eyes and pushes their eyebrows upwards. “Come on, I’ll make you tea.” I bury my face in their hip. One Earl Grey later, I stare out the window. Late afternoon and the day is already dimming. I have work to do. So much work to do. Heartbeat in head, shaking in chest, I am still, I am still, I am still.

Joon, too, is ill. They can’t keep taking care of me and I can’t take care of them. We lack clean dishes. Our only contact is with our pets and the ever-multiplying fruit flies in the kitchen. All our clothes are laundry. Floors no longer exist. I was supposed to have myself together. Not this. One more pill. Tiny oval in my palm. You were supposed to make it better.

They’ve made me worse. I spend a month trying to convince myself to make a doctor’s appointment. My mother’s voice in my head: you’ve cancelled too many appointments. I bet he won’t even see you now. It’s embarrassing.

Too many times. Embarrassing. Phone calls. Can’t.

I don’t make an appointment. I’m going to have to wean myself off these things on my own (always on my own) but I can’t yet. I’m mid-semester and already struggling. A decade of depression has made me a master of deception, bullshitting that I’ve read the things I haven’t. This and natural wit get me through seminar and class each week, and necessity keeps me from skipping them — though a handful, inevitably, are still missed. I slog through spring finals, spring corrections, and I start the weaning process.

R: What was the withdrawal like?

Finn: Hell. You become a different person. At first, it just feels the same as those days where you forget a pill. You think ‘Ok. Buzzies. Dizziness. Anger. Expected,’ but that’s just the beginning.

I started to cut down my dosage in May and the process lasted until the middle of July. What no doctor told me, what I found out through a series of blogs and forums, was that Paxil has some of the worst withdrawal. Heck, it’s been almost a year and sometimes I still find myself wondering if certain behaviors are the residue of my time with Paxil.

That first day in May, I sat down with a steak knife and cut several of my 30 mg Paxil pills down by about a sixth — making them 25mg — and put them into my little weekly pill case. After about three days, all I felt was a little nausea and a little spacey so I cut my next pill down by another sixth. I immediately felt the way I usually would on days when I’d forgotten to take my pill on time. I figured maybe, like the various blogs had told me, it was just a temporary drop and it would level out. It didn’t.

You wake up with a film of sweat peeling your arms from the bed. Your head is heavy and sagging with emptiness. You are a bundle of exposed wires. Every movement zaps you from your temple to your fingertips. You are seeing everything as if through a mirror. You can push yourself right up against the glass and still never touch the other side. You are sensitive. You laugh until you cry and then you hate yourself for crying. Your partner isn’t listening so you collapse to the floor in despair. Somewhere between the red pulsing in your fists and finding a clear spot on your sweater to wipe the snot, you realize how tough this withdrawal really is.

Every few days to a week, you cut back by a couple more milligrams. You go from feeling like shit to feeling dead, slowly working your way back to feeling like shit and cutting back again. This goes on for two and a half months. Two and a half months. About ten weeks. About a quarter of a year. A season. The season of withdrawal. You try to get some work done for your research assistantship when you can but it’s mostly futile. You know you’re lucky, living off the remainder of the money you earned as a teaching assistant and loans from the government. Sometimes, you’re afraid Quebec would take it all back if they looked at your file and saw how useless you were or that your langue maternelle and chosen area of study were their enemy.

D: Who are you talking to? Who is this you?

Finn: Sorry. I meant me. It wasn’t a real you. I just wanted them to feel it, if they could.

A: Do you really think that’s a good idea? People might think you’re directing them too much, and if it’s not done well enough —

D: It won’t be.

A: — if it’s not, then people might get angry or think your withdrawal wasn’t a big deal or not get it.

Finn: Ok. Yeah. I’m sorry. I’ll stick to myself. I won’t try to write for anyone else.

Anyway. After two and a half months of withdrawal — and yes, I likely went through it a lot faster than I was supposed to — after that time, I slept for what felt like weeks. I still oversleep way more than I ever did before. By the end of July, though, the withdrawal storm had mostly passed and I was excited to go back to the regular amount of depression I’d always had. I was excited for things to get a little better.

D: But things didn’t actually get better.

Finn: …No, they didn’t.

[Finn shifts. A shifts]

A: Hey, um you’ve spent a really long time on that. Maybe you should try something else. Maybe people want to hear more about how to get better. You’ve been dealing with this forever. Why don’t you give them a list of resources or something?

D: Yeah. That’d be useful, at least. Better than listening to any of us.

Finn: Ok. Yeah. I can do that. There are a couple of apps and things that have helped me over time. I’ll list a few that are easier to access, I guess.

Booster Buddy — This is an app where you emotionally check in each morning and complete a couple little self-care tasks related to whatever you’re struggling with. Doing so helps wake up your animal buddy who then thanks you and gives you motivational quotes. Also, as you complete tasks, you get points that unlock ‘levels’ that let you give your buddy cute accessories. It also keeps track of your mood, medications, and addictions if you have any. It’s a really useful and quick tool to get you in the habit of minor self-care and mood tracking.

Stop, Breathe, Think — Simple, straightforward, as-of-yet-in-my-experience not offensive or appropriative guided meditations. Select your feelings from a wide array (they separate the feelings into various categories and you can select up to five) and the app will present a series of guided meditations for you that are appropriate to whatever you’re feeling.

You Feel Like Shit — The single best interactive self-care tool I’ve ever used. This tool is made with Twine so, depending on what you’re feeling/dealing with, it will lead you on a variety of paths. It also gets you to check in on a variety of self-care things in very gentle ways — it won’t shame you if you eat poorly, for example. It very much lets you feel in control of how you care for yourself while gently nudging you to doing the most positive thing you can do for yourself at the moment, whatever that may be. I feel like it really embodies the spirit of ‘harm-reductive’ which I think is really important.

7cups — I mostly use 7cups for the growth path activities (videos, affirmations, meditations, etc.) that give you healthy reminders to help you improve what you can, as well as accepting yourself and your illnesses and being thankful for what you do have. There is also an abundance of listeners that you can talk to when you’re not doing well and community chat rooms and forums. I’ve had some awkward experiences with community members re: queerness and gender identity but overall it’s been pretty useful.

Rainymood — The sound of rain, various types of rain — it’s calming and helps you sleep.

Passionflower Valerian tea — This tea will help you calm down and help you sleep really well. Notable side effect: ridiculously vivid dreams.

St. John’s Wort & 5-HTP — If you’re not on any medication, these two supplements can be really helpful. 5-HTP is an amino acid and it’s really great for anxiety. St. John’s Wort is a plant that is basically a mild SSRI. It affects your serotonin, which is why you can’t take it if you’re already on an SSRI, because you will get serotonin syndrome and maybe die — no, really. I’m serious. That said, if you aren’t on an SSRI, this does help a bit. It might also be worth it to start taking a daily multivitamin.

(Note: I’m recommending supplements but not foods because let’s be real, if you’re depressed, you likely don’t have the energy to make healthy meals and fresh produce always rots and wilts and slimes away in that bottom back drawer of your fridge — so yeah, don’t worry, I got you.)

Also, the following songs (but also whatever works for you, you know?): “Rise Up” by Andra Day; “Keep Your Head Up” by Ben Howard; “I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers; “Up We Go” by Lights; “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root; “Let the Rain” by Sara Bareilles; “Beautiful Times” by Owl City; “Thrash Unreal” by Against Me!; “Try” by P!nk; “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself” by Jess Glynne; “Looking Up” by SafetySuit; “Make Them Gold” by CHVRCHES; “Recovery” by James Arthur; “Today Will Be Better, I Swear” by Stars.

SC: Oh! Don’t forget about your own blog, the one with all the affirmations and cute kittens and stuff!

A: No, don’t give them that. That’s too much.

R: You could but I think, for the sake of caution, you should maybe not. It’s really your decision though. Speaking of resources, how have things been going with your therapist?

A: Oh! I know this one. I was with them when they were supposed to have their last appointment. They still didn’t like him so they didn’t go to their last session because they didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or risk an awkward dialogue.

R: That — wasn’t the best plan of action. Finn, is that true?

Finn: Yes. I’m sorry.

A: They didn’t know what to do.

SC: Ok. That’s ok. It would have been better if you had cancelled beforehand but at least now you’ll go request someone new?

Finn: I will. I promise. As soon as I have the time and energy. I just, I haven’t had many great experiences with therapists.

R: Why don’t you talk about that?

Finn: What do you mean?

R: Your experience with therapists.

Finn: Oh, ok. Which one?

R: Why don’t you start with the first one?

Finn: Ok. Let’s see.

Well, it wasn’t until age 14, between covering my clothing with safety pins and darting down halls, earphones in, crawling (in my skin), that I stumbled into therapy. A misunderstanding, really. A survey I thought was for data about teens and school and pressure that landed me in a chair facing a guidance counselor. It was my first time stewing in that silence, darkness filling with a tight-lipped pity. It was nowhere near the last.

And the Counselor says, “So you feel like you want to hurt yourself sometimes? You think about killing yourself?” So blunt, he asks, as they will all ask, even though he already has the answer in front of him. I have yet to understand the sick fascination they have with hearing you say it, hearing you say in one way or another, “Yes, Mr., I want to die.”

I dance around it, as we always dance around it, not wanting to make it a big deal, but wanting to make it maybe just big enough that maybe they’ll be able to help. So, I say, “I guess it’s more that I just want to stop being. Or sleep for a really long time.”

And the Counselor says, “Hmm,” and he nods, as they will all nod. And he will let the silence build again. As though its weight is meant to feel new. In it, I will overthink every possible way that he could be thinking about this encounter, these things I am saying. Am I a liar? Am I broken? Am I not broken enough? Am I just the lazy, never-enough bitch creature my mother always told me I am? Am I manipulating a system meant for real people with real problems?

It is the first time. There will never be a last.

This first time will lead to a call home, a referral to the children’s hospital, my mother, emotional, saying she’ll take care of it, later sternly telling me I should have come to her, me feeling guilty that I hadn’t but knowing that I couldn’t or that in so many ways I had. The first time will lead to a psychologist and an art therapy group, will lead to more silence, not opening up, my mother telling me I’m wasting her money if I’m not speaking one day, telling me not to air our dirty laundry or that it’s all my own fault the next. This will lead to me skipping psych appointments, will lead to more guilt, will lead to more skipping — of school, of social gatherings, of existence, will lead to my extensive knowledge of home decor and home improvement from watching HGTV all day every day laying on the couch, will lead to me scraping my way out of high school. These will lead to more therapists, more skipping out on therapists, and so on.

When I got to university, I never tried to register myself as mentally ill with the center for students with disabilities. I wonder if anyone ever does. Or do you all feel that same complicated dissonance between the fear that the university won’t see your disorder as valid, that maybe they’ll see it as too much, or feeling like maybe it really isn’t valid enough?

[A shifts and starts picking at the skin of their cuticles. D yawns.]

I don’t know. This one doesn’t quite feel right either.

SC: Are you sure?

[Finn nods.]

R: Ok. Were there any other ideas that you had?

Finn: I mean, I thought about looking at one of those posts about ‘habits of happy people’

R: Ok. Maybe try that?

Finn: Ok. I’ve gotta get one though.

Ok. Got one. Here goes.

Be busy, but not rushed be productive, but not overwhelmed. Fill your time.

The energy it takes just to do taxes is enough to warrant a week of sleep. Keeping Busy may be a distraction but depression is, by definition, lying in bed at 3 pm watching Parks & Rec, hearing the pigeons in the heat, wanting to throw rocks at them, not having the energy, looking at the mountainous terrain of dirty clothes on your floor, the smell of gelatinous tea in mugs, and rolling back over. Depression is not doing the thing until the thing must be done because there is never the energy. Depression can’t make itself busy. Depression is always rushed.

2. Have five close relationships. National surveys find that when someone claims to have five or more friends with whom they can discuss important problems, they are 60% more likely to say they are ‘very happy’

They say. They say like it’s easy, like it’s easy to keep in touch when there are a million other responsibilities you already don’t have the energy for; like they don’t have a voice telling them they’re unworthy, they’re boring, they don’t deserve friends, they’re just annoying; like isolation isn’t the default; like they don’t feel like the longer you wait, the more the anxiety tells you not to bother, the more each unanswered message and cancelled plan makes you feel broken. Ignore it, they say. Do it, do it anyway, they say, no matter how alone you feel regardless. Do it. Then you, too, can be very happy.

3. Exercise. Endorphins, endorphins, endorphins.

Yes, more to ignore. Ignore the inability to get up in the first place. Ignore the exhaustion. Ignore that it takes an hour to look a way you don’t hate and ignore the anxiety of how the exercise will make you look by the end. Ignore the anxiety of exercise in general, of doing it around folks, of not doing it right, ignore the energy spent doing it. Ignore it. Endorphins will solve everything.

4. Spend more money on experiences. Trips! Shows! Doing, not having!

Ignore the correlation between poverty and mental illness. Ignore the fact that we — that I — cannot afford experiences, do not have the luxury to plan such things, to purchase more than the necessity. Ignore the ease of retail therapy on the rare occasion, that less effort can be put in and one comes out with a reusable item that makes them feel good. Ignore the energy it takes to plan trips, the social investment necessary to see shows, and the energy that takes. But most importantly, ignore poverty, ignore it —

D: I don’t think that’s elaborate enough for people to care. There’s no story there.

A: Yeah, I’m not too sure about it, either.

D: You’re not even trying.

Finn: Well, what do you want? There’s no story in any of it. None of them. They’re bits and they’re pieces. They’re not pretty. I’m not articulate. I’m not Plath. My fig tree has been in front of me for years and all the figs have already swollen and fallen and died. I am what I am. I get up every day. Or I don’t. But I try. And I worry. All the time. About everything. This has been my life, my whole life. I am trying to get better but I’m not there yet and I don’t think I ever will be. So, what do they want from me? It’s something that just isn’t there. They want beauty in melancholy. They want that thread of creativity only visible to those who suffer. But I can’t give them that. I don’t have the energy for that. Don’t they see the paradox? Write. About mental illness. As if that could really happen. And how? Where do I even start? Where do they want me to end? It doesn’t end. The silver linings are shards that will come back and slice you up if you don’t hold them carefully. If you rest on them, if you lean the whole story into them, they will shatter and you will bleed. Do you want to bleed?

SC: I’m so sorry, Finn. Why don’t you tell them about what you’ve been doing this past year? What happened after the withdrawal, where you are now?

Finn: This past year? What am I supposed to say? After I went through withdrawal, I took a vacation with my then-partner to the town my grandmother grew up in, the town where I spent all my summers growing up. It was hell. I hadn’t been there in years and I hadn’t realized how oppressive it would be. I mean, I shouldn’t have expected a town of a couple hundred people to respect my pronouns or my visibly queer and interracial relationship, but for some reason I did and I was trapped; Joon was even more trapped. Then, right before the new semester began, my deadbeat dad up and died. Hey, haven’t seen you in ten years but bye forever, here’s tens of thousands of dollars in debt from my coke habit. Have fun with that messy grief and the lengthy, costly legal processes of renouncing succession. And in the midst of that, I started to stand up for myself around my mother, which led to more guilt and gaslighting until I realized I may not be able to have a relationship with her anymore. Then, on New Year’s Day, Joon left me. There were real problems there and I respect that, but it didn’t make it any easier, especially when I found out how immediately (overlap likely) they started dating The Australian. Basically, this last year was hell and I hit the lowest low I’ve yet to hit. And yes, it was around that point, in January, no friends, no family, no nothing, that I realized I needed to just kill myself or dedicate myself to getting better. There was nothing else left.

So I chose to get better. I chose to start contacting people, meditating, learning how to be grateful. I am getting better because I keep trying. But it doesn’t mean I don’t still fall behind, fall apart, and isolate like all hell. It doesn’t even mean that I get up at a regular hour. Half the time, the only things I can list in my gratitude journal are, “I am grateful for the sun. I am grateful I am here.” I am still depressed and I will likely always be depressed. I’m just trying is all. But it’s hard. It’s not a happy ending by any means because it isn’t the end and there will never be an end.

D: Ugh. Now, you’re just monologuing.

Finn: Well, yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing the whole time, isn’t it?

Epilogue [of sorts]

D [Depression]: I guess. That wasn’t very inventive, though. You’re not very good at this, are you?

A [Anxiety]: Are you sure you want to tell them that? Isn’t it better if they find out on their own? Oh, but then again what if they didn’t get it at all. Maybe you should start over. What if they think you’re extra weird for talking to yourself? Can you make it clearer that these are all just things you say to yourself? That you haven’t actually fractured your mind this way? Wait. Did I do it? Is that enough?

R [Reason]: It is what it is. One way or another, you produced something.

You completed the task and that’s enough.

SC [Self-Care]: You did. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The point is that you got it done and you were able to speak, no matter how many times the others interrupted you. You are brilliant. You will keep going. All of us are learning and we are working together to help you. You are helping you. Keep pulling yourself out. Stop when you have to. Rest. But keep going. Keep going. Keep going. You’ve got this.

Finn [Me]: Thanks, I guess. At least it’s a start.

these words by Finn Purcell were inspired by the colour of Owen Gent

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