Chapter 22: A Place to Be

When I was 12, I drilled a hole in my head and filled it with bad ideas about myself. It was as if I woke up one day feeling like a terrible person, with a sense that nothing was ever going to be ok ever again. The doctors called it depression, and with that my life took on a different shape. I stepped onto the conveyor belt of the mental health services. It is hard to put a coherent timeline to these years, and hard to find the words to explain the experience. What I can say is that in describing one experience, I am in many ways describing them all. I became very familiar with waiting rooms, the ones with the yellow walls and ticking clocks branded with the name of a popular antidepressant. I’d sit there for as long as it took because appointment times didn’t seem to matter. I’d sit there for 1 hour to be seen for 10 minutes, by a different doctor than the last one, and the one before that. During their introductions, I’d try to bear the weight of the disappointment at this stranger and the knowledge that by the next time they may be gone too. I’d wonder at myself for ever being so stupid to have expected any different. I’d wonder over and over why they couldn’t review my file before calling me in, but I’d never say it. Rate your mood from 1 to 10 and promise not to kill yourself. That was about the gist of it.