This is a piece that I submitted in my creative nonfiction workshop at school and received great reviews but I've always thought that the best way to get feedback is a place like this where the reader can be as honest as possible without the awkwardness of being in the same room as the writer. It's a bit long and fair warning, it's dark, but if you do read it please follow it through to the end or else you'll miss the most important part. Thanks in advance.
Catching Air
It was early August and I was home in Cary, back from my apartment in Chicago, all my gear packed up, when I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Was I seriously about to go to Wyoming for nine days? It was 9:30 a.m. and my friend Mike was supposed to be in my driveway at eleven. The desire to abandon my plans grew slowly within as the minutes passed by. Sweating, I got up from the couch to turn on the fan. I could hear my heart beating over the TV. My stomach swelled and cramped with pressure. Why did I put myself in this situation?
The trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks had been in the works for over a year and was the constant subject of conversation between my friends. I was going with Mike, Morgan, and CJ. We were taking Mike’s old Buick Rendezvous for the thirty-hour-ride west, with a slight detour to pick up CJ in northern Minnesota where he worked at a YMCA camp. The thought of being cramped in a car for more than a whole day of straight driving across the most desolate land in the country made me want to run straight up to my room and never come out.
I stared at my gear and thought about the week ahead of me. Day after day of strenuous hiking in bear country, and these weren’t your shy black bears, these were seven-hundred pound grizzlies that would tear off your head just because. That thought alone was enough for me to grab my phone and call Mike, the unofficial leader of our trips.
“Would it ruin everything if I didn’t go?” I said, already ashamed to be asking.
It took Mike a second to respond before he said, “Honestly, I’d call the trip off if one of us couldn’t go. What’s going on?”
I paused, not sure what to say. “I’m just not very stable mentally right now.” The words sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. “There’s no way I’d ruin the trip for everyone else though so never mind, I’m fine.”
He paused, “Well are you going to enjoy it if we go?” His tone was complete confusion, but he didn’t press further. Years of roughhousing and backyard sports had established me as the “tough” one, being several inches taller and many pounds heavier than anyone else. It wasn’t a rare occurrence for me to take it too far and end up hurting someone, which always left me with intense feelings of guilt.
“Probably have good days and bad days but I’ll tough it out, don’t worry about it.”
Mike said alright a little hesitantly and we hung up. So it’s really happening, I thought, I’m doing this.
Everybody experiences anxiety to some degree. Being nervous about a presentation or a test is normal and healthy. You might get nervous about a speech but I’m nervous about sitting in room full of strangers where I won’t be able to leave without being embarrassed. I worry about how close I’ll be to the door, to the bathroom, whether if I do need to leave someone will say anything, or a teacher will challenge me. It’s entirely irrational, I know, but I can’t stop it. My mind constantly hypothesizes future situations, and they’re always bad. Even the simplest decisions, like whether I should go to my friends or stay in, can take hours for me to decide. The endless possibilities add up to the point where it’s just easier to stay in my apartment, thus isolating myself to the point where I won’t leave my place for days, even weeks if I don’t have to.
---
Two months earlier on the morning of my first day at a new job, I was showered and dressed with still another hour before I needed to leave my apartment. A ball of pressure hunkered down low in my stomach and I was constantly pacing between the bathroom and living room, every few minutes feeling like I was about to throw up.
It was late July, in between my junior and senior year of college, and hovering around one-hundred degrees every day, dropping to a cool ninety at night. My apartment doesn’t have air conditioning. I was only in my dress clothes for a few minutes and they were already stuck to my flesh. Paranoid about getting dehydrated, I was chugging water and had to relieve myself every thirty minutes. I worried that I’d have to go while on the train and wouldn’t have the opportunity. I imagined myself getting to work and immediately asking where the bathroom was. Not the first impression I wanted to make, much less the fact that I would have to continue going given the ridiculously excessive amount of water I’d drank.
My mind became strangely absent, like a system shut down to avoid incoming threats. It wasn’t zooming along, constantly shifting from one minute detail to the next, like what exact time to best leave, or checking Google Maps for the seventh time to make sure where I was going. I just sat on my sagging couch and shifted my eyes from floor to ceiling.
The minutes passed by. I felt like part of me knew I wasn’t going to get on any train but I wasn’t quite ready to admit it to myself. Even after the time to leave had passed I remained on my couch, thinking nothing.
It wasn’t until an hour later when the thoughts took over.
You pathetic waste. Twenty-one years old and can’t even perform a minimum-wage job. What the hell are Mom and Dad going to think, they’ve been on your case for weeks. A month into summer and you still haven’t done anything. What is wrong with you?
I was lying in bed with the blinds shut, light off. For hours I mentally attacked myself. Nothing was off-limits. I deserved nothing. I was spoiled. Two parents that were still together, both loving in their own way, a paid college education, plenty of friends, nice clothes, money to do anything I wanted, yet still I was always depressed. I felt like a little kid who needed to be cared for constantly. My brother was off completely on his own with a good job and a steady girlfriend. My sister was set to attend the number-one-ranked journalism program in the country. Meanwhile I sat in the apartment my dad paid for, watched TV for hours on end, rarely even hanging with friends. I was a major in creative writing, couldn’t even think about calling myself a “writer,” and spent many more hours thinking about writing than actually doing it. I always took the easy route and was ashamed of it, yet couldn’t get myself to stop. I couldn’t help but wonder whether some part of me like to suffer, and if so, why?
Later that afternoon my mom called to see how my first day was. I was still lying in bed when the vibration of my phone made me jump up. The caller ID “Mom” glowed in the dark room and tears instantly leaked from my eyes. The muffled vibrate on my mattress repeated six or seven times before stopping for good.
I banged my head against a wall, paced endlessly in circles around my room, and swore at myself over and over again. If I had long enough hair to grab hold of I would’ve ripped it out. I was so tired of hating myself but each day I tried to improve I failed miserably.
The next day was no better. I didn’t shower or even change out of the clothes I slept in.
When my mom called again, I answered, “Hey.”
“Hi, so how was work?”
“I didn’t go.”
“What. Why?”
I said nothing and released a sporadic sigh.
“Michael, what’s wrong?”
“I never went. I just couldn’t do it, I don’t know.”
“Well…that’s ok,” she said tentatively, “you can always just find another job that you’d actually enjoy.”
“No. That’s not it.” I tried to continue but got choked up. I was never able to express myself to my parents. In a way, they felt like strangers to me. There were so many things I couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them. I always felt that their opinion of me was completely wrong. I never trusted their support because it was coming from my parents, they had to support me.
“I’m freaking out right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I’m barely functioning. I just lay around all day hating myself.”
“Michael, come home. It’s not normal to feel like that, we can get you help, don’t worry about it so much.”
Don’t worry about it, why didn’t I think of that?
I don’t mean to attack my mother but that’s literally the worst advice you can give someone struggling with depression, even though it’s true. All it does is belittle their situation, make it seem nonexistent.
“I can’t get on a train right now. Maybe tomorrow, I don’t know.”
My parents ended up driving downtown that night to get me. I couldn’t even look at my dad. I imagined myself through his eyes, how pathetic I must have looked. My dad is old school Italian. All my friends who know him agree he’s the scariest person they ever met. I remember when I used to be proud of that. Like hey, my dad can kick your dad’s ***. I learned to look at his aggression and impatience with disdain, though, and partially hated him for it and also myself, because I knew how much I was like him.
We didn’t talk about what was going on with me at all on the hour drive home. I had run through the scenario hundreds of times: my mom would do all the talking while my dad kept his eyes on the road, painfully silent. She would stress that I need to try to take it easy, not to take everything so seriously. I found it strange that I wasn’t relieved they didn’t talk about it, but retrospectively I know I was just looking to vent.
---
The sound of something hitting our tent woke me up at five in the morning. I sat upright in my sleeping bag and listened. Silence. No one else woke up but I knew I heard something and couldn’t help but think it was a bear. I waited for the sound of its breath, of claws on dirt, but heard nothing. Then something smacked the top of the ten and woke up CJ and Morgan. We stayed quiet, waiting for the next sound. The glow stick hanging from the ceiling cast a soft green light in the tent. Another smack, again on the roof.
“It’s just a squirrel throwing down pine cones from the trees above,” Morgan said, and rolled back over in his sleeping bag.
It sounded plausible but I stayed still, waiting for the next sound. I didn’t have to wait long. Another loud whap against the roof. It can’t be a bear, I thought, relieved.
“Doesn’t that ****er know it’s five in the morning?” CJ said.
I knew I wasn’t going to fall back asleep. I worried that my friends could hear the sound of my heart pounding in my chest. Thoughts about the day ambushed my mind. We were to go mountain biking in the Teton Range. We’d been in Wyoming for three days and each was its own challenge for me. The challenge being not to have an emotional breakdown in front of the friends who thought of me one way, while the reality was entirely opposite. I was no longer the assertive, quick-talking kid.
All I could think was I was supposed to be on vacation. I couldn’t make sense of it. This wasn’t my first trip. I’d gone on trips to Colorado, Tennessee, and New Hampshire, and each time was a blast. Our trips used to be the highlight of the year. This time around was turning out to be week-long nightmare.
---
My parents brought me back home the day after I failed to go to work, on a Wednesday, and a doctor appointment was set up for Friday.
The doctor ended up being very kind. He had a wide face with black hair slicked back and a well-manicured beard.
“So why are you here?” He asked in a surprisingly soft, sincere voice.
Tears were already starting to make my eyes shine and I was calling myself a pussy over and over in my head.
“Well I was supposed to start work the other day and wasn’t able to go. My anxiety completely controls me, and I think I’m depressed.” The words came out with little air; I had to squeeze them out of my lungs.
“Ok, what sort of physical symptoms are you experiencing?”
“Nausea’s the main issue but I also have stomach and chest pains, headaches, diarrhea, light-headedness…”
He was sitting on a stool and nodding. Something about his look was very understanding. He was a stranger but I felt comfortable be honest with him.
“Explain what you mean by anxiety.”
For some reason I always have a hard time putting it into words. “I just tend to freak out about the smallest things. I’m always afraid I’m going to do or say something that makes me look stupid. Whenever I’m in an uncomfortable situation I feel like I’m going to throw up or pass out. Everything feels insurmountable.”
“And what makes you think you’re depressed?”
“Most days I wake up and feel completely drained with no desire to get out of bed. I look at what lies ahead each day and don’t want to do any of it, including things that are supposed to be fun, like hanging with friends. I don’t like living, I don’t like myself.”
“And how often do you feel this way?”
“Pretty much every day. There’s moments where I’m fine but it always comes back.”
“Ok. First of all, you need to know that what’s going on isn’t normal. It’s not your fault. It’s actually about chemical levels in your brain. When you have low serotonin levels you’re more likely to feel like you were explaining, but there’s medication that can help right those imbalances.”
I didn’t expect to get medicated that first day. I figured I’d just take a couple test to make sure there wasn’t anything physically wrong with me (which they did, surprise, surprise, nothing off). I didn’t even know a family doctor dealt with issues like depression and anxiety.
“Now there are many different options and each medication works differently. It’s not going to be an immediate fix. Sometimes patients try three different medications before they find the right one for them.”
Great, just what I needed to hear. I was already at my breaking point. I needed help NOW.
“I’m going to start you off with 10mg of Lexapro and 0.25mg of Xanax to help you sleep. The Lexapro won’t start working for at least a week or two but if you experience significant side effects or things get worse, stop taking it and come back and we’ll try something else.”
Lexapro, one of the many antidepressants, is tailored to right the chemical imbalances in the brain. People suffering from depression have low levels of serotonin and norepinephrine (adrenaline), hormones that help supply energy and positivity. Engaging activities like sports send a surge of adrenaline which temporarily helps, but a stress hormone called cortisol slowly rises while the adrenaline teeters down after a short period. This rise in cortisol and lack of serotonin and adrenaline results in the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
The doctor left to write up the prescriptions and came back with a couple pamphlets about general anxiety disorder and clinical depression. He never mentioned either one directly to me.
I took my first pill that day and struggle to get it down, though it was just a tiny white circle. After an hour or so I felt even more drowsy and lightheaded than usual. Any movement at all made me dizzy and I told my mom but she said not to worry, it was normal to feel the side effects early on, it would stop after a few days. I didn’t leave the house for three days. The thought of going anywhere with those side effects was too much. I started to wonder whether taking medication was worth it.
---
My friends and I were out of the car and walking towards the outfitter shop and still I wanted to say no, I’ll just hang around the parking lot and read. There was a solid blue sky but haze from surrounding forest fires blurred the edges of the mountains. The steel cables for the ski lift spanned up the mountain and I froze. I didn’t even think about having to ride up on one. I doubted I could do it but my friends were already ahead.
Inside, it looked like any other sporting goods store but a hallway lead to a back room where two rows of giant mountain bikes stood along with racks of protective gear. The guy behind the counter was surprisingly young, shoulder length brown hair, an obvious stoner. He didn’t give us any speech about the trails, how to ride the bikes, nothing. I wanted to know more, like how intense the trails were, whether you needed any experience or training, but my friends were already filling out forms on the computer. I thought about using money as an excuse not to go along but I knew my friends wouldn’t let me bail. I filled out the forms: insurance for the bike, credit information, etc. Then the guy walked us over to the gear. Full-face helmets, protective gloves, plus full body armor if we wanted it.
“Do you recommend all the pads?” Mike asked.
“Uhh, I don’t know, man. You guys can go up and try it out, if you decide you want the pads, come back down and we’ll hook you up.”
We all looked at each other for a minute, silently deciding against the pads. I wasn’t going to be the only one to wear them.
CJ laughed, always up for a bare-bones adventure, and proceeded over to the rows of bikes, “Which one of the babies is mine?”
We each grabbed a bike and headed out the back door which led out to a big field full of people tossing Frisbees and footballs. We followed the signs and walked our bikes through the tourist village used as a ski lodge in the winter. Before long we were at the base of the chair lift and we stopped for a minute to look at the mountain ahead of us. A thick layer of pines hid any sight of the trails we were about to ride, hard as I tried to spot one.
Out of a plume of dust a biker came barreling toward us and skidded to stop, releasing a victorious shout. His clothes were plastered with dirt on one side, but he was smiling. I turned back towards my buddies who were already heading to the lift.
Two employees were working there, one scanned the receipt dangling from my bike and the other put it onto a rack attached to the cables. All four of us got on one chair and it bobbed back forward and back gently as it carried us up. I looked at the ground passing slowly beneath me and imagined myself falling. I wrapped my arm through the bar on my side and tried to act cool. Be calm. Be calm. Be calm.
As we passed over the pines I finally caught sight of the trails: one to our right was full of tight switchbacks, a tan serpent in the dense forest; one to our left had jumps that looked well over six feet tall. I looked at Morgan to see a sarcastic, grave look, “We’re toast,” he said, but I could tell he was pleased. CJ was literally rocking the chair back and forth with excitement and I wanted to choke the life out of him. Goddammit, what the **** am I doing? I was lightheaded and took a couple gulps of water from my Camelbak. I put all my energy into imagining I was somewhere else, that I wasn’t about to be hurling down a mountain on a bike I’d never ridden.
At the top we hopped off the chair and scurried out of its path as it turned to head back down to bring up more riders. Our bikes were propped up on a rack and I walked over to mine, which I then saw had a label dubbing it ‘Poseidon.’ I hopped on and rode it down a little slope to where a big wood sign labeled the direction and difficulty of each trail. There were two green trails, three blue, and one black, in ascending order of difficulty. We decided on the first green trail, ‘Lucky Charm,’ lined up, and started down.
I didn’t have time to think. CJ went first, then Morgan, myself, and Mike in the back. I pedaled first with caution, not knowing what was ahead. The trail didn’t seem steep but I was already flying, the slightest touch on the rear break locked the wheel, sending the back end out on each turn. I nearly slid out on the first three turns before I even had the time to slow down and get my bearings.
Slowly, I experimented with the bike, trying to figure out how it worked. Definitely needed to break before the turns, not during, and I learned the tires had serious grip. I could lean farther than I cared to before they lost hold on the hard-packed dirt, so long as I didn’t accidentally touch the break.
About halfway down I saw a cloud of dirt around a turn and skidded to a stop. It was CJ, to none of our surprise. He was already getting up when I stopped, and laughing, brushing off the dirt.
“Nice going, CJ,” Morgan said, “and you wore all white, too, what a shame.”
“**** you guys, let’s go!” CJ said, jumped on his bike, and pedaled off in a hurry.
We continued down the trail and flew through switchbacks and banked curves. The monster shocks on my bike ate up each bump and rock, ceaselessly carrying me down the mountain. Me entire body was rigid, hands clenched the handlebars in a death lock, elbows out and shoulders hunched, legs under the strain of my entire weight as I hovered an inch or two above the sit. All my attention was focused on the non-stop onslaught of trees and rocks that threatened to snag my handlebars or pedals if I was just a bit off center.
Eventually, I stopped riding the brake and threw in some pedals on the flat bits. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was exhilarated. It brought me back to the days when we used to ride through the local woods, making our own trails. I chased after CJ, not wanting to go any slower than him. My front tire was just inches behind his as we barreled out of a turn and I heard CJ holler. I looked up to see three big jumps ahead.
CJ came out of the turn a little wobbly and swerved around the first jump into some tall grass. I, however, came out clean and pedaled twice more before hitting the jump. The front wheel depressed to absorb the slant and then I was sailing. I looked down to see several feet of dirt pass beneath and then my tires touched down smoothly. There was zero time to think before I hit the second jump and I was again flying through the air, a giant smile on my face. When I landed the second time my bike wobbled a bit and I got control of the bike just as I hit the third jump. This time I lurched through the air top-heavy and I got the sinking feeling in my gut like when on a rollercoaster. Oh ****. I braced for impact and closed my eyes when my wheels touched down and I rolled on, dumbfounded. I skidded a 180 and jumped off my bike, hands up in the air like I scored a touchdown.
“Holy **** dude!” CJ ran towards me. “You were ****ing flying, man. This is awesome!”
Morgan and Mike came around the turn and slowed to a stop, figuring one of us crashed.
“Michael just beasted these jumps,” CJ said, “I can’t believe this is a green trail.”
I flaunted a bit and we got back on our backs, still plenty of trail to go. There were two more similar jump sequences before the trail ended and I hit them as fast as I could. I felt invulnerable. It wasn’t about how I could crash and get hurt; it was about how much air I could get.
I couldn’t remember ever being so happy. So free. Free from thoughts about what was going to happen next, about how I felt or looked, or what people thought. I was there, on the mountain, with three of my best friends. That was plenty, I realized, more than what most people have.
I remembered that the doctor had said once the medicine kicked in I’d feel completely different. Suddenly the glory of life would be self-evident. This didn’t happen though. I cycled through Lexapro, Zoloft, Effexor, but none of them matched the exhilaration and happiness I felt while barreling down that mountain with my friends. It took a demanding present to distract me from myself, to show me that I really could be happy. I wasn’t anxious because I didn’t have time for it. Trees and rocks took priority as they whizzed by.
That moment was so pivotal in my journey to better days. I had forgotten what it was like to be without anxiety and self-hatred. There was always something to dwell on, something to bring me back to my grim reality. But that all changed in that moment. And no, it wasn’t a permanent change, but the happiness I experienced that day felt like the purest form on earth. It sustains me to this day, reminding me that I can be happy. And maybe that wasn’t even true happiness—being separated from my anxiety—but for me, it was enough.
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Originally Posted by ChicagoReader
