I can be a little odd. I can be hard to get to know. A piece of me feels I am getting harder to get to know. A piece of me feels I’ve lost a piece of me. Sometimes I come away from people feeling a little empty. As if I didn’t give enough to them. I struggle often with basic conversation. I give a lot of one word responses while I try to convince an ever-growing piece of me that I really do care. Not that it doesn’t. The other piece is just getting harder to find. But I’m still looking.
I started antidepressants last weekend. It’s another step in my search. I was diagnosed with depression half my life ago. It hasn’t felt as bad as it was back then and so I stopped the search for a while. I started again because it turns out that just because something is not as bad as it’s ever been, doesn’t mean it’s not bad. I do not always feel sad and often feel happy. Mental health is not just about feeling. There is a difference between what we think and what we know.

I saw a psychiatrist for the first time in thirteen years after seeing a therapist for two. These experiences are so different. Therapy feels like indulging in the piece of my brain which conceptualizes thoughts into writing, and psychiatry feels like putting words to page. To sit down and go down the list of symptoms. Disinterest in old hobbies. Excessive sleeping. Excessive eating. Isolation. Missing work. Procrastination. Crying. I have contained within these so much, and to you they are just words. A healthy level of detachment which allows for some analysis. These are the symptoms of a depressed person, though I do not always feel depressed, I guess that’s not the point. I was given a prescription meant to target both depression and ADHD, and we’ll check back in next month.

I went to see The Odyssey on Wednesday and cried. I love heroes and have always wanted to be one. I grew up with so many. Men who are strong in their convictions and bodies who save others and change the world. Their flaws, if they have any, are endearing; easy to overlook and only further serve to emphasize their otherwise perfect selves. The worlds my heroes inhabited were simple: they had a finite amount of suffering, one great evil. If the hero gave everything, then the evil would go away. This came at great cost to the hero, who had known from the beginning what would be asked of him. He would martyr himself, lose a piece, and the suffering of the world would end. In this unexamined and immature reading of media my prepubescent self found an identity. The myth of heroic stoicism wormed its way into my bones and told me that not only is it possible to save the world, the only way to do it is to suffer.

I woke up on Thursday morning. Technically. It was 12:20am on Thursday morning. I was having a panic attack. My mind and heart were racing. I had felt some anxiety on Wednesday and knew it was related to my new meds. I was able to keep it managed during the day. I am used to managing anxiety. This was different. I bolted from bed faster than I can remember and when I looked out of my window the world lurched. I felt the horizon tilt as if I lived on a disc and it had for some reason begun to fall end over end. A feeling of being snuck up on, as if someone was in my tiny room with me, convinced my legs to move and I was chased through the hallways of my building in my socks by phantoms I could feel but not see. I ran towards the door at the end of the final hallway and just as the corridor was beginning to twist and close around me I hit the crashbar and out into the open air. My mind continued to race and my heart continued to pump out of my chest as I ran down the street. Halfway down the block I forced myself to stop and attempt to collect myself. I was afraid of passing out or having some kind of seizure and hitting my head with no one to witness. I frantically dialed 911 so I could hit the send button if I felt myself fading. The phantom presence from earlier was gone but now the full moon had deemed itself my enemy as it lit the clouds around it, threatening to bring them down on top of me. A part of me laughed at being terrified of something so serene. I ran again to the next street and googled, “freaking the fuck out Wellbutrin”, before I put my phone away and began to pace.

Odysseus is not like the heroes I grew up with. Or probably I am no longer who I was when I last looked up to a hero. He is flawed in ways which appear cheeky and inoffensive but which result in material consequence for all around but himself. The excuse of savior through suffering reveals itself when it comes time to put pen to paper. Tied to the post you have suffered the siren’s song while contributing nothing to the going of the ship. A rower digs the wax from his ears, meant to protect him from the song, when he sees your expression of desire and grief and throws himself onto the rocks. He must know what is causing you to feel this way. He must know what it means to be a hero. He dies, you suffer. Simplify. Measure the material. They die, you live.

At 1am I phoned a friend. I had been pacing the same stretch of 60 feet of sidewalk for twenty minutes and my brain was beginning to quiet just enough. I deliberated with my thumb over the call button for a long time. I didn’t know what I even wanted from them. I just needed to talk to someone. To know I still could. The ground was still shaky beneath my feet and my bones still wanted to work their way from my skin. The moon had gone behind some clouds. By some miracle, they picked up the phone and talked to me while they drove over. They brought a blanket and some water and told me that they were going to take me home with them, I could stay on their couch. It took me some time to gather the courage to step from the sea to their boat. I rolled down the window and tried to tell them how good The Odyssey was while I resisted the urge to open the door and run.

Odysseus travels to Hades where he is forced to reckon with those he has driven to the rocks. Those who revered him in life now abhor him in death. He is given a terrible prophecy before he is driven from the shores of Hades by those who once thought they loved him. The prophecy portends more suffering. That he alone will return to Ithaca. That those who somehow have managed to remain at his side will need to be expended. That his homecoming necessitates the loss of those who have come to be home. He must lie to the many to save the many and then he will tell them the truth and lose them anyway. He chose his role of hero and now he must finish playing the part. Lose it all and see what it gets you.

They held me as I cried on their couch and ran their fingers over my back and through my hair. We were closer than I have been with another person in many years. I squeezed and wept as I let the world around me spin and rock and eventually come to a halt. I clung and they didn’t leave. I began finding it easier to breathe. We talked for a while before they went to bed and I slowly found what could be considered rest.

Odysseus gives himself to the sea. To the gods. He cedes his power and his control and is delivered home. He is forced to face the suffering which has occurred in his absence in his community before he reunites with those he holds dear. He sails away with them. In his attempt to save his world he has only perpetuated suffering. As he once again sails away from Ithaca he takes with him his home and his world. A world which did not need saving.

When I was being held I found that piece. I have not always avoided human closeness but I have not always been comfortable with it. It requires an amount of vulnerability I have deftly evaded. Much of my foundation as someone who has wished to be a hero is built on faux-vulnerability. The kind of vulnerability which admits to at one point not having known, not the kind which admits to not currently knowing. I have always learned but I am never learning. I have been scared but I am never scared. I have always been there but am never here.

Isolation comes with self-imposed suffering. I have been close in the past but never felt deserving of it, and so have isolated myself in this way for the majority of my twenties. My identity as a hero as defined by the child in me demanded I work to deserve closeness. It is a reward for when the job is done and the world is saved. I’m sure at some point I would have seen Odysseus’ sailing away with wife and son at the end of the movie as a reward for his heroism and not as something he could have easily always done from the beginning and without suffering for twenty years. I will honor little Connor now by telling him that I did it. I was the progenitor of this destiny and so I am the only one who can provide closure. I have been a hero and now I am done. I have saved many lives both directly and indirectly and I have bore witness to great and terrible things for which I have suffered. You did it, kiddo. I am proud of you and I will tell your story. We will move on and I will hold you.