A Glimpse of the Monster Within

Few know this, last year I was suicidal. It took me months to even realize how deep of a hole I was in. Now, I’m able to see this experience as something beautiful that ultimately taught me what was most important to me in life but at the time it scared me shitless.

For some background, I was living in San Francisco and going through treatment for Chronic Lyme Disease. Some of the side effects of the bacteria and coinfection killing medications are severe nerve pain, anxiety, depression, and dissociation. I was living in an emotional trance, walking like a zombie through my life.

The daily physical pain combined with the emotional nothingness led me to a feeling, or lack thereof, of watching my life go by as I detached myself from it. I wrote this when I felt the effects at its strongest.

Pain squeezes me out of my body.

I watch from the tower above.

Unable to focus on the life below

As clouds come and go.

During my time in San Francisco in the spring of 2019, I lived in an apartment by myself and rarely saw people as most friends were working long hours. This was a lonely time. What was toughest was the fact that even when I hung out with people, the dissociation made me feel nothing. I couldn’t connect with others and it was painful for me to keep trying to do it as I felt I was slipping farther and farther from myself. I didn’t know how to come back.

It truly felt like I was living in black and white. Only a few moments of joy were sprinkled into the basin of darkness that I had been consumed by.

Depression covers life with a thick fog. I was no longer able to see through it to who I really was. I felt like I was putting up a front but I didn’t know what for. My coping mechanism, like many others, was to make myself as busy as possible. I became a productivity machine filling every moment with some new thing to do. Subconsciously, this is how my mind kept me safe from the pain I was harboring within. I kept myself distracted with movement.

As this progressed, I knew something felt wrong internally, but I kept working toward my goals of a healthy body and a career in golf, pushing through unimaginable nerve pain just to get a few extra hours in on the driving range. I was trying to work my way out of this empty feeling but to no avail. I was just digging a deeper hole.

I don’t know how to explain it but it literally felt like I was being chased. It felt primal, that if I stopped, I would be caught and killed.

As I did this, the feeling got worse. It got to the point where I had considered stopping the chase. I wanted out of this pain and knowing I did scared the hell out of me.

A Glimpse of the Monster

I finally spent a week where I stopped running, I stopped working, and I just did things to make me feel something, anything. I would go for a walk not because I needed exercise, but instead, I chose to do it to pay attention to the gorgeous Cypress trees in Golden Gate Park. I went to the beach not because I felt I had to go enjoy a sunset, but because I wanted to go put my feet in the sun drenched sand and smell the ocean breeze.

It was only when I took this time to slow down that the veil of depression’s fog began to dissipate. I could see part of the monster I was running from. When I peered through the mist I saw the plack black, nothingness pit that pulled in every emotion and connection within my experience before I could taste it.

The First Step: Acknowledge Something is Wrong

When we first see the monster we are naturally presented with our instinctual fight or flight response. I dare you to summon the courage to stand steadfast before your demons. Make the first move in the fight to regain connection to yourself and your life.

The most important thing I did was to reach out for help. I finally could see something was wrong and reached out to family friends in the area. I moved out of my solo apartment and into their home. They welcomed me in and gave me the human connection (albeit somewhat forced) that I needed.

Emotional Scaffolding

When building a skyscraper, the first thing the workers do is set up strong, reliable scaffolding. This is not only to help save them if they fall, but help them erect a taller building. Our lives are the same.

In my research and reading on depression and dissociation, I learned the most important thing you can do is figure out what scaffolding you need in your life. The most common ones that came up are to meditate, eat healthy food, workout, and be around family/friends. All of these give your body the fuel and physiological changes it needs to feel good. Your mind and heart are soon to follow when the proper chemicals are released in your brain.

I found that I first needed to be around people. I remember the first time I felt something after over 6 months feeling nothing but emptiness and despair. I was leaving the house to go see a doctor and was having a rough day both emotionally and with physical pain.

The mother of the family I was staying with told me she was going to give me a hug before I left otherwise I wasn’t allowed to go. She could tell something was up. I said I was fine and that I had to go. She insisted that she give me a hug. She wrapped her arms around me and didn’t let go. It was at that moment that I felt a piece of myself come back.

I left the house to sit in my car and cried my eyes out for 15 minutes.

It was just a flicker of the emotions I once knew but it was enough to be a beacon of light for me to work toward.

Over time I learned what my emotional scaffolding would be. I now know I need a structured morning and nighttime routine filled with mediation, gratitude practices, and reading. I need human connection, to spend time with friends and family. I need enough sleep and to eat healthily.

Routine is the foundation upon which our scaffolding can be built. Your routine can be fully structured minute by minute or just give yourself an hour in the morning to do what feels right that day, whether it’s reading, meditation, running, etc. Regardless of how tough these routines are to execute at first, it is what pulled me out of my depression, and will do the same for you.

There are undoubtedly days where I still have relapses of this depression. What I know now is that it’s ok to feel depressed. Those days will happen. But no matter what, I won’t give up on my day, I will fight, I will do the routines that I know help, and I will only focus on my input and the effort I control.

I know I’m not the only one fighting this faceless monster. You may have already caught a glimpse of it hidden in the fog. Regardless we have each other. We all will support each other if one of us reaches out. Reach out to friends and family, you never know if your text, call, or hug can be the thing that gives them that glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel.

This is just the beginning of my journey to a healthy body and mind and I will continue to share the other things that have helped me. For now, I’ll leave you with a piece I was shown that continues its role as an inspiration to keep fighting.

Henry the V
Act III, Scene 1
Shakespeare

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'