Untamed

When I began recovery, I thought that my problem was that I ate, drank, and drugged too much. I learned that overeating, drinking, and drugging were actually not my problems; they were my ineffective solutions. My actual problems are clinical depression and anxiety. Being both depressed and anxious is a bit like being Eeyore and Tigger at the same time. It’s like always living a little too low and a little too high. It’s always struggling to be at the level where life happens, which is here and now.

Depression and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be there but I’m really gone. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel me anymore—including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.

Depression, for me, is a forgetting, an erasing, a slow fade into nothingness. It is like I run out of Glennon, and there is nothing left but panic that I am gone forever this time. Depression takes all my vibrant colors and bashes them together until I am gray, gray, gray. Eventually I get too low to operate, but as I begin to fade, I can usually still accomplish small things: do the dishes, take the kids to school, smile when it seems called for. It’s just that it’s all forced. I am acting instead of responding, because I have forgotten the point. Perhaps this is why so many depressed people become artists, to reclaim the power of answering the question: What is the point? We are clawing at the ground with pen and paper while drowning in quicksand.

If depression feels like sinking below, anxiety is a shaky hovering above. Right now, as I write this, I am in the middle of an anxious period that has lasted a few weeks. I know I’m floating into anxiety when I find myself obsessing. Obsessing over the next speech, the kids, the house, my marriage, my body, my hair. Anxiety is feeling terrified about my lack of control over anything, and obsessing is my antidote. Writing is clawing the ground when I’m sinking too low, and obsessing is clawing the ground when I’m hovering too high.

I thought I’d been hiding my anxiety until my wife touched my arm and said, “I miss you. You’ve been gone for a while.” Of course, we’ve been by each other’s side virtually nonstop. It’s just that living with anxiety—living alarmed—makes it impossible to enter the moment, to land inside my body and be there. I cannot be in the moment because I am too afraid of what the next moment will bring. I have to be ready.

The other day a friend was describing getting a cavity filled at the dentist and she said, “It’s not even the pain I hate the most—it’s the anticipation of the pain. I’m sweating, panicking, waiting for it to hurt terribly bad. It never does, but it feels like it’s always about to.” I said, “Yes. That is how I feel all the time.”

When one lives in a state of constant vigilance, if something actually goes wrong: Forget about it. Full panic. Fifteen to a hundred in two seconds flat.

Kids two minutes late?

Everyone is dead.

Sister doesn’t text me back within thirty seconds?

Definitely dead.

Dog coughs?

Almost dead.

Abby’s plane delayed?

Yep, all this was too good to be true, life will never let me be happy, all the death.

The good news is that I’ve figured out many ways to outsmart the body snatchers. Proof of my expertise in this area? I am a clinically depressed inspirational speaker. I am a diagnosed anxious person whose main job is to convince people that everything’s okay. Please note that if I can be these things, anyone can be anything.

five pro tips for those who live too high and too low 1. TAKE YOUR DAMN MEDS

I am on Lexapro, and I believe it to be—along with all the personal growth shit—the reason I don’t have to self-medicate with boxes of wine and Oreos anymore.

My favorite song goes like this: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for he gave me Lexapro.”

Once, while playing a family game, Chase read this question to my then husband: “If you were going to be stranded on an island, who is the one person you’d bring with you?”

Craig said, “Your mom.”

Chase said, “Okay. What is the one item you would bring?”

Craig said, “Your mom’s meds.”

I do not believe that when we die, one of us will be presented with the She Who Suffered Most trophy. If this trophy does exist, I don’t want it. If there are people in your life—parents, siblings, friends, writers, spiritual “gurus”—who judge you for taking prescribed medicine, please ask to see their medical license. If they can show it to you and they happen to be your doctor, consider listening. If not, tell them sweetly to fuck all the way off. They are two-legged people who are calling prosthetics a crutch. They cannot go with you into the dark. Go about your business, which is to suffer less so you can live more.

2. KEEP TAKING YOUR DAMN MEDS

After you take your meds for a while, you will likely begin to feel better. You will wake up one morning, look at your pills, and think: What was I thinking? I am a perfectly normal human, after all! I don’t need those things anymore!

Going off meds because you feel better is like standing in a torrential rainstorm holding a trusty umbrella that is keeping you toasty and dry and thinking: Wow. I’m so dry. It’s probably time to get rid of this silly umbrella.

Stay dry and alive.

3. TAKE NOTES

This is what happens to us: We are in our homes, and we start sinking down, down, down or floating up, up, and away. We are fading and freaking out. We are in the bad part. So we make an appointment with our doctor for help. Our appointment is in a few days. We wait.

We start to feel a little bit better, day by day. The morning of our appointment, as we shower and get into the car, we can’t even remember who we were or what we felt like three days ago. So we look at the doctor and think: My down self is impossible to explain. I barely remember her. Was that even real? We end up saying something like “I don’t know. I get sad. I guess everyone does. I’m fine now, I guess.” Then we leave, without help.

A few days later we are in our homes. And we start sinking and floating again. And so forth.

When you start sinking into the gray, get out your phone or a notebook and write a few notes from your Down Self to your Up Self. Write about how you feel right now. This does not need to be a novel, just a note. Here is one of my notes from my Down Self:

It’s all gray.

I can’t feel.

I am all alone.

No one knows me.

I’m too tired to write any more.

Put your note away in a safe place, and then call for that appointment. When you go to your appointment, bring your note from your Down Self. When you sit down with the doctor, you don’t need to remember or translate. You just need to say, “Hello. This is me, all showered and ‘fine’ looking. I don’t need help for this Up version of me; I need help for this version of me.” Take out your note and hand it over. This is how you take care of your Down Self. This is one way to become her friend and advocate.

When you’ve been returned to yourself, write yourself another note.

Months ago, I threw away my umbrella because I was dry. Two weeks later, I’d just finished snapping at the kids for the millionth time and my people were looking at me sideways with scared eyes. I was going through the motions, making lunches, writing words. I just couldn’t remember the point of these motions anymore. I realized I was gone again. But I also felt confused. Maybe this is just who I am, actually. I can’t remember.

So I went to my jewelry box and pulled out the note my Up Self had written to me.

G,

You love your life (mostly).

The smell of Tish’s hair makes you melt.

Sunsets blow your mind. Every time.

You laugh twenty times a day.

You see more magic than the average bear.

You feel loved. You are loved. You have a beautiful life that you have fought hard for.

—G

I called my doctor, got back on my meds, and returned myself to me.

Take good care of all of your selves. Fight like hell to keep yourself, and when you lose her, do whatever it takes to return to her.

4. KNOW YOUR BUTTONS

My commitment to sobriety is about staying with myself. I don’t want to abandon myself ever again. Not for long, at least.

Remember those Staples commercials from a few years ago? A group of people in an office would get stressed about something, and a red “easy” button would appear out of nowhere. Someone would press that button, and the whole office would be transported out of their stress and into a pain-free place.

“Easy” buttons are the things that appear in front of us that we want to reach for because they temporarily take us out of our pain and stress. They do not work in the long run, because what they actually do is help us abandon ourselves. “Easy” buttons take us to fake heaven. Fake heaven always turns out to be hell. You know you’ve hit an “easy” button when, afterward, you feel more lost in the woods than you did before you hit it. It has taken me forty years to decide that when I feel bad, I want to do something that makes me feel better instead of worse.

I keep a handwritten poster in my office titled “Easy Buttons and Reset Buttons.”

On the left are all the things I do to abandon myself.

On the right are my reset buttons, the things I can do to make staying with myself a little more possible.

EASY BUTTONS RESET BUTTONS

Boozing

Drink a glass of water.

Bingeing

Take a walk.

Shopping

Take a bath.

Snarking

Practice yoga.

Comparing

Meditate.

Reading mean reviews

Go to the beach and watch the waves.

Inhaling loads of sugar and passing out

Play with my dog.

Hug my wife and kids.

Hide the phone.

My reset buttons are just little things. Big thinking is the kryptonite of high and low folks like me. When everything is terrible and I hate my life and I feel certain that I need a new career, a new religion, a new house, a new life, I look at my list and remember that what I really need is probably a glass of water.

5. REMEMBER THAT WE ARE THE BEST PEOPLE

I’m an artist and an activist, so pretty much all my friends struggle with what our culture has defined as mental illness. These people are the most alive, passionate, kind, fascinating, and intelligent humans on Earth. They live different kinds of lives than the type we’re trained to aspire to. Many of them live lives that include spending days in the dark without leaving their homes and holding on to words and policy and paintbrushes for hope and dear life. This kind of life is not easy, but it’s often deep, true, meaningful, and beautiful. I have begun to notice that I don’t even enjoy folks who aren’t at least a tad mentally ill. I don’t wish folks without a little anxiety or depression any harm, I just don’t find myself particularly curious about them. I have come to believe that we “crazies” are the best people.

This is why so many of us are resistant to taking our medication. Because deep underneath, we believe that we are actually the sane ones. We mentally ill are the only “sick” people who believe our magic is inside our disease. I did. I still do. When people said “Get better,” I heard: Get the same as everyone else. I knew I was supposed to hang my head and declare that my way of being was dangerous and wrong and everyone else’s way was better and right. I was supposed to get fixed, join the troops, and fall into line. Sometimes I desperately wanted that, because living my way was so hard. Sometimes I could make myself accept that my inability to live lightly and pleasantly in the world I’d been born into was chemical and that I needed help integrating like everybody else does. I needed to say “Uncle” and admit: It’s not you, world—it’s me. I’ll get help. I need to get better. I need your science.

But other times—when I turn on the news or watch closely how people treat each other—I raise my eyebrows and think: Actually, maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you, world. Maybe my inability to adapt to the world is not because I’m crazy but because I’m paying attention. Maybe it’s not insane to reject the world as it is. Maybe the real insanity is surrendering to the world as it is. Maybe pretending that things around here are just fine is no badge of honor I want to wear. Maybe it’s exactly right to be a little crazy. Maybe the truth is: World, you need my poetry.

I’ve got these conditions—anxiety, depression, addiction—and they almost killed me. But they are also my superpowers. The sensitivity that led me to addiction is the same sensitivity that makes me a really good artist. The anxiety that makes it difficult to exist in my own skin also makes it difficult to exist in a world where so many people are in so much pain—and that makes me a relentless activist. The fire that burned me up for the first half of my life is the exact same fire I’m using now to light up the world.

Don’t forget: We need their science because they need our poetry. We don’t need to be more pleasant, normal, or convenient, we just need to be ourselves. We need to save ourselves because we need to save the world.