In retrospect, I’ve always struggled with mental illness. Some of my earliest memories of elementary school were crying and begging my mom to let me stay home. I just didn’t like being there. I loved learning, but being at school was unbearable and I’d literally make myself sick worrying about it and trying to avoid going. All I wanted to do was stay home, where I felt safe, with my grandparents while my mother was at work. The four of us lived in my grandmother’s house and that home was my sanctuary as a child.
While I was in middle school, my grandmother developed a persistent cough that became the focus of my worries for several months. I would spend my days in class ceaselessly turning over the possibilities in my mind. On the days when she had medical tests I couldn’t concentrate on anything as I was too busy obsessing over her potential results. When she was finally diagnosed with lung cancer I was devastated as my worst fears were now realized.
After she died, life at home changed dramatically. My mother was despondent and frequently broke down into unconsolable tears. My grandfather stoically carried on and I did my best to follow his lead, burying my sadness. As an adolescent, however, I was not emotionally mature enough to process my feelings on my own. Instead, I did my best to be “strong” and anger was all I allowed myself to feel.
Two years after my grandmother died, my grandfather succumbed to complications stemming from a chronic illness. By this time, his hospitalizations had become routine and I wasn’t too worried, but despair gripped him and he seemed innately aware that he wasn’t going to be coming home. At this point I was 15 and my mom and I now had to navigate the unfamiliar waters of being a two person family.
She and I bickered incessantly, as parents and teenagers often do. The grief and loss we both felt only served to make matters worse as time wore on. I was also hopelessly bored with high school and decided I to skip my senior year and start taking classes at the local university. My mom wasn’t happy with the idea and we battled it out for several months, but I’m a persistent asshole and she finally agreed.
I got my GED as soon as I turned 17 and began applying to UTEP that spring. Since I wasn’t moving away for college, my mom decided to take out a home equity loan and update a lot of the older fixtures of the house. Contractors and laborers poured into the house and most of April and May of 1998 were spent amid the chaos of construction. They finally wrapped up near the end of May and we began to settle in, working on the yard ourselves to finish updating the house.
One evening, three days into June, we were pulling weeds in the back yard when my mom began to complain of dizziness and a headache. Being prone to migraines and a host of other physical problems, she rubbed some Icy Hot on her neck and went to bed. I retired to my room and got on my computer. About an hour later she cried out to me frantically, telling me to call 911, and soon lost consciousness. While the exact cause remains a source of endless debate and mystery, what I know is that she suffered a major brain hemorrhage and ultimately died two days later. She was 48.
That first night, standing outside the hospital, talking with my aunt, I made it clear that I had no intention of abandoning my plans to go to college or let all the effort my mom had gone through with the house to go to waste. I would be 18 in less than a year and insisted on living alone in the house. For whatever reason, my aunt agreed. In retrospect, this was an absolutely terrible idea because I was in no way prepared to live on my own, never mind the overwhelming emotional trauma I’d just experienced. Of course, hindsight is everything.
I often say much of the next two years are something of a blur, though I think that’s a convenient little fiction I’ve concocted to save myself the pain of recounting all the mistakes I made. There were certainly good times, I made or strengthened connections with friends that have lasted to this day. Most of the vices I still struggle with were ingrained during this time as well.
I think the stereotype of a grief-stricken young man would have me battling with drugs or alcohol, but I was staunchly against all chemical distractions. If anything, I thought pain was something that needed to be embraced. An emotional flagellationI felt I probably deserved. Instead of self-medicating, I blew lots of money on stupid shit. I played video games incessantly. I would gorge on obscene amounts of junk food and lounge around the house in as much darkness as I could manufacture. Though the internet was still in its infancy at the time, I had already discovered its utility in meeting new people. Thus, as a horribly depressed shut-in, I also developed an unhealthy fondness for semi-casual sex and likely laid the seeds for all the intimacy issues I continue to battle.
While my depression was oppressive, it was mostly due to grief and frankly doesn’t hold a candle to the depths of despair I’ve felt more recently. It was around this time, however, that I first started having unbearable anxiety. To put it bluntly, I let my mom’s house fall into disrepair almost immediately and the idea of my family coming by to check up on me and seeing what I’d done weighed on me constantly. I shifted overnight from hiding in my darkened hovel to needing to be as far away from it for as long as possible. That way, if someone came to visit, I wouldn’t be home and they couldn’t come in and see the filth I’d allowed to manifest.
This chapter of my life remains my biggest shame. Not only did I disrespect the home that had been my mother’s and my grandmother’s, I also view it as a colossal waste of an opportunity. My financial situation today could have been so much better, but, again, hindsight is everything. While I blame myself for these mistakes, I obviously was doing my best in an extremely difficult situation and I regularly marvel that I made it through relatively unscathed. No jail time, no major addictions (caffeine not withstanding), no STIs, no children. Just guilt. The debt actually came later.
After finally capitulating and agreeing to sell my house while it still had some intrinsic value left, I ended up working for my cousin at his saltwater aquarium shop in early 2000. I made a few brief attempts at school, but that wouldn’t come to fruition for quite some time. No, I was “Josh the Fish Guy” for the next 8 years of my life. It proved to be a formative experience in many ways and I’m grateful for the opportunity. If anything, I’d say the next 5 years were something of a golden era for me in terms of mental health. That’s not to say things were good, but most of my problems were buried so deep that I didn’t realize there was anything fermenting under the surface.
In April of 2005, I was at Home Depot with a friend, bored and idly planning some project when I suddenly started to feel dizzy and short of breath. My heart pounded as thoughts of my mom and her sudden affliction flooded my mind. I was certain that I must be dying. I convinced my friend to drive me to the emergency room and thus my journey into the world of anxiety officially began. Looking back, I often wonder if the smell of the hardware store that evening happened to trigger some cascade of memories associated with the construction projects going on at home just prior to my mom’s death.
Let’s consider this something of an origin story for my broken brain. Health fears (hypochondria sounds so gauche) and a major preoccupation with death are how this most commonly manifests, but I struggle with various forms of anxiety, depression, obsession, and compulsion. It’s a challenge I expect will last for the rest of my life and I’ve come to embrace various philosophies and mental paradigms to deal with this aspect of myself. Even as I’ve been writing this, the Sword of Damocles has weighed heavily on my mind as it so often does.
