The second, I only found out later that people were whispering about what I ate and which classes I managed to attend etc. I was far too out of it. Although the hardest crush came when I discovered that despite my pain and confusion and depression my roommate had reported me as a potential violence problem – against HER.

She wouldn’t tell anyone about my struggles not to kill myself, but she would tell them that my struggles endangered her life because just suppose I used instruments against her. It could happen.

Aka, depressed people can apparently turn violent and slash up bystanders on a whim.

It’s taken many years for me to recognize that being treated as a pariah had more to do with stereotypes about mental illness and depression and those peoples’ own fears about themselves.

I can’t help reading about the coffee store incident that happened with Ouyang Dan and recognizing the whole ‘You’re a disgrace and a failure and are skating by while the rest of us do real work’ as it applied to some people being incensed that I didn’t show up to class but got good marks on papers.

The fact that it was grace to even get a professor to allow me to balance things that way and that I had to do more work to make up for not being in class – that didn’t hit their consciousness.

It’s like the ‘Depression = Sweatpants Syndrome’. Being in trouble academically or in a similar program is supposed to look a certain way. If you fight against it, or find ways to manage and don’t meet the expectations of what trouble looks like? Then you’re faking and getting away with something.

It’s taken a very long time to separate who I am from what I am able to do, from what people think I should be.

I’m lucky to have had a wonderful therapist in these later years who pointed out that children look for mirrors of themselves in their parents. And that looking for mirroring extends into society as we get older and doesn’t just disappear. It’s a human thing to care what other people think and feel it as part of oneself.

Some of us, however, learn harshly when what we see reflects society’s prejudices and ignorance, that such reflections are better left as very small aspects of ourselves, looked at with a discerning eye.

Kali~ *offers huge hugs*

When I was a music major in college it was similar (not in the same ways of difficulty, but being a music student has it’s own ways of making you want to run away to a desert island), in that you had that community of people who were in your year and in ALL of your classes. That is my way of saying I am glad that you and I are here to share these experiences in this space.

Your first year, you’re in a section of about 60 people. You have every single class with those people for a year. You get a feel for their political opinions, for their manner of legal interpretation, and…for who they are.

I came down with the secondary condition that actually made me disabled about a week before my first year started, as I was moving cross-country for law school. I knew no one in the area where my school is, had no friends or family within 200 miles.

The 1L year is spoken of afterwards with a kind of pride for the hell you go through. How much worse the hell gets when you hurt everywhere, all the time, and you’re fatigued, and your body just seems to be breaking down around you.

The thing that killed me, though, was finding out how other people around me felt.

The other students in my section? Most of them thought of me as an excuse, not a person. And then there was the professor who, when I showed up late after a break because I was desparate for food and I could barely put one foot in front of the other, told me to ‘take my time’…and stopped the class while I hobbled one baby-step at a time to my seat. When I tried to explain that I was having a bad time walking that day, she just said ‘no no, take your time’.

I spent most of the next week so suicidal that I couldn’t be left by myself. My psychologist recommended commitment, but 2 of my oh-so-few friends and my then brand-new boyfriend rallied around me and traded me from one person to the next.

I know it’s different. Through the encouragement of my dean of students, I did accept a move to part-time instead of full-time. It was…shatteringly hard, to admit that I could no longer even go to school like everyone else.

But it has its similarities – the tight-knit group all around you, but of which you are no longer part. The polite shunning. The way they talk about you when you’re not there.

I still am something of a social pariah. One of the hardest things about law school is that you make your social circles your first year, out of the people in your section, and I…didn’t. So I have a few friends here and there, but no one close and…well, it’s been hard. Really hard. If it wasn’t for my boyfriend – the same guy who helped keep a suicide watch over me when we’d been dating for just a few weeks – I would have never made it past that first year.

~Kali

My mom had a thyroid problem diagnosed a few years before she had me, while she was still in the navy and not my dad’s dependent. Anyways, she couldn’t go overseas (to Japan!!!) if she was on the meds, so she stopped taking them. And was fine.

I wish I was surprised by your (mis)adventures, but I’m not. I’m just… not. I’m sad that this seems to be the way it is, but surprised? No.

What others think ties into “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” which is also bull hockey.

Of course, for the most part, the average person doesn’t care about you (not in a bad way, I mean they’re not looking to see you mess up) but the people you work with? Especially in the “small town” feel of the base? Ick.

Your post really reminded me of being in the Navy and sucking it up. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? You suck it up, you pull your weight no matter what it costs you, you don’t *talk* about it or hint that something might be wrong unless of course you’re joking. You can joke about what a wuss you are, how weak, a crip, sick lame and lazy, but only as long as you keep sucking it up.

There were times when I thought if I sucked it up any harder, I’d freakin implode and collapse into a very small black hole.

It’s actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine, the idea that ‘confidence comes from within’ and ‘it doesn’t matter what others think’. Bull shit. The people around us act somewhat like mirrors, and if we can’t see ourselves reflected in how they think of us, we might as well be spinning our tires. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor, it’s early…) It’s impossible for us to see ourselves clearly, so we have to rely on those mirrors to see ourselves as we really are. It doesn’t matter if those mirrors are broken or tinted, because they’re the closest thing to objective reality we have for measuring ourselves.

*hugs all around*

FYI, you can get help, but there is a lot of paperwork involved and you have to get the right people to sign off approving you for the proper care, and those caring for you have to be cleared to care for you (note: they don’t have to hold clearances, just be approved as not a risk). Sadly that is a chore, and more Second Shift work that you shouldn’t have to do to get care. I hope that doesn’t sound know-it-all-y, I hope it is just a little word of encouragement from experience. It is scary, but it can be done in some cases. Depending on the nature of your job it is better to seek help in order to maintain that clearance. I am not an expert, but that has been my personal observation. Best of luck to you. And of course, you are the only person who knows your experience, so my thoughts might not apply to your situation at all.

And, if I come off out of line here, FormerSquid, please let me know.

*offers hugs and encouragement*

I still can’t get help, because I carry a clearance and to lose it would mean losing my job.

In some ways the worst part of it all was the way none of my shipmates, some of whom I was close with, wanted to deal or even try to. The sense of isolation. In a close-knit military unit, that’s such a large thing.

I feel you, Ouyang Dan. I’m still struggling, though have managed to get myself to a better place these days with help from friends, most of whom are out there in Bloglandia. Thank you for writing this, it brought back memories and moved me deeply.

That is really all I can say. I so understand that situation. Not word for word, of course, because it is your experience, and only you can understand it, but yes.

You are not alone.

Yeah.