Stop, Drop, and Roll (Part 1)

This is not going to be a short blog post.
This will also not be interesting to anyone looking for controversy or insight.

No, this is a very personal blog post. In the interest of getting my thoughts out there and being a more open person, I wanted to write this.

This post is about my battle with depression and, in its more recent stages, suicidal ideation as well.

I'll save Part 2 for the present and we'll wind our way there through my life history~

I grew up in the middle of the middle class. I've never been wanting. My father never beat me and very rarely even yelled at me. My mother was always a cultural and intellectual outlet. I've never had anything important taken away, and I was never refused anything that mattered. I still wound up hating my own life with every fiber of my being some days.

I was born in Cincinnati, my mother gave up her career options in order to be a full-time mom to three boys, myself included. My father worked for a company that did plant contracts, so he moved with the jobs, bringing us with him. Before I could walk, I was living in Washington state. A mere year had passed before I was moved again to Boston. One of my earliest memories can be attributed to this house.
Sitting at the table long past dinner, a paper towel in front of me and four Oreos lined up on in- my dessert. The first memory I would have with my father's anger and desire to be in control. My mother had thrown out the newspaper before my father had had the chance to read the sports section. He yelled at her. He slammed the front door shut and drove off, knocking the wall phone off the hook (remember corded phones? Yeah, that was a long time ago....).

We packed up and moved again. This time almost back to where I was born. We moved to Mentor Ohio, a stone's throw away from where my mom grew up. I got to spend a little longer there. I even made a best friend in first grade: Ryan Minnis. I started playing soccer this year. To make my dad proud. All he seemed to care about at the time were sports. Playing it, watching it, hearing about it... So, despite hating sports, I tried to be interested in baseball for him. I tried to be good at soccer. The exercise was good, and it definitely was better playing than watching. But even still, I was more interested in video games, a trait I attribute to my brothers who both played as often as they could as well. We were competitive, even at that age. Although I wasn't old enough to solve most of the puzzles. I couldn't beat most of the games I tried, but it was fun just to try-- and when I could beat them, I felt more adequate- more like I had lived up to my brothers' skills. I had few people to truly look up to at that point in my life. My dad was interested in things I wasn't. We didn't seem to share a huge number of interests, but he tried to be a video gamer when he wasn't a sports person.

Honestly, when I look back, I didn't have that many interests that COULD be shared. I wasn't musically talented (my parents never made me try anyway), and I wasn't interested in sports. I read some, but it was all Goosebumps and Boxcar Children- an interest that faded with time. I wasn't much of an outdoorsman. When we went camping, I complained. I was too young to appreciate forests the way I do now.

That time came and went. For second grade, we moved again, this time relatively permanently to Rochester Hills in Michigan. Here, my eyes began to deteriorate. My schoolboy crushes began to blossom. And my parents' marriage began to dissolve. I continued with soccer and I made new best friends too. Life was still good. I even got to learn the profoundly worthless skill of cursive writing! Then came fourth grade. My parents had been arguing a lot lately. Furious yelling- slamming. I didn't understand most of it. What I did understand was when they got my brothers and me onto the middle landing of the stairs to the top floor where our rooms were- sat us down, and told us that they were separating and that it wasn't our fault. Departing myself from cliche depressed child, it never once crossed my mind that it was my fault- they were always arguing about each other. What I didn't understand was why they couldn't put up with each other for our sakes. It wasn't until much later that I understood my mother's necessary quest for freedom and the equally detrimental effects of living in a household with constant yelling, tired glances, and suspicion.
My innocence had been stricken with a debilitating disease. It was terminal.

Over the course of the year, everything seemed to get more somber and troubled. The arguments were more vehement. My grandparents (on my mother's side) had begun to visit more. My father moved a couch-bed into the basement to stay there. A single word sparked a new race- a new type of fight that would ruin my oldest brother for the better part of a decade: Custody. My father began to pollute conversations with us with the notion that it was "your mother's idea," "your mother's fault," and my favorite phrase, "tearing this family apart." His goal was to convince us that our mom had systematically gone out of her way to destroy the family without any regard for anyone within. I never dared question him, but some divine luck prevented those words from truly sinking in.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my eldest brother, 15-16 at the time. My dad offered cartoons, video games, and a compelling story. It was hard to say "no" to. Still, he wasn't the only one employing shady tactics. My grandmother had stooped over the top of the basement stairs one evening, holding a tape recorder out, trying to catch my father saying something potentially incriminating. I understand now why she did it, but I still look back on that memory with mixed feelings...
Being the youngest, I didn't have a say though. My mother received custody of me no matter how passionately I tried to stay with my brothers. Deep down, I knew my desire was breaking her heart, and I couldn't force it. The oldest had no problem refusing, though. The middle child was left in an oddly symbolic place, for he too knew he was hurting our mother, but he was also more willing than I was to put up the fight to stay. In the end, he wound up coming with me for the earlier part of the separation. We went to live at an apartment (it was only recently that I learned my mother had to have her parents cosign the lease for her. At that age... The confusion and embarrassment and desperation must have been enormous. I don't remember much of the talk during the divorce, but I do remember my grandparents remarking that my mom needed to start eating. She had been stressing herself into not eating... A problem I could only relate with in the later years of college) in the same city. My school didn't change, so I was able to retain most of my life. For the moments when it got particularly bad, my mom had decided that we should get a dog. As much for her as for us. We needed something to keep us occupied. She needed someone to love when we were away.

The fights weren't getting better. The bitter feud between them raged each time they tried to speak- so much so that my brother and I had to be messengers much of the time- a practice that would continue for me alone for many years. The police were called on numerous occasions. Typically when my father wouldn't give us up when it was her time to parent. It was also around this time that I learned my mother had been seeing someone else- the man who would become my step father. A man that I loathed with every inch of my soul. A man that I would come to respect and appreciate much later in life for his love and devotion to my mother- for showing her what a real friend and a real partner was, where my father was so woefully inadequate. But in the meantime, I hated him. More than I hated anyone else. I lashed out at him- and who wouldn't? He was an invader. He didn't belong there. He was the change that everyone fears in their lives.
To avoid too many examples, for Christmas, I opened a gift from him- it was a towel. A simple hand-towel. My repulsion with such a pathetic gift (I mentioned how spoiled I was, right?) was only topped by the fact that it was him giving it to me. I hurled the box across the room and stomped off. It was pointed out to me afterwords that the real gift was underneath the towel- a gift I had actually wanted- something I don't even know how he found (since he was hilariously inept with the internet). I suspect my mother bought it and told him to give it to me- and to be clear, it's not that he's not a generous man, but merely that he didn't know me- didn't know how to get on my good side.
My frustration hadn't abated. Our dog, Nick was the only thing keeping me happy at this point.

It was after this year that the worst move of my life took place- only an hour away to Dearborn Michigan. I was just entering middle school. No friends, no knowledge of the area, nothing under my belt at all. I was alone, afraid, and rebellious. My adolescent mind took in the change on top of the new male figure in my life, and it did not approve. On top of all of my rage and confusion- on top of being separated by a distance I could not cross on my own from my oldest brother, this was the first time in my life that I was bullied. Bryant Middle School- My own special hell. My older brother went through a similar phase at this time- he became dark and brooding. I talked to him less and less during this year as he spent much of his free time shut up in his room.
I made two friends. I didn't like either of them. Friends of necessity. To help me survive.
My mother called the police several more times here. When my father stood out on our sidewalk and refused to leave, and when my oldest brother came to visit for the first and only time. He stayed in our brother's room and wouldn't come out. When push came to shove, he did indeed shove our mother for trying to make him come out. She was used to the power of the police solving the problems she could not by this point. And that's not to say she shouldn't be. Here she had an ex-husband who could not be tamed by reason- who could only be persuaded by the flashing lights and sirens- and it worked. The unintended consequence, of course, is that my oldest brother hated my mother for it even more. It was this incident that led to his decision to stop speaking to her for nearly ten years. And I was forced to sit and watch this fight tear our ragged family apart further. Academically, socially, and emotionally, this was the worst year of my life. In a word, I was lost.

The following year, my mother made the first major sacrifice for me that I could actually see ( I assume she made many, but that I was too young to appreciate them)- she drove an hour every day to drop my brother and me off at school back in Rochester, before driving an hour back to go to work. Every day. I don't remember these drives, as I was fast asleep in the car almost every time, however, it baffles me to think about that kind of sacrifice right now... I can barely justify a half hour drive to do something I legitimately want to do, let alone several hours in the wee hours of the morning just to make my kids happy. And it was a sacrifice that could not properly be acknowledged until we were both much older.

As luck would have it, that was exactly what I needed to thrive again. For the rest of middle school, I found myself in a small number of very close friendships (that persist to this day) in a learning environment that suited me for the most part. After a year of this, my mom moved us back to Rochester. The following two years are mostly a contented blur of happy memories- probably some of my happiest memories, and definitely the memories that produce the most nostalgia in my life. Memories of fort sleepovers, Halo with friends, staying up until 2:00 AM to to watch TV shows that I fell in love with, sneaking out at night to play online games on the family computer, and even buying my own computer. This was the easiest period of my life- the best.

But, of course, these things must come to an end as quickly as they came to be.
We moved. And my brother stayed behind. This time, to Kentucky- a state that I had no good knowledge of- only bad assumptions and hearsay from stereotype-filled television. Here I was to begin sophomore year of high school, and I would stay in Kentucky through to the present day.
The school? Newport Central Catholic. I was going to a Catholic school... At the time, I was a self-described atheist, although I had heard the word, "agnostic" used before, and I didn't fully understand the concept. By the end of high school, agnosticism was the perfect standpoint for me.

This point in my life is when I learned how to succeed in the system without trying. Receiving high grades for minimal work. I spoke more with my teachers than I did with other students. The kids were obsessed with our football team- it was the pride of the school- something we sank much of our budget into. However, this is still the school in which my interest for photoshop and video editing had taken hold. And it was accommodated here. I was able to learn some basic picture and video manipulation to an extent I was pleased with. I got a job that I kept for several years. I didn't have the relationships that I wanted here though. I became cold, aggressive, and distant. My argumentative side exploded due in part to my emotional and cognitive development, and also in part because it was a Catholic high school, and I had to sit through videos like "homosexuality 101" in a class called "Catholic Morality." (PS, if you're gay, it's because you had a fascination in the fine arts. Just so you know) I made the most of my life here, and it wasn't bad by any stretch, but I would also not use the word, "fulfilling." It didn't help that holidays were a mess of my father wanting to see me, but being unable to hold a simple conversation with my mother. So, I had to be the lone messenger between the two of them, conveying their desires, capabilities, willingnesses, and most of all, their displeasure with each other. This was my teenage burden- to be an adult where my parents could not be. My developing argumentative nature was explored in this realm as well. I began to yell at my mother when she couldn't understand my or my father's perspective. It was easier because I was more familiar with my mother. I wasn't scared of her.
My father?
Every time he picked me up or met my mother to pick me up, the long hours in the car would slip by in forced conversation. Almost always, my mother would come up. And not in glowing terms. I tried to ignore it and send the message through silence that I didn't wish to discuss her with him, but it didn't work. For years I put up with it, letting him berate her. It wasn't until I was 18 that I found the courage to explode at him about it. He hasn't used the word "mother" in negative context since...

I wasn't nice. Kentucky taught me to keep everyone at a distance or show my dominance over them. If I wasn't the bottom rung of the ladder, then I would avoid trouble. This was how I operated for the remaining three years of high school and the first year of college. I began to see the world as fundamentally ugly. It was a shallow world of pain. I started to understand politics, little by little as I began to understand people through Psychology courses. People are fearful. Hateful. Prideful. I understood little still, but I was picking up on human agendas. On deliberate politicization of issues. I began to understand the lengths people would go to in order to cover up secrets- in order to hate each other- in order to persecute each other.
My innocence and wonder was lost. I lived, but I can't say I was happy.

We'll end part 1 for now. This is a long read I understand.

 -

Wade