Unexpected Symptoms of My Depression

There is something absurdly exciting but also horribly pathetic about spilling the entire contents of your soul to a complete stranger. That’s what I did at the bus stop one day.

It was raining, and I had gone to the bank on a pointless errand that was meant to make me feel like I had my life together when in reality it only reminded me of the fact that I had only $18.28 in my checking account and therefore did not have my life together at all.

A young man dressed in all black—black shirt, pants, shoes, socks, even his ballcap—ran under the bus shelter, because of the rain, and sat down on the bench next to mine. This act felt like a slight even though I was fully aware that this was not the case. He pulled out his phone, which I was expecting to be black, but it wasn’t. It was gold. I took offense to that as well because my expectations of his consistency were shattered. It was a silly, trivial thing, but it caused me to immediately burst into tears.

This, understandably, caught the young man off guard. I say young man, but I was sure we were close to the same age. But the possibility that we weren’t, and I was both wrong and an idiot, only made me cry harder.

“Whoa…” he said, elongating the vowel and holding his hands up. “You alright?” he asked.

“No!” I wailed. And I proceeded to drop my head into my hands and sob harder. I’m sure this made the young man extremely uncomfortable, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. And then the rain fell harder, splashing my bare legs—I had worn shorts because it had been sunny out when I left my apartment—forcing me to curl into a ball so my feet wouldn’t get wet.

“Uh…” the young man said. I could imagine him craning his neck to see if his bus was here or searching for another stop.

“I’m sorry,” I cried, lifting my head. I was very glad I hadn’t worn mascara that or I would’ve looked even more atrocious then I already did. “I’ve just had a rough–” I hesitated. A singular rough day wasn’t enough to explain an outburst of hysteria at a bus stop. Few days? Few weeks? No. It was more than that. Much more.

“I’ve had a really rough few years!” My shoulders shook pitifully as I contemplated throwing myself into the street.

The young man eyed me warily as the rain kicked up, forcing him to move closer to me in order to be under better cover of the bus shelter. I dragged my sleeve under my nose as I struggled to take a deep breath. The young man slowly reached a hand out before pulling it back to his chest. My eyes watered more, my fingers not fast enough to wipe them away before they could roll down my cheeks. Then I felt two quick, gentle pats on my shoulder. I covered my face and continued my crying until I finished. I didn’t receive any more shoulder pats.

Once my tears ran out and I could breathe through one of my nostrils, I looked to the young man standing next to me. He looked at me, the road, down at his phone, and repeated this pattern twice more.

“Uh… you good?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I am not good.”

And then I did the aforementioned soul content spilling. I told him everything that had been plaguing my brain for the past year or so. I told him my frustrations about finding a job. I told him about how my relationship status read “single” but should’ve said “going to die alone at the hands of hereditary heart disease with nothing and no one.” I told him about how I was pretty sure my current roommate hated me and sometimes made me feel like an imposter in my own home. I told him how I was about to be entirely alone in the town I lived in because all of my friends were leaving for work or grad school or other. I told him how I felt like a worthless, useless, paper thin Waffle House napkin that is only useful if layered up with three or four more napkins.

The words all rushed out of me with such quickness, I barely had time to register the look of horror on the young man’s face. And then I finished my confessional, taking a long, shuddery breath, completely spent, and realizing that once again, I had been possessed by the depression demon that lived in the back of my brain. It had been a few weeks since it had made its presence known, but it snuck up on me, catching me unawares and in public of all places!

“Shit,” the young man said. Shit was correct.

When his bus pulled up to the stop, the young man gave me a long pitying look and left without another word. I didn’t cry about that and was very proud of myself for it. My moment of hysteria was gone, rushed away with that poor young man dressed entirely in black, minus his gold phone, whom I probably had traumatized for life.

Sometimes you cry at bus stops. Sometimes you think you have a handle on things, even when they’re falling to pieces right before you. For me, I like to think I have complete control over my depression. I—usually—know when my episodes are coming. I know what coping mechanisms work best for me. I try to eat at least two meals a day, I shower, I feed my cat, I do the bare minimum, or I go as far as to cook my dinner every day for a week. I lull myself into a false sense of security where I believe my mental health is perfectly fine. And then something as simple as an unexpected phone color shatters my delusion.

After my bus stop breakdown, my own bus came, and I went home. It rained for the rest of the day, but I ate leftover pasta salad for lunch and mini frozen pizzas for dinner. I fed my cat. I watched Buzzfeed videos and the first season of Jessica Jones.

Sometimes a breakdown lasts for weeks and you feel like you’re so low it would take a special tool to scrape you off of the ground. Sometimes a breakdown only lasts a few minutes and you embarrass yourself in front of a total stranger. It’s the after period of a breakdown, when your tears are spent, and you’ve poured out all of the utter crap the depression demon in your brain has been filling you up with, that you can finally breathe, even if it’s only through one nostril. You’re still breathing. You will keep breathing.