The Government's Cure for Depression

Couple things to report this morning.

1. Today is the centennial celebration of LSU's participation in the Federal Government's Depository Program. Yes, I realize that this was the single dullest statement I have ever committed to writing. But there really are some funny things they've pulled out of the dusty, never visited stacks at my job. I mean, come on, it's the U.S. government, just imagine their take on education, the workforce, nuclear warfare...anything you just spoofed in your head, it's not a joke, they really did print it. There's a pamphlet cheerfully titled: "Everything you ever wanted to know about transporting nuclear waste"; on our table of army documents from WWII is one called 'Do you want your wife to work after the war?' that goes meticulously through why men should be real men and take their jobs back when they get home. Women are inherently inferior, after all, and shouldn't be taking jobs away from our men who need them. Especially unmarried women, what do they think they're doing, they don't even have a family to support! I am not kidding you, it's in there.
But there's also a lot of things that are just genuinely worth looking at: collections of the art owned and displayed in Washington, a history of the Capitol that's really fascinating, and most importantly, the transcripts of what the hell actually goes on over there. On these shelves just over to my left as I'm typing are the Congressional records, which I have sadly never even looked through (they're quite boring looking tomes, not shiny at all, and no cartoons on the cover). There are literally hundreds of things printed up about FEMA, hurricane Katrina, and disaster plans that I'm willing to bet might actually help a few people, people who are supposed to know these things and don't, that never get read, just sit here in the LSU basement along with all of the social security information and handy reference guides to tax laws. Let's not kid ourselves, once I leave this job I'm never coming down here again, but someone should. Not me, but someone.

2. Tuesday was my first appointment with Dr. Benjamin Hayes at the Student Health Center. I was terrified; after years of denying and hiding and fighting my depression and anxiety I was going to get help. I made the big step, called someone, admitted that this life I live day after day sucks; it's not me, the girl who wakes up every morning and gives herself a migraine worrying and avoids going out to dinner with friends is not me. I nearly didn't go, I couldn't face up to talking about all kinds of things that I knew would sound ridiculous the minute I opened my mouth, he would shake his head and tell me it was nothing. But I went, took a deep breath, and opened the door. And I never got a word in edgewise.
He spent all of our 20 minute meeting telling me what he thought the issues with treating depression were, explained that I would only see him three times this semester, and suggested I get this certain book and start his weekly anxiety management classes. I feel cheated of my justly earned chance to celebrate my mental illness. I wanted to talk about my mother, to cry about my years of shyness and how I've been scarred from rejection by my first love at age 13. I walked out feeling more alone than ever; even the man getting paid to help me isn't helping! I'm going to the classes, going to give it a try, because there's no use in going backwards now, but gosh...


I guess that's all for now, class in a few minutes. I was hoping to have this mess all sorted by the time my next story was due in fiction writing. I mean, really, depression-induced writer's block is hardly going to help me graduate in December, and I doubt Bennett would take it as a valid excuse.

Credit

I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways we change ourselves for other people. Can knowing the right person at the right time really alter who you become as a person, what values you hold? Does it matter if those people ever know the role that they've played? To a teacher you were just one in a class of thirty, in five classes that term, over a twenty year career; to you he was the professor who opened up to you a new way of reading, thinking, looking at problems in school and out of it. A youthful crush made you change the way you dressed, they way you thought about yourself, and forced you out of your comfort zone. They never felt the same way you did, how much credit do they have for the transformation?

The most recent of the many examples of this in my life was two years ago, a guy I met in a pub one night out with friends. I thought his good opinion would be well worth having. I took a long, hard look at myself and my politics, and found more than a few things worth examining, and several that I consequently changed views on completely. I got out of my comfort zone and went out of my way to befriend him, and I ended up with a friendship that has lasted more than two years and leaving school. But he never looked at me that way, or if he did it was only in passing and quickly gotten over. I know him so much better than I did back then, I know he is just as fallible as I am, and just as human. But I still value his opinion, and despite our own respective relationships and commitments, I do believe I'm still just a little bit in love with him, or maybe I'm just in love with the feeling of accountability and purpose I had at that time and place.

It's not so surprising that I might mix the two things in my head. I remember my drive and determination a few years ago, a drive that I lost somewhere along the way, which despite several whole-hearted attempts, I just can't seem to regain. Every time I start to think that the problem has gotten beyond me a voice in my head tells me I must not be trying hard enough, I'm making a fuss over nothing, maybe I'm just whining. Lately I've decided to stop listening to that voice, a mix of my dad's 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' lecture and a lifelong fear of being a bother to anyone. It's not so easy to get past it, though, and I haven't actually done anything about my problems, whatever they may be, besides tell myself I'm going to do something about them.

This is where it connects to my musing about other people's influence in my life. It took one boy in the eighth grade who never looked at me twice, and an insightful and fatherly english teacher to break my thirteen-year debilitating shyness and convince me to join the drama and debate teams, of all things. One drunk in a bar eight years later pushed me to turn what was becoming a year long abandonment in a strange place into the most meaningful and genuinely fun period of my life. If it comes down to my feeling that I need to hold myself accountable to someone else in order for me to effect change for the better, that's got to be at least a part of the problem I'm having so much trouble getting off my ass and getting help with. But if that's what it takes to get me there, who the hell do I charge this effort to?