Downhill

"I noticed you withdrawing during your junior year in high school, and it's been downhill ever since."

--Mom when discussing my history of depression

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part III

It's the first day of Summer Semester 2016. The instructor walks in to the front of the class with his bag over his shoulder and sunglasses and an distinguished frown.

"Why is he frowning?" I ask myself. "Did I make a mistake in coming?"

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy, Part II

Stanford doctors and staff during my last admission kept bugging me to either get a part-time job or go back to school in order to "structure [my] time."

I registered for Spring Semester while I was still hospitalized.

The social worker comes up to me in the hallway after learning I was headed back to college, and asks, "On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you?"

I'm depressed, I'm thinking, I don't get excited. "About a three," I respond honestly.

"Why so low? Maybe you should pick another class?"

What do these people want from me? I'm ill! If I could function in normal life, I wouldnt be in the hospital. 

Why English 156 Wasn't Easy

I'm sitting in the front row, where I always sit, in order to hear better because I'm partially deaf and so I can talk to the instructor or professor without raising my voice.

The instructor (who I often call "Doctor" to everyone else out of habit) is one desk away, looking down at some papers.

"Is it just me or is this class unusually conservative?" I ask to no one in particular, hoping to get a "Oh, no, I'm a Democrat" out of one of my fellow students.

No one responds.

Nine Years

"It doesn't take nine years to get a divorce," My mother says to me.

Goddamnit! It could.

A Kiss And a Hotel

"It's not like he drove you to a hotel," my mom commented after I told her what happened between Joseph and I.

The MS Threat

"If you had cancer, you'd be dead," The Neurologist says looking up at me from behind her desk and smiling.

It's called "paresthesia," which is simply unusual sensations such as burning or pins and needles usually in the extremities.

"I'm not worried about it," The Neurologist states.

"Do you think it could be something like MS?" I ask.

"No, not really...I don't know." She thinks about this further and then toward the end of our appointment, she adds, "Let's just get it out of the way"--referring to screening me for multiple sclerosis.

I have a brain MRI on Thursday and then some additional nerve tests concerning my eyes and ears.