I have three scars running parallel to each other on my right upper hip. I look at these every day and think of three words that have defined the past few years of my life:
Runner.
Depressed.
Wanderer.
Three seemingly separate words, but intrinsically tied together in my life. They go in a constant cycle.
I was first diagnosed with depression at age 18. I had stopped running. I wasn’t going to college. I had virtually no prospects of a future. As my feelings of depression increased, my need to wander followed suite.
I wandered. I wandered as far as possible. Across the ocean. I wandered from family, from friends, from my diagnosis. I wandered from refilling my medications. I wandered from therapy. I wandered from my diagnosis.
It wasn’t until I was calling my parents, crying to them that I had wandered too far, that I realized I couldn’t wander from depression. It would follow me across the ocean and to the depths of the earth. It would haunt me and creep up on me when I least expected it. I would force me to wander back home, back on medication, back into therapy.
Oh, but I didn’t learn. I wandered again. When the going got tough, I wandered to the mountains. To a party culture. To a place where no one knew me.
A few months later, it was the same story. A call home filled with tears and my depression telling me it was time to wander back home, to my haven. Back to medication, therapy and a support system I had tried to push away.
I was a wanderer.
When I wasn’t wandering, I was running. Pounding the pavement and feeling every ounce of pain, worry, thoughts of harm, thoughts of anxiety slip away, mile after mile, stride after stride.
I could push my body, refocus my thoughts, feel “normal.” Running meant I wasn’t defined by a mental health diagnosis. Instead, I was defined by an action. A feeling. A commonplace phrase:
I am a runner.
But that was taken away from me. A tattered body resulted in extensive surgery and sitting on the couch for months. No longer could I break away from my thoughts or be defined by running. I was like a caged animal. Confined to a solitary state. Enraged by the thoughts slowly leaking into my mind and eventually contaminating every thought:
You are depressed. You are gaining weight. You have no fitness left. You are a failure. You are not good enough. You are depressed.
I could not face it. I could not accept what I had withered to. I was now only defined by my diagnosis.
I started running far sooner than I should have. I restricted my calories. I weighed myself constantly. I judged my body based on if my deformed calves, hamstrings and quads were perking up to their normal, defined shape. I judged myself harshly on failed workouts, slow mile times and increased anxiety over not gaining my fitness back.
I couldn’t run from my depression.
I couldn’t wander from my diagnosis.
I had found my breaking point.
I wanted to fight. I wanted to flee. I wanted to go back to the mountains or across the ocean. I wanted to push my body to miraculously recover from being torn apart under a scalpel. I wanted anything else to distract me from the fact that I was depressed. Because if that was the only thing left, then I was a failure.
My literal breaking point was a trip to the inpatient unit at Mercy. Void of calories, severely dehydrated, sobbing because I didn’t know where to turn to.
I didn’t want to run.
I didn’t want to wander.
I wanted to fight. I wanted to accept. I wanted to fix what I had broken.
I wanted to say, “I. Am. Depressed.”
Therapy, changes in medication, more therapy, more changes in medication are what followed. Each call to the doctor, each medication refill at the pharmacy, each check in at a therapists office forced me to confront what I had wanted to hide from all along.
I suffer from a mental illness. I can’t run from it. I can’t wander from it. It will likely be something I deal with for the rest of my life.
But it doesn’t define me.
I am a runner.
I am a wanderer.
I am a free spirit.
I am a daughter, an aunt, a sister, a friend.
I am a writer.
And now I can finally say with confidence and a smile:
I am depressed.
My reason is to accept who I am, flaws and all.
