A dark walk home.

I went to bed extremely early last night. After waking up to find myself asleep on my couch at 9 pm, with my notes falling off my chest and on to the floor, it seemed the only reasonable course of action, you know? Anyway, at some point I heard our front doorbell ring. I struggled back into consciousness long enough to stumble to my door, make sure it wasn't someone important (aka, Ryan), and head back to bed.

This morning, Steph told me about our visitor. It was the resident from upstairs, the dark-haired one that we never normally see. She came and knocked last night and asked if she could come in and talk to us. I guess she was sort of stumbling around what she wanted to say, and Steph came right out with, "This is about the new neighbor, isn't it? Is he bothering you too?" and the girl was like, "Yes, he is!"

Our street has been having a pretty high turnover lately. It's a very short one-way street, just across from our main classroom and the rest of the Loma Linda campus, and we recently had a new family move in about halfway down. They consist of a big black man, who spends all day every day fixing cars, his mean white wife (?), and his little boy who roars all the time, regardless of small matters like neighbors who are trying to study. Anyway, if his wife is in evidence (and usually screaming at him), he pays us no mind--but if not, he calls at us as we walk home.

"Hey, ma. Hey, why won't you look at me?"
"Hey, girl, you make me scared riding that board so fast."
"Hey girl, what's your name? I said, what's your name? How do you keep your hair so pretty?"

If we don't answer, or pretend not to hear him, he keeps yelling at us until we're almost to our front door. When he was trying to talk to me yesterday, the last thing I heard before I shut the front door was, "Why won't you motherfucking answer me?"

Steph and I were talking about how we always pretend to have a phone call when we walk home, or how we walk on the far side of the street, or try not to make any noise if he's got his head down under the car hood, so he doesn't realize we're there. Neither of us ever make eye contact. She told me that the girl upstairs was telling her that, last night, her boyfriend walked her home and told the man to stop talking to her. He got cursed out for his  trouble.

Our landlord is a really nice older man who genuinely cares about all of us here, and I was going to ask him this afternoon if he would anonymously talk to the neighbor and ask him to stop. And that might do it--but then again, it might not, because I don't really think he's going to care that he's making us uncomfortable. Because he's going to feel that it's his right to talk to us from his own house in whatever manner he wants to. Because, unfortunately, that's rather how our society functions.

It is absolutely ridiculous that we should be pretending to be on the phone, or hiding from him, or acting like we don't hear him, in order to feel safe on our own street. I think that as women we incorporate this kind of stuff into life everyday because we know if we don't, we can get hurt really badly. Killed. So we have support groups and we plan about the best ways to avoid the wrong kinds of attention, the safe places to go, the times when you have to make sure to stay in pairs. It makes me think of the quote, "Society teaches women how to avoid rape; it doesn't teach men not rape."

And, while we're not talking about something nearly so extreme, I'm sick of it. Not on my street. I'm tired of being nervous and uncomfortable, I'm tired of having the way I walk or how often I've been home commented on every time I walk past, and I'm done with being afraid, because that's all the planning and strategizing is doing--trying to compensate for fear.

I'm considering how best to do this, but I may just talk to him myself. I'm not sure the best way to go about it--still deciding. I mean, that guy seems to get angry really easily, and even though he's big and fat and probably slow, I'm really small. So if Carter does talk to him, and it doesn't work the first time, I'm filing charges. Enough.

I couldn't even tell you.

My skin is torn, right down near the edge where it and and my nail came together in a once-perfect fit, edging around the white half-moon and the blaze running through it that is uniquely mine. It hurts, but I rub at it again, distracting myself from my discomfort, my worry, and the disjointed flow of my words as they describe the inner twists of my mind to a perfect stranger.

The beginning panic is mostly gone, now, taking the first chunk of cuticle with it. I don't know what I was so afraid of--what I'd hear, perhaps? That I'd break down and cry in that small office? It's not like me, I know, but then again, none of this is--or didn't used to be, at any rate.

They say that around 40% of medical students experience a major depressive episode at some point during their years here. They also say that, if it's happened once, chances are extremely high that it will happen again.

There is a specific period in my past that doesn't have many memories. I've tried to find some, but I just recall being...dark. Tired, all the time. Hopeless, and completely alone. Someone very dear to me recently described it as a kind of anger--if your life is good, even great, why should your mind tell you otherwise? It's not logical, not reasonable, it can't be talked around, and that made him furious. Me, it just makes me more tired. You can only argue with yourself so much before you stop believing what you're saying.

I notice a bit of blood under the nail of my left hand. We're talking about possible mental strategies to use to combat my negative self-talk--I wonder, is self-talk part of the psychobabble?--and I'm perking up a bit. This is why I came, after all. I hate acknowledging that I might actually have a problem; I'd rather chalk it up to laziness, or lack of efficiency, or timing my sleep cycles wrong. But the idea that someone could help me change how I look at life, and that this could go a long way to solving my problems, that was an idea I could have hope for--a great deal of it.

Then he said, "You seem like your head is in the right place--owning your problems and such--and I don't think counseling is going to do you much good, although we'll certainly meet a few more times. But here's an appointment for a psychiatrist, and we'll get you started on an antidepressant tomorrow."

You don't know what it's like to hear that. Depression carries such a social stigma; somebody recently compared it to being diagnosed with an STD. If you announce that you have heart failure, nobody is going to give you that funny sideways look and say, "Riiiight..." If something goes wrong with the body, you fix it. You may get sympathy for it and, if you're lucky, somebody will bring you warm soup and bread to eat while watching movies from the comfort of your oh-so-shnuggly bed...perhaps that's just my own immediate fantasy. But if something goes wrong with your head? People get really uncomfortable, really fast.

It's more than that, though. It felt like something in me froze. What? Medication? Can we not talk about this first? What about the side effects? What is it going to feel like? Are there other options to try? Is this really the first step? I don't even know you, and you're saying I need to start a series of meds that will last indefinitely? Do you even know how I feel about medication?

I tell him I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of drugs and he seems to shrug it off. I realize I need to quit playing with my hands--my thumb really hurts now. I know, I know I'm showing significant discomfort with the idea, and while I'm not doing it on purpose--it really is freaking me out--he doesn't pick up on it.

Our time is up, and he ushers me out of his office. I decide to wait and take my concerns to the person who would actually be writing the hypothetical prescription, so my questions will hold until tomorrow. Yet as the day has worn on, predictably, I've been unable to focus my attention for too long without it coming back to the session. I should feel relief, right? That there's a plan in place, that I'm going to feel better, focus better, sleep better, eat something, anything. That I will stop losing weight, that I won't struggle so hard to be happy when I'm stressed; that I will learn to cope with stress in a way that's healthy.  Even if I don't decide to go on meds, I can learn to focus on being strong in areas I'm weak. These are all good things.

It feels sick, though; and devastating in its own way. It feels broken--it feels shameful. Less. Empty. It feels like tears that I'm too tired to care about.

It feels like something I wish nobody else knew. Especially the people closest to me. Which is odd, writing about it here. But I needed to do something. I don't think I would have been able to sleep tonight if I hadn't gotten it out somehow.

Our first set of tests for second year starts tomorrow. I'm not ready for them--hellishly unprepared is a better description. What with my lack of concentration and various illnesses in the past few weeks, I'm seriously asking God for miracles on my behalf. For now, all I can do is sleep and study more in the morning.

Rebel Light

The rebellion begins quietly as the evening ends, just before the day is submerged into the coming night. Have you ever noticed? The tangible moment as the sun begins to touch the horizon...and suddenly every speck of light, every ray of brilliance grows in intensity, revolting against the coming dark and painting each surface, each shadow and blade of grass, each tired face, each piece of dandelion fluff in shades of gold that glow as if the entire world is on fire. And that moment, when the light manages to turn back the encroaching dark completely, that moment seems to last forever.