Chris Banyas
Editor-in-Chief
Yesterday, upon the stair, / I met a man who wasn’t there / He wasn’t there again today, / I wish, I wish he’d go away…
I need to preface what I am about to detail by saying two things: first, the story I am about to tell you is being told strictly for the benefit of others, in the hope that someone, even one individual person really, will find something that resonates with them and take appropriate action, and second, I do not want sympathy.
Starting Kindergarten is probably one of the most anticipated events in a young child’s life, but for me it was something that I can remember dreading.
At the age of five or six I can remember actively worrying about what I would do when I was grown up, and, though I can’t remember this detail in actuality, wouldn’t be surprised if I was pre-gaming my first tax return.
I would worry about the littlest things: assignments, tests, events, you name it and I lost sleep over it, in large part during the times that probably should have been carefree and magical, as dumb as that sounds.
I tried to kill myself roughly six months before I started attending classes at Idaho State University, something I undertook, attending class that is, in large part because I could come up with no other alternative path to follow at that specific time. It was during a snowstorm, sometime in the winter of 2010.
My father has been very open with me about the fact that he faces a very similar situation in the worrying department, and has said many times that I likely inherited it from him, and that he inherited it from his father.
The first time I got drunk was in the basement of a friend’s house when I was in high school. We were watching “Gangs of New York,” and I ended up outside running through the sprinklers until I sprawled in grand fashion in the mud.
This event was to presage several other ridiculous events that would occur later in my life.
After I graduated from high school, I was directionless: I took a job working nights at a hotel, where I was alone from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., and as anyone who has worked the graveyard shift can tell you, it doesn’t help your mental state.
Around the time of my twenty-first birthday I began drinking regularly, on a weekly basis, with a group of people that I am still friends with today.
It is also around this time that I think I began to become depressed, along with having issues with anxiety.
I would drink myself stupid.
Why? I think because it represented an option for a change of state. If everything is monotone, a shock to that state sometimes becomes appealing, even if it means you are bedridden for days afterward.
Many times, after nights of drinking with friends, I would end up sitting alone in my room crying and punching myself in the head repeatedly, raging against whatever it was that had taken up residence in my brain.
I felt like I was pretending to be normal, pretending to be like them, and I think I got quite good at pretending over the course of 10 years.
I worked various jobs for various periods of time, my mental state vacillating between passable and borderline suicidal.
As we’re going to talk a bit about suicide, I will try to put my feelings in that state into words and perspective: as with the young man sitting alone in a room bludgeoning himself in the darkness, I think that suicide becomes appealing, not because an individual necessarily wants to “kill oneself,” but rather because it represents a change, an avenue of escape from the feedback loop of life.
I can remember regularly buying Tylenol PM, and telling those around me that I was having issues sleeping, when in reality I wanted to minimize the time that I was awake each day as much as possible.
It is a difficult thing to try and explain to people, the feeling of worthlessness, the feeling of extreme self-loathing, the feeling of drowning in a life stream that everyone else seems not only perfectly able to cope with, but even able to enjoy on a regular basis, but it is the truth.
I can remember waking up on sunny days and thinking to myself how dull everything looked, how the birds and sounds of children playing in the school yard across the block sounded empty.
Two parents raised me that could not have been more caring, supportive, and loving. I was not abused, raised around substance abuse of any kind, or born into any sort of predicament that might set me up to be behind the 8-ball.
This fact feeds the monster of shame that always follows you around in this state of mind, a monster that I still carry with me, and will always have to account for.
It is a terrifying prospect to give others a glimpse into your world of personal dirt and mental processes and the history of both, and I have been wrestling with this piece since I took the job of editor. But I believe it is absolutely necessary.
It is worth noting that drinking is something that I have always enjoyed on some level, though for various reasons at different times.
It also bears mentioning that several members of my extended family have struggled with alcoholism, so I am very much aware of these issues.
But drinking, like anything else, is something that I believe you must learn how to do over the course of time, and I do not blame any of my life events upon the substance itself. Truly, I enjoy drinking socially with my friends to this day, even throughout these issues.
Another factor in the powder keg of my state of mind was that of self-image. I’ve watched enough television and listened to enough episodes of Loveline to realize that I likely have a mild to moderate case of body dismorphia, and have viewed myself as grotesquely overweight since I was young.
Again, I don’t want your sympathy. If anything, I’m putting this out there to let anyone who might experience even one-tenth of these emotions know that it is not normal and that they need to seek help immediately.
You don’t need to live like this.
A major moment of irony occurred in my life when I plunged the Swiss Army pocket knife into my left arm multiple times that snowy morning after taking a handful of pills: when I had received it as a gift as a young boy, I cut my finger with it the first time I opened it to admire the sharpness and the craftsmanship.
I was, of course, highly intoxicated at this juncture, and I sat in my chair bleeding all over my room, feeling not a thing.
My best friend eventually walked in and after a rather charged exchange informed me that if I did not talk to my parents, he would go to them.
He proceeded to purchase bandages and medicinal supplies with which I bound my wounds.
I passed out several times, became sick and light headed, and tried for hours to stop the bleeding, which eventually subsided.
One of the most difficult things I have ever done was telling my mother that I had tried to kill myself, but in true motherly fashion after shedding a few quick tears, she picked me up as she had so many times as a child, and went to work.
The looks you receive when you mother tells the receptionist at a clinic that the reason her son is standing behind her is due to lacerations aren’t that much different than the looks you receive when some people find out you struggle with depression.
I think you just start to not notice after a while.
I’ve never struggled with feeling faint at the sight of blood, and I watched throughout the entire procedure, while something like 30 stitches were pushed into, through and out of my arm.
It’s a strange feeling to go from the depths of terror at having your “secret” exposed to a cheerful and upbeat nurse and doctor who seem to not care at all about the fact that you just hacked up yourself.
I remember the nurse saying several times something like, “the world is a crazy place nowadays.”
That was one of the first times I realized how normal all of this actually was, regardless of how normal something like this should be. These people deal with issues like this every day.
After I was sewn up, I went to the doctor and began taking Zoloft, a drug that while making me feel mentally foggy, quieted the inner tumult.
I had what I consider a moment of clarity when I was at another friends house; his younger sisters were visiting and one of them asked me, “What happened to your arm?”
This is a question that has faded along with the scars, but one that drops the bottom of my stomach out the same now as it did then whenever I hear it to this day.
What happened?
Recently, after being off Zoloft for about a year or so, I visited the Student Health Center on campus and spoke with a doctor I have spent a lot of time with over the years, Supe Lyon.
I am very thankful for her help in many different situations, and this was no exception: I am now on Prozac and feel better than I have in my entire life.
So: What happened?
The human brain is a wonderful and terrible thing, capable of conjuring forth from the ether the sounds of Beethoven, the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, and yet at the same time providing a person with the implements of their own annihilation in a sort of mental drowning pool.
What happened is, I discovered that there is absolutely no need to go through life thus afflicted, dreading every waking moment, and that there are numerous avenues available through which “normalcy” may be attained.
Suffering in silence helps no one. I did it for nearly a decade and often think about all the time I wasted sunk down in the doldrums.
I strongly believe that if issues like these were to become more widely discussed the nationwide suicide statistics would drop dramatically as the stigma of depression and “bad brains” would lessen.
I remember hearing various people throughout my life suggesting that I talk to someone, but I didn’t want to for a simple reason: I did not want to be put on a medication.
I was afraid to have what I viewed as a scarlet letter of dysfunction stuck to my breast for, what I assumed would be, all the world to see.
But the fact of that matter is simple: some people need medicine for certain things and others do not. The taking of medicine should never deter someone from seeking the help that they may desperately need.
We all have the right to be happy. Sometimes we just need to learn what it is we need to do to achieve this.
In an effort to be fully transparent, I should also mention that I have never tried therapy. I suppose that, like talking about this experience, someday I might feel up to trying it, but we all have to move at our own paces.
It is also important to note that pills are not a total cure…sometimes I still wake up and see things, not as they truly are, but through the eyes of the monster that has grown into my being and become a part of me.
I still own that Swiss Army Knife. It sits on my desk and makes itself useful almost every day.
When pondering the multiverse, it is entirely possible that in another existence I was not fortunate enough to make it past my issues and be able to look back as I am doing now. It is so very important to recognize and take the chances you are given.
