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Recently my mother was in the hospital for dehydration and some other health issues. They were going to keep her overnight for observation.

I was sitting there with her while nurses moved around the room preparing things. Undoing her IV. Adjusting the bed. That strange hospital choreography where everyone seems busy while time itself feels suspended.

And then she looked at me and asked:

“Now, what do I think about?”

Not casually.

Not rhetorically.

She genuinely didn’t know.

And I froze.

Because how do you answer a question like that for someone else?

How do you tell another human being what to think about when they are 86 years old and suddenly confronting the shrinking of their world?

Before I could really respond, the nurse came in and interrupted us because they were moving her.

In some ways I was relieved.

Because I didn’t know what to say.

She’s doing much better now. Back in her apartment. Recovering well. The crisis passed.

But the question stayed behind.

“Now, what do I think about?”

I think part of what makes the question so frightening is that it sounds simple until you realize it really isn’t.

It’s not about boredom.

It’s about meaning.

My mother has always had an active mind. An obsessive-compulsive mind that loops and circles and searches for something to land on. And now, at 86, after losing pieces of the life she once had, she’s trying to figure out where to place her attention, her energy, her thoughts.

What do you think about when the future feels smaller?

When your body limits you?

When you can no longer do many of the things that once gave your life structure and identity?

I always try to answer practically.

I tell her:

“Think about your friends.”
“Think about bingo.”
“Think about activities coming up.”
“Think about getting stronger.”

And those things matter. They do.

Small routines and social connection become lifelines as people age.

But underneath her question, I think there is something larger that neither of us fully knows how to answer.

What makes it even stranger is that this wasn’t the first time she asked me something like this.

A long while back, when she was in the hospital after having a stroke, I remember getting ready to leave after visiting her. And as I stood there saying goodbye, she looked at me and quietly asked:

“Now what?”

At the time, I tried to answer the best I could. Think about healing. Think about getting stronger. Think about the next step.

But I realize now both questions were connected.

“Now what?”
“What do I think about?”

Both are really asking the same thing.

How do you continue being a person when life becomes smaller than it once was?

And if I’m honest, I ask myself versions of the same question now too.

I’m 54, and life is different than it was in my youth. There are things I can no longer do easily. Parts of myself I miss. Dreams that changed shape. Limitations I never expected to negotiate this early.

So sometimes I quietly ask myself:

Now what?

What gives life meaning now?
Who am I if I can no longer be who I once was?

And maybe that’s why her question unsettled me so deeply.

Because I realized she wasn’t asking something unique to old age.

She was asking a profoundly human question.

Everybody asks it eventually.

Some people ask it after retirement.
Some after illness.
Some after divorce.
Some after losing a dream.
Some after realizing youth is not coming back.

“Now what?”

And finally, I told her the truth.

I said:

“You’re not alone in asking that question, Mom. I ask myself the same thing sometimes too. Everybody does. Nobody knows.”

And the moment I said it, I watched relief come over her face.

You could literally see her body relax.

For a moment, the fear loosened its grip on her because she realized she wasn’t uniquely broken or lost.

That question she thought isolated her was actually connecting her to everyone else.

To me.
To aging people everywhere.
To younger people secretly carrying the same fears.
To anyone who has ever sat quietly wondering what life is supposed to look like now that it no longer resembles what it once was.

We spend so much time looking for answers, as if the right words could somehow reverse the shrinking of a world.

But they can’t.

So to answer her question — what now? — I offer the only truth I have left:

I don’t know.

Comfort does not come from solving the mystery.

It comes from realizing we are all sitting inside it together.

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By the time I take the two groaning steps to my desk, I start considering terms.

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Then again, maybe I already signed something years ago. Maybe this is the improved package.

Maybe this is what “better” looks like.

I think about that more than I probably should. Some days my soul feels so tired and worn down that I wonder if this is just what happens when parts of you slowly burn off over time. Not dramatically. Just gradually.

Then I look in the mirror and immediately switch to wondering why the love handles are still here.

If I already sold my soul, I feel like I should have at least gotten the deluxe package. New knees. Functional joints. A body that could kill. Something.

I hate looking in the mirror. I hate walking.

What’s especially cruel is that my brain finally seems interested in living again.

Now that some of the depression has loosened its grip, I actually want things. I want movement. Experiences. Connection. A future.

I just wish the body matched the remission happening in the old noggin.

As it turns out, when I lost all that weight from bariatric surgery, I didn’t just lose fat. I lost a critical amount of lean muscle mass too.

“Your muscles are wasting away because your blood protein levels are dangerously low,” my doctor told me, in that calm clinical tone doctors use when saying something that quietly detonates in your brain.

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Let’s do some labs to see how much.

Which is one of those sentences that sounds reasonable and terrifying at exactly the same time.

It makes sense, though. My core strength is practically nonexistent now. It takes me longer than it should to get into bed and out of it. To shower. To put on clothes. Every movement feels slightly over-negotiated, like my body wants a meeting before approving basic human activity.

Don’t get me wrong. I lost the weight. I gained some back, sure, but I’ve plateaued and have slowly started creeping down again.

My goal now is to get under 200 pounds and maintain it long enough for insurance to hopefully approve skin removal surgery.

Yeah. Skin removal.

One of those phrases that sounds fictional until it becomes part of your actual life.

Apparently if my protein really is that low, the answer is strength training combined with the high-protein, low-carb diet I’m already on.

And I just loooooove exercise. Especially when every joint in my body files a formal complaint at the exact same time.

I can daydream all I want about traveling someday. Or taking a morning walk. Or hiking. Or feeling spontaneous again. But right now those things feel very far away.

Mostly because there’s no magic bullet waiting to suddenly give me my strength back overnight. Unless my testosterone is low again, in which case apparently my body and I will be entering yet another deeply humiliating side quest.

And yeah, I know recovery like this doesn’t happen quickly. I know that.

It’s slow. Tedious. Repetitive.

Doing something I hate consistently in order to maybe feel a little better later.

My mind finally wants expansion again. Dating. Travel. Movement. Flirting. Live music. Experiences. Becoming a person again.

My body, meanwhile, would like a chair. A heating pad. And preferably me horizontal.

Honestly, though, maybe documenting this part is good for me. Maybe that’s the next angle for this journal.

Not just emotional survival anymore, but physical reconstruction too.

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Trying to build a body that can carry the version of me that finally wants to live again.

Maybe the devil didn’t offer me a deluxe package after all.

Maybe all I got was a second chance with complicated terms and conditions.

A body held together with protein shakes, physical therapy, lab work, heating pads, and stubbornness.

Still, I suppose the fact that I’m trying to renegotiate means some part of me plans on sticking around.

I don’t actually know how much strength I can get back.

I don’t know if my body will ever feel like mine again in the way I want it to.

But for the first time in a long time, I at least care enough to try.

So if you see me walking with a cane or riding around Walmart in an electric cart, just know this probably isn’t the final form.

At least I hope not.

Maybe strength isn’t getting your old body back.

Maybe it’s waking up every day in a body that hurts, in a life that became smaller than you wanted, and still deciding to negotiate for more anyway.

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There’s a very specific kind of magic that only exists in a summer music theater pit orchestra. If you’ve ever sat in one, you know exactly what I mean. At Western Illinois University’s Summer Music Theatre (SMT), that magic depended on one simple thing:

You could actually see the stage.

For decades, the pit was a living, breathing part of the show. We weren’t hidden away in some dark cave somewhere. We were right there in the open, crammed into a trench with twenty of our friends, a forest of music stands, and this beautiful mess of sound: trumpets, flutes, clarinets, timpani, violins, bass, piano, and cello.

Part of the joy was watching the action unfold right above your head while you played. There was this constant exchange of energy between the actors and the musicians. You could feel it every night.

It worked beautifully for twenty years, and for my family, it became part of the backdrop of our lives.

A Full-Circle Overture

My history with the SMT pit actually started before I was even born.

Back in the summer of 1972, the resident cellist in the open pit was my mom. She spent that whole season playing through demanding show books while heavily pregnant with me, her cello resting right against her belly. I like to think my first exposure to music came through those vibrations echoing through the theater.

Fast forward seventeen years to 1989.

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The theater needed to expand the section, and instead of simply replacing her, I got to join her. My mom didn’t just hand me the bow and disappear. She stayed right there beside me in the cello section. During the 1989 and 1990 seasons, we played side-by-side under the stage lights, navigating frantic page turns together.

Sitting next to your mentor, who also happens to be your mom, is something I’ll always carry with me.

After those two summers together, she officially retired. I kept playing through my college years and continued returning to the pit off and on until I finally left Macomb in 2000.

For those first shared seasons, we were guided by a true Macomb legend: Dr. Maughan McMurdie. Doc McMurdie had been there since the very beginning of SMT. He was conducting when my mom played pregnant in 1972, and he was still standing on the podium when we played together years later.

Having him there made the whole thing feel strangely complete, like a family story circling back around on itself.

Spotlight and Heartstrings

Because the pit was open back then, we didn’t just see choreography and costumes. We saw people.

And one particular summer, the theater magic became deeply personal for me.

I fell completely in love with one of the performers on stage.

Every night, watching him under the lights made my heart race. Rehearsals suddenly mattered in a whole different way. The romantic songs in the score started feeling a little too real.

What I remember most, though, happened after the curtain came down.

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We’d leave the theater late at night, drive out past the lights of town, and end up parked in some open field somewhere. We’d climb onto the hood of my car and lie there under the cool night sky talking for hours while the stars stretched above us.

It was simple. Quiet. Romantic.

And honestly, it was one of the best, sweetest summers of my life.

The Great Pit Battle

Then came 1992.

Doc McMurdie retired, and the administration decided to “fix” something that never really felt broken in the first place.

The higher-ups became convinced the pit orchestra was too loud and that audiences couldn’t properly hear the performers onstage. Their solution was to dig the pit lower into the ground.

Musicians immediately hated it.

Suddenly we were cut off from the stage. We couldn’t really see the actors anymore. That sense of connection started disappearing. The little moments that made live theater feel alive were gone.

And we all kept asking the same question:

If this setup worked for twenty years, why was it suddenly a problem now?

Nobody ever really gave us a clear answer.

Apparently lowering the pit still wasn’t enough, because eventually the actors were given microphones. Then, when that still didn’t satisfy the powers that be, they built an actual cover over the pit itself, leaving only a narrow opening for the conductor.

That changed everything.

The Covered Summers

Once the cover went up, the entire experience changed.

We were boxed in underneath the stage, barely able to hear what was happening above us. Instead of reacting naturally to the performers, we relied on a little monitor shoved into the pit.

The connection between the cast and orchestra was gone.

And looking back now, that cover feels symbolic of something bigger.

It was the beginning of the slow disappearance of live pit musicians in Macomb.

Eventually funding dried up and the summer theater program faded away altogether. Later productions experimented with prerecorded tracks and digital replacements, but by then something essential had already been lost.

The soul of it.

Keeping the Pit Alive

The performances I love remembering aren’t the ones spent staring at the underside of a wooden cover.

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The ones I hold onto are the summers when the pit itself felt alive. The warmth of real violins. The brass cracking through a big number. The rumble of timpani. Two generations of cellists sitting side-by-side trying to hold it all together.

It was fun. Real fun.

Looking back now, I realize how lucky I was to experience the tail end of that era.

Every time I tighten my bow today, I still think about how a line that started in an open pit in 1972 somehow came full circle for me years later.

Recorded tracks may hit the right notes, but they’ll never have a heartbeat.

They’ll never know what it felt like to fall in love under stage lights, or drive out into the dark after the final curtain and lie on the hood of a car talking beneath the stars.

The funding may have disappeared. The theater may have gone quiet.

But the memories never really do.

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Life mostly happens in the mundane. Not in the huge, cinematic moments people post about afterward.

It happens in routines.
Familiar voices.
Someone asking if you got home okay.
A dog following you from room to room.
The specific way certain people make your nervous system unclench for a minute.

The small stuff isn’t separate from life. It is life.

I think people dismiss the “small stuff” when they’ve never had to survive on crumbs emotionally. Because when you’ve lived through loneliness, depression, grief, chronic pain, rejection, or instability, you learn quickly that tiny things are sometimes the only things keeping a person going.

Someone remembering something you said weeks ago.
A moment of being understood instead of explained away.

None of it looks dramatic from the outside, but emotionally, it can mean everything.

I had to learn this the hard way, through the slow thawing of my own life.

After years of clinical depression—and finally experiencing something close to remission over the last year and a half—I started realizing how much of life I had stopped noticing while I was simply trying to survive it.

For so long, I lived strictly in the binary: I was either good or bad, happy or depressed, joyful or scared. I became so trapped by those extremes that I forgot how much of existence happens in the spaces between them.

I was only keeping a ledger of my own erasure. Another day lost to depression, another hour spent anxious, another moment swallowed by mental illness. I was so busy waiting for a massive breakthrough—the “ah-ha” moment, the triumphant symphony, the dramatic transformation—that the good stuff just slipped past me.

I didn’t notice that the mundane was quietly doing the work the entire time.

For me, getting better happened through tiny recalibrations. It was a medication quietly grafting new pathways into my brain. It was the slow, nine-year decrescendo of finally ending therapy with someone who knew me inside out. It was gradual, almost invisible shifts accumulating underneath my awareness, altering the texture of my daily life without ever announcing themselves as a breakthrough.

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And maybe that’s how I ended up in remission. Not through one massive victory, but because enough small things changed for long enough that eventually my life started feeling different before I even realized it had.

When you’ve spent years only tracking pain, learning to notice the quieter parts of life becomes its own form of healing.

But the gray stuff isn’t always inherently good, either. That’s the part people forget. Life happens there, but so does damage.

Relationships erode in the mundane.
Loneliness grows there.
Habits form there.
Resentment settles in quietly.

Small cruelties accumulate just as easily as small kindnesses. Which is probably why the mundane matters so much in the first place.

So yeah, don’t sweat the small stuff. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it doesn’t matter, either. Small things have the power to transform a life slowly, quietly, almost invisibly.

They shift your world from black, to gray, to white.

And then, finally, to chartreuse.

You don’t even realize you’ve been changing until one day you look around, realizing you are no longer standing exactly where your suffering left you.

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My therapist was talking about the emotional intelligence of someone I know and I had to stop the conversation for a second.

Not because I disagreed.

But because I realized I don’t even fully know what people mean anymore when they say “emotional intelligence.”

The phrase gets thrown around so casually now that it almost feels self-explanatory. Like we all silently agreed on the definition years ago.

And maybe in a way we did.

Back in MY day I remember when TIME magazine put emotional intelligence on the cover in 1995, treating it like NASA discovering a habitable new planet. Suddenly there was IQ… and now EQ.

An entirely new framework for understanding human behavior, exploding right before the internet became king.

Back then, it felt revolutionary. The idea that human beings had another kind of intelligence besides logic, memory, and raw intellectual ability. Emotional awareness. Empathy. Communication. Self-regulation.

And honestly, it WAS a useful idea.

Not just: “Are you smart?” But: “Can you communicate? Can you regulate yourself? Can you read a room? Can you have feelings without detonating your entire life?”

Fair enough.

But somewhere along the way, emotional intelligence stopped being descriptive and started becoming moral.

“Emotionally intelligent” became shorthand for evolved, safe, mature, healed, and better.

And I think we all absorbed some of that.

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We started treating emotional intelligence like a superpower. The myth became that once you achieve it, you stop spiraling. You stop overreacting. You stop getting hurt. You stop losing your shit. Like emotionally intelligent people just glide through conflict calmly while maintaining perfect eye contact and using flawless “I statements.”

But that’s far from the truth, because human beings are messier than that.

I don’t care who you are—having EQ doesn’t mean you move through life like some Zen Buddhist monk floating six inches above the ground. People with emotional intelligence still lose their shit. They panic, get jealous, get defensive, and shut down. They say the wrong thing, spiral, avoid difficult conversations, and cry in parking lots.

I read somewhere that sometimes EQ is just understanding your own chaos in real time.

That emotionally intelligent people don’t magically transcend being human; sometimes they just understand their dysfunction in higher resolution.

And honestly, that definition makes more sense than the polished social media version of emotional intelligence ever did.

Because awareness is not the same thing as perfection.

Knowing why you’re spiraling doesn’t always stop the spiral. Knowing your triggers doesn’t mean you’ll never get triggered again.

Sometimes growth is just recognizing the pattern a little sooner than you used to. Sometimes it’s apologizing faster. Sometimes it’s staying in the uncomfortable conversation instead of running from it.

And sometimes it’s simply admitting: “I know exactly what I’m doing right now and it still feels impossible to stop.”

The internet completely changed the way emotional intelligence gets displayed. It shifted it from quiet self-awareness into public identity performance.

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Now, everyone is publicly self-aware. Everyone knows therapy language. Everyone can identify attachment styles, boundaries, triggers, narcissism, trauma responses, gaslighting, and emotional labor.

Which is good in a lot of ways. Seriously. A lot of this language has helped people finally describe experiences they never had words for before.

But sometimes it feels less like emotional growth and more like people learning the vocabulary of emotional growth.

And those are not always the same thing.

Because online, emotional intelligence can start to feel performative. Less “I’m trying to understand myself honestly,”and more “Look how emotionally evolved I am.”

EQ gets presented almost like personal branding now. A curated identity. Proof that someone is self-aware, healed, safe, enlightened, and mature.

But some people can explain emotions beautifully while still hurting everyone around them.

Some people can identify every trauma response they have while still expecting everyone else to absorb the impact of it.

Some people can speak fluent therapy and still have no idea how to sit in discomfort, apologize sincerely, or tolerate being misunderstood for five minutes.

We’ve added emotional intelligence to the growing résumé of labels, diagnoses, and self-definitions we use to explain ourselves—as if diagnosing yourself out loud somehow exempts you from having to do the actual work.

But I don’t think emotional intelligence is something you permanently achieve and then graduate from. It’s not a credential.

It’s just something you keep practicing while continuing to be a flawed human being.

Maybe emotional intelligence isn’t becoming emotionally flawless.

Maybe it’s becoming more honest about the fact that none of us are.

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A Play in Four Acts

CHARACTERS:

• JERRY: A musician, artist and writer. He looks like he’s holding his breath.

• THE REPRESENTATIVE: Jerry’s “Social Self.” Dressed in a suit that is slightly too small, wearing a permanent, strained smile.

• THE DOCTOR: A figure of cold authority, constantly checking a watch that doesn’t move.

• THE CHORUS: A group of figures in hoodies, illuminated only by the blue light of their smartphones.

ACT I: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF “NO”

(Setting: A void. JERRY is trying to draw a circle on the floor with a piece of chalk. THE REPRESENTATIVE follows behind him with an eraser, frantically rubbing the lines out.)

JERRY: (Stopping) Why are you doing that? I need that line. I need to know where I end and they begin.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: (Breathless) We can’t afford the line, Jerry. Lines are expensive. Lines create friction. Friction creates heat. And heat makes people leave the room.

JERRY: I’m fifty years old. I’m tired of being a floor mat.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: You aren’t a floor mat. You are “easygoing.” You are “the flexible one.” You are the “low-maintenance friend” everyone loves because you never take up any space.

JERRY: I’m not flexible. I’m just afraid. I tossed my boundaries to the side decades ago because I thought they were barricades that would keep my friends out. I thought if I said “No,” I’d be saying “Goodbye.”

THE REPRESENTATIVE: Exactly! It’s a bargain. We trade the self for the seat at the table. Now, stand up straight and look agreeable. Someone might be looking.

ACT II: THE BURDEN OF PROOF

(Setting: A sterile exam room. The sound of a fluorescent light humming loudly. THE DOCTOR stands on a pedestal, looking down at JERRY through a magnifying glass.)

JERRY: It’s… it’s a dull roar today. It’s heavy.

THE DOCTOR: (Interrupting) You’re articulate. Your vitals are stable. You just made a witty remark about the wallpaper. People in “real” pain don’t tell jokes, Jerry.

JERRY: (To the audience) And there it is. The Trap.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: (Sprinting onto the stage, throwing a heavy, tattered gray cloak over JERRY’S shoulders) Quick! Stop smiling! Look haggard! Limp a little!

JERRY: (Struggling under the weight of the cloak) I shouldn’t have to do this. The suffering is real whether I’m laughing or crying.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: In this room, if you aren’t performing, you aren’t hurting. Invisible illness requires a witness, and the witness requires a show. If you don’t give him a Broadway-level performance of agony, he’ll write “Patient is fine” in the chart and walk out.

JERRY: (To THE DOCTOR, his voice straining) I can’t sleep. I can’t sit. I am… I am falling apart.

THE DOCTOR: (Scribbling) Better. Now I can almost believe you.

ACT III: THE DIGITAL TELEPATHY

(Setting: JERRY sits center stage at a desk. THE CHORUS stands in a semi-circle behind him, their faces glowing blue.)

JERRY: (Typing) I spent my life over-explaining. Writing long emails to justify my feelings. Providing courtroom-level evidence for my boundaries.

THE CHORUS: (In unison, a rhythmic chant) We don’t explain anymore. We expect. We don’t ask anymore. We demand.

VOICE 1: You used a word that triggered my third-grade trauma. VOICE 2: You didn’t acknowledge my specific neurodivergence in your subtext. VOICE 3: Why didn’t you navigate my map? I never showed it to you, but you should have seen it.

JERRY: I can’t read your minds! I spent fifty years learning to speak up, and now the world says I should have known what you needed telepathically?

THE CHORUS: Misunderstanding is cruelty! Confusion is a call-out!

JERRY: No. It’s basic cancel culture. You’re setting tripwires and calling them “awareness.” You’re waiting for me to fail a test I didn’t know I was taking so you can feel the rush of “canceling” a stranger.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: (Terrified) Jerry, stop! You’re being “difficult”! They’re going to unfollow!

JERRY: (Standing up, pushing THE REPRESENTATIVE aside) Let them! Real understanding isn’t a download. It’s a relationship. It’s the messy, slow work of two people risking the truth. It’s me saying, “This is hard for me,” and you not requiring me to perform it perfectly before you believe me.

ACT IV: THE NEW MAP

(JERRY walks to the edge of the stage. He picks up the chalk again. He draws a single, solid line between himself and the audience. He doesn’t look at THE REPRESENTATIVE.)

JERRY: I used to think putting up a boundary meant I was bad at being a friend. I used to think it was a sign of failure.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: (Quietly) And now?

JERRY: Now I realize that people who get angry when you set a boundary are usually the ones who benefited from you not having any. I’m bad at reinforcing them, sure. I still stumble. I still want to collapse when things get tense.

THE REPRESENTATIVE: It’s safer to collapse.

JERRY: It’s quieter. But it’s not safer. Because when you collapse, you disappear.

(JERRY steps over his chalk line, then steps back. He smiles—a real one this time.)

JERRY: A boundary isn’t a wall. It’s just the moment I stop believing that belonging should cost me my soul.

(JERRY turns off the desk lamp. The blue glow of THE CHORUS fades into total darkness.)

CURTAIN.

EPILOGUE

The stage remains dark for a long beat before a single, warm spotlight finds JERRY sitting at the edge of the apron, his feet dangling over the orchestra pit. The Representative is gone, and the Chorus has fallen silent. He looks out at the audience—not as a performer seeking a witness, but as a man finally comfortable in the quiet. He realizes that for half a century, he treated his own life like a guest room, perpetually keeping it tidy and vacant so that no one would ever feel inconvenienced by his presence. He had mastered the language of everyone else’s needs while leaving his own vocabulary stunted, assuming that a well-defended heart was a lonely one.

He stands up, brushes the chalk dust from his hands, and realizes the most important boundary he ever drew wasn’t a fence to keep others out, but a hearth to keep himself warm. He finally understands that the only people who ever asked him to be invisible were the ones who were never truly looking at him anyway.

(Blackout.)

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People talk about psychiatric hospitals like they are all one thing. Either they are life-saving sanctuaries full of compassionate professionals or they are nightmare institutions designed to strip people of their humanity.

My experiences taught me the truth is much less simple than either version.

I’ve been hospitalized in psychiatric units in my 20s, again in my 30s, and again in my late 40s. Some admissions genuinely helped me. Some left me feeling worse. I’ve had doctors who were brilliant, compassionate, and clearly exactly where they were meant to be. I’ve also encountered staff and providers who seemed burned out, dismissive, inexperienced, or completely unequipped to handle vulnerable human beings.

And honestly, a lot of the care you receive depends on why you are there in the first place.

Both times I was hospitalized as an adult were largely for medication management and rapid medication changes. That phrase alone probably sounds alarming to some people, and honestly, sometimes it should.

There are definitely situations where psychiatric hospitals become revolving doors. Someone survives a suicide attempt or reaches a breaking point, gets stabilized just enough to no longer be considered an immediate danger, and then gets discharged quickly because another person needs the bed. That reality exists. Pretending it doesn’t helps nobody.

But there are also situations where inpatient psychiatric care makes legitimate medical sense.

One time I was admitted because my doctors wanted to try an MAOI antidepressant. Because of the risks and interactions involved, they needed every trace of my previous antidepressants completely out of my system first. That meant stopping medications cold turkey and essentially rebooting everything under medical supervision.

And if you’ve ever abruptly stopped psychiatric medications, you already know that isn’t some casual process.

The hospitalization wasn’t because I was “crazy.” It was because the medication transition itself carried risks, and they wanted observation in case something went wrong physically or psychologically while my system adjusted.

That’s another thing people outside psychiatric care often don’t realize. Sometimes psych units are treating acute psychiatric crises. Other times they’re functioning almost like highly controlled medical observation units for the brain.

And depending on the hospital, the staff, and the level of competence involved, that experience can feel either incredibly supportive or deeply traumatizing.

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The last time I was hospitalized, the experience was not therapeutic for me. It was frightening in a completely different way.

I was treated less like a person going through a specific medical and psychiatric situation and more like a generic “crazy person.” And honestly, there’s something deeply destabilizing about that.

Because once you’re inside a psychiatric unit, your normal reactions can suddenly be viewed through a distorted lens. If you’re upset, you’re “escalated.” If you’re frustrated, you’re “agitated.” If you strongly advocate for yourself, you’re suddenly “noncompliant.” After a while, you start feeling like you’re trapped inside someone else’s interpretation of you.

The closest thing I can compare it to is a kind of mistaken identity.

You know why you’re there. You know your own baseline. You know the situation is more nuanced than the chart in front of them. But suddenly you are inside a system responding to a version of you that doesn’t feel accurate at all. And that loss of control becomes terrifying because the people around you hold enormous authority over your treatment, your medications, your discharge, and even whether your emotions are considered reasonable.

Ironically, being constantly treated like you are irrational can become its own kind of psychological distress.

What made the experience especially difficult was that I was placed in a higher observation unit with people experiencing active suicidality, psychosis, or severe psychiatric crises, and I genuinely did not believe I belonged there.

The environment itself felt designed more for containment than healing.

You lose almost everything immediately. Your phone is taken away. Belts, shoelaces, ties, dental floss, anything remotely considered a risk gets removed. Contact with the outside world is reduced to payphone-style unit phones where you try to sound normal to worried friends or family while sitting under fluorescent lights surrounded by strangers in crisis.

Patients are monitored constantly. Cameras watch the unit and psych techs check rooms every fifteen minutes throughout the day and night. I understand why those precautions exist. For many patients, they are absolutely necessary. But when you already feel misplaced in that environment, the level of surveillance starts to feel wrong in a way you can’t quite argue your way out of.

And in higher observation units, there is often another layer of separation that changes the emotional atmosphere completely: the staff themselves can feel physically inaccessible.

In the unit I was in, much of the nurses’ station was surrounded by protective glass. So even basic conversations sometimes happened through barriers that made the entire interaction feel more custodial than therapeutic.

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Again, I understand why some of those precautions exist. Staff safety matters too, especially in units caring for patients in severe crisis.

But emotionally, it creates a strange dynamic.

When you are already frightened, overwhelmed, vulnerable, and questioning how people perceive you, speaking to nurses and staff members through protective glass can quietly reinforce the feeling that you are being viewed primarily as a potential threat instead of a person needing help.

It changes the atmosphere of the entire unit. The environment stops feeling relational and starts feeling institutional. Safe, maybe. Necessary for some situations, maybe. But still wrong in a way you can’t quite argue your way out of.

Sleep was almost impossible there, and one particular experience still stands out to me.

At the time, I had sleep apnea and used a CPAP machine. Because I was placed in the high observation unit, the machine’s power cord itself was considered a potential risk.

So every night, because the CPAP had to remain plugged in, they assigned someone to sit in my room and watch me while I slept to make sure I did not try to harm myself with the cord.

At least in theory.

In reality, having another person sitting in your room all night observing you is not exactly an environment that encourages sleep.

So I barely slept the entire time I was there.

And that’s part of what made the experience so disorienting. The unit was trying to keep people safe, but some of the precautions themselves became emotionally exhausting. Constant observation, constant noise, constant awareness that you are being monitored and assessed at all times. After a while, it stops feeling calming and starts feeling almost impossible to mentally settle inside your own body.

Anyone who has struggled with mental health already knows how deeply lack of sleep affects emotional regulation, anxiety, depression, and clear thinking. Yet somehow I was in an environment where rest felt nearly impossible.

And the physical design of the unit somehow made everything worse.

Ironically, it was a brand-new psychiatric facility, but it felt like nobody involved in designing it had ever actually asked psychiatric patients what helps people regulate emotionally.

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There was no carpeting anywhere, so every footstep echoed. Every door creaked loudly. Conversations bounced off the walls. Nothing absorbed sound. When your nervous system is already overwhelmed, you start counting ceiling tiles just to feel like you’re doing something.

There was also almost nothing to do.

Some psychiatric units I had previously been in at least attempted therapeutic engagement through art, music, structured activities, or spaces that felt remotely human. This unit mostly revolved around eating meals, sitting around, and watching whatever happened to be on the communal television.

The group therapy sessions often felt equally hollow. Many were run by people who seemed to be working off simplified worksheets and canned responses rather than genuinely engaging with complex human beings. At times it honestly felt less like therapy and more like people reciting cliff notes about mental health to vulnerable patients trapped in the room.

And maybe that was the hardest part. Not just the discomfort, but the feeling that the system often mistakes management for care.

Yes, the healthcare system is overwhelmed in general, and psychiatric care is not somehow protected from that reality. In many ways, it may reflect the cracks in the system even more harshly because the people entering it are already emotionally vulnerable before they ever walk through the doors.

And sometimes psychiatric hospitalization honestly can feel less like deep treatment and more like emergency stabilization in an overcrowded system trying to keep up.

There are units where the goal genuinely seems to become: stabilize the immediate danger, adjust medications quickly, document improvement, free the bed for the next crisis waiting in the emergency room.

That sounds harsh, but I think most people who have spent significant time around inpatient psychiatric care understand exactly what I mean.

It does not necessarily mean the staff are evil or uncaring. Many are burned out, understaffed, emotionally exhausted, and working inside systems that were never given enough resources to handle the level of need coming through the doors every day.

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But from the patient side, it can feel profoundly lonely.

You are sitting there during one of the hardest moments of your life while the institution around you is also functioning like a machine under pressure. Beds are limited. Time is limited. Staff attention is divided between people in completely different kinds of crises. And somewhere inside all of that, actual human healing is supposed to happen.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes people leave safer, more stable, and genuinely helped.

And sometimes people leave feeling like they were processed through a system that was trying to manage risk faster than it was trying to understand them.

I eventually realized that, at least in that particular hospitalization, the primary goal no longer felt like truly understanding me or helping me improve in any meaningful long-term way. It felt like the system was trying to stabilize people quickly enough to free up beds in an overcrowded psychiatric unit.

And once I understood that, I understood the equation.

The system rewarded people who appeared calm, compliant, cooperative, and manageable. So that’s what I became.

I said the right things. I attended the groups. I avoided showing frustration. I learned which emotions raised concern and which responses signaled “progress.” And within days, I was discharged.

That realization was unsettling in its own way.

Because while some patients genuinely are improving during inpatient treatment, others are also learning how to perform improvement well enough to leave an environment that feels frightening, humiliating, or emotionally unsafe to them.

And that’s the part that still stays with me.

You do not have to be psychologically healthy to figure out how to get discharged from a psychiatric unit. You simply have to understand the equation.

In my case, leaving was probably the right thing. I understood that the environment was worsening my mental state instead of helping it, so I adapted, complied, performed stability, and got out within days.

But someone else could do the exact same thing for very different reasons.

A person in active crisis can also learn the script. They can learn what staff want to hear. They can learn how to appear calm, organized, optimistic, compliant, future-oriented. They can learn how to suppress what they are actually thinking long enough to satisfy the system’s requirements for discharge.

One patient “playing the game” may be advocating for themselves appropriately in a bad environment. Another may be dangerously unwell and simply masking effectively.

From the outside, both can look exactly the same.

What stays with you afterward is not always the hospitalization itself. Sometimes it’s the fear.

The fear that your mental health history can suddenly supersede every other fact about you. That once “psychiatric patient” enters your chart, it can begin coloring how people interpret your personality, your emotions, your reactions, your judgment, even your physical health concerns.

You start wondering whether people are hearing you clearly or filtering you through diagnosis first.

Are you anxious, or are you “irrational”? Are you frustrated, or are you “agitated”? Are you advocating for yourself, or are you being “difficult”?

That fear is hard to explain to people who have never experienced it. The feeling that once mental illness becomes part of your medical identity, there is always the possibility that your credibility becomes conditional.

And maybe that’s why the more humane psychiatric units mattered so much to me. The better staff never made me feel like my diagnosis erased my personhood. They understood that mental illness is something a person experiences, not the entirety of who they are.

To be fair, not every psychiatric unit feels cold or dehumanizing. That contrast is part of what makes all of this so complicated to talk about honestly.

I’ve been in units where staff treated patients with dignity. Places that actually attempted to create some sense of structure, engagement, and humanity beyond medication passes and observation checks. There were scheduled walks, art activities, music therapy, conversations that felt genuine, and moments where you could almost forget you were locked inside a psychiatric facility for a little while.

Those environments felt less like containment and more like recovery.

Even small things mattered. Staff remembering your name. Someone asking how you actually slept instead of just checking a box. Having activities that reminded you that your brain still deserved stimulation, creativity, and connection instead of just surveillance.

And then I’ve been in places that felt almost entirely custodial. Places where patients mostly wandered around waiting for the next meal, the next medication round, or the next shift change. Endless pacing. Television noise. Fluorescent lights. Nothing meaningful to engage your mind while you’re already trapped inside your own thoughts.

That difference matters more than people realize. Because boredom inside a psychiatric unit is not normal boredom. It eats at you in a specific way. Especially when you are already anxious, depressed, overstimulated, frightened, or mentally exhausted. Humans in crisis still need stimulation, connection, distraction, creativity, movement, and moments that remind them they are more than patients being monitored.

I don’t know what the right answer is. I know what helped me and what didn’t. I know some of those units treated me like a person and some treated me like a liability. And I know that distinction mattered more to my recovery than any medication adjustment or group therapy worksheet ever did.

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• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Call or text 988 (Available 24/7 in English and Spanish)

• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

The End of a Chapter

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When my therapist told me she was leaving, I felt something collapse inside of me. It felt like a breakup—not because of romance, but because she had been my lighthouse for nearly a decade.

Intellectually, I knew she wasn’t abandoning me. Life was simply moving her family in a different direction. But emotionally, it felt like losing a foundational piece of my architecture. You don’t spend nine years letting someone witness your trauma, obsessions, and breakthroughs without forming a deep emotional attachment. She had become part of the structure holding my life together.

I think I always knew this day would come. Therapists retire; people move. I understood that. I just never let myself imagine what it would feel like when the anchor finally let go.

In those final sessions, we talked about what came next. She recommended a new therapist—younger, more progressive, interested in alternative treatments like psychedelics. Somewhere in those conversations, there was an unspoken truth hanging in the air: She didn’t know what else she could do for me.

That sounds harsher written out than it felt in the room. It wasn’t rejection; it was the natural end of a chapter. She had helped me survive, helped me stay alive through the darkest years. But we both knew she couldn’t magically lead me to a perfect answer that would erase my suffering.

In early 2025, we had our last session. There was no dramatic movie scene. No handshake. Just two people in the same room they had sat in for years. Near the end, she said something personal that tied everything together, and for the first time in nine years of constant talking, I was completely tongue-tied.

The Collapse

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Underneath the goodbyes, I was drowning.

Everything felt destabilized. I stopped my Spravato treatments because I couldn’t tell if they were working anymore. I lost faith in my chemistry. I stopped taking most of my medications altogether. I slept on my couch for weeks because my bedroom was a disaster and carried too many bad memories. I was taking large amounts of Benadryl just to stay disconnected from reality.

One night, at four in the morning, I was messaging a close friend. I told him I didn’t care if I woke up the next day. I wasn’t planning an act, but I was done participating in survival. He asked if I had a plan. Casually, flippantly, I described how I would do it. Then I rolled over and went to sleep.

But at four in the morning, the line between “fantasy exhaustion” and “active intent” is invisible to everyone but the person drowning.

A while later, the police arrived and escorted me to the ER. At first, I felt betrayed. I thought I was just venting. But looking back, what else was he supposed to do? If someone you care about describes their exit, you don’t get the luxury of assuming they’ll be okay.

I spent hours in a monitored ER room being evaluated. Eventually, they determined I was safe enough to return home. I avoided the psychiatric ward, went back to my apartment, and went right back to sleep.

Learning to Pedal

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In the spring of 2025, I walked into my first session with the new therapist already exhausted by the idea of starting over. But I also saw my psychiatrist and told her something had to change. We adjusted my cocktail, and I committed to being compliant with my meds again.

I started dumping my entire history into these new sessions. Nothing was off-limits. I just talked and talked. And then, something started to change.

I struggle to explain it even now, but I know that it happened. It felt as if my psyche finally rebelled against the darkness. It was as if the training wheels had finally come off, and instead of immediately crashing face-first into a ditch, something inside me actually started pedaling.

I was different.

Not “cured.” Not magically happy. But I wasn’t drowning. I started cleaning my apartment every day. I moved back into my bedroom. I turned my apartment into a home instead of a bunker. I created routines. I built structure.

And for the first time in thirty-five years, I noticed something shocking: I was recovering.

I still have bad days. My moods can still be a rollercoaster. But the difference is the “snap back.” I recover emotionally in ways I never used to. I’m participating in my own life again.

The Grail

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So, did I finally find the Holy Grail? In a very unexpected and still somewhat mysterious way… yes.

I can’t say for sure what the catalyst was. Was it the Spravato forging new pathways while I slogged through the years? Was it the new medication clicking with the old? Or was losing my longtime therapist such a psychological shock that it forced me to learn how to swim on my own?

I think the answer is somehow all of those things and none of those things at the same time.

So, was this the grail that the Trazodone had been? In some ways yes, and in some ways no. But it was a grail.

Maybe years of treatment, therapy, adaptation, grief, medication, survival, and sheer exhaustion finally lined up in a way my brain and psyche were ready to accept. Or maybe it was simply my time in the universe to finally emerge from it.

I want to say the culmination of thirty-five years of psychological torture finally loosened its grip enough for me to breathe again. And once I felt that shift happening, I ran with it.

I didn’t look back.

I started living differently. I built routines and stuck to them. I started taking care of my environment. I started feeling gratitude more often than rage toward a God I wasn’t even sure I believed in.

And the strangest part is this: I really am different now.

For years, I imagined recovery like the end of The Last Crusade—standing in a room of endless chalices, convinced that if I just picked the “True Cup,” I’d be healed forever. One perfect pill. One perfect answer.

But recovery didn’t arrive like magic. It arrived through years of surviving long enough for the pieces to finally work together.

This is where the Superman metaphor comes back for me.

For years, I looked at that iconic image of Superman—bracing his shoulders against the weight of a crumbling world—and I saw my medications. I saw my therapist. I saw the “Grail.” I thought they were the only things strong enough to keep the tracks from snapping under the weight of my depression.

But I see it differently now.

The medications provided the structure. The therapy provided the blueprints. The people who loved me provided the light so I could see what I was doing. But they weren’t the ones under the tracks.

I was.

I spent thirty-five years developing the muscles of a survivor without even realizing it. I thought I was just failing to stay afloat, when in reality, I was becoming strong enough to eventually carry my own weight.

The miracle wasn’t a magic chalice or a sudden flight into the sun. The miracle was the moment I realized that the tracks were holding because I was holding them.

I’m still on the ground. I’m still human. I still feel the weight. But the cape isn’t a costume anymore; it’s the quiet resilience of a man who decided to stop waiting for a savior and started becoming his own.

The world is still heavy, but I am finally, finally, light enough to lift off.

I believe a man can fly.

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Every new medication felt like another chance to get back to that version of myself. The version that felt light. Calm. Hopeful. Alive.

I kept thinking the next prescription, next dosage adjustment, next combination, or next treatment would finally bring me back there permanently. I was obsessed to say the least.

But the problem was that I was trying to return to a version of myself that existed under completely different life circumstances. My life was changing constantly. I was going back to school. Relationships were changing. Stressors were changing. Responsibilities were changing. My environment was changing.

It’s hard to explain, but it was like trying to recreate the results of an experiment while one major variable never stopped moving. There was no way to perfectly get back to that original “Trazodone summer” because the conditions surrounding it no longer existed in the same way.

So even restarting Trazodone couldn’t fully recreate what I had experienced before. And maybe it actually was helping again to some degree, but my underlying life circumstances had shifted so much that there was no simple way to measure that against what I had originally felt. Life doesn’t fit neatly onto a symptom scale.

What I did instead was throw myself completely into researching psychiatric medications and treatments. I learned mechanisms of action. Side effects. Drug interactions. I bought medication guides, the PDR, books on biological psychology, books on psychiatric medications and treatment-resistant mood disorders.

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Then the internet came along, and I found electronic bulletin boards, forums, and support groups filled with people just like me. People searching for their own holy grail. People who felt burned by medications that promised one thing and delivered another.

I reached out to psychiatric researchers and doctors online asking what they thought was wrong with me and what I should try next. I was desperate, but I was also determined. I truly believed the answer was out there somewhere.

Zoloft. Prozac. Wellbutrin. Dexedrine. Paxil. Nardil. Mood stabilizers. Antipsychotics. Combination after combination after combination.

Ativan. Klonopin. Xanax. Ambien. Adderall. Ritalin. Lexapro. Effexor.

I learned what an SNRI was and how it differed from an SSRI. I learned how benzodiazepines affected GABA systems in the brain. I learned how stimulants increased dopamine and norepinephrine signaling. I learned what an MAOI was and how it worked. I became obsessed with understanding why things worked, hoping that if I understood enough, I could somehow solve myself.

And along with all of that came learning how to survive the side effects. Restless legs. Dry mouth. Brain fog. Emotional flattening. Medication fatigue. Insomnia. Sedation. Weight changes. Sexual side effects. Withdrawal symptoms. At some point, managing side effects became almost its own full-time job.

One of the scariest experiences of my life happened in 2002 while living in Minneapolis while I was taking an MAOI. MAOIs are older antidepressants that work very differently from most modern medications, and because of how they affect neurotransmitters in the brain and body, you have to be extremely careful about drug interactions and even certain foods. Back then, I had to follow dietary restrictions and avoid specific medications because combining the wrong substances could create a life-threatening reaction.

One night, while sick, I accidentally took a cold & cough medication containing dextromethorphan, a very common over-the-counter cough suppressant. What I forgot in that moment was that dextromethorphan also affects serotonin levels in the brain. The moment it clicked in my head what I had done, pure panic hit me. I had combined it with my MAOI, and now my brain was being flooded with far too much serotonin.

More serotonin is the goal of many antidepressants, but too much serotonin can become extremely dangerous. The body can react violently. It’s called Serotonin Syndrome, and it can become a medical emergency very quickly.

I immediately took my emergency blood pressure medication, called 911, and laid down exactly the way my psychiatrist had taught me to if something like this ever happened.

Then the shaking started.

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Sweating. Tremors. My body felt completely out of control. By the time I got to the ER, I had an entire trauma team around me trying to stop the reaction before it caused severe complications or organ failure. I remember being held down because the shaking wouldn’t stop. They pushed large amounts of Ativan into my IV trying to calm my nervous system and counteract the reaction.

Slowly… very slowly… the shaking began to ease.

I have never been as scared in my life as I was that night. I genuinely thought I might die. And honestly, I came far closer than I’m comfortable admitting.

After that, the treatments started becoming more novel and experimental. At one point I even had an implant designed to send tiny electrical signals into areas of the brain involved in emotion and mood regulation. By then, I wasn’t just trying standard antidepressants anymore. I was chasing anything that might finally break through the depression that seemed determined to survive every treatment thrown at it.

Then came ketamine, or more specifically, Spravato, which is brand name of the S-ketamine form of ketamine. Spravato was approved in 2019 with huge excitement surrounding it because it worked differently from traditional antidepressants and often worked much faster. Instead of waiting four to twelve weeks hoping for gradual improvement like many SSRIs or SNRIs, people were talking about relief happening within days or after only a few treatments. For people with treatment-resistant depression, that kind of promise felt almost revolutionary.

Ketamine-based treatments approach depression from an entirely different angle. Rather than mainly targeting serotonin systems, they affect glutamate pathways and appear to help the brain form and strengthen new neural connections. The way I came to think about it was this: depression can create these deeply worn emotional highways in the brain, where every thought automatically travels down the same hopeless routes over and over again. Ketamine seemed aimed at helping the brain build new exits, new side roads, new pathways that weren’t completely dominated by despair.

Almost like giving the brain permission to bloom again after being emotionally frozen for years.

And for the treatment-resistant crowd, people like me who had already cycled through medication after medication after medication, this felt like an entirely new frontier.

I began taking Spravato around 2023, while I was living back in Illinois.

Was it revolutionary? Honestly, yes.

Did it help me? Also yes. But not exactly in the way I thought it would.

By that point, my entire existence had become organized around chasing a medicinal holy grail that could never truly exist again, at least not in the way it had during that first experience with Trazodone.

Too much had changed.

My brain had changed biologically through years of medications, withdrawals, side effects, stress, adaptation, and emotional survival. But psychologically, I had changed too. My identity had slowly fused itself to the search. The next medication. The next adjustment. The next breakthrough. The next chance to finally “get myself back.”

And the entire time I was chasing this grail like some psychiatric version of Indiana Jones, I was also in therapy.

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Therapy absolutely helped me uncover things I needed to face: trauma, codependency, obsessive overanalysis, unhealthy thinking patterns, underdeveloped communication skills, emotional avoidance, all of it. But if I’m being honest, part of me was also using therapy as another place to reinforce the belief that somewhere out there this perfect treatment still existed.

I kept trying to convince my therapists, and honestly myself, that there had to be another holy grail waiting for me. There had to be. No question. No debate. Because I had already experienced it once before, and I couldn’t let go of the belief that it could happen again exactly the same way.

I continued Spravato treatments for roughly two and a half years alongside intense weekly therapy. And somewhere during that time, something inside me slowly started to give up.

Not on life exactly.

And not entirely on the belief that the holy grail was still out there somewhere waiting for me.

But maybe on the idea that I could medicate my way back into being the exact version of myself I had once briefly experienced.

My therapist had been with me almost every week for nine years. Through medication changes, breakdowns, panic, hopelessness, obsessive searching, trauma, relationships, identity struggles, and every other version of me that showed up in that office.

She stuck her neck out for me more times than I can count. Sometimes probably farther than she professionally should have. And I will be forever grateful for that.

Because the truth is, she became my safety raft.

When everything else in my life felt unstable, she was the constant. The one person who kept holding a hand out to me year after year while I kept searching for answers, searching for relief, searching for the grail.

Then one day she told me she and her family were moving away, and eventually our sessions would come to an end.

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I’m also not encouraging anyone to ask for the medications or treatments mentioned in this post, and I’m not saying medication is required for recovery. If you’re on medication, that’s okay. If you’re not, that’s okay too. I believe healing and recovery can happen in either scenario.

This is simply my personal experience with medications and what I had to learn for them to help me in a meaningful way. One of the hardest lessons for me was realizing medication alone was never going to save me. It could support me. Stabilize me. Give me room to breathe. But I still had to participate in my own healing.

Some people are strongly pro-medication. Some are strongly against it. I’m not interested in shaming either side. I’m simply talking honestly about how medication can help many people while also acknowledging they are not a magical cure that replaces the deeper work of recovery.

The one thing I really hope people understand is this: medications do not “fix” you. They do not patch holes in your personality. They do not magically heal trauma, loneliness, insecurity, grief, or the parts of yourself you struggle to face. At their best, they help treat symptoms. They can quiet depression enough for you to function. They can lower the volume of anxiety. They can help stabilize moods that were previously unmanageable. But they are not a replacement for healing.

And trust me, this is coming from someone with an extensive history of medications, medication cocktails, and alternative treatments. If there were a magic combination that permanently fixed every broken feeling inside me, I probably would’ve found it by now.

Healing still has to come from within.

The best way I can describe medication is this: imagine the scene in Superman (1978 - the only real Superman) where a train is speeding down damaged tracks, and right before disaster, Superman swoops down and physically holds the broken section together long enough for the train to safely pass over it. That’s what medication can feel like sometimes. Not rebuilding the track. Not erasing the damage. Just stabilizing things enough to keep you moving forward while everything else is at risk of coming apart.

But here’s the important part: in this example, Superman is not just the medication. Superman is also you. It’s the combined effort of treatment and your own resilience working together to hold things up during the moments when life feels unstable. The medication may help support the weight, but you are still the one enduring it. You are still the one waking up every day and continuing forward despite whatever condition, disorder, trauma, or struggle you are carrying.

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When I was first diagnosed with depression, after working with my therapist for a while, he suggested I talk to my doctor about trying medication to help support my treatment. The first medication I was prescribed was Trazodone.

When I started taking Trazodone, Prozac was still relatively new and rapidly growing in popularity after its release in 1987. SSRIs were becoming the “big thing” in depression treatment at the time. But many doctors and psychiatrists were still using Trazodone as a first-line treatment, especially for people like me dealing with anxiety, constant worry, insomnia, and depression all at once.

So after I got the prescription filled, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know anything about pharmaceuticals, much less antidepressants. I didn’t understand how they worked or what they were supposed to feel like.

Trazodone works on several different systems in the brain involving serotonin. In simple terms, it’s somewhat similar to medications like Prozac because both affect serotonin, but Trazodone is considered a little more “dirty” pharmacologically. And by “dirty,” I don’t mean bad. I mean it interacts with multiple receptor systems instead of acting very selectively.

Along with affecting serotonin pathways involved in mood and anxiety, it also interacts with histamine receptors, which is a big reason it tends to be sedating and is often prescribed to help with sleep. It also mildly inhibits serotonin reuptake.

Prozac, on the other hand, works much more selectively by strongly blocking the reuptake of serotonin without significantly affecting many other receptor systems in comparison.

I took my first dose of Trazodone and went to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I could barely move. I genuinely thought something was wrong with me. I called my mom panicking, telling her something felt seriously off. I was groggy, nauseated, exhausted, and felt completely drained. Part of me thought I’d take the medication and wake up feeling like a million bucks. Instead, I woke up feeling emotionally and physically overdrawn.

My mom told me to stick with it. So did my doctor and therapist. They all kept saying the same thing: give it time. The side effects would improve. And honestly, they were right.

Within about two or three weeks, the change was dramatic. The anxiety that had constantly lived inside me suddenly wasn’t dominating every second of my day anymore. My mood shifted into something lighter, calmer, more hopeful. I felt lighter. Connected. Excited about life again.

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At the time, it honestly felt like the holy grail. Like I had finally gotten my life back. I couldn’t believe something could make that much of a difference. That summer, after starting it, I fell in love, loved life, and for a while genuinely felt like I was finally living the kind of life I had always wanted. I was living my best life.

The side effects were still there, though. Most mornings I felt incredibly groggy, and it definitely interfered with my summer job. I pushed through it, but it wasn’t easy. I was also only taking a relatively small dose, around 75mg. If you look at the literature on Trazodone, antidepressant effects are usually associated with much higher doses, often somewhere around 100-600mg.

Looking back, I honestly think it worked so strongly for me because my brain had never really been exposed to anything like it before. I had never taken psychiatric medication at all, so even that lower dose was enough to “tickle” those systems just enough to create a major shift.

But even with the improvement, I was still dealing with morning grogginess and some stomach issues. At the time, those side effects felt frustrating. Ironically, compared to some of the things I would battle through during later treatments over the years, they were actually pretty minor.

When I went back for my follow-up appointment, my doctor told me I could stop taking it because I seemed to be doing so much better. I was “back on track.”

Two weeks later, everything crashed.

My mood collapsed harder than it ever had before I started the medication. The anxiety came roaring back. Depression hit even deeper. Everything in my life started falling apart again, and if I could go back in a time machine and change one thing, it would probably be staying on that medication at all costs.

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My doctor restarted it. I waited for that feeling to come back. I waited and waited.

And that devastated me, because it never fully returned. I never reached that same “perfect” feeling of recovery again.

Incidentally, that was also the moment I began chasing another medication that would work the way Trazodone had worked for me in the beginning. I became convinced there had to be another “holy grail” out there somewhere. Another medication, another combination, another treatment that could recreate that feeling of finally being okay again.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the real holy grail of recovery would eventually turn out to be something completely different.

To be continued…

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A lot of these posts came from late nights, overthinking, chronic pain, loneliness, questions I couldn’t stop circling, and moments where I just needed somewhere honest to put things. I wasn’t trying to build a brand so much as trying to build a space where people could feel a little less alone in their own heads.

Somehow, people connected with it.

That still surprises me.

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So first, thank you. Whether you’ve been here from the beginning or just recently subscribed, whether you read every post or only occasionally stop by, thank you for spending your time here. That matters more than people realize.

Today I enabled paid subscriptions for Fess Up.

I want to be very clear about what that means:

Right now, nothing is changing.

I’m not putting posts behind a paywall. I’m not splitting the community into “free” and “paid” readers. Everything will continue to remain free to read.

This is simply a way for people who find value in the writing to help support it financially if they want to.

Think of it less like buying access and more like helping keep the lights on or as a virtual tip jar.

Writing takes time, energy, emotional honesty, and consistency. Some days it also takes fighting through pain, exhaustion, or the part of my brain that says nobody cares anyway. Support helps make it easier to keep showing up and doing this.

But whether you’re a free subscriber or a paid one, I’m grateful you’re here either way.

Truly.

Fess Up exists because people connected with honesty, vulnerability, humor, awkwardness, contradictions, and the messy parts we usually hide from each other. That part won’t change.

Thank you for reading.
Thank you for staying.
Thank you for making this feel less like shouting into the void.

— Jerry

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Just be yourself?!

I’ve never felt more lost in my life, and that’s the advice?

Be myself?

I have no idea what that means anymore, let alone how to do it.

“Just be yourself” sounds comforting until you realize some people genuinely don’t know who that is.

Come on. We have to do better than that.

Because what people usually mean by “be yourself” depends entirely on which version of you benefits them most.

A friend who keeps me around because I’m funny might tell me to “just be myself,” but what they really mean is: keep being entertaining.

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Someone else might mean the version of me that calls people out.

Or the version that listens quietly.

Or the version that knows things.

Or the version built entirely around survival.

So which one is me?

And what if I am all of those to one person?

That’s the part nobody explains.

People talk about identity like there’s supposed to be one clean, permanent version of you underneath everything else. Like somewhere deep down there’s a fixed personality waiting to be uncovered if you heal enough, meditate enough, or stare at yourself long enough in a bathroom mirror at 2 a.m.

But I don’t think that’s how people actually work.

I think most of us are assembled over time.

A collection of instincts. Adaptations. Defense mechanisms. Humor. Shame. Survival. Performance. Experience. Values. Fear. Connection.

Some parts of us were built because they were rewarded.

Some were built because they kept us safe.

Some were built because without them we wouldn’t have made it through certain periods of our lives.

Humor can become social currency.

Knowledge can become protection.

Quietness can become camouflage.

And survival mode can become such a permanent state that eventually you stop recognizing it as survival and start calling it your personality.

So when someone says “be yourself,” what exactly are they asking for?

The funny version?

The guarded version?

The confident version?

The wounded version?

The useful version?

The easy version?

For a long time, I treated this confusion like proof that I was fake somehow. Like if I were a real, authentic person, I’d always know exactly who I was in every situation.

But maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it.

Maybe none of these are me.

And all of these are me.

Maybe the problem isn’t figuring out which self is the real one.

Maybe the real challenge is learning when each version of yourself belongs.

Use humor when you can.

Call someone out when you need to.

Protect yourself when the time comes.

Stay quiet when silence matters.

Be vulnerable when someone has earned it.

Maybe maturity isn’t becoming one fixed person forever.

Maybe it’s learning how to move between different parts of yourself without completely abandoning who you are.

Maybe “being yourself” was never about uncovering one permanent identity.

Maybe it’s about understanding which parts of you to lead with, which parts to protect, and which parts no longer need to run your life.

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I watched a creator introduce themselves the other day. Rattled off a list of conditions like a personality reveal. OCD. Autism. Neurodivergent. Said casually. Confidently. Like collecting labels was the same as understanding them.

And I’m done with it.

To be clear — there are creators who talk about this honestly, trying to explain their experiences or help other people feel less alone. That matters. But most of what I’m seeing isn’t that. Most of it is labels turned into merch. Content. A hook.

Tell me you don’t have any ideas for content without telling me you don’t have any ideas for content.

Because I know people actually living with OCD and Autism Spectrum Disorder. And it’s not what the trend says it is this week. It’s not quirky. It’s not aesthetic. It’s not a personality upgrade.

Social media has this way of taking real human suffering and sanding it down until it becomes marketable. Now disorders get introduced like quirky personality traits:

“I’m so OCD because I like symmetry.” “I think I’m autistic because I hate small talk.” “My ADHD makes me buy iced coffee.”

Yes, I have heard creators say those things.

Or worse, influencers start packaging the “quirky” parts like superpowers—claiming they’re more creative because of their ADHD or using their “neurospicy” traits as a brand. But that’s a dangerous half-truth. While people find ways to thrive, these labels describe fundamentally different ways of processing the world that come with real friction, real cost, and real exhaustion.

That is not how any of this works.

Because wanting your kitchen organized is not OCD.

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Real OCD can be terrifying. Intrusive thoughts that don’t feel quirky or funny or relatable. Thoughts that stick to your brain like barbed wire. Rituals and compulsions you hate but still obey because your mind convinces you something awful will happen if you don’t. Washing your hands until they crack and bleed because they never feel clean enough. Repeating the same action over and over until it feels “right,” even when you know it doesn’t make sense. Losing hours of your life to mental loops you would give anything to escape.

That is not the same thing as color-coding a planner.

Similarly, autism is not just being socially awkward online or having niche interests. For many people, it’s isolation. Sensory overload. Masking so hard for so long that you forget what your natural self even feels like. It’s burnout. Misunderstanding. Feeling alien in rooms full of people you love.

And it’s not a scale.

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The autism spectrum isn’t a 1 to 10 slider where someone is “a little autistic” and someone else is “very autistic.” It’s not a pain chart. It’s not a personality dial. It’s a range of different traits showing up in different ways across different people. Someone might struggle intensely with sensory overload but communicate well. Someone else might have minimal sensory issues but find social interaction deeply confusing. There’s no clean way to rank that.

Even clinical levels aren’t measuring how autistic someone is; they’re describing how much support a person might need at a given time.

But the internet flattened that too. Now people talk about being “a 2 on the spectrum” like they’re rating spice tolerance -casually walking you through it between steps of their morning skincare routine.

Algorithms don’t reward nuance. They reward certainty. Identity. Simplicity.

So now every uncomfortable feeling becomes a diagnosis. Every personality trait becomes a symptom. Every quirk becomes content. And the weird irony is that the more casually the language of suffering gets thrown around, the harder it becomes to see the people actually drowning in it.

When every habit is called OCD, real OCD disappears.

When every awkward person claims autism after a TikTok carousel and a Facebook quiz, people living with the actual weight of being on the spectrum become background noise.

Awareness is good. Recognition is good. People exploring themselves honestly is good.

But disorders are not zodiac signs. They are not branding. They are not character customization options for a social media identity.

And somewhere in all this performance, we forgot these labels were meant to describe disability and struggle—not content.

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Meds lined up.
Sleep managed.
Pain… negotiated.

Not fixed. Not gone.
Just controlled enough to keep everything moving.

I didn’t become stronger.
I became more efficient.

Inputs. Outputs. Adjustments. A system that keeps running whether I feel anything or not.

And it works.
That might be the problem.

Because somewhere along the way, waiting stopped feeling like something I was doing and started feeling like something I was built for.

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Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all bad.

Maybe this, just existing, is the bridge.
Maybe this is how I get to something like living—
You’ve said this before.
—something that actually feels like being here.

Right now, in this moment, I don’t feel doomed.

I will later. I always do.

But I’m starting to notice the delay.
Starting to remind myself that it’s not permanent, even when it feels like it is.

And somehow… that helps.
A little.

But there’s this other thing.
This anxiety that shows up when I don’t feel bad.

One side pushing: go, go, go. Do something with this. Don’t waste it.
The other already calculating the drop: what if this doesn’t last. What if this is as good as it gets.

And then:
Stop.
This isn’t helping.
You should be doing something else.

Even feeling okay comes with a deadline attached.

I keep waiting while also knowing nothing is coming.

I understand it in theory. No one is coming to save you. I’ve written about it before.
But understanding something and living like it’s true aren’t the same thing.

Part of me still pauses. Still delays.
Still acts like something might step in and change the shape of all of this.

Part of me still waits anyway.

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I’ve been rocking back and forth in my office chair for the last five minutes.
Just sitting in the loop.

Editing what I’m going to say before I say it.
What I’m going to write before I write it—
This isn’t landing. Fix it.
—what I’m going to do before I even start doing it.

And by the time I get there, something’s already been interrupted.

Intrusive thoughts don’t always sound like chaos.
Sometimes they sound like reasonable suggestions.

Intrusive thoughts don’t always sound like chaos. Sometimes they sound like reasonable suggestions.

You could be using this time better.
This isn’t the best use of your resources.

They don’t feel like foreign objects.
They feel like they belong.
Like something trying to make better use of me.

Like something trying to make better use of me.

One tells me to stop. The other tells me to start.
They don’t label which is which.

It feels like the Force—the light side and the dark pulling at each other, trying to balance each other.

So I sit there trying to figure out: am I hesitating, or hoping?
And while I’m sorting it out, nothing moves.

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Just start.
Just start.
(Echo)
(Echo)

You don’t even know what you’re doing.
You’ll stop in five minutes anyway.

I don’t know which voice that is anymore.
The one trying to push me forward, or just another version of the same pressure keeping me running in place.

Maybe it’s not about figuring them out.
Maybe it’s just this: seeing them show up and not handing over the keys when they do.

I can function.
I can get through the day.
I can even look okay from the outside.

But functioning isn’t the same thing as being here.

Functioning isn’t the same thing as being here.

And I’m starting to wonder where that line is.
Or if I crossed it a while ago and just kept going anyway.

I’m still here.
Still sitting in the chair.
Still writing this instead of stopping.

The system works.

I just don’t know what it’s keeping alive.
Or if it’s me.

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I’ve been existing for so long. I haven’t been living. I’ve just figured out how to make it through the day… and then the next. One day at a time.

I guess that’s what they call survival.

And maybe that’s all it was.

I think I gave up a long time ago. Not all at once, not in some dramatic way. Just slowly stopped caring about anything that wasn’t right in front of me. There were moments, sure. Small things here and there. But for most of the last twenty years, it’s been day by day. Sometimes hour by hour.

Sometimes it was just chasing sleep. Wanting it. Needing it. Not even for rest, just for the break.

It wasn’t about being comfortable. Although I wanted that. I really did. I longed for it in a way that felt almost physical. But like a lot of things, it always felt just out of reach.

Or maybe not out of reach.

Maybe I just didn’t have the instructions. Didn’t know the rules. Didn’t even know if there were rules—just this sense that everyone else had access to something I didn’t.

So now what?

Have I had some great epiphany?
Nah. I don’t think it’s been anything that grand.

But something’s shifted.

I’ve started to notice things. Started to want more than just existing. And that want—it’s not quiet. It’s not subtle. It’s made me hungry for something I can actually feel.

Connection.
Friendship.
Laughter.

Not the forced, shit-eating grin kind. Not the “get through the day” version of it. Not polite chuckles or background noise.

I want the kind that takes over.
The kind that catches you off guard.
The kind that makes your stomach hurt and your eyes water and you can’t catch your breath.

I want something real enough that I stop wondering what it would feel like.

And start actually doing it.

I have no idea how to get there.
How to have any of that.

There isn’t a formula for it.
If there is, I missed it.

I wake up.
Routine.
Medication.

Then nothing.

Not dramatic nothing. Not collapse. Just… absence. Time passing without much resistance. I sit in it and watch it move.

I catch myself thinking about what it would be like to live again.

Even that sounds rehearsed.
Like something I’ve heard before and kept.

I don’t know how to live.
I know how to maintain.

There’s a difference.

It’s not that every day is empty. That would be cleaner.
There are interruptions. Small spikes. Moments that almost register.

But they don’t hold.
Nothing holds.

Most of it is just continuation.

And I don’t want pity.
I don’t.

If this sounds like whining, it’s probably just insecurity leaking through. It does that.

Human, right?

I don’t even know if that word fits anymore.

I feel managed. Maintained.
Like a system running on updates and adjustments.

“More machine now than man.”

That’s how it feels.

Medication.
Therapy.
Frameworks. Acronyms. Strategies.

CBT. ACT. DBT.

Like I’m following instructions on how to be a person.
Like I’m learning a language I should already speak.

And maybe it helps.
Or maybe it just keeps everything from falling apart in a more organized way.

Either way, I don’t know where I am in all of it.

Or what part of me is actually me.

Or if there’s anything underneath all of this that isn’t just… managed.

There’s supposed to be something, I think.
Something you feel. Something that anchors it.

I keep waiting for that.

Recognition.
Contact.
Proof.

But I’ve been here before.

Same place. Same expectation.

No arrival.

Just continuation.

Still here.

Still running.

Still waiting.

For something I don’t recognize.

Yet?

Or maybe this is it.
And I’m still waiting anyway.

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I’ve asked myself this question more times than I can count.

Am I a coward for staying? For ending up back in the same town I grew up in, in the same zip code I’ve known my whole life, watching the world move on from a place that feels increasingly like a waiting room?

For a long time I thought the answer was yes.

I was wrong about the question.

Here’s the thing about asking whether you’re a coward for never leaving your hometown: it assumes you never left.

I left. Twice. I packed my things and I went somewhere new and I tried to build a life there not once but twice. And both times — the combination of depression and circumstance and bad timing and things I still don’t fully understand — sent me back.

I didn’t stay because I was too scared to go. I went. And the world sent me back.

I’m still working out what to call that.

When I graduated in 1995, I had nothing lined up. No job. No plan. No direction. I’d been born and raised in this town, got my degree here, and when it was over I just kind of stood there blinking. Everyone else seemed to know what came next. I didn’t.

So I stayed. I told myself it was temporary.

A couple of years passed. I fell in love. We were together for two years and for a while that was enough — enough to feel anchored, enough to stop asking the bigger questions. But he had a life to build and I didn’t know how to build one with him. So he left and I stayed and I felt, for the first time, what I can only describe as being stranded. Like everyone else knew how to swim and I was just treading water, watching them go.

That feeling was the thing that finally pushed me out the door.

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I moved to Minneapolis in 2000 to be near my sister, and because there was the promise of a temp job at the university — something I could step into and see what it might turn into.

I crashed into her world that first year. We rented a house together right next to the University of Minnesota, close enough that I could walk to what would eventually become my office. Her roommates, her music student life — I stepped into all of it. And something in me exhaled for the first time in years.

The temp job turned full-time. I was doing well. I genuinely loved Minneapolis — the city, the energy, the feeling of being somewhere that had a pulse. For the first time in my adult life I felt like I was actually living rather than waiting to start.

But depression doesn’t care about fresh starts. It doesn’t care that you finally got out, that you’re doing well, that things are looking up. It just shows up — not dramatically, but quietly, like water finding its way under a door. Some mornings I couldn’t get up. Some stretches I couldn’t hold it together no matter how badly I wanted to. I had to take months off at a time, and each time I came back I felt a little more like I was performing the version of myself that had it together, rather than actually being her.

Still, I stayed five years. I built something there, even if it was imperfect.

Toward the end of year five, things started collapsing all at once.

My friend and supervisor announced he was leaving to go back to school in Wisconsin. Our department was being restructured. I could feel my job getting shaky under my feet.

And then, quietly and without explanation, the only friends I had started ghosting me.

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I kept emailing my friend at work — just trying to see if he wanted to grab lunch, the kind of thing we’d done dozens of times. The replies stopped coming. My calls went straight to voicemail. I’d walk through the week replaying conversations, trying to find the thing I’d said or done, and coming up empty. Eventually I stopped trying to figure it out and just sat with the bewilderment of it — the particular loneliness of losing people without ever being told why. To this day, I still don’t know what happened.

So I did what you do when everything falls apart at once. I said screw it and I moved to Madison.

I packed up my life again in 2005 — this time with my dog, Tinker, riding shotgun, the only part of it that felt uncomplicated.

At first it almost felt like I was doing it right. A friend helped me find an apartment, and in between showings we ended up at the Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co. — this old building that used to be the Fess Hotel generations ago, the kind of place with history you can feel in the walls. My sister came to visit. We saw the movie version of Rent and both walked out of it like: what was that? We hated it. It was one of those small, normal moments that made it feel like maybe I was building something.

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Then the rest of it started to slip.

I tried to get a job at the university and completely misread the situation — applied for something my skills had nothing to do with. The embarrassment of it has a particular texture: like realizing mid-sentence that you’ve been speaking the wrong language in a room where everyone else is fluent. The friend who’d encouraged me to move wasn’t around much once I got there. And I found myself again in a place I didn’t belong, without the footing I thought I’d have, not knowing what to do or where to go.

I lasted six months.

So I came home.

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It was 2006. West-central Illinois. Three to four hours southwest of Chicago. The town I grew up in. The town I graduated from. The town I thought I’d escaped.

There was a logic to it that had nothing to do with my own career or my own pride. My parents were still there, living in my childhood home with its big, familiar yard. I knew that back there, Tinker would have room to run. If I couldn’t give myself a solid foundation, I could at least give her that.

I told myself it was temporary again. I’d take pre-pharmacy classes. Work toward a PharmD. Build something new. Get out again.

That didn’t work out either.

Somewhere between the failed plans and the depression that never really let up and the physical issues that started limiting what I could do, temporary became indefinite. I ended up on disability. The dream of Minneapolis — of going back, of rebuilding something there near my sister — sits on a shelf I can’t quite reach.

Tinker’s been gone about eight years now. I have Pepper now, because at some point you realize you need another living presence in the room with you — something that keeps you tethered to the present tense.

The familiar isn’t weakness. Sometimes it’s just survival.

But home can also become a hiding place. And the thing I find hardest to sit with is that stability and stagnation look identical from the outside. Both people wake up in the same town they grew up in. One chose it. One just never found a way out.

I don’t always know which one I am. I’m not sure that distinction is as clean as it sounds.

I still think about Minneapolis. I think about my sister there, about the version of me that loved that city, about what it might look like to try again. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Maybe the answer isn’t about geography at all.

Maybe the real question was never whether I was brave enough to leave.

Maybe it was whether I was brave enough to keep going after coming back.

I’m still here. That counts.

— Jerry

I don’t think I’m the only one asking this. If you are too, you’re not alone in it.

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I’ve been called an attention seeker. And honestly? I hated the attention.

There’s this thing that happens when you’re struggling and you can’t keep it inside anymore.

You post something. Maybe it’s vague — one of those “some days are harder than others” kind of posts. Maybe it’s more direct. Maybe at 2am you type out something you’ve been carrying for months and you hit share before the part of your brain that second-guesses everything can stop you.

And then you watch the notifications come in.

And you feel worse.

That’s the part nobody talks about when they throw around the phrase “attention seeker.” They say it like the person wanted an audience. Like they were fishing for likes. Like it was some kind of performance.

But here’s what was actually happening — at least for me.

I didn’t want attention. I wanted someone to notice I was drowning.

Those are two completely different things.

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For many years I would post dramatic things on Facebook. Questionable things. Things that, looking back now, I can only imagine the worry and puzzlement my friends must have felt seeing come up in their feed. I think about that sometimes — someone just scrolling on their lunch break and suddenly there’s me, unraveling in public.

But those posts were never about gathering an audience to my pain.

They were about saying: I’m here. Help. I don’t know what to do with this.

That’s it. That was the whole message. I just didn’t know how to say it any other way.

And some friends got it. They’d message me privately — “are you alright?” Others would reply directly on the post asking if I needed help. And I wouldn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because answering meant explaining, and I didn’t have the words for what was happening inside me. So I’d go quiet.

And then there’d be a knock at the door.

Two police officers. A wellness check.

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Some friends eventually labeled it as crying wolf. And I understand why — from the outside, that’s probably exactly what it looked like. The dramatic post. The silence. The pattern repeating. I get it.

But it was never crying wolf.

A wolf cry is a false alarm. What I was doing was a real alarm with a broken speaker. The emergency was genuine. I just couldn’t transmit it clearly.

Attention means people are looking at you. And when people look at you, you have to perform. You have to respond to comments. You have to explain yourself to people who didn’t ask the right question. You have to watch someone write “praying for you 🙏” and feel more alone than before you posted.

What I actually wanted was for one person to see it and quietly reach out and say “hey — are you okay?” Not a crowd. Not the comments. Just to not feel invisible.

But that’s not how it works, is it.

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What you put out publicly, the world responds to publicly. And suddenly you’re exposed in a way you didn’t fully consent to, even though you’re the one who hit post. You wanted a lifeline and instead you got a spotlight.

And then comes the shame.

Because now people know. And some will treat you differently. Some will forget by tomorrow. Some will bring it up months later at the wrong moment. And I get why. If I was blasting it on Facebook for everyone to see, why wouldn’t it be fair game in a normal conversation? That’s a reasonable assumption. I put it in a public space — that must mean I’m comfortable with it being public. But that’s the contradiction at the heart of all of it. The post wasn’t comfort. It was crisis. And crisis doesn’t follow the same logic as a normal conversation. So you end up with mixed signals on both sides — friends who don’t know how to handle it, and you not knowing how to explain why the thing you shouted into the internet you can’t talk about over coffee.

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And some people were just honest. They’d tell me outright — “I don’t know how to deal with what you’re going through. Please contact your therapist or a crisis line.” And I understand that too. That’s not abandonment. That’s a person knowing their limits and being straight with me about it. There’s actually something decent in that, even if it stings in the moment. Not everyone is equipped to be someone else’s emergency contact. Not everyone should have to be.

The problem is that when you’re in that place, any version of “I can’t help you” — however kindly meant — just adds to the weight.

You start wondering if you should have said anything at all.

That’s the loop depression puts you in. You’re isolated, so you reach out in the only way that feels available. The reaching out goes sideways. Now you feel isolated and exposed and embarrassed. So you pull back harder. And the silence gets louder.

I want to stop here for a second and say something important.

I love my friends. I genuinely do. And I can only imagine the roller coaster they’ve been on with me over the years — the high points, the low points, the posts that must have made their stomachs drop, the silences that must have been just as confusing as the noise. They have stood by me through all of it. That deserves more than a footnote. That deserves to be said out loud.

Today I’m in a much more stable place. I’ve largely stepped back from yelling for help on Facebook. That chapter has quieted down. But every once in a while something slips — because the loneliness still shows up. And when it does, what I really want isn’t advice. It isn’t solutions. It isn’t a hotline number or a gentle redirect to my therapist. It’s just someone who will listen. Sit with it. Not try to fix it. Just be there on the other end and let me know I’m not completely alone in it.

That’s all it’s ever really been.

My friends have given me that more times than they probably realize. They didn’t always know what to say — how could they? — but they stayed. And for someone who has spent a lot of time feeling invisible, being stayed for matters more than I can properly put into words.

Attention seeking. That’s what they call it.

I call it not knowing how to ask for help in a way that actually gets you help.

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There’s a difference between wanting to be seen and wanting an audience. Between needing connection and needing applause. I think a lot of people who get labeled as attention seekers are just people who never learned how to say “I’m not okay” in a quiet room to one safe person.

So they say it loudly. In public. And then regret it immediately.

If that’s you — you’re not broken. You’re not manipulative. You’re just someone who needed something and didn’t have a better way to ask for it.

And if you’ve ever rolled your eyes at someone’s “dramatic” post — it might be worth asking what they were really trying to say.

And if you’re one of the friends who stayed — thank you. You have no idea.

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A friend recently asked what I was doing with my life these days. I gave her a loose timeline of the last few years and ended with, “Now I’m just sitting here in my hometown… rotting.”

She was quick to push back. “I am sure you know the power of negative thoughts,” she said. “Ain’t nobody got time for that! Try—just try—to be as kind to yourself as you would be to an old friend.”

The darkness of depression can suck the joie de vivre out of anything, much like the Dementors in Harry Potter. It feels like it even drained the life out of music for a while. And it struck me that so many things my inner voice tells me—about my life, my grief, my relationships, and my cello playing—are things I would never dream of saying to a friend.

If I wouldn’t say it to them, why is it so easy to say it to myself?

The Comparison Trap

I’ve touched on this before in my post The Comparison Trap (https://fessupblog.substack.com/p/the-comparison-trap), but looking back, I realize how deep those roots actually go.

When you’re pursuing a performance degree, “perfection” isn’t written in the syllabus, but it’s everywhere. It’s in the room. In the expectations. In the silence after you play. It wasn’t just about the music, either; it bled into my physical aesthetic. There was this unspoken rule that everything had to be “tight”—the technique, the performance, and the body.

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In the gay community, that pressure can get turned up to a deafening volume. I felt like if I didn’t fit that narrow, lean ideal, I’d be rendered invisible. I was measuring my soul against Yo-Yo Ma and my body against an impossible standard. And somewhere along the way, I stopped hearing the music I was actually making and stopped seeing the person I actually was.

The Liberation of Distance

What’s strange is, I’ve already lived an alternative.

For a while, I was in an eclectic band called “Go Ask Brian.” We played original folk-rock that was just… fun. I played electric cello, and something about it felt like a shield. I wasn’t just a body on a stage being evaluated for “tightness.” I was part of a sound.

The electric cello let me be loud, a little gritty, a little imperfect. It was the first time I understood that “unpolished” could be a vibe instead of a failure.

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I felt something similar when I moved to Minneapolis and started playing open mics with coworkers. I was far away from the expectations I had internalized. And because I was usually the only cellist in the room, I gave myself room to be messy.

Not because I suddenly became more skilled—but because I became less cruel.

And that’s the part that’s hard to ignore.

If I walked into a coffee shop and saw another cellist playing, I wouldn’t judge them. I’d listen. I’d be curious. I might even ask to jam. But for years, I’ve met my own playing with a magnifying glass and a red pen.

The Morning Pass

The strange thing is, I already know what the antidote feels like.

Even this morning, sitting down to write, I felt scattered. I couldn’t focus. I didn’t know where this was going. And instead of shutting down, I did something I almost never do in other parts of my life:

I gave myself a pass.

I let it be messy. I let it be incomplete. I let it be honest.

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This blog exists as an unpolished, unapologetic look into the trenches of depression. I allow that here because the goal is truth, not prestige.

But somewhere along the way, I decided that grace only applies to the writer.

Not the musician.
Not my body.
Not the person in the mirror.

I gave the writer a pass.
I withheld it everywhere else.

Landing with Conviction

I keep thinking about a masterclass I saw Yo-Yo Ma give. He said something that should have changed everything for me:

“If you’re going to make a mistake, make it the biggest, grandest mistake you can make. Land on the wrong note with the same conviction as all the other ‘good’ notes you’ve landed on.”

He was giving permission to fail with style. To be bold instead of perfect.

But at the time, I was too busy sharpening the knives of perfectionism. Every mistake—musical or otherwise—became evidence. Proof that I wasn’t enough. And I’d start the internal beat-down before the piece was even over.

Now I can see it more clearly.

If I can give the writer a pass for a scattered morning, maybe I can give the cellist a pass for a missed shift. Maybe I can give the man in the mirror a pass for just being human.

The grace I offer myself on the page doesn’t have to be a fluke.

It can be a practice.

And maybe that’s what this looks like, for now—learning how to land on my life with a little more conviction.

Wrong notes and all.

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I recently sat down for a digital “interrogation” with an AI assistant. I didn’t want to write a standard “growth” post because I’m not sure I’ve “grown” in the way people expect. I haven’t bloomed; I’ve fortified.

When a friendship of three decades—one built on shared music, trips, and mutual survival through depression—ends over a FaceTime call with a vague sentence about “therapy,” you don’t look for a silver lining. You look for the locks.

On the History and the “Glue”

The Question: 30 years is a massive span of time. What was the glue that kept you together?

The Reality: I thought the glue was simply being best friends. We knew everything about each other. We liked the same music, went on trips together, loved the same movies. We had our own language and sarcastic sense of humor. We both dealt with significant histories of depression; I had breakdowns where he was there for me, and he had breakdowns where I was there for him. I didn’t think that glue would ever be “not enough.”

But there was a subtle, nagging sign I ignored for years. Whenever I would bring up the fact that he was my best friend, he would never mirror it. He wouldn’t admit it. Maybe in his head, I wasn’t his “best” friend, but we spent 30 years in each other’s pockets. You don’t share that much history and call it anything else.

On the Resentment and the Pattern

The Question: You mentioned things felt lopsided. Where did that friction actually come from?

The Reality: There was a deep-seated resentment he had regarding my disability. I’m on disability for my depression, and he clearly didn’t like the fact that I “got to sit around and do nothing” while he was working. He viewed my survival as an unfair advantage.

But it went deeper than that. He knew he was my best friend—and he knew I didn’t really have anyone else. He used my reliance on him as leverage. Whenever he was going through something, I always gave him the space to be himself and talk. He chose not to. Instead, he would kind of bully me for liking him - in a weird way —a tactic he used in other relationships, too.

In fact, looking at his life, I wasn’t the first person he did this to. He had a track record of screwing over the significant people in his life. He burned bridges until he was standing on an island, and then he used the leverage of being my “only” person to make the exit as lopsided as possible.

On the Night of the FaceTime Breakup

The Question: How did the final moment actually happen?

The Reality: He texted me and asked if I could talk over FaceTime. I asked him, “Right now or later?” His response was chillingly casual: “We can do this now or later, it’s up to you.” After thirty years, the end of our friendship was just an appointment he was happy to reschedule if I was busy. What a coward.

I got on the call, and he dropped the mic. I asked “what” and “why,” and all I got back was a shield: “Something happened in therapy... I’m not going to go into it.” I started to tear up and I hung up on him. He nursed his resentments until he decided he was done playing the part, and he didn’t even have the courage to treat the ending with the gravity it deserved. (This happened right before COVID hit 2019-2020.)

On the Fortress of Self-Worth

The Question: Is it lonely inside those walls now?

The Reality: It feels lonely for sure. Really lonely. I still think about him daily being reminded by things new would laugh at and more. But if I have to weigh being someone’s jester—or the person constantly smoothing over the cracks of someone else’s resentment—against my own self-worth, I’m going with my self-worth 100% of the time.

I’m being honest here: I may not have been the best friend to him all the time. Perhaps I did put pressure on him to accept more of my suffering than was fair. But I’ll never know for sure, because he chose to walk away rather than talk. I’ve finally gotten to a space where I don’t care about him one way or the other. I mean I think he’s a shit friend but I’m not angry anymore; I’m just finished.

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My Takeaway

If there is a “lesson” here, it’s a hard one: Don’t let your sense of humor open a door that allows someone to ignore your reality. I spent decades smoothing things over, only to be told there was “no room” for me because my struggle didn’t look like his struggle. He refused to label me his best friend even while he knew I relied on him, and he used that distance to walk away in the most dismissive, “now or later” way possible.

I don’t wish anything bad for him, but I’m done chasing people who treat a 30-year history—and a string of other broken relationships—like a subscription they can just cancel. The drawbridge is up. It’s quiet in here, and it’s a bit cold, but for the first time in thirty years, I don’t have to justify my existence or keep the peace for anyone but myself.

I have left a bunch out. What would you like to know more about our friendship? Breakup? Any specifics?

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I’ve got two that keep coming back lately, and honestly, they’re exhausting.

The Hunt

The first one is just straight-up terrifying.

It starts with this warning. A maturation egg, something organic and wrong, like it doesn’t belong in the same world as me. I have to sit there and watch it grow, knowing exactly what’s coming. That’s when the adrenaline kicks in. It becomes a countdown.

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I’m trying to find somewhere to hide, but there isn’t one. There never is.

Once it hatches, it’s a chase.

Sometimes it’s just a presence. No face, no body, just intent. Other times it’s a man with no face. Either way, it knows where I am.

The worst part isn’t even the thing chasing me. It’s everyone else.

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They see it. They know what’s happening. I go up to them, I ask for help, I beg them to do something, to hide me, to acknowledge it. And they don’t. They just keep going. Like I’m not even there. Like none of this is happening. I feel completely invisible, even in the middle of a life-or-death crisis.

There’s always a little bit of blood around. Not enough to be dramatic, just enough to confirm what I already know: something has already gone wrong.

I spend the whole dream running, dodging, trying to outmaneuver something that doesn’t get tired. And right when it’s about to catch me, my brain finally hits the panic button and I can suddenly fly. I lift just out of reach.

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For a second, it feels like escape. It never is.

He catches up. He always catches up. Sometimes it ends with a shot to the head. Sometimes it’s just the moment before impact.

That’s when I wake up, sitting straight up in bed, heart racing, trying to remember how to breathe.

Hell of a way to start the day.

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The Longing

The second one isn’t violent. It’s just heavy.

It usually starts outside, in a neighborhood. Streets that feel familiar. Houses that look like they should belong to someone I know. It’s quiet in that normal, everyday way.

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I’m looking for someone. Or maybe I’ve already found them. That part shifts.

There are people around. Friends, or at least people who should feel like that. We pass each other, we smile, but we don’t talk. Everything looks fine on the surface, but no one actually sees me.

I try to talk to this person I’m looking for, and it’s like I don’t land. They don’t respond. Or they respond just enough to keep things moving, but not enough to actually meet me. Like I’m slightly out of sync with everything around me. Like I’m invisible to the one person I need to see me.

Sometimes I end up inside a church. Sometimes it’s my dad’s old office from when he was dean of admissions. Different place, same feeling. Like I’ve stepped into somewhere that should mean something, and it just… doesn’t.

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Other times, I’m at a university at night. It’s raining. I’m waiting for a ride that either never comes or already left without me. Eventually I get to my car and start driving, trying to find my boyfriend’s house.

Except it’s not his. It’s always the house of someone from my past.

And I know it as soon as I get there. I just stand outside in the rain, looking at it, holding onto something I can’t even name anymore. It’s not hope exactly. It’s not closure either. Just this deep, familiar heartache.

Waiting. For something.

But for what?

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Cars pass. People move. Life keeps going somewhere else. I’m there, but I’m not.

At some point, the feeling gets so heavy that I try to force myself awake. I know I’m dreaming. I’m telling myself to get out. That’s when it hits—that sleep paralysis glitch. I can’t move. I can’t open my eyes. My brain is yelling at me to wake up, and my body just… doesn’t. I’m stuck there, pinned under the weight of that longing.

Not fear exactly. Just this deep, sinking awareness that I’m alone in something I can’t explain to anyone else.

Connecting the Dots

I don’t think these dreams are random.

One is about being chased by something that won’t stop. The other is about reaching for something that won’t meet me. Different shapes, same feeling.

In both, I’m the only one reacting. The only one trying to fix something. The only one who seems to notice that anything is wrong at all.

Maybe the faceless man doesn’t need a clean definition. Maybe that’s the point. He’s “Life” or he’s “Loneliness”—he’s whatever shows up when something feels unavoidable and out of reach at the same time. I can’t put my thumb on it, but I know it’s bad.

I don’t think these dreams are trying to scare me anymore. I think they’re trying to get my attention.

What do you think these dreams mean? What are some of your dreams?

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