“There is a very special Birthday wish today,
To my daughter, your presence is like the first ray of sunshine after a week of rain. I hope you have the best birthday to date. Happy Birthday, Laura Beth. Love Dad”
That was the day not only my father, but my close friends started calling me Sunshine. It was one of the most mortifying events of my High School career, yet I got just what I wanted with that message. Everyone knew it was Sunshine’s birthday.
Throughout High School my friend group would call me Sunshine. Passing me in the hallway and shouting out, “Do the lips Sunshine?” or cat calling me from 20 feet away by saying “Sunnnnnnshine.” Thankfully my birthday announcement came only a few years after the release of Remember the Titans. If you are unfamiliar with the movie, go watch! It’s a classic you won’t regret. The plot is about the integration of a southern high school in 1971. The football team is the first to deal with the challenges of integration during fall training. I won’t say anymore to give away the plot, but there is also a character who is from California. He’s the classic 1970’s hippie into peace, love, and meditation. Thus, he also sticks out like a sore thumb. The team nicknames Sunshine. Hence, where the two quotes come from with my friends. I didn’t mind. I’ve always enjoyed attention. I’ve always wanted to be special.
While I left the nickname behind in high school, it didn’t leave my personality. I was always the go to friend when you needed a pick me up. We didn’t have to talk about the problem. I would if you wanted, but for the most part I knew my roll was to shine my light and brighten up their darkest days.
I prided myself in being cheery, bright, and happy. On occasion to a fault, I could also beat myself up when I wasn’t living up to the person I thought I should be. I’ve also always been called a leader by at least one if not multiple managers I’ve worked for in various job positions. Honestly, I think it’s my strong work ethic mixed with my cheery attitude that made me the leader they saw.
I kept this demeaner throughout my early 20’s. Always being driven towards my career goals but trying my best to never take life too seriously. Then 2014 hit. I was over my job. While I loved working with commercial fishermen, and I was one of the best for the southern territory my company covered. I was over it. I was at the top of the company. I was ready to get serious about my goals and go to graduate school. Or very least find another job that didn’t have me in and out of 5 different states every year living in hotel rooms. I had been applying to multiple jobs and schools for over a year to find an easy out from the dead-end job. I wasn’t having much luck.
The winter of 2014 I had decided it was my last year at this job. I’d start over. From where I didn’t know, but work had just become more and more frustrating. Everyday was a new fight with the company I worked for. They kept trying to find ways to pay us (the field workers) less and less to increase their profit margins. It made me a nasty person, a frustrated person. I didn’t like who I was becoming. I was ready to leave.
April 1, 2014 my future master’s advisor called me to say I was being considered for a position in his lab, and I was to visit that week! I was ecstatic! Out of nowhere after one phone call, my life was turning around. I had my visit, and he offered me a spot that same week. I accepted. I moved to Maine in May of 2014.
I was at an all time high. This was what I had been working towards. I had all but given up on this dream. I was ready and willing to give graduate school everything I had. Gradaute school demanded everything I had. The average week started at 60 hours. We were expected to be present, except for teaching and classes, in lab easy access to our advisor Monday through Friday 9-5 minimum. That first year I’d typically stay til 6, and if I went home before then it was due to a change of scenery. I was just switching my view from my office to my bedroom. Especially that first year, I struggled hard with that work life balance concept we all hear so much about. There was always one more paper, page, or book I could be reading. My advisor always had silly projects or requests of me to be sure I was actually reading the papers and books on my subject.
It was during my second summer my father said something. He was the first one in my life to notice. He said 2 simple words that completely pissed me off, “You’ve changed.” I was so irritated by his words.
I spit back in a confrontational tone, “What do you mean I’ve changed?”
“You just don’t sound like you anymore Sunshine.”
In the moment I was too mad to understand what he was saying. My ego brushed it off with, he just doesn’t know what it takes to succeed in this career field. He doesn’t get the long hours in the office, in the lab, in the classroom. He doesn’t get the dedication, the lack of sleep, the sacrifice necessary to get ahead in this career. He doesn’t understand there is always more I could do. Nothing I do is ever enough.
I defused my anger quickly telling myself he just didn’t get it. He loved me, and the distance away from him was getting to him. I responded with a simple, “It’s been a long week Daddy. I’m just stressed.”
It was an easy brush off. He never brought the topic up again. He was never a confrontational man. He just hugged me extra tight every time I was home. Those goodbyes were some of the hardest I’ve ever had in my life.
The pressure I felt only increased as the months turned into years. I didn’t notice the subtle changes at first. I didn’t notice my quick and easy irritability. I didn’t realize there were days the undergraduates avoided me because “LARA” (my nickname from them) was in a bad mood.
I did feel the annoyance from constant interruptions. I did notice my general feeling of competition towards every other female in my field, and the thought in the back of my head “Well I’m happy for her, but if she got the grant I won’t get the grant.” The thoughts didn’t isolate themselves outside of the lab. They started within it. Every paper or grant someone else got to review for typos or references, I was envious. Instead of being grateful for being given something I sincerely didn’t have the time for, my thought process went to “why am I not good enough to handle this work.”
The Spring of 2017 hit. I was in the last sprint of the marathon. I would complete the first draft of my thesis before taking a summer position with my future Ph.D. advisor. This was the timeline before the reality of the statistics started coming in. My findings weren’t significant. What had gone wrong? My advisor thought for sure everything was one track. I had my doubts, but he assured me it would all workout during the statistics. There was something wrong with the samples. I had to go back into the lab.
In a matter of 6 weeks, I by working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week in the lab, I reanalyzed the 230 samples. Besides the one day a week I took to grocery shop and meal prep, and the 2 hours a day I spent in the mornings working out, showering, eating, and getting into the lab, every second was spent dedicated to my studies. I was giving EVERYTHING I had to my advisor.
In May I left. I moved to take the job, something my advisor was displeased with, but the idea of not having money coming in terrified me. Home was too far away to move back. Also, I looked forward to having a mindless job again. Things would get easier. The stress would subside. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel…. or so I thought.
Summer of 2017 everything caught up with me. Depression set in.
To the passer byer, it would’ve gone unnoticed. Sure, maybe I wasn’t as upbeat or happy as I always had been, but I was finishing up my M.S., working full time, keeping up with my gym routine, and trying to make new friends. It was a lot. If asked, I could easily excuse the pain away with an easy excuse, “I’m just stressed.”, “I’m tired.”, “I got a lot going on at home.” Anyone accepts those answers, with little to no prying into your personal life.
For the day to day, no one saw (including my roommate) the late Friday whiskey nights that ended with laying on my bed sobbing myself to sleep. The just one more beer and cigarette phone calls with my best friend during the week. No one saw the sun beaming down on me and my bathing suit covered body on a Saturday because I knew the saltwater and sun would help, but leaving the house and walking a mile, alone, felt pointless.
I wasn’t me.
I had lost my light.
I wasn’t a stranger to depression. I had seen its cruel tricks for over a decade as my sister slipped in and out of various states of happy, sad, and barely moving. All determined upon finding the right dosage, switching medications when one had stopped working, or convincing herself she no longer needed them and slipping into the sweet silent cacophony of her bedroom where she couldn’t manage to move from unless insisted upon by family. Then the couch would become her new sanctuary for the day. During these episodes, we’d whisper around the house. The monster was back. My sister was gone.
I didn’t have anyone that summer to witness, to whisper. I had the confidence of my family. My parents in denial, not her too. Not sunshine. My sister knew. She knew depression was a cold bitch that didn’t pick favorites. No one was exempt. She sent care packages. I cried for hours each time I got one. I’d fall onto my bed surrounded by the small items, maybe slip into the shirt, and forget to eat the rest of the day because all I wanted in those moments was to be home. To be touched. To feel loved.
I was 968 miles away from home. I was 968 miles away from touch. I was 968 miles away from love.
My mom thought about making the journey one weekend when my father was away. The flights were too expensive. We were on the phone for 20 hours that weekend instead. I just wanted someone to talk to. This is how depression hits. This is who it hits. It’s not always the sad mopey ones. The family members with other addictions to explain it away. The people who’ve had a hard life.
Sometimes it hits the most promising, happy, cheerful people in your lives. The ones that always seem to make your day brighter, but when it comes to making their life brighter, they fall short.
It’s not fun. It isn’t fair. It doesn’t make sense.
I pulled myself out of the depths of this despair by completely leaving the career behind I had worked so hard to form. I know my success in Marine Science, my hard work in the field, weren’t the only reason for my depression. Mental health is more complicated. Complications I haven’t found the words for yet. All I know is that was the answer for me.
The day after I decided to just leave was the day after I got rejected from my second “sure thing” Ph.D. program. I was devastated. I laid on the floor and cried into the phone to one of my best friends for over an hour. I went and got burritos with my roommate. We ate them while I sat on the couch with red puffy eyes as small whimpers leaked from my body. I was in bed by 9 pm physically and emotionally exhausted.
I skipped the gym the next morning to give my body extra rest, and we went to work. On our drive, I started having a conversation with him. In reality I was running through all the thoughts in my head out loud. I needed them to escape. I needed make them more than thoughts in my own head. During this conversation, I decided to set my career driven hat down, and I would go have some fun. At that time, I didn’t know I wouldn’t return to the profession that consumed my 20’s and my joy. I only knew I needed to rest, to heal.
The depression didn’t disappear overnight. I still had some tough days and weeks in that same apartment. I still had some conversation with some close friends that didn’t seem like me on the other line. The one thing I did have. The one thing that changed in my voice. Hope.
I had hope that tomorrow and the next day and the next day would get a little better with time. I had hope I’d be happy again. I had hope I’d be me again.
Maybe I could’ve found this hope and kept my career. Maybe I could’ve stayed on my path. Maybe I made the perfect decision for me in that moment, on that car ride from Lynn, MA to Seabrook, NH.
I got through those times without medication. I got through those times heavily relaying on my close friends and family. I got through those times with the support of the community I found in Salem, MA at the local gym. No one there knew what was going on, but every time I walked in at 6 am or 6 pm for class and was greeted with a smile and a big hello. For another hour I was around people who cared for me. For just one hour, I didn’t feel so alone.
I also didn’t seek help during this time from a professional. I’ve been in and out of therapist offices since my sister became ill when I was 15. I hated them then. I hated being forced to do something I didn’t have any control over. I didn’t see the point then. I wish I had. I wish I could’ve been the one family member to understand and support my sister when she was begging for one of us to get it. I wish I could’ve been that for her since she became my saving grace when I was at my lowest.
I do fully support finding help. There are multiple resources these days. Personally, I meet virtually with a therapist once a month and have free access to text her when I’ve having “one of those days.” I’ve named them my overwhelmed days. To me, that is what depression or tough days feel like, wave upon wave of overwhelm. I highly recommend you find the support. Either though an online therapy service like the one I use (Click here to Join Blush), or as simple as a free hotline (Find some Hotlines Here). Sometimes opening up to a stranger on the other end of the line is the easiest way to finally admit maybe everything isn’t perfect after all.
I wish I had some serious inspo to leave you with here, but in all honesty the work, this journey form my experience doesn’t work that way. It’s the little moments every day, the little changes that eventually fall into place, get you on your path, and you wake up one day a whole hell of a lot happier than when you started! So all I got for you is…
Start…start now!
And
Keep Going!
Comments