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Viewing entries tagged
Depression
If you are someone like me, when a mental health curveball suddenly comes hurdling through, having an episode that stretches from days to months is not uncommon - just incredibly frustrating and distracting. Truth is, sometimes the start of a new year might actually come in the summer.
As I bring out the tomatoes and pull out an 8” kitchen knife my right arm grows tense and my palms start to sweat. The weight of the knife all of a sudden feels firm yet alien; it feels almost too comfortable in my hand. I pretend to not stare at the few thin residue scares from bleak years before that faintly decorate my wrist. An hour earlier I had a tumultuous confrontation with a close friend and so my funneled thoughts overturning each said word makes my mind and body feel separate from one another. I feel distant but desperate to reach a mental conclusion to the argument so that I can stem the bruised emotions. My obsessive mind can’t move forward without resolution, so it gets stuck in a mental cycle of repeated half-assed solutions. My soul is dying to stop being tormented by the sickly familiar parasite that randomly turns thoughts into a low pressure-chamber.
“People with Borderline Personality Disorder, like you,” Michael started but his words trailed into terrifying darkness as I cast my eyes about the narrow room. Whom, I thought, is he addressing? Certainly, I don’t have Borderline. I went home and took every online self-assessment test for Borderline that I could locate. The diagnosis remained the same… severe Borderline Personality Disorder profile.
This COVID-19, this has changed everything. Nothing will be the same. When I’m suffocating in my own presence in my apartment I quietly gasp for clarity with these little Zoom calls, texts and Netflix viewing parties. I see all these beautiful pixelated faces. All these souls that I rather experience in person - a luxury that I can’t have. I patiently wait for them as their picture flickers on the screen and as the glitches finally sync their words with their mouth. I yearn for the familiar voice of those who know me best. It feels like most times my soul is trying to leap through the glass just to be with the ones I love. I feel foolish.
The play presents the scenario without comment, which can be infuriating from an audience perspective. To know something is amiss about these relationships, but finding validation nowhere can feel like gaslighting. However, directors Mary Kate Ashe and Aaron Sawyer pick up on the subtle creeping horror of modern heteronormativity and family bonds by employing two modes of communication and double casting.
