On Not Letting My Brain Shit Talk Me

Brains, depression, and the bad things they cook up together

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

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I really needed to read

Heather Havrilesky

‘s “Rejection Isn’t Personal” tonight. As someone who has depression, anxiety, and probably bipolar disorder (I’ve never gotten a definitive diagnosis on this last one, but it seems likely given the way chemicals happen and don’t happen in my brain), it’s pretty easy to cook up stories about myself with my very own brain as the author.

I hope you’ll read all of “Rejection Isn’t Personal” if you’re feeling rejected, tired, or like a person who doesn’t always fit into the world as you know it, but here are a few passages that really struck me.

“Rejection isn’t meaningful, and shouldn’t be taken personally. When you gather data and tell stories about how your past rejections mean that you’ll continue to be rejected in the future, you’re using a meaningless road map to navigate your life.”

“Out of the blue, a secretly fearful or rigid person can decide that you’re not attuned enough to their particular needs, or you’re not muted enough, not regular enough, you don’t nod along enough, you’re too insecure, you’re too much of a show off, you’re too weird, you’re too honest, you say too much, you do too much, you think too much, you’re too much.”

“I’m here to remind them and everyone else that MOST OF US will be rejected repeatedly no matter what we do. We’ll be pushed away even when we’re at our best. We’ll be ignored and ghosted even when we’re the most luminous and loving being within fifty square miles.”

I could probably cut and paste from the whole essay, because so much of it resonated with me.

I’m taking a new medication called Villazadone, which if it goes okay will eventually take the place of Lexapro, which has caused me to gain more weight than my frame or my ego likes to carry (seriously my ankles hurt every day and my boobs have entered into the too big to buy bras for in most stores category) and has also flattened my ability to feel love or joy. This can happen with Lexapro. I’ve also had to up my Wellbutrin to the maximum amount because well, I have major depressive disorder and the other things too maybe.

Switching psych meds is no fun. Aside from occasional manic feelings of wow, this isn’t too bad I feel a little tipsy, it’s a lot of waiting and feeling like your brain car has a new driver and you don’t know where they’re going. This morning I cried on the 5 train for the whole ride to class, and I couldn’t stop even when I got to class. My students looked a little worried, but one of them gave me a piece of candy and I got us writing while still wearing my giant sunglasses and I settled down.

The night before I’d been on a date with a man who very casually told me that the last movie he’d watched was a Trump documentary, and that he wouldn’t vote for Kamala because she’s “not qualified.” Friends, I was not in the fucking mood. He explained to me that if nothing else Trump was “a very good business man.,” and that “I had to give him that much.”

I resisted his language at every turn, rattled off every last bit of data I could come up with and even gave him an out, “If this is about the genocide of Palestinians, I get it.” Nah, it wasn’t about that, he waved the murder of over 40,000 people away.

I told him that the date was over. My exact words were, “My pussy has dried up and it will never be wet for you.” He begged me to reconsider by holding my hand against my will and grabbing me around the waist. I squirmed away. He said, “That’s it?” I nodded, he insisted on paying for our drinks, and thankfully finally left.

Once he was gone, I ordered myself a glass of Lambrusco and the cacio y pepe pasta which I can now miraculously eat because my IBS has chilled out a little. I read an essay from The Best American Essays that I will teach next week. It’s called “A Thousand Gentle Smotherings” by Celeste Marcus, and it’s about growing up with a sexuality that is considered slutty and promiscuous in “the peculiar energy of Modern Orthodox Judaism” (150).

I was underlining and reading and underlining and reading, and the pasta came and it was so amazing to eat fresh pasta with gluten in it. The pecorino! The pepper! I was probably dissociating a little bit through reading and food, two of my favorite ways to leave the world as we know it. I was probably trying to forget something else the date said to me, which was, “Trump is going to win.”

He might. He might not. I wish I could say. I wish I could be more positive, but didn’t we all think Hillary would win? There is truly nothing that makes this horrible never-ending nightmare of a person un-electable.

I underlined another sentence from the essay, “I make people think of sex” (151). It resonated with me. It probably resonates with some of you too.

Photo by Victoria Aleksandrova on Unsplash

My body, my bisexuality, my attitude, my voice, the things I write and say, I truly don’t know, but it seems to make some people think of sex. Or that I am a rape-able object. Or that I am an object to be grabbed, claimed, and discarded when used up. And that somehow this is my fault.

There are so many things I don’t write about in my Substack or in other essays published in other places because I think they are too dark, even for me, and even for my readers. Sometimes my writing and the loops that my depressive brain make get codified into difficult narratives about myself that are not true, but sometimes feel very true.

I have not had an easy time dating since my divorce almost 12 years ago. I came out in the middle of those years, and that’s been hard too. I have felt rejected by most of my partners, even if I was the one who said good-bye and ended it, because if I ended it it was because the relationship was making me feel small, object-like, and devalued.

I have often felt that I was for sex and nothing more. Some of those people I had relationships with just completely disappeared without a trace, like I literally don’t know where four or five of them are—it was like the spooky revolving bookcases in Scooby Doo. They were there, and then they were gone.

I’ve also stayed very close with two or three of those loves, and that has been amazing and sometimes still hard. I feel and name myself as the rejected one, the one who wasn’t good enough, or the one who made the way for the next one.

Lovers often do their “last” of something with me. You are the last cis woman I will date. Though you asked to be poly with me, I couldn’t do it, but with my next partner I did. You are the last bisexual woman I dated. You are the last monogamous and/or poly relationship I had. I dated you before I fell in love with my soul mate.

I blame myself for these situations. I blame these failed lovers of mine. I blame the disposable, algorithmic culture that the dating apps have created. I blame biphobia, the patriarchy, my parents, America, New York City, aging, disability, being fat, being old, my preference for myself over the needs of others, my exhaustion, my overwork, my need for rest, my lack of resources, too much therapy, not enough therapy.

One of the things I need most in a therapist, is for them to debunk the shitty narratives I create about myself in my head. I need constant reframing because left to its own devices, my brain likes to tell me bad things about myself. SSRIs have helped, and having good therapists has helped, but sometimes it feels like a daily struggle

Today

Heather Havrilesky

helped. And going to a union rally which my students chose to attend with me helped. And singing the stupid union solidarity song that Jacob likes us to sing helped. And going right home after my classes, and eating two slices of pepperoni pizza, a grape Fanta, and a bag of M and Ms helped. And writing about these darker shames has helped I think, though I’m sure there will be follow up shame for putting it out there in the world.

But again:

“Rejection isn’t meaningful, and shouldn’t be taken personally. When you gather data and tell stories about how your past rejections mean that you’ll continue to be rejected in the future, you’re using a meaningless road map to navigate your life.”

Rejection has no meaning. No meaning AT ALL.

It has nothing to do with me or my value in the world.

I am not to gather these rejection stories into dark matter and use them as some kind of twisted road map.

I have to let this go, and free myself from completely unreasonable and nonsensical narratives that my brain made up for me.

There is no pattern. There is no evidence.

Jesus this is hard. But I really want to let this narrative in particular go.

Oh, and I really need a therapist.

Enjoy the typos!

xoxo

Carley

Gosh, I hope Tuesday night turns out okay.