Yesterday I Called The Psychiatric Clinic Where I Made An Appointment A Couple Of Months Ago. At The

yesterday I called the psychiatric clinic where I made an appointment a couple of months ago. at the time they had told me that the waiting list period was 2-4 months, and I wanted to know what it was now.

I’m not sure if they didn’t understand that I was wanting to know specifically where my appointment was on the list, or if they just weren’t going to tell me that, but either way all they would say was that their waiting period is 4-6 months.

so that was encouraging.

my dad sent me the sites for a couple of other clinics to try applying to instead and I keep looking at them but I haven’t done anything yet.

I have it good, really. I’m living with my parents right now and they’re very supportive. they’re trying to help me get better and they’ve made it clear that I can stay here as long as I need. I’m not in any danger. I don’t have any emergency medical issues. I don’t have crippling debt. I don’t have a job right now, but that’s no one’s fault but mine. I know there are people doing so much worse than me. I see their stories every day. people who are still going out and doing things and getting by under horrible circumstances and here I am, doing nothing. not even trying. 

really, the only problem I have is me. 

when I was in school I grew to hate the question of “what are you going to do after you graduate?” so much that I banned all mention of it from my graduation party. now I get the upgraded question, “so what are you doing now?” and I hate it even more.

every time a well-meaning family member asks me that I think, nothing. I am doing nothing. I am floating. I am drifting in space.

my brother came home to visit over the Fourth of July weekend. he had a car that he wanted to bring home so my dad and I went out in my grandfather’s truck to help tow it back. 

on the ride home he asked me the question. 

I mentioned that I had made a psychiatric appointment and that I was sort of waiting on that. 

he gave me advice. about moving forward and getting your name out there. about how things will probably suck for a while because when you send out lots of resumes they’ll almost all get rejected but things will improve. you just gotta push forward a little bit at a time. it’s good that you have that appointment but you shouldn’t just wait for your situation to get better. you always think the next thing will be better, he says, but when it comes along there will be problems with that too. keep pushing forward but don’t place all your hope on any one thing to turn everything around.

uh huh, I said.

it was good advice. 

then we got distracted by a goat and he went on to give me advice about how to survive the zombie apocalypse. he was very heavily caffeinated at the time. 

I couldn’t figure out how to explain that waiting for this appointment felt like waiting for a live preserver. like I was treading water in the middle of the ocean and it was all I could do to stay afloat and someone had said, you cannot wait to be rescued. you have to swim to shore by yourself.

you’ll be alright, my brother said. you did well in school. 

and so I did. I made it on the dean’s list almost every semester, my professors usually liked me, I hardly ever missed class, I could count on one hand the amount of assignments that I had botched or missed in my entire time in school. I graduated magna cum laude and immediately received a great deal of ribbing about how my family had to find out from the program because I didn’t tell them. I had to repeat several times that I also had to find out from the program because they didn’t tell me ahead of time either.

I did not say that it was nice and all but I didn’t really care about it that much. I was tired and happy that it was over and that I could take the stupid robe off and go eat some cookies now and anyway you can’t say things like that, really. 

I did well in school and I hated it. I was exhausted and miserable and I stressed myself sick all the time. I wanted to be able to miss class when I felt bad, or to bullshit on lesser assignments instead of panicking over them. I couldn’t. the anxiety was always pushing me forward, threatening me with the consequences of failure. 

my first semester I went to see a college counselor. I said that I had a lot of anxiety.

“I notice you don’t make eye contact,” the first one said, and suggested a tentative diagnoses of PDD-NOS. I asked to see another counselor.

I saw the next one for the rest of the semester. it was difficult to fit the sessions in around class and work and productions and convocations and everything else. the counselor was nice, but I found that I was not looking forward to seeing her. it involved talking, something I have never been much good at. 

she told me early on that she didn’t believe in labels. “I don’t want to put you in a box,” she said. “Everyone is different. I want to focus on your situation, not on a diagnosis and a list of symptoms.” 

I nodded and I didn’t argue because she was, after all, the counselor, and probably right, even if it made my heart sink because goddamn did I want a label. I wanted a box. I wanted to say this is what I have, this is what’s wrong with me. I was very, very tired of saying this is just the way I am. 

in our last session she told me that her conclusion was that I was probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. I did not really feel like that was true, but even if it was I wondered why everyone seemed interested in giving me a very vague diagnosis of something autistic but resisted putting any labels on the anxiety I had very explicitly told them I had. 

I never resumed the sessions the next semester. I kept on doing well in school. college offered lots of opportunities: clubs and honor societies and extracurricular work and field trips and conferences and social events and networking opportunities. all kinds of ways to build up your future, plan for life after graduation. 

I couldn’t care about my future.I knew that I should but I couldn’t. I did the things that were right in front of me, the things that I had to do, and I didn’t have anything left. I didn’t feel enthusiastic or excited about anything.

but after all, how bad could things be, if I was doing so well?

things have never been truly dire. I have never been at risk of self-harm. I get up every morning and I do some things and I brush my teeth and shower every day. I’m not sure how much of it is driven by anxiety and guilt over not doing the things, but I do them. things were never so bad in college that anyone saw cause for alarm. things are not so bad now that I cannot wait two, four, six months in abeyance. 

you can’t wait too long, my brother said. if you spend too long out of college not doing anything, people will notice. they won’t want to hire you so much. 

it has been seven months now since I graduated. I think a lot about those old stories about people getting trapped in the faerie otherworld. how time seems to stand still, one moment stretching out forever like a dream, but when they finally return to the real world it has been centuries and centuries. 

lately life feels like floating. like anti-gravity, drifting through endless space; like swimming against a current, moving with all my might but going nowhere. things don’t work and I don’t know why. books pile up unread, projects rot, emails go unanswered and there’s no reason for any of it. things just don’t happen. 

I look at these appointment forms and I think, this isn’t going to work. they are going to tell me that there is really nothing wrong with me. that there is something wrong with me but they’re not going to say what it is because they don’t want to put me in a box. that there is something wrong with me but it’s not the thing I think is wrong, it’s not the anxiety or depression it’s something else they think is more interesting. that there is something wrong with me but there’s really not much they can do about it. that things can’t be too bad if I did so well in school, if there are no emergencies now, if I am moving from day to day. 

that I will sit in someone’s office feeling like I did sitting in the car with my brother, trying to explain why I have done nothing with my life for seven months, but being unable to get the words right, and they will shake their head and send me away. 

I wish I had not done well in school. I wish I had failed, because I am failing now, failing at the things I want to do, failing at doing the things I am expected to do, failing at finding any meaning in anything, failing to be happy. but it’s unbelievable, even to me. it makes no sense. the fault must be mine, somewhere, but I can’t find it.