I was with two friends the other night, a couple who—like me & Will—have been together for nearly a decade. One friend
left the room to pour us some drinks, and as I chatted to the other about what we’re up to lately, how our bodies and brains and hearts are stumbling around in all this snow (and, importantly, the music we’re listening to as they do), I found myself telling her the truth about my mental health. A truth I’m trying to tell more often, more freely, more matter-of-factly.
The first friend came back into the room and asked, “So how was your day, Hannah?”
“It was okay!” I chirped, my voice ascending the femme-trained scale, in that uppiest of up-talk melodies, reaching skyward in polite desperation for any updates that might be tangible or even legible to people who are not currently parenting a three-year-old or doing confidential abortion-related work or writing for money.
The second friend looked at me in disbelief. “You just told me you’re really depressed.”
“Oh,” I said. “I am…But the day was fine. You know.”
Anyway. My days are fine, generally, because I live in a safe and warm little house with two beautiful other humans and a perfect dog, and because I live on a quiet dead-end street of beloved friends and neighbors who care for one another in truly utopian and radical ways, and because I have clean water and abundant food and access to the insulin and needles and Zoloft and melatonin and vitamins and and and. I have it all, and could ask for more if I needed to.
We can all ask for more, when we need to.
Much like my abortion appointment, my medication increase appointment happened casually, though the circumstances necessitating it felt very very not casual.
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