Accept that your hope of being a tenured professor has reached a dead end. Overcome academe’s indoctrination process, which tells you that leaving academe means failure. There are other rewarding things you can do with your life, and you’ve got to get started somewhere. Don’t rush into another graduate program or law school. Let go of your desire for prestigious affiliations. Find a job and let the status come later. Better yet, start thinking like a free agent or an entrepreneur, since you can’t rely on any employer to survive long or to care about your prospects.
This paragraph is from the article, Dodging the Anvil in The Chronicle of Higher Education online, which basically states that humanities ABDs’ and PhDs’ (I’m assuming creative writing MFAs, since they would be applying to English departments are included) job prospects are even worse than before.
It was already bad when I graduated in 2002 and I was lucky to get the on-campus interview that I did. I think being a woman and an ethnic-American had a lot to do with it, but as the article says (and you don’t have to read it with regard to this post), I already had published work in an anthology, as well as a top-tier journal at that time so I had those going for me as well.
All this is a preface to the issue I’m dealing with right now. Some of you may or may not have noticed my sudden disappearance online, both from your blogs and on Twitter. I was blindsided Monday night by a severe depressive episode — more severe than the usual depression that’s always there, the one I struggle with day-to-day and from which I was improving. Monday night was different in that for the first time in 5 years, I had suicidal thoughts. I even considered writing a suicide note on my blog and set it to post in several days. How utterly egotistical, but in my mind, I felt it would bring closure to my blog. Um, yeah.
These were idle threats made to my husband, but the thoughts were real. My suicide attempts in the past consisted of swallowing a whole bunch of pills, except the first time, when I threatened to jump out of a second-story window. Lame. Like that would actually kill me.
Anyway, what always happens is that the ambulance comes to take me to the E.R. where I’m forced to drink activated charcoal. If you’ve ever had that experience, then you know it’s one of the most vile things you can ever consume. EVER. Silly as it may seem, that experience is what’s kept me from ODing these past 5 years, although whenever I’ve been hit with these depressive episodes, I honestly haven’t felt suicidal since 2005. I also felt like cutting, which I haven’t done in years, but as with swallowing pills, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But oh, I wanted to badly.
Show ▼
In retrospect there were triggers: a close acquaintance re-posted part of my
Disability Acceptance post on his blog. He also has bipolar but is very high-functioning as I once was. Then there was the visit to my sister’s place on Saturday for our Christmas. In the past, visits with my family have been stressful for me, but this one wasn’t. I had an
awesome time; nobody said or did anything to hurt me. But, I’ll admit, I’ve always been jealous of my sister who’s 8 years younger, and who, in my eyes, was planned and wanted. Don’t get me wrong: I am NOT blaming these people for what happened.
I’m proud of my sister — she has a successful career, a wonderful marriage, a neat condo near the Loop, and travels a lot with her husband. However, other than the wonderful marriage, which I also have, I covet these things. I covet her relationship with my parents. In fact, our mom kept calling me by my sister’s name all night, but she was also calling Brian and my brother-in-law by her name, so really, it shouldn’t have bothered me. Well, I guess it did but I just didn’t realize it at the time.
Clearly, I still haven’t accepted that someone “like me” can be on disability. I don’t want to be! I want to be high-functioning! I want to have a career! At this point, I don’t know what sort of career that would be, but I want one. Of course, it can’t be a McJob, because that would be “beneath me.” But, I still can’t be counted on to actually show up anywhere because I just don’t know how I’m going to feel from day to day — I can’t even commit to playing hockey, and that’s fun, not work!
Because of medical bills and student loans, it will be years before Brian and I will be able to buy a place of our own, but all I want is an in-unit washer and dryer — is that a lot to ask? I want to be able to do things abled people can do, like have a career, own a home, take classes in something (my sister has started knitting recently and is incredibly talented), to be high-functioning enough to do those things.
I’ve been so angry — SO angry, which is a new component of depression for me. So maybe it isn’t a depressive episode but something else. Though it’s been a few days since I’ve showered and although I’ve withdrawn from my friends online, both of which are major red flags, I’ve had the energy to get out of bed, difficult as that’s been, and yesterday, got up from my desk when it was time to leave for my therapist appointment and dressed myself. Brian worked from home and drove me. Maybe it’s the light box that’s given me this energy (I’ll have to post about that another time); I don’t know, but in the past, I wouldn’t have even been out of bed and Brian would literally have to dress me to go to this or that appointment.
When I talked to my therapist on the phone Tuesday, I promised that I wouldn’t do anything to harm myself. I DO NOT want to end up in the hospital, and I DO NOT want ECT. There were moments when I thought maybe I do need ECT right now, but that doesn’t scare me — being under anesthesia does. So does being hospitalized. After seeing my therapist yesterday, she determined that I don’t need hospitalization, let alone ECT.
I wanted to die because, even though the depression will pass like it always does, I didn’t want to suffer through another severe episode yet again. I was tired of it. I am tired of it. But I gave the therapist my word; I trust her, so it’s only fair that she should be able to trust me.
Then there’s the issue of what my death would do to Brian. I was concerned that my life insurance wouldn’t pay if I committed suicide and didn’t want to leave him in the lurch. Callous, I know, especially because he was incredibly upset at the prospect of losing me. My therapist confirmed that it was the depression talking when I told him that he could always find someone else, someone better and because of that, it didn’t seem fair that I had to suffer. Irrational, I know.
And today, a former classmate posted the article above on Facebook, which helped put some things in perspective. As in, even if I suddenly became high-functioning again and could hold down a job, the prospects of a career in academia are pretty frickin’ slim. But I think what has begun to help me realize that, just because I can’t work and am on disability doesn’t mean I’m a big loser, is this: “Overcome academe’s indoctrination process, which tells you that leaving academe means failure.”
