#24 Deficiencies
February 2024 | Washington, D.C.
I was thrilled when the lab results from my bloodwork came back and my doctor told me I had a vitamin D deficiency. I thought, stupidly, that this must explain the near-decade of depression, poor sleep, and general lethargy. I raced to the pharmacy - to the apteka - for supplements and thought about how much better I’d feel after a week of pills, nevermind that the fine print says it can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months for a marked improvement in the aforementioned symptoms to be felt.
I wanted to be able to identify a root cause and a solution that didn’t involve therapy or medication. Answers: deficiency, supplements.
Of course, by definition, a supplement is not a solution. It can only be additive, not substantive, not an independent clause. It cannot fix, only help, only enhance. And the root cause of all my life’s sadness most certainly is not a mere lack of vitamin D. I’m not sure there is such a thing as a root cause. To diagnose a mental malady is not an exact science, but a holistic one. And though I can probably pinpoint its beginning - or at least, the moment I began to notice it - to the summer my father was diagnosed with cancer, I cannot credit his illness with the creation of my own. Such a statement only endeavors to reduce the complexity of mental pain, to eliminate the myriad causes that contributed to it, and it fails pitifully. Furthermore, while it does not explicitly state that I became sad because the father I loved was sick, its omission of any mention of the fraught relationship that we actually had suggests that I became sad because the father I loved was sick. It is a nice thought, a sentimental one, and it is also untrue.
It was not the first time I felt my own deficiencies. You’d have to reach even further back for that, to the thirteen-year-old who developed a habit of avoiding mirrors for shame of what creature she might see staring back. It was, however, the first time my world went truly gray. Black and white paints smeared across the sky. It would not be the last.
After the seventeen-year-old who, squinting in the harsh, antiseptic hospital light, tried in vain to make herself cry for her father, there was the nineteen-year-old who thought the college gym treadmills could cure her of her body dysmorphia. There was the twenty-one-year-old who listened to Foster the People’s third studio album on repeat while she catastrophized her future and the twenty-three year old who cried when she left Spain and the boyfriend she had been with for a mere two weeks. The twenty-four-year old witnessed a war. The twenty-six-year old pleaded for her mother to understand why she had chosen to stay in Armenia, that it meant everything to her, only to leave three months later with a heart so shattered she thought she might never put it back together. She left a life she had loved, friends she had cherished, and a boy she cared too much for. To cope with her grief, she wrote profusely of the first, spoke regularly with the second, and locked away the memory of the third.
On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, the twenty-seven year old arranges a flight to see the friend who nearly died just two months prior. She has already absorbed the shock of the thought that she might have lost her. Now there is only an ache, and so much love.
She used to be stingy. She would not admit how deeply she cared for people, how grateful she felt to have them in her life. Lest she show her cards and lose. Lest she find the sentiment unreciprocated. Lest she find herself humiliated. Now, she begins to understand, in her very bones, the ephemerality of this life. Now, she bookends the messages she sends to her friend with an “I love you.”
In all these years, I’d have loved to keep a bottle of supplements at my bedside. Genuine care for my father I found so difficult to love. Willpower when I binged, and when I tried desperately to run it off. Contentedness, and an ambition that doesn’t eat you whole. The assurance that everything would be okay. Self-worth and the ability to drop a boy the minute he made me feel like less of a person. The ability to let those you’ve cared for go when you start to feel them drifting away. The ability to communicate care.
When the lab results came back, I framed my own depression as an absence or lack of happiness. Another attempt at reducing complexity. And it isn’t true.
Because there is more than one way to paint a sky gray. And the gray in my life has not marked the absence of color, but rather its overwhelming presence. Yellow, purple, blue, green - laughter, wonder, knowledge, joy - creating streaks across the sky, and then mixing and blending into a single tone. Underpinning that same sky with a richness of experiences, the breadth of people met and places explored. The ache - the gray of longing, loving, and loss - was born of color.
If you’d like to go back and read my past musings and meltdowns, hit this link.