"I think I’m gonna grow out my eyebrows.”
That’s what I said the day I gave my notice at work. When my boss asked me what I was going to do next, I said, “I think I’m gonna grow out my eyebrows.” I think about that a lot. Not only because it was a strange thing to say, however true (I did want to more fully embrace my inner Cara Delevingne), but because I remember feeling like it was a perfectly normal thing to say. I had decided to quit after months of mounting stress and panic, but in that moment I remember feeling fine.
But I wasn’t fine. I hadn’t been fine for a long time.
My job was in public relations for a large health care system. I developed campaigns and social media initiatives. I was reaching our patients and the public. I was good at this job. I liked this job. My company was even paying for me to get my master’s degree. And I quit to work on my eyebrows.
Now that I look back, it’s obvious to me. But at the time I had no idea I had a mental illness. I knew I was anxious (I was so overwhelmed I had heart palpitations), but I didn’t know I had anxiety. I knew I was depressed (I lacked motivation; I was feeling hopeless), but I didn’t know I had depression.
Ever since I was little, people had noticed I was “nervous,” “sensitive.” There was always something wrong with me: issues with my stomach, headaches, insomnia for months. And my symptoms didn’t go away when I got older and started working. There was a pressure in my gut to succeed, and I felt physical pain when I failed. Every closed door at the office meant my imminent firing was being discussed. Every time a supervisor asked if a project was completed and it wasn’t, I experienced an all-consuming feeling that I was a failure. Doing well at work became an addiction; I needed success to survive.
And when I had my first child five years ago, my anxieties got worse. My need to do more at the office, and the self-destruction when I couldn’t, became invasive. I put more pressure on myself to be the ultimate wife and perfect mom. My husband tried to be supportive—he never wanted to tell me I had taken on too much. But I didn’t have as much of myself to give to work, and that made me angry. As a feminist, I felt defeated not being able to devote as much time to my job. My failures were stacking up. It felt like they were winning.
This, of course, was my internal dialogue. To my colleagues, I tried to be the funny, can-do coworker. They didn’t know how scared I was to say no. There was a day at work when we had a PR crisis, and I sobbed hysterically all day. (No one else was crying.) I wish someone had told me my facade was cracking so I would have known. I actually don’t know when others started noticing. All I know is that I still felt like I was getting my work done, like I was holding it together. Right until that last day. Eyebrow day.
Falling apart felt like just that—little bits of your mind and spirit dropping behind you, slowly and silently. It’s not until most of you is gone that you even notice.
The truth is, over the course of my last three months at my job, I had quit my master’s program: I was too busy, I didn’t know if I wanted to do PR forever, a man in my class had written a sexist message on the program’s Facebook page…. I had lots of reasons, and they all felt real. At the office I’d asked to no longer work with a demanding administrator: I was busy, I couldn’t deliver what she wanted, it was taking me away from the rest of my work…. That felt real too. And then I wanted to quit entirely.
I don’t know whether my brain was inflating these experiences, making them more unbearable than they actually were. But when your mind plays tricks on you, it doesn’t matter if what you’re feeling is “real”—by your feeling it, it becomes real. It was real that every area of my life felt like it could crush me. But at no point did I believe there was any reason for my state of overwhelm other than work. Work was the problem, and that was that.
So I quit. To devote more time to my eyebrows.
A few months later my husband lost his job, and with that we lost our insurance. I was pregnant again. So I tried to get my job back. I wrote pleading emails to my boss, emails I pored over to ensure I seemed as casual and funny as before even though panic filled my entire body. She said no. That I’d become unreliable. That I’d been exhibiting “strong emotions.” I cried for days after she responded. I was humiliated. I thought I’d held it together there. I thought no one had noticed. I hadn’t even noticed—how could anyone else have?
When I really think about that period in my life now, I’m embarrassed—about how I felt and how I made enormous, life-changing decisions based on those feelings. Mostly I’m embarrassed that my friends and coworkers saw me fall apart when I didn’t know I was falling apart. And to know others saw something in me I couldn’t see in myself makes me feel a special kind of vulnerable that is extremely humiliating.
After that conversation with my old boss, I finally decided to see a psychiatrist. At my first visit I was diagnosed with major depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Untreated—probably since childhood—and permeating every cell in my body, the disorders were presenting themselves in manic behavior as well as physical symptoms. Things became clear and began to make sense. The big, overwhelming parts of my life became less so. And having answers, having a name for what was happening to me, made me feel stronger—as if now that I knew what I was up against, I could arm myself. I could fight it.
These days I know what I’m looking for. I can tell the difference between “fine” and “not fine.” I feel the gradual slowing down of my drive and energy that signals my depression is coming, or the physical pressure that indicates an anxiety attack, and I head it off with medication. It’s survivable. I still work too hard sometimes, and since I'm a mom of small children, there will always be stressors. But when I feel myself losing it now, I know what to do: I need to talk to my counselor, take a break for self-care, and relax. To breathe.
And right now I can breathe. I can live with this. And I’m not all that worried about my eyebrows.
