Not Pretending Anymore(69)

“Yeah. Well, I needed a break from Wisconsin.”

She cocked her head. “Too much…dairy?”

“Nah. The cheese is the best part.” I laughed. “Not enough of everything else, like my fam.”

“When do you go back?”

“Tomorrow.” I sighed. “I wish I could stay in California a few more days, though.”

“You miss home that much? That’s why you’re here? It’s an awfully long way to come for just a few days.”

“Well, I needed to do some soul searching. And I wanted to talk to Dad, in particular—and see you, of course.”

Catherine was the only one I’d spoken to at length about my bouts of depression over the years. But even so, I’d never expressed my deepest underlying concern to her: that I feared turning into our mother. Catherine didn’t realize the extent to which it plagued me.

A look of concern crossed her face as she gestured toward a bench near a monument of Holy Mary. “Let’s sit.”

I looked up at two birds congregating on the Blessed Mother’s head and finally said, “I’m going to talk to Dr. Spellman. I keep waiting for things to get worse.”

She tilted her head. “Worse how?”

I looked my sister in the eyes. “You know...”

Catherine adjusted the gold cross around her neck. “No, I don’t. What are you saying?”

I hesitated. “I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I’m cleaning the bathroom floor with a toothbrush at two in the morning, Cat. What if I wind up with bipolar disorder like Mom?” I swallowed.

She frowned. “Just because you struggle with depression, that doesn’t mean you have exactly what Mom has.”

“Last month they had to adjust my meds again. I missed a few days of work and was feeling really down.”

“Okay…well, that still sounds like depression. You know medications need to be adjusted from time to time. That’s true for almost any condition.”

“Or my illness could be progressing. I talked to Dad, and Mom didn’t change overnight.”

She let out a long breath. “You can’t jump to a conclusion like that just because you needed a medication adjustment. But let’s walk down that path for a moment. What happens if things turn out to be the worst-case scenario and you’re diagnosed as bipolar someday? What are you really worried about here?”

“I don’t want to be sick, Cat.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Having depression or bipolar disorder doesn’t make you sick. It just means you have something you need to learn to live with.” She paused. “But what’s wrong with the idea of being sick anyway? We all become sick, whether mentally or physically, at some point. No one escapes this life unscathed.”

“Yeah,” I muttered as I looked up at the birds again, listening to them chirp.

My sister placed her hand on my arm. “No one would ever know you sometimes suffer on the inside. Most people probably think you’re a carefree, happy-go-lucky guy. You can hide a lot behind a smile.”

“Yeah, I try.”

“You shouldn’t have to work so hard to please others or give them an impression of you that’s not real. But you’re not alone in that. Many people hide their depression behind larger-than-life personalities. You never know what someone is going through on the inside.”

That reminded me of Molly. She knew a lot about me. But she knew nothing about my struggles with depression. And that was my fault. While she was always open about her anxieties, seeing a therapist and such, I’d never even hinted at my own struggles. Not only had I been dishonest with her in that sense, but I now realized how much my having to hide that part of me ultimately impacted my relationship with her.

“I had a realization at this lesbian bar back in Wisconsin…”

Catherine’s eyes widened. “I’m not going to ask what you were doing at a lesbian bar.” She laughed. “But tell me more.”

“My worry about ending up like Mom is the driving force behind a lot of my actions, particularly the way I handled the Molly situation. I think it’s why I let her slip away so easily, why I didn’t admit my feelings or fight harder for her. I sabotaged myself, so I wouldn’t have to deal with telling her about my worst fears.”

“You worry about turning into Mom, but you do realize the likelihood of that is slim, right? Just because you’re her son doesn’t mean your experience will be the same. Everyone is different.”

“I get that. But seeing how much Dad had to struggle with it when we were growing up has made me fearful of being a burden to someone. Shit, even if I was half as bad, that would still be pretty terrible. I’m young. Anything can happen.”

“Dad loves Mom. He doesn’t look at her as a burden.”

“Yeah, you know, I didn’t have a true understanding of that until I talked to him yesterday. But he didn’t know Mom was sick when he chose to be with her forever. By the time things got bad, he’d already committed.”

“What’s your point? That you should stop yourself from ever falling in love and warn people away from you, on the off-chance you end up like Mom?”

“Well…yeah. I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“Don’t be foolish, Declan. I think you need to be treated for health anxiety, too. You can’t throw your entire life away out of fear. I guarantee you the fear of ending up like Mom is far worse than the reality of being Mom or living in Dad’s shoes. Yeah, she’s had some rough episodes. And it was hard for all of us growing up—embarrassing and humiliating when it happened in front of our friends. But she was untreated for a very long time. You have a good handle on things. And despite all of the bad moments with Mom, there have been a lot of wonderful moments too. Life has ups and downs. And if you love someone, you deal with it all.”