Megan: Hmmmmmmm
Megan: No one day stands out specifically in my mind except for Saturday, March 15.
Megan: I don’t know if my excited constitutes the same as excited, excited. The night of March 15 was a celebration for a friend of mine who died. Jake is my friend who died from cancer, who I ran a marathon for, etc. So I woke up knowing that I was going to be able to feel him and be with his family that day, so I was more apt to get up and be an active person in life that day. But with that, comes anxiety.
Megan: And the temptation to hide.
Kate: What’s anxiety feel like to you? I get anxiety for Around the Horn (not comparing the two, just explaining) and my heart rate is high and I feel slightly panicky and half my brain power is taken up by some bad energy that tells me I’m gonna fuck up. But the more I do it, the less anxiety I feel.
Megan: Anxiety for me feels paralyzing. Horrible word to use, I know, but it’s the truth. I’m scared to do pretty much everything. It’s like these flurries of irrational thoughts that I know are irrational, but my mind just has them anyway and I can’t help but give in to the feeling. Sometimes, I manage it and I go and it’s fine. But when it’s really bad, I hide.
Megan: In 2013, the summer before my suicide attempt, I lived in Brooklyn with my two cousins and interned with NBC Sports in New York City. It was a night gig. I spent all day binge eating and then I’d be in the bathroom all day just looking at myself and hating myself and hiding from the fact that I had things I wanted to do but couldn’t figure out how to do.
Kate: What did you see when you looked at yourself?
Megan: A very fat, worthless, lifeless person who was looking right through herself.
Kate: And what would happen when (if) you tried to tell yourself that wasn’t true?
Megan: I would never try to tell myself that. Other people would, and I simply wouldn’t believe them. I felt really, really, really embarrassed and even more of a burden than before.
Kate: What does being a burden feel like?
Megan: I would describe it as really lonely, but not wanting to be alone, but feeling like you have to be in this life alone because dragging anyone else down with you, especially people you love, is even more selfish than the thoughts I already have and things I already did.
Kate: Do you feel like you have to pretend to be fine/happy a lot?
Megan: Yes.
Kate: Do you ever wonder why you have to deal with this?
Megan: I used to before my friend died of cancer. Now it’s more of, HOW am I going to deal with this? WHY CAN’T I figure out how to deal with this for good? WILL I ever?
Megan: Plus, genetically, I was primed for it.
Kate: How often do you think about this, during the course of a day?
Megan: What qualifies as “this”?
Kate: Mental health. How you’ll deal with it.
Megan: Oh, constantly. There are times when I’m doing something and really engaged in the moment but more often than not, during those times, I’m very self-conscious.
Megan: And I worry very much how this will inhibit me in the future. I worry very much, who in God’s name will ever want to sign up for this in a relationship? Will anyone want to hire me? Am I really this bad? Am I getting better? What exactly is better?
Megan: And the big one: How honest should I really be?
Megan: The benefits of being honest are great. People come to me when they need help, which is the whole point. I feel like I’m living an honest life. I do wonder if I’m making things worse for myself, but then I remember how miserable I was with this giant boulder in my stomach.
Kate: Do you mean talking about this so frequently and having people come to you—perhaps that makes you feel it more?
Megan: Nah. I mean worse for myself in terms of alienating myself.
Kate: Alienating yourself because people will only see you for your issues?
Megan: Correct.
Kate: (Like in the same way, though not the same, as how I worry people will just see me as the gay one?)
Megan: Yes, like that. We all have our token vulnerability, or what is perceived as vulnerability, and we all work our whole lives to be more than that one token thing.
Kate: While also feeling, sometimes, a responsibility to “normalize” that thing.
Kate: What helps?
Megan: People who care. Doing things I like and feeling rewarded for it. Therapy.
Megan: That might be the toughest question you’ve asked.
Kate: Why?
Megan: Because I don’t know. Everyone wants to feel loved, and everyone wants to feel good at something. But, like, that doesn’t make anything go away. I guess what helps is consciously fighting against my own brain. Learning my own brain. Honest conversations.
Megan: Feeling better actually feels worse sometimes because I feel pressure to never feel bad again, which is inevitable.
Kate: When you feel better, what does that feel like for you?
Megan: Feeling better for me feels like I can take a deep breath and not have a daunting thought on the other side of that breath.
Kate: What does it feel like hoping for some better place off in the distance?
Megan: That’s a complicated, good question. It gives me a second of hope and a reason to stay here. But it also can become discouraging because I don’t get there and I’m a perfectionist, a destructive perfectionist like Madison. Just like Madison.
Kate: What does it feel like when something isn’t perfect?
Megan: My therapist tells me, “You HAVE to remember, you will always have a distorted view of the world. Your eyes are skewed. You have a depressed lens. An anxious lens. A perfectionist lens.”
Kate: What did reading about Madison make you feel?
Megan: Took me right back, but not in a bad way. I just felt inside her head. I felt like I was reading about me if I had died.
Megan: And it made me glad that people were going to read that and maybe be forced to think for a minute.
Kate: That’s surreal.
Megan: I read that quote from Madison’s mom, about being so mad at her, and thought about how mad my aunt was when she called me or how mad my mom would have been. She would have been so, so angry at me, because I had promised her I’d never do it back in high school.
Megan: I remember that Saturday, after my attempt, when I woke up at home, my mom was just kind of staring off into space while we were sitting in the living room, and she said, “I don’t even know where I would start.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Like, you know so many people. Who would I have to call first and what would I even say?”
Megan: I attempted suicide with the intent of dying and relieving my loved ones of me, at least on the surface. But maybe, also, I did it to prove to them, “Look. This is really serious. I’m not bullshitting you.”
Kate: Why does therapy help?
Megan: Therapists are magicians. I take that back: GOOD therapists are magicians.
Megan: I learn new coping mechanisms.