The most overwhelmed I have ever been in my life was the time the paramedics wheeled me into the admissions building at the psychiatric hospital after a scenic 90-minute drive down a highway surrounded by golden autumn trees. Normally, I would have commented on the view, but I just zoned out. It’s that feeling you get when you’re reading a long academic paper late at night and your eyes glaze over the page but the text is blurry. I would call it a daydreamy state, except daydreams have a positive connotation and I felt like I was grieving.
The LED lights in the consultation room hurt my eyes, and I swayed dizzily as I stood up from the stretcher. I had not been able to hold down any food except for graham crackers, peanut butter, and Welch’s fruit snacks for the last 72 hours, and although my stomach was whining loudly, the thought of a meal was nauseating. The paramedics were making small talk in an effort to make me comfortable, reassuring me that I was going to a great hospital and that they had brought others to the unit that week. I remember it being like the scenes in the movies, where someone is told awful news and the sound of others’ voices is muffled, tuned out. They took my phone, my headphones, and my wallet and locked them in a closet.
Stepping into the unit was a sensory overload. The common room TV was playing a basketball game, and the sound of fans cheering felt disturbingly incongruent with my mood. Wearing nothing but non-skid hospital socks (since my shoes had laces), it was like I had forgotten how to walk. A nurse sat down with me for a “check-in,” but when she asked me to describe how I was feeling, I could only think of one word: overwhelmed. How I felt at that moment was the definition of being overwhelmed.
I’m someone who typically does not have the patience for puzzles. Like many college students, I have a chrome extension to watch recorded lectures at triple speed. My friends make fun of me for walking fast like a New Yorker. But that day, my heart was pounding so fast. I opened a 1000-piece puzzle and tried to get my brain to focus on one thing and one thing only: placing the next piece. I couldn’t sleep through the night, so I got up and worked on the puzzle in the dimmed common room. I finished one, then moved on to the next.
So much about my life had changed in 24 hours. A day before, I was trying to will my depressed brain into concentrating on lecture slides for my midterm. Now, I was in a hospital in what felt like the middle of nowhere, wearing oversized hospital clothes, and trapped in a dark place emotionally. I didn’t know what my life was going to look like the next day, week, let alone year. I didn’t know when I would be able to hold down the food I tried to eat. I didn’t know when I would be able to concentrate for long enough to even watch a movie. But what I did know is that every time I put down a puzzle piece, I got a tiny hit of dopamine, and it felt like I had just a little purpose.
What I learned was that I had to start somewhere, even if “somewhere” was small and insignificant like putting together a puzzle in the psych ward. When I struggled to focus on reading books, I set a timer for 15 minutes each day and started there. The hardest part of depression has been overcoming inertia. When you feel like there’s a heavy blanket keeping you in bed, the hardest part is sitting up. It’s almost like relearning how to do something that came intuitively to you before. Yes, it is overwhelming, but it is possible to make it through. I’m back to being too impatient to work on puzzles, and it’s rewarding to know how far I was able to come.
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