"Harmonious Cacophony" by Carissa J

 

800-273-8255

 

If you don’t know what that number is, it is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It is available 24/7, toll-free, and willing to help you through any crisis. Here’s the best part:

I was put on hold.

On April 14, 2021, I was comforted by beautiful elevator music, red and blue capsules, and the horrible scream of uncertainty echoing throughout every corner of my brain. This terrible, discordant orchestra was nothing more than a whisper at the end of my sophomore year. It was nothing but a small annoyance that I figured would eventually see itself out, in fact, it started out as an itch in 2nd grade. That itch became a gash as I would watch my insecurities bubble up and drip away. Then I moved from a 300 student private school to a 3,000 student public one and the voices grew inside of my head, every move I made was somehow wrong.

After missing the majority of sophomore year due to severe sickness, migraines, and insomnia, God decided to reward me with plentiful time by starting a global pandemic during my Junior year. I attempted to tune out the never ending train of thoughts to focus on my grades despite the loss of two friends, my 13 year old dog, and my grandpa within the span of 8 months. The consistent A’s that I had maintained freshman and sophomore year looked at me in disdain as my GPA dropped from a 4.3 to a 2.7.

“I need to see more effort.”

I wish that I could turn back time and catch it early. I wish that I could go back to second grade and realize that the excessive itching was not just allergies. I wish that I didn’t drown in red despair

So there I sat, laughing at the fact that I was put on hold. The complex arpeggios and sharps that I had created stumbled out of place and now were a clashing composition of chords with no rhyme or reason. All of my friends and colleagues were creating their chef d'oeuvres as I tried to fit my musical masterpiece into a note. Instead, that single note was played back to me as the beep of the hold line brought the mess of unexplainable emotions in my head to an abrupt stop. 

I ended up failing two of my classes. I’ve never been more relieved.

The hardest thing to do for me is to be able to truly, clearly express the tangled anxiety inside of me. How do you explain to someone that you’re trying? How do I explain that I could do better on the test, but someone is tapping their pen, or the bird outside is chirping too loud, or the

clothes you’re wearing are too itchy, or the lights are too bright? It has always been like trying to understand a radio station that is just out of range and the words are drowned out with waves of unpleasant static. How do I write a personal reflection if I can’t even find a way to describe the way that the cities I built in my mind are crumbling to pieces? I don’t know how to explain that I’m thinking everything but nothing simultaneously and the emptiness inside of my chest brings about the urge to scream and cry until my throat swells and bleeds from the strain. How can I turn this bottled up disharmony into a euphony?

I guess I’ll have to put those questions on hold.

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety, or as I like to call, the “triple threat”. All of my emotions contradict the other, but they love to hold special conferences in my brain to discuss how to make everything I do ten times more difficult. Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Serotonin always like to skip those meetings. There are 6,500 languages and over 171,000 words, yet all fall short to describe the struggles that I have to endure the second I wake up. Despite the crushing weight of never being able to experience normalcy, it is worth it. It was worth it to wake up the next day and cry for hours because of how much I hated myself at that moment. The anger, frustration, and sadness drove me to a point of insanity that taught me to treasure a life that I thought I did not want. There was not enough room on that single note to finish my harmonious cacophony,

There was only enough space to start it.

I’m proud of you,

Carissa Johnson