Sail on Silver Girl

“When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down”


I never thought that I would encounter real problems- namely mental illness- at the rightful age of sixteen. I’m hardly equipped to drive a car much less navigate my life. Granted it isn’t easy to navigate life anyways, but other times it’s virtually impossible. Take teenage hormones; add stress, change, moving, school, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Add specifically anxiety, and you’ve completely veered off course. At least, this is what I observed from Nicole.

Nicole and I are mostly opposites- Nicole is a rampant over-analyzer, while I don’t care enough to spend more than two seconds deciding what I’ll have for breakfast. We’ve always balanced each other out like that. However, right around the end of the school year Nicole developed extreme anxiety. It was never a shock considering her personality, but it still worried me to death. Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. Being able to put a name to the demon was a firm reality check. I don’t know what I expected, but by the end of summer, her family had moved, her sister had gone to college, and she was having anxiety attacks nearly every day. Obviously Nicole knew that she had anxiety, and she also knew that she couldn’t handle it alone- but ‘therapy’ was still a scary word. After all, it seemed like a relatively new problem and no one used to the idea yet. Nicole did begin to see a therapist, however it was usually me who was up with her until dawn listening and soothing. This was quite the scenery change- I was often dubbed “The Comedy” as a nice way of saying, “can’t take anything seriously.” But I really did love Nicole, and like holy matrimony, I was there in times of prosperity as well as times of hardship, for better or for worse, through thick and thin, and everything in between. We really weren’t meant for a conventional friendship anyways.
I don’t want to make the situation sound entirely miserable- we did manage, it just wasn’t optimal. Sleepless nights, eternal days, and sobbing in bathroom stalls during lunch included. Last night was of the sleepless variety. Nicole was living in an apartment while her family transitioned into their new house. It had no room for privacy, especially after being accustomed to a larger house. She constantly had to put on a cheerful face, and eventually all of the pent up emotions would spill over. I made a rule that Nicole had to call me the minute she began to feel anxious. Last night, those emotions didn’t just spill over; they pretty much erupted before she could speed-dial me.
She worried that her birthday would come and she wouldn’t be able to celebrate it, she worried that her sister wouldn’t be able to come home from college, she worried that her mother would be miserable without seeing her sister, she worried that her tutor wouldn’t be able to help her with Spanish on Tuesdays. Worry, anxiety, worry, anxiety. I’ve always thought that the most unfair thing in the world was that Nicole wasn’t able to distinguish between ‘worries’ and actual problems when she was anxious. I knew this; she knew this, so step one was always calm down minus a few crazy meditations (which we established were a little too much). Step two was to go through everything in a different light and hope that there wasn’t a step three because we didn’t have one. Bottom line, I wasn’t a trained therapist, and most of the time I would end up bawling my eyes out well before we made it through some indistinguishable form of step two. Anxiety definitely took a toll on the both of us.

I was used to having to put on a brave face but it never got any easier. When I was younger, my Mother essentially took in one of our family friend’s son and let him live with us. He battled horrible depression and in the simplest sense, it terrified me. He made our happy, bustling house gloomy and I hated it. I hated him, I was petrified that he was going to destroy my happy family, and even more scared that I couldn’t force myself to feel compassionate and understanding towards him. All of that time around mental illness and I didn’t want Nicole becoming as miserable and self-destructive as he was. But at the same time, mental illness scared me so much that I wanted to curl up in the fetal position. If we all have our vulnerabilities, mine was not being strong enough to go through that as a good person. It was a big burden to bear at the very least and I wasn’t even the one going through it. I was weak in more ways than one and I knew it, so how could I be the strong one now, when my best friend needed me?
Admittedly there was a certain aspect of ‘darkness’ that wasn’t included in my title as ‘The Comedy’. I was the same genuinely happy person for sure, but I also understood really horrible forms of suffering. I was exposed to say the very least, which in conclusion is probably what made me so adept to help Nicole even if I didn’t always believe it.

Nicole constantly questioned if she was good enough; did people like her, was she anything compared to her sister- and nothing that I would ever seemed like enough to invalidate those thoughts. This scene played over and over during every one of our morning car rides. Nicole drove and I listened. This particular Monday had particularly Monday-esque vibes, as well as very discernible anxiety all wrapped up in one big huge ugly present.
“Nothing is right today, I can already feel it. How am I going to get through the day?” Nicole’s voice was quivering, just like it had on the phone a few hours before. We were evidently reaching our breaking point- neither one of us had slept, we hadn’t come to any world-altering conclusions, and it was only 6 A.M. Forget patience and understanding, it was going to be a blessing if we could crawl into the school parking lot. “Take it easy today, I’ll be there whenever you need me so don’t let it get too bad. Remember you have your counselor, too.” I couldn’t honestly say that everything was going to be okay, and I knew that Nicole wouldn’t listen even if I did. She rather snapped back- “I’m going to end up beheading the first person I see and then crying in their face”. I knew the feeling. I added- “Whatever works for you.” I didn’t mean to be insensitive but at the same time I was running on three hours of sleep and we were hitting every red light in both a figurative and a literal sense. At least we had personality. And style- always style, even if it was a guillotine. “All kidding aside, I know I can’t make it through without a break-down!”

There was something magical about the moment that the rosy glow of the sun finally came above the trees. Nicole and I always vowed that we would sit in complete silence from start to finish because it would probably be our last moment of peace for the day- and today was no different. It was wildly appropriate that that moment came right as Nicole finished her sentence. The red light ahead of us faded into the warm rosy glow that stretched all around us, the hints of light filtered in through the buildings, and all of the angry morning rush became minimalistic as the sun renewed the darkness. Everything was quiet, but not really silent. There were uniform sounds of leaves rustling in harmony with the pattering of construction workers. For a minute, Nicole allowed herself to let go of her anxiety, and I allowed myself to not worry about Nicole. It was like the whole world was there too, in a single instant- sitting, listening, and whispering that everything was going to be okay for the both of us.

“If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind”
-Simon and Garfunkel