I Deserve To Be Well

10.04.2023

I Deserve To Be Well

by David Wimbish

I was 15 years old the first time I thought of ending my life. The dull ache of depression had lodged in my belly for several years like a sponge, soaking away the dopamine and serotonin from the rest of my body, buoyed only by, “it runs in the family,” from a generation that thought therapy, and especially medication, meant institutionalization and perhaps an eventual lobotomy.

With that company, and no avenues for productive processing, my only option was to accept the depression as a permanent passenger, walking in my own shadow as a sort of half-self. Then came “normal” life - graduation, college, marriage, divorce, career. I navigated them with my depression passenger, only aware of him the few times I felt his absence - the occasional taste of something delicious, the surprise late-night kiss, or a particular musical note vibrating my entire body until my hairs stood on end. In these rare moments of feeling, I was suddenly conscious of how little I felt throughout the other long stretches of existence. 

A few years ago, the passenger consumed me. I suffered a mental breakdown, followed by a failed attempt to end my life. I spent two years thinking I would never feel again. I couldn’t write music, couldn't even get off the couch. I reached up and grabbed the only ropes that extended all the way to the bottom: therapy, community, and music.

Therapy took some time in unraveling my mental knots, but it did so gracefully. Community lead to conversations with a friend on antidepressants who, after hearing my stigma-filled reluctance to get on meds, said, “You deserve to live a life at more than 50%.”

It was the push I needed - I started antidepressants and felt that small drip of serotonin usher back in a me I’d not known in over a decade. And thus came music. I began writing again, describing the receding passenger in word and note until a new, bright horizon appeared in the form of a new album. 

After I’d fully adjusted to the meds, a blizzard buried me in a cabin in Maine with my keyboard and computer, and I hopped out of bed one morning in tears, half-dressed, and danced around the cabin singing, “I deserve to be well.”

Our new song, Medication, wrote itself in a half hour, and became the new buoy for my brain - a regular reminder that we are worth whatever it takes to feel whole. Music served as a companion through the darkness, one of the few reminders that I am not alone in my depression. But now it serves as a companion through the light - a handhold for healing, and a reminder that I deserve to be well. 