The Dorky Writer: depression

Alexandra, The Dorky Writer hadn't been able to move for months. For almost a couple of years. She hadn't fallen into a sleeping course, but that would've been so much better. She had lost herself in every way possible. Her handsome wizard boyfriend had left her with no true explanation, she had given up the encounter against the Mighty Thesis; she hurt herself in that thorny forest, she drank her feelings and then let them out to have something to drink again. Her environment was consuming her.

She didn't understand how, but three angel-like people found her right on time. They took her to a healer, where she liked to keep flowers of all kinds: some wittered, some fully bloomed, but all of them well taken care of. The path to recovery was tricky. Even though new tools were given to her to recover her way again, she kept going back to the forest to see if she could die, if she could recover what she once thought was hers, feeling unworthy and unwanted even though those four helpers always told her she was indeed worthy, someone worth fighting for. She couldn't comprehend. The language they spoke became unnatural and there was no interpreter. There was no other remedy but to give her strength and courage potions. These made her feel sick of herself even more, not because of their effectiveness but because they made her see herself and made her ask herself how she had fallen so down.

So, yeah. My boyfriend, now ex, broke up with me with arguments that, with the passing of the months, seem weaker and weaker. Seems to me he wanted to get rid of me from a long time ago but didn't know how. I'll just say he did it in one of the most cowardly ways possible, the moment I needed him the most. But I don't want to talk about him here, I already have enough with a lot of unsent messages I have for him and all the times I have to talk about it with my therapist and psychiatrist.

I am being treated now for depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and, to make it more awesome, cyclothymia. I am under medication since December 2019, although the therapies started back in October. I was reluctant to take pills again, it felt like I was going back to a path I had already taken. Also, I didn't mind if I died at all. I wanted it... needed it. I had lost so much: John, my Master's Degree classes, my will.

I cannot say I feel like new now, I still feel so damn bad sometimes, as if I'm going back to the beginning but I'm actually different. The pain for everything is there, every day, not every minute of the day, though. BUT the biggest problem is there when the bad days come: I don't want to get better. This is not just make an effort, Ale, as everyone loves to say, this is about me not wanting to do it. Fortunately, if I can say it, just this month, my psychiatrist has finally found the right medication for me. That process has been so damn difficult! Apparently cyclothymia isn't as easy to identify as bipolar disorder.

Currently, my mind is right on the top of the roller coaster. I fear this might be a maniac phase. But that's an issue for another chapter.

End of Chapter 8

TW: Anxiety, depression, death, rape, sex, abortion.

"I am a woman who lives and does everything passionately. When I love, I love hard; when I hurt, hurt badly."

It was difficult to read this book. Difficult to the point I considered stopping. It made me cry since the beginning and made me remember things I thought I was ready to let go. So, pay attention to the back cover's warning and mine: "this book might make you cry..." Even so, I regained courage and continued. Yes, I kept crying, but less this last time. The other part of the warning is also true, by the way: "{this book might] fill you with nostalgia, empower you, or even give you hope."

It's both sad and comforting to know that we are not alone when it comes to heartbreaks, even if it seems that way. Castro Mármol writes down feelings of pain and longing that we might not know how to express through letters and poems, which might seem familiar from other poets nowadays, but that have the precise words to connect directly to you, even if you are not experiencing any of these feelings.

"Eighteen Inches" is an inch-by-inch journey that shows us that love might come and go and that it can be also found again, even if it comes in a different way. I don't feel empowered or hopeful after reading it but I think it's because I'm not there yet, not because this book fails in its purpose. I'm sure that it can be just right for someone else.

I'm eternally grateful to Mirtha, who decided to share a part of her soul to us.

I could read this book thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing ;)

MIRTHA MICHELLE CASTRO MÁRMOL is a Dominican born actress and poet. At the age of five, her family migrated to Miami, Florida. She wrote her first poem at the age of six and since then cultivated a passion for poetry. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California. “Letters, to The Men I Have Loved” is her debut as an author. It consists of profound letters and poems directed to various men during different milestones in her life. Her work expresses loss, love, pain, growth, and hope.