Писательница призналась, что бросила антидепрессанты после переосмысления смысла книги Шелла Сильверстина

I recently stumbled upon my copy of Shel Silverstein’s book, “The Missing Piece”, for the second time in my life. It’s a seemingly simplistic tale of a Pac-Man-shaped creature who is rolling on a hill, looking for the little curved triangle that could make him a complete circle. The first time I read the book was when I was 12 and just as earnest about figurative language as I am today. I filled the pages with pink and yellow sticky notes detailing my thoughts on the book, excited to agreeably talk back to the words. But I noticed my sudden absence of dialogue during the part in the story when the creature chooses to leave behind the one piece that fits perfectly. How rare I had imagined that to be, to find a solution so efficient! He begins to roll with such speed that the book could have ended right there, and my young mind was happy to resolve that life could be so quick, and sharp gravel doesn’t have to hit our skin because we can launch ourselves over each rough patch. And then, he just gives it up. I had no affirming language for that part. It made no sense to choose to be incomplete. It was around this time that my anxiety attacks began. I was always the sort of child my siblings referred to as “too sensitive,” teachers as “too distracted” and peers as “too dramatic.” I had anxious reactions to most encounters with the people in my personal space, which at that point was extreme nausea that caused me to swiftly leave many rooms with a pounding heartbeat and a rising brick in my throat. But, by the time I was sitting on the floor of the bathroom, I often stared down at the clear water and white toilet, unable to add the color of whatever sat in my esophagus. Other kids with stomach bugs would come and go from the room, throw up and then be excused from school with the proof in the porcelain bowl. I was so jealous that everybody else could see the color of their pain. Mine just remained stuck in my throat, all of the time.  My loving parents tried to help me in many ways — living room lectures, therapy — and then, in light of my continued nausea, I found myself sitting before my cold-handed pediatrician with a worried forehead as crinkled as the paper below my thighs. She wore an unnaturally sober expression as she asked me why I was nauseous. At some point, I admitted to her that I didn’t think I was good enough, and I wanted to just give up all of the time. I could tell that broke her heart, and that alone made me want to cry. We talked for a while, and whatever I confided in her that day led to me being handed a small orange cylinder with colorless pieces of confetti inside and a small speech ending with, “Life doesn’t have to feel this way.” She had handed me my very own missing piece, and I felt myself push it into my throat with my own hands every day for the next eight years.   Some things got better after I started taking medication. If depression is a distortion of the concepts and feelings we are subjected to as humans, antidepressants are a device that softens the strange shapes so that we may have an easier time perceiving them. The nausea finally stopped. I began to develop a heartening idea that the hole that had always festered in my body was no larger than a piece of confetti. The pills made the anxiety feel less powerful. But instead of that lost power being returned to myself, it felt like it was going to the medication. From there on out, whenever the anxiety started to get worse, I met with my pediatrician to increase my dose. Over the course of my medicated years, I increased my dosage several times and ultimately maxed out on a completely different medication than the one I had started with. The obsessive thoughts and anxious behavior never went away. I just lost the will to talk back to them, letting the antidepressants keep me just above the surface.  By the summer of 2026 — my eighth year on antidepressants — something inside of me was begging to break to the surface. I was on the maximum dose of my current medication and still, I was unhappy. I, a born outdoorswoman, had spent two years in a concrete city while suffering the many usual college heartbreaks. I was unhappy with my education at my old school, felt unfulfilled in friendships and was completely out of touch with my needs. When the winter semester ended, I made the biggest risk of my entire life by packing up and moving to North Carolina to become a white water raft guide. I met several souls, old and young, who knew so much about themselves. Some of my new coworkers confided in me about what it was like to be on antidepressants, and then to get off of them. They validated the emotional muteness of it all and the continued feelings of emptiness. Just as my pediatrician had said, they, too, didn’t realize that “life didn’t have to feel like that.” I was 20 by then and, having made the biggest risk of my life with my new job, was willing to make another for a sense of autonomy over my mental health. I stopped taking my medicine that week, only two months ago from today’s date, leaving my last bottle of pills full and unclaimed in a Walgreens in Southern Appalachia.  Gaining the control I desired from quitting did not happen quickly. Any security I had in my decision was immediately burned up when the withdrawal symptoms kicked in. The momentary psychological horror of going cold turkey made me feel 12 years old again, with my renewed adolescent nausea and constant urges to cry. I imagine Silverstein’s creature felt the same way when he surrendered his “missing piece,” feeling how clunky it was to roll as an imperfect circle. I wonder if, for a second after setting down his missing piece, he, too, was convinced that the sensation of withdrawal would follow him forever. It’s as if sweet air had finally entered our lungs and all we can think about is the burn of the first breath. The things that used to be easy become hard again. It made me feel useless and overwhelmed. I remember sitting with one of my older coworkers late one night, after a day on the river. Our bodies were always sore from rafting, but our minds were so awake with the thrill of white water touching every aspect of our lives. I told him my greatest secret: I was afraid of everything. He said he knew. He shared a few sentences about life and experience and eventually just put one hand on his stomach. I mirrored him, feeling the warmth of my core temperature. He didn’t have to say anything else. From then on, when I start to feel my pain and confusion rising up to crowd my throat, I put my hand on my stomach to remind myself of all the fullness I contain. I’ll feel my anxiety descend from my throat and return to my stomach to be digested into something empowering.  Depression is a disease. It is debilitating if left untreated. There are some of us who find the hardest part of our depression to be admitting that we need medication. My kryptonite, however, was admitting that I was using medication as a way to pretend I was treating it. I had put so much of my weight into a valued resource supporting individuals globally that it finally turned sour in my own body. I found my copy of “The Missing Piece” again two weeks ago, about two months after I stopped taking my medicine. I gently touched my crumpled-up annotations and felt a gentler memory of my youth rushing in through my fingertips. Amid all of the notes about trivial themes of perseverance explored in my earliest education, I stumbled upon a sentence scrawled in blue pen that still makes my stomach drop to this day. I looked closer at the creature in the story, clearly seeing that the “hole” in his body was really just a mouth. Perhaps he realized that closing it would silence his greatest songs, reject the heartiest food and, worst of all, stop him from talking back to the words on the page. To the 12-year-old me who wrote, “sometimes we just have to accept we will never be truly complete,” I can now see the value in the parts we already possess. Statement Correspondent Julia Carney can be reached at [email protected].