[U Nam Back From The 80s Rar
Kody Coste
On February 17, 2020, I was at a crossroads, deciding whether I wanted to live or die. After contemplating suicide for two days, it seemed like that was the only answer. I had battled depression for years, but I never told anyone how I was feeling.
On February 17, 2020, my wife left for work. It was a government holiday, so I stayed home. My daughter was leaving to return to college after visiting home for the weekend. As I watched her drive down the street, I believed that this was going to be the last time I saw her. I started to cry and begged God to help me. I struggled with both wanting and not wanting everything to end.
As I grappled with this inner conflict, a voice told me to call someone. I picked up the phone and called the Indiana University Health psychiatric floor. I told the person on the other line that I was in trouble, and he responded by telling me they did not have any beds and to call outpatient services.
I followed his instructions, but my call to outpatient services went to voicemail. I called the psychiatric floor back and insisted that I desperately needed help, only to be referred to the local emergency room. Finally, I called my wife and told her that I was suicidal. She came home and took me to the hospital.
At the hospital, I completed an evaluation and was admitted to a psychiatric care facility for four days. I was ashamed and humiliated at first. But after the hospitalization and participating in a month-long outpatient treatment program for my depression, I gained a whole new perspective.
Being vulnerable and asking for help is scary, but with the help from the right people, that feeling is short-lived. I hope that by sharing my story of recovery, anyone experiencing symptoms of depression will feel empowered to seek help. I found a way back, and so can you.
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I lived about 150 miles north of the furniture store, in the Santa Maria Valley with my mom, sister, brother, and dad. Our local winds acted as devilishly as the ones the essay was detailing. Walking home from the bus stop, gusts spat grit and gnats into my eyes. They grabbed leaves and trash and whirled the debris in tiny cyclones along sidewalk gutters. During a windstorm, invisible hands snatched my skirt, tossing it above my ass, flipping it up in the front, inverting it like an umbrella. These same hands grabbed my dark hair, winding it around my neck, garroting me.
Because whiteness is made oppositionally, Didion relies on this controlling image. Becoming a lazy Mexican purifies her. Hibernating in the heat will restore her WASPy womanhood. Like Alcestis, she will reject the permanent sleep offered by the underworld. She will never, at her core, grow lazy enough to quit caring about the work waiting for her in the United States.
Santa Anna ruled as president of Mxico an inordinate number of times. (You could rightly call the man a dictator.) Regardless, the United States has his leg. It followed a circuitous route to the Midwest after grapeshot fired by a French cannon in the Mexican state of Veracruz tore it up. Doctors amputated it and Santa Anna honored the casualty by staging a state funeral for it. Wearing a cork and wood replacement, Santa Anna fought in what Mexican history books call la Guerra de Estados Unidos contra Mxico but while fleeing the Battle of Cerro Gordo on horseback, Santa Anna left behind his prosthesis. U.S. Infantry captured it. Soldiers took their trophy to Illinois, where it remains a roadside attraction.
This instance is the only time that the word Mexican appears in this iconic essay about a place that was once Mxico. Given how primitive Didion finds Mxico, and Mexicans, it seems that the comedic pleasure she takes is oxymoronic.
I was also struggling not to gawk at breasts. They jiggled and hung everywhere. The backyard was Lesbos. Topless women lounged poolside. Others congregated in shallow water. A few floated alone, arms outstretched, eyes closed. A muscular lady in a bikini bobbed in an inflatable plastic donut covered in icing and sprinkles.
Didion inherited a wagon-trail morality from her ancestors. From my queer Brown ancestors I inherited a different kind of morality, one that drives me to write for Lewis, Salvador, Antonio, and Jeanne. In this moment, California belongs to them. This sentence is their title, their deed.
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Growing up, basketball was my life. Throughout my childhood, I played for hours a day. I was always shooting and dribbling and perfecting my skills. Even as a small kid, I was successful in the sport and had no problems with injury, always getting knocked down and springing right back up like nothing. That was until I started having elbow soreness.
I always assumed the soreness in my right elbow was a growing pain. I was just a young kid, and with all the basketball I did, a little soreness was expected. However, as I got older, my elbow just never seemed to get better. In 2018, my parents took me to an orthopedic facility in Maine. After a series of tests, the doctor there advised me to do physical therapy (PT) and take six weeks off from sports.
Osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) is a joint disorder in which a segment of bone and cartilage starts to separate from the rest of the bone after repeat stress or trauma. Most often, OCD develops in the knee, though it can occur in the elbow and other joints as well.
The day after my 16th birthday, Dr. Donald Bae, an upper extremity specialist, confirmed the diagnosis and recommended surgery. I was devastated, to say the least, that my first year of high school basketball would be taken away just like that.
Thankfully I got support from another athlete who also had OCD in his knee. He helped me understand what to expect and gave me advice on how to recover as effectively as possible. About four months after my final surgery and a whole lot of PT (60 appointments in 2022), I was able to get back to training in basketball.
The first step I took towards improving my grade was to look back over the test. I identified the errors I made on the test and asked myself critical questions: Why did I get this question incorrect? Did I make a simple error? Did I misunderstand this topic, did I run out of time, did I feel confident while completing this problem on the test? After my test had been returned, the last thing I wanted to do was look at all the mistakes I had made. Yet, tackling these tough concepts as soon as possible would actually help me to better evaluate my understanding and adjust accordingly.
Based on this realization, I decided that I would dedicate a limited amount of time each day, roughly an hour, to work on understanding the concepts that had challenged me. It was easier to motivate myself when all I had to commit to was studying for a set amount of time each day, rather than getting overwhelmed by the enormity of all of the difficult concepts I had to master before my exam.
Of course, this was easier said than done. My first year of college, if I received a bad grade, I would get stuck in this endless loop of waking up early and staying in the library until late at night. After this test, however, I decided to be intentional about identifying opportunities to rest and find moments of joy. I went on nature walks, cooked, and spent time with my friends. When I struggled to find time for these activities, I decided to make time by scheduling them into my planner! Because I was well-rested, my performance during my dedicated study times actually improved.
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So early in grad school, I started submitting research papers to top journals. The first one got rejected. So did the second. Experts in my field were telling me that my work was not good enough. I wondered if I should drop out.
SARAH: I moved my entire life across to Manhattan, and I didn't know a soul on the East Coast, and I maxed out every single credit card to move into my first shitty, hot, sweaty apartment in Manhattan, and I showed up for work.
SARAH: When I was in college, Richard Branson and the original Virgin Airlines had really ascended, and he just represented such an incredibly awesome anti-establishment view that I just personally really connected with.
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