30 Years of Clouds

I am depressed. If you know me, this should come as no surprise, but if you don’t, well, ta-da! Do you want to know what it’s like inside the head of someone whose major depressive disorder controls their life? Well, let me tell you.

Today, I’m 30 years old. I’m lucky to have made it to this point. The forecast wherever I may be will read sunny, rainy or snowy on the daily, but for me, it’s always cloudy. My depression makes me feel flat. I take two different medications to try and combat this, but it’s hard to not be flat. I haven’t cried or had the urge to cry in almost a year.

I’m frequently irritable. Frustratingly so. It gets so bad sometimes that I feel awful for those around me that have to deal with me, especially on a daily basis. I’m constantly, unconsciously utilizing a grand victim complex to make it sound like the world specifically hates me. In my view, it does. I’m just the laughingstock. I’m the joke—the punchline of my inner circle’s life.

Depression feels like putting a car in neutral. It feels like I’ve been stuck in a mode of thinking since the first loss of my life came and went. When my grandmother died, my childhood died with it. I have not felt the same since. I have gotten over her death practically, but not emotionally.

You’d never know it, looking at this face! Look how normal and handsome this 10-year-old child is! Right?

He was going through some shit. The cake was good though.

My childlike tendencies come out in strange ways now. I love animation, and one of my favorite shows is Bluey, a kids’ show about a six-year-old Blue Heeler dog learning lessons. My inner child is appeased and I wish I could be in those days enjoying this without fear of loss.

Bluey’s four-year-old little sister, Bingo, is a lot like me. The more reserved, but more imaginative, child. The super sensitive kid whose feelings are hurt at every perceived slight. My mind will immediately snap to “my life isn’t fair.”

In the episode titled “Favourite Thing,” Bluey recalls an anecdote about Bingo tripping up her words and saying “difficult” as “trifficult.” The family laughs as if it was just a silly poke, but Bingo cries and runs from the dinner table into a corner, and no matter what they did, she could not help but feel sad. I felt this way just last week.

It’s so hard to be quirky, or different. As a kid, any difference is an easy target for more socially adjusted or more popular people to jump all over. It’s no different for me today. Many days I feel like the jester, dancing in the court amidst the world to entertain, and not to be anything further in particular. That is what my mind thinks and my body feels.

I was the one who imitated my favorite shows growing up, and embarrassed my friends, or gave them significant ammo to make fun of me. I was the one who loved cartoons and anime, and a game series called Fire Emblem (a little too much), loved expressing my fandoms through writing, and over and over I think to myself, man, was I ever the largest target. I deserved what I got.

I caught shit for even playing my Game Boy on the bus. For years I had a particular bully who would not leave me alone about this, and I just hid it behind my backpack so he couldn’t see. That kid has given me scars he will never know, and that eats at me more than you could possibly imagine.

Being laughed at by your entire group of friends in seventh grade for spilling Sprite on yourself without anyone offering to help adds to the mix. My former school district was so inept they basically put me in modified lunch detention daily to get away from my peers made things even worse. Sitting in class in eighth grade going through anti-bullying education when two people who actively bully you whisper, “why are we even doing this? this doesn’t happen here.”

I had neighbors throw snowballs at me as I walked home, alone. I would be the only person who was cross checked into the grass when we played street hockey by one neighbor in particular. There’s reasons why video games I grew up with have hundreds of hours on them. I never went outside. I didn’t want to subject myself to that harassment.

In seventh grade, my mom wanted to be a chaperone for a music department trip to HersheyPark. Only one other student signed up to be with me…his reasoning was to make sure I wasn’t alone. I’ll never forget that gesture. But I also won’t forget feeling so forgotten.

In third grade, we tended to caterpillars that grew into butterflies, and released them into the wild. Only one didn’t survive—mine. I still get laughed at for this when I tell the story…and it’s not funny to me. Just another pack of ammo for the people out there.

I’ve endured cyberbullying, especially in Facebook’s early days, for notes I used to write about feelings I had and experiences I went through.

I was even bullied for my choice in underwear as a sixth grader. Can you believe that shit? Since then, locker rooms scare me. And yes, I have to go into one frequently for work and face that fear.

I was called everything. Fat. Gay. Homo. Dumbass. Worthless. I was kicked. Elbowed. Lonely. Misunderstood.

I felt like my entire middle school life was spent amidst assistant principals and guidance counselors. I don’t think people in my life understand the depths of the scars of which I carry, and still recover from, even as many as 17 years later.

I would come home to my parents saying that I hated my life. Sometimes I wanted to stab myself with a knife in the chest and just get it over with. I frequently said I wanted to run away from home. I feared everything. I was a scared child who should have had it like any other kid, but I didn’t. I can’t go back and erase that and try again. I’m an adult now.

Self-consciously, I’m reading all of this as I go, and I’m thinking, “see? how in the world can people put up with this shit from you on the daily?”

However, I want my 30th birthday to be a change. It won’t be overnight, I know. I want to be seen as normal. I have depression, OCD, and I will be tested soon to see if I am on the autism spectrum in any capacity. The monotone voice and clinging to interests from childhood are two potentially large factors of being on the spectrum.

I don’t care how much you like Eeyore, or think there’s a similarity between him and I. If you tell me I sound like him, it is not okay. That boundary will never change, and you will never convince me otherwise.

I ask that you be okay with the fact that I love drumming to music in the car, dancing in the store, or singing at the top of my lungs to music I love. I ask that you be okay with the fact that I absolutely riff on anything I’m watching, with quips at every turn.

I’ve lived with that embarrassment for far too long. No more. I refuse to be told that I embarrass people. I am who I am.

Too long I have suffered. Too long have I been oppressed by these chains that bind me to a past that should have been incredible. I should not have to apologize for who I am. I want people to see me as Jordan Kuhns—an introvert who defied odds to do what he wanted to do in life, even with all of this around him trying to hold him back. The quirky purveyor of sarcasm. The incredible listener. The one who understands.

I ask that people attempt to forgive me for my irritability, or arrogance, or stubbornness, and understand it comes from somewhere deeply pained, and deeply engrained in my own sense of self. I want to be better, and I am trying.

I forever thank my family, who has stuck by me and supported me in any way possible throughout this. I thank my friends, who continue to accept me for who I am. They are my bedrock.

I want the forecast on my last day on earth to be sunny. It was sunny for this little one, attached to his Thomas the Tank Engine pillow. I feel awful for him, knowing what’s ahead. He looks so peaceful.

It makes me want to cry.

I wish I could. Maybe someday.

Today is the day that anything that happened to me before is no longer an excuse. Today is a day that I move forward. I’ve made changes to my life, and my mindset that will allow me to be even better. 30 years of clouds will break up, and sunny skies will be assuredly ahead.

That little one will be proud of me someday.