Another Umbrella Email

By Anonymous

Content warning: explicit descriptions of depression, death, suicidal thoughts, drowning; mentions of ableist terms describing mental health conditions

It’s raining.

I am drenched. I brought a raincoat. I’m even wearing it. But somehow I am still drenched. It was a twenty-minute walk from my friend’s house to the Peter, and I got drenched. My hair is sopping. It’s stringy where it is wet and frizzy where it is almost dried.

It doesn’t all fit underneath my raincoat’s hood. My jeans are soaked. They’re five shades darker than they were when I put them on this morning. They’re wet and sticking to my thighs like a second skin that I desperately want to shed. My raincoat only reaches halfway down my thighs. My socks are wet. I put on boots this morning and yet somehow, my socks are still wet. My feet hurt and are probably wrinkled beyond belief. My t-shirt has a wet spot on it. The hood on my raincoat comes to a point where all the water streams down. It’s streaming down into my coat. I am drenched, but my umbrella is in my bag.

I didn’t use it because at least when I’m drenched and miserable, I’m feeling something.

The last time I got caught in the rain, I was in a flimsy white dress kissing a nice girl who I had no business being with. I wasn’t attracted to her. But I was drenched and miserable and thought it might be nice to kiss her, to feel something. I knew it was going to rain that day, but I didn’t even bring a jacket. No umbrella. No boots. Nothing. Just me in my lacy white dress. I made an impulsive and bad decision about my clothes because I wanted to be wet and miserable. I made an impulsive and bad decision about the girl because I was wet and miserable. I think I’m depressed.

I think about Lake Waban a lot. I’ve got a lovely lake view out my window, and most times looking out that window I think what it would be like to be in the lake. I want to sit at the bottom of the lake and sit and sit until I drown. I don’t actually want to kill myself. That seems too drastic and I’m too lazy, but drowning seems like a good way to just do nothing. I just want to do nothing.

I wake up and I just want to do nothing. I go to bed and I want to drown. I am depressed because normal people don’t feel like this. Then again, I fuck things up too often to ever be considered normal. I ruin everything. I ruin everything with my impulsivity and my laziness and my sadness. I take comfort in the fact that I deserve this because I ruin everything. I am a stupid bitch who ruins things. Stupid, stupid bitch.

I am so tired and so done. I am drenched and miserable. I don’t want this existence, and it doesn’t really matter if I die, right? I’m not sure. I just want to walk into the lake and never come out again. But then I’d be even wetter. A raincoat doesn’t really help when you’re drowning.

Is that what the Stone Center is? A raincoat? I recognize that I need help, but I’ve heard Stone can’t help. I’ve heard all they want to do is put you on meds or send you to the gym or completely discount you and your feelings. That sounds like more of sitting out in the rain, which I can’t have. I want to call Stone, but every time I feel like I could I also feel like I could just go jump into the lake and achieve the same effect. Why is Stone so bad? I feel like half of Counterpoint articles are about mental health and most of the student body is in need of help, so logically Stone should be better at helping us. Why doesn’t the administration know that Stone is so bad?

Then again, maybe I’m just not one for therapy. I grew up with such a stigma surrounding it. My dad always gave off the vibe that therapy is for crazy, mentally-ill wackos. He never said anything explicitly, but he always gave off the vibe. Then again, you’d have to be crazy to want to drown at the bottom of Lake Waban. I think I might be crazy and depressed. But I need help and if I can’t go to Stone, where do I go? If I go someplace else, they’ll charge my insurance and my father will see the bill. He won’t like it if I’m in therapy. He would probably want me to come home, to leave Wellesley, and adjust to being “normal” whatever the fuck that means. But Wellesley itself is more of an umbrella than a raincoat. It keeps me dry even if it does have an idyllic lake I could just drown in.

Summer is coming, at which point I will have to leave Wellesley anyway. I’ll have lost my umbrella then. I won’t be able to send a mass email begging the universe to return it. Mental health problems are still mental health problems when school isn’t in session; the only problem is that my resources aren’t in session either. Summer worries me. The possibility of a summer storm will leave me drenched, and while there is only one Wellesley, there are thousands of lakes even if they aren’t Lake Waban. I need to get myself another umbrella. I will get myself another umbrella regardless of my proclivity for ruining things, regardless of Stone’s failings, and regardless of my father. For now, there is Wellesley and I’m not drenched. I will not allow a summer storm to drown me. I will get myself another umbrella.

From April 2017 issue