Runaway Train (eBook)

When Depression Meets Heartbreak

Mark Torphy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
252 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-6912-5 (ISBN)

Infos

This book takes its reader on a journey through the depressed mind of a black man as he navigates through a heart-wrenching breakup. It destroys the myth that men lack emotion and the ability to get in touch with their feelings. It also displays the blurred lines between the author's factual reality and his depressed reality. This is a memoir of trauma, pain, internal analysis and self-discovery, wrapped around a detailed, compelling story. The title 'Runaway Train' describes the author's depressed mind as it speeds through self-deprecating, destructive thoughts that challenge his self-worth. While riding the emotional waves, you will see the depths of his despair, struggle, humor, and hope. The hope is that this story will give you a window into the process of a depressed mind, how powerful the mind is, and where it can take someone.

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This book takes its reader on a journey through the depressed mind of a black man as he navigates through a heart-wrenching breakup. It destroys the myth that men lack emotion and the ability to get in touch with their feelings. It also displays the blurred lines between the author's factual reality and his depressed reality. This is a memoir of trauma, pain, internal analysis and self-discovery, wrapped around a detailed, compelling story. The title "e;Runaway Train"e; describes the author's depressed mind as it speeds through self-deprecating, destructive thoughts that challenge his self-worth. While riding the emotional waves, you will see the depths of his despair, struggle, humor, and hope. The hope is that this story will give you a window into the process of a depressed mind, how powerful the mind is, and where it can take someone. Experience an inspiring story that challenges mental health stigmas and shares the struggle that far too many people endure. The Runaway Train shows how profoundly depression can grip the mind regardless of who you are and how society perceives you. This is a story of struggle, but also hope and self-actualization.

Textauszug

INTRO

Shit. I really do have to get up now. It’s 8:41am. I already slept through my 5:30am “work out” alarm and my 7:00am “get in the office early” alarm. Sigh. Time to go back to the cotton fields.

I had not been in the office in 10 whole days during the busiest time of the year for me. It wasn’t a choice. I could NOT go. My mind, my body and my soul were forcing me to rest. My depression had been on fire lately. The weight of it had been almost unbearable. My energy felt non-existent. My mind had been on hyperspace, zooming through the most horrific, emotional thoughts imaginable. Whoever said men don’t have emotions is a muthafuckin’ liar, just like my ex-girlfriend (for the sake of this book, we’ll call her Amber Johnson).

I lay for another two minutes, rubbing my eyes and the stubble on my head and face before I threw the covers off and rolled on to the side of my bed to sit for another few minutes. As I rubbed my eyes to life, I scanned my room—my sanctuary. It was the only room in the new place that I painted and put any effort into. My chocolate-brown, distressed-wood dresser which matched my bed sat directly in front of me, television perched on top of it, with my wallet, my keys and some of my workout clothes piled up on the side of the TV. I really should have put them away last night when I didn’t make it to the gym as planned. My chocolate-brown recliner sat in the corner of the room opposite the TV. My white hoodie lay halfway on / halfway off the chair from me throwing it last night as I got into bed. I should have put that away as well. Next to the chair was a TV tray with my laptop on it, waiting for me to feel inspired to write something. Anything. Just to clear out the internal clutter. I needed to get on it—it might help. Along the same wall, I scanned past my first window and bookshelf and looked out the second window to the dreary sunlight. The skies appeared as grey as my bedroom walls. The fan pushed dusty, cool air in my face while I continued to rub my eyes. Damn, I need to clean off my fan too. I can hear the motion of the cars leaving my townhome community, the huge apartment complex next door and the busy Georgia highway adjacent to my place. The business behind my home was starting to come to life with “Monday” written on the faces of all those dragging into work.

Even through all the life that is outside my window, the house felt calm. It should have. I lived alone. Everything was exactly how I left it when I got into bed the night before—thrown together. It wasn’t too messy, and it wouldn’t take long to straighten, but for someone with mild OCD, I didn’t do a good job of preparing everything before bed the night before. So, it was slightly uncomfortable. But I hadn’t been myself in a few months, so, this was just par for the course. Just making it through the day could be so exhausting, so little things sometimes fell to the wayside, even though regret would creep up shortly after.

As I made my way to the bathroom, I detoured around the bed to close the window. Looking out as I push down, I told myself it was going to be a good day. I tried to repeat that over and over, to start off on the right foot, but there was no denying, she had been on my mind since I became conscious that morning. I wished it would stop. That’s the problem with my depression. My mind would loop on a hyper-speed hamster wheel and wouldn’t stop. It felt out of control. It felt stronger than my will. I have said in the past to anyone who would listen that depression felt like a 3,000 pound blanket laying over my body—it was suffocating. It was heavy. It kept me down. It drained my energy when I tried to fight it, and I couldn’t just push it off. I needed help.

The other analogy that I have used is (and this is specific to my brain): it feels like a runaway train, barreling down the tracks on a mountain side or a steep hill, with no brakes. My mind is moving that fast and picking up momentum through the weight of seemingly only negative thoughts. The thoughts didn’t stop, though; they were on a loop and everything bad I could think about ran through those thoughts.

The thoughts were the runaway train. I pictured every lie I knew about. I pictured what I believed the thought process behind each lie was. I pictured a person’s motives and their intent. I pictured a sinister laugh, a picture of her and him not only plotting their future behind my back, but how to destroy mine in the process—like the bet scenario from one of my favorite movies, “Trading Places.” “How can we be happy and fuck your life up in the process?” And in the famous words of Eddie Murphy’s character, Billy Ray Valentine, you picture her saying, “He didn’t think we could do it. I won.”

As I walked onto the cold floor of the bathroom, I glanced at my sink. Going from left to right, my cologne bottles were lined up. Next, my hand soap. I looked past the faucet and mouthwash and for a brief second, my eyes locked on to something—my energy supplements, immune system supplement… and my anti-depressants. My muthafuckin’ anti-depressants. This muthafucka has me on anti-depressants, I angrily said to myself. I was so frustrated with the effect that she’d had on me that I could hardly appreciate the progress I’d made in healing. I thought that maybe the warm embrace of the shower would soothe me and wash some of this bitterness off my spirit. Maybe it would rejuvenate the spark in me to be positive and see life for the wonder and blessing that it is again. I’d been so off my game. My optimistic lenses had been clouded by this fog of pain and sorrow. I’m tired of that shit. She shouldn’t get to control my emotions. She’s not worthy of that. Fuck her, I thought.

In the shower, I stood still, letting the water run off my face and down my body while I tried to regroup. I seemed to need to regroup every 10 minutes, and it was exhausting. Yet I stood there, still, with my eyes closed—breathing slowly and deeply, attempting to calm myself. I thought about the tasks of the day. I thought about my blessings. I thought about my children. I tried to outmuscle my negative thoughts and fill my mind with positive images. I’m going to make this a good day, I told myself.

I finally had work to do at the office, since I let it pile up over the past work week. I had tons of my own side work to do—personal clients that I still serviced outside of the accounting firm I worked for. I still had to find the time and energy to keep the momentum going with my cardio, weight-lifting workouts, and my overall health and weight-loss journey. I also needed to make time to write, even if for no other reason than to get these emotions out from inside. I realized that I could fill my life with progress—small, controllable steps. Forward moving steps.

The plan was to take all of the things that I could control, the things I knew I should do, and anything else I could think of that I wanted and needed to do, and just do that. I planned to do the little, controllable things, and with patience and distractions, let GOD reveal the next steps of HIS path. I planned to stop worrying about the past and stop thinking about what she might be doing. I had to stop worrying about whether she was happier with him and how I would replace her.

I told myself to focus on a new life. Focus on GOD’s direction. Focus on things that would help me create a life that I wanted. The rest would take care of itself. That was the plan, and I had to believe in it. I didn’t have anything else to hold onto other than my faith that GOD had this, and that I needed to let go and follow my ordered steps. HE’s got this. HE has got this! Trust HIM!

Feeling clean and refreshed, I stepped out of the shower. While toweling off, I heard the faint gospel music coming from my phone in the other room, wrapped under my favorite comforter. I should have either turned it off when I woke up or turned on my Beats Pill speaker to let it engulf the bathroom and carry me into a different head space. The songs on this playlist were fitting given where my head had been:

No Weapon—Fred Hammond
I Give Myself Away—William McDowell
Gracefully Broken—Tasha Cobbs Leonard
Lost Without You—BeBe & CeCe Winans
Nobody Greater—Vashawn Mitchell

I had been listening to a worship playlist of these songs and several others at bedtime and throughout the night. I did it to cleanse my spirit in my subconscious. I turned on my speaker when I entered the bathroom if I really needed a boost that morning and when I needed something to overpower my organic thoughts. On this day, I thought I was good.

As I walked over to the mirror to take my medicine, brush my teeth and check on my weight loss progress, my temporary theme song began to play. I smiled.

“I’ve been changed.
Healed.
Freed.
Delivered.
I’ve found joy.
Peace.
Grace.
And favor…”

This song was (and still is) my ‘pick me up’. It made me bawl like a baby, gave me the strength to get out of bed, and rejuvenated life into me over the previous few weeks like only music can. My steps toward the mirror got lighter, as I could actually feel the strength building inside my body.

“(And right now) Right now is the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.4.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-6912-2 / 1098369122
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-6912-5 / 9781098369125