Nightcrawlers
Depression, Pete and Pete and The Bled
by Taylor Hruby
Strap in, this shit ain’t funny.
The Bled has a song called “Ruth Buzzi Better Watch Her Back”. In it, there's a beautiful break where the singer screams “you're not alone”. Things like this speak to me in odd ways. I started writing an article a few months ago while thinking of The Bled. I would write about being depressed, about my anger issues, my hatred for irrational things, or whatever and I would end the articles with “you're not alone” and post the song. The story I had started was about The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Kind of.
I’ve been kind of going through an existential crisis on what it means to have this site, to have this avenue to people’s brains (or at least the illusion of an avenue, I have no idea if anyone actually reads most of this stuff), to try and ‘entertain’ someone with my written thoughts. I bounce back in forth between “real” and “funny”; between interviews and rambling nonsense; gimmicks and structure. But yesterday I read something truly heartbreaking. I read a story about Madison Holleran, a 19 year old girl from New Jersey who couldn’t deal with failure, so she hucked herself off of a parking garage, but not before buying all of her family some trinkets she thought they’d enjoy. I’d urge you to read that article, but I also understand why reading something like that might weigh down your day. This article will be no better, so feel free to back out now.
In the article, the author, Kate Fagan, talks about depression. She talks about the hiding, the fakeness, the “filter” that we use to address such things. She talks about how we filter ourselves to hide that pain. She uses Instagram filters as an example, which is phenomenal. We present these happy faces to people all day, every day, but what happens now that we can’t shut that off? How do we deal with the fact that we hide ourselves at work, at school, for 8 hours a day, only to come home and continue this devastating façade through a computer screen and by extension, our "real" friends? She wrote about the way we talk about this kind of shit with our closest friends, but some people still can’t get over that hump; they still can’t tell those closest to them how much they are actually hurting. I started to think about how we never tell each other anything real. I figured I should start up my Pete and Pete article again.
Which brings us back to “The Nightcrawlers”. If you’re not familiar with this episode, I’ll set it up a little bit for you. Little Pete goes up against the International Adult Conspiracy, the group of adults who set the bed times for children everywhere. Little Pete is 10, so his bed time is 9. Which is illustrated by an awesome chart in the episode:
Anyway, Pete hates the fact that he's missing out on all the fun stuff every other kid is doing while he's asleep. So he and his friends devise a plan to stay up for 11 straight days to break a world record set by an Australian housewife. They start strong, but the episode is just them all succumbing to sleep, slowly, but surely. Even Artie (The Strongest Man in the World) can't stay awake. One by one, his friends fall asleep. One by one, they leave his side, until it’s just him. Pete's mom comes out and tries to call his bluff, but he breaks the world record playing flashlight tag with her and they decide on a new bedtime, 10:15, and Little Pete wins one for kids everywhere.
This episode resonated with me a lot as a young man, but I'm not sure I knew why. The most important part to my young mind was Little Pete talking about how unfair his bedtime is because there are kids all over the world who don’t have to be in bed and they’re having all the fun. Little Pete was missing out! Sure, I thought a lot about what kids everywhere were doing, just like Little Pete, but I have always had a tougher time sleeping than that. And, later in my life, I've wondered if Pete had a real problem, like me. I couldn't sleep, but for much different reasons.
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For as long as I can remember, I've laid in bed and thought about really bad shit. I used to lay in bed, back in my house in Wilton (so I couldn't have been more than... 8?) and think about the people I love being dead. Not about their deaths, not about them dying, just about them being dead already. It wasn't a graphic, miserable demise, it was the aftermath. It was nightmares about how I would try and cope with them not being around and me failing at that horribly. It wasn't their deaths, it was the loneliness. The abandonment. Eventually, my anxiety would hit a point where even running out of bed to my mom to get yelled at for being out of bed was worth it, just for the break. (I suppose this is more about my anxiety than my depression, but it's sort of a "what came first..." type scenario for me. Am I depressed because I have anxiety? Do I have anxiety because I'm depressed?)
I would find her and tell her I had a nightmare and she would always say, “You haven't even been in there long enough to fall asleep. How could you already be dreaming?” How do you express to your mother, at less than 8 years old, that you had just had this nagging feeling that something bad was going to happen to her and you didn't know what to do? That someone you depended on for safety had perished and now you were alone? I'm a “grown up” now and I can see why “The Nightcrawlers” meant so much to me. Maybe Little Pete was actually like me. Maybe it wasn't his bedtime that was pissing him off. Maybe he just couldn't sleep because he didn't want to be alone. Maybe he was scared about what would happen while he was sleeping.
When I could fall asleep, I used to constantly have a recurring dream that I was running from vicious animals. As I got older, I just started running from unidentifiable objects that I inherently knew were “scary”. But when I was a child, I ran from animals. Snarling, salivating, child devouring animals. I would run and run and run, then I'd reach the end of a cliff and I'd fall and fall and fall. I still hate heights. I stand up on something tall and that falling sensation immediately returns. Years later, I would dream that there were people outside my window, just staring at me. Never really doing anything, just watching me. It's still unnerving, but it was much more so as a young man. I eventually started listening to a Walkman while trying to fall asleep. It was so awful that I would need that music so badly to sleep that once the CD would stop, I would wake up to start it back up. I felt like I couldn't sleep without it, even though I was already sleeping soundly. In high school, I just stopped sleeping. I wouldn't sleep until I was absolutely exhausted. After I graduated, I moved out and I avoided sleep like I avoided responsibility. I'd sleep for a couple of hours at a time, be up a day or two, then sleep for 16 hours straight, then be up forever. It was vicious, but it was better than missing out on something. It was better than trying to fall asleep.
Growing up with depression, I just blacked every shitty thing out. I remember these shitty things, but I don't remember them, you know? It's an experience I recall having, but it seems so fake. It might as well be someone else's experience. This is the defense mechanism that I've built for myself. It's like I was asleep all those years.
It was at it's worst a few years ago, when John Hart, my best friend, bandmate, roommate, a million other things, passed away. I ‘lost’ that time. I can’t remember much about the years between his passing and right around my wedding. I feel like I was completely robbed of at least 3 years of my life. I was a zombie, I was incredibly emotional, I was lazy. I was asleep and I was miserable. And now, 6 years later, I not only think about John, I think about that lost time. I don’t just think about all the shit I miss about him, I think about all the shit I missed out on by wasting my time crying. John died and I don't think I slept a full night for at least a year. I woke up to my phone vibrating on my night stand to hear about his passing, so from then on I had to leave my phone on the floor so that wouldn't happen ever again. I would lay in bed and think I could hear it. I would think I was missing another horrible phone call. Should I answer it? Should I just let it ring? Where was my god damn Walkman?! Eventually, I'd check my phone and obviously no one had called. Turns out, even 20 years later, it's hard to sleep when you think someone is dying somewhere.
I often lie awake and sing songs to try and occupy my mind. If I don't, it tends to wander and all of a sudden I'm having a panic attack. Most of the time, I grab my wife to reassure myself that everything is fine, but sometimes that doesn't do the trick. I get up and eat a small snack or just walk around. It's much better now than it was because I get up so early that my body is more ready for sleep when that time comes now. I still struggle with it, yet it seems to be retreating a bit. It used to happen all the time, when I was real young. Then it was relatively rare, but happened sometimes. When my friend died, it started back up, full force. Now it seems to be regressing again, but I'm worried about what my anxiety and depression will do to me when my son or daughter comes in August. It's a lot scarier to worry about someone else than yourself.
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I didn't mean to ramble there, but I wanted to illustrate some of my struggle. That's not the only struggle, but we only have so much time and it's the worst part of my depression/anxiety. I know now that I was depressed back then, that I had anxiety back then, but I was just terrified. I had no clue how to handle anything, let alone things like this. I've grown to live with the ebbs and flows much better. I didn't know how to fight through it, didn't know how to occupy myself better, didn't know how to fake a better smile, but I do know some shit now. I know it sucks to be in the dark (figuratively, but sometimes literally), I know it sucks to think you're alone, I know it sucks to think no one knows what you're going through. The reason I posted that article about Madison Holleran was not only to illustrate why I felt compelled to publish this article, but it was to show you what can happen when you don't say something to somebody. Tell someone you're struggling. Depression is a very real thing. If anyone doubts that, they're an asshole and not worth your time. Don't hide behind any filters in real life or otherwise. Be yourself and you'll be a hell of a lot happier anyway. If you need to talk to someone, talk to me.
You're not alone.