Finding My Way Back to the Light

To experience joy, it seems that you have to be open to all the other possibilities. Being that open hurts. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I thought I knew what my milestone birthday would look like. Travel, ritual, connection, joy. Instead, it became something else entirely.

On May 30, I turned 45. I had imagined celebrating in Glastonbury, England, at a week-long women’s retreat filled with yoga, ceremony, and beauty. Instead, I spent my birthday weekend lying in my parents’ house in Texas, barely able to muster the energy to eat takeout for dinner. It was the opposite of what I’d envisioned. It was part of a long, dark descent into depression that blindsided me this summer.

When I booked my England trip a few months earlier, I thought I was creating something meaningful for myself. My plan was to spend a few solo days in London before joining the group retreat in Glastonbury. I chose Notting Hill, a neighborhood with sentimental weight: I had lived there during a semester abroad in 1999 while studying at the University of London. Back then, I was 19, idealistic, wide-eyed, eager. I thought returning 25 years later would give me both nostalgia and perspective: a chance to walk the old streets and reflect on how far I’d come, how much I’d grown and matured.

Instead, I found myself holed up in a tiny Airbnb at the top of a house on Portobello Road, paralyzed by the weight of depression. What had looked like a quaint room online became a cocoon of isolation. I forced myself to walk around the neighborhood a little, but even that felt heavy. The thought of getting on the subway and venturing farther into the city was overwhelming. My appetite shrank; food felt pointless. I looked around at people bustling cheerfully through the markets and cafés, laughing with friends, and I felt like a ghost among them. Everyone else seemed alive. I was not.

Looking back, I can see that Glastonbury was never really going to happen. Depression had already taken hold well before I boarded the plane. Yet I stubbornly flew to England anyway, thinking I’d magically snap out of it, not wanting to forfeit the money I’d spent on flights and the retreat. Instead of heading to Glastonbury, I booked a one-way ticket to Texas and flew out that same morning, abandoning the retreat altogether.

It wasn’t part of any plan. I live in Guatemala with my husband and our 12-year-old daughter. They would soon be leaving for Colombia to spend two months with his family. Meanwhile, my father was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer (not a severe case, but still worrisome), and my mother is living with Alzheimer’s and bipolar disorder, among other diagnoses. Maybe I thought they needed my support, but actually I needed theirs. Somewhere between gut instinct, guilt, and exhaustion, I fled to my parents’ home at Canyon Lake. Maybe I thought being there would ground me.

But depression doesn’t yield to family ties or the Texas Hill Country landscape. Canyon Lake has beautiful trees, blue water, and rolling hills, but in the summer it is blisteringly hot. My days blurred together in heaviness and fatigue. I wandered aimlessly through the house, unable to sustain interest in reading a book or watching TV.

My actual birthday, May 30, came and went almost unnoticed. We “celebrated” with Vietnamese takeout, my parents, my brother, and me sitting at the dining room table for fifteen minutes. Then I returned to my room, flattened again by depression. It felt less like a birthday than a reminder of how far down I’d sunk.

The nights were worse. Anxiety surged through me in relentless cycles, thoughts racing, my body restless. I was profoundly sleep-deprived, and that deprivation magnified everything: despair, hopelessness, obsessive thoughts about death. I wasn’t acting on them, but I circled them constantly, like a vulture over carrion. The lack of sleep became unbearable, and the line between exhaustion and danger blurred.

On June 2, I checked myself into the psych ward. The heavy door clanged shut behind me, and I immediately regretted my decision. I knew I had crossed a threshold. It was terrifying to admit I needed that level of help, but it was also, in its own way, an act of survival. I could no longer manage on my own. Depression convinced me that I would never get better, that I would always feel dark and in despair. Anxiety told me that I'd blown up my life, ruined my career, alienated myself from my family and community. None of it was true, but the repetition of these dire thoughts ruled my mind.

Two decades earlier, at 25, I had been committed to a mental hospital against my will after a manic episode ended with the police taking me to the psych ward and my parents signing the papers to have me committed. That experience haunted me for years. So choosing to voluntarily admit myself now, at 45, felt like facing my deepest fear, living out my worst nightmare. My mind told me I’d never get better, that I’d be trapped in endless depression and anxiety forever. But that wasn’t the truth. Slowly, with time and patience, I did improve.

Those two weeks in the hospital in June were some of the longest of my life. The psychiatrists cycled me through medications, tweaking and adjusting dosages in search of the right “cocktail.” Some days I was groggy and fogged, other days wired and raw. Nothing felt settled. The ward itself was stark: fluorescent lights, meal trays, vital checks, routine staff checks every 15 minutes throughout the night, the volatile mix of so many struggling souls in one confined space. The days bled together, marked only by medication schedules, mealtimes, and visiting hours. My dad, my sister, and my friend Amanda visited several times. Even their kind reassurances and loving presence irritated me.

Mostly, I remember the misery of time stretching endlessly. Scribbling about rage and sadness in my journal only to later tear up the pages in paranoia and frustration. Waiting to feel tired enough to sleep. Waiting for the meds to take effect. Waiting for some inner shift that never seemed to come. I hadn’t been this low since my mid-twenties, twenty years earlier, and the return of that despair was crushing. I was sure I had learned how to manage my mental health since then. I believed I had grown past this. But depression is ruthless; it strips away confidence and confronts you with your own vulnerability.

Still, in the midst of all that bleakness, there were small glimmers. A nurse who hugged me quietly when I was unraveling. A fellow patient who cracked a joke at lunch, briefly cutting through the heaviness. Tiny mercies, but reminders that I was still human, still capable of connection, still alive.

When they offered me melatonin that first night, I wanted to cry and rage. Over the counter! A natural remedy! I’d tried that back in Guatemala, and it hadn’t helped at all. That night I slept no more than three consecutive hours. It didn’t help that one of the other patients would randomly scream, “Help! Momma, Poppa! They’re gonna kill me!” at all hours of the day and night. A few of the mother-hen types did take me under their wings. One was just 23, but she helped pull me out of my shell when I first arrived, inviting me to play cards and board games. After dinner, she’d commandeer the TV room so a group of us could watch a movie to pass the time before night meds and the hope of sleep.

When I was discharged at last, I didn’t walk out “healed.” The meds didn’t flip a switch and restore my life overnight. Healing was slow, uneven, and ongoing. I spent another month at my parents’ house as an outpatient at a nearby clinic. Anxiety left, but depression hung around. Sleep came back, and I overcompensated, dozing more than I needed, as if making up for lost nights. I binge-watched Stranger Things and The Crown, ate too much junk food, got hooked on diet soda, and had little drive to help myself get better beyond taking my meds.

Nevertheless, I did get better, gradually.

Returning to Guatemala felt like a dream come true. The lake where I live looked almost unreal in its beauty. Home was waiting for me with its warm embrace.

My 45th birthday wasn’t the milestone I dreamed of, but it’s part of my story. A painful chapter, yes, but one I survived. Depression didn’t erase me. I’m still here — gentler with myself, grateful for my family, my home, and the simple miracle of breath.