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Oranges In The Freezer

  • Kathryn
  • Jul 19, 2015
  • 3 min read

I write a lot about depression now. It's been such a defining but unnamed presence in my life that now, 240 mg of daily medication later, I'm here trying to dissect my mental illness, examine it below a microscopy and hunt for its chemical composition.

Wellesley's Science Center has long bridges between the older and newer sections of the building. They go two, three, four stories up, and then you can push the envelope on your brain's way-too-high-o-meter by accessing the fifth floor balconies. From that last perch you can see

all

the

way

down

past the first floor and to the library on the one below it.

I would leave class and go to these balconies and bridges. A sort of tenseness sets into your body when you become aware of a gaping vast empty space around you: the world tightens and you tighten with it. A blankness comes into your mind and a vibration comes into your bones. When you go up to the railing -- waist-high and always seemingly completely inadequate -- and put your hands on its topmost rail, you can gaze down, down, down. Many things provoke a sense of drifting unreality: this experience was at the top of that list. It's the juxtaposition of I'm totally fine and oh my God, my God, I could die.

The compulsion to jump from high places is called “l’appel du vide" in French. It translates as "The call of the void." Everyone has intrusive thoughts: the passing urge to jerk the steering wheel towards the forest, to drink too much wine, to jump from high places. But some of us get stuck in that twilight zone where the eerie music is stuck on an audio loop and Rod Serling is nowhere to be found. I think it's the best way I have to explain depression. Your brain takes you up to that fifth floor balcony, sometimes for a day, sometimes for six years, climbs your feet carefully to the other side of the rails, and says, Hey, friend, it's going to be really sad when you jump. And you're going to jump soon.

Altogether, the whole thing gives a new meaning to what lies "between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge." Especially since two seasons of The Scooby-Doo Show have taught me that if my brain doesn't get the job done, the pterodactyl ghost will.

I spoke to a close friend about dealing with fear and obsessive thoughts earlier this month. Her mother, a nurse, once advised her to put oranges in the freezer and take them down when she needed a distraction. Frozen oranges are a full sensory experience: the coldness and the hardness distracts your sense of touch, the citrus smell distracts your sense of smell, crunching and squeezing the pulp distracts your sense of hearing, tasting the orange distracts your sense of taste, and of course the orange itself distracts your sense of sight.

The psychologist I see has explained that obsessiveness lies at the root of many of my struggles, and, well, there's no anti-obsessive medication that can magically make you be able to sleep and think when something is not in its right pattern. But you can distract yourself from engaging in your obsessive act as a way to stave it off and endure it without acting on it. Having oranges in the freezer was suggested to me as a way to cope with fear, but I think I'm going to start trying them for pattern-solving, too.

Even if it doesn't work, frozen oranges gives me something to toss off of high places besides myself. And I guess I could chuck them at the pterodactyl ghost as well.

 
 
 

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