The most lost and depressed year of my life came after one of the best year’s of my life, the year I returned to UC Davis after my junior year abroad in London. That return year, I was lower than a ditch in Death Valley.
My year at the University of London was amazing. And still means the world to me. I experienced and saw so much. I grew in world view, capability and a bit in confidence.
My childhood was sheltered and suburban, my role the “good girl,” who only ventured from home an hour and a half to go to college. I generally felt—confined.
But I was deeply curious.
In London, I navigated the Continent by Eurail with a rucksack during the winter holidays and hiked from hostel to hostel, village to village (pub to pub) in England’s Lake District while the daffodils bloomed. I saw Alan Rickman play Jacques in As You Like It at the Royal Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-Upon-Avon, before he was a film star. He was tremendous! I went to museums galore, to castles, cathedrals and historical and architectural sites that were often ten times older than those in the U.S.
I performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland (in The Interview, an absurdist play by Octave Mirbeau) while 100 bagpipers gathered in the park below the castle. I served as assistant director for a production of Twelfth Night, sung cabaret, and helped to direct and edit a three-camera studio shoot of Endgame by Samuel Beckett.
I studied a bunch of subjects that I wanted to study, including American Literature, fascinating from the British perspective, read a ton—especially plays—saw one or two stage production almost every week plus a bunch of concerts. I held jobs, made friends, and had an expat British boyfriend for part of the year.
I became the “tea mother” among my friends, serving chocolate digestive biscuits and black tea in my dorm room in the late afternoons and on Saturday nights after the pubs closed—stopping for kebabs on the way home.
I journaled and observed people.
I enjoyed life far away from my childhood . Very much.
The year was not without loneliness. And trouble (with men, mostly). And unconscious self-judgment and other internal baggage that I brought along for the ride. I had a long way to go to be “fully-formed.” But it was still one of the greatest years of my life. A sea change took place.
But when I returned home, I was expected to return to the “show already in progress,” resume my life as it had been, as if these changes and new perspectives and experiences had never happened.
People asked, “How was your trip?”
Trip?! It was so much more than that. But when I tried to explain what the year meant to me, how my world had expanded, doors opened, it felt like no one was listening.
In one conversation, my father even said, “London ruined you.”
He doesn’t remember it. And being who I was at the time, I never protested or argued or asked him what he meant. Instead, I let the phrase rattle around in my head for decades.
Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash
I wanted to continue to explore the world. Since one of my goals was to become fluent in a second language, I applied for and received a partial scholarship to a program in Mexico. My parents didn’t want me to go and wouldn’t fund the remainder. They wanted me to finish college. It was understandable. Perhaps they thought I wouldn’t, but I very much wanted my degree! With my “good girl” syndrome, I didn’t try to persuade them. I didn’t even think to take out a student loan and go anyway (It wasn’t very expensive). I was 21 years old.
So, I went back to UC Davis to finish up my English degree. Most of my friends in the Drama Department, undergrads older than me and MFA students, had graduated and moved on. I arranged while still in London to rent a room in a house owned by professors (and parents of a dear friend/prior boyfriend) that was occupied by all theatre people. I had the smallest room in the house. The only bed I had was an old vinyl fold-out couch of my parents. It didn’t fold out all the way in the room. My two other roommates were both men, one an MFA student, a good guy and a good actor. The other roommate was an undergrad who I didn’t care for and was the living embodiment of Pig Pen. He kept his dirty clothes in a shopping cart in his room, and the smell that emanated from his domain could make your eyes water.
And then I tried. I smiled, went to classes, auditioned for plays. But underlying everything was a mild, heart-dimming depression.
I felt so stuck and unhappy.
Even though I had navigated myself around Europe, I did not know how to captain my own life. I mentioned this in a previous post, I believe. The metaphor of how I lived my life (up until I was a 31 years old) was floating down a river unable to swim, the current just taking me. I didn’t know how to take control of my life or how to take care of myself. I was thus prone to being a victim. It wasn’t pretty, and now, looking back, I feel so sad for that girl.
One night during that first semester, I was working, selling tickets in the glass booth of the local movie theatre—a fish in a spotlighted bowl—and the sadness and frustration inside were just too much. I started crying. A fellow walking by happened to see.
I was so lost. He spoke sympathetic words. I was sick and yearning for anything of that sort. I let him befriend me. His name was Yule.
After I got off work, I went with him to the Blue Mango, a little hippie cafe in town that I had never been to before. He sat down at an out-of-tune upright piano and improvised a haunting piece of music.
In the weeks that followed, I went to San Francisco with him and busked on the street, singing for money. I compromised myself sexually with him. I let him borrow my car, and he broke it. I had to borrow money from my dad for repairs.
He had been an Aggie, he told me, and had left a week before graduation, so he wouldn’t have to pay back student loans. He told me he knew more about me than I did about myself. He wondered out loud to me about the systems of life being rigged, about possibly being a messiah.
I was that depressed.
One day, I drove him to visit his mother in Vallejo. She lived in a sketchy neighborhood in a small Spanish-style with the only tended front garden on the street. Yule said that people in the hood knew to respect her. While he took my car to take her grocery shopping, I sat on the front porch and watched as African-American children sold drugs to young men in red sports cars. An older white woman waddled out of her house to collect the money from the kids. I had never seen anything like it before.
Finally, after a couple of months, I woke up. A friend of Yule’s helped me get my treasured Gibson guitar back from him, and I escaped.
Depression can make you do the illogical.
I went on that year to flunk a class for the first time. It was Irish-Anglo literature, and I read everything in the class and wrote all the papers and loved the work. And then didn’t show up to the final.
I slept around a bit, something I had never done before. Then I rebounded with a younger guy, a damaged type, appealing to my Florence Nightengale tendencies at the time. It was a horrible relationship that I nursed for too long, even sharing an apartment with him.
There were more moments of poor judgment, of lowering my status, allowing verbal abuse, of self-sacrifice, of floating down that river.
I survived the year and, after one more quarter of classes to complete requirements, I started my teaching credential program while working at a preschool. I stayed busy, found things to enjoy, resigned myself to what was at hand, as I was in the habit of doing. I didn’t feel fulfilled nor in control, but I didn’t feel so depressed anymore.
It used to be really painful to recall this stuff. And I didn’t dare share these experiences with others. But I have worked very hard over the years to forgive myself, the girl I was then, and let go of the shame accumulated during that year—and before and beyond. It’s okay. I was depressed. I didn’t know any better. There was a context to it all. I’m just glad I’m no longer that girl. I have so much sympathy for her now. And love.
The only bright spot during that horrible year was my time on stage. I landed some great roles and performed well. In character, I was free for a while. I had blocking to follow, lines to say, and with that reliable structure and an appreciative audience watching for an or two under the dusty stage lights, I was safe and oddly in control. I didn’t have to just follow the current down stream.
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash