Should I roll over the edge, or jump?

My first encounters with depression and anxiety did not start only in my early 20s, but that coincided with the time when I got conscripted, and I had to write down the D Word, on paper, for the first time.
Years after the fact, I was sharing experiences, from the military days with a colleague who had also served around the same time.
One of our younger colleagues overheard us talking near the watercooler and he became curious, he just jumped in and asked about the “Military Subscription.”
He was a gamer and loved those first-person shooters.
I told, him, “No, it’s conscription, not subscription, you won’t be receiving cool stuff in the mail, or any add-on value packs for your games,”
In short, it means the government owns you, and tells you to report for service, and they can send you to war.”
Whenever I chat to people about conscription, the one reply has often been an expected response, “Why did you do it, I would never have gone!”
That’s just the problem though, we had the option of not complying, but it meant ending up in the military detention barracks: Prison no less.

So, I mentioned doing paperwork regarding the D Word for the first time in my life.
I remember sitting in a communal area, there in the base before final platoon-allocation.
Someone mentioned something about “These guys will go to Bravo.” I had no idea what Bravo was. I was only clad in underwear, because all the new intakes were being prodded and examined during health, and psych evaluations. One would imagine Psych Eval to be part of Health Eval?
One of the questions on the document we all had to complete, asked, “Are you aware of anyone in your family who had ever been diagnosed or treated with depression?”
Yes, there was my mother, who, until she passed away, suffered from debilitating depression.
There was also my grandma, and beloved aunt I lost to depression ,  when she could not bear the burdens of this world any longer.
But I only filled in a single word : “Mother.”

Years later, sitting in my cubicle, I knew I had reached rock-bottom.
This was as low as one could go.
Of course, that was incorrect, you can always go lower.
That’s just how my mind works.
Within despair, feeling trapped, and overwhelmed, I think about stuff like, “How would anyone define rock-bottom in universally agreed-upon terms.”

The corporate machine provided a free service where staff could chat to certified medical professionals.
Those kind people helped a lot, over the course of a few days, but just depression manifests after hundreds, if not thousands of events and thoughts assimilated over a long time, the “cure,” for me specifically, did not present itself immediately.
In a world where real-time responses are expected from computer systems that realization was disappointing.
After all, we just want to “move on, and put things behind us.”

late that afternoon, I somehow found myself at the train station, like I had done a thousand times before.
I could have taken an earlier train, but I didn’t want to go home.
Back home my lovely wife was waiting, but the idea of going home meant I would need to confront the one person who knew I was not “OK.” The one person who could look into my eyes and see it all without saying anything.
My anger at that point in my life made it impossible to talk to me about anything except the most basic of day-to-day stuff.
Remaining at the station, sitting there on the platform was a brief escape from reality, it was LIMBO.
Remember that scene from the 3rd installment of The Matrix: MOBIL station? And that wretched Train Man?
Change the letters around in MOBIL, make it an anagram, and you get LIMBO.
I liked the limbo, there at the far corner of the platform, being neither at work, and not going home either.
There I was … on autopilot , Thinking, “Maybe this is it? Imagine how easy it would be to lean forward, mind the gap, and merely fall in front of the oncoming train!”
And despite thinking the unthinkable I still found a way to pander to absurdity.
I wondered, is there a protocol, do you get up and run, do you lean forward and just fall? Do you scream? Do you at least wait until there aren’t bystanders around?
In later years, even at a group session I was berated by one attendee who told me not to make fun of these things.
And that’s just it, I wasn’t making fun, my fried brain was frying my thoughts just a little bit more. It was a subjective, and very personal experience.
Often that’s one of the reasons we forego telling our stories , because we fear potential judgement outside of context.

Something about a memory from the days in Bravo Company surfaced between the arrival of the fourth train, and the departure of the third.
I judged my fellow recruits harshly back then , proclaiming them to be losers.
“We gotta deal with stuff, we’re soldiers now, and all that. Tigers don’t cry, cowboys don’t cry either!” That kind of thing.

And I guess I laughed at myself there, at the edge of the platform, thinking, “I would rather be a loser than a hypocrite!” because I found myself in a similar position to some of those recruits I watched break down in an army base.

That evening I got onto the fifth train, and I went home.

Matt
2025 02 03