Dog Medicine

by Julie Barton

  The psychiatrist wasn’t what I expected. She looked like someone’s mom. She had short brown hair and was wearing a long denim skirt with a gray and white flowered turtleneck. Her desk was flanked by four tall gray filing cabinets, everything except the computer stacked messily with papers. I flopped down on the black leather couch and stared at the back of her head as she wrote something on a clipboard. She swiveled around to face me.

  “Hi,” she glanced at the clipboard, “Julie. I’m Dr. Miller. I understand your parents are very concerned about you. Can you tell me why that might be?”

  I had to stifle laughter. She was so earnest. So ridiculously fake. She didn’t care about me. She didn’t know me. This was her job. Then, I thought, I can’t take this anymore, and I felt the tears coming.

  “Good luck fixing me,” I said, staring at the floor, failing to fight the tears that betrayed my attempt at a steely exterior. “I’ve been to about ten therapists and no one has been able to help.”

  “Well, I’m not a therapist,” she said. “I’m a psychiatrist. I’m an M.D. I can help you figure out if there’s something wrong physiologically that we might be able to help you with.”

  My cheeks flushed. Fuck. This was bad. I’d been sent to the crazy doctor. Maybe this had all gone too far. Surely I could snap out of it. Shame fluttered through me, and the tears came hard.

  “Can you tell me why you’re crying?” Dr. Miller said in a quiet voice.

  “Because I always fucking cry,” I said. “It’s my thing.”

  “Okay, can you tell me what you’re feeling right now?”

  I wanted to tell her that I was terrified, that I didn’t want to go to an institution, or that maybe I did. I just couldn’t fathom feeling better, and I didn’t know if I wanted to feel better anymore.

  Instead I told her about Clay, about my dad working all the time and my mom always being fine and never really talking to me. I told her about losing my boyfriend and leaving my job in New York and not knowing what I was going to do with my life. I told her about hating Ohio, about hating myself, about sleeping and eating sugar to dull the pain, about having no friends left.

  “Do you ever think about suicide?” she asked. We made eye contact. I knew enough about doctors to know that you never tell them you’re thinking about suicide if you really are.

  “Not really,” I said. “Just being really injured. I want someone in a hospital to take care of me. I want to be broken so I can be fixed.”

  “Okay,” she said, like we were done. She swiveled back to her desk. I checked the clock. We’d been talking for forty-four minutes. She handed me a piece of paper and said, “Take this to the front desk and they’ll get you all set up.”

  “Set up with what?” I asked, thinking they were going to wrap me in a straitjacket and toss me down the old laundry chute reserved for the too-far-gone cases.

  “Just a follow-up appointment with a new therapist, and maybe some medication,” she said. “Thanks so much for agreeing to come. You did the right thing.” She gave me a tight smile before looking back down at her paperwork. I stepped into the hallway and she closed the door behind me. I stared at a faded picture in a flimsy silver frame on the wall, an eagle soaring over pine trees. Then I read the paper in my hands. She’d circled, “Major Depression—MD—First Episode.”

  I wanted to collapse and cheer. I’d been given a checkbox for a fucking psychiatric disorder. There was a reason that this was happening, but holy shit, I was sick-in-the-head! I had never known anyone who had been diagnosed with depression. In my quick estimation, this was shameful and scary. I felt swept away by this piece of paper, and there was not a bone in my body that thought for a moment that the psychiatrist might be wrong. I took a deep breath to let it soak in. Then, as was my habit, I placed this diagnosis right next to all the other diagnoses I’d absorbed over the years. Ugly, Weird, Stupid, Fat, Unlikable, please meet your newest teammate: Depressed.

  PALE YELLOW PILLS

  MAY 1996

  I sat on my living room floor in front of the television. Pamphlets and stapled stacks of paper surrounded me. My parents were trying to look busy in the kitchen while sneaking glances as I read about these drugs they wanted me to swallow, these drugs that would change my brain. Because something was terribly wrong with my brain. All of this felt like a kick to the gut.

  The picture on the front of the Zoloft pamphlet showed a sunrise under bright blue, italicized block letters. The blue-jean-dress psychiatrist had given me a prescription for this medication, and I left her office convinced I would never take such a drug. The thought of swallowing medication that would affect my brain seemed ludicrous. Why would I ever do such a thing?

  Still, as I drove home from her office, down the central Ohio roads cradled under huge trees with brilliant green leaves, I felt a shift. This dark, scary, oh-so-phenomenal pain I was suffering might be treatable by a drug. If they’d made a drug for the awful way I felt, then this was something others had felt before too. That thought alone pulled me one smidge out of the blackness. There were others like me. But where? Were they all hiding on their parents’ couches too? Why didn’t anyone ever talk to me about feeling down? Really down? Was this so shameful that it shouldn’t be discussed aloud?

  After my flat-out refusal to take the drug, my parents went into research mode. My dad found and printed every piece of data he could about depression and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). He brought them home and handed them to me. “Just read it and see what you think,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything.”

  Part of me wanted to remain this way—fucked up and sad—to show my poor, gallant, hopeful, caring father that some things weren’t fixable, especially people. Or to punish him, to expose that I was broken partly because of his absences. But those truths were beginning to be overrun by the bit of me that wanted to feel happiness: genuine, deep, inside-out happiness. I wondered if I could be happy; I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t know how being okay and staying okay felt. The thought was enticing enough that I continued reading the Zoloft pamphlets.

  I read about side effects, hoping for weight loss and skin improvements, but instead found weight gain and loss of libido. Then I read what this drug helped eliminate: prolonged feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness, sometimes running in the family, sometimes not. The pamphlets described an inability to function that was sometimes triggered by traumatic events such as breakups or moves, and childhood events such as abuse and neglect. This was me. Had my parents forged this? Had my dad hired a doctor friend to write this just for my convincing?

  After an hour of leafing through the pages, I landed at the final conclusion: Why not? It couldn’t get much worse. I gathered the pile of documentation that Sunday morning and walked into the dining room where my parents were reading the newspaper. I stood before them, their faces open and hopeful. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay what?” my mom said.

  “Okay, she’ll take the medication,” my dad said, smiling at me. My mom’s eyes searched mine, wanting confirmation that he was right.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why the fuck not? It’s just my brain.”

  “Julie,” my mom chided.

  “Fuck it. It can’t get much worse,” I said, noticing a hummingbird hovering outside at a yellow and red feeder. My parents, in their silence, agreed.

  Within the hour, my mom drove the prescription to the drug store. My dad and I sat and watched a football game on television while we waited for the pills to come.

  “Want anything?” my dad asked before he went to the kitchen for a handful of cookies and a soda.

  “Nope, I’m fine,” I said, acutely aware of how far from fine I was. The decision to take the pills terrified me. I was sick, really sick. I sat on the couch huddled in a ball and fell asleep without noticing.

  When my mom came back from the store, I woke up an
d went to the kitchen. She handed me the pills and we stood on opposite sides of the kitchen’s island.

  “You know what else might help me?” I said. Her face brightened like I’d just told her we’d won ten million dollars while she was at the drug store. The fact that I had a potential solution for my terrible malaise appeared astonishing to her.

  “A puppy,” I said. I could hardly believe I’d said it. I was sure my mother would laugh at the idea, but she didn’t laugh or scoff or sigh. She knew me well enough to know that this wasn’t a joke or a dark stab at a stupid solution. “One that’s mine,” I said.

  “I think that’s a great idea.” Her face relaxed. Then her tone shifted into skepticism. “I’m not sure what Cinder will think, but that’s okay.” She offered a nervous laugh. Her ever-so-slight negative reaction to my very first attempt at self-help bristled deeply. Didn’t she know how hard I was trying?

  “She’ll be fine,” I said, starting to walk away, knowing I was being an asshole but too hurt and sensitive to help myself.

  “What kind do you want?” my mom asked as I left the kitchen, then, “Great idea, honey!” she said, just before I slammed my bedroom door.

  Here we were again. My mother said something innocent that cut me sideways, and I couldn’t stop the rage. I couldn’t stop wanting to punish her when all she was trying to do was love me in the best way she knew how.

  JUNE 26, 1996

  I’d been taking the medication for seven days but still didn’t feel different. Mornings were tough; waking up was the hardest. I would lie in bed for an hour or more after my body awoke. Physically getting up felt too emotionally difficult. My parents’ mantra had become Two weeks. Two weeks until the medication kicks in. They were desperately hoping the Zoloft would help lift me out of the darkness.

  We’d talked about getting the dog soon, and over oatmeal that Sunday, without asking her to, my mom perused the classifieds looking for puppies. She held a steaming cup of coffee in her hand as she read aloud, “Australian shepherds six weeks AKC, beagle puppies, German shepherd . . .” She was scanning down the page to golden retrievers. I’d gone to the bookstore and bought two books: Prozac Nation and A Guide to Your Purebred Puppy. I tore through Prozac Nation, a little frightened by Elizabeth Wurtzel’s too familiar, dark and self-destructive reaction to feeling the same way I did. When I needed a break from the Wurtzel book, I perused the puppy book. Each breed was ranked according to traits like the amount of exercise required, the ease of training, and sociability with strangers. I earmarked about eight breeds in the sporting group: Brittany spaniels, golden and flat-coated retrievers, Labrador retrievers, Irish setters, Weimaraner and English springer spaniels. I studied each page with surprising focus and found myself returning to golden retrievers: easy to train, loyal, big, great running partners, and beautiful. A family dog. My new family.

  I also bought a book on training and was reading about how to bring a dog home so that the transition was as smooth and trauma-free as possible. I bought a crate, food bowls, and a leash. The preparation was a welcome distraction.

  “Golden retriever, AKC pups, ready to go,” my mom pointed at the newspaper with her cherry-red fingernail. I had to grin as she put down her coffee, snatched up a purple pen, and circled the ad. “Here’s another one. Golden Pups, Parents on Site, City of Alexandria.” She circled that one too and wrote down both phone numbers. I was learning to recognize that my mother’s willingness to help me get things done was the way she tried to connect with me. This was how she knew to express herself: with actions, not words. I hadn’t apologized for my rudeness the other night. I never apologized to my mother; she rarely asked it of me; and still, she showed up. I imagine now that I would have imploded much earlier had she punished me or been angry about my awful behavior. These are things I didn’t consider then. I couldn’t fathom not having my mother with me, on my side, always forgiving me until I finally figured out that inflicting pain on her was not actually what I wanted to do. How very lucky I was.

  She called two of the phone numbers, and they confirmed that we could come see the puppies that day. We dressed quickly, jumped into her top-down red convertible and pulled out of the driveway. It was a blissful mid-summer day in central Ohio: seventy degrees, bright sun, and puffy clouds. Flowers bloomed everywhere. The summer bugs were just beginning their daily chorus.

  I’d begun seeing a new therapist named Mya. She was young—a therapist in training. She was under thirty years old, had just moved to Ohio from Seattle, and I liked her immediately. Her soft-spoken tenderness put me at ease. She was pretty with straight brown hair and striking green eyes. She crossed her legs at her ankles and wore solid colored skirts that ended just below her knee. I told her about wanting a puppy and she said she thought that sounded like a perfect idea.

  My mom drove us down our street and turned onto the long two-lane road that would eventually lead us to the highway. We didn’t talk. I leaned back in the seat, holding an old towel. The book said that the best place for a puppy to ride home was on a towel in his new owner’s lap. I couldn’t imagine a wiggly puppy wanting to sit in my lap in a convertible. Maybe we’d have to put the top up.

  The first litter we saw was at a house in the suburbs east of Columbus. We walked up onto the front porch and a friendly middle-aged woman came outside, pointing us to the walkway around the side of the house.

  “They’re all back here,” she said, wiping her palms on a soiled apron with faded pink flowers. “We have two of them sold already, but two are still available. Both females.” We opened a chain link gate and saw a six-foot-wide wire pen in the center of a big grassy lawn. The flimsy metal practically burst with the excitement from the puppies.

  They were irresistible: fuzzy white blond fur, eager sparkly brown eyes, and big floppy paws. The woman’s three children also came out to the yard, and they showed us that it was okay to reach in and pick up a puppy, let it run in the grass. Each puppy barked and squirmed, jumping in an effort to be free. I laughed and picked up a little female. Her razor-sharp puppy teeth grazed my hand as she leapt out of my grasp to go run in the yard. Within a minute, she was in a full sprint, racing to catch up with her siblings. She stumbled and landed chin first in the grass, her little tail flailing. She regained her footing, sat up, shook her head, and took off again. We watched them play, happy in their freedom, but the pups didn’t come back to us. They played in the yard, oblivious to our voices. I went over to them, tried to call one to me. I’d read in the book that when you’re choosing a puppy, the puppies that wander off and don’t look back are likely to do that when they’re grown up as well. I turned to my mom who stood smiling with her arms crossed.

  “Let’s go look at the other litter,” I whispered.

  “Okay,” she nodded. She turned to the woman and said, “Thank you so much for showing us your beautiful puppies. We’ll let you know if we decide one of them is right for us.” I was so impressed with how my mom said her polite no-thank-you. I nodded in an awkward way that was supposed to convey, Thanks and Sorry. Neither sentiment translated and the lady gestured in a way that said: I’m not insulted. Should I be insulted? I felt overwhelmed. I hated people. I wanted to go home and hide on the couch.

  We got back in the car and drove farther east past the Franklin County line, way out into the countryside toward the little hamlet of Alexandria. A few trees lined the roads, and beyond them stretched endless fields: soy, corn, wheat, and potatoes all the way to the horizon. These fields calmed me with their simplicity, their singular purpose. We drove down near-empty country roads that every once in a while intersected another two-lane road. We’d stop, look around, then continue on our way. Birds perched idle on telephone wires, some taking off with the approaching rush of our engine, their wings pulling them up higher, higher, and away.

  I closed my eyes, breathed deep. These were just like the roads I ran on during my last semester of my senior year
in college. My classes were over by 2 p.m., so every day at two thirty I strapped on my running shoes and left campus. The only promise I made to myself was that I would jog slowly, take a different route every day, look up at the trees and sky when I ran, and only skip one day a week. It was the beginning of a few of the happiest, most peaceful months of my life. In New York, I would walk down shadowy sidewalks dreaming of the openness of central Ohio, yearning for roads flanked by fields, for their freedom and isolation. These roads cradled me. I realized this now. I’d been trying to hate Ohio, because it was so hard to be at home. But the land had actually always been there for me all along. As a child, the moon had lit my room on sad nights. I’d wandered cornfields and puttered around at Lehman’s Pond. Those were some of my best childhood memories. And here we were, my mother and I, only thirty or so miles south of my college, sailing along a quiet country road after my breakdown, on the search for my new family. I comprehended at that moment that I was beginning to actively try to heal.

  As we neared the farm, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting my head fall back so that the sun warmed my pale face. I accepted that lovely moment with gratitude and hope.

  When I felt the car turn, I squinted and saw a long gravel driveway flanked on either side by fields that had gone to seed with weeds and wildflowers. At the end of the driveway stood a tall white farmhouse cradled by a crescent of century-old trees. Dogs barked as our tires crunched up the drive. A lanky red golden retriever ran toward our car, tail wagging, barking, hackles raised. A few puppies ran in the yard behind the house, free of fences. This was looking good so far.

  A tall blonde woman in her fifties stepped out of the farmhouse’s side door, the screen door slapping shut behind her. She waved and smiled at us as we cut the engine and stepped out of the car. “Ooh! A convertible!” she said. “Great day for it.” My mom smiled and introduced herself. We all shook hands.