My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Mantra

A string of the most utterly uninspiring words ever to be connected in the history of spoken language happens to be my longest held, most treasured mantra. These words are beyond mundane, slumping gracelessly into the territory of off-putting. Nary an Etsy artist has painted them on a gaily colored plaque. Neither will you find them emblazoned on magnets gracing refrigerator doors in the homes of the mantra-minded. T-shirt sales would be abysmal and shall therefore not be attempted. I am quite probably the only human regularly regaling myself with this sentence, at least until you read this. Then, perhaps, you'll make my terrible mantra your own.

This sorry slogan was born in my mid-twenties, before I knew what a mantra was and at a time when I needed so much more than a punchy saying to better my days. I was in the midst of a stint of mental health even more awful than the maxim it would spawn. Depression had reached a debilitating level in my life. I regularly missed work, unable to convince myself to get out of bed. I slept for twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours, anything to avoid being aware of the spiraling void that was my inner world. I vacillated between not eating and bingeing junk food, avoided my friends, and quietly wished I had no family so that suicide seemed less of a selfish asshole move.

I was decided unwell, though thankfully not delusional. Knowing this state to be untenable, I sought counseling. Among the first questions my counselor asked: Do you exercise? Unable to summon the requisite energy for enunciation, I muttered something about exercise being a part of my past but nothing I could bring myself to do in my current state. She told me it was necessary. I'm certain you will remain calmly standing, or unloading your groceries, or doing whatever task you're about right now, utterly un-bowled over to learn that she was correct. When I exercised, I felt better. Later experiments with my diet proved that my outlook and function also improved when eating more whole and fewer processed foods. Ah, data, you alluring minx. Let me look at you. But only when I feel like it.

Had they been forced to join me on my mental health roller coaster, the next few years would have tried the patience of the most devout Buddhist monk. Time and again the depression would return. And time and again I would divert my gaze from data, focusing on how I felt, what the symptoms wanted from me. Depression did not want me to exercise. It had no appetite for salad, sunshine, or socialization. Depression whispered in my ear with its poison breath, just lay here. Skip the shower and notice, nay perseverate on, how awful life is. It's quite wise to indulge in a donut while you're at it. Don't worry, powdered sugar has yet to be classified as a gateway drug.

Data, meanwhile, was pretty but silent, a marble Venus in the corner with nothing to say in her own defense. She was a fact, as inarguable as the stone from which she would have been carved, had she truly been a statue rather than simply a statuesque collection of information. Like all facts, she had no drive to be seen or understood. She simply was, and so she would remain, whether or not I chose to recognize her.

The data was there. The depression was there. And in between was I, slowly rolling my glassy eyes from one to the other. I had facts about what would improve my outlook, reduce the symptoms. Trouble was, I didn't feel like doing those things. Giving in to the symptoms was so much...easier? In hindsight, nothing about being cripplingly ill was easy. But at the time it was such a monumental effort to go against depression, to rise from beneath its fetid exhalations, offering sweet, sugared distraction and the sweeter, if utterly fabricated, promise of surcease. From the darkness beyond the stony gaze of data, irony giggled with the smeared lipstick glee of The Joker as everything that "felt good" only inflamed the symptoms, pinning me more firmly beneath the weight of depression.

I would love to tell you an inspiring tale here. I woke from my depressive fog with an angel standing at the foot of my bed, severing the cords of depression from my soul with mighty swings of their fiery sword. Benevolent alien life-forms beamed me up and I returned with the resilient outlook of a Pleiadian and a fantastic and unfading streak of electric blue in my hair. Out of nowhere, the Dalai Lama emailed me with the wisest of counsel and an invitation to do life-altering charitable work involving llamas. I met a lucky rabbit named Svoot who used his magical powers to speak, telling me the error of my ways over tea and crumpets. The truth, my friend, is less fantastic, much like the mantra soon to be born from it.

Depression, despite the allure of its powdered sugar promises, was obviously a liar. Data remained in her corner, as silent and nubile as ever. And I, betwixt the two, was quite simply tired of feeling shitty. I'd run the experiment thousands of times; the results never varied. What I felt like doing was an empty promise. After the day(s) in bed, the unreturned phone call(s), the second (or third) day without eating, the third (or fourth...you do see where this is going, yes?) sleeve of Donettes, there was only more darkness. The muted pleasure of giving in never materialized into the ephemeral promise of getting up, of coming back to life.

Though data still spoke no more loudly than the marble maiden to which I compared her above, she remained stalwart. Like a quietly glowing lighthouse in the ocean of my illness, she illuminated the true path forward. Data doesn't lie, and the truth had, after agonizing months of denial, at last become inescapable. The things I least wanted to do paid a guaranteed return. The treasury bonds of mental health, my habits alone could promise the ROI that skipped showers and powdered sugar had failed to provide. At last ready to surrender into the marble arms of data, I formed and folded into my heart and life a truly insipid mantra:

I don't have to want to; I just have to do it.

I don't have to want to exercise; I just have to perform the necessary contortions to get into the sports bra and embrace the sweaty boobs. I don't have to want a salad; I just have to put down the donut and make like Svoot. I don't have to want to get out of bed; I just have to use the need to pee as an excuse and go straight from the toilet to the shower. What must be done has no need to be appealing, because it is effective. (I'm pretty sure, at this point in our tale, a glance to her shadowy corner would show data's marble lips curling into a smirk.)

It is well and truly lacking in the appeal department, this mantra. It doesn't ring with power, resonate at the frequency of quantum shifts, or make a catchy sticker everyone wants for their water bottle. At this (or any) given moment, no one is monetizing a YouTube channel around this phrase. Don't go looking for any "I don't have to want to; I just have to do it" guided meditations. You're sure to be let down. I'm not even certain that it's grammatically sound. As far as mantras go, this one is a solid let-down. But here I am, nearly three decades later, still saying it.

I don't have to want a cold shower; I just have to turn the hot tap off and know my nervous system will thank me later. I don't have to want hard conversations; I just have to adjust my big girl panties in such a way that I'm able to be curious and vulnerable. I don't have to want to become an armchair expert in perimenopause; I just have to become an advocate for my own health. I don't have to want a squeaky-clean diet; I just have to pass on foods that make me feel crappy. I don't have to want a phoenix rebirth; I just have to recognize that I'm already standing in the ashes and decide it's time to rise.

These days my mental heath is sound, my tolerance for discomfort a thousand times its once subterranean level. I have a clear vision of the future I am creating and am eager to take action in that direction. Yet I still find myself needing to do things I don't particularly want to. Perhaps there will always be a voice, a Tina Turner-esque whisper, faintly scented with decay, suggesting that settling under the weight of constriction is preferable to the effort it will take to expand, to evolve, to ascend. Mayhap the day will never come when the appeal of hard choices today that invite forward an as of yet unrealized future matches that of powdered sugar.

Or perhaps a blissful happily ever after is, even in this reflective moment, hurtling through the quantum field, preparing to burst forth on this plane. Tomorrow (or any given day) I may wake in a land of milk and honey where data (smirking bitch that she is) is the path of least resistance. No longer marble, she is transformed into gleaming yellow brick, and somewhere over the rainbow there is no need for mantras, horrid or otherwise. If this place exists, like Rumi's field, I will meet you there. I'll bring the donuts.