I was depressed, so I climbed a mountain
By: Meaghan Cohen
Tags: Depression, Mental Health, Hiking, Life Lessons, Challenge

Please enjoy this awkward summit selfie

Alright, so it wasn’t Everest. But it was certainly a challenge. Mount San Antonio, locally known as ‘Mount Baldy’, sits just above 10,000 feet overlooking the sprawl of Southern California that lies northeast of Los Angeles. Bagging this peak was just the kind of conquest I needed to fix the nasty funk I’d been in.

I’m usually a confident, positive person. I’ve worked very hard on cultivating these traits as an adult. I believe we are in control of how we feel, and that we are generally responsible for our own happiness. But when I recently suffered a quick succession of unfortunate events, I discovered that I am not always the warrior princess of mental toughness I thought myself to be. I am only human, and when life was unkind, I slid slowly down into a dark, ugly place.

I moved to California a little less than a year ago. I left an incredible group of friends back in Atlanta, which has weighed heavily on me. It’s hard to leave wonderful people who love you and understand your soul. The first six months I lived in San Diego, I was traveling almost every weekend, so I didn’t make many friends. In June I broke up with my boyfriend of four years, so by the fall I had very few friends and no romantic interests. (And I am a woman with needs, so this was difficult in more ways than one). I was a lonely and a little, uh, ‘thirsty’, but I told myself to stay optimistic. I ticked off my usual list of blessings like good health, comfortable financial situation, and the fact that I live in ‘paradise’ and berated myself for feeling low. How could I possibly feel anything but happy?!

In early October I got laid off. As a stand-alone event, this was actually pretty great. I was bored and ready for change after working at a media start up for just over 10 months. The company shut down without warning, and suddenly I was at liberty to job hunt and focus on my writing and photography with the safety net of unemployment benefits. I felt free, weightless and full of possibility in the first few days, just like how I felt when I first moved or first became single. It’s such a rush to go through an upheaval and have new possibilities and opportunities.

For a while after losing my job I stayed busy. My roommate and I moved to a new apartment, and so setting up the new place occupied a week or so. I worked on rewriting my resume and updating my online job site profiles. I would go out and party hard, since I didn’t have to wake up for work. I threw myself into Tinder, making what I thought were some good connections. A favorite opening line when chatting on Tinder is ‘What are you looking for?’ After a little reflection, I realized that ‘attention’ was the honest answer. Uh oh. But I shrugged this off too, assuring myself that there was no harm in trying to meet new people and of course that’s all I was really trying to do.

When things unraveled, it happened so quickly that I don’t know if I can even pinpoint when it started. Suddenly everyone in my small social circle was either out of town or too busy to hang out, and my loneliness started to spiral into paralyzing isolation. The job hunt was stalling out, with zero interest from anything I had applied for. Desperate for distractions and attention, I was relying heavily on strangers from Tinder for human connection. When I got repeatedly rejected, via the ruthless ‘ghosting’ tactic, it destroyed my self-confidence way more than it should have. Enough rejection will break anyone down, even as I told myself over and over not to take it to heart.

During this time, it felt like the walls were closing in on my world. I was forced to spend most of my time alone with my thoughts. This isn’t a bad thing when it’s done by choice, but at this point it wasn’t a choice. It felt more like a punishment. I was still dancing around all the negative feelings that were welling up inside me, refusing to confront or even acknowledge them. I kept repeating my tired mantra of how lucky I was compared to people who ‘really have it bad’, denying myself of the basic right to feel bad for myself for even a minute.

Sleeping ten to twelve hours and binging Netflix became my daily routine. Doing anything creative or active felt like a chore. I forced myself to go on short walks or to the gym a few times, which always made me feel better. [HINT HINT SELF] But some days, I just couldn’t drum up the effort.

I stopped trying to make plans. I had a bad cough and fatigue, which I used as an excuse to ‘take it easy’, spending entire days in my pajamas on the couch. I had unwittingly hit the point of depression where it becomes cyclical and self-reinforcing. I felt like crap so as much as I wanted to go out and connect with people, to create, to live, I had lost the energy and the confidence to do these things that would have reinstated my energy and confidence. I was wallowing in my own misery instead of doing anything to make myself feel better.

One day, I was on the phone with my dad, who I am extremely close with. As I was describing the daily blah that was life, he interrupted and asked, “Are you OK? I mean mentally.” I paused to consider my answer carefully. “I don’t know.” I would never lie to my dad, but I still didn’t want to admit how bad I actually felt. However, once my dad spoke it in to the ether, I knew I couldn’t pretend I was fine anymore, as much as I wanted to. I knew it was time embark on a perilous inspection into my mind and figure out what was going on in my head. We always avoid looking for answers we don’t want to find, but those are usually the ones we need the most.

Digging into my psyche was actually a pretty quick exercise, like ripping off a Band-Aid. I thought back to when I first got laid off and realized that I had been overwhelmed by the sudden freedom. I was feeling rejected and unworthy in so many personal areas of my life that I was afraid to try, to risk failure in any other ways, so I was holding myself back. As they say, “Sucks to suck’.

It was still hard to admit to myself that I had succumbed to intolerably common behavior, indulging in weaknesses like self-pity. How dare I. Was I depressed? Kind of. Was I afraid, sad, anxious, directionless? Definitely. Was I using strangers for attention and validation? Ugh, gross, yes. These were badges I did NOT want to admit I had accumulated. However, in order to turn things around, I had to admit ALL of it. I was sad, lonely, lost. Things I don’t want to let myself be. But sometimes you just the way you feel, and you have to let yourself feel it. With difficulty, I finally let myself feel all the icky, ugly, bad feelings.

And then I said to myself, “So what are you going to do about it?” I decided to take a hike.

Hiking is something I enjoy as much for the mental benefits as the physical exercise. I usually solo hike, and I like to choose tough trails that push me. Hiking is my meditation, my prayer, the rope in the tempest that grounds me. Getting closer to some of the country’s best hiking is a huge reason I moved out West at all. Was it any wonder I felt so miserable after foregoing this therapy for so long?

I took my time to research difficult single day hikes in the Southern California region. And since I’m being honest now, I’ll admit that ‘research’ was an excuse to delay actually doing anything right away. It took a while after I decided to do a hike before I finally had enough motivation to get off the couch. This tale isn’t fiction, it’s real life. I needed a couple more days wallowing in self-pity before I hated myself enough to make a real change.

The truth hurts

I hate to confess this, but it took another Tinder rejection to push me over the edge. I deleted the damn app and set my sights on the Mount Baldy Loop in Los Angeles National Forest. Reviews said it was very difficult, but beautiful. I wanted an arduous challenge to prove to myself that I am still strong and self-sufficient. I get a lot of mental fortitude from being physically fit, and vice versa. If I could complete a physical challenge, I was convinced my mental state could improve.

I chose a beautiful day mid-week so that parking and trail traffic would be light. I felt good as I started out, excited yet calm. The first few miles were relatively easy, and I thought ‘Wow I’m so badass, this isn’t even that hard’. Then I hit the steeper slopes of the Devil’s Backbone trail. I had to stop frequently, but the views were so incredible that I didn’t mind. I refused to be hard on myself when I needed to rest. I reminded myself that I had purposely picked something that would I would struggle with. That was the point. The joy of conquering a difficult hike is knowing you pushed yourself through discomfort to a new level of accomplishment. Turns out, it’s the same kind of joy you get when you dig yourself out of an emotional hole as well.

At the end of Devil’s Backbone, I thought I was done with the incline. Then I came around a corner and saw the final ascent to Mount Baldy looming in the distance. I blurted out “Oh shit”, and stopped to take it in. My legs were exhausted. Even more problematic was how I was mentally rattled by this surprise. Thinking I had hit the top and then realizing I had still had a very challenging chunk of trail to go was unsettling. But I was already more than halfway around the loop, and more importantly I couldn’t let myself fail this self-imposed test. So up I went.

The final ascent to the top of Mount Baldy

At some point during the barren, rocky, grueling final climb to the top, I realized that while I was tired in a physical sense, I was struggling psychologically more than anything. Looking up at how steep and rocky this trail was, with no visible sight-line to the summit was freaking me out. I had to change my mentality, engage some positive thinking. I started to look behind me each time I would rest. This way I saw how far I had come, and how absolutely beautiful the views were. Each time I turned uphill again, I would look at my feet instead of at distant point on the path, and by focusing on just one foot in front of the other each step became a little easier.

And then suddenly there I was, at the summit, with incredible views of mountains and valleys for miles all around me. Sure, I still had to go down, and it was long way back. But the really hard part was over. And the rewards were more than I could have hoped for.

The whole way up, as I was focusing on my breathing, my sweating, and my muscle fatigue, I hadn’t realized that each physical step closer to the summit was also a step out of the mental and emotional hole I had fallen into. Proving that my body could climb a mountain was concurrently proving to myself that I still had emotional ability to push through a difficult period of life and come out just as strong as ever. The most important parallel is that there is no shortcut to either. You have to decide you’re going to do it and prepare yourself. And the only way to accomplish either is one slow step at a time.

Is everything perfect now? Of course not. But I’m not sleeping or Netflixing my life away. I’m writing again, I’m socializing, making plans. When I’m sad, I let myself be sad, and when I’m happy, I bask in that wonderful feeling.

On top of the world at the summit of Mount Baldy

Authors Note: At times I struggle with doubt, anxiety, stress and loneliness like many people (even if I hate to admit it), and hiking and being outdoors helps me cope. I also talk to people I trust and check in with myself regularly. This is what works for ME. There are some things that a mountain just can’t fix, and that’s OK. If you are dealing with trauma, anxiety or depression, these are real, serious struggles that you should never feel ashamed in seeking help for.