There’s No Emptiness Like Apathy

After I graduated high school, depression crept up on me like the heat in a slowly boiling pot. It was almost imperceptible at first. You know what they say, “a watched pot never boils.” Well, that was certainly true for me.

It’s hard to know where it began, exactly. In high school I had devoted myself to my studies and related extracurricular activities. I was president of my FFA chapter, Mu Alpha Theta, French Club, and my class. I participated in Quiz-bowl competitions and even made it into the state tournament in tennis. But there was a problem. Despite my success in high school, it never felt like enough to me. You see, there was one other extracurricular activity I participated in: basketball.

A Sports Neophyte

Basketball has been a part of my life since I was in 5th grade. That year, I joined my elementary school’s team, and I was terrible. I wasn’t fast. I couldn’t shoot. I couldn’t dribble. It was embarrassing. But, my mother and father both played when they were young, and they encouraged me and gave me pointers in my own basketball journey. I loved to hear the stories they told of their junior high days. Every time I walk into my polling place, which happens to be at the same school at which my father attended, I am reminded of his story about playing basketball in the cafeteria, because they didn’t yet have a proper gym. When I see pictures or hear stories about one of our legendary basketball coaches, images flood my mind of my mom zipping back and forth on the court, getting steals on one end and layups on the other.

So, that next year, I worked on my basketball game. We had an old faded Huffy basketball goal mounted on the deck walkway overhanging the small concrete pad that my brother and I would practice on. I remember our makeshift “court” was so small that the transition between the concrete and the gravel made a perfect demarcation for the free-throw line. My brother and I often made shoe-marks in the gravel to give a sense of where the 3-point line might be on a larger piece of real estate. My brother and I wore out countless basketballs and scraped dozens of knees pounding against that rough concrete court.

At that time, I was still relatively tall and strong for my age. I figured I would be a post player, so I worked on my post moves that whole year. I did layup after layup. Mikan drill after Mikan drills. By the time the 6th grade season rolled around, I was no longer an embarrassment (whether they would admit it or not) to my parents, but I still wasn’t the best player out there. I knew I could do more.

Still Not Good Enough

At the risk of sounding arrogant, in my small class of 30 at my elementary school, there was never any question in my mind that I was the smartest kid in my class. School was never much of a challenge, and I was proud of my abilities. But I was also cursed (and blessed) with a streak of introversion that runs deep through my family. I was never particularly comfortable with social interaction with kids my age, though I always wished I could be. Despite my academic success, I always looked in jealousy towards my friends who were considered more attractive and desirable than myself.

I remember one night, around this time in my life, I looked down at my protuberant (at least for an adolescent) belly sticking out over my hand-me-down Wrangler jeans. I fell into the same trap that so many of us do. I wanted to be liked, to be accepted, to be desired, and so I decided I would work harder than ever; to be the best basketball player and the most attractive 7th grader at my school. It’s sad to admit that this was my motivation. I still question what this says about myself as a person, as well as how it reflects on our society. But, back to my story…

After making this decision, I doubled my efforts at basketball. Nearly every day and night I would go shoot until I was too tired to continue. When winter came, I got an extension cord and brought out an old (probably antique) lamp we had inherited from my great grandmother and put it on the deck to light my way. When it snowed, I cleared the concrete and continued anyway. When it was too hot, I would take breaks and stand over the fan of the A/C unit which sat nearby. My brother and I continued to practice together, never holding back, helping us both improve through the relentless competition.

What I achieved was remarkable. In 5th grade, I was probably the worst, most uncoordinated kid on my team. By 7th grade, I was undoubtedly the best. Even more, I had discovered something that I truly enjoyed. It was something all of us in my house could share in together. When we finally got satellite television, some of the most commonly viewed channels quickly became ESPN and NBA on TNT. My brother and I nearly burned up our Playstation 2 playing NBA Live 2001, and I decorated my room with posters of Kobe Bryant. I wore basketball cloths to school to be ready to play at recess. Bottom line, basketball had become inextricable from my life.

Hard work Pays off

I continued working on my game through my 8th grade year. By the end of 7th grade, I had reached 5’9″ and was one of the tallest for my age in my area. I was no giant, for sure, but my height was not a hindrance. I think back to my 8th grade year as a time of pure basketball joy. My coach was tough, and strict, and sometimes mean, but in his own way he cared for us and wanted each of us to excel. There were no political games being played. If you worked hard and had the skill, you played. Hell, even if you didn’t, you still got to play.

My best friend at the time, Benton, and I used to actually compete with each other in warmups to see who could pace the fastest mile before practice began. I pushed myself and it paid off. We had a great season; I averaged right at 30 points per game while leading us to a record of 11-4 and winning the R-3 Tournament. I loved every minute of it.

After the season was over, I was on a bus ride with Coach Floyd coming back from some camp or field trip. There weren’t too many people left on board, so I decided to ask Coach a question that had been burning inside of me like a hot coal on a bed of snow.

“Hey Coach,” I said with a veneer of confidence, “can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Zach, what’s up?”

“Do you think I could make it to the NBA?”

“If you continue to work hard, like you have, I think it’s possible,” he said.

He was hard to read. He gave me what I wanted to hear at the time, but looking back, I think he just didn’t want to destroy the dreams of a young boy too soon. Given what would happen a few months later, perhaps he should have been more honest with me.

A Different Direction

If it’s not clear by now, basketball was a part of my identity, my self-worth. It was really the only strong directive I had in my life. I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college or what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just knew I wanted to play basketball. Now, I was heading into 9th grade. My goal was to at least make the junior varsity team, if not varsity. It was unthinkable I would be relegated to the freshman squad.

In pursuit of that goal, I joined a local “traveling” basketball team with people my age from the surrounding areas. We were at a summer tournament in Nixa, Missouri, in a gym with no air conditioning, on a hot June day. I don’t remember the team we were playing, or what the score was, or much else about the game, but I do remember it was close. It was near the end, I had managed to get a steal and was going in for a layup. The referee never called a foul, but I got hammered by the defender as I was about to go up for the shot. My left knee hyperextended. I heard a pop as loud and as violent as a .308 shell in a quiet wood, ringing out for miles and miles as the excruciating pain pulled me to the earth with haste.

With a little help from a teammate and my knee still searing, I stood up and hobbled to the free-throw line. Only then did I realize that the referee had turned a blind eye to the defender’s behavior. Dejected, I was helped to the bench where I watched us slowly tick away the seconds before the final buzzer rang out, signifying our defeat.

It was at this point I began to understand the seriousness of what had just happened. With the adrenaline of the game no longer circulating, my knee could not hold my own weight. I could not walk without help. The two-and-a-half hour ride home was sad, long, and painful. The next two weeks were more of the same as I attempted to convalesce with traditional RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) therapy. It soon started to feel better. I even thought I was ready for the high school summer basketball camp, but I didn’t even make it through one day before it was obvious my knee was still unstable. It didn’t seem to be getting better.

A trip to a physician and an MRI scan later, the full extent of my injury was finally revealed.

I had completely severed my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

By this time, it was early July. The orthopedist told me that due to my age they would have to make sure my growth plates were closed before proceeding to reconstruct the ligament. In addition, it was a 6 month recovery process. This meant I could miss up to half of the basketball season.

A Huge Disappointment

This was devastating news. Any rational fourteen year-old would have probably taken it as a sign to give up basketball, but I did not. I was determined to get back and show my classmates and my new coaches what I was capable of.

Recovery was difficult. The surgery was painful and so was therapy. By mid-November, ahead of schedule, I was back on the basketball court, but not only had I not met my goal of reaching the JV team, my first season was less than spectacular to say the least.

When my sophomore year came around, I disappointedly warmed the bench for the JV team. My junior year was arguably worse. I played a lot, usually 3 quarters, and even started, but again on the JV. I tried to play my best. I had some good moments, but with several of my friends from my travelling team beating me out for Varsity spots, on the inside I was humiliated. I hated playing on JV.

I grew to dread basketball practice. I felt like I was not given the chances and the grace to make mistakes that others were. It was painful and unrewarding. The sport which had so defined me I now began to resent.

As I entered my senior year, I seriously considered not even playing basketball. I knew that a group of juniors had been groomed and would most likely pass me up on varsity. I questioned what the point would even be of putting in the work to spend another year on the bench. It certainly didn’t help that I didn’t seem to have much in common with my teammates. But I hated the thought of being a quitter. I didn’t want to give up when I faced a little adversity. So, I settled in for one final year, one more chance to redeem myself, to fall in love once again with the game of basketball.

I worked as hard as ever during that preseason, but my fate was already sealed. When my coach talked to us all individually before the first game, he told me that he saw me as a “role player,” a polite way of calling me a benchwarmer once again. However, my performance demanded attention and I did manage to get some respectable playing time during the season. I started one game and made several key plays over the year, often relying on my 3-point shot I had adapted from my gravel arch in my backyard.

From my (admittedly myopic) perspective, I had done everything right, but was not rewarded for it. By the end of the season, as I saw my playing time dwindle and the team’s performance diminish, it became harder and harder to continue on. When senior night rolled around, I once again warmed the bench on what should have been a highlight of my high school career. But few times in my life have I felt as worthless and disappointed as I did after the last game of my career.

We were playing in the District Tournament for the right to move on to the State Tournament. We had done well enough to earn the right to a bye in the first round. All we needed to do was win this game against a team we had already beaten once to be in the District championship.

I helplessly sat and watched as our coach rotated only six people through the lineup instead of the normal eight. I listened at halftime as we were dressed down for “not wanting it enough.” I was never given the opportunity to act on that advice.

When the final buzzer rang, I finished with fewer minutes played than probably any other game in my career since 5th grade. We lost that game, due to what felt like outright sabotage. It was all I could do to hold in the tears. My basketball career was over, and it had gone nothing like I had planned.

Moving on

When I stood up to give my valedictorian speech at graduation, I received polite applause. My diversity of efforts in both sports and academics was not recognized by the scholarship committee. My classmates bestowed upon me two superlatives: most likely to succeed and teacher’s pet. I played it off like it was no big deal, but I was always very hurt by being considered the teacher’s pet. I was anything but. I definitely tried hard in school, but I was often uncooperative, even adversarial when I was asked to do pointless assignments or busywork. I helped countless classmates maintain their high marks with nothing expected in return. In this context, being “awarded” most likely to succeed felt more like a sarcastic response than any kind of validation.

When I told people that I was going to St. Louis College of Pharmacy (STLCOP), it was met with some variant of “of course you are, we would expect nothing less.” Perhaps this was meant as a compliment, but it really taught me that I had just barely been doing enough. Anything less would be a disappointment. I had to keep going, not for myself, but to prevent letting everyone else down. This was a tremendous stress to bear.

For two years after graduation, I barely picked up a basketball. What once made me happy now left me with nothing but bitterness. I did not hate basketball, but it gave me no joy. I was resentful. Betrayed. Disappointed. I had chosen to walk the path towards my Pharm.D., and school was hard. It drained every last bit of energy I had left. Other personal circumstances seemed to slowly sap all of my remaining joy and happiness.

It was not all at once. If it were, I might have noticed more quickly. I remember I was once so full of emotions and feelings that there was no question that I was alive. I never enjoyed the heartache or the hard times, but those emotions were rich and vibrant. Now, life just seemed dull and uninteresting. I would spend my nights procrastinating on studying for exams by playing Playstation or watching Netflix. For a while, I was able to harness these new, less intense emotions in the form of poetry. I was not empty yet; I still had much to look forward to with earning my degree and getting married and raising a family.

My wife and I first started “officially” dating in 2012. Just yesterday, when I was organizing my filing cabinet in my office, I found an old STLCOP publication called “Conjurings,” the semi-annual literary publication of the college. I knew that I had saved them because I had something in there. I flipped through the pages and found my name. In this particular issue I was published three times! The poem that I had sent in had emphasized a string of letters, “MEMROSE,” an acronym intended for my future wife. As I read that poem, I realized that was one of the last times that I was able to harness those feelings fully. I wrote a few other poems over the years here and there, but I had lost my fire and the song within.

Mary and I had already been engaged for a year when I hit what I would consider to be my first low-point. It was a mixture of the stress we were both under with planning for the wedding and our school curricular requirements, and my creeping depression. I thought that the emptiness I felt inside, the apathy, must have meant I no longer wanted to be with Mary. But after we broke up for that short time, those feelings did not go away. I missed her tremendously. A few months later, we reconciled, but she’s never really completely forgiven me for this incident, and I can’t say I blame her. It was a pretty selfish thing to do, but at the time I did not understand the condition I was in.

A few months after we rekindled our relationship, we were very happy with each other, but there was still this pit inside of me. By this time I had learned of a psychiatric syndrome called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is basically depression that is caused by the changes in the seasons. I thought I must have this disorder, as it was mid-winter and I was hating life. We were mere months away from graduating, but I was miserable. It was not because of Mary. My grades were still good. I just didn’t feel like what I was doing had any purpose or meaning. I just felt… worthless and empty.

On with life, and down

Somehow I made it out of that nadir, and by graduation I was given a new lease on life; an opportunity to start again and do something spectacular that would make everyone proud.

Without going into too many details, I’ll just say that being a pharmacist was not quite what I hoped it would be. As the months dragged on, I slipped deeper and deeper into depression and anger. I was powerless to help anyone in my job, and it ate at me day by day. I started to feel like my six years of training were wasted. I again got no joy, no fulfillment from my main target in my life, and my best efforts were met with disapproval. Once again, I felt just as helpless as I did sitting on the bench during the basketball district playoffs.

As far as professionally, these issues have not gone away. I have come to accept that they are part and parcel of practicing pharmacy in a rural area, but that didn’t make it any easier for my mental health. I took my job very seriously and often brought it home with me. Again, I let it eat at me, for years, without me truly realizing what was going on. I tried to make myself feel better in dozens of ways; I bought a new truck, a tractor, I taught myself guitar, I played video games… I did anything but really deal with the problem. Nothing helped. Nothing made me happy. I lost the first year of my son’s life to this emptiness and apathy, a period I have shamefully described to my wife as the “worst time of my life.” How terrible is that, when a father cannot even find joy in his own son, especially one as sweet and loving as John?

This feeling of nothingness made me grow to hate myself even more. How is it that I could be so indifferent to parenthood? Clearly I am a terrible person. How could I make such a selfish and financially damaging decision as to buy a brand new truck? Why doesn’t this tragic movie make me cry?Why can I find no fulfillment in anything?

Why was I even alive?

Ironically, the same issue that haunted me in sixth grade is what finally helped me out of this. It was about a year ago when I stepped onto the scale at my doctor’s office. It shot up and bounced back and forth like a boat bobbing in the wake of a Lake Ozark yacht before finally settling on the critical number: 204 lbs.

The astute reader with some medical knowledge and a note of the previous description of my height will see that this tipped me past a BMI of 30, putting me in the medical category of “obese.” This, coupled with my dismal cholesterol labs made me realize something needed to be done. I was a little reserved about it at first, but I agreed to treatment with phentermine, a stimulant appetite suppressant, and other medications. I was skeptical to say the least, but I am thankful my provider chose this approach.

The first day I took a phentermine, I didn’t feel “high,” but I just felt “normal”. Maybe it was a “high” and I’m just reluctant to admit it to myself, but I don’t think that is the case. I had felt that way before, many years ago. I again enjoyed drinking my coffee and talking to my wife. I appreciated my two-year old and his peccadilloes. And when we watched a sad show, I was able to cry once again.

I researched this phenomenon in the medical literature. It turns out, stimulants can be an effective treatment for acute depression, but their effect wanes over time. Still, it was a wakeup call for me. These feelings I had been having since high school were not normal. There was never anything wrong with my wife or my kid. I was in denial of my depression, and this silly weight loss pill finally helped me realize it.

Shortly thereafter I got off the phentermine and on a proper antidepressant. After a few months I felt I was back on track for the first time in years. I was back down to a healthy weight, my cholesterol was under control, my family life was good, and we had baby number two on the way. I was even a part of a local group who played basketball once a week, and the game was once again fun for me.

Temporal Repetition

Little did I know that history would repeat itself when I this time tore my right ACL during one of these friendly basketball nights. I again was in denial for about a month, sure it would heal itself given time. Then the MRI revealed the truth. I was conflicted on what to do. A surgery would mean another long and difficult recovery, but forgoing it would certainly mean I would never play basketball again.

I’m no longer a teenager and I know basketball will never be a major part of my life ever again, but the bitterness and resentment I accumulated from high school has faded and my love for the sport itself remains. There are few things more satisfying than hitting a game winning shot, even if it is just a pickup game to 21 on a Monday night.

If I chose not to do the surgery, it meant I would never play basketball with John or Amelia. But maybe that would be for the best? After all, basketball caused me a lot of suffering over the years. Maybe it is best if they don’t get inspired by their father to take on those same risks.

But, I can’t make that decision for them. I didn’t want their life or our relationship to be limited by another selfish need to take the easy route. So, in February, I went through the same procedure again that I had endured nearly sixteen years earlier.

It was definitely harder as an adult. Add in COVID, and it’s another recipe for mental disaster. My health started slipping again, and it only got worse after I returned to work. Only after I went my separate way from my last job did I fully realize the toll it had taken on me.

My medications had helped, but without shedding the main causal factor, I was unable to fully recover. In the past month, I have written more, played more, enjoyed my children and my wife more, and have just felt more free. Even so, I still have my days. I just recovered from a two day stretch of those same apathetic feelings that have haunted me over the years. It is an ongoing battle.

My wife and family have been extremely supportive. Even someone “most likely to succeed”, like myself, needs validation, encouragement, and support, at work and at home. As adults, we often spend more time at work than we do at home. Happiness in our jobs is paramount to happiness at home. I’m looking for that right place that will let me use my expertise as a pharmacist while offering me respect, encouragement and support. Thanks to my wife, I have the luxury of waiting for that right opportunity. Many others will not have that same chance.

If you know someone who may be going through something similar, reach out to them. Let them know you’re there and that you love and care for them no matter what they do. Show interest and encourage their successes and support them in their failures. Help them see a doctor if needed. Don’t let apathy rot them from the inside out like a dying tree in the forest.

After all, there is no emptiness like apathy.

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, call the national suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or visit https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

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