Frequent ANTIGRAVITY contributor Danny Cherry Jr. is a fiction writer and journalist who is a native of New Orleans East. He currently resides on the Westbank with his wife, 18-month-old son, and emotionally needy teacup poodle. His fiction has been published in award-winning literary magazines such as FIYAH and his journalism has been seen beyond these pages in BuzzFeed News, POLITICO, and more.
A Letter To My Son
Baby boy, you cry in the other room, and there I am in bed, unable to move.
My body feels heavy—like my torso is strapped to the bed. And each cry and coo is an accusation: lazy, unfit, bad parent.
But you, my sweet boy, would never say that to me.
It’s daddy’s brain: Words often enter my ears and get filtered through a grater formed by trauma that strips words of all positive connotations and makes them whole again in the form of perpetual bad thoughts. These thoughts often grow repetitive, making me angry… and for a flicker of a moment, I feel upset with you for waking up early… then my anger morphs into shame.
I push away those thoughts. I will myself to get up. In your room, in the dark, I reach for you and feel your arms raise. You realize that daddy is there to rescue you.
I sit in the rocking chair, only able to see amorphous shapes in the darkness, and press you to my chest. A thick head of hair rubs against my chin. I usually take those moments in the darkness to think. And as of late, I contemplate what it is we leave behind for our children. If I were to die young, you would have a bevy of articles knowing daddy’s opinions. You would know that I was a multigenre writer. You’d know from stories told that I loved to laugh, and was always down for a good time. You’d know I always tried to keep things light. You would know so, so much about me, baby boy, from the things I’d leave behind in our house.
But I often fear you’ll never know the whole me, the part of me that struggles to put one foot in front of the other some days, the one who lets the news cycle and day-to-day life weigh on him, and who moves around the world like the Sword of Damocles follows him around. You’re so happy right now, and giggly. But the part of me you don’t know often fears I’ll pass on my suffering to you.
Bipolar Time Travel
Baby boy, I wonder who you will become when you’re older. Will you be a jock or a theatre kid? Love Marvel or DC? I wonder if, selfishly, you will want to be a writer like your daddy, or health care hero like mama.
But I hope I never pass on my mental afflictions to you.
Depression and anxiety really mess with your memory and perception of time. Time becomes a liquid, malleable thing: One minute I was 28, then I blinked and I’m now 31. I’m 31, but some days when the ruminating thoughts force their way through the thick wall bolstered by the meds, I’m in a flashback of all the worst things that have happened to me. A minute later, my anxiety has my psyche tumbling towards an uncertain future.
But let’s go backwards from today. I am 21 years old and in Southeastern Louisiana University’s on-campus health center. Minutes prior, I was unable to catch my breath. My arms and face went numb. It was finals week, and I was on a bender of too many caffeine pills and too little sleep—with a side of Monster Energy drinks, too little food, and booze on the two nights of free drinks at The Brown Door in downtown Hammond. After it all tapered away—the fear for my life, the inability to breathe—I was fine, my fractured mind snapping back together. Before I could leave the office, I was given a pamphlet. I still have that pamphlet. In bold letters, it says the words “Panic Attacks.”
I dismissed that shit. Black folk didn’t get panic attacks. I never heard of my father, who grew up with a father who suffered the loss of his wife while dealing with Jim Crow era racism, having a panic attack. Talking to a counselor? That was unheard of. There’s an adage I heard once growing up from an older Black person: What happens in this house, stays in this house. I wasn’t about to tell some stranger my problems.
I just figured it was a one time thing. Then it happened again. And again. And again.
Flash forward. I’m 30, and you’re here. It’s now the early months of your life and I’m dealing with the worst depression I’ve ever felt. Burnout is the cause of it… I think. I’m not taking care of myself, barely eating, to the point that I’ve dropped noticeable weight and people won’t stop asking if I went on a diet. I’m writing, but it doesn’t feel fun or healthy. I take the saying that “the pen is mightier than the sword” to heart and try to use my words to cut through the bullshit day after day. But around this time, the figurative pen is just as heavy as a real sword. My mind and facility for words were hindered by some misfiring in my brain’s synapses that caused a log jam of unpleasant memories. In the early days, it made it hard for me to be a parent.
It’s hard to tend to a child’s every need—which I did and do—when you don’t want to leave the bed or couch. When you feel like there’s a heavy weight on your shoulders. There’s a filter that hangs over your mood when you’re struggling with depression and anxiety as a parent. You can’t enjoy something as simple as the first steps. It gives you immense guilt.
I sometimes still don’t have the energy to chase after you, or carry on a babbling conversation. Some nights, my tongue feels too heavy to read to you and instead, I just rock you, swaying back and forth in the rocking chair, turning my body into a safe space for you, you becoming a safe space for me—me and you against the world.
My mind travels again. I’m stationary in present day and I’m 31 now, baby boy, and I have three pills I have to take for the rest of my life. Two keep me “balanced”—I think my psychiatrist secretly thinks I have bipolar disorder—and the other one keeps away the scary thoughts that have been with me since childhood.
I wonder whether or not you’ll suffer as I have in the past. If so, I wonder how many pills you’ll have to take. I wonder if I’ll be able to help you. And when those thoughts start, daddy feels heavy, and he just wants to sleep. But I’m a parent to a toddler, and naps are a long gone concept, unless they are yours. So sometimes instead, I trudge through the day like the walking dead—leaving wrong times unchanged on clocks, emails piling up in my inbox, phone calls unanswered. When I sit and stare into a void, I fear that by proxy of genetics and not due to my intentions or actions, I’ll pass on my trauma to you.
How to Slay a Demon
That cloud that hung over me for a time is gone, and I’m more mentally present. You and I recently had a bunch of good days together—I was babbling back to you, I was springing out of bed to get to your crib, and when I was rocking you back to sleep, the thoughts that came for me in the darkness of your room didn’t dare bother our quiet time together. I had the strength to lift you up and fly you around the house like you’re Superman, able to leap building block towers in a single bound, impervious to all coming your way.
But those dark days may return again. I can’t promise they won’t. There’s no cure for what daddy has. Maybe one day my worst thoughts may come true, and I’ll completely succumb to my sickness and will lose whole days due to depression. Ninety percent of the time I doubt that. But the 10% is still potent. So while I’m clear-minded, I wanted to write this.
I write this so that other parents who get sick sometimes know it’s OK to not be OK. I write this because I want to show to you, my baby boy, that if I do pass on my affliction to you, whatever you’re feeling is not you. Thoughts are nothing more than synapses in your brain firing, flickers of light that have no bearing on what makes you you. If you do one day become a writer, here’s a rule that applies to both writing characters and humanity: People aren’t what they think—they are what they do.
I write this because I want to pass on the knowledge that mental illness, like a demon, can be eradicated or held captive once you name it, and had daddy not developed the courage to get help, Lord only knows where I’d be. I want you to understand that radical honesty is OK. More men need to do it.
Last thing: I write this because I want you to know the whole me, not just whoever Google or social media says. And the part of me who is healthy (for now) wants you to know, above all else, no matter what comes, you will be loved, and you will always be my baby boy. When (or if) you feel your mind tumbling out of time, like mine sometimes does, I’ll be there to hold you all together, and help you become whole again.
illustrations by Victoria Allen
