Grounded: My Life in a Word

Parts 1 and 2 (of 4)

Part 1

When I was 7 years old, I was, for the first and only time in my life, grounded by my father.

The incident for which I was punished began when my best friend Ben and I decided to rappel out of his second-story window on a rope tied around a bedpost. Ben and I both had parents who worked in wilderness education and we considered ourselves to be experts in all matters of adventure. Being conscientious outdoors people, we drew detailed plans for our descent in crayon on a sketchpad on the carpet. We then, very carefully and using an array of sophisticated knots, tied one end of a ball of string around my waist, wrapped it several times around the bedpost, and tied the other end to Ben, who held onto the rest of the ball to lower me safely and smoothly to the ground.

The plan was flawless and we were eager to get underway. We opened the window as wide as we could and I pushed my way backward through it, but just as I was beginning to put my weight onto our rope, Ben's father opened the bedroom door, saw us, and, in an uncharacteristic burst of anger, shouted: "What the fuck are you doing?!"

I jumped back through the window in a panic, loath to get in trouble and with my lower lip already starting to tremble, but Ben calmly explained the plan, pointing out the details of our blueprint.

"You've put some good thought into this," said Jon, cooling off. "But what you are doing is very dangerous. To do something like this safely you would need a rope at least five times bigger. Why don't you build something with your Legos instead?"

Ben and I looked at the floor and nodded solemnly, but as soon as the door clicked shut we locked eyes and beamed in uncontainable excitement.

Five Times Bigger!

Five Times Bigger!

All we had to do to complete our plan without getting in trouble was get a bigger rope!

We rushed down to the basement and began tearing through boxes, unearthing nails and tape and wire and electrical cord. Eventually, Ben held up a thick red twist of corded rope. When we compared its girth to our ball of string, it was undeniably five times thicker.

We rigged up our system once again, albeit in hushed voices–we knew we'd found a loophole but we weren't stupid–and I once again crawled out of the window. I began to lower. It was perfect. I was secure, weightless, a spy on a mission. I was two-thirds of the way down the wall when I was startled by a booming, low bark.

"Sage Minnig Garrettson!"

I looked around wildly and in stomach-dropping terror saw my substantial father leaning out of the window of our big blue van in the driveway, turning purple.

"Da-ad, it's safe! We asked Jon!" I said pleadingly, dangling in midair.

My dad took a slow breath. "Well you're closer to the ground than you are to the top, so you might as well come down."

Ben lowered me to the ground and I walked meekly over to my fuming father.

I tried to explain the logic of five times bigger on the car ride home with no success. I resigned myself to sulky silence as I was sent to my room while my mother was filled in on the day's events.

Now, despite my father's poorly contained rage, it is important to note that this man was Maya Angelou quoting, guitar strumming, fairy house building gentle. I'd never seen him raise his voice indoors, let alone punish a child.

But the wrath of a gentle man is no small thing, and as I sat weeping in my bedroom, I was certain I had made it to my final night on earth.

Eventually, I was allowed downstairs, where my parents sat at the kitchen table. My mother was inexplicably stifling a grin.

"Sage," he said. "I know you love to climb and explore, but what you did today with Ben was very risky. Jon told me he told you not to and you did it anyway. I need you to make better choices, and there will be consequences. We have decided you will be grounded for the next two weeks."

I gasped. "Grounded?" To be grounded was legendary, the stuff of books and movies and Disney Channel shows about cool tweens.

"Yes. You are grounded. And by that I mean you must stay on the ground."

"What!?!"

"This is serious, Sage. We need to be able to trust you. No monkey bars, no climbing trees, and definitely no rappelling."

Behind him, my mother was becoming red-faced from trying to hold in her laughter, and despite my father's calm demeanor, there was a gleam in his eye. My dad has a unique appreciation for clever wordplay and was undoubtedly feeling more than a little pleased with himself.

I, on the other hand, was gutted.

Part 2

Ants. Thousands of them, crawling through cracks in the floor, up along the walls and the ceiling and the bed frame. I measured time in the white spaces that disappeared beneath the swarms of their tiny bodies. It smelled like mold and dirty laundry and some plant that must bloom in autumn in southern California that infused the air with a sort of umami desert fruitiness. Also rice. I had a rice cooker, and when it got to be too much to face the dining hall I would walk two miles to the 98-cent store in Montrose and buy rice and cook it in my dorm room. I got a few sparks of joy from the thin film of paper left behind on the edges of the pot, crispy little wisps that would melt in my mouth. I had flown three thousand miles from home to go to college, hoping the sunlight would fix me. Instead, I spent an entire semester glued to my bed, skipping my classes, avoiding my peers and their parties, leaving only to get rice and cigarettes.

I was grounded, like an airplane with a broken engine, or a ship washed too high onto the rocks to get back to sea.

I came home to Maryland and lived in a series of basements and closets. My world became gray. I tried taking community college classes, then state university classes, becoming lost in the throngs of people my age who seemed to be in some unstuck place a world away. There was an English professor who looked at me and saw me, and when I realized this I never returned to his classroom again. Compassion was not a door I could open.

I measured my time in unpaid parking tickets and overdue assignments and missed calls. I spent most of my evenings crying in my car. Car crying is loud and immediate and suffocating. It crushes you like an airbag. There is no place for the sorrow to go. It clings to you, like a cloud of Pigpen dust everyone around you can see.

My father’s warnings to stay on the ground had not followed me into adolescence. I was smart, athletic, and hard-working, and the people surrounding me began to expect certain things. Puberty blasted through my life like a tornado and I was suddenly piercingly aware of how I was perceived in the eyes of others as a young woman. I traded out my mohawk and cargo shorts for bangs and skinny jeans and went about the work of becoming perfect. The private prep school environment stoked my ambition and my rising understanding that I would never be enough. So I climbed higher.

But something was growing in me. Something that dragged me downward. I collapsed whenever I was alone. I felt utterly worthless, helpless, hopeless. I hated myself with a sharp fury. You are nothing, a voice in my head repeated relentlessly. Nothing. The world would be better off without you.

My mother took me to see a performance of Legally Blonde: The Musical for my 14th birthday, and while Elle Woods danced around in her pink miniskirt on stage I crumpled in my seat, despondent. My mother cried in the car ride home as she set up a psychiatry appointment.

A week later, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder.

I became a masterful performer. I smiled, infused my voice with a light energy, laughed often. When I couldn’t, I disappeared. Blonde and silly and beautiful and ebullient, or gone altogether. “Where were you?” people would ask later. I would dodge, give vague answers. Certainly not shoving my fingers down my throat in the bathroom, shattering like glass in some hidden place.

When I got my driver’s license at 16, I started taking long drives at night to feel close to the idea that I might jerk the wheel hard to the right and careen off the road, crash into a tree. There was a spot next to the farm stand that would have been perfect.

I took a medical leave during my senior year. I got a Planet Fitness membership and ran on the treadmill for two hours every night at 1 am. I spent the rest of my time playing my guitar until my fingers became calloused and nimble.

The years that followed are mostly lost to me. I have a theory that depression is like an open wound in your brain, and when it heals it leaves behind a thick layer of scar tissue that interrupts the normal signaling, muffles your memories.

I know I spent hours upon hours staring blankly at a laptop in bed as Netflix shows flowed across the screen without leaving a trace of their substance behind.

I know friendships and relationships dropped away like leaves off a dead houseplant, unwatered and left in a dusty corner. But not without me feeling the anger, resentment, and disappointment they left in their wake.

I know that, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get off the ground.

The essay is not over! Click here for parts 3 and 4.