Getting off (the trail) and my mental health

Sorry for the long gap between posts. I've been actively avoiding writing this one as the decision to get off the trail is wrapped up in my mental health and I haven't really been feeling up to discussing that. But I'm going to give it a shot today. This is likely to be a long one, so strap in.

While on the trail I had little time or opportunity to fully keep up with the news. I'd catch snippets of what was going on, but I wasn't religiously following the news. So, the decision to get off the trail was made pretty much the evening of March 31st – about 15 hours before I got off trail. This decision was precipitated by an email I received from the ATC stating that they were going to be requesting temporary closure of the trail April 1. While exploring the links provided in the email I discovered that the shelters I had been staying in were officially closed, and had been for a week. 

I forwarded the email to my wife and discovered that she was only really available to pick me up April 1. So, the 20 mile day I had just finished turned out to have been a good strategic choice. It put me in position to make it into Duncannon early the next day without embarking super early or turning it into a sprint. 

So, the choice to get off the trail was more or less made for me. This was probably for the best, as I don't know if I would have made the decision of my own volition. That reluctance to do the wise thing comes down to the reason I was hiking the AT in the first place. The trek was meant to be a mental restart after years of neglecting my mental health had left me in a very, very dark place.

Mrs. Tedward and I had been living apart since 2011. Both of us have been pursuing scientific careers in academia and there just hasn't been the opportunity to reunite. In 2014 I was leaving my first postdoctoral position and tried finding a position in her area but failed. At that time my mental health was shaky at best, but with the new position came a renewed vigor.

I've been dealing with anxiety and depression since I was a teenager and up until last year I had told maybe 3 or 4 people about this. Forget about seeking therapy or treatment - that was just not in the cards. My strategy was to throw ever more of myself into my work, which proved a very effective coping strategy for me over the course of many years. Sure it comes at the cost of relationships and time with friends and family, but considering I get all worked up when meeting up with friends anyways it seemed a win-win.

The second postdoc started off pretty awful with a project that time after time proved overly technically challenging. But a year and a half in, a new project pretty much fell in my lap and things immediately clicked. Again I had a renewed vigor and spent the next year and a half riding a big wave. Then in 2017 I started putting in applications for faculty (professor) positions.

For those of you outside academia how this works is that universities usually advertise positions between Sept. and Dec. of one year for a start date in Aug. or Sept. of the following year. Candidates submit a big application package and wait for weeks or months to hear if they get a chance to interview either by Skype/Zoom or in person. If one is lucky enough to make the first cut and you impress them enough then there is a second round of interviews a month or two later. After that offers and negotiations (I never made it that far). If one doesn't get offered an interview, it's usually:
::crickets::

During my first round of applications in 2017, I told everyone that I was only going to pursue this path for two years. I was fairly confident that something would pan out in two application cycles and suspected my mental well being wouldn't make it much past that if nothing came of the first two tries. Things went decent the first round of applications: I got a handful of interviews and some interest, but nothing panned out.

What I hadn't counted on was how much stress the whole process would give me and what coping mechanisms I would employ to deal with that stress. Suffice it to say that every step of the process was agonizing for me, and I found that my strategy of dealing with the stress was to spend even more time and effort in the lab conducting research. I virtually stopped hanging out with friends and my wife and I visited each other less often. 

By the second year of applying I was at the stage of depression where everything, even some days getting out of bed, seems to a huge task. But there still appeared to be some hope, so I was able to power through and be reasonably productive. Then in the middle of 2019, after a year and a half of working the job market, everything dried up. No more leads. Done. Fini.

I knew in my heart that was it – there was no way I could manage another year on the same trajectory and survive. By mid 2019 the depression had progressed to the point where I had a hard time doing literally anything outside of lab. Making matters worse, my brain was no longer in the game when I was in the lab, so many of my experiments failed due to operator error. I hated myself, my predicament, and felt entirely impotent to navigate an exit strategy. 

Also around that time serious thoughts of suicide became near daily occurrences. Again, I've dealt with that since I was a wee lad, but this was the worst it had been since I was a teen. I never had any specific plans, but my depression has always kept my ability for long term planning to a minimum, so I knew if I were ever to do the deed it would be spontaneous - in a fit of rage. One trick I had found years ago worked to snap me out of the suicidal thought pattern was self-harm, specifically hitting myself upside the head. 

As the downward spiral progressed, the depression getting worse and the thought of suicide intensifying, the frequency and intensity of the self-inflicted corporal punishments increased. Things got so bad that I actually *started* seeking treatment. Now I say started there because it took nearly 4 months to get an appointment with a professional.

Before I was able to make that appointment the thought of hiking the AT entered my head as a serious exit strategy. I was mentally incapable of pondering the thought of leaving the lab without something in place, but I was also incapable of doing the legwork required to find a position in my wife's neck of the woods. So it started as "I've always wanted to do this, why not now?", and progressed to researching and planning a thru-hike. This planning gave me some hope and helped at the very least put the breaks on the downward spiral I was experiencing.

Just before getting an appointment with a therapist I decided to cash out some money from my retirement account to fund the thru-hike. This was a promise to myself that I would indeed be thru-hiking in 2020, the thought of which provided me something to look forward to and work towards. The months leading up to my departure from the lab were really rough and I had some terrible days, but looking forward to getting on the trail was indeed a bright spot that helped get me through the dark times.

I did not experience thoughts of suicide for 12 of 14 days I was on the trail. I wouldn't say everything was sunshine and rainbows, but hiking is therapeutic in many ways for me and being on the trail was helping me process things. However, from the beginning the trip seemed pre-destined to be cut short and I knew that if forced off of the trail I would likely revert to my pre-trail mental state. I was largely successful at pushing those thoughts out of my head while on the trail by focusing on the necessary daily tasks. 

After I got off the trail I reverted to a mental state reminiscent of the worst days before I decided to hike the AT. I was now unemployed in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (hopefully this one won't go on as long!!), unlikely to be able to get back on the trail this year, and annoyed at being a virologist siting on the sidelines during a viral pandemic. It's taken several weeks, but I'm currently back to the numb, unmotivated, depressive state I was at before getting on trail. I'm optimistic that things keep progressing toward a more positive outlook.

Finally, I need to thank my wife for her patience and understanding. I don't think I would be where I'm at right now without her!