Runaway Train: When Depression Meets Heartbreak

By Mark Torphy

This book takes its reader on a journey through the depressed mind of a black man as he navigates through a heart-wrenching breakup. It destroys the myth that men lack emotion and the ability to get in touch with their feelings. It also displays the blurred lines between the author's factual reality and his depressed reality. This is a memoir of trauma, pain, internal analysis and self-discovery, wrapped around a detailed, compelling story.

The title "Runaway Train" describes the author's depressed mind as it speeds through self-deprecating, destructive thoughts that challenge his self-worth. While riding the emotional waves, you will see the depths of his despair, struggle, humor, and hope.

The hope is that this story will give you a window into the process of a depressed mind, how powerful the mind is, and where it can take someone.

Experience an inspiring story that challenges mental health stigmas and shares the struggle that far too many people endure. The Runaway Train shows how profoundly depression can grip the mind regardless of who you are and how society perceives you. This is a story of struggle, but also hope and self-actualization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098369125

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CHAPTER 1

NOWHERE TO RUN

Over the previous nine-day period, I was able to completely rest my mind, my body and my spirit. My timing was as horrible as it could possibly be because I am a tax accountant, CPA, and it was mid-February—the absolute busiest time of the year for me. But I just couldn’t work. I couldn’t adult. I couldn’t people with the others in my office. I had nothing for them. It wasn’t planned or expected. I just followed my gut. I had to listen to my body, my spirit, and GOD. And it was the best decision I’d made in a long time.

I was able to just lie there. I cried when I needed to, and boy did I cry. I slept when I needed to. I didn’t move when I didn’t want to. I watched countless episodes of Chicago PD and Mom. I created ass grooves in my new couch. I rested. I had moments of clarity and promise, and moments of terror and pain. I embraced the emotional trauma that comes with losing two of the three people closest to me over an 18-month span—75 years of friendship. I timidly embraced the change that needed to come into my life and the fact that I would actually be able to control some of that change and the direction that my new life was taking. I relied on my faith in GOD after weeks of questioning His path for me and His attention to my life, and angrily questioning the reason for my pain and why it had to be so severe. The rest got me past initial thoughts of what my loved ones would think if I was no longer here and thoughts of if the pain would stop if my life stopped. The rest created embers that began to heat up, and it gave those embers the oxygen for me to visualize the potential blaze that my life could be.

The unforeseen sabbatical started on a Friday at the end of the day—fuckin’ Valentine’s Day. That was my breaking point. For about a week and a half prior, I felt my spirit just falling into an infinite abyss. I thought I was at rock bottom, but still falling.

She consumed every thought, and I couldn’t shake it. No distraction was powerful enough. No task was big enough to block out thoughts of her. And the way my depression works, it’s not like a Hallmark movie with all these beautiful images and portraits of the one that got away, picnics in the park, her laughing in slow motion. My shit doesn’t work like that.

I was seeing her and him smiling, enjoying life. I was seeing them sweaty and naked and her legs in the air. I was seeing the two of them with her kids and his daughter as one big happy family. I was seeing her telling him how shitty of a boyfriend I was and that she never loved me at all—she was just in Atlanta, using me while she plotted her way back to him.

Of course, none of that was confirmed. It may not have been true. It may have been far from the actual truth. But because of my depression, that shit felt soooooo real—It felt like an undisputed fact. Absolute. It was like a video that looped over and over in my mind. This is how my depression works. My mind goes to unthinkable places and stays there. It loops the thoughts like a bad music sample. And the worst thing about it is it feels absolutely real and justifies itself. It takes tiny pieces of what may be true and creates unimaginable, heartbreaking scenarios and masks them as absolute facts.

All of that really got rolling on the previous Tuesday. While at work and against my better judgement, I decided to stalk her on social media. She had unfriended me on Facebook weeks prior, at a point where she had apparently decided I wasn’t worthy of the truth and transparency that we vowed to always have while honoring our history and friendship.

Even though we were still communicating, she severed that particular connection. I had been on a Facebook sabbatical for the most part, so it took a while before I even noticed. The gesture hurt; it hurt a lot. But since I hadn’t been using Facebook, it was easier to look past. We still followed each other on Instagram, but she rarely used that. So again, the practical nature was: social media shouldn’t really be a problem. But there was something in my spirit that said, check HIS Instagram page. I know you see where this is going.

My heart dropped like a bag of bricks. Boom. There it was. A picture of her and him together from two days prior for the world to see—with the biggest smiles imaginable. It felt like acid was speeding through my veins. My body was experiencing a physical reaction. Anxiety broke through and attacked every inch of my body. I had to get up from my desk and get out of there. I couldn’t let anyone see me break, but I was losing it, and fast.

As I got up from my seat, I looked around to see if anyone was noticing. All of my co-workers appeared to be busy at their desks—thank GOD it was tax season. I reached down to grab my phone and the first tear of a tsunami started to well up in my eye. Oh shit. It’s coming, I thought. I started to rub my eye and pretend that something was in it, just in case someone looked up and saw me. I needed to have a story ready, even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to talk.

The hallway door was approximately 40 yards from my desk, but like an image from an old 70s television show, the door seemed to be getting further and further away the faster I walked. I couldn’t feel my feet on the ground. The first tear had begun its sprint down my face, and the second tear was getting set in the blocks. Boom, an imaginary gun went off, and my second tear took off in a full-blown sprint. The third and fourth tear hit the blocks and didn’t even wait for the gun.

As they began to roll down my face, I grabbed the doorknob. I could have pulled it off the hinges, I yanked so hard. The door didn’t move, and I almost pulled my arm out of socket. Fuck. That shit hurt. Did anyone see? Push, dumbass. Push. I got out the door and needed to make a right to get into the main hallway to head to the bathroom. I thought, what if someone is in there? I was in full blown tears at this point. Should I dip into the stairwell? If I do that, I’ll have no excuse for my tears, and no cover. Fuck it, keep your head down. Make it to a stall. Keep it quiet and you can stay in there for as long as you need to.

As I opened the restroom door, I noticed the auto-light turned on, which told me it was off prior to my entry so no one was in there. Thank GOD. I got to the first stall and locked it behind me. Once I got inside, there was no stopping the tears. I tried to carefully put toilet paper down on the seat so I could sit down, appearing to be actually using the bathroom, and let my emotions go. My coordination wouldn’t cooperate. I kept pulling too hard and the pieces kept breaking too small. I was ready to kick the whole shit down. I couldn’t contain my breathing. My anxiety had taken over—my body was physically ill. I was trying to do everything to calm down and get this toilet paper on this seat so I could sit down. The next 15-20 seconds felt like an eternity, but I finally got the toilet paper onto the seat. I pulled my pants down to simulate the real thing to anyone that may have come in. As I got my pants down and turned, I collapsed into the seat. My chest was tightening. I could barely breathe, and I knew the oxygen wasn’t getting to my lungs. My face must’ve looked like I just emerged from a swimming pool. I don’t believe in that moment I could have stood up, even if the building was on fire. My whole head slumped into my chest, chin first. I could barely stay on the seat. I cried and cried and cried—uncontrollably. Someone could have entered the bathroom and I probably wouldn’t have known. I just cried until my head rang in pain, and my body felt dehydrated. I had used probably a quarter of the roll of tissue. My head had spun out of control this time.

I had cried the life out of my body and felt like a zombie. I had no idea how long I was in the bathroom. I didn’t remember the next few minutes. So, I left the stall, washed my hands, looked in the mirror at a walking corpse, saw nothing, and made my way back to my desk. My mind was looped on so much personal destruction and it was moving fast, but I was so out of it, I couldn’t even process it. I sat at my desk, stoic, for the remainder of the day. I didn’t even have enough emotion left to feel the depression. I had nothing. Nothing to give. Nothing to feel. I don’t think I spoke to anyone for the rest of the day.

I probably looked at that picture 100 times that day in disbelief. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. There was a piece of me that just knew, even though she hadn’t told me. She moved out of the house that we shared and straight to Houston and into his arms, without a word. I should have known. But I still couldn’t believe my eyes. It was right there for me.

She left me for another guy—the guy who (she told me) was out of her life. The guy who, according to her, she needed to leave so she could come home to me. The guy that she told me she had no future with. The guy she told me had the much smaller dick (Give me a Bible, she said). The guy that she had lied to me about from beginning to end and everywhere in between.

She ran to him and posted up on Instagram a few days later, with his broken grammar-ed post Enjoy our first of many superbowl together. She skipped out on the rent and all money she owed me. She had re-started the relationship with him while we were still together—still living together. She was praying on our future, so she said. Yep, another lie. She sought him out—went to visit him for New Year’s Eve, while telling me she was taking care of a sick friend. She even lied in my face when I asked her if she went to see him—lied and chuckled, as if to say, I can’t believe you would ask me that. The truth couldn’t come out of her as it related to him. She probably lied about much more throughout our off-and-on years of trying to make it work. She couldn’t tell me the truth about him if her life depended on it.

Over the next 10 days, I did more digging on social media. His Instagram page didn’t have any security on it, so it was open season. I went back through and found posts that were sent between the two of them—posts that she liked that dated back to when we were still together. Posts that appeared to show that she initiated their reconnection, and confirmed that she went to see him while we were together and lied to my face about it when questioned—that she created an entire story about how she left the house to take care of a sick friend just out of surgery while he was posting pictures of the two of them together during that time. His posts showed that they were in a full-blown relationship while she was still living with me.

Every single thought was more painful and heartbreaking than the previous one. And her presence seemed to be everywhere. Even after turning off social media, my thoughts stayed on her. Everywhere I went, there were reminders. I still lived in the same area that we lived in together, so going to the gym was a reminder and going to work past one of her old places every day was a reminder. Every car on the road seemed to be a Silver, 2015 Nissan Versa. All the restaurants where I picked up to-go meals—I had been there with her. I couldn’t escape. And because I couldn’t escape, my mind became obsessed.

Without the energy to fight it, I went with the obsession. I was stalking social media every day, every hour. I wanted to see new posts. I wanted to see what they were doing. I was hoping to see kinks in the armor, something that showed that maybe she wasn’t happy with him. Maybe she didn’t actually move to Houston to be with him and she just visited. Maybe she realized right away that she made a mistake, and she was about to call me.

My mind played every trick on me that it possibly could. I thought about every possible scenario. I wanted to believe the good scenarios. I couldn’t stop envisioning, with vivid clarity, the bad ones.

That’s what my depression does.

As ashamed as I am to admit, I created a bogus account so I could look at their Facebook pages. This was rock bottom. It went against everything I believed in, but I did it. She had major security protection on hers, but his was open. I could see pics of them, things that he shared with her. I could see the hearts she left on his posts, going back to when we were still together. She opened up the lines of communication with him and pursued him while she was with me. And she moved with stealth; I had no idea. She lied and lied and lied to make sure that I had no idea. That was even more soul-crushing.

So, on Valentine’s Day, I had less than nothing. I was EXHAUSTED. I knew there would be social media posts. It was Valentine’s Day; of course the happy couple was going to post. So, I braced myself for it. I didn’t know when it would come, but it was coming. I had told myself the day before that the social media stalking had to stop. The need for it had been served. I needed confirmation that she was with him, and I got it. I needed confirmation of lies, and I got it. I needed confirmation that all of this was intentional and planned, and I got it. I’m sure there were many more lies, but I had confirmed enough. I could come up with millions of questions and keep digging for information, but I didn’t need to. I needed to get the main questions answered with no doubt, and I needed to get the sting of seeing them together numbed; I was on my way, but I had done it to the point of complete exhaustion. So, I knew that the stalking was coming to an end. It felt like rock bottom, with no hope of recovery. I felt dead inside, not numb because I was still suffocating in pain. But I was dead to the outside world because nothing that was happening could be absorbed. The Hulk could have slammed me like Loki, and I don’t think I would have felt a thing.

As I predicted, around three o’clock in the afternoon, the picture was posted to his Instagram account. The picture showed her hugging his neck with one arm from behind and holding the phone for the selfie in the other hand, while the caption read,

My Valentine’s (the picture of 3 hearts) heart heart heart.

My preparation for this kept me from being taken out, but it still brought unbelievable pain. Rock bottom sunk just a little bit further. My eyes couldn’t produce any more tears; they were barren. I felt my heart sinking and beating irregularly, but this time it felt different. It was weaker, like it had given up. My head still produced horrible thoughts, but they were moving so much slower. Something was really wrong. I needed to lay down. I felt faint. Was I going to pass out at work? How would I explain this shit to my bosses? What if my phone was still open to the post? They would surely figure it out. I didn’t get embarrassed easily, but that would do it. Not only would I be embarrassed, but I might be fired, and the word of my fainting would spread throughout the company, destroying any respect that I may have earned at that point. I just had to make it home, even if it was in zombie-mode. I just had to make it home.

The next two hours were a blur. My zombie protection mode was engaged. I left work at 5:30 on the dot. I still can’t even tell you anything about the ride home; my zombie mode made sure of that. I walked in the door at 5:40. I walked up the first flight of stairs, scanning the main level for any abnormalities. When it looked okay, I continued up the second flight of stairs and into my room. I was under the covers, my head on two pillows, hugging a body pillow and clutching another pillow under an open window and a fan by 5:45. That began my rest, and recovery.

I only slept for maybe 45 minutes, but I laid in bed until about 9:00. I only got up to use the bathroom and eat. I didn’t want to talk, or even exist to anyone. I was in my bubble and I had no idea when I was going to emerge. After eating, I turned on the television and sat at my computer. When I logged on, one of the memorized pages in my history was of Facebook—not the fake account I had created to stalk them, but my actual Facebook account