diana cowgill

We’re here for a reason. I believe that very strongly, and I was given a writing prompt asking for me to explain that reason. Why I’m here…

I discovered My Why when I was terribly depressed and needed something to stem the bleeding. My experience with depression is a big part of this story of Why, and as everyone’s depression manifests itself a little differently, I’ll start with that.

My depression is gradual, moving like a vine over my life. It creeps, sends out shoots that find finger holds and stick firm. I consider it my shadow–meaning once it’s established it turns me into a shadow. I’m cheerful and friendly by nature, with a cheeky sense of humor and a real nose for mischief. But when I’m depressed, my optimism withers. Nothing’s funny. I become a pale, weakened phony, struggling to function well enough to not be a bother or raise concern in the people who care for me, fighting just hard enough to get back to bed at the end of each exhausting day.

While I spend most of these depressive periods choked out by my shadow, I do have flashes of light. I might feel normal one evening, or I could take a walk with my dog and be myself for a day or two.

The stage is set and I can now properly begin my story.

I spent a single horrible semester at Sonoma State University. I’d gone there hoping to outrun the nicely broken heart I’d gotten in Maine, and I was in a very bad way. I didn’t want to see my friends, didn’t want to talk to my brothers or parents. I was surly, irritable. I withdrew; justifying, if pressed, that I was too busy, or tired, or invested in some book or movie or any of a number of excuses, when asked why Diana couldn’t come out to play.

I didn’t know how depressed I was when I started classes and moved into a tiny room off campus, but I was in a pitiable state. Which, of course, only got worse as the semester progressed. Shadow me doesn’t make friends, so I was pretty much alone. I lost weight and spent a lot of time thinking about what dying might feel like.

My one “friend”, and the F word is a stretch, was a weird freshman from Bakersfield whose name I don’t recall. He was nice-ish, but a bit of a narcissist who I now know was just using me for my Costco card.

On one of our Costco runs, I was feeling lighter than usual, and Bakersfield and I had a nice conversation about our lives at home. We talked about our families, and I brought up my Grandma Shirl, who passed away before I was old enough to really know her, but who left behind an impressive collection of artifacts. She was renowned for scooping up sale items regardless of how much use she and my Grandpa Joe had for them. She’d have four of the same stuffed rabbit, boxes and boxes full of travel-sized toothpaste tubes. She had dozens of frisbees, self-help books, novelty note pads. Her little house was stuffed full, but there was one particular bulk item, piled high in a black-widow infested back shed, that Bakersfield and I focused on.

My grandmother had ten-thousand plastic ladybugs. They are about as big as a fun-sized snicker bar, and they were originally procured to be part of Grandma Shirl’s somewhat baffling protest against Richard Nixon. The Watergate scandal was, in part, caused by his “alleged” wiretapping, aka wire bugging. So to protest, she bugged phones of her own by leaving cute little ladybugs on top of public telephones. I think she hoped to spark outrage, but I don’t know that she ever did.

Bakersfield laughed at the story, but I couldn’t get my grandmother’s scheme out of my mind: she was leaving these silly little trinkets for strangers to make them think. And I figured, maybe she was on to something.

Unlike my grandma, I wouldn’t use the ladybugs to protest anything. I wasn’t fighting. I wasn’t angry. I was just a depressed, heartbroken, terribly lonely kid looking to feel human again. And these ladybugs sounded like the best way for me to do it.

I would leave ladybugs as presents for people to find. On tables, in bicycle baskets, the outside of plant beds. Leaving these breadcrumbs would be a happy distraction for me, a fun and silly gesture designed to make someone smile. They’re dropped only so they can be found: a polka dotted reminder that we’re all here, and we’re all just people.

And that is, after a terrifically windy introduction, My Why. Human beings are fragile things. We’re like racehorses; strong and capable, but also unbelievably easy to hurt. And what hurts us the most? From where I’m sitting, lonesomeness and isolation–the feeling that no matter where we are and who we’re with, that we’re really just alone. Stranded on a rock, marooned in our own heads, screaming for help that will never come. My Why is fighting that.

The ladybugs are one facet, a very large art project that my best friends and I have been doing for nearly a decade. Together, we’ve ladybugged almost the entire United States, as well as much of Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. But My Why drives me beyond that. My writing, my life as a whole, I hope to use as a connecting force.

The best stories, the ones that inspired me to become a writer, overflow with compassion. To Kill a Mockingbird is a story brimming with heart and tolerance for human weakness, and through it Harper Lee was able to give the world Atticus Finch, the best example I know of compassionate strength. Living a life in some way like Atticus, or, even better, writing a story popular enough to be influential, with a character as memorable and honest as Atticus, is my ultimate dream.

Depression took away my joie de vivre for a while, drove me inward and made me unreachable. But I’m not depressed anymore. I survived my time in the shadows, and it even brought me the clarity to identify the thing that really makes my soul tick. People are just people, and the more we understand that, the better.