Melancholia:

An Examination of Anxiety and Depression on Wheatons Campus

Cast:
Abigail Bowman as Herself
Emma Baker as Lauren Gathman
Jonah White as Sammy McCoy
Jeremiah Brown as Brian Williamson
Jonathon Neumann as Chad Klopfenstein
Jonathan Bartolomucci as Alexander Blue
 The six characters sit on stools in either a half-circle or in rows. Actors are free to leave
their seats at any time but are limited to their immediate area. Characters do not acknowledge
one another, but may play off what the previous character has said. The most important thing
for actors is to embody the story through their characters words.

Transitions between sections will be marked by a projector, showing the titles of each
section. Transitions between characters will be marked by a simple lighting change.

INTROS

Chad: Hey Im Chad Klopfenstein, Im from the class of 93 but I graduated in 96. I bet
everyone else in this thing is like fourteen... I was a COMM Theater major with a vocal
performance minor, I started at Wheaton thinking I was going to end up in the sciences but I
ended up with a Theater Music degree which has served me well in the world of international
banking computer programming, which is what I do now. Im a 44 year old man who has three
kids; never thought that I would get married, never thought that I would have kids; and I love
being a dad and husband. I love solving hard problems... What I do is very creative. Im an artist
at heart and I take that into everything I do.

Abigail: Hello, my name is Abby Bowman, Im a junior here studying Anthropology and Spanish.
Next year, through the HNGR program, I will be going to Peru. Im an improviser and one day I
hope to go to culinary school and learn how to bake.

Brian: Im Brian Williamson, Im a senior but Im going to need to take a bonus semester in the
fall, so Im not quite out of the woods yet. Im a business econ. major because Im good at
numbers but I dont know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I was computer science until
I realized I couldnt code: I like fixing computers but I cant make Facebook happen. And after
school grad school if I want to put off real life for a couple more years, accounting if that
works out, law school Im still feeling options, lets call it that.

Sammy: Hello everyone! My names Sammy McCoy, Im a Junior studying community art here
at Wheaton. I hope to someday be an art therapist because I strongly believe that art is not just
something you hang up on your wall. To me its something spiritual. You can make something
with your own hands, feet, or bodyit is an outlet where you can just be free-flowing
expressing yourself in a way that no one has ever seen. I want to see people grow and create
things that they can look at and say this is a part of me.

Alex: Hey guys, Im Alex Blue. I transferred to Wheaton from Taylor University last fall, and I
left Wheaton after last semester due to health problems. I think it was for the best. Since then
Ive been taking time caring for myself.

Lauren: Hi. Im Lauren Gathman. I am from St. Louis, Missouri area. Im a junior majoring in
voice performance and theater at the conservatory. I like cats.
COMING TO WHEATON

Chad: I have a chronic mental illness, called bipolar type two, which was not diagnosed until I
was in my 40s, but going back over my personal history I clearly exhibited symptoms of it going
back to late high school. So I was at Wheaton trying very hard to get throughtrying to figure
out who I am and what I believe and what Im going to dowithout the benefit of having a solid
basis of mental health, and because I was undiagnosed, I was doing it without any medication -
without any help.

Lauren: I didnt know that what I had was depression, I thought it was, like, the way everybody
felt all the time. Like, thats the normal thing, right? I guessit sort of got worse towards the
middle of the year, once all the crazy had died down and you kind of got used to being here. I
was just very sad all the time I felt like I couldnt cope with a lot of the pressure of, like,
classes and stuff. I had never even heard of depression, much less being diagnosed with it. Like,
you cant be sick mentally, thats not a thing. I mean, I would hear people say: I feel depressed,
but more like an adjective, not really a diagnosis type thing. More like: you need to stop being
that way and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Youre thinking about it the wrong way, you
can get out of this, its fine.

Abigail: Coming to Wheaton when I was a freshman, I lived 19 years in the same place and came
to a new place where I didnt know anybody. I would say that I was always somebody who was
undiagnosed as a high stressed, highly anxious persona type A perfectionist. That year I put
a lot pressure on myself to do things 100% all the time and if it was any less, then it wasnt good
enough Wheaton is very high stress and perfection oriented. There was always a tension to be
better than everybody else around you, whether it was your academic performance or the number
of things you were involved in. It seemed my freshman year in particular created a recipe to amp
up my anxiety level 10 fold.

Alex: I wasnt in the right place when I came to Wheaton. Depression was not a problem at
Taylor; I didnt have it until I came to Wheaton. And I dont think thats Wheatons faultbut it
didnt help me being 30 minutes from my house and feeling completely helpless. I would be in
emotional states where I would cry myself to sleep at night feeling like Im alone.... I literally
snapped and could not think correctly or do things correctly.

Sammy: Coming into freshman yearI think the greatest memories were getting to know
everyone on my floor. I got to experience what its like to do a raid, to go on the sister floor. But
there were other aspects of freshman year that were just bad with a capital B-A-D. My
depression started acting worse. I mean, Ive had depression since I was in 7 or 8 grade. Even in
th th

high school I had to punch through to get all these things done while putting on a smiling face.

Brian: Ill start with Passage...oh boy, passage was rough. Passage was rough in a lot of ways. I
was bringing a lot more baggage than the program was built for. The program was built for
normal church kids and I had actual bullshit to deal with: identity issues, issues of faith, self-
hatred. That was really bad, but I got through it. Then I get to Wheaton, I get to T7. The floor
was nice enough, but there was no privacy, no closed doors, no me-space that I really badly
needed to compose myself and get myself together.
Sammy: Sometimes I feel like parts of me were hidden from other people. I was so open to
talking about everything, but I sorta felt shutout and restricted to talk about certain things. For
me personally, being at a Christian college youre kinda expected to be I dont even know if
Im saying this right expected to be a perfect Christian. I was afraid of what everybody else
was thinking. That year was one hell of a journey (light laugh).

Brian: Everybody was trying to prove to everybody else that they were a good person and I
wasnt really into that game. I was just trying to be honest with people and it blew up in my face
again and again and again. It was tragic, looking back: whenever I tried to get vulnerable with
people about certain taboo issues of doubting the faith or sexuality they were either unequipped
to respond or they were terrified by the fact that the question was coming up at all. They were
trying to deflect it and turn it back to oh, you need Jesus more, and that didnt work.

Alex: My health is fine, my depression is fine, Im fine. but I wasnt fine. I would get
depressed to the point that I wouldnt eat for days. For the first couple of months its easy to put
on the face: youre the bright-eyed transfer or freshman who says Im going to study
geology For the most part, we do get integrated into the community and find a home, but for
those of us who deal with anxiety and depression, I found it hard to find a place to call home.
COUNSELING

Chad: I did go to the counseling center while I was at Wheaton. I think it was a lot smaller back
then than it is now. I saw the same guy for two years, he was the head of the counseling center
back thenand he was great, but I felt like I really couldnt talk about the fact that my life was
falling apartthat just wasnt okay. And I want to be careful here because I dont know if I felt
that way with my friends here at Wheaton or even my profs.
Jim Young, Jimma, knew I was at the counseling center and he was really great about praying for
me, praying with me and talking about what was good in my life. He showed me a lot of
wonderful loving care that wasnt shame based at allso it may be that I took on a lot of that
stigma myself.
I know that my parents, who were both Wheaton profs, did not respond well when they found
out I was going to the counseling center. So my biggest concern was my folks. I dont want to
paint a picture that Wheaton was a terrible place for me coz it wasnt and the counseling was
good for me. But back then, in America, being diagnosed with a mental illness meant there was
something fundamentally wrong with you. I think that things are changing slowlybut its still
true. Im still pretty cautious with who I will talk about it Wheaton is a pretty good place to
talk about it.

Abigail: It was my junior year that I was actually diagnosed with anxiety and depression. At the
beginning of the school year, I plugged an unfamiliar address into my maps and ended up in a
parking lot surrounded by red bricked and dark brown shuddered buildings. The second building
on the left, with the address engraved in gold lettering right next to the heavy wooden door,
would become my most visited location of the semester. But stepping into the counselors office
each week, sometimes more than once, would also become my most well-kept secret of the
semester. I had no idea what to expect when I sat down on the couch in that office for the first
time and, I have to admit, I did an excellent job of keeping up the guard I frequently construct in
new situations. But, during the second visit, once the small talk was done and basic introductions
over, my head, heart, and entire being sunk as low as my body sunk into the floral couch as the
counselor looked me in the eye and said with gentle directness: Based on what youve told me,
the test you filled out, and from what Ive observed, Im going to tell you that you have severe
anxiety and moderate depression. And its something thats been around for a while, that youve
gotten very good at ignoring.

Brian: My roommate, after a while, said: you should go see some counseling, and I was like:
hes right. So I tried to go to the campus counseling and, god bless him, the guy from the grad
school program tried, but he was in way over his head with me, my god. I left those sessions
feeling a billion times worse than I came in, and thats saying something. He asked the wrong
questions, pursued the wrong courses of help Again, he was trying but he didnt really know
what he was doing. I should have been seeing someone professional the moment I got here. I
mean Im not faulting the guy, he was trying his best, but his best was not enough.

Lauren: Mom wanted me to start counseling. I did not want to do counseling. I behaved more
like a two year old than I had since I was actually a two year old - tried to lock myself in my
room and hide under the bed, actually. I did not want to do it, I dont know why I had a mental
block about it, but I did. I still dont know why I have a mental block. I guess its sort of like a
sense of shame, like youre not good enough to handle life on your own. Plus theres this sort
ofI dont know, in stories and comedies and stuff they make fun of the idea of therapy and
lying on a couch: they make fun of your lying on a couch telling the person how you feel. Its
made to almost seem like its less legitimate, like its not a real source of help, its: You must be
stupid and cant handle yourself, so you must go do this thing.
ANECDOTES

Chad: I like mythologywhen I was a kid I didnt read comic books, I read Greek mythology. I
love the story of Medusa Heres this womanshe was a priestess in the temple of Athena and
she was raped by Poseidon and somehow Athena decides thats her fault. Poseidon gets off scot
free and Medusa is punished for being attacked and is turned into a gorgon and is sent off to this
island and spends the rest of her life by herself trying desperately to make a life and every time
she gets closer to a human being he turns into stone That story fascinated me as a kid, I loved
that story: the complete and utter lack of justice, lack of connection, and the end of her story is
that, finally, she died. Her head gets chopped off, thats the happy ending for herwhat was
twisted about me as a kid (laughs) was that I thought that that was really amazing. It didnt make
me happy, I felt sad for her. I wanted so hard for it to end differently but it never did.
Shes always portrayed as the bad guy, but really shes the victim. She is a pure priestess and
Poseidon takes her. She loses everything. Her only happy ending is that she dies. That probably
says something about me.
Theres something about being a Christian that death can be a happy ending. I was never good at
giving the right Christian answer but Ive always passionately believed in Scripture and
passionately believed in Jesus. So theres something in me that believes she got released from all
the terrible horrors done to her.

Sammy: This is a heavy truthbut I even tried to commit suicide. I was done with everything. I
reached the pinnacle point in which everything was hitting me one thing after another, problem
after problem. I thought I just cant do this anymore, I just feel weak, tired. Ive had insomnia
for five years too, so sleep didnt even exist. All in all, it is really hard to express whats going on
with depression in words
It's kind of ...

Fade up on Abigail. Sammy and Abigail take turns explaining their metaphor.

Abigail: It's kind of like saran wrap; it just keeps getting wrapped around you. It's clear, it's see-
through, transparent, so if you wrap it the right way, no one's gunna know it's there but you,
because it's suffocating.

Sammy: Like drowning... You're in the middle of the ocean calling out for help, but because of
other filtered sounds like the crashing of waves and fog horns, no one can hear you.

Abigail: The more it wraps the more it cuts off your circulation. What do you do when visibly
nothing is wrong, but its all in your head, your mind? In addition to that, having people say:
"you're not measuring up to this standard," is another layer of saran wrap after another until your
mind can't do it anymore.

Sammy: Part of you wants to scream out to the heavens "help me!" but the other part of you is
saying no one can.

Fade out on both.

Brian: DSG. Free journaling. Oh boy. It got really bad, I was I named some names, I said
some things criminal liability. I was terrified of it, looking back, and so when I went to see my
counselor the next day I handed him the document and I was like oh God, whats this? Help!
We have the session and everything is fine but then Im having dinner and my RA is like hey,
the Dean wants to talk to you. And I was like goddamn it, because I knew exactly what was
happening. Lo and behold, I head back to the bookstore building, I go upstairs and theres two
armed officers flanking me.

Lauren: I admitted to one of my teachers that, yknow, I was depressed and wasnt I was
having a bad day or something like that. And the language I used did sound like It was
definitely over-dramatic. But, instead of finding me and talking to me directly, the professor
contacted res life. Res life was like we insist that you go to the hospital: we are not allowing you
to stay on campus anymore - which may or may not have been a legitimate choice on their part,
Im not sure about that yet. When I was stuck in the hospital, trying to get back on campus
sucked because it was a holiday weekend: even though the doctors at the hospital were like you
can go home whenever they still didnt let you leave because Wheaton would not allow you to
stay on campus until you had contacted a certain person in res life - you had to meet with them
and, like, discuss things. So I could have gone home the day after I was admitted into the
hospital, except that Wheaton was on holiday and wouldnt talk to me and wouldnt let me back
on campus. Which, that really was frustrating.

Brian: They kick me off of campus, Im suspended for a semester, theres a legal investigation,
they send a goddamn tech van to my house because Wheaton PD called Evanston PD and that
was a load of crap. We sent them scurrying off because they didnt have a fucking warrant and
Im still mad about that.
The campus called, like a conference call, to talk it out with me, and they asked some fucking
invasive questions about, like, my sexual preferences, stuff like that, about whether I had any sort
of fetishism habits or anything. I sort of talked them down, I said: thats stupid, thats irrelevant,
Im damned depressed as hell anyway, whats that got to do with anything? After the call, my
parents essentially shout me down and come about this close to smacking me because they think
Im a kinky fuck or whatever, because they think the questions had to be coming from
somewhere. It was a really, really bad week. It was a really, really bad week.

Abigail: I very much like to learn I like to challenge myself academically, but Ive also realized
that the things that I am interested in and passionate about are not suited to a particular classroom
setting. I prefer people to facts. My brain doesnt work with numbers and words: it works with
people and conversations. Im not very outspoken in class, I dont raise my hand, and I dont
really talk unless I am prepared to give a presentation. It was almost nice to not have to feel like I
have to defend myself out loud to people all the time and constantly put on my A game to raise
my hand in class.
There were a couple of professors last semester who would call on me in the middle of class. Not
that I wasnt paying attention, it just takes me a long time to hear something said, process it,
think about what I heard, formulate a response to it and then say it out loud, which normally
doesnt happen in the time span of discussion in class. There was one day in particular that a
professor called on me and I panicked; it wasnt a new thing for him to call on me, but that was a
time when I definitely felt trapped. It triggered it, I had a panic attack I couldnt speak couldnt
do anything, all the while at the same time I had to make it seem okay, like I just didnt know the
answer. I was so afraid that I would be misperceived if it was more than just not knowing the
answer to the question.
Im kind of trapped in my own body sometimes. I dont know how to get out of it, how to escape
it somedays. There is no one else I can really blame necessarily but myself. I didnt know how to
unravel the situation. Its very suffocating in a way. Dont say it because theyll think youre a
freak because you have mental illness, but if you dont say anything, maybe theyll forget it by
tomorrow.

Alex: I felt myself being pulled in too many directions and would neglect taking care of myself. I
would be pulled in one direction by work, one by homework, one by social life, or by getting
enough sleep so I could do it all over again the next day. It was an exhausting pattern.
I cannot believe that every single person is designed to go to a college or a university. I cannot.
And due to that neglect of my instinct to take care of myself I saw my health deteriorate to the
point that I was kicked out of Wheaton.
HERE AND NOW

Chad: Some people came out of Wheaton feeling like they were supposed to leave as a certain
type of person. I didnt sense that, I felt like I was supposed to go into the world and ask all the
hard questions because both Jim Young and Michael Stauffer did that. I felt like my job was to
go into the world and engage with people where they were and to love them where they were and
to ask hard questions of Christians, non-Christians, and especially myself. I ask a lot of hard
questions of myself and that does not make me a very popular person.

Abigail: Currently, I would say that I take life as it comes, one day at a time. Anxiety and
depression are not gone, but I would frame it by saying that whereas first semester, I was in crisis
mode, this semester, I'm dealing with the ups and downs that come naturally with recovery. I am
still seeing a counselor every week, and now am also seeing a nutritionist for a severe eating
disorder. There are really great weeks and there are shitty weeks, phenomenal days and shitty
days, restful hours and shitty hours, perfect moments and shitty moments.
Right now, I am learning to recognize what all depression and anxiety and eating disorders mean
beyond a simple diagnostic description. I am learning to name what it is I am feeling, knowing it
is ok to say those things aloud, even if it means admitting that I am not ok. I am learning how to
navigate through the tensions of my own body, heart, and mind, which try to convince me that
neither I nor anything I do matters, with the truth that I do matter and that I was created by and in
the image of one who does not make mistakes in calling his creation good. I am learning how to
speak and how to listen, how to love and be loved, how to hold and be held, how to lead with
confidence and how ask for help in dependence, how to give and receive grace. I am learning to
live in the grey areas of questions, frustrations, and hardships that are the realities of our world
on this side of heaven, where the kingdom is already come but also not yet fully here.

Alex: Thank God, I have only had maybe four or five of my migraines in the time that Ive been
out of Wheaton as opposed to having one almost every single week. After leaving, I have had
more time to just be present instead of having to do things. Now, at my part time job, I work
from either 8:00 to 2:30 or 2:30 to 8:00 at night. And that time is for me to jump in my car, listen
to my music and be who I am. I get to hang out with my deepest friends that I have had since
kindergarten. My goal is that I strive to do my job to the best of my ability, I strive to be in
community with my friends, and I strive to keep myself in good health.

Sammy: I am here and there. There are days when I feel completely alone and I wont even get
out of my room, there are days when I feel surrounded by people who love me. I cannot tell if its
getting better or worse I mean I still have insomnia, and depression, and anxiety. But being
here at Wheaton has taught me so much about myself. There is so much I can do as a person, but
I am a human being and I have my limitations. In some weird way anxiety and depression has
been a blessing... I think that for both, they helped me realize that I could not do things on my
own and they have also revealed to me that I have strengths and weaknesses. They revealed who
my friends really were, and through my difficulties God has been by my side listening to me cry,
listening to my troubles, and revealing his unconditional love even when I felt that no one loved
me.
Brian: Suspended for a semester, I got some psychiatric evaluation. Surprise: moderately to
severely depressed. So I start seeing a counselor in town two times a week for hour-long
sessions. We start pulling my life back together. Over the summer I do a full course-load of
summer school and I get a job at the computer lab there. Im handling my commute, I get myself
fed, all that sort of stuff. I have my life in order, yknow. I have time to hard reset, not deal with
this alien abusive culture I was getting/perceiving at Wheaton.
At any rate, I got back to Wheaton. Im still talking to my counselor twice a week on the phone,
thats good. Im doing fine: helping with clubs, making my grades, etc. I still have to deal with
depressive symptoms now and then. Its not a walk in the park all the time, but it is worth it in
the end. Ive realized that life is its own reward.

Lauren: This year, my friends actually did the research for me and looked up other counseling
centers that were good in the area. Because, again, I still didnt want to go. Ive been doing that
all year consistently, so its better than last year in that I didnt start right towards the summer
before you could actually get anywhere. But it still just doesnt seem very useful ever. Whenever
I go it just feels like Im sitting there Sometimes I talk about what Im feeling, but she never
actually suggests anything to do about it, or shes doing weird psychoanalyzing things that I
dont think are necessarily accurate.
CLOSING THOUGHTS

Chad: Being an artist is living a life thats focused on creativity, and pushing on the edges of
peoples expectations, and asking questions, and going places that require courage. My life is full
of questions, and there is only one person in your life that is going to know all the questions and
all the answers: Jesus. He created you to go out into the world and find that which is other than
you.

Abigail: I dont have it all figured out. There has been a lot of responsibility put on Wheaton
students to figure out world issues and figure out what to do with them all while they are here at
Wheaton. It is not my responsibility to play Gods role of fixing things all the time. That can turn
into a very hopeless and dark reality. This year I have come to a much more realistic awareness
that I am fixed into a system that is very unjust; I need to be held accountable for that, but what
do I do with that?... It is not about easy answers.

Alex: Someone can put on a very good face and say I have it together and inside everything is
crumbling apart. I spent a lot of my time at Wheaton putting on the face that I was doing fine. I
just wasnt in the right place when I came to Wheaton. I think the board made the right decision.
I gotta take care of myself. I survived a year and a half there. Ive come to terms that, though I
may have failed college, I cannot believe that God is done with me. I cannot believe that the God
I follow would do that. Yes it may be dark where I am right now, but he is not going to leave me
in the dark. You know they say in movies, night always gets darkest before the dawn.

Sammy: For me, reassurance really helps: the support, the love, the reminders, and when people
want to hang out with me, I cry tears of joy. You want to be with methats the greatest thing. A
human being is so complex in many; many ways We are all far more than just a label. Im
more than that. Be more. I like those two words: be and more (laughs) Youre a human
fricking being (laughs)! And you have every right to have the emotions that God put in us! You
are far greater than what others place you to be.

Brian: Thesis statement, one thing I can tell Wheaton as a community: people are worth it for
themselves, not because of a theological mandate. You shouldnt have to do mental gymnastics to
try and relate with and understand people with taboo issues. Dont ask what would Jesus do?
ask what any decent person would do. That positions you to be able to help in being able to just
listen and keep from judging, rather than trying to steer someone back on track.

Lauren: When youre in this sort of painful area its hard to get yourself to do any homework, or
to do work. Doing the work makes you think, or at least makes me think, about how not well
youre doing in your classes, which leads to more pain, which leads to not doing homework,
which leads to not doing well in classes, so it turns into a vicious circle thing that feeds itself. It
feels like there is very little grace given for that.
Im one of the better functioning people who have this. I have various other close friends who
struggle a lot more than me, especially with things like getting up and going to class. A lot of
people dont think I am depressed or dont notice that Im depressed because I am still at the
point where I can get myself up and go to class. But thats just me, and partially because my
mom drilled that into my head, she made me go to class when I had stomach flu.