My Mental Health and a Global Pandemic

In some ways, I've been preparing for this pandemic my whole life! At various times, I've suffered from and been treated for generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, and vague one called adjustment disorder.

Leila freaking out with birds in her hands.

Which is why I am completely baffled by the fact that I am NOT freaking out right now. At all! And I am as stunned by this realization as you are.  

Today is Friday, March 20, 2020. My fifth day of teleworking from home, and my seventh day of staying inside, practicing social distancing. 

COVID-19 has officially been declared a global pandemic for over a week now. Tom Hanks and Idris Elba have both tested positive for this virus. Schools, businesses, restaurants, and bars are closed. 

Both Saturday Night Live and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver are on hiatus (until further notice). Normal society has come to a screeching halt. 

But I'm okay. And I think I'm okay because I've been working on my mental health almost non-stop for over a decade!  

I started seeing a therapist regularly in 2009, when I was so crippled with anxiety and depression that I could not sleep or eat. Humans need to eat and sleep in order to live. When I could no longer do either, I finally faced my fears and got the help I needed. I talked through those fears with a wonderful therapist, and my new-found psychiatrist prescribed me much-needed medication to get me eating and sleeping again.

Leila in 2009, not eating or sleeping.

Over those 16 months, from 2009 through 2010, I learned to face my fear (of talking about my fears), and I learned that I was not a slave to my emotions. I learned that I could take an emotion from a "10" and turn it down to a "6," just with the power of my breath alone. I learned to stop being so afraid of my own damn thoughts and emotions.

I went back to therapy in 2014 after a traumatic flight left me with PTSD. I was flying to Mexico to visit my dad who was in the hospital after a stroke. I was flying from Washington, DC to Dallas, TX, and I planned to change planes at DFW and continue on to Aguascalientes, Mexico. 

We had just begun our initial descent into DFW when I felt our plane tilt forward and to the left. It felt like a nose-dive. Passengers started screaming. Then 10 seconds later, we were back to normal, and the flight attendants didn't seem fazed. The pilot never told us what happened, and we landed like normal. The passenger next to me told me he was sure that we were going to be on the news that night.

I had about two hours before my next flight to Aguascalientes, so I found my way to the nearest airport TGI Fridays and immediately ordered a Long Island Iced Tea (having worked at TGI Fridays as a teenager, I knew that the Long Island Iced Tea was the most potent drink on the menu).

Long Island Iced Tea from TGI Fridays.

Once I finished that first one, I immediately ordered another. That was when I texted my partner and told him about my flight. He looked-up my flight on a public flight-tracker and told me that my plane had dropped 10,000 feet in a matter of seconds. 

I was pretty shaken-up, but by the power of TGI Fridays, I was able to muster-up enough liquid courage to get on my next flight. My week in Mexico was mostly spent in the hospital with my dad. I didn't have time to think about my return flight until the day I left. There was no TGI Fridays in the Aguascalientes airport, but I bought two cans of beer and chugged those as quickly as possible. And I eventually made it home. 

After returning home, I had nightmares every night about crashing planes. I had to get out of bed in the middle of the night and sit in the living room, flipping through Facebook or Twitter to calm myself down. I decided to go back to therapy because I had developed a full-on phobia of flying, and I didn't know how I would ever walk onto another airplane again. 

After just a couple of sessions with the Kaiser Permanente therapist and with the  psychiatrist, I started to attend a weekly group therapy session with other people who suffered from anxiety and panic. I loved this "anxiety class" (as I called it)! I learned about my "overactive amygdala." 

I learned about tactics like "worry time" and "categorizing your thoughts."

After a couple of weeks with these new tools, I had stopped having panic attacks. 

I went back to therapy in 2017. I had a whole new list of worries. The election of Donald Trump. My cousin had terminal cancer. My new boss at work had fired my closest work-friend and other co-workers were quitting in protest. It was a hard time.

I returned to my Kaiser Permanente therapist. She encouraged me to start reading books about "Adult Children of Alcoholics." These books blew my mind!!! They were about ME!!! The peacekeeper. The overachiever. The perfect daughter. I couldn't believe that there were other people just like me!

After that, I was hooked on self-help books about addiction. I realized that the root of my weight problem was that I was a food addict! And I would need more than Weight Watchers to tackle this addiction. I devoured Russell Brand's book Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions. 

His booked advocates that EVERYONE can benefit from a 12-Step program, not just winos and junkies.

But ironically, it was around this time that I started relying more and more on alcohol to get me through the day. I would come home and have a couple of White Russians for dinner. Why not? I had a rough day, and I deserved it. And they were delicious and made me a happier person to be around. I started drinking at work. I would mix little bottles of Tito's Vodka into my Diet Coke bottles. Why not, right? I could still do my job. And it made me a more pleasant person to be around. 

But everything changed in November of 2018. That was when I met my sponsor. She was volunteering at a health and wellness fair that I attended, and her table was full of flyers about Alcoholic Anonymous (AA). I was immediately drawn to her. She was kind and engaging and started to talk about the services that they offer. I said to her, "I think I need this," and I burst into tears. This angel gave me her personal phone number and email address and told me to email her that very day! I went with her to my first AA meeting two days later. 

Hi, my name is Leila, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is November 17, 2018.

Over the next year, my sponsor took me through the 12 Steps. She bought me my own copy of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The 12 Steps taught me how to live without the emotional crutches of alcohol. They taught me to give up control and turn it all over to a higher power. They taught me how to stop being so damn afraid all of the time.

So here I am on March 20, 2020. In the middle of a global pandemic. I am sober. I am not worried. I am present. I am following the instructions of the CDC and staying at home.

I am continuing to do my job remotely. I am keeping in contact with friends and family. I am reaching out. Because all I want to do right now is connect. That's all.

If you're feeling anxious, fearful, nervous, or worried, please reach out to me. Find me on ALL of the social media platforms (Leila Hernandez, in Washington, DC, I'm not hard to find). I want to share my experiences with you. I want to laugh with you. I want to talk with you. I want to know how you're doing and how you're getting through the day. 

It might not feel like it, but we are more connected right now than ever before!
All will be well. We've got each other. What could be better than that?

  

Remembering Mr. (Terry) Neisler

When I was 35, I was diagnosed with a condition called adjustment disorder, which I had never heard of. According to Wikipedia, “An adjustment disorder (AjD) occurs when an individual has significant difficulty adjusting to or coping with a significant psychosocial stressor.” Looking back over my life, I should have been diagnosed with this disorder much earlier.

As a kid, I did not adjust well to change. I would get anxious at the end of every school year, and summers were the worst because I knew that a full-on anxiety attack could (and would) strike at any time. I liked the routine of going to school and being distracted from my obsessive musings on mortality. During the school year, I also had new episodes of The Simpson, 90210, or Friends to calm, distract, and soothe my anxious mind. But all of that routine and structure was gone in the summertime.

I was the most anxious when I was leaving one school and starting another. The summer between elementary school and middle school was horrendous. The summer between middle school and high school was crippling. But every fall, I ended-up adjusting to my new school and my new routine. I loved going back to school. 

When I started high school, I took “Theater Arts” as an elective. My teacher was a funny, hefty man in his 30’s named Mr. Neisler (full name, Terrance "Terry" Neisler, in case anyone is Googling him). I loved his class immediately. We learned about theater history, movement, sound, make-up, stage combat, you name it.

We had to memorize a monologue from any Shakespeare play, and I selected a speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is still my favorite play to this day. I would use that monologue when auditioning for plays for many years after that. My love of Shakespeare definitely came from Mr. Neisler. 

Mr. Neisler was also the director of my first high school play, The Taming of the Shrew. He was my first mentor. He encouraged me and believed in me. He was the first adult who treated me like an equal. He treated me like a friend. He got me. He saw me. He made me feel seen (which is all we really want). 

In the spring, he cast me in the Varsity One-Act Play, where I had even more lines than in the previous show. 

Another theater teacher at my high school was in charge of the Freshman One-Act Play. Since I had been in two other plays my freshman year, I felt confident that I would be cast in a play with only freshmen. But she didn’t cast me in the play. At all. And I was devastated. I cried...a lot.  

But Mr. Neisler was there to comfort me and assure me that there would be other plays. He  told me the other director was crazy to not cast me. But then something funny happened. The lead male actor had to quit the play because he was failing a class. So the director asked me if I would be willing to play the male lead. I didn’t know how I was going to memorize all of those lines (I had never been the LEAD in anything in my life), but I said yes and agreed to play the male lead.

The next school year, I took choir instead of theater as my elective, but I knew that I would still get to see and talk to Mr. Neisler during the fall production, which I was looking forward to auditioning for. I was cast in that play, and in the next spring, I was again cast in the Varsity One-Act Play. And our friendship only grew stronger.  

Mr. Neisler told me that he might be moving. He said that the school principal wanted the other theater teacher to direct the Varsity One-Act Play next year. Mr. Neisler said that he was already starting to look for theater teaching jobs in Houston, where his wife’s family was from. Apparently his wife was unhappy in McAllen and wanted to move to Houston to be closer to her family. 

By the end of my sophomore year, the news was official that Mr. Neisler would not come back in the fall. I was going to lose to my favorite teacher, my mentor, and my best friend. I was heart-broken. 

But before he moved, we did one more play together. Mr. Neisler and I both auditioned for the McAllen Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of The Tempest, and the play would be directed by Mr. Gelber, the theater teacher from another high school in McAllen. Mr. Gelber and Mr. Neisler were best friends. All of Mr. Gelber’s theater students were going to audition for this play, as were Mr. Neisler’s theater students. 

This play gave me something to focus on as another school year came to an end. I didn’t have time to be sad about Mr. Neisler leaving because I got to see him at rehearsal. And the show was a huge success. And then Mr. Neisler moved to Houston. 

I didn’t do very well that summer, after he moved. I was anxious a lot. I was weepy a lot. I had problems falling asleep at night. I didn’t have a normal routine. I probably drank a lot. 

I hung out at Mr. and Mrs. Gelbers’ house A LOT - as a lifeline to Mr. Neisler. We all watched movies together (like the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet and the 10th Anniversary Concert of Les Misérables). I also hung out with the Gelbers' oldest son, Devon, and I babysat for the younger boys, Alex and Jamie. 

The next summer, Mr. Neisler took his Houston theater students to New York City to see Broadway shows, and he invited me to come with them. Mrs. Gelber was originally going to go on this trip, but she injured herself and needed surgery. So she let me take her place on this trip. I had a wonderful time with Mr. Neisler and his new students. It was clear that his new students loved him as much as we did.  

One year later, I graduated from high school and moved to Indiana to go to college. Early in the school year, I was on AOL Instant Messenger with a friend from McAllen. He told me, through Instant Messenger, that Mr. Neisler had cancer.

My brain (my heart, my stomach) couldn’t handle this news. I couldn’t process it. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I just logged off of Instant Messenger and tried to push all of my emotions deep down, as far as they could go. I didn’t try to contact Mr. Neisler. I just wanted to forget everything. 

All of these years later, I still don’t know exactly when he died. I never asked about a funeral. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to tell him what a huge role he played in my life. I don’t know where his wife and kids are living or how they’re doing. Do they know how much he was loved? 

However, I recently reconnected with Mr. Gelber, who is now teaching theater at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. I found him on Facebook, then found his Texas Tech email address and sent him an email. I told him how much I regretted not being there for Mr. Neisler at the end of his life, and I told him how much Mr. Neisler meant to me. 

Mr. Gelber wrote back the next day and said, “You mustn’t worry about not being there for him. He knew how you felt.” 

I Found My Purpose

Dear friends,

I know what I have to do. For the sake of my health. For the sake of my sobriety. I can no longer hide behind a desk and play it small. I have to do what I was born to do. And here it is:

I need to speak to people about my struggles with 

depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction. 

That it what I was born to do. That is my purpose. 

And it's not because I have a savior-complex (even though a less-than-supportive person in my world said that to me a couple of days ago, but I will forgive her and move on).

I have to speak to people about my struggles with depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction, because if I don't, I will go back to abusing alcohol, food, and Klonopin, just to get through the day.

I need a career where I can honestly express myself. I need a career where I can be my authentic self. I need a career where I am building relationships and helping the world.

When I was a kid, I didn't realize that I had mental health struggles. I just thought I was dumb, or slow, or over-sensitive. But it was so much more than that. I was a young girl suffering from early on-set anxiety and depression. I believe that my first anxiety attack (at the age of 7!) left me with years of PTSD. And every anxiety attack after that left me with more PTSD.

I didn't have the vocabulary to talk about my emotions. I was too terrified to talk about my emotions. I was terrified OF my emotions!

That's why my calling is to speak to groups about my experiences, throughout my lifetime, and share with them the lessons that I have learned along the way. I want to speak to elementary school children. I want to speak to middle school and high school students. I certainly want to speak to college students (and be honest with them about the mistakes I made because I didn't know how to handle my emotions). I want to talk to them about my reliance on alcohol, drugs, and boys to feel sane. One day, I would also like to speak with businesses about mental health in the workplace.

These are the topics I care about, and these are the gifts I want to share.

To all of the doubters out there - I will be good at this! I will be very good at this! And I will help people so that they don't have to struggle the way I struggled.

When I was 16 years old, a tall, blond, beautiful, Polish girl lived in my home as an exchange student. I was always so jealous of her. I was short, frumpy, and had frizzy brown hair. I wanted to look like her so badly!

Then one day, she gave me the most profound compliment that I had ever received. This tall, blond, beautiful girl told me that SHE was jealous of ME! I immediately refused her compliment and said that she was insane. What would she have to be jealous of? She said, "When you talk, everyone listens. No one listens to me. But everyone in the room stops and listens to you."

As an insecure 16 year-old, I didn't think that was such a great compliment. I just wanted to be tall, blond, and beautiful like her. I thought that I had to be tall, blond, and beautiful to be happy. I thought that all of my problems were based on the fact that I was short and frumpy with huge, frizzy hair.

But 22 years later, I'm just now remembering that compliment. And it scares me. It scares me because it reveals my purpose. And my purpose is to speak to people about the very things that hurt and scared me most in life - depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction. That it's. That's why I'm here.

Now where I go from here remains to be seen. I will start this new endeavor one step at a time. But I will certainly keep you posted!

Lots of love,
Leila

Connection Is The Opposite of Addiction

Dear friends, 

Today sucks. One of my best friends in the universe is hurting. His father died yesterday, unexpectedly. I learned about it via a random person's Facebook post - which is its own level of suckness. My friend and I spoke on the phone yesterday for an hour, speaking through tears. His father's death is creating news, as he was an important figure in the history of American rock 'n roll. But I just want to be there for my friend. Maybe he wants me to fly down to be with him at this hard time. Maybe he would rather I not bother him right now. I'm not sure. I'm only sure of one thing - this hurts. 

So instead of buying the first first flight to Austin, I'm sitting here at the Rockville Library, writing about my feelings instead of acting on my feelings.

But my lovely Eric G. sits beside me, reading some "Batman Detective Comics" that he found in the fiction section. He doesn't mind sitting by my side while I cry. So that's nice. 

A lot has been happening since the last time I wrote here. I've been sober for over 6 months, and I'm still going to AA meetings and meeting with my sponsor. I'm even getting to know other people in my Saturday morning meeting. A few days ago, I got coffee with another woman from my AA home group, and she is fantastic! She's smart, she's funny, and she's kind. I'm meeting the best people in the world in my Saturday morning AA group. 

I cried during my "share" at this morning's meeting. I talked about my friend's dad dying, and how much this hurts, and how something like this REALLY makes me want to have a drink.

I know how much better I would feel if I had a drink. I know it would just take the edge off and bring a smile to my face, even if just for a little while. But today I choose not to take a drink. I'm just going to sit here, in pain, and write about it. 

My stomach hurts with sadness. My eyes are puffy from crying. And I just want to close my eyes and sleep through the next few days. If I can't drink through it, can I at least sleep through it? 

At the same time, there is so much good in my life. So much love. I have the the most loving, brilliant, and kind friends in the world. I am grateful for all of them. I just want to feel connected to ALL of them. In my recovery, I've learned that what I long for, more than anything (more than any drink, more than any food), is connection.

I want my friends and family to know how much I love them. I want them to know that my heart aches with love for them. I feel nothing but love and gratitude for everyone who has ever walked with me at any point, during this life's journey. I am grateful for the ones that brought joy, and I am grateful for the ones that brought pain. They have all made me a better, stronger person.

I recently ran into one of these characters from my past. An ex-boyfriend. Someone who brought me so much joy, but also brought me pain. I saw him on the platform of a Metro Station on Wednesday. I knew it was him because of his black and orange Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, which he still wears year-round, even 10 years later. 

Even though I felt embarrassed and self-conscious, I walked over to him. We made eye contact, and I waved. As I got closer, I said, "I would hug you, but my hair is soaking wet." He said he didn't care and hugged me anyway. We each asked each other how the other was doing. I'm pretty sure we both said fine. He was heading in the opposite direction as me, but I decided to get on the train with him (in the wrong direction) to catch-up a little more. He said he was on his way to the courthouse to sort out of some legal stuff with his property management company. I said I was on my way to work.

Within a couple of minutes, we were at the next stop, and I got off to catch the train in the opposite direction. We hugged goodbye, and I said, "I'll hopefully see you on the Metro again," and waved goodbye. 

I realize how lucky I was to run into him. He's one of the only characters from my past who I'm not currently connected with, in any way. He's not on social media. We don't have any mutual friends. I've hated not knowing how he's been or what he's been up to for the past decade. But I want to know these things. Just because we didn't work out as a couple doesn't mean that I don't want him in my life as a friend. He's a hugely important part of my life story. I want to reminisce with him about old times and funny memories. Yes, it was a (slow) painful break-up, but that's just one part of the story of our time together. I want to be his friend. I want to know about his wife and daughter. I want to know what his life is like now. I want him to know Eric, and I want Eric to know him. I want to go with Eric to this guy's rock shows (he's in a pretty successful local band). I hope this guy and I can have that kind of relationship one day. 

What else? 

I have a health coach. She is lovely. She has come into my life at exactly the time I've needed her most. She has helped me get rid of the Lean Cuisines and microwavable breakfast burritos in my life. She's got me chopping, rinsing, and cooking my own food.

And I feel in control of the food I put into my body for the first time in a long time. She has also inspired me beyond my dinner plate. She wants me to focus on ALL aspects of life and being an interconnected human. She wants me to have a career that inspires me. She wants me to lead the life that I was born to experience. 

I don't want to settle for an office job. I don't want to settle for living small. I want to connect with people and help them through the hard times. I want to speak with high school and college students about my experiences with depression, anxiety, addiction, and recovery. I want to help young people express their emotions. I didn't have the words to describe my emotions as a kid - I didn't know what "anxiety" or "depression" meant. I only knew that life seemed harder for me than for my peers. I seemed to have more "break-downs" and "freak-outs" than anyone else around me. I seemed to be the only one staying up all night, every night, trying to finish history papers and physics lab reports. Life was hard! 

But drinking made life easier for me. Drinking built community. Drinking helped create great memories.

But I don't need alcohol anymore. I don't need it to build community. And I don't need it to create great memories. I can now do all of that without drinking. 

But today is hard. My friend's dad died unexpectedly, and I know he hurts. And I hurt. But I'm not going to drink today. Thanks for letting me rant.

Lots of love, 

Leila 

An Open Letter to Russell Brand

Dear Russell,

I went to my first AA meeting yesterday. Thank you. Yes, YOU.

I listened to your audiobook, Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions, last winter. I loved it.

As soon as I had finished it, I immediately started it again from the beginning. I didn't know then that I was an alcoholic, but something still resonated from inside of me, from your first few words. Something about always feeling uneasy about the state of the world. Always contemplating the futility of life and mortality. Never really feeling at ease on this planet.

Those sentiments resonated with me 100%. I had never put those feelings into words before, but you did. And I felt a kinship with you immediately.

At the time I listened to your audiobook, I could easily see how I was addicted to food and relationships, and used those things to self-soothe and feel a sense of purpose. I put food and relationships on this pedestal as being the only things that could save me - that could give this meaningless life any meaning. I built my day around food and relationships. I built my life around food and relationships.

But when you rely on anything outside of yourself for a sense of meaning, joy, or purpose, you're setting yourself for hurt.

My relationship with food was starting to impact my health. My weight slowly crept up, year after year, despite being an active member of Weight Watchers.

And the need for attention and approval from others was crippling. I could never get enough compliments from my partner. I wanted strangers to notice me. I wanted my peers to praise me. But it was never enough.

I realized all of this from listening your audiobook.

But I didn't realize that I was also an alcoholic until just now.

I met a woman at a health-and-wellness fair who was handing out literature about AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). I started speaking with her and was crying within 60 seconds of meeting her. She was kind and generous and gave me her phone number and email address. I emailed her that night. She invited to join her at an AA meeting the next day. I went to that meeting yesterday. And I absolutely relished every moment of it.

Russell, I didn't realize it, but I'm an alcoholic! I use alcohol to self-soothe. I rely on alcohol to fly in an airplane. Sometimes, I use alcohol to just get through a hard day.

This AA meeting was nothing like I had expected. I expected a room full of traumatized, abused, homeless addicts. What I found was room full of people JUST LIKE ME. People who have been struggling with anxiety for most of their lives. People who are very sensitive to the disapproval of others. People who worry too much. People who are really funny and interesting! People who are willing to be vulnerable and share their hurts and scars with a room full of strangers.

I fell in love with EVERYONE in that room.

I didn't say a word for the entire meeting. I just listened. And cried. And felt completely at home with these lovely human-beings.

If this is what church feels like for religious people, then I FINALLY understand the appeal of church for the first time in my life! I felt hope. I felt unconditional love. I felt the absolute beauty of humanity.

And I will go back. I'm already looking for more meetings to attend. I would happily attend a meeting every day!

I know that AA will help me with some of my problems. But I also know that I have to deal with my specific issues with food, too. And for that, I plan to attend my first OA meeting in two days. In fact, I'll be going to an AA meeting at 6:00 PM, followed immediately by an OA meeting at 7:15 PM. And I can't wait.

Thank you, Russell. Thank you for sharing your recovery with me. Thank you for holding up a mirror to my own fears and struggles.

I know that I will always be an addict. But I now have the HOPE and FAITH that I can lead a full, happy, and healthy life, without being tied down to these addictions. I'm not there yet. I'm just at the start of this journey. But I am finally ready for the start of this journey.

I wanted to thank you via email, but I couldn't find your email address on your website. So here it is. My thoughts and feelings of gratitude for all the world to see. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Russell.

I hope that, one day, I too can help other people find their way to freedom from addiction.

A grateful fellow human being,
Leila Hernandez

Ennui

Blah. Ennui. For no good reason. Hormones? Probably. Is there anything wrong in my life? Nope. Life is fine. Life is abundant. And the universe is unfolding as it should.

But still, I cry. I'm crying because I'm sad that I'm crying.

How would I like to soothe this? Definitely with cake. Oh man, that would perk me up. If I could do ANYTHING in the world, I'd love to walk down the street to Whole Foods, go to the bakery, and pick out some sort of mousse cake. Then I would come home, eat the cake, and watch Parks and Recreation on Netflix, and I would be euphorically happy. And everything would be ok. And I'd go to sleep happy.

But I can't do that. Nope. I'm a food addict. Yay. That means I don't get to use food like that anymore. As a food addict, I'm not even allowed to eat sugar and flour. Which sucks. Which is probably another reason why I'm crying. It sucks. Being a food addict sucks. Because I know that cake, pizza, and ice cream WOULD make everything better. But I can't do that.

So, instead, I just sit here sad. For no good goddamn reason. This is what it feels like to live with depression.

Eh. The end.

My Month of Zen - Part 2 (Jon's Last Day)

Dear friends,

Tonight is Jon Stewart's last episode as host of The Daily Show. I will never forget where I was on August 6, 2015.

As a part of my healing, and as a way to say goodbye, I have been binge-watching the past 16 years of The Daily Show for over a month now. 1999 and 2000 were silly years. 2001 through 2007 were very dark years (see previous post). But re-living the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was euphoric! I was shedding tears of joy as I watched the episodes from the days after the 2008 election. I had forgotten how magical those days were. We really did believe that everything was going to be alright.

But I realized that I'm never going to feel that kind of euphoria about an election ever again. The exquisite joy of that night (and the following months) was a direct result of the feelings of fear and hopelessness from the previous eight years of the Bush Administration. You can't have the joy of an Obama election without the devastation of a Bush presidency. You can't have the rainbow without the rain.

However, the euphoria of the 2008 election was dampened by the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009. I was just starting graduate school, and it seemed like the world was collapsing around me. And Jon Stewart spoke for all of us when he interviewed CNBC host Jim Cramer about the role that people like him (and other economic reporters) played in the economic collapse. Please do watch all three parts of the extended Jim Cramer interview HERE.

2009 was also the year that The Daily Show sent Jason Jones to report on the presidential elections in Iran. Yes, Jason Jones was literally in Iran and not in front of a green screen pretending to be in Iran. Jones interviewed Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari (watch the full segment HERE). Bahari was imprisoned shortly after the interview. He was tortured and interrogated for 118 days. Bahari wrote a book about his experience in captivity called Then They Came For Me. Stewart and Bahari then wrote a screenplay based on the book, and Stewart directed the movie, later titled Rosewater (watch the movie trailer HERE). It's currently streaming on Netflix, if you haven't had the chance to see it yet. It's magnificent.

2010 was year of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the South African World Cup, and the year that I moved to London. Yup, I moved to London *ONE MONTH* before Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert came to Washington, DC for their "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear." I was heart-broken that Stewart and Colbert were coming to my town just after I had moved to another country! To this day, it still pains me that I missed this event.

In 2011, Senator Gabby Giffords was wounded in an Arizona shooting that killed six victims. An earthquake in northern Japan triggered a tsunami, leading to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. Kate and William got married (I was there!). The Arab Spring brought uprisings to Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The Occupy Wall Street protests led to similar "occupy" movements around the world. And Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan. In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban, Barack Obama was re-elected president, Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast, mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut shocked the country, and the Summer Olympics came to London (I was there!). And there was Jon Stewart, through all of it.

 
All of our lives were touched and shaped by these events. Just writing this blog post and listing all of these horrific events in sequential order is breaking my heart. The world is a horrible, horrible place! But that's why I needed Jon Stewart and the The Daily Show. I needed someone to help me laugh so that I wouldn't just give-up and cry. That's what Jon Stewart did for me.

Can I share with you my absolute favorite moment from all 16 years of Jon Stewart's time on The Daily Show? It's this: Michael J. Fox interview from April 2009.

Michael J. Fox was on The Daily Show to promote his new memoir, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. Fox was confessing that it took him many years to come to terms with his Parkinson's disease diagnosis. At first, he didn't tell anyone about it. He drank too much, he went a little crazy. He said, "But once you can fix something in space and say, this is this, and this isn't going to change, then it opens up all these new possibilities around you." And I absolutely needed to hear that message at that moment. Because, in 2009, I had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I thought I was going crazy. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. And I kept hoping that it would just eventually go away. But after watching this interview with Fox, I finally "fixed it in space" and accepted that I had a problem and that I needed help. So I summoned all the courage that I could muster, and I found a therapist and a psychiatrist, and I got the help that I so desperately needed. And it saved my life.

So I owe a lot to The Daily Show. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Jon Stewart got me through some of the hardest times of my life.

And somewhere, deep down, I'm kind of afraid to move on with the next 16 years of my life without him. I don't know what I'm going to watch first thing in the morning while I'm getting dressed. I don't know who else is going to make me laugh at 7:00 AM so that I can face everything that life will inevitably throw at me.

But I think I can do it. I think I'm a big girl now. I'm not the 18 year-old that I was when Jon Stewart started at The Daily Show. I'm 34 years old. I think it'll be alright.

Thank you, Jon. Thank you.

Your biggest fan,
Leila