Heavy No Longer Is the Head That Wears This Crown
Like lots of young girls, Christine Metcalf would watch the Miss America pageant on TV and hatch a great plan. “Someday,” she’d think, even playfully sucking in her stomach when passing a mirror.
Little girls grow up. Thoughts of being Miss America tend to vanish in the haze of figuring out your place in the world.
So it was for Christine, who by the time she entered her teens knew she never felt like Miss America. Where was the happiness that was supposed to come? She came to accept that someone misled her on all that stuff about enjoying life.
At the darkest moment--after another argument with her parents--she says she contemplated suicide for the first time. She was 14.
“You don’t see light at the end of the tunnel,” she says. “That’s a cliche, but you really don’t. You don’t see an out. So when you’re facing what you think is a really difficult problem, [suicide] seems the only way to relieve it.”
That moment passed, but not Christine’s dark view of things. The outside world saw an honors student and three-year member of the cheerleading team. Her parents saw a girl who could be argumentative and moody, but who they thought was just being a teenager.
Christine wasn’t so sure.
“It was somewhere before my 16th birthday,” she says, “and I was thinking that I don’t know if I should be feeling this bad all the time. But I just thought, ‘This is normal. This is how life is. It stinks.’ ”
Christine is 18 now, the picture of poise and emerging beauty. She’s reliving those moments while sitting in her Fullerton living room and describing the event that opened the door to her life.
Her mother’s clinical depression resulting from a chemical imbalance was diagnosed in 1989. Open about it, Patty Metcalf even prepared information packets on depression. Two years ago, Christine saw one on the piano bench in the living room.
It listed symptoms and offered always-never-sometimes options for answers. “It gave you points for each one,” Christine says. “And it said if you scored above 25, you should consult a physician immediately. I got, like, a 48.”
After praying and soul-searching, she went to her parents. Shocked, they made an appointment with a therapist who eventually diagnosed in Christine the same clinical depression her mother suffers. The therapist prescribed antidepressants for Christine, which she’s been taking for two years.
“After the first month, it was so different,” Christine says. “I learned to enjoy things on my own. I used to think I liked things because people around me liked them. I learned to be optimistic on how things would happen. I wasn’t as stressed. I didn’t feel like I had a big burden on my shoulders all the time. I didn’t feel pressured to be perfect.”
A happy ending, but we’re only partway through the story. Last fall, Christine, a senior at El Dorado High School in Placentia, heard an announcement about the Miss Placentia pageant. What the heck, she thought, and went to an introductory session.
On Jan. 6, Christine was crowned Miss Placentia, securing a spot in next month’s Miss California pageant. The winner competes for Miss America.
Even at the local level, contestants choose a platform for their involvement. It’s fair to say that some girls stretch to find one.
Not Christine. She chose depression and teen suicide as her platform. And, rather than conceal her own history, she has made it part of her presentation.
She hasn’t stopped there. Today, she’ll speak to classes at El Dorado and do the same this month at Valencia High School in the district. She’s also spoken at the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary.
Whether discussing suicide is a path to becoming Miss California remains to be seen. As Christine might say, what the heck.
“As teens,” she says, “we have such pressure on us--to hold jobs, attend a good college, be popular, look the right way, act the right way. That’s stressful, and it can be very unhealthy.”
Figures given me from the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County indicate that between 7% and 14% of children will experience an episode of major depression before 15 and that two-thirds don’t get the help they need. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for people between 15 and 24.
Christine isn’t posing as an expert, merely a survivor. She wants peers to know that depression is an illness that can’t be willed away. She wants them to drop the kind of mask she wore for so many years.
“It’s not a happy pill,” she says of her medication. “You still get bummed about things and get frustrated. But it’s nice to know you can deal with them, that you’re going to come out of it and that it’s not going to last forever.”
Miss California will be crowned June 30. When I ask about her chances, I know she’s looking way past it when she answers:
“I’m much happier and more excited for the future. That’s one thing I never had, was excitement for the future.”
*
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.