I Am

With depression, many times we focus on what we aren’t, or what we don’t have. We look at how we are lacking because it’s so easy to point out what we lack. But – take a minute (or two) today and think about where you are, or where you have been. It will remind you how far in life you’ve come. So this is me:

• I am a mom.
• I have had four children.
• I am a wife.
• I am a daughter.
• I am an aunt.
• I am a cousin.
• I am a friend.
• I am an employee.
• I am an executive.
• I am a boss.
• I am an author of two books.
• I am a blogger.
• I am a high school graduate.
• I am a college graduate. Twice.
• I am a law school student dropout. Twice.
• I am a divorcee.
• I have been a single mom.
• I have been married twice.
• I have had major surgery 7 times.
• I have generalized anxiety disorder.
• I have survived.
• I am here.

Semi-colon or Period?

I have long been a fan of the semi-colon project. In fact, a semi-colon is the only visible tattoo I have. I was heartbroken, but not surprised, when the founder of the project lost the battle with depression.

I know I have posted many times about my struggles with my son, Z, and his bi-polar disorder. What I haven’t posted a lot about is my own struggle with depression. And make no mistake. It is a struggle. Every damn day.

Some people have situational depression. Others have chronic depression. For someone who has never suffered from depression at all, this is the different between twisting your ankle and having debilitating arthritis. Both hurt, but one pain heals and goes away. The other does not.

For those of us with chronic depression, we make the choice to rise every day. To face the world, when many days we want to do anything but. Some days, we are no different from the patient who is on the last round of chemo – so sick and weakened and in so much pain that ending it all seems easier than continuing on. Unlike those going through chemo, we have an invisible illness that many do not understand and we are shamed and humiliated for it. In my mind, we are everyday heroes in our own lives because we continue to fight to live.

Last night, I found myself running my fingers over my tattoo over and over again. It was dark in my bedroom, but that didn’t matter. I know exactly where the tattoo is, and if I think hard enough, I can recall exactly how the needles felt piercing into my skin. On nights like last night when the struggle demands me to put a period to the end of my story instead of the semi-colon, its presence on my skin comforts me.

And despite the thoughts in my head last night, I rose today to write to you. You are not alone in this fight. You made it another day.

Just a Dream

My life has flown by so fast. I look back now, at 41, and realize how much time I wasted. I spent so much time unhappy. Unhappy I was fat. Unhappy I couldn’t have the man I wanted. Unhappy I wasn’t living the right life. And now here I am. Unhappy in my body. Wondering if there was ever a way I could have lived the life I wanted. Not regretting my children, but regretting so many of my choices that led me to where I am.

How do I move forward when I don’t feel old but I know that I am. I want those things, still, that young people want. How do I continue on this road when there are so many things I need to rewind and do differently. I want to spend less time of my youth fat. I don’t want to have a wrecked body. I want to get back to myself, the utter confidence of self, the love I had for my life. I realize these things are lost now. They have been lost through the passage of time.

I can work or pay to get a better body, I can change my path and trajectory, I can do things differently now going forward but they don’t change the choices of the past. They don’t change that I’ll never have certain things, things I’ve always wanted. Is there a point in time where not having what you becomes acceptable? Do I just swallow my dreams and desires down and say, “this is what I have”? I live a privileged life, and I’m selfish. I want to be who I was, free to express myself and not repressed into a role. Yet here I am, pushing forward for my own repression daily. I make ties that keep me into my life. I no longer struggle to pursue my dreams. I merely wish I had and feel sadness that I didn’t.

Fatigue. Not Just Military Clothing.

Have you ever wondered how to diagnose something you can’t see with a scan, can’t physically touch, or can’t prove? The answer to that is by trial and error. The trial part being a lot of different drugs meant to help. The error part being those (expensive) drugs not working for you.

I’ve been battling something for years now. It’s been worsening in recent months, to the point where some days I do not rise from my bed. As an active type-A personality, this is frustrating for me in the extreme. As someone who wants to find out what in the hell is wrong and get it fixed, the lack of desire to leave my room in search of answers is puzzling.

Since Doctor Google is never wrong, I have self-diagnosed myself with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). I have five out of the list of symptoms they list as criteria, with four symptoms being the minimum threshold to “having” CFS. As I lay here in my bed with my laptop, I wonder if it really matters if I am diagnosed with CFS. After all, I’m already taking the medication typically prescribed to help with CFS. It’s not like there’s a lot of options with regard to treatment. Many of the home remedies I already employ just to get through my day. I don’t think I need an “official” diagnosis just to have an “A-Ha!” moment.

So how, then, does one live with something so physically draining and so mentally crippling as CFS? How do you explain to your employer that you’d really like to get out of bed but that today it just doesn’t seem possible? How do you fix this? I need to know because I emphatically refuse to move through life like this. I won’t even call it living, because it isn’t. It’s existing. Coping. Managing. At least guys in the military sign up to be assigned to wear their fatigues. For me, I can’t wait to get rid of them. I’m tired of wearing them day after day with nothing else to change into.

Pause, Then Continue

 

I had heard about Project Semicolon some time ago. The Project resonated with me on a lot of different levels but most particularly because I, too, am a survivor. I remember the first time I thought about dying. I was 13 years old. I became obsessed with it. So much so that my best friend was worried, my mom was worried, my aunt who I stayed with that summer in Florida was worried. I wasn’t worried though, because I knew waiting on the other side was peace.

The thing that held me back from dying was, what if I was wrong? What if there wasn’t peace on the other side? What if it was more of the same? Disruption, chaos, heartache, malcontent. I felt I couldn’t risk it.

As I got older, I started worrying about what would happen to those I left behind. Would they be sad? Would my death cause someone else’s? What would my dad do? Would he blame himself?

During really low times, I convinced myself that everyone would be better off without me. I was sick all the time, I wasn’t any fun. I was no kind of mother, no kind of wife. The insurance payout and the social security my death would generate was surely worth more to my family than me alive.

These thoughts are awful. It’s a pretty safe gamble to bet that anyone who suffers from depression has had them. Yet, when we go in to our practitioners for our prescription the answer is always the same when asked, “have you ever thought about suicide?” We always say, “no”. We (being the Depressed) know what will happen if we confess to these dark thoughts. We’ll be locked away, have a permanent stain on our ‘record’. We’ll be thought of as crazy. Our kids might be taken away.

What I find crazy is that the Depressed are forced to bury these thoughts that are a naturally occurring part of our disease. It’s like saying, “Oh, you’re diabetic but you never have high blood sugar? Wow, that’s awesome!” It just doesn’t happen that way. Doesn’t it stand to reason if you’re sad all the time, you’ve thought about ending it to escape the pain? Of course it does, yet our healthcare system is structured such that admitting to such a major symptom of our disease is cause for shame.

Non-depressed people think thoughts of suicide are a sign of weakness in the Depressed. Something the Depressed can control. Like hell these thoughts are a sign of weakness. I can no more control my thoughts than an amputee can regrow his leg. Does it make me weak? No. Does not taking my life make me strong? No. What choosing to continue makes me is a survivor. Nothing more, nothing less. And I don’t for one second take for granted that I am a survivor TODAY. I might not be tomorrow and I know this. I know it is a possibility of the disease I continue to battle.

In my own small way to show that I survived today, and all the days before today, I tattooed onto my body a semicolon in a VISIBLE place (something I said I’d never do). I put it on the inside of my right ring finger to remind myself that I’ve had a lot of pauses in my life. I could have chosen to end my sentence but I didn’t. Instead, I chose to continue. I can only hope that when I reach one of those low points again in my life, I’ll look at my finger and know that I have the choice to end my story or to continue it – and that because I once had the ability to survive, I will find it again and will choose to keep writing my story.

An Understanding

I’m a big Robin Williams fan. I always have been. I loved him in Mork & Mindy, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Night at the Museum. He brought joy to my life with his quips. I’m so, so sad that he’s gone and honestly, he’s the first celebrity in my lifetime that I’ve cared is gone. I never follow this type of thing on the news media. However, with him and the cause of his death, I’m reading and watching and both encouraged and disheartened by what I’ve seen and heard.

For those of us that understand that depression really IS a disease, we get it. We’re either someone who has the disease or close to someone with the disease. We know the daily struggle of depression. I have never seen such a public outpouring of support over the tragedy of losing someone to this terrible disease as I have with Robin Williams. As much as the understanding and support has been pouring in, ignorant comments and a lack of understanding has also surfaced. This reminds me yet again just how far we have yet to go in the understanding of mental illnesses. I read on one person’s Facebook that we shouldn’t make comments like, “‘I hope you find peace’ or ‘he’s in a better place’ because what type of message does that send out to those who are currently depressed? It’s like a green light to kill yourself.” That is such an ignorant statement. Those who are or have been depressed know what it’s like to struggle day in and day out with the very task of living. There is rarely any peace for those who suffer from depression. And so yes, when someone with the disease succumbs to death, we do hope they find something better than what they had.

Although the public refers to a mental illness as a “disease”, I don’t think most people get it. The majority of the population thinks that because you can throw medication at this “disease” that might blunt some of the effects it causes, everything should be good, right? Instead, those with depression are left struggling with a disease that they can’t talk honestly or openly about. They have to hide their true nature because it isn’t socially acceptable to talk about your daily struggle with how much you hate yourself, your life, and want to die. I know this need to hide the particulars of the disease well. While I was going through my divorce at 23, I was severely depressed and contemplated ending my life daily. I was so tired of everything. Each day was an unimaginable struggle of self-hatred and despair. Even though I was a college student who was flying through my program with tremendous success; I had a beautiful little boy who I adored above anything; and parents who loved and supported me, it wasn’t enough. I was overwhelmed by my personal failures. I sought out help and I can remember my doctor asking me if I thought about suicide. I carefully navigated my way through that minefield knowing I’d not only get my child taken away by my crazy ex, I’d also get committed if I answered honestly – “no, of course not doctor,” and continued to bury how bad I was hurting and how I was barely existing. Luckily, I survived that round.

Like any insidious disease, the depression came back. This time, it came shortly after having my third baby, nearly ten years after the first round. Little B was born early, colicky, and it was a hard adjustment for everyone. I didn’t sleep for days on end trying to care for him. I remember talking to my male OB/GYN who stated to me, “if you’d just take some of the pressure out of your life, I’m sure you’d be fine. Maybe quit your job. Don’t juggle so many different things.” Right. Like that was an option… and a realistic cure to depression. Luckily I ended up with a good primary care doc who got me on meds ASAP and I got the treatment I needed. But the whole experience was a good reminder for how little our society has progressed in the thought processes of those who have never experienced a mental illness. Ignorance and lack of understanding still reigns supreme.

Can you imagine telling people with terminal cancer to just ignore it? And to me, that’s what chronic depression is. It’s cancer, and it’s one that no doctor can tell you whether or not will be terminal. You can fight it, you can try to live, but there’s no guarantee that it will ever be better. Or, if you do manage to rid yourself of depression, will it come back? And when someone dies from cancer, we certainly don’t condemn them because of the fact that they finally lost the fight. In fact, we view their struggle to live as a heroic battle and those that fight the fight and die become immortalized in our eyes because they tried so hard. For those with depression, though, once they succumb and lose the fight, they are disparaged and condemned for their “choice”.

I hope something good comes from the death of such a talented man. I hope there is greater understanding achieved for those who struggle with and fight against mental illnesses. They, we, certainly don’t “choose” to have such a nasty disease and it’s about time people begin to understand that.