The Dirty "D" Word

Depression… It is such a stigmatized illness which is so incredibly treatable. Did you know depression is one of the most treatable of psychiatric illnesses? But really, why do we continue to suffer in silence? Many times it is because of the reactions received from those we know and love. Depression isn’t just about being in a bad mood or being sad because someone ate the last cookie in the jar. You can’t just “snap out of it” and people who ask you to do just that don’t say it because they don’t care about your feelings but because they don’t understand.

I have suffered from depression for the better part of my short life. It came and it went and it came back. Some days I didn’t understand why I was so sad, why I felt so empty or why I was so irritable, I just was. I didn’t dress in all black; I didn’t walk around sighing constantly, I was simply me. Quiet around a lot of people, scathingly sarcastic at times and ready for a good time most days. I don’t blame my parents for not recognizing it. Hell it took them 18 years to realize that I had been diabetic for a good chunk of my childhood. Unless you were bleeding to death, stopped breathing or had an irritating cough that didn’t let them sleep through the night; chances were you weren’t seeing a doctor. And some of the aforementioned were questionable (see sister impaling her thigh with a sharp stick, and got a bunch of butterfly bandages). It wasn’t that my parents didn’t care about our well being. I would never doubt for a second that we mean more than the world to them. It was just a different time… my parents didn’t speak English very well so they depended on us to advocate for ourselves in a way. We were always running around without shoes on much to my parents chagrin and getting hurt but we would pick ourselves back up and patch stuff together with the first aid kit. We were always getting into something… always. In kindergarten we had a class project where we made peg boards. You could put rubber bands on it and make different shapes by stretching them from peg to peg. Whose brilliant idea that was is beyond me. So it went like this: said brilliant parent supplied all the kids with a board, their own hammer (yes 4 and 5 year olds got sent home with a hammer in their back packs) and a bunch of nails. Under the close supervision of teachers and aides we hammered a bunch of nails into our boards. Surprisingly there weren’t any injuries in class; at least not any that I can remember. So once the day was over we all went home with our board’s nails and all. I used to sit on the potty and play with my board, set it on the floor, wipe and carry on (you’re welcome for the details). One day I jumped off the toilet and landed on the board. I remember I was wearing some pink thick foam like flip flops but one of the nails managed to go all the way through and get stuck in my foot. Oh the wailing that came next must have been enough to drive someone nutty, but not my parents cause they weren’t home. Instead my sister yanked the board off my foot and stuck a band-aid on the bottom of my foot and life went on. Then when we were like 10 or so my sister came down with something that made her face huge. Her face and neck looked like she tried to swallow her butt. My parents claimed it was the mumps but I think they just made it up. Lucky for us we were visiting with my uncle who decided we needed shots. Why me since she was the fat faced one?! I remember this pretty clearly cause he says stuff as a physician that would make one question seeing him professionally but hey free medical care? Who’s gonna turn that down? Anyway my sister was freaking out and he said don’t worry it won’t hurt. Seconds later she was freaking out even more loudly because it did in fact hurt and he had lied. His professional response was “I said it wouldn’t hurt but I didn’t say who it wouldn’t hurt and I didn’t feel a thing!”

See my childhood was great; I had everything I wanted and needed. Two parents who were married, I can’t speak to the status of their marriage although I can say that if there were problems we rarely saw the cracks. There were a couple of big fights I remember but I think I remember them because they were so few so they stood out. So here they are almost 40 years later still together, I’d say they have a good marriage. My dad was pretty strict, like stick up his butt strict for a number of years. When I was 8 my little brother was born and it really changed him. He softened up a lot. But even before that it wasn’t like he was a neglectful dad or anything like that. He would try and teach us to play softball and catch with him. Seriously do dads still do that? I wasn’t bullied in school, I was bullied by my sister which some might say would have been worse but I can’t say cause I don’t know the other side of it. It wasn’t a constant tormenting. I guess she was just mean. But I don’t by any means blame my depression on that.

As you all know I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder earlier this year. That is simply the fact, you don’t get bullied or teased into becoming bipolar but it doesn’t help. I was in high school when I really started to feel and recognize that I was depressed. Sure most kids will go through some mild form of depression or teenage angst but I felt more than that. I didn’t sleep much at night and spent most of that time on the internet talking to random kids who were probably going through something similar. Oh the days of dial up… My sister hated me… can you guys remember picking up the handset and hearing that awful fax machine sound? Anyway, I remember one day I was in class my junior year and I got called out of class. I wasn’t a trouble maker so I was a little freaked out. I was being summoned to the school counselor. She sat me down and told me that someone was worried about me. They were worried that I was depressed and could possibly consider hurting myself. I was kind of blown away. Sure I was depressed I thought I was hiding it pretty well, but I hadn’t considered harming myself. At that time I didn’t want to be in that office staring at that woman who probably thought I was insane. The last thing I wanted was a parent/teacher conference to discuss with my parents who I would need to translate for, why I was suicidal (I wasn’t). I told her I was fine and I didn’t know why anyone would have said that. Silly lady, who’s depressed? Not this girl!

Fast forward a few years and I’m sitting at work having a rage fit while on the phone with a customer. I’m furiously pounding my fists into my desk while trying to make this asshole understand that I can’t make a room open up just because he’s a new sucker that just purchased this time share. It was overwhelming, the anger not the customer.  This wasn’t the first meltdown I had experienced not by a long shot. I remember an incident in the parking lot at the Wal-Mart where I was working. It was one of those moments that really shames me. I can’t remember the details but I remember I was screaming at poor Mike who was trying desperately to understand me. I was screaming angrily with that kind of rage that makes you sick. Mike was crying, I might have cried. In retrospect I wonder why Mike didn’t just pack it in. He didn’t owe me anything, he could have walked away right then. It would be a long time until I finally sat down with my doctor and asked for help. It would be an even longer series of doctors and medications and meltdowns and ups and downs, tears and tantrums, going on and off meds because I felt better then felt like shit again. All of it led me to my doctors’ office where we discussed the history of meds that I had tried. Doc, the Lexapro isn’t doing it anymore. I don’t feel any better, sometimes I feel worse. We had a very honest conversation that day. He asked me not to be offended or upset by what he was about to tell me he thought was going on.

I think in the years since I moved away I was able to become more honest with myself. Honest to a degree that many people don’t reach. Not only that but I have been able to put on my big girl pants and speak up. I’ve advocated for myself and my health. I am not shy about yelling from the mountain tops that I am a weak person, I suffer from a mental health disorder and I need help. It isn’t easy and you know sometimes it is easier to tell every stranger on the street than it is to tell your own family. Family can be the biggest critics. My family was quick to criticize my choice to go on antidepressants. Oh I heard it all. You just need to calm down, just calm down. You’re too tightly wound but you don’t need pills. You’re not depressed, what are you depressed about? You don’t have anything to be depressed about. You’re such an attention whore; you just want everyone to worry about you. You freak out about everything, you’re so dramatic. So why do you want to kill yourself?

Crimeny with the kind of support I got over the whole thing it was hard to keep going. But I felt better. I felt in control, I felt happy. Mike had a totally new girlfriend and he was happy. But as depression goes it’s all about the peaks and valleys. Then there’s the health insurance gods, they’re not very kind gods and try to dictate your health care for you. I was taken off this wonder drug Lexapro and put on Celexa. I promptly stopped that because it wasn’t the same. I didn’t feel like it was doing anything. I tried Zoloft for a while, then Welbutrin. None of it was the same and I stopped taking them all. I was working under Daniel by this point and I was a holy mess. If I wasn’t at work sleeping on my desk cause I felt sick I was yelling at a customer. Oh and that disgusting sunflower seed habit. I wish I could apologize to the cleaning crew for that gross mess I had going every single day. It was addicting and it soothed my nerves which in turn made Daniels job easier. I bet it was hard to explain to other supervisors why his team was always such a mess. He said once that compared to us the other teams were like a Communist dream. We were like the monkeys hanging off the chandeliers.

I wish I had known that under the calm exterior there was a serious storm brewing inside him. I wish I could have telepathically told him it would get better. I wish I had hugged him more and told him that this world would never be the same again without him. That he would have stuck around and tried a med or two and talked to a doctor or two so that we could have seen him at the end of an isle waiting for a beautiful bride. So that one day we could have cooed over pictures of newborns and joked about what a great job he was doing screwing up a kid like the rest of us. I wish I could have loaned him my loud mouth to yell from the mountain tops about his own pain. Because it does get better…

There are so many people silently suffering. Today suicide is the 10^th leading cause of death in the U.S. I wish each of those persons knew they weren’t alone. I wish they knew that the pain they left behind is immeasurable and unnecessary. I wish they had been able to wait another minute. Maybe another minute longer contemplating it and they would have talked themselves off of the edge or given someone else the chance to do so. It is becoming far too frequent an occurrence. I want to spend my life celebrating with friends, not celebrating who they were. I want to visit my friends and have drinks and food and fun.  

I spent some time with my wonderful friend this week as she started the grieving process and I was truly lost. There was a very present feeling of loss in the air and the silence was deafening. I know there is nothing I could have done to ease her pain much less, make it disappear. As we have learned through the loss of our friend before, grief doesn’t end it only changes. Her pain will take longer to heal and I can’t hope to ever understand what she’s feeling. All I can do is pray that they are able to move from pain to a different place where they can smile when they think of him. I don’t know if that’s possible but I hope it is.

I wish there was more I could do to remind people that there is help. I want to tell everyone everywhere that they don’t have to be stuck. There is another way out; there is a light at the end. Life gets better. Life is worth living.