depression

Rec

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Today’s recs were going to be LGBT resources. With National Coming Out Day on Saturday, I thought that might be helpful, but in reading Jesus: A Pilgrimage and in re-watching the tenth season premiere of Supernatural, unbidden, I thought of what helps me through the sullen moments of my depression, and realized that I wanted to offer some of my go-to places.

My top three, not including supportive friends (I just received a card from my godmother that was the perfect sentiment at the perfect time, and later on today, I’m planning a phone call to my best friend):

1. I will read the day’s Scripture readings. For non-religious people, I would recommend Robert Fulghum‘s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and his other books. Another book that doesn’t rely on a particular religion is John Harricharan‘s Under the Tamarind Tree – A Secret Journey Into Our Souls: Inspirational Quotes About Life, A Reminder of the Inner Magic. I would randomly pick a page and read it. This book works very well for that kind of inspirational reading.

2. Starbucks or Cracker Barrel. You can get away with sitting there for a long time for very little money. In the case of Cracker Barrel, I have found that their lack of wi-fi and abundance of white noise lets me get a lot of writing done with very little distraction as well as abundant refills of fountain drinks. If you frequent Starbucks, register your card. You can’t beat their perks and freebies if you’re there a lot.

3. It will sound strange, but for me, I watch Supernatural on Netflix. Or TNT. I don’t know when I realized it, but I find it very therapeutic. I think that after ten  years of shows, almost two hundred episodes, being exposed to their personal lives and the good side of fandom, I find it very comforting. It’s well written so knowing the ending doesn’t diminish from the enjoyment of watching it more than once.

Find the thing that makes you feel comfort. It doesn’t have to make you feel good, but you don’t want it to make you feel bad. It gets me through when I know I don’t want to do anything, but I also don’t want to sit like a lump. The background noise of the show is comforting.

For me also, listening to BBC America is also comforting me. It’s those British accents. It doesn’t matter what the show is; in fact, that’s how I started watching The Hour and Orphan Black.

 

Share your go-to strategies in the comments; they might help another reader!

Depression =/= Unhappy

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(Note: I write about depression on a fairly regular basis. I don’t know how long I’ll continue to talk about Robin Williams. I am profoundly saddened by his death, and I may find that I’m repeating myself. I was shocked, and I am still in shock. It is a very sad day for many people, but my thoughts and prayers are with his family. I can remember the shock of my mother’s death, and while it wasn’t a suicide, it was sudden and unexpected. I hope that they can heal and move forward.)

 

I recently posted about the passing of James Garner. He truly was one of my longtime heroes from my childhood. Of course, he was in his 80s and I’d been expecting to hear about his passing, and was pre-sad in the waiting.

My sister does this thing on Facebook. She posts when celebrities die. It’s kind of an informational thing, but she is always the first, and it’s always a huge shock to family and friends when she misses one. Yesterday, I got a text message from her telling me that Robin Williams had died.

I gasped and stared at the phone. I had been midsentence talking to my husband and he asked what and I couldn’t speak. My eyes welled up and I put up my hand to kind of say wait a minute, I can’t say the words. I couldn’t say the words. They got caught in my throat and part of me thought that if I didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true.

Robin Williams died.

His eyes reflected my own shock. We put the television on and saw the headlines, possibly suicide. This was beyond belief. I knew that Robin had more than his share of problems over the years: drug addiction, his struggle with sobriety, heart surgery, even depression, and he’d come through it all.

His kind of genius was either snuffed out at twenty-something or he was safe from the demons.

Whenever his name was mentioned on television or in the news, it would never cross my mind that he might have died.

Robin Williams was supposed to live forever. Forever.

How is it possible that his energy, his vibrancy, his manic hilarity is silenced? How does the world keep turning when Robin Williams isn’t in it any longer?

In the past eleven hours or so, I’ve read of many fans’ shock and disbelief, some knowing that in the heart of many a comedian lives the darkness of depression, but many others asking how someone so funny could be depressed enough to kill himself. He had a great life: marriage, three great kids, a career, a ridiculously funny sense of humor, a humanitarian, money and he was well loved, not only by his fans, but by his fellow actors and his family. How can someone so happy be so sad on the inside?

I posted a statement in response to this and said, “It is so important to keep repeating: DEPRESSION HAS NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING TO DO WITH HAPPINESS.”

I was asked about this earlier this morning, and I do understand that people who are not exposed to depression might not understand the severity and the forms it comes in. I didn’t understand how depression worked just a couple of years ago, and unless people know someone with depression, most people misunderstand how serious it is.

 

I describe it as an iceberg. The part that you can see from the outside is so much smaller than the actual problem. So much of what is there is lurking below the surface, waiting to pull you under when you least expect it.

There are three types of depression (that I’m aware of). The mood descriptor is the most confusing because it uses the word ‘depression’ and we talk about being so depressed, and so when we are talking about the clinical, chemical imbalance, physical manifestations of the mental illness, it is often confounded with the much less serious depression or down mood.

When you are down and your mood is depressed, this is a normal emotion and feeling and we all get that every now and then. Sometimes there are reasons for the down mood, and sometimes it’s a lightweight apathy or boredom in a moment, and it always passes. One of the reasons that the miscues come from is that we should really use a different word when describing the depressed mood rather than depression the mental illness.

This comes and goes and everyone gets in this kind of mood now and again. It comes, it goes away, and that’s all normal.

The second form is situational depression. This might need medication temporarily or it might need close observance. It definitely should be seen by a doctor to make sure that it is situational. This type crops up when something big hits you unexpectantly: someone dies, you can’t afford to fix your car and can’t figure out how to get to work, you get seriously ill, a friendship ends – the kinds of things that pop up and are more than just a minor sadness that will pass. It is serious, but it’s not clinical. There is a reason for it and everyone’s reaction to the same stimulus will be different. This strikes me as an emotional response but more than a simple moodiness.

Clinical depression (and I don’t know that this is what Robin Williams had, but clearly he had something), (and this is what I’ve been diagnosed with) is that feeling of nothing. Mood swings, bursts of inappropriate emotion in both happy and sad directions, lethargic, nothing feels right, everything feels empty. For me, I just stopped. Everything. I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t cook, I didn’t want to do anything, and it was well beyond just being lazy, and ever worse was that I didn’t care that I felt this way. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered and I was okay with that.

My husband would ask if I wanted to use the computer and I’d shrug. I’d sit in the dark, not doing or looking at anything; not sleeping. I thought about the logistics of driving my car over a bridge, and how reasonable it sounded. My best friend would get on the phone with me and ask if I was drunk – I was so out of it – brain fog: I couldn’t remember things; I didn’t know if I’d eaten or when I’d showered last. I forgot appointments and my children’s assignments. It’s serious, and in retrospect, I’ve always had some form of depression with varying degrees of severity. I didn’t realize it until I was suicidal, and it has nothing to do with cheering up or having a good job or being happy.

It’s also scary because you’re alone and at the point you don’t care about being alone, it’s already almost too late.

I also liken my recovery to being an alcoholic. There is always the chance that it will come back or rather it is never gone. I need to be vigilant and aware of how I’m feeling and if I’m in a normal mood or if I’m coming on a more depressive one (like I’ve been feeling recently).

I’m on medication, I’m in therapy, I have coping mechanisms and friends who understand and support me when I’m having a bad time of it, but I can also feel it most of the time and I’m in a constant state of checks and balances to make sure that my meds are working. When it’s really bad, I go back to my lists, listing every infinitesimal detail of my day, including eat breakfast and take a shower.

I hope this isn’t too much of an info dump. These are questions a lot of people have about depression and its misrepresentation in layperson circles, including my family that just don’t get it (and that’s not their fault), so I go to people who do understand; people who can support what I need when I need it.

Writing this makes me feel a bit better. It’s good to be able to change the idea that someone who commits suicide is weak when really it’s that they can’t control the avalanche when it’s coming down on them and burying them alive.

 

Breakdown

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It’s been more than three months, and it still makes my heart beat faster and my pulse quicken; it is not an eventually-formed-fond memory like driving in Wales became and I’m not sure that it ever will be. It is anxiety driven, terror induced shakes.

I don’t know what led to my being so upset. It was probably a perfect storm of events that lined up in a row just so, and I was too busy putting off my anxiety to notice that it was creeping back up on me. It took more than three weeks after to finally reach a semblance of normal anxiety, and then it crept back up into a bad place again. It did slowly come back down, but it was not easy, and it is especially never easy when I’m hyperaware of what is going on inside my head and my emotions and my emotional state, and my best friend is busy, and I can’t afford therapy sooner than every three to four weeks. This could easily turn into an essay on the health care system and money, but I will stick with the breakdown; my collapse; my I-really-don’t-know-what-to-call-it other than badbadbadbad.

There was the misunderstanding between my best friend and myself that we didn’t even realize until a week later. We were answering questions not asked and it was a complete disaster on both our ends.

There was the misunderstanding about my travel plans and a delay that wasn’t a delay that set off a series of hysterical tears.

There were people making plans around me for me and I couldn’t express my disagreement without sounding like a bratty child until finally I broke.

And boy did I break.

I always listen.

I never argue.

My mantra is usually, “Okay, what do you need?” or something similar.

I accept. I do what I should. I do what’s expected. I’m reasonable.

I talk myself out of things constantly to do what works for everyone else.

It wasn’t until I began shouting at the phone, “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME! THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU! I CAN’T! I CAN’T DO IT TONIGHT! I will do it tomorrow. I can do it tomorrow,” and it was clear there was something more than me being difficult. I was crying and doing that hiccupping thing that you do when you’re five and can’t stop crying, and there was a kind of stunned silence on the other end as the scope of what I was feeling was expressed so overwhelmingly.

Another arrangement was made.

I didn’t like the new arrangement. It put too many people out, but I would accept it. What else could I do? It was a sensible solution and I could handle it I told myself.

Anyway, it didn’t matter; I would handle it. I would be as reasonable as the solution.

I thought.

By the time I arrived I was alternating between being numb and being upset, and nearly always on the verge of tears. There was another new plan, but I didn’t care. I was too numb to care at this point. I knew I would be taken care of and I didn’t care about anything else.

I was on edge and every look, every whisper, every motion out of eyeshot made me startle. I was afraid to speak. I didn’t know whether to apologize or hide in the bathroom or shout at the world. I stayed quiet, fearful that so many of my friends were angry with me. It was so hard; I felt as though I were being watched and judged, and for the most part that probably wasn’t true, but it was not an easy feeling trying to deal with my own emotional breakdown – and what else could this be? – and worrying about what others were thinking and knowing how I’d failed at getting along and just doing what I was supposed to.

I had held it together all week, and on this last day, I couldn’t hold it together, not even for just a few more hours. I wished I could just suck it up and do the one thing I was asked to do.

And I truly couldn’t do it. It was such a simple thing. I’d been doing it for twenty-five years, and I couldn’t make myself do it now. This was the one thing, the final straw, and it was too much, and even I didn’t know that until something inside took over my voice earlier in the evening. I didn’t think I’d ever fallen apart like this, certainly not with so many hearing and knowing and assuming things, and I was embarrassed as much as anything else.

The one person I was afraid to see smiled at me. It was the kind, tired look of it’s-going-to-be-alright-I-promise, and for a second I thought they were mad at me, but it didn’t matter. We’d be okay; if not today then another day, but that look was the first quasi-hug of comfort until they crossed the room and hugged me tightly with that comforting feeling of never letting go. How I didn’t begin to cry, I honestly don’t know. I was hugged tightly and I buried my face in their shoulder and neck and I held on as if my life depended on it, and in that moment it did.

There were more hugs and hand holds, and shoulders squeezed and smiles to keep me going until the next time which would be who knows when, but it was okay.

I would be okay.

There was a solution, and people were taking care of me and that was what I needed.

I love my friends. Without them, I am nothing. We are all a reflection of one another. We reflect and complement and we fit like puzzle pieces on an enormous board and when they’re not around or available, it takes a toll. I get more paranoid, I get more sensitive, I feel like no one likes me anymore, that I can’t ask for what I need, and the more I stretch out, the further away they are, and I can’t touch them and then I’m falling.

I’ve always likened depression and anxiety to alcoholism. It never truly goes away, no matter how many drugs, how many therapy sessions – it is always there somewhere, and we cope. And sometimes, we have relapses, and we need a reminder of why it’s important to be aware of our mental state, our mental health, and we check in with our sponsor, the one person who’s been there and who we trust to guide us out of the darkness, who always has what we need.

At the same time that we are being led out of the darkness, sometimes we are called upon to be someone else’s sponsor and lead someone else to their light. It doesn’t mean that we’re perfect or that we’re ‘cured’, but it means that we are all on our journeys and when we intersect, we need to look both ways and help each other cross the road.

We have that hand in the dark to hold, the whisper in our ear, and ultimately it will be all right.

I Heard it in the Homily

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*This essay is about me and my dealing with things. Except in rare circumstances, my coping falls to me until and unless I ask for help. And sometimes I can’t ask.*

When I’m having a particularly difficult time, I pray for patience, courage and strength. Never one without the others. In my early days with the church, there were times when the priest said, “Let us pray.” I had no idea what to do. Make my shopping list? Think about breakfast? Write fan fic in my head for the next three minutes? But one day the words just came to me: patience, courage and strength, and just the thought of them during prayer was very calming and gives me a moment to re-focus. When I have nothing or no one specific to pray for, I can always use more patience, courage and strength.

Today was one of those days. Actually, it’s been one of those fortnights. I’ve been falling into a deeper depression and heart palpitating anxiety and sudden bursts of tears. There are several factors causing this, some that shouldn’t be reaching the level of anxiety that they are and others that are obviously out of my control.

Sometimes my coping works and sometimes it builds to a crescendo until some kind of an outburst happens. I’ve had one outburst in the last three weeks, and considering that I’ve been sick that long, the kids have taken turns being sick, my friend died, a student at my son’s high school committed suicide, my friend has had a crisis of their own and can’t help me, and payday and therapy can’t come soon enough, I think one outburst is a reasonable ratio to three weeks of time.

For example, my coping this morning when my car went sideways in the snow was very good.

My coping last October in Virginia with the idea of driving forty-five miles on a straightaway in near perfect weather was very bad and if you ask anyone present, that would be an understatement.

It’s unpredictable, this coping thing.

Some of my successful coping isn’t available (more than one thing and for varied reasons) and in addition to the coping not being accessible, the idea of the coping being unavailable increases my stress levels.

It’s hard not to blame the people around me (whether in person or by phone/text, whether by actual acts or acts of omission), even though in my mind, my logical places, I know that no one can read my mind and by the time I can, by the time I’m able to, ask for what I need, it’s often too late.

At this morning’s homily, one line blared above the others, and stood out to me:

“We are called on to be strong.”

The exact message I needed to hear today. Maybe I can get through another day if I can hold onto that.

We’re not called on for more than we are able; I truly believe that despite my much often heard whining. I’ve been strong before. I can do this until tomorrow and then see where I stand. Maybe tomorrow is the day I can reach out and my hand is grasped or maybe someone will reach for me. I don’t know. I just have to hope that I’m strong enough to endure until the depression passes or the coping returns, whether that’s through people, writing, planning, carrots, or whatever. I won’t know until it happens, but until then I am called on to be strong and the best thing I can do is believe in myself and have faith that things are going the way they should be and this moment is just that: a moment soon forgotten.

Relapse

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There are so many things coursing through my mind that sometimes it’s hard to keep up and get it all out. It’s been going on longer, but the last four weeks have been a really bad place for me, throwing me, well, not throwing me, but sliding me back towards the beginnings of my depression and I do not like it. I noticed that something was off, but as per my custom chose to ignore it while at the same time being hyperaware of it. When my friend asked if I was alright and noticed that every time he called I sounded sad and asked about my mood, I realized that I wasn’t imagining what I had been seeing.

Lately doing anything is a chore. Not something like a responsibility that you know you have to do but are procrastinating doing, but an actual chore, pushing myself to, if not make dinner at least state what dinner would be and getting someone else in the family to make it. Cooking was one of the happy places that I lost when I sunk into depression and it hasn’t bounced back.

I did the cooking and baking for Christmas and my middle son is the only one who doesn’t get a store bought birthday cake because he always asks for my cheesecake (Philly 3-Step variety) and so I oblige him and did, but the daily cooking and experimenting that I was enjoying so much – baking bread, frying chicken in the newly discovered (for me) peanut oil, Pinterest recipes, caramel and ginger cookies. The love was there. The want was there. I just couldn’t get past the chore of getting up and actually doing it.

At least, we’re not eating out constantly or bringing prepared food in. That is something we definitely can’t afford to do as we struggle this year to pay the bills, some that are not always getting paid and our tax refunds going to repay friends who helped us in our time of need. There’s a lot of pasta and grilled cheese, but at least it’s getting made.

I try to have a list for each day, and those usually help, but it seems that my brain has picked up on all of last year’s coping tricks and is sabotaging them. In the Jewish faith, each year on the anniversary of a parent’s death, you’re supposed to light a memorial candle called a Yartzeit. You light it at sundown of the death day and it burns for twenty-four hours. You do not blow it out. This was something I learned when I was a child. I also learned that you never light the candle if your parents are living. I don’t know if this is religiously true or if my mother was just superstitious. I was supposed to do this on Saturday. It was written on at least two calendars. I said something to my husband on Saturday morning. And then I just forgot. It slipped my mind. Literally. I didn’t remember until I was looking at the calendar Monday morning to check the week’s schedule, and I didn’t actually remember it; I read it and had a V8 moment. I thought I would burst into tears. How could I forget my Dad?

For everything else, I’m not so much lazy or unmotivated as much as I just don’t feel it. I want to write, but if I don’t it’s alright. I want to make a phone call, but unless it is anxiety driven, I don’t until the anxiety builds to explosion levels and that is no good for either of us. I want to sit and do homework with my daughter, but if she decides to do something else, I just don’t want to be bothered, and don’t chase her down, and this is the scariest feeling of all; the not wanting to be bothered.

I’m not back in the place of completely mentally paralyzed or suicidal, and I credit that to recognizing the downward slide as well as my friend who knows me so well calling me out on some of my lethargic behavior and moods and knowing when to poke me and when to actually push.

My medication dose has been changed and I go back to the doctor in a week or so, but it doesn’t feel any different and I think it should feel a little better; just a little. The next few weeks are bringing things that are stressful and fun and I should be looking forward to them, but it’s making me feel anxious and as though I’m going to let everyone down including myself. I’m afraid to build anything up because it will be a disappointment; I’m afraid to get excited and I’m worrying over things that I really do have no control over, but they’re still there. I want to scream at some things, and I want to cry at others, and I’m trying to hold it all together so I don’t push away the people who are always there for me, who reach out and care for me, but the next few weeks….I just don’t know how to get through it and actually enjoy the parts that I’m supposed to enjoy.

This list includes Author’s Night at my daughter’s school, Free Comic Book Day, a doctor’s appointment, a therapy appointment, pay the mortgage and other bills, attend a birthday party, Mother’s Day, my oldest son’s prom, my daughter’s birthday party, visit my best friend at least four states away, Memorial Day weekend, which is also my deceased mother’s birthday and a visit from Grandma (the kids’ grandma, my mother in law). And that doesn’t include writing for my memoir workshop even though it won’t be in session and I’ll miss one session but I promised to keep up on my writing. And all of this is off the top of my head. I’m sure I forgot something. Or several somethings.

In trying to come up with some positive things to write about and ease out of the bad place, it is not easy. On a good day I’m at best a realist.

I’ve been very good since declaring my New Year’s Resolutions and my reaffirmation of much of them for Lent. I have been very good since Lent and have stuck to only two cans of soda a day with very few exceptions. I usually will drink those with meals, and I have primarily been drinking green tea with jasmine and water, the colder the better.

I have tried (and mostly succeeded) in eating oatmeal three times a week. I add a touch of brown sugar and a handful of cranberries and some milk. This really has decreased my cholesterol, and it is very filling and tastes good, and much healthier than a bagel.

I am skipping some desserts, and last night didn’t actually have dinner except for a bowl of strawberries and some sour cream, a childhood comfort food that can only be made better with sliced peaches and blueberries.

Except for three bad mornings, I have continued to attend morning Mass and have tried to add Sunday Mass into my week. If I don’t get to the church (and on the days that there are no Mass), I read the Mass in a Catholic periodical that publishes the daily Masses.

I’ve given away several sweaters that either no longer fit or that I know I will not wear again. I have a pile of baby clothes to do the same with as soon as I call the church’s office manager. We are very slowly clearing out the things that we haven’t used in years and that are taking up much needed space that can be used for other things.

I have been writing more even if I haven’t been sharing the really personal ones or the ones that need too much explaining to understand context, but sometimes (more often recently) I’ll start something and just leave it there and not go back to it.

I am not where I want to be, and I think that adds to the chemical issue of depression and brings on extra situational stress and in the place I’m in my level of tolerance and ignoring things is just non-existent so I find myself shutting down.

I also know that I can’t go back to last year; I barely lived through that. I also can’t go back decades and change decisions; I can’t return to college and choose different majors. It’s hard to move forward; though it’s not easy knowing that one changed decision could change everything now.

Or would it?

There is no way to know, but this is one of the questions that weighs heavily on my mind and in my relapse into depression and increase in anxiety, it plays over and over again as though a broken record or a film on a loop.

Train Derailed

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(* This is something that spewed out suddenly during my workshop on Thursday while someone else was reading. My mind wouldn’t let me stop until it was written and I didn’t know what would come out of the pen until it was on the paper. It is not an assignment of blame. Just thoughts. I don’t know if this will be expanded on eventually or left as is. It’s not quite poetry, but it’s a bit more emotional and the cadence isn’t quite prose.)

 

My eyes hurt. I haven’t cried today, but my eyes want to. I’m not sure about my heart. I’m full of feels. Feeling melancholy. The lingering sad, inappropriate considering this week’s events of a heaviness, the lingering of something, loss of memories not to be. I was afraid to want, but I wanted so badly, needed so badly and I let myself grasp it and blow the embers keeping it warm, building the flame of expectation, of want and need I didn’t know I needed, but I did. This is strike two. You know me better than I know myself and you can’t heal me. You can’t fix me. And I want that so badly.

Happy New Year!

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It’s catch up time.
🙂
I’ve read all of the wonderful comments left for me by all of you. I’ve responded to all of them except for the essay Unrequited Love, which I will begin answering this afternoon.
I am so appreciative of the response to not only that piece, but to some of the others that are published here.
I also have a Facebook page for those of you who are on Facebook, although I’m still working through how to use it with this blog.
I have another post this afternoon that is similar to Unrequited Love in that it talks about some of my philosophy and needs for speaking out and writing, but I am still working on one that explains ME better.

I think the two main things that I’ve been focused on and will continue as a theme in my life this new year are my ongoing recovery from depression and anxiety and my religious/spiritual awakening. Both are subjects that most people shy away from, hide in the dark and don’t discuss. My aim for both, but especially the subject of depression and mental health issues is to bring it into the light as I have been brought into a lighted part of my life. I also speak about the journey I’m on.

So thank you for joining me on this journey.

Kb

Suicide Prevention

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Now that Suicide Prevention Week is over, we mustn’t forget the struggle that men, women, and children are facing every day, wondering if it’s better for everyone if they ‘just went away’.

It is our job, our obligation, to show them, not that they are wrong, but how much they are appreciated, how they are not alone, never alone. There is always a better way than suicide and they (we) are strong.

We are courageous.

We are empowered.

And we are stronger together.

For those times that we feel that we aren’t, there are people, friends willing to drop everything to catch us, take us by the hand,  and pull us out if the depths of darkness and into the light.

We need to make sure that those in need know that we are here. I am one of those people on both sides of the darkness.

For a long time I was the hand pulling people up, holding tight when they wanted to let go, and pushing my own despair away to help someone else. It wasn’t until recently that I couldn’t do either. I couldn’t reach out and I couldn’t push down my torments that were barely on the edge of perception, in the shadows, the grey space that they had always been in, since childhood, unrecognized, unacknowledged and unidentified. Nameless.

Luckily, I had a couple of someones who reached their hands out and pulled me up, who continue to hold my hand.

I will keep talking about this. I will be there for the next person who doesn’t have anywhere to turn.

This is Suicide Prevention Month. We are approaching the holidays – Thanksgiving here in the US, Christmas, Chanukah, New Year’s, when folks reassess their lives and sometimes make bad decisions. Permanent decisions for temporary pain.

But they are not alone.

Trevor Lifeline helping LGBTQ youth: 866-488-7386

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Veteran’s Crisis Line: 1-800-273-8255, press 1