Depression 101

Depression 101.  According to my old Webster’s dictionary, depression has 10 different definitions.  But the ones that lend themselves to my topic are the ones that describe a state of mind or being:  (3) low spirits; gloominess; dejection; sadness, (7) a decrease in functional activity; (9) (psychol.) an emotional condition, either neurotic or psychotic, characterized by feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy etc.

I don’t want to offer pat answers or the same old stuff you could find by googling depression.  The market is flooded with that information.  Where my special gift lies, is in unwrapping some of the layers, and giving my readers a bit of a window into how the depressed mind works.  A dubious gift, maybe.  But one that was bestowed upon me, whether I wanted it or not.


“November 27, 2012

My heart hurts.  I can’t describe it very well, but that will have to do.  Most of the time, when one has some kind of heart-wrenching pain, there is a cause for it.  For me, right now, there is no cause.  My heart just aches, like someone just died or something terrible happened.  But no one has died; nothing awful has happened.  I’m also scared.  Sometimes it goes beyond scared to terrified.  Of what, I’m not always sure.  Sometimes, my mind will look around and fix on a point to place the terror.  It’s usually something that isn’t rational.  Someone has a cold, and I suddenly am afraid that they are at death’s door.  (Deep down, I am sure it is pneumonia, cancer, or Alzheimer’s.  Or maybe all three.)  Someone has a small cut, and I am shaking visions out of my head of what they will look like with the prosthesis once the infection has overtaken and the limb is amputated. 

Understandably, I can’t handle sentimental books, movies, or songs very well.  I have no patience for shallow sentimentality either.  Give me the real, heart-wrenching stuff if I must have it...The shallow stuff doesn’t move me, the real thing moves me way too much.  The effort it takes to hold tears back in front of the rest of the world is exhausting. 
 
The effort it takes to keep my fears in check and not show my family how scared I am is also exhausting.  I sometimes find myself shaking, breaking out in a cold sweat, and my heart racing.  I try to calm myself down.  I tell myself it isn’t rational, that I’m scared of nothing.  My addled brain protests that I am still scared.  I try to enjoy my kids’ happy laughter and goofiness.  But my mind can’t handle the noise and talking.  I shut down, and stop talking or answering; or ask them to be quiet--and I try not to be angry with them.  After all, they are just kids, and delightful ones at that.  But my short replies are not what they want--they want Mom to be here, with them, to be herself.  But who am I when I am like this?  It is in my heart, my mind, and in my soul.  If those things don‘t make me who I am, what does?  But this is not me.  I am not me. 

When my mind gets like this, I (obviously) can’t gather my thoughts together very well.  Even simple tasks like making a meal or cleaning the house are almost too much.  Any projects that involve actual thought processes are sure to end in chaos.  (A few have.)  I don’t want to talk about what I’m experiencing.” 

I wrote that over a year ago, when talking about it was too painful.  A friend who found out later how difficult the time had been, expressed her sadness to me that she didn’t know.  She wished she could have helped.  But how could I tell anyone?  I could barely articulate how I felt to myself.  Writing it out was a bit of a relief, but so hard.

On the surface, I tried to keep it normal as much as possible.  I did my best to hide how bad it was, or if I couldn‘t hide it, I hid out in my house till the worst had passed and I was able to function with a degree of normalcy.  It didn’t come on all at once.  In the space of about a year, I slowly retreated from as many social situations as I could possibly get out of.  Before this, my husband had always joked that I talked too much.  But when I stopped talking almost altogether, except when I absolutely had to talk, he was not relieved.  It was no longer a thing to joke about.

It has been over a year since I began to get better.  Things are much brighter now.  But it has been a long road.  I am also beginning to accept that, to some degree, I will always live with this burden.  Better means better.  In my case, it does not mean totally healed.  But no matter how heavy the load, no matter how dark things have gotten, God has never left me.  In the middle of the hardest times, He has been the closest.  So that is why I am writing here.  I want to share how He has loved me and offer hope to one who may be hurting but cannot speak of it.  Sometimes pain is too great for words.