As we crafted the pieces of our imagined lives, looking forward to our marriage, family, and beyond, my husband and I followed this idea of the perfect dog. His name would be Rufus, inspired by a back-bone slipping, soul-thrumming blues song about a hound dog by one Rufus Thomas. A shaggy, black, hulking mass, his own bark would be his calling card, “Rooof-us”. We pictured him playing with our future children, leading us down wooded paths, cozying up by the fire.
Ironically, we got just what we were asking for.
There is a black dog that lies at my feet while the children play; a dark shadow that trails my every step; even one who crawls in beside me while I sleep.
Only his name is not Rufus.
Depression is not the companion my husband and I envisioned accompanying us on our life’s journey. And I didn’t envision me as its sole caretaker.
It can be taught to heel. It can be kenneled or crated. But it is still a wild animal; a living, breathing thing. And like a wet dog on a rainy day, its smell permeates the air long after its left the room.
Tag Archives: Depression
Happy Mother’s Day?
I’m trying really hard to make today’s post about mental health; something full of knowledge, experience, resources. But I also feel that, in chronicling my journey toward mental health – that is, out of depression – many of my posts have been depressing themselves. On this banner day of Mother’s Day, I feel like I should be all full of flowers and fairy dust.
I’m laying in bed, exhausted, freezing from the night sweat my hormones gifted me, snorking from an allergy attack that will most likely turn into a sinus infection, listening to the rain steadily thrum the window above my head.
And yet, I returned from the bathroom earlier to find two of my daughters lined up, positively vibrating with the creative joy they couldn’t wait to unleash in the form of scrolls and paintings and cards. The best gift, though, was my five year-old shaking and giggling, burying her head in my lap when I told her how much I liked her portrait of me. Her pride, her modesty, her shyness, her beatitude. My eyes welled up – and I realized Mother’s Day could end right there and I’d be whole.
It is the unexpected joy that is the best – especially in the midst of struggle. It is most certainly unexpected then, and therefore, even sweeter. As acute as the suffering is, the joy is crystalline clear.
I realize that life continues on a parallel, sometimes intersecting, track with depression. It cannot be separated out. But it also cannot crowd out all positive experience. Life happens despite it. Even happiness and poignant moments can happen in spite of it.
So Happy Mother’s Day. May you have a bright spot in the midst of your trials.
Where Is My God When It Hurts?
Another great post from Cate Redell at Infinite Sadness . . . or Hope?
Her thoughts are what runs through many a tormented mind, I think, trying to figure out why its owner is suffering.
In the darkest days of my postpartum depression, I peered into every corner, lifted every heavy layer up, searching for some reason why this was happening to me; some redeeming seed I took take forward and grow into something useful.
God is not vengeful. I don’t think this was put upon me as punishment. I don’t think I deserve this.
But are there some lessons I can take from it?
I work extremely hard at controlling things, often to my own detriment. I am horrible at admitting I need or asking for help, much to my misery. I am a perfectionist, punishing myself with an impossible ideal.
When my world spun out of control, these were all things that were impossible to maintain.
And from my earliest days, God instilled in me a desire to help others. If even one person could learn from my suffering, would that be the reason for it? My ability to not lose faith and turn my trials into something positive?
In the end, it’s all about perspective and how we choose to react to what’s given us.
Cate’s post gets to the heart of that. Enjoy!
Last week I wrote about struggling to find hope in the midst of the chronic pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia (see Fatigued Hope). I admit I’m still battling this one. I don’t think there is a simple answer, yet I am frustrated by having previously written about hope, but not being able to find it to apply in this situation.
A number of people commented, in relation to that post, that I should perhaps look to my spiritual beliefs. Hence my question: where is my God when it hurts? The question is phrased as it is because I believe that spirituality is an individual thing, and as such where your God is when I hurt is not actually of much significance to me. It is in terms of how you might find comfort in your trials, but for me personally, it only about my perception of who my God…
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Knitting, Needling, and Never Saying Never
I’d heard Ann Hood speak at an ASTAL event at Rhode Island College and loved her humor as much as her ability to spin words. But I still hadn’t read any of her work. I was excited when I obtained a copy of her book, The Knitting Circle, finally able to experience her written words. I usually try not to get too much information about a title before I read it myself, even forgoing the author bio on the book jacket until after I’ve finished, because I don’t want to form any preconceived notions. I want a totally fresh, unexpectant perspective. I had heard this particular title was heartbreaking, but only whispers.
Really, I figured I had been so low already, why not scratch the bottom of the barrel? Couldn’t get any lower, right?
“When she opened [her eyes], Scarlet was standing in the center of the living room, looking around, horrified. Yarn, empty bags of microwave popcorn, scattered mail covered the floor. And there was Mary herself, in those overalls, wrapped in that blanket.”
This description of the culmination of depression for Mary, who lost her young daughter to a sudden illness, hit a little too close to home. I never reached a period where I’d stayed like that for more than an afternoon or day, but would I have if I didn’t have three little sets of hands and one big set pulling at me? Would I skip the shower one more day if I wasn’t going to actually see someone when I left the house? Would I make dinner if there weren’t four other mouths to feed?
Isn’t everyone who suffers from depression really just a step away from this threshold? What keeps one from crossing over? Obligations, yes, but that doesn’t make life any more fulfilling. Love, yes, but it still hurts even amidst it. A flippant attitude that it can’t surely can’t get any worse? That only goes so far; one either ends up being bitter or it does indeed get worse.
And having experienced it once does not make one immune. I stupidly read this book with some of that flippant attitude and it knocked me back on my keister, which I’d only gotten up off recently. I read it in the midst of an already tough, low, hormonal spot – right before upping meds. Good times; perfect timing.
Which makes a question my aunt asked me even more pertinent.
When I floated the idea of using my postpartum experience to develop a writing program to help women suffering from it, she worried whether hearing and vicariously living through participants’ experiences would plunge me back into my own depths. I guess there’s always that possibly, that threat, if you will. But, alas, that is a human frailty; being attuned to the feelings and woes of those around us (or a strength – depending on the situation and one’s perspective). And most certainly an Achilles heel for me, the ubersensitive introspective individual that I am.
But the fact that I have and would feel their suffering so acutely may make me uniquely qualified for such an endeavor.
Only time will tell.
In the meantime, I’ve been looking for a knitting class to take. Ann Hood was truly inspirational.
Quoted text taken from:
Hood, Ann. The Knitting Circle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007. Page 246
You Got Some ‘Splainin to Do
This morning my daughter sat down to some interesting breakfast reading.
Coming home late after an evening “med check” appointment with my physician, I had left the visit summary on the dining room table. Yesterday’s visit went swimmingly well. No problems to report. Successful treatment measures. A-ok – until the next six month visit.
The chart information on the second half of the sheet told a different story, though; that of my history. The medication I’m on; my ‘problem list’.
Depressive Disorder Not Elsewhere Classified.
I’m hoping that eight years old is not old enough to know what that means. Hell, I don’t really know what that means. The first time I saw it, I stopped in my tracks. I remember the NOS designation on IEPs from my teaching days. I remember the frustration of parents and teachers who knew something was up, but no diagnosis could be made. How would this individual get the help he or she needed without a direction to go in?
Now that was me!
My eight year old wouldn’t be able to recognize the name of the medication I’m on either, Sertraline sounding more like a foreign language than a medicine to help her mother get through life.
Thank God, in this case, for medical illiteracy. I’m all for blowing apart the stigma, but haven’t quite figured out how to explain it to my young children yet. How much information would help them see it’s perfectly acceptable to struggle and receive help and how much would open them to an overwhelming, suffocating side of this world they don’t need to know exists yet?
I didn’t know there was a family history of whatever the hell ails my family until I was an adult starting to suffer from similar problems myself. As a child, there was an underlying tension at family gatherings, but having no explanation and no other frame of reference, I just thought that was how it was. Do I let my kids live in ignorant ‘bliss’? Do I give my oldest an age-appropriate mete-ing out of Momma’s struggles so she doesn’t think she’s responsible for Momma’s wrath? Or will I be giving them the framework for their own self-fulfilling depressive prophecy?
All important questions. All of whose answers will remain unspecified for now, just like my diagnosis. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this.
Depression did not define me and the same is true for you. | Boundaries of the Soul
There comes a time when whatever is ailing you affects your quality of life so much that you go searching for answers. For me, it was finding the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale online. Always one to minimize symptoms and having a surprisingly high threshold for pain (per my midwife) which perhaps translates to the emotional kind as well, I didn’t know how accurately I answered the questions. But the fact that I sought it out was the first step in getting help.
Dr. Nicholas Jenner (see link below) wrote this incredibly helpful piece that I found too late to “diagnose” myself, but in reviewing his symptoms three and a half years into my own journey, I see how spot-on they are. In fact, they made me smack my head in a “Gee, ya think?” sort of way. Shit, is that what happened?
Maybe his article will reach you at a point somewhere before that one!
Depression did not define me and the same is true for you. | Boundaries of the Soul.
Still Waters Run Deep
I’m not stagnant; I’m just catching my breath.
A wise woman reiterated these words to me recently. I’d heard them before, but benefited from their run through my ears once more. And probably will again someday.
Two Christmases ago, my mother presented me with a framed quote from Jodi Hills.
She wasn’t where she had been,
she wasn’t where she was going,
but she was on her way.
Though at times like this, when I’m walking in my sweats through the land of sinus fog after days of leading my children out of it, and I feel like I’m in some sort of stasis, I am not the person I was a few years ago. My cynical, smart-ass, survive-with-laughter self says, that’s for sure. And there are a good number of negatives with what I’ve experienced over the last three to four years. But after being so low, I was able to honestly assess to which heights I wanted to rise. And how to get there. And how to push myself despite the risks and fear because I realized joy is ours to grasp, not to be handed. And that I wasn’t alone at the bottom of the pit. Maybe I could shine a little light down into it, if not pull someone out of it.
Realizing and doing are two different things, however. I have a business plan to write. I have a child who is too smart for her own (and my) good that I have yet to enroll in preschool. I have my own anxiety to swallow. And the usual chaos that raising three children entails (Seriously, did I not see this coming?).
Right now I like being in my sweats. But I wonder if being in them too long will make me break out in a cold sweat. Too long out of the loop. Too long in the confines of my own house with little people. Longer than the short fuse of my resolve from lessons hard learned.
It’s easy to be a wimp. It’s so damn hard to push forward into uncharted waters. I’m trying at least to keep up with the current; tread water or cling to my little rock in the midst of it all. The flow certainly isn’t stagnant, though. I’m just trying to get enough huff and puff to get back in there.
Bring on the Suck
I should’ve known when my previously straight hair went haywire that the proverbial poo was about to hit the fan.
Grade ten, three years after my first menstrual period, and apparently just long enough for my hormones to hit their stride, I chopped my nearly waist-length hair to above my shoulders. And it corkscrewed.
Wow, I never knew you had curly hair. You should’ve cut it a long time ago. Look what’s happened now that all that weight’s gone.
Looking back, I think it had everything to do with weight, but not the long drawn-out weight of my tired tresses.
I’m now three years out from the birth of my last child. And I’m miserable.
This is the longest I’ve gone without being pregnant or breastfeeding since 2004. That’s a feat in and of itself. I should be on top of the world. Instead, I’m at the bottom of some pit, the one where my hormones get back on track to torment me.
I’m out of that stasis where my body is in some sort of tenuous cycle, tentatively burgeoning and bleeding because it’s out of practice. Training camp is over. It’s on like Donkey Kong. Cramps that say, get ready, I’m coming. An ache in my pelvis that threatens, I’ll bottom out if you’re not careful. And depression that moves in and refuses to leave, until it is mysteriously vacant one morning like a lover leaving an open wound.
I’ve popped the ibuprofen. I’ve seen my therapist. I’ve researched thyroid malfunctions and requested specialized blood work from my physician.
Now I ask, Is this the new normal?
After carrying and bearing three children; after wracking my body to the point of breaking; after rending my soul to its minutest form – is this the new modus operandi? This is how things are to be?
Is there a physical band-aid? A spiritual fix? Some modicum of acceptance to make this all bearable?
I’m not whining about cramps. I’m not lamenting PMS. My body is in a 28-day bag of hurt. How far into that bag I get dipped depends on the day. But no one day is particularly fun.
My daughter asked me the other day why I get my period because I’m not having any more kids. A few weeks ago she questioned me when I said I get [even more] sad and tired a few days a month. (My husband said to not go there with her – yet; keep her blissfully ignorant) Good questions. It doesn’t seem to make much sense. I don’t understand it and it’s happening to me.
My levels are off. Some levels. Who knows which ones or why. But it’s a whole new level of suck.
Piles of Pooh
Losing Suction
It’s been a rough few days (weeks?). I wish there was a good reason why – that might make it better, or understandable anyway – but there’s not. I’m just miserable for no good reason. Irritable because I have angst. Angst-ridden because I have hormones and a crippling sense of self-awareness? (Thank you, Virgo)
There have been days I have camped out with my laptop for hours. Stared out the window waiting for the light to change. Held myself because it was the only thing to do.
And then the strains of PBS children’s programming came to me.
The minutes and hours marked by Arthur and Thomas, Maya and Miguel rather than numbers.
And I knew I should move. I knew I should engage. I should scoop up that little wonder of a child and take her out into the world.
One day, we did. We traipsed around the yard, trekked to the mailbox, tried to imagine the garden in full bloom. But the mailbox was empty and spring was still a ways off.
Yesterday, we shut off all electronic devices and ate lunch together. We sat side by side, but I buried my nose in some manner of printed matter.
Today, we compared notes on the types of yogurt we ate; she turning her nose up at my Greek with honey, me trying to convince her she ate blue banana. green guava. purple passion.
The silly word games I remember playing with my first baby when I was a first time mama.
Learning colors through the culinary.
Exploring math while masticating.
And for the first time in a long time, my sense memory elicited a positive response. Bubbles of laughter reminding me that I know how to do this. I know how to make it fun. I know how to enjoy it.
All it takes to make it enjoyable is a little more effort. An invitation to join me as I move about my day. A question here, a comment there. Inclusion. When all I’ve been is insular.
I’ve so needed space for me, I’ve been pulling back. But all I’ve done is created a vacuum, a void they notice and try all the more vehemently to cross. Perhaps if I reach across the void, giving them what they need, I will get what I want.
Joy and peace of mind.
Being able to lay my head on the pillow at night knowing I’ve done my best and not feeling guilty at the time I set aside for myself.
There’s no sense doing a job you hate. And there’s no reason to make mothering more onerous than it is. That wouldn’t just create a vacuum; that would suck.
Disconnect
Head vs. heart
Exhaustion vs. anxious energy
Joy vs. misery
Difficult situations rolling like water from a duck’s back; simple acts eliciting freak-outs
Distraction/perseveration
Longing, lacking,
cup overflowing
Confusion, crystalline pain
The grounding grasp of tiny clasp,
The constricting clutch of oh-so-much
Synergy, synthesis, integration – somewhere out in the ether.
I’m dying to meet Her.
Chopping Potatoes 