Tag Archives: I feel your pain

Identity, Living, May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health

Maybe

At the beginning of May, I set out on a mental health mission.  May being Mental Health Month, I wanted to dedicate a daily post to a condition of, treatment for, and/or living with mental illness.  While my life is influenced by my own struggle with depression, and all of my posts are therefore colored by it, I wanted these series of posts to address mental illness and health dead on.  And with the exception of one day, I did it!  And learned some interesting things in the process.

What a month of blogging about mental illness and health will teach you:

  • Focusing on your depression and what it does to you everyday makes you even more depressed
  • I may have exhausted not only myself, but also those around me.
  • Daily blogging (I had previously blogged approximately two times a week) made this ‘stay-at-home mom’ feel like I had a purpose, a vocation, a “real” job.  I had set that schedule for myself and had to stick to it.  I made writing – something I truly enjoy – a priority.
  • Daily blogging made my house look like a pit.  Making my writing a priority pushed nearly everything else to the wayside.
  • I need to work on time management 😉
  • If you write it, they will come – eventually
  • There are a lot of super-supportive people who write incredibly thoughtful comments.
  • ‘I feel your pain’, though overused, is not a pile of horseshit.  It is extremely powerful to connect with someone who has, indeed, felt your pain.
  • That I over-catastrophize (yes, I may be making up words again).  I missed one day in my blog-a-day-a-month challenge and a bushel basket of chopped potatoes did not come crashing down upon my head.
  • That given the chance to slack, I will.  June 1 rolled around and I let the rest of life come rushing back in.
  • That, sometimes to a fault, I engage both sides of an argument, an issue, etc.  I’m forever writing that big pro/con list in the sky, which may make me come across as wishy-washy, fickle, not knowing my @## from my elbow (compare the two previous points!)
  • That achieving balance is to continually adjust on the tightrope of life.  Urgh.
  • That telling your deepest, darkest fears and foibles makes you incredibly vulnerable – or at least feeling that way.
  • That people like to know they’re not the only one feeling that way.
  • That one month of posts is not enough to explore all there is to know about mental health and illness.
  • That although I started the month of May thinking these posts would be a departure from my usual in that they directly addressed mental health and illness, there really is no separating out depression from everyday life.  It’s the constant mantle on our shoulders, sometimes blowing lightly in the wind, sometimes soaking wet with rain.

So, now it’s back to operation ‘normal’, whatever the hell that is.  I did miss writing about my crazy adventures and travails as a mom.  I did miss writing something “positive” or life affirming (I tried during May, but felt like most of it was heavy).  I’ll be glad to write something that doesn’t make you think I loathe my children and the life I lead.  But I guess I won’t be giving up writing about mental health and illness; that is woven into the fiber of my being for better or worse.  Maybe I’m finally learning to live with that.

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May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health, Writing

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

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