winter

i don't particularly want to reveal a lot about my family; i want to protect their privacy.  it was my choice to write about this topic, and they didn't get a say in it.  so let's just say that there are others in my family who have suffered from various mental disorders, with depression probably being the predominant one, going back a couple of generations on both sides (perhaps further; i don't know).  and since most in the field now agree that there is a genetic component to the disease, it shouldn't have been a major surprise that i would end up living with depression (or something else) too.  however, when i was 20 years old and had my first episode, i don't remember being acquainted with our family history.  i'm not saying my parents didn't tell me; they might have and i just didn't remember.  but i suspect that the stigma of mental illness, which still hangs over us today, kept them from talking.  a generation ago, the stigma was probably unbearable.  i'm sure that if they thought i or my siblings were at risk that they would have said something, but medical knowledge wasn't as far advanced 20+ years ago, and it certainly hadn't trickled down to the general public.

so there i was, faced with this choice of what to do.  i'd managed to finish up my classes, even a couple of challenging papers, which was good, and i was signed up to take another prerequisite online during the spring semester.  i didn't have any "real" - i.e., paying - work lined up immediately.  i decided that it couldn't hurt to head to my mother's for the holidays.  i gathered up some winter clothes and my dog and got on a plane. (my dog is a registered emotional support animal, so she gets to come on planes without being crated and into other public places with me as well. what a godsend.)

enter my mother.  bless her, she is one of the most genuinely happy people i've ever met in my life.  she insists on seeing the good in every person and every situation.  she laughs easily and heartily.  she loves to cook and bake and still receives holiday cards from people she hasn't seen in perhaps 30 or 40 years.  at 69, she still works out 5 days a week and looks 20 years younger.  everyone adores her.  in other words, if we didn't look alike, i'd have trouble believing we were from the same genetic pool.

mom and i have always been close, but for all these amazing qualities, there is one huge problem between us, a problem that i've encountered often out in the world.  almost everyone is able to point to a time in his or her life when s/he suffered from "being depressed," "feeling sad," "being blue."  but think of that as the small part of the iceberg that actually can be seen above the water, with the massive remainder down in the dark depths of the ocean. clinical depression is that massive, dark remainder.  it's huge and insidious and enveloping and difficult for others to see or understand.  and that's the issue.  people often try to sympathize, but many fewer can empathize.  and many can do neither because they're [rightfully] afraid.  so they run, or they drift away slowly.  i get this.  i really do.  if i don't want to be inside my own head, i can hardly expect that others will want to get in there with me.  and we're very sly when in the depths of the disease - especially if, like me, you're single, with a small circle of friends, and you're not working, so you don't have forced social activity every day.  if you ignore the phone for a couple of weeks, the ringing slows down and then, mercifully, stops.

i want to be clear about something here: that i own my part of the responsibility for exacerbating the effects of the disorder.  social interaction, even if it is forced, is a good thing to do.  exercise, even if it is forced, is the right thing to do.  mental exercises, even if they are forced or artificial, are the right things to do.  if i make it easy for others to withdraw from me by withdrawing first, i'm responsible for that.  i did read something recently, however, an article that was beautifully written by a cancer survivor.  (I'm unable to find it right now - i think it was on slate or salon.com - but i will provide the link here as soon as i do.)  the title was something like "10 things to do when you find out your friend has cancer."  as i read it, i thought to myself, wow, one could swap in the word "depression" for "cancer" and this would still be an amazing, and helpful, article.  I believe that #1 on the list was "don't run away."  sure, as the friend you're probably scared, even terrified.  about your friend, yes, but also about your own vulnerability.  the easiest thing to do is to stay away from things that scare us. but that doesn't help our friend, and it doesn't help us grow.

anyway, back to my mother.  she can be the most sympathetic person in the world, and i love her absolutely madly, but she does not understand clinical depression.  she can't fathom the depths to which one can sink.  she can't understand the feeling of wanting - no, needing - to stay in bed all day for days on end.  (she's the busiest retired person i know.)  she can't understand why i would cry at the slightest provocation, or even no provocation at all.  she can't understand why i wouldn't want to see friends - after all, wouldn't that distract me, get some of these feelings out of my system?  she tried, really hard.  she contacted my therapist back in san francisco during one of my worst periods, when i'd been at her house for perhaps 3 weeks.  they talked on the phone, unbeknownst to me until my mother came into the room where i was staying, handed me the handset, told me who was on the other end, and left the room.

at first i was furious: how DARE they talk about me behind my back? but that melted away quickly when my therapist told me that my mother was confused, even frightened.  she felt helpless - and she's one of the most capable people i know, so that must have been awful for her.  My therapist asked me kindly to get out of bed, to do it for my mother, to do it for her too.  so i did.  and i never went back to bed for hours and hours again for the remainder of my time there.  as much as i was hurting, i couldn't bear the thought that i could be hurting someone else so badly, someone who was completely undeserving of it.

that's a good trick, actually, and maybe i'll close with it for now.  thinking and caring about something or someone else prevents you from ruminating on your own situation.  our brains simply can't process both at the same time.  so pets, making something for a friend, writing an email or a (gasp!) letter, volunteering somewhere, finding a support group where you can hear others' stories rather than always focusing on your own - these are all good things to do.  and i used some of these tools to start coming back.