Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
depression
after much thinking about this i’ve decided to “come out” and admit to the fact that i, woman of positive strength and forthrightness – righteousness and angst…. suffer from mental illness in the form of clinical depression and have done since sometime in my teenaged years (diagnosed at age 15 when i was hospitalised for a suicide attempt).
i have had 3 major depressive episodes in my life – at the age of 15, again at the age of 20, and one i have emerged from very recently. by “major” episodes, i mean an acute phase lasting from 1-3 months (characterized by paralytic sadness, total diminishment of self-worth, and suicidal impulses) followed by a year or more of low-level depression that leaves me angstful, angry, tired, giving my life an uninspired flatness. over my lifetime, i have gained better control over these time periods so that suicidal ideation, something i once acted on, is now relegated to the realm of escapist fantasy (every depressive needs an escape hatch even if it’s never accessed).
depression runs in my family on my mother’s side. as a child growing up, stories told in hushed tones were imparted about relatives literally cracking up and being carted out of their small cabin-fevered community to the local sanatorium for a spell of “rest” (a particularly striking story is the one about my great-aunt mary running through the woods in her nightgown, screaming at the top of her lungs back in her younger years). from the stories i have heard about her, i suspect my grandmother likely suffered from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, my grandfather and his brothers suffered from various depressive and psychotic ailments, and i have at least one cousin with schizophrenia, and another who did in fact commit suicide.
and of course, there is my mother. from about middle-childhood, memories of my mother are infused with her ongoing struggles with depression, medication, and her abusive marriage – a triumvirate combined to create one very unhappy mom who was prone to short-term memory blocks from the medications. i have only recently realized the childhood futility of trying to please someone who is never happy, who just can’t be happy for any length of time – and the more i think about it now, have a thought that this (along with our very angry father) might be at the core the intense self-esteem problems both my brother and i have faced as we have grown to adults.
i do not blame my mother for her illness, though i always thought it would be infinitely more manageable if she was not in an abusive marriage as well – but those were her choices, borne out of her own crippled sense of self-worth – and thus sadness was an emotion familiar in our household. also familiar was the concept that mental illness was hereditary and there was a good chance i had caught it from the family gene-pool (according to my mother – i was “an angry child and no one knew why” (if you want to know why, see the part about my mother being depressive and my father being a man unafraid to express rage, i suspect this had something to do with it)). i was raised to believe i was emotionally “wrong” in my expression, too intense, too volatile, to expansive in my emotions (both positive and negative – if i was happy i talked to much, if i was angry i was out of control). at 15, when i was hospitalized for an overdose of pills, it was obvious to everyone i suffered from the same genetic malformation that had struck every known generation of my maternal family.
in the beginning, i was glad to be diagnosed and medicated. the diagnosis of depression made me feel good because it validated me as being ill and not just a fuck-up. it was like “see, it’s not my fault – i have a medical condition.” i was put on one course of drugs that gave me nightmares, then another that made me throw-up continually, until finally they found a dosage of something i would take for the next year of my life. i also had a psychiatrist assigned to see me weekly and who sometimes saw the family together. i really don’t remember much about these sessions except that i didn’t want to go to therapy, didn’t understand the point of it, and didn’t trust the doctor (who i’m sure was just fine, i never knew what i was supposed to say to him really – so i just said nothing). then the drugs started to dull me – i mean, really flatten me out – and make me violently ill once again… so that after about a year i stopped them altogether.
i decided then, not only was i better (looking back it is clear i was not), but i was cured for good – and since that time have steadfastly refused any diagnosis of my mental state as being that of one who is clinically depressed – even when i have been fairly obviously symptomatic. mainly this refusal stems from two places – 1) a fear of becoming my mother, locked in eternal sadness and self-esteem problems and 2) a fear of treatment involving pharmaceutical medication.
as a result, i have faced down intense depressions while rejecting a name for them, preferring instead to wander in the wilderness of my mentalscape refusing a map to ground myself in.
this, i’ve learned, is not a particularly healthy way of dealing with depression, and it is only on the emergence from my most recent bout i can see that. in fact, it is only upon the emergence from my most recent round of depression that i can even admit i was depressed, and acknowledge the profound impact that state was having on every area of my life. the acute period this last time spanned about 2 months in the fall of 2003 and carried forward until january 2005 when a timely intervention of homeopathic st. john’s wort kicked out the last lingering despair. even though i started seeing a naturopath in january 2004 every two weeks for counselling, i never was able to appropriately identify myself as “depressed”, preferring instead to think that my symptoms were all a result of ptsd, or some astrological misalignment – and thus only was treated with the st. john’s wort accidentally for another malady – when i could have been treated with it much sooner in the process (or even taken an herbal remedy). my shame, and my refusal to “allow” myself this mental illness which clearly belongs to me, meant i wasn’t able to get appropriate treatement to end that depressive state sooner.
coming out of depression for the first time in many months, is like having a window opened inside of onself, allowing fresh air and light to pour in for the first time after a dark winter. it’s having everything taste better, and having more energy, and wanting to make changes (rather than making them because you feel some obligation to), and also being able to find more compassion and love for other people. it’s like remembering who you are all of a sudden, as opposed to who you have been for the lost time of the depression. in all honesty – coming out of depression feels nothing short of miraculous and i am greatly thankful to have been released from that state.
i am acknowledging this now, not because i need to put a label on everything in my life, but because according to statistics, without treatment i can expect at least one or two more of these episodes in my lifetime. i’m pretty sure i know the things i need to do to avoid or at least minimize this in the future – and that starts with a name, and then a map, and probably a good compass to avoid getting lost in this wilderness again.
One Comment on “depression”
Red Cedar 
hey – thanks for writing this. you know, when i first read in your blog, way back when it was still a young blog, that you had been depressed for much of the spring … and felt so much LESS ALONE. like, yeah, i’m not the only one who falls into holes. sharing really does make a difference, and i have been able to accept my own pits of “the blues” since reading your blog, without despairing too greatly that i there is something terribly wrong with me and i am the only one!
anyway, i hope this makes sense and doesn’t come across that i am downplaying your self-evaluation, but only to let you know that “coming out” is powerful and i for one am very interested in what happens in your life.