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Chapter 3: Descriptions of Depression Are Depressing

Aug 24, 2024

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Jack made a grab for the telephone receiver as I hung up the phone, and got a handful of my hair instead. “Ouch!” I pried the strands loose from his pudgy fingers, put him down, and then whirled to face my husband. “Jim, my Visiting Teachers from church are coming over! I forgot all about them!”


My husband and I scanned our cluttered, neglected kitchen and living room. “How long do we have?” he asked.


“Fifteen minutes!” I ran my hands through my tangled hair, thinking fast. We could do this.


“How can I help?”


“Toss all the toys in the playpen and vacuum the living room. I’ll get the kitchen.” I dashed to the sink, scooped up piles of dirty dishes and stuffed them in the oven. They wouldn’t all fit! I stacked the remainder of the dirty pans away in the cupboards and hoped the baby wouldn’t find them. Thank goodness the deep double sinks hid all of our cups and silverware. I tossed a washrag over each sink. A teasing voice in my mind quipped, “Voilà, zee newest concept in kitchen décor! Avant-garde Grunge!” I stifled a giggle.


The clutter on the kitchen floor was easy to hide; I swept it under the computer table, out of sight. The dirty laundry in the hallway fit perfectly in the dryer. Eight minutes remained on the clock. We were winning.


 The vacuum roared in the living room. The debris hitting the hood made a sound like a million tiny hailstones. Had it really been that long since we vacuumed?  Our three children watched, goggle-eyed, at their parents’ hyperactive tidy-up.


“What can I do, Mommy?” asked Jamie, our oldest daughter, and I kissed the top of her head in passing.


“You can stop Jack! He keeps pulling the toys back out of the playpen.” Hands full of opened and unopened mail, I yanked the desk drawers open, one after another, until I found one with enough headspace to shove it all in.


As Jim rewound the vacuum cord and pushed the vacuum against the wall, there was a knock on the door. “They’re early!” I hissed. “What did we miss?”


“Too late now,” Jim said, and opened the door. Jack made a dash for freedom, and Jim spun him around and sent him careening off in another direction, like a human pinball.

Only one of my Visiting Teachers, my friend Peggy, stood on the porch. She looked like a bedraggled stray.  Her normally sleek hair hung lank and wavy, her usually-impeccable clothing was wrinkled and her eyes were bruised from lack of sleep.  “Sorry, Barbara couldn’t come. It’s just me.”


I gave her a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”


“Don’t say it’s ‘just you,’ say, ‘It’s ME!’ ” Jim teased.  


Peggy tried and failed to smile. Jim’s gaze met mine over the top of her head; something was definitely wrong.


“Come sit down,” I said, “You look worn out.”


Peggy collapsed onto the cushions of our couch with a sigh, rubbing her seven-months-along baby bump. “Did the morning sickness come back, Peggy? Are you feeling ok?” I asked.


Peggy’s eyes filled with tears, as if sympathy was more than she could bear. “I’m not feeling ok, I’m really not,” she said. Her fist tightened around her car keys. “I’ve never felt this bad in my life!”


The girls stopped playing and stared at Peggy. This conversation didn’t need an audience. “How about I take the kids to our room?” Jim asked, reading my mind.


“Great idea,” I told him. “Bring the Little Smart Driver, Jack loves that thing.”


Jim grabbed the back of Jack’s overall straps and picked him up like a suitcase, and our son crowed with laughter. “C’mon, girls. Mama needs some privacy. ” The three of them trooped down the hall.


I scooted closer to Peggy and put my arm around her shoulders.  “What’s going on with you?”


“It’s depression,” she said, and a tear rolled down her cheek.  “My anti-depressants haven’t kicked in all the way, and the doctor said it could be another week or two before they do.”


“I didn’t know you were depressed.” This was the first time I’d ever seen Peggy without a smile on her face.


“I felt so bad, Heather, like everything I did was wrong. I couldn’t stop crying. It was awful. One of the doctors I work with at the hospital said the pregnancy probably caused it.”


I was amazed at Peggy’s willingness to open up about her depression. Mental illness is a taboo subject in my personal universe. I heard myself blurt out, “I get post-partum with my kids, but I didn’t know you could get depressed while you were still pregnant.”

Good grief, I’d just admitted to having post-partum depression. I couldn’t believe I’d said that out loud. Peggy didn’t flinch, though, it didn’t faze her. “My doctor said it can happen before or after the baby’s born.”


“I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this right now.”


“Once the drugs kick in all the way, I’ll be ok,” Peggy said, and wiped her eyes. “I already feel better than I did.”


“Well, that’s good, I’m glad they’re working.” I handed her a tissue.


“I tried to shake it off, and I couldn’t,” Peggy said. “And I was scared, because it hurt so much I wanted to die, and I was afraid I’d act on that feeling.”


I had no idea how to respond to her, and we both went silent.

Her desperation was difficult for me to understand, as was her fear she’d somehow lose control and kill herself. Depression was my constant companion. It had been for eighteen years. It waxed and it waned, but it never went away.  You fight it, you push back, that’s all you can do. You don’t let it win. But how could I say that to Peggy? Depression had her in a choke hold.


I looked at the mangy carpet, and thought of all the times depression had knocked me over and kicked me when I was down. Sure, sometimes it hurt so much I’d longed for my life to be over, but I didn’t want to end it. What good what that do? Suicide would mean never-ending regret, a spiritual torment that could well last forever; how could I ever forgive myself for doing something so selfish? The thought of eternal pain in the next world made suffering for a lifetime in this one seem like a bargain. I wondered if I’d feel differently if I were agnostic, like Jim.


Peggy pulled her thoughts together. “The doctor told me not to blame myself. Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain, it isn’t anyone’s fault. I was worried about the baby getting hurt if I took Prozac, but he said the risk to the baby was a lot worse if I didn’t take my meds, because depression kills people.”


Not me it doesn’t, I thought. It never will. So that risk doesn’t apply.


She turned to look into my eyes. “Know what the worst part is? As a nurse, I’ve had lots of patients with depression, and I never believed they were hurting as much as they said. I thought they could shake it off, I thought they were doing it to themselves by being negative all the time. Now it makes me sick. I hate remembering I dismissed their pain.”


Jim strode into the living room, Jack in tow, and began to dig for a diaper in the playpen. We both watched him for a long moment.


“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “No one can understand something they haven’t felt themselves. They don’t have any frame of reference.”


“It’s like being in labor,” Jim broke in. “I can’t understand that. But I do know one thing—if it were up to men to have the babies, there would have been one. Then the human race would have died out.”


Peggy and I laughed. I reminded myself how lucky I am to have Jim, whose optimism and cheerful good humor can lighten any mood, however dark.


XXXX


Long after Peggy left, I continued to ponder our conversation, and Peggy’s approach to her depression. I was shocked by her openness and honesty, and by her eagerness to take the medication the doctor claimed would help her feel better. I was amazed, too, that her doctor believed her and didn’t judge her, or call her hysterical.


As I stared up at the darkened ceiling, I thought of all the reasons I kept my illness to myself, and weighed the pros and cons of getting help. Depression is a mental illness, there’s no getting around it. And mental illness carries a stigma that lasts a lifetime.


Once you’ve admitted to depression, the Powers-That-Be have license to question your sanity forever. Child Protective Services can use it as leverage—are you competent to raise your children? The government can question your second amendment rights—is it safe for you to own a firearm? The military can use it as grounds to reject you—should anyone with depression be allowed to enter the Armed Forces?  People would have reason to distrust your perception of events—could your depression be blinding you to what really happened, or give you motivation to commit crimes against others or yourself? Psychiatrists could use it against you, and commit you to a mental institution. That last thought made me shiver, so I scooted closer to Jim.


I’d never asked for help with depression. To ask for help would be tantamount to admitting I was weak, that I was unable to cope. Poor Peggy was blindsided by it. She didn’t grow up with it, she hadn’t learned to handle it. She was tempted to kill herself, so of course asking for help was, for her, the right decision.  After all, the level of pain inflicted by malfunctioning serotonin and dopamine receptors does have to be felt to be believed.


Imagine you opened your eyes one morning, and everyone you loved and cared about was lying on the floor of your bedroom, dead. And it was your fault. Hold onto that feeling.  Now imagine waking up and feeling that same level of despair and sorrow and guilt and self-hatred for NO REASON AT ALL, which means you not only hurt like blazes, you also feel like a loony. That’s clinical depression in a nutshell.


Until Mr. Lewis shared his nugget of wisdom, I hadn’t realized constant mental pain and exhaustion had eroded my hope and optimism to a critical point. What kind of life is it, when you would rather die in your sleep than wake up to another day of pain? My focus was on enduring this life until my time on Earth was over, and I could leave this world behind and go home to my Father in Heaven. Life wasn’t supposed to be easy, right? If it were easy, why would the reward for living a good life be so amazing?


But wouldn’t it be nice to have the option to be happy, and be the person I felt I truly was, deep inside? I didn’t want to be negative and cynical. My children deserved a mom who didn’t cry and stare at the wall on her down days.


Peggy didn’t worry the doctor would decide she was exaggerating, or say it was all in her head, or institutionalize her. She wasn’t afraid to take medication.


Maybe 18 years was long enough to endure this kind of pain, maybe I deserved to live a better life. Maybe Peggy was right.

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