I tend to be quite a cheerful and optimistic person, for which I am very grateful. I grew up with the odd balance of a wonderful but chronically depressed father, and a mother so relentlessly cheerful that sunbeams fairly burst from her eye sockets. I don't find myself at either extreme, but I definitely trend toward the sunny side. (Thanks for those happy genes, mama.)
I did go through a bout of depression once in my life. It started during the last year of my first marriage, when I could feel my whole world crumbling around me, but couldn't quite get a grasp on what was happening or exactly why. I went to my doctor and explained how sad I was, and instead of asking me why I was so sad (or encouraging me to ask why), he gave me a prescription for Paxil, a drug which I took for the next year or so. The Paxil did slightly alleviate the depression - or at least made me better able to bear the pain of my situation - but it also made me gain 30 pounds. Neither the huge weight gain (I am 5'3") or the weird denial of the reality of a marriage that was on the rocks made anything in my life any better. In fact, it made things worse.
On the day my husband moved out - one of the worst days of my life - I flushed the Paxil I had left down the toilet. I knew it wasn't really helping - that it was just prolonging the inevitable. I knew that I was going to have to feel every bit of the pain that had been gathering in wait for my release from the drug, like an angry stormcloud ready to burst over my head.
And then, I did feel the pent-up sad. Boy, did I.
The next six months are a bit of a blur. My sister remembers washing my hair for me one day because I was simply too sad to take care of it myself. Other people who loved me washed my clothes, my car, and even my children for me during those first terrible months after the separation. They trusted I'd get beyond the sadness, and they knew that the only way through was through.
They were right, of course. One day, I noticed the flowers beginning to bloom in my yard, and the sun coming out. I realized I was about 35 pounds thinner, and that I'd somehow managed to find a job, childcare, and a place to live for me and my children. I no longer spent 23 hours of every 24 hour period mourning my lost marriage.The cloud had lifted, and I felt so much stronger for having made it through to the other side. I felt brave, actually. Brave and amazonian. My depressive episode was over, and just as I'd never had one previously, I've never had one since, even when things have been tough. I get sad, of course, but it's different from the bonecrushing, heartripping grief that I'd experienced. I almost feel like going through that one toughened me up, and built up my resistance, so I am less likely to suffer from depression again.
I'm grateful for the fact that I don't have to live with a chronic mood disorder, and I know it's mostly just good genetic luck, along with the strong fundamental coping skills with which my parents gifted me. Having seen my father suffer so terribly with what was finally diagnosed as an atypical bipolar disorder, I know what I am missing. Although my father's official cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, I know it was the sadness that really killed him. It wore his body and spirit out over the years, just as if he'd been battling chronic cancer or diabetes.
This is me with my Daddy, in the rain, in about 1975.
I watch each of my children carefully for signs of mental illness, because I know it runs in our family. I have a cousin who has a young adult son with schizophrenia, and it has been a revelation to me seeing how hard she has worked to get him the care he needs, and how much she has hurt, watching him hurt. No parent wants to see her child suffer from an illness, but when your child has mental illness, there is the extra burden of the stigma, and the misunderstanding, and the lack of resources. So I watch, and I worry. Since their grandfather died last fall, we've had many very open conversations about mental illness, and how to ask for help. I've encouraged them to be there for any friends they may have who seem to suffer.
It's a rainy evening here - it's been raining for days and days - so a lot of people with whom I've interacted lately have seemed blue. I guess that's why the subject of organic sadness is on my mind.
I am looking forward to the return of the sun later this week.
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