The Demon Returns

April is a time of renewal and rebirth in the natural world when the tree flowers, daffodils, and other spring flowers bloom, and the spring peepers emerge from their winter sleep in the mud to sing their amazing chorus. But for me, after three glorious months of being depression free, productive and content, April has brought back the demon.

The spark has left my eyes, my face feels like melting wax, there is panic in my gut and I just want to cry. Instead of living in the world, I've gone back inside my head with all the negative thinking, physical aches and pains, isolation and loneliness. Try as I do to beat back this devil with my intellect, it's just too powerful and leaves me helpless.

Thanks to my wonderful caregiver and friend, I recently had a DNA study done and it was discovered that my body is deficient in the ingredient necessary to process serotinin. I'll be trying a new supplement to address this issue and will let you know if it works. I'm hoping it will lift me up before I'm totally debiliated again. I also hope this process proves positive and will give hope to others who suffer from treatment-resistent depression.

FEELING HUMAN

Today is January 6 and is the 4th consecutive day I'm been depression-free. This comes after 4 months of debilitating depression. If I stay well (please oh please), this will be another cycle of depression and feeling well. This has been going on for many years - months of depression, months of feeling normal.

Last year, I was tested by a kinesiologist who put me on 2 supplements, Thyroid Synergy and Crave Arrest. Among other substances, they contain iodine and 5-HTP. After a few weeks, the depression lifted. I felt so well that I thought I could get off the Paxil which I'd been on for 20 years and which obviously no longer worked since I have periods of depression. The withdrawal symptoms were so brutal that I couldn't bear them. I went back on it and probably will have to stay on it for the rest of my life. (I continued to feel well for several months, than crashed so I stopped taking the supplements).

Paxil is now known to be the most addictive of the SSRIs. I've done lots of reading on this topic. Some folks have been able to get off it (not easily) - some could not. (I've heard that doctors don't like to prescribe Paxil anymore because of the addictiveness).

Anyway, 6 days ago I remembered the supplements and began taking them again. I can't say that they are the reason for feeling better since I've been cycling like this for years before I found them. What I do know is that coming out of the depression is the most incredible relief - it's almost like being reborn. Long may it last.

CHOICE

I'm almost always depressed. If I'm not severly depressed, I'm sad. It's a terrible way to live. I hate it, yet I have no choice but to live with it.

I wonder if I had made different choices along the way if things would be different. I left my parents home at age 17 - out of the frying pan into the fire. I was dating a man who my parents didn't approve of. They made me feel like a criminal, and treated me like one. I was desperate and made a bad choice. I left home a few days before Christmas. I put on all the clothes that would fit on my body and carried what I could. On Christmas eve, I remember walking up 42nd street in NYC headed for the YMCA where I was staying with this man. I was hysterical with tears, alone and afraid. I believe this was the day my heart broke. In my own defense, it was not a conscience choice to run away - I felt as if my life depended on it - I felt like I had no choice. Unfortunately, the situation I ran into was worse than the one I had left behind.

Why do we make bad choices - not seeing options, not considering ramifications, fear, not having been shown that we had options? Who knows - there are probably more reasons. Did the choice I made at 17 pave my road of loneliness, isolation and depression?

These days, I try to be thoughtful about decisions and choices I make. That's a good thing.

IT'S HARD BEING HUMAN

Everyone suffers to some extent - it's just the nature of things. There are no free rides and no do-overs in this life. We get what we get and it's up to us to do the best we can with whatever it is.

My neighbor hurt his back three years ago and can't work anymore. The family went from living a nice, comfortable life to getting food from the food bank. A friend just found out that she has breast cancer. Another neighbor recently had his larynx removed due to throat cancer and can no longer speak. I could go on and on with one sad story after another.

It's so easy to be the victim and to be angry at our situations, but I try not to feel sorry for myself. I read somewhere that true happiness is the ability to enjoy life in the face of suffering.

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." Ernest Hemingway

The demons of depression are dancing in my head, it makes them very happy when I wish that I were dead.

This is not the life I would have chosen for myself, but it is the one I was given. One of my theories for getting this life is that I did something in another life that caused someone great pain and loneliness, and I'm paying for it now; another theory is that I am dead and this is really hell. I don't believe either one of these, but when I'm in the depths of depression they serve as some rational. Depressed thinking is so dark.

Out of the Frying Pan

I always thought my parents brought the wrong baby home from the hospital - I never felt like I belonged. When I was 17, I "ran away" from home - out of the frying pan into the fire. The following is a piece I wrote about my relationship with my mother:

The layers of clothing lay heavy on my back as I quickly walked out of your life. Home had become prison, mouth gagged, feet bound, even the telephone was a forbidden zone. You followed me outside like hound after rabbit, opened my mail and called me ungrateful. The picture you painted with father and brother, side by side with a glass of whisky in your hand told a tale of crime. 

But I was your daughter, came from your womb - you were supposed to protect me. And just what was this awful thing I had done? Rebelled against prejudice and attempted to grow in my own light - crimes punishable by years of solitude; diszoned, disgraced and banished into a hotter fire.

The aloneness ached like bone scraping bone. The fear took on a life of its own, portrayed each night in dreams, in a show of tangled telephone lines and broken locks, of sweat soaked sheets and screams- this frightened child fought the demons you created.

Years later when flight from this inferno brought me back to you, welcoming arms stayed closed like goatsbeard at night and peaceful sleep still eluded me.  The shadows gripped tightly through those years, like suspenders on an emicated frame, but slowly the elastic stretched.

As I sit here with you tonight on your 86th birthday, my mind forgives you and aches to love you, but the child you abandoned so long ago still recoils from your touch.

 Some wounds never heal but they can become manageable.

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

Unlike most serious illnesses, there are no tests for depression. Diabetes is monitored through testing blood sugar, cancer can be looked at through biopsies, and heart disease can be seen through injecting dye into the veins or with new scan technology.  While changes in the brain can be seen on a certain type of scan, the only measure for depression is the way a person is feeling and how they are living their life.  I believe that because this illness cannot be measured it seems less real to non-sufferers. Depression sufferers are often told to "Just get up and go for a walk." Non-sufferers can't grasp the fact that we can't get up - that we are paralyzed by this illness. And even if the non-sufferers understand, it usually leaves them feeling helpless.

Many of us have visited a loved one or friend in the hospital, bringing best wishes and flowers. Even when we are home with the flu or a cold, we often receive a gift of homemade chicken soup. But because others feel so helpless in the life of a depressed person, they tend to stay away, and while mental illness has finally been recognized as a real medical illness, stigma still exists. Depression is a cruel and isolating illness.
I am fortunate, however, to have a circle of friends, who despite not being able to comprehend what I go through, love me in spite of it and check in on me regularly. But generally speaking, no one brings flowers for depression.