About 8 years ago I had my first depressive "break." Clinical depression runs in my family (on my dad's side -- my mother is the most nauseatingly sane person in the world), and it hit me hard when I was about 28. I was in a serious relationship with a guy that I really loved, but was overwhelmed with feelings of despair and worthlessness. It took me months to accept that I needed help (and, it turned out, medication), but in the meantime I made my boyfriend so miserable with my own miserableness that he dumped me. He didn't handle the breakup well, and many of my wonderful friends are still ready to string him up because of the way they think he treated me, but it wasn't his fault. I was broken, and he couldn't fix me, and I subtly punished him for it, and he couldn't take it anymore. That's the truth.
The depression was very intense. I kind of felt like a marine in boot camp, where they're supposed to break you down to your barest elements as a person so they can rebuild you as a soldier. I felt like a raw, exposed nerve ending all the time, I had suicidal ideations (never could or would act on them -- don't worry), I felt worthless and despondent and beyond salvation. But then I went to therapy and went on medication and got better. I've had relapses, but the difference now is that I recognize what's happening immediately and get help. Mostly it's just chemical. I feel fine on the meds, and I cycle downwards fairly dramatically when I'm not on them. The only side effect that I can't get rid of is insomnia (I'm writing this at 3 in the morning). I haven't slept through the night without the assistance of ambien or something similar in 9 years, and I've resigned myself to the fact that I probably never will.
So how did the depression and the breakup back in 1998 affect me? In a way, it made me determined to take control of my life to the extent I could, and not be a slave to my chemical makeup. I know I have tendencies to feel down, so I'm determined to not feel that way, to the extent I can control it. I feel like I have two choices: I can deal with whatever comes, and get on with my life, or not. "Not" is not an acceptable option. Life's too short to feel crappy about things, so a big part of my approach is to just not feel crappy.
Since 1998, my life has changed quite dramatically, and I did things I'm not sure I would have done before. I ran a half-marathon and then a marathon, though I had never been a runner. I bought a house and got a new job. I started playing bluegrass music in public. I made new friends. I joined tennis teams. I started a book club. Best of all, I married an Australian surfer that I met on vacation in Costa Rica.
Without the depression, I don't know that I would have ever done any of these things. On the other hand, maybe the outlook I have now was always in me, just waiting for an opportunity to emerge, like a butterfly in a cocoon. So the depression, in a way, provided me with the impetus to act. But the desire, the impulse to make a life, was there the whole time. And since then I've felt very strongly that I control not only my destiny but also how I'm going to feel about it and what I'm going to become. I'm relatively fearless about how my life is going to go. Marry an Aussie surfer/electrician? sure, I love him and he's fun and sweet and he makes me happy. Move to Hawaii? Why not, it's pretty and people will come visit. Have a kid soon? Hell, yeah. We're ready. Full steam ahead.
Yesterday my mother called me to tell me about an envelope of my old school records from when I was in first grade in Venezuela. The teachers loved me, I was cooperative, smart, eager to learn, a joy to have in class, blah blah blah. In the "needs improvement" section, the teacher said, "Wendy has a difficult time keeping her work space neat and organized." I would like to invite my teacher to my office to let her know that her observation would be as applicable now as then -- my desk looks like a filing cabinet was dumped out onto it, and it pretty much always looks that way. I try to clean it, but it doesn't really take. I guess that part of me has been encoded since the age of five, and it's never changed, and it's never going to.
I want my friend to know that her core as a person isn't something likely to be changed by anything. She's smart, principled, moral, ethical, and serious. I suspect that those qualifies may spur her to make some changes that she might not have otherwise made, or that she didn't realize she had the strength to make. But it will still be her. Some lessons learned, a little more circumspect, perhaps, but still wonderful her.
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