You Are Not Alone
By Judith Cullen
© 2014
I went to a gathering of folks from my High School
recently. It was not a formal reunion,
but simply an informal gathering at a local brewery-eatery. There were people from several classes there,
spanning the years around 1980. I had
expected some of the “old scripts” of behavior to kick in, as so often they do
in such situations. That was not the
case. Perhaps the reality of all of us
being over 50 has given us a wholly different perspective. We have lived a lot in over thirty years –
each and every one of us.
Early on, a lovely woman from the year after mine obliquely
referred to her struggles with depression.
It was probably the only moment in the evening that I faltered, and felt
that same old awkwardness that I felt so often in High School. I remember this woman as a bright,
self-assured young lady. Depression was the last thing I would have expected to
creep into her life.
But what is the formula for depression? What is the fatal recipe that determines in
those golden ages of youth what experience will push someone past their
threshold of inner strength? Does it
only sneak into the lives of those who are already challenged by economics or
academic achievement, or is it defined by a different set of parameters? Who are we to know at 18 who will struggle
and who will succeed, if that will be a constant or a roller coaster? How can we tell among all the signed “Stay
Cute ‘n Sweet!”s carved into our yearbooks with 30 year old Bic ballpoint pens
that life will most likely be a bumpy ride for all of us as time passes. Some are more resilient, but I suspect
everyone has to fight this fight at one point or another.
I have struggled with clinical depression over the last
decade or more. I am very conscious of
it, conscious of how what I eat and how I think affects it. I am conscious of the daily evaluation
between what constitutes your garden variety “bad day” and what is that dark
fog infiltrating your soul, threatening to freeze you into lassitude. It is the sort of state where curling up in a
ball, under a blanket, weeping or tightly shutting your eyes till the world
goes away seems like a reasonable course of action. It might just be for an hour or two. When it lasts for more than a morning, or
several days on end, is when you are in profound danger. What’s more, you feel absolutely isolated and
alone.
I looked at this lovely woman who I had been acquainted with
so many decades ago, and I felt a very real pain that she should have struggle
as I have had to. I stammered stupidly
and said all the wrong things. I do
that. Sometimes I am brilliant and the
golden words lift lightly to my lips.
Other times I cannot say the right thing to save myself from
perdition. Had someone said to me what I
said to her, I would have ascribed them and idiot and thought, “They don’t get
it. They have no idea. They haven’t had a real depressive episode in
their entire lives.”
But the thing is, I do understand. I really do.
I grieve for her struggles as I do for my own – for this woman who I
really know only very superficially. No
one deserves the daily toil of deciding to put one foot in front of the other.
No one deserves the stigma that still comes from being diagnosed with
Depression. What I wanted to say, . . . what I wish I had said that I still
feel from the depths of my heart is, “You are not alone. You are never, ever alone.”
Struggle is a sign of having lived. None of us were guaranteed an easy ride,
though that is hard to convince yourself when you are under that blanket trying
to squeeze the darkness out of your soul. Life includes the entire gambit: joy,
ecstasy, depression, anxiety, love, anger.
Living, no matter what it seems like at any given moment, is still
preferable to the alternative. That too
is an internal argument which depression engages you in.
More people suffer from depression that you might
think. I am sure the seeds of my own
depression were planted long before they had been diagnosed, and are the
composite of any number of disparate influences: heredity, self-image, chemical
deficiencies, the inability to let go, pushing myself unhealthily for years on
end. I know that there are people who
suffer far worse than I do. I am
lucky. I do not need medical support, at
least at the moment. I recognize the
signs. Some days I see them more clearly
than others. I still have moments of
feeling like depression might have, or could ruin my life. And I have other moments when I know with
conviction that while there is still life, there is always hope.
In honor of that recent experience, of feeling the right
thing and saying the wrong thing to someone whose battles I have complete
empathy for, I say to every one of you who also has been sucked down into that
foggy darkness: You are not alone. You are never, ever alone.
“Depression, anxiety, and panic are not signs of weakness. They are signs that we have been strong for
far too long.”
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By Judith Cullen
© 2014
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