Our "D" Word

At some point over the last year a fellow blogging Mom-friend of mine blogged about having to say and write the D word out loud. To own it. In her world, the word was Divorce. In my world, the word is Depression. A recent difficult and heart wrenching time with one of my teenagers has impressed upon me even more strongly that this D word has to be something that we acknowledge. I thought I had been. I talk pretty openly about my own struggles & how much medication has helped me. Discussions of our grisly and tragic family history in regards to our antecedents that have clearly had similar struggles but without the benefit of modern medication have come out from under the proverbial rug. And most importantly I thought that I was watching my kids.
When I was in high school my friends and I read The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. For those who are unaware they are not high school romance novels about cute non-blood sucking vampires. There is a scene in one of the books where an event changed the mindset of the main character forever. It was a pivotal moment. He describes the after math of that event as something like "And the sky was never the same shade of blue again." (Insert rant here: I would quote it from my well worn, dog eared, highlighted copy but someone 'borrowed' it and never returned it. This particular theft took place 18 years ago and still pisses me off.)

It was as if the sky was never the same shade of blue again. I cannot tell you how that idea spoke to me. Looking back I know that I struggled with anxiety and depression. I know that my mind was cloudy and garbled by wacky synapses & chemical issues that passed to me through that giant genetic maze. Since I am not a crier when depressed, I boxed myself off, made the best decisions I could under the circumstances and really didn't understand why I always felt like a mysterious, horrendous black something was looming over me just waiting to get me. Now I understand that what it feels like when a medication takes away the anxiety thus removing the horrendous black something. I get less stomach aches. I ride escalators. I can ride in a car as a passenger without the need to feel like leaping out of a moving vehicle.

I didn't embrace medication until after I gave birth the second time. Of course my life was stressful and I was sleep deprived. 3 kids under 3 will do that to you but will it make you think repeatedly that going straight instead of turning around a curve would be a good idea? Going straight off of a cliff. I wondered so many times why no one around me could see what was going on but I guess I hide it well. The good news is that I was with it enough to drag myself to get help. I hope that my experience has allowed me to see the signs in others & get them to look at a word that we all want to avoid - Depression.

I personally wish there was another word. One that didn't have the ability to be misconstrued as mere sadness or despondency. A word that describes a definitive medical condition like diabetes or asthma. The counselor that we've worked with recently just shook her head when I started listing the family history. Thankful seems a very little word when I try to describe how I feel about the difference modern medicine can make to my life and now to one of my kids. It's scary when your mind is a dark, murky fog bank and sometimes medicine can return the shades of blue to the sky. The fact that a person has been in the murky fog bank means that the shades of blue won't be quite the same shade but blue is so much better than a thick, murky black.