ME: THE BEGINNING

I’ve been depressed for as long as I can remember. In the beginning I didn’t know what to call my being different. My parents certainly didn’t call it depression.  I was called overly sensitive and overly emotional. From their perspective I was angry and selfish without cause, with frequent outbursts of crying.  I would explode in a funnel cloud of emotion.  I’d throw a tantrum at the drop of a hat. I knew that I was an embarrassment to my parents, especially my mother. Propriety and decorum mattered a lot to her. Clearly I didn’t fit in.

Friends of the family called me ‘the girl who cried.’ We’d take family trips to their home in Lodi, California and not a visit went by when I wasn’t crying over something. I once became so upset that Dad took me outside and walked me up and down their tree lined street. There were fig trees and he’d pick a couple of figs and eat them while we walked and walked. Dad was a calming influence, when he was home. 

I grew up with overwhelming feelings that I couldn’t name or conquer. There were moments of joy, of course, but the good times were tempered by an underlying dread and melancholia. I escaped into food, books, fantasy and sleep. I remember having these turbulent feelings before I started wearing glasses. 

I got glasses in 4^th grade. 

I needed a reason for these strong feelings of not belonging.  I queried my parents, my aunts, uncles and cousins but no one coughed up any grievous traumatic injury. When repressed memories of molestation were all the rage I thought maybe I had been abused but I couldn’t conjure up a suspicious encounter let alone an actual incident. 

In recent years I’ve come to believe that I started down this rabbit hole at birth. 

I was an induced delivery (Mom’s doctor had a vacation scheduled on my due date) requiring forceps to pull me into this world. One side of my face was paralyzed and distorted; there are no pictures of me until I’m over 6 months old. Dad was so distraught he arranged for his good friend, a M.D. in San Francisco, to examine me. Mom went back to work and Nana Maude came to live with us to take care of me. When I was sick she’d rub my chest with smelly pink stuff covered by a cloth diaper. I felt safe and warm.

What seems odd to me is that the lack of photographs, actually the whole of my birth,  was treated as inconsequential. I was simply absent among the displayed baby pictures of my siblings. There are no stories about my early months except for the physical description. During this time my parents helped care for an older cousin (one of my big brothers to this day) and I wonder if Mom focused on him to avoid dealing with my disfigurement. Did she feel shame birthing a less than perfect child? 

Nana died when I was in the 6^th grade.  I was away at church camp when she died and the funeral was held. Mom told me when she picked me up from the bus. I still remember the asphalt parking lot under my feet as I began to cry.  I was bereft, screaming at Mom for not retrieving me to attend the funeral.  Mom’s response was that she didn’t think I would care if I missed the funeral so the trip to pick me up wasn’t worth it. Once again, I was over-reacting. 

I hated being different. I hated being me. I hated the droopy side of my face even though you had to look very very close to see it. I tried so hard to be normal. I made jokes about my leaky face and claimed the shroud of the hypersensitive, thin-skinned and angry sibling in the family. I became a rebel, acting as if I was beyond caring. Faking it between bouts of good and bad. 

When I was about 4 years old I became a big sister and by 8 I had a baby brother. My sister suffered for several years before being diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. My brother was the prince of the family, spoiled by all of us. 

Dad wasn’t around much but when he was he and I had great times. I had my school friends and projects, scouting, and the beach. A chronic underachiever I cleaned erasers on my good days and sullenly sat through school on my bad days. Since Laguna Beach was a small town with an excellent public bus system I was able to get away on my own which eased the strain of trying to meet Mom’s expectations of my body  and social life.  Mom’s mixed messages swarmed around me:  I would be prettier if I were thinner — have some ice cream and  stand up straight — don’t show off your boobs.

I learned to pretend. I pretended so much I should have taken up acting. Before I had wasted any time on my fantasy I realized that to be a really good actor one must embrace emotion, not hide from it. And hide I did. Therapists, counselors, and ersatz cults offered solutions. I found solace in books and food and alcohol and sex and grass and music and Star Trek. Hiding means living without always wondering if you are the butt of some cosmic joke. 

 I soldiered on. I grew up, dated a lot of frogs, had children, and married too many times. I managed to support my children and have a somewhat fulfilling career. I did some good, helped some people. I loved passionately. I made great friends who blessed me with their support and friendship even when I was incapable of responding. 

I never figured out what Mom wanted of me. When Dad died Mom lost any semblance of balance, seeming to pit we three sibs against each other. Our roles crystallized into the Prince, the Sick Sister, and The Forgotten One.  Eluding the family drama meant I moved to northern California. Some considered this an audacious and gutsy move as I packed up two dogs, several cats, a rabbit and a guinea pig (not to mention my two children) and slogged up Highway 99 in my Pontiac station wagon.

My constant friend on this 60+ year journey has been Sisyphus. Up and up we have pushed that boulder only to be crushed as it rolls down hill. Just when I thought I understood the rules of living my life, just when I could see the “getting it” place, I’d fail. Sometimes I felt like the universe was mysteriously changing the rules. Sometimes I felt like I was too dull or damaged to understand what came so easily to others.

In the beginning I would brush myself off and try again. Eventually my optimism faltered and it took me longer and longer to nurse my wounds. Sometimes I forgot my mission was to get that boulder up the hill  and I’d be lost in a murky, dead sea. 

I self-medicated so well with alcohol that alcohol became a problem. I headed to rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous. I never received a dual diagnosis and was sober 20 years. I never was free and wondered why AA wasn’t working for me. Once again I felt different than the others. At least being sober kept me from executing my suicide ideations. 

It has taken a lot of years and a lot of stops along the way to accept that I have a mental illness. It was easier for me to say “I’m an alcoholic” than to lay claim to endogenous depression and major depressive disorder (double depression). There are still days when it is a bitter struggle between my brain and the voices squatting in my head.  Ah, the convincing lies depression tells you!  Depression affects both my perception of the world and the world’s perception of me until I was looking through so many false filters that the distortion was reality. I became a creature of the mis-es: misinterpreting, misunderstanding, misconstruing, miscalculating, and misreading my world and those in it. 

Living with depression is a daily trip down my rabbit hole. Depression is always there but mostly manageable. Sometimes feeling like Alice and sometimes like the Red Queen, I experience my own fantastical Wonderland.  Sometimes it’s fun and sometimes its not. A year ago I had an incident of suicide ideation for the first time in years. My Gentleman had never seen me sick and I had never been sick with a supportive partner. My actions triggered the past fears of one of my children. That run down the rabbit hole was formidable but I survived—and so did My Gentleman and children.