Depression is a word often uttered, but rarely understood. It is not a mood nor a mindset, but a mental illness. It is estimated that around 350 million suffer with the illness each year. But I’m not here to bore you with facts and figures, I’m here to talk about my own personal experience with the matter, and hopefully, open some eyes and ears about the subject in the process.
It all started the fall of 2013, otherwise known as the beginning of my senior year in high-school. It was already destined to be tough, seeing how we had just placed my gracious grandmother into a nursing home due to her severe dementia. But when one thing went wrong, everything else was soon to follow. My mother, a school teacher of 25+ years and happily married to my father, began having severe pains in her abdomen. One thing led to another and before you know it, she was in the hospital in surgery to remove a tumor. A week after that, I drove her to the doctor to get checked-up and make sure everything was clear and good as new. It wasn’t. My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And that’s how it officially started.
Before I go any further, let me just take a moment to explain that depression is not always the cliché, glorified scenario that television and stories make it out to be. It’s not an issue that can be created and resolved in the matter of an hour and a half movie time. It can go on for months to years to even a lifetime. It can be hereditary or caused by one of about a million issues faced in our everyday life. Loss of a loved one, bullying, relationships, abuse, or even low self-esteem, lack of sleep, body images, and the list is actually endless. And none of the issues are any more or less painful and difficult than another. Let’s make that clear right now. I know personally how easy it is to beat oneself up for being sad because they feel someone else has it worse. Somebody always has it worse, but that doesn’t make yours or my issue any less difficult.
But anyways, back to my personal story. A terminally ill mother can lead a family through a lot of difficult things. Me being a kid, I didn’t know how to comprehend or deal with these fresh, life-altering issues that came in like the burst of a volcano. So, I didn’t deal with them at all. I avoided home at all costs, hiding from my problems instead of facing them head on as we are so often encouraged to do. Well eventually, I had to. And I did. It was a big scene of me and my father yelling at each-other and my mother bursting into tears. Fun times. But we resolved it, and worked together exceedingly well from then on. But, my depression was quite the opposite.
For a young, teenage girl, I never cried. I mean never. I was not an emotional type, and frankly, never had a reason to be. Up until that point, my life was as smooth sailing as one could be. But then that big wave came in and crashed my boat into a giant boulder. I cried for the first time about my mother at the end of a day at school, I sitting in the band hall alone and thinking entirely too much about an issue I could not control. Then I began to cry a lot. Mostly when I was alone, and mostly at night. My fear and stress levels went through the roof and I began having trouble sleeping, waking up about every hour or two every night for several months. Then I began over-eating, mostly fast-food since both of my parents were teachers and were too busy going to chemo appointments or going to work to make a proper dinner. This all made things significantly worse. And that’s when the anxiety kicked in.
Man oh man, the joys of anxiety. Heavy breathing or lack thereof, uncontrollable sobbing, shaking, heart beating as if you just did a mile sprint, fun stuff indeed. Somewhere that year, I had my first official anxiety attack, and many more since. So what’s the next step when you reach points like that? You guessed it, medication. Playing with doses or getting more medications on top of medications, constant drowsiness, or feeling like an insane person for having three different prescription medications under your name at the age of 17. When it rains, it pours, right?
I wasn’t the only one struggling though, obviously. Ultimately my mother struggled the most, she losing her hair, making chemo trips once or twice a week. Losing an insane amount of weight due to the constant vomiting on the way home from anywhere and lack of appetite to follow. And my Dad felt about like I did: helpless and terrified. Oh, and let’s not forget the periodic visits to the nursing home where my grandmother stayed, slowly but surely getting worse and worse. Around that mid to late April in 2014, she passed away.
Then a month later I graduated high-school. Yippee! Thankfully my Mother was able to attend that, and even help throw a graduation party after that. And during that summer we even had a solid month or two where she didn’t have to attend chemo because her cancer had gotten so much better. But naturally, that didn’t last either. Nor did my temporary happiness.
She got worse the following year, and on June 5th of 2015, she passed away. My loving, gentle, heart-warming mother was gone. And so was my faith in the world, in myself, and in my life. With depression comes the common side-effect of suicidal thoughts and self-harm, right? Well I was no different. The thoughts had briefly crossed my mind here and there during that first year, but they really made their impression the second after she was gone. Suddenly I wasn’t just sad about her, I was sad about everything. By that point I probably weighed 40 pounds more than I did in that late 2013. I had begun college (which is stressful and terrifying enough on its own), and I began to lose contact with a lot of old friends. I think that was mostly my fault though, I had completely isolated myself. I began to think more and more about what I could do to end it all. How the world did not need me, how all I did was cost money and cause other people problems. I thought about my fathers licensed handgun at the bottom of his nightstand. I thought about one of the multiple bottles of pills I had in my own nightstand. I even thought about ramming my own car into a tree. But I didn’t do any of it.
Instead, I went back to college that following fall. I made new friends and I took a bunch of art classes. I began getting more involved in my major of film. I even got a job at a Halloween store. I still got sad from time to time (ok, it was still pretty frequent at first), but I still felt myself improving a little more every day. And now here I am, feeling better than ever. I do still get sad yes, and even have a bad thought or two cross my mind on a bad day, but, I am better.
That’s how depression works. It starts off small then goes from a giant flame to a tiny flicker in the back of your mind. There’s no guarantee it will take 3 years for you as it did for me. It could only be one, or hell, it could be 30. But either way, that better will come. I know how it is, I really do. It’s a constant cycle you go through over and over and over again. It’s like a wound that you don’t bandage. It will just keep festering and never get better because it’s still exposed to that open air. And sure, there will be a lot of others around who tell you “maybe you should put something on that” or even try to help you do it. But ultimately, the only one who can bandage that wound is you. The only one who can heal you is you.
I’m a film major in college, but also a writer (obviously). I’m passionate about pretty much all art forms, from movies to music to acting to writing. I’m not that good of a painter but you get the picture. But my point is, everyone has something they are passionate about. Doesn’t matter what it is or where it’s at, it’s there. And the only way to lessen that constant dreary darkness that has suffocated you, is finding that passion. Distract yourself, make yourself useful, and feel productive about something. Do what you love and never stop. Hell, even use this pain your feeling and make it into something great. Make it into a writing like I am here today. Share it with the world to help others as well as help yourself. Nothing comes easy, but it does come. I promise you.
