Depression as a thief....

When I look at the impact of depression, I am struck by how it robs you.  For a lot of reasons, I have been thinking about the good times in my past.  I now see how stress, pain, and depression robbed me of the recognition of the pleasurable parts of life.  I know that I was aware of pleasure.  But sometimes it was discounted.  Life is stressful.  But when your focus is primarily on the stresses, you are robbed of living in the moment.  I allowed that to happen far too frequently in my life.  The constant worry and the focus on the negative created an overall negative in life.  Love was important.  But I was so focused on looking for how I was failing; I didn’t allow recognition of how I was succeeding to penetrate my consciousness.  If you ask the people that love me, you will hear that I am negative about myself. It is a fact.  I am.  And that negativity contributes to an overall mood.

I remember a patient in the psychiatric hospital I worked at.  She had a serious and chronic case of depression.  She was diabetic.  And she was widowed.  She had two sons who loved her totally and completely.  But she was so depressed that she kept making suicide attempts.  Her diabetes had been debilitating.  And the physical consequences limited her ability to function.  She was blunt about her desire to die.  So, she kept trying to commit suicide.  She used her diabetes meds as a way to try.  So, her sons had to be vigilant to prevent her suicide attempts from becoming an actual death.  And she was committed to my facility over and over.  The doctor kept trying to find the medical key to prevent her depression from being a death sentence.  And her sons struggled to deal with her desire to die in spite of the fact that they had already lost Dad.  They were articulate.  They told the staff about how painful the situation was to them.  While they understood the reasons, the fact that Mom wanted to leave them was extraordinarily painful.

As I look back on it, I am struck by how much of life she was missing.  The love of two beautiful grown sons is nothing to overlook.  Many people, who are estranged from their children, would give anything to have that.  She had been a wonderful Mom.  And they were willing to tell her, the staff, or anyone else who would listen how much they wanted their Mom back.  Because of love.  Her depression robbed her of that beauty.  It was a sad situation.  When I left the hospital, I also left the opportunity to find out what happened to people.  My fear is that she was eventually successful at killing herself.   Nothing seemed to work for her.  No medication or therapy was enough.  She had a great doctor.  He tried everything and anything.  He cared a great deal about this patient.  But her depression was stubborn.

So, even though things have been hard this year, I am conscious today of the gifts that surround me.  I have a lovely and loving daughter.  I have friends and the support of many beautiful people.  I am a smart, loving and giving woman.  It is true that I have depression.  But I have tools.  I have support.  And all the rest I can ‘solve’.  Feel free to remind me of that if I sound like I am giving up.  Because giving up leads to death.  And if I do that, I am allowing this biochemical monster power over me that I shouldn’t  let it have.  Life is short enough as it is.