Depressed for Christmas?

Why am I depressed now, why is my family member, why is my neighbor depressed right now?  at this time of year?  all year?  The word, "why." has occupied way too much of my time lately, so I hope to concentrate on "what?"  What can I do to help my depressed loved one/stranger this Christmas season?  This is my short list:

-call your loved one every day.  (((don't forget, it's a big thing.)))

-invite your loved one to your home, or anywhere.  (((don't give up.  keep asking.)))

-send music or a movie idea; a book or a new Christmas ornament to your loved one.

-did I mention, call every day and keep inviting your loved to your home? (((or anywhere?)))

-visit your lonely neighbor, check on your single, elderly neighbors and friends....

-(((and repeat above.)))

O Night Divine, the weary world rejoices:  in HIS Name all oppression shall cease

+JMJ+

Christmas isn't over until the Feast of the Epiphany - I wish all my depressed friends a very peaceful and calm holy day and Christmas season.  I am hanging on with you, but don't call...ThIS YEaR... I'mOut - still hanging on the moment - butOut!

Hear the angels' voices - it's ok.

Prognosis: Recovery Unlikely

The old point in John Calvin's idea of salvation caused some to embrace the term:  frozen chosen.  These folks are assured of their salvation and if they died today they know they will be in heaven...immediately.  "Once saved always saved" is the line, and a very comforting one at that.  Your "condition" was etched in stone.  Like the Calvinist's salvation, I have been told that my depressive disorder is mine forever.  It is major,  it is a disorder, and once you get it you always have it...there is no cure.   Something is majorly out of order.   When one calls the "repairman"  one is met with many responses.  Pills.  Talk Therapy.  Psychotherapy.  Support groups.  Behavior Modification.  Exercise.  Eat ... food... three times a day.  Keep the schedule of sleeping and rising at the "heroic moment" - the moment one opens one's eyes... make the Morning Offering and get up!  This is the way to live with depression.  You hang on.

Number One Son recently told me he is proud of me.  Proud of me for getting out of the house.  Proud.  This really stopped me in my unsteady tracks.  I was embarrassed at first.  I am proud of him, he isn't supposed to be proud of me, I thought.   Does he think I am in remission?   At least he is happy to see me as I am.  He is one of the few people I have let in to see me in the darkest place.  I could never repay him for all he did for me during those times.  In the end I was very happy to have a proud son.   Number Two Daughter has been doing the requested, "please check on me once a day"  work I've read about, and I didn't even ask HER for this kindness.   I had asked three different people for this favor...but they must have forgotten.  It doesn't seem to be a big deal,  but it is.  It really, really, really helps and makes me feel connected to the scary world out there...and to my beloved children and to... life.  I had thought, once,  in the very darkness of depression, that I would show my children how to die:  trusting in the mercy of God and accepting all from His loving hands with joy.  Now I think I am showing them how to live - all the time fighting the Major Depressive Disorder demon.

There is no cure for MDD,  so "they" say,  but there is a lot of advice as to how to live with it.  So, what if we do everything on the list?  What if life's events take a positive turn around?  What if troubled children are healed of their own demons?  What if estranged family members reconcile?  What if one finds happiness in everything and everyone around them?  What if one's life changes for the better?  Is the prognosis good, then?  Does our depression go into remission when life's events begin to go well?  What if days or weeks go by like this and those around us think we are cured?  What if during this time you are the only one who knows that hidden inside you are equally sad and happy at the same time?  (Laughing on the outside/crying on the inside.)  What if depression does show even when "everything is going so well?  When this happens no one can understand...why are we so sad when everything is "looking up"?  When loved ones give you a list of everything that is good in your life and then ask how you can choose to stay in the dark place, what do you say?  No one seems to understand that you do not choose to stay.  Love is an act of the will, why can't we train our brains to be "normal"?  Why can't we will mental health?

What is the prognosis?  Unlikely to recover.  Why?  Were you born with something irreversible or did you acquire it along life's unkind path?  I'm sure I don't know.  After I wrote I Want to Fix You (found here),  friends and family members told me they understood, finally.  I heard words of acceptance and offers of help...but still it sounded like they wanted to and thought they could:  fix me.  Or that I could fix myself.  Perhaps the fix will happen...perhaps "they" were wrong when I was diagnosed.  Perhaps I will have a very long remission.  Perhaps today I will be happy, active and "fine" and tomorrow I will be in the darkness again.  Unlikely to recover.  Even writers with MDD speak of "normal times."  When you see me happy do I appear "normal?"  If there is a list of symptoms which proves my disorder is there a list which proves I am normal?  Is it all just the opposite of my list?  For now I am hopeful for one day of normal.  I wish for one day where all is normal and good.  A day that my children don't feel sorrow, loss or pity when they look at their mother.  A day where my friends may enjoy my company and not feel as though they must be on a mission.  A day of peace.

I do have a few friends who insist I am normal.  They don't see the neurological pathways in my head.  They think I arrive at the station on the same train they are on.  I flip-flop around on that one...alternating between worrying for my friends' mental health (for crazy-thinking)  and loving them even more for thinking I am normal.
Today I'll concentrate on the loving and not on the worrying...all the while hanging on to that invisible rope...

Values Clarification

What if you were on a ship going down slowly, and knew that if the load were lighter more people would/could be saved?  This was the first of many "Values Clarification Exercises" I participated in during my teenage years in Minnesota.  I was a newcomer in school at the end of the previous year in 1973.  I returned to school in the fall and something strange had occurred.  All of the ninth grade English teachers had changed their names to their maiden names, left their bras at home (liking tight turtleneck sweaters - it's Minnesota dontchaknow), put Ms. in front of their new names and taught us girls how to roar...boys how to observe girls roaring.  We also played the values clarification game.

Values clarification teaches that behavior should be the result of free, uninfluenced, autonomous choice, based on personal analysis of a given situation coupled with the moment's emotions and desires. Phew. What it meant for me was that I, and my classmates, were to decide who was to live and who would have to die.  The fun began by everyone "opening up and getting to know one another".  Like "group"...and I hate group, still.  "They" (from now on, "They", will be our beautiful and braless NewFeminists) wanted us to reveal what was important to us, or cherished.  Then a multitude of moral dilemmas were thrown at the class.  Questions became increasingly personal and difficult.  Casual polls were taken and minority classmates were pressured to abandon their convictions and join the crowd.  Also, sharing personal information with other classmates demanded personal comparisons be made - which always breeds discontent - and usually "we" took that home.  I see now that was the intent.  And this is only part One of the "Exercises"!!!


Later we were encouraged to publicly affirm our positions on various subjects such as drug use and abortion and our right to not go to church with our parents.  The teachers bombarded the students with a host of new and more challenging dilemmas and various solutions.  All of this, and more was to prepare us for the ultimate decision making moment of our young lives.  We were on a ship which was slowly going down.  Many and various "types" of people were on the ship.  Each day a new problem arose and someone "had to go".... they would be eaten or thrown overboard, depending on the day, of course. Who was more important to keep?  The doctor, the cook? the fisherman, the child?  Well, even though we were children ourselves everyone reluctantly agreed that the child should go first.


WhywhyWhy am I thinking about values clarification after all these years?  I think it is because I was recently reminded that in that very same school year, those very same jigglyMsTeachers asked me to play Anne in their play Diary of Anne Frank.  After all the cleaning up of scattered values, we were encouraged to agree with Anne that,  "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."  I was ...a curious new young feminist, for sure. 


The obvious contradiction did not escape me then, and is still alive and kicking it seems.  The Doctrine of Changing of Values (or abandoning them), even, is devouring our children... and all of us.  Our children are expected to accept everything and everyone as reasonable as long as "no one is hurt".  But then "hurt" must be newly defined.  People are demanding that I agree to change the definition of marriage.  Some people want me to vote for drug tests for welfare recipients.  Some folks want me to agree that all the illegal aliens in our land of freedom must be sent "home".  Some people want me to be outraged that a former-heavy-drinker is getting a liver transplant.
  

Some of my friends want me to believe that despite all the murder, stealing, rape and war,  that people are really good at heart. 

I don't wonder why Number Five Child, product of the Infant Internet Generation, claims foul on all the mixed-signals.  Bombard them long enough and you will have a generation of...values protesters.  Well, at least we know they're confused.  I know I am. 

Mental Health Day

I have been informed by unidentifiable voices that it is time for a Mental Health Day.  I am hoping that I will not be forced from my little sanctuary, sanitarium,  from my little Asylum.  The sun is out there, my neighbors are walking their dogs in the frosty Chesapeake Bay air, the water is moving ever so slowly...as am I.  Not fully paralyzed, this spiral-down was slower and I actually "saw" it happening.  It is a very interesting ride... the depression One.  "We" worry so much about the "Other" who never knows what/who they will find when they visit/call/contact us, that we often forget that "we" are just as surprised and confused as "they" are; we are new every morning.  Like the mercies of God.  Why do I feel I've gone back a few steps...to Sundress days (blogged about here)???  At least I've been told I don't look like I've grown horns.


(((upon further review of recluse status, will skulk out later for necessities:  marlboro lites and hot cocoa heavy)))

Loving Real People - Part II

I already blogged about my Facebook friends found here, but so much has changed since then I feel I must write again.  Not only have I "made many more friends" since my last post, but I have met real, live FB friends...out in the Real World.  It has truly changed my life and I am exceedingly thankful to Almighty God.  I will soon meet another "old friend" whom I have re-connected with thanks to FB.  She is not the only one.  So, for now, I will continue to ignore the naysayers, who think I need to change directions.  Afterall, I only spend nineteen hours a day online.  (((sheesh)))  

Oh, and it is only a partial Crash this time...grabbed that one, teeny branch on the way down.  Hanging on.