Next week is depression awareness week, so in honor of that, allow me to give you a glimpse inside the dark and cobwebby recesses of my brain in a probably vain attempt to explain what it feels like from the inside out.

This weekend, I wound up comparing my brain to a swimming pool.

Story: Sam came and spent the weekend with us. He's my little brother, and he just turned 10 years old. We were riding in the car when Sam decided that it was "Serious Conversation Time." He turned to me and led off with the big one: "Why did my Dad have to die when I was so young?" I answered, hoping that I wasn't sowing the seeds of something that would someday put him in therapy, "I don't know, honey. I don't understand it, either." He asked a few more Dad questions, then asked about me going in the hospital. Hospitals, understandably so, freak him out quite a bit. I told him I went to the hospital so that the doctors could work on my head and made some joke about it. He asked what was wrong, and I told him I was depressed. He asked what THAT was, and I tried to explain it as best I could. I told him that I had been very, very sad for a very, very long time, and the doctor called that depression. He asked why I was sad. I got to try to explain brain chemistry. Which led me to the pool, since Sam helps Mom do the pH testing on her pool and then pours the stuff in to correct the balance. That seemed to satisfy him.

So, my brain is a pool. A stagnant, algae filled pool at the moment, apparently. Depression is something that runs in my family- it practically gallops. (Props to you if you just caught the Arsenic and Old Lace reference.) My Dad had it. My grandma had it. My great-grandma was put in the hospital for it. So it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when the psychiatrist who did my assessment in the hospital told me that I was depressed. He said that depression is like wearing really dark glasses that magnify everything- everything seems dark, and at the same time seems so huge that it is completely overwhelming. Simple things aren't simple anymore, and even the most mundane tasks take so much effort that they just don't seem to be worth the expenditure of energy.

I wish that I could explain how pathetic I feel being sick like this. Depression is suffocating, and real, and not something that I can "just shake off" or "get over", no matter how much I wish that I could. It's like a huge, heavy, immobile lead comforter. It doesn't cover you up in a nice, snuggly, cozy way. It swallows you up in a not so comforting, completely isolating way. After all, who would want to snuggle with you if you're under a 300 pound comforter made of metal? It's not exactly a scene set for romance and camaraderie.

I am 27 years old. I am a wife, and a mom, and a grad student. I remember when I was motivated to do all kinds of things all by myself. Work? No problem! 70 page paper? Who needs sleep! Cooking and cleaning and being relatively healthy? Just one more thing to check off the list.

Now it's like I'm a pitiful six year old. Kyle prods me to get out of bed, to take a shower, to use soap, and to go to work. He reminds me to take my medicine. He basically takes care of the house since all of my energy is used up on crazy things like personal hygeine and making myself get out of bed. I have to read things for class over and over to try to get my brain to retain at least SOME of the material I'm supposed to be able to discuss, which is never something I had to do before.

Even though the logical side of me KNOWS that this isn't something that I can will myself out of, or just work harder and suddenly snap out of it...the rest of me feels terribly weak, and I blame myself for not being able to "just suck it up and get on with my life." I feel completely inept. Accompanying the depression for me is not just a lack of self-esteem but an abundance of self-loathing. It sounds melodramatic and overly angst-ridden, but I literally cannot think of things that I don't screw up. I wish with everything I have in me that I could snap my fingers and make it stop. My brain is not a pleasant place to be. Along with the weakness, the apathy, the anger, the sadness....comes a loss of control. It's like I'm watching someone else just sit there...and not do things.

I know that my life is not bad. I have a great husband and an adorable baby. I have a job. I have the ability to go to see doctors and to get the medicine that I need. We can buy groceries and diapers and even have a little left over . Depression isn't the result of a "woe is me" attitude where if I could just compare myself to the starving children in Africa or the people who are trying to escape militias in Rwanda I would be OK. It is a brain storm of the non-creative kind.

I am doing therapy. I am taking medicine. I am trying to get better. But it is so, so hard. It is exhausting beyond words, and there are many days where I can't seem to make myself think that it is worth the energy that it will take to fight to do so.

Erm. So. Yes.

I guess I said all that because I can't explain out loud what it is like. Because I'm angry and isolated and blame myself for so many things that are going on...but the monster in my head says that it's just further proof of how absolutely worthless I am. Working on that. One of my girlfriends sent me this WONDERFUL book that I completely adore, and it has an affirmation in it that I really like: You have enough. You do enough. You are enough. I don't believe it all yet, but maybe if I say it enough I will.

So, I guess I'll finish up by yoinking some lyrics from one of my favorite bands, Blue October. The lead singer has dealt with mental illness and drug addiction, and is very forthright about that in their songs. They have a song called Overweight, which is about recovery. Here's a few lines that are particularly pertinent:

ever carried the weight of another?

for how long?

or walk as far as they need to recover?

for how long?

when you're sick you seem to think you failed eternally

and that the people you let in are only crumbling

i’m effing sick of faking life and this recovery

when my decisions paved the road that lies in front of me

so to the friends that even call that i don’t call back

i hold you deep inside my heart upon a hill

it seems to hide sometimes to run away and wonder

i’m really sick of saying sorry but i will

i wanna learn to walk with others as an equal

i wanna treat the ones who love me with respect

i wanna tell the world i’ll give them all a piggy back

and try to take away my negative affect

i'm floating far away....

***

So, thanks to the ones that carry me when I can't carry myself. My family, Pam, and my Julie especially have been my posse. I'm working on it. I am broken but Kyle tells me that I am still in here somewhere. Here's to coming back soon.

If you have someone in your life who is fighting mental illness, or if you are, please know that it is real. It can be debilitating, and it sucks. I really don't think it has to last forever, though. I catch glimpses sometimes of myself in here. It's like the sun popping through the clouds. It's reassuring and frustrating all at the same time. Reassuring because it lets me know that there still is something here of the woman that I was (and I suppose, still am), but frustrating because it doesn't stay. Maybe one day it will.