My Book of HOPE

UNDERSTANDING It takes a monumental amount of empathy and sincerity to step into the darkness where the depression lurks and look at it from a depressed person’s point of view. Not everyone is capable of this depth of understanding. But to help a person struggling with depression, one must look at that person not with the Reflective Attitude they have grown up with, but with the compassion of understanding that physical images don’t always reveal the real person. How could I expect others to understand something that neither I nor they could not see? So long and exhausting was the struggle that I, too, began to question my sanity. Struggling is not the correct word to use when describing living with depression. Struggling requires strength to battle this giant. Apathy, guilt, fatigue, emptiness, sadness, shame, feelings of inferiority, and the complete void of feelings and emotions were all I had enclosed inside my normal-looking body. Every thought I had about myself was wrapped in the negative cloak of depression. I did not have ONENESS, the predictability of being the same person day after day. I was a shattered mass of broken bits of negative reactions to my depression. Through my journey of self-discovery, I stitched together the jagged pieces of my personality to discover my oneness. And I am lucky, for now, I have a solid foothold of who I am. I no longer have to identify myself as a depressed person. I instead describe myself as a person who is living with depression. I’ve separated my identity of who I am from my depression. I now see my depression as an unsavory byproduct of my physical and psychological makeup. My depression medications have given me the ability to delve into my murky psychological darkness and dig out the identity of who I am. Dr. Farabee and I called it “cleaning the garbage out of the attic.” Each chapter in this book deals with me, pulling out one bag of garbage (guilt, anger, fear, frustration, alcoholism) and looking at it for what it was, and analyzing it until I understood the power it held over me. This book only contains a portion of what I’ve learned about myself and what I have gone through. And how it’s alleviated my fears of what the role depression medicines play in my life today. The COVID-19 pandemic shattered many people’s identities. Many of us were restricted and bound to our homes. Our job identity was lost. Our identity as parents changed. We are now teachers, a job for which we were not prepared. We couldn’t go out to eat, visit friends and family, celebrate special occasions, or shop. We no longer perform the ritual duties that define who we are. All our daily routines that help determine who we are crumbled when the Pandemic hit. We went through a period of lost souls in our isolated world. This swift crushing of our identity can rebound into depression. We struggled amid a whirlwind of unfamiliar emotions that we have no clear understanding of. Feelings of despair, loneliness, isolation, grief, anger, and shock at what we’ve lost lead many into the dark tunnel of depression. Physical depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and psychological depression is caused by the negative emotions brought on by social inequality. It is difficult to distinguish where the physical depression and psychological depression divide. Many books have been written about one’s “attitude,” “think yourself happy,” and “how to improve” one’s life. I feel like those books did not take effect because I do not control depression-- it controlled me. Now, by taking the correct medications and with the help of a psychiatrist who understood and listened when I needed someone to be there, I am able to live a fairly normal life. Even so, sometimes, all this help is not enough. I’m aware that the depression is lingering in the shadows. I continuously have to remind myself that this clingy vine of depression is attached to me and never completely goes away. Today I know and feel the ONENESS of my soul. I once was a shattered being, never knowing from one minute to the next if I would be able to perform the task asked of me: from as simple as doing the dishes to as complicated as taking a college test. My identity was a shadowy form with no substance to base my feelings of who I am. There was no me. I was only a shattered mass of broken mirrors reflecting the activities I performed every day. During the darkest journey through my depression, I performed the simplest essential roles forced upon me by the fact of my being a parent, an adult child, an employee, a student, and a wife. But I always took the easiest route. Love yourself. We forget how to love ourselves when we’re in the darkest tunnels of depression. We tend to hate ourselves for our failures, shortcomings, and inabilities to perform the primary duties in our everyday lives. But remember to blame the illness, not yourself. Separate who you are from the bleakness of the depression. Don’t let depression rule your life; we have to live our lives around this illness. Soul I tap into the spring well of my soul savoring purity upon my lips. Nourished silver sprays burst through my body radiating a shimmering mist crowned by a glorious answer Of One