by Mel Miskimen
I’ve been diagnosed with chronic depression and to make things even more interesting, Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The diagnosis came after I had a breakdown of sorts after 9-11 – finally, what Sister Mary Marcelline predicted back in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis had come to fruition – we had been attacked.
And, in those worrisome days after the WTC collapsed, I thought, “Okay. This is it. World War 3. Start stockpiling. Get duct tape. Cower.” I was certain that the other shoe would drop and when it did, I would be annihilated.
I stayed in my basement. Or bed. I couldn’t do anything. Thinking, talking. Bathing. Why wash my hair, when I would be gassed?
And then, during a series of never-ending news briefings, my 15-year-old daughter suggested that maybe I should call the phone number for the mental health hotline that scrolled underneath Peter Jennings.
Long story short, I called, and the nice person on the phone said that I should seriously consider seeking professional help, which I did, and because of that, after several talk therapy sessions, where I talked about my feelings of never being good enough, my post-partum depression that seemed to go on and on and on, that sinking-into-a-black-hole feeling I could never get out of, my thoughts of death – not suicide, per se, that I would never do because it would have taken too much energy – my inability to get out of bed, my thoughts of nothingness, etc., it was suggested that I go on medication.
I was reluctant. I thought, “Boy are you weak! You can’t even pull yourself out of what ever this is by yourself? You need pills? Loser!”
But, I knew what life was like without them, and . . . it pretty much sucked, so what the hell?
It couldn’t have been 5 days that I noticed a difference. I felt like the day was full of possibilities. I felt unburdened. I felt a tiny bit of sadness, that I had waited so long . . . and, I felt angry at my parents, my teachers, my husband. Hadn’t they known? Didn’t they see me suffering? How come they didn’t take me somewhere to get help ‘way back when? I remembered being in the kitchen, leaning over the counter, my 3-year-old son clinging to my knee cap, my husband asked me what was wrong, “I’ve got this feeling of doom coming. A blackness. Like my soul is being sucked out of my body,” I said.
“Uh huh,” he said as he poured himself a glass of water and went back to watching TV.
Okay, so that was then. I’m better now. Prozac is a wonderful thing. But, I still have the feeling, that no one gets it, this thing called Depression.
Like, the other night, I was watching a PBS special called, Out of the Shadows, all about people’s battles with this disease, when my husband wandered through on his way to the bathroom. He stopped for a minute to tell me how proud he was of our son’s report card.
“Um, I need you to be proud of me,” I said.
“I am. All the time. You are a good writer,” he said.
“Yeah, thanks. But . . . no, I need you to be proud of me that I got professional help and crawled out of the black sink hole of Depression, because I don’t think you really get what it’s like to live every day with a feeling of nothingness, like living is just too hard, like I used to feel that I didn’t deserve to breathe.”
He looked at me, like he was really thinking about what to say, hoping maybe that he would say the right thing?
“No, I couldn’t know what it was like. I only knew what it was like to live with you and . . . I am glad you got help. No, I’m glad that the help you got helped, because . . .”
“Because?”
“Well, because, if you hadn’t gotten help, then, I wouldn’t be here.”
“You wouldn’t be here? I wouldn’t be here, because, I’d probably would have killed myself.”
“No, see, I would have left. I wouldn’t have stuck around.” He got up and went back to Law and Order.
Huh? He would have just left me? Taken the kids? What?! He wouldn’t have tried to figure this out? Looked me in my vapid eyes and said, “Honey, you need help and I’m here to take you to see a doctor.”
This did not bode well. He was glad that the meds restored my brain chemistry, because he could think about other things, like work?
Are my feelings hurt? Uh, yeah. Does this bother me? Uh, yeah. Does it surprise me? Unfortunately, no.
Mel Miskimen is the author of "Cop's Kid"
Take heart, Mel, your husband is not the only one who would have responded that way.
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