You know what I did last summer.
Ah! Family vacation!
The minivan didn’t break down. But I broke down in the passenger seat.
It happened this time last year, while I was visiting my brother’s family. My sister-in-love and my mom and my nieces and nephew and my girls fled the vehicle. Katieface and Mom conferred with my brother.
I simply could not get out of their minivan. I was sobbing hysterically in the front seat, big scary ugly tears. My face was smashed into my fists. My stupid old heart was torn to stupid old shreds over the loss of my marriage, my job, my security, my safety, my sanity.
Joe got into the driver’s seat, closed the door. He sized me up calmly.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he said kindly.
I was crying too hard to answer, and honestly, I didn’t care what happened next. I didn’t care if the driveway opened up and sucked the van into the molten center of Earth. I didn’t care if we drove to the moon, where D would be waiting for me with roses and a new fixed-up shiny life and love and maybe a Miata. I had simply ceased to care.
This is what is difficult to explain about the blackest of depressions, the darkest of griefs. The pain simply takes up all the space. There is no space left for decision-making, for caring. Things will never be better. It is impossible that things will ever be better. Do you understand? It is impossible, in a moment like this, that things will ever be better.
My brother took me to the water. He coaxed me out of the van to sit on a driftwood log with him. We stared at the horizon. Sunset was taking its good old time, just like mourning tends to.
We talked. I don’t remember the words, not all of them. Depression and grief devour the brain, raid its cupboards, leaving crumbs of no worth.
He is a wonderful brother. Did it help, that day? Talking by the water? Yes. It helped to hear that he loved me, that he wouldn’t have any other sister, no matter what. I sure wouldn’t choose any other brother.
Am I better now? A year later?
My God. I realize: No.
I’m not.
Tomorrow, he and his family come to visit for a week. I want to throw my arms around them all, squeeze my nieces and nephews tight.
But I hate telling them—like I hate admitting to myself—that I am carrying the same grief, the same hopelessness.
Then I remember: They have iPhones! They read the blog! They already know! Lucky them! Vacationing with me! Ha! Ha ha!
It is difficult to be the family of someone who cannot figure out how to stop hurting. We sad folks? We are sorry we are so tedious, and we feel awful about it. More awful. We apologize, over and over to you, in our heads and hearts.
A full year after the minivan breakdown, I am still scrabbling to get by, white-knuckling it through everything I do.
Damn it to hell. I sob alone in my car. I sob in the shower. I pray to be alone, because I can’t seem to convey to the people in my life that the pain is almost beyond what I can tolerate, on most days. Then I pray not to be alone for the rest of my life. Then I go back to praying to be alone, because smiling is just too bloody hard and breaks me down more.
There are many optimists in the world, and I appreciate their efforts to get me going, get me launched in a new direction. I have appreciated over the past year their many, many attempts to help me and I am embarrassed that not much has changed. I do the right stuff, which apparently is still the wrong stuff, because it’s not doing the right stuff.
I feel bad for the optimists, because if you’re an optimist, this world—with its chronically fucked-up people like me—is really damn confusing. I have quite a few in my family. I watch them hope and hope. They watch and watch. Things get better AND THEN THEY GET BAD AGAIN. Very frustrating! And if you’re an optimist, you’re trying HARD NOT TO BE FRUSTRATED! When you try to HELP SOMEONE, THE HELP YOU OFFER SHOULD CONCEIVABLY HELP THE PERSON. When it doesn’t, it can’t be the world’s fault, because the world is groovy and there are silver-dollar pancakes to prove it and sometimes poor people win the Lotto and go on Oprah.
“I’M JUST CRAZY, NOT DEAF, MOM,” I eee-nun-ceee-ate-ed today, to my poor mother, who is at her wit’s end with her tarnished crankypants firstborn who can’t see past the vicious fog. “NOT DEAF. BRING IT DOWN, WOMAN.”
She sees unicorns and rainbows and floating pierogies. She is not a pessimist. She was born under a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal, on a Willy Wonka candy bar, happy shits and giggles in her first nappy. It is hard for her now, with me. I am hard for her to have.
We pessimists (even non-depressed pessimists) are used to shit raining down and we have given up on umbrellas. We have a few saving graces. We’re the ones to turn to if you are, in fact, losing your own shit.
Those of us who are clinically depressed and have children are blessed and cursed—we have someone to live for, and we have someone to live for. I live for the girls now. For my family. It’s not for me. That is the God’s honest truth (and I am a rare pessimist who’s optimistic about God existing).
Self-love would be nice, but self-loathing has stolen all the best punchlines. Belief in some kind of contentment, some kind of happiness beyond my children? Lasting love? Decent career? Bipolar under control? I can’t pretend I believe in those things anymore.
I know how frightening that sounds. I know it’s not what anyone who cares about me wants to hear. But this is what can lie behind the smile of the happiest, perkiest-seeming soul you know. How about that? What cruel bodies we have, that we can thwart our own progress by hiding the hurts, so as not to ruin everyone else’s good day or Christmas dinner!
One year later. How I wanted this summer to be different. Maybe next summer.
I will keep going. And tomorrow I will hold close all the people I love, and try to love with honesty. And let them see behind the smile, if I can. But I can’t promise anything. At all.
But I can make offers.
Joe phones just now on their way to the airport. They are in the Minivan of Tears, I can hear.
“Hey. How are you?” he asks, in his usual wary-but-loving, talking-to-depressed-sis tone.
“FINE! OKAY! FINE!” I yelp like a psychotic trained seal. It is not my brother’s fault. I become the village idiot whenever I talk to my brother, because he is kind and smart and wise and active and helps dying people and delivers babies. I blather and mutter and generally humiliate myself on the phone with my brother, because I would like him to be proud of my remarkable comeback instead of having to discuss the wacky pros and cons of electroshock therapy. Zap! Pow! Hilarious!
“We’re on the way to the airport, just thought I’d check in—”
I tell him helpfully that I’ve made a list of things we can do.
“YOU’VE made a LIST? A LIST?”
“Yes,” I say. “I know you like family activity lists.” Joe does like lists. He is a very good doer, a very good savorer of good activities.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m coming there with very low expectations.”
“That, I can deliver on,” I say. “I did find some caverns.”
He finds this amusing. “So now you’re looking for REAL caves?”
“I thought it seemed appropriate. Metaphorically. And proactive. There are stalagmites and stalactites. And a boat.”
“Well, just no cocooning or cave-dwelling,” he replies.
“Right,” I say. “If I feel the need to cocoon, I’ll do it outside.”
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
Arms around you here. So many of us who understand.
Close your eyes, and feel love around you, flying in from all directions in the blogosphere.
Ooh, wow, I totally get it. About not being able to promise. It’s the thing I hate the most about my own relatively easier mental illness (plain old depression, no bipolar, medicates decently).
I used to say: All of the rest of you can get away from me, but I’m stuck in here with just these two little holes to look out of. Now I realize that my daughter is the one other person who can’t get away from me.
I have no words of comfort, just a “been there” and a wish that it get better (however relative and temporary that term) for you. Also, once I heard a story about a depressive woman who married a man; the man’s condition was that she not attempt suicide for a year. She promised, and at year’s end, the condition for staying married was a year’s renewal. And so on and so on, year by year. It struck me as a good way to bargain with myself, except days or weeks rather than years.
Next summer will be better. I promise. It will. Because it has to be.
You just put one foot in front of the other. One day you look back and see how far you have come. It wasn’t easy, but you did it and that is all that counts.
♡♡
LOL My not-a-bot code is YDuk – so you don’t get hit with flying false smiles (everyone wears them, but the heart doesn’t know they aren’t real)
Battling severe depression since 2006 I know there are no real words of comfort, they smack of falsehood and impossibilities.
What I do know is that when your brother and his family arrive bury yourself in their hugs and their love, they are the real and true comfort.
You are loved, you are cared for and you are not alone.
Have you ever tried forcing yourself into some sort of workout routine (even if it’s just walking for 45 minutes 5 times a week). And I mean–forcing yourself–because exercise is boring and can be painful if it’s not something that you regularly do? And you must not let any excuse keep you from doing it no matter how much you might hate it. You need to do it enough to start feeling that natural high that athletes get, so you have to push yourself–maybe walking through a neighborhood with hills and then flat surfaces so that it’s more like cross training. If you haven’t tried something like that, you might try that. Give yourself a month of regular working out and see if you feel any difference. I think the combination of sunshine (if it’s sunny where you live) and sweating out all the bad stuff might make you feel better. It always makes me happier. I hate exercise every step of the way, but it always makes me happier afterwards.
I tried to write a comment. It was long. But it said ‘wrong anti-spam word.’ So I’m taking that as fate that you are better off without this comment.
This is very bad. It is a very bad way to live. I have had similar thoughts. I am doing better now. I think you can also. No set of facts can predict what is possible for a person and how she lives her life.
I will hope for things to be better for you.
I wish there were something that I could say to offer up anything worthwhile to you, but there isn’t.
Except I understand, I really do.
And I wish it weren’t so, but like my Dad used to say, shit in one hand, wish in the other, see which one fills up first.
Thinking of you and knowing your heart,
Jenn
Yes, I remember your minivan breakdown. It’s hard to imagine that a year has passed since then. You give so much through your writing. I firmly believe (and hope and pray) that the universe will not rest until you are “repaid in full.” In the meantime I’m here listening. Thanks yet again for sharing your struggles so honestly.
bot code LUKY
Ditto what K says above. That is how my husband dealt with his depression for years and years, jogging and sports.
What an amazing community you have created here with so many people sending love your way!
i.love.u.
howe caverns!
we have bat patches sewed to matching denim jackets from that place. it was a most excellent trip.
xoxoxoxol
Jenn,
I am one of those annoying optimists. I’m not going to tell you it will get better, because I don’t really understand what you are going through. Not at all. I’ve been profoundly depressed at points in my life, but the optimist has always been at my core. I am going to tell you that as some others have mentioned, may of the people I know who really struggle with depression have found a great deal of solace, strength, and rejuvenation in running (or other exercise, I’m sure – I just mostly know runners). Have you tried it? I don’t remember though I should. One of my many flaws, for which I apologize in my heart and head is that I have horrible retention about my friends’ lives, even though they mean the world to me.
keep plodding onward.
you can.
Over the past year or so, you have really helped me understand depression with your honesty and your words of wisdom.
When you explain how you just want your brother to be proud of you…that part really touched me. I’m sure that he is. It sounds as though he, and your mom, have a great deal of unconditional love for you, and no amount of money can buy that.
So hang in there, dear Jenn. We are wishing and praying for you!
I like to hear it, not because I’m not sorry about those bad feelings but because I like to read how you write about them, and because I think it’s a good plan to write about them. I alternate between optimism and pessimism. It’s tiring.
Ahhhhhhh.
I am on a family vacation now with my doer siblings and my mother, who looks at me, her firstborn, as if I am going to shatter into a million pieces.
Sometimes I shatter, Sometimes I don’t. But I always feel fragile and I always feel like a disappointment.
I don’t know what you are going through. And I know what you are going through.
Thank you for this. Love to you, always.
I have no magic words of comfort. And I can not honestly say that I know what you’re going through, because I’ve never been there. But as an eternal optimist, I’m confident things will get better for you. Until then, take comfort in the love of your family and the smiles of your girls. Keep going.
I remember reading about your minivan breakdown last year, and it spoke so strongly to me, because I felt like I was going through a kitchen counter breakdown at the same time. And the realisation that a whole year has passed since then is astounding. And even a bit embarrassing. Because the people who care and the people who matter hope that you’re better now. That things have sorted themselves out, and how you wish that that was so. That tone of surprise when they hear that you still have your bad days. The astonished: “What? I thought you were better!?” It’s tough. Sure it is. And you do try like damn to be better. And yet that beast crouches deep inside you, gnawing on your determination, waiting for you to let your guard down so that he can pounce on you and flatten you for good. So always, it’s a waiting game. A game where you pretend life is normal, all the while keeping the monster in your peripheral vision.
A whole year, huh? And we’re still here. That’s got to count for something!
I don’t ever think there should be a timeline for grief. I do not think your brother does either. I’m glad you have him.
I’m sending this to my mother, who in some ways is awesome about my depression, and in some ways just doesn’t get it. This sums up a LOT of what I have been trying to explain ever since my diagnosis.
I’m not ok a year later, either.
In fact, I’m waiting for my Van of Tears moment. I wait for them, expecting the deluge every second of every day. I’m under constant flood watch.
But that’s ok, I’ve decided.
I also find myself in the “living for him” mode, thankful that I could throw my energy into my son’s life and have him as my daily “why I’m getting out of bed” purpose. It works.
So that’s ok, I’ve decided.
I WAS an optimist. Experience has put me on the darker side of Blake. I know who created both the lion and the lamb, and I can still be awed and stunned by the beauty of creation while terrified by its destructive forces.
It’s much harder to tell others to “buck up, things could be worse” when you’ve lived through the penultimate “worst.”
On the other hand, I already see the light at the other side of the cave. I see our capacity for love. We may say that we don’t care (and have that awful feeling of ennui knawing away at our souls), but it is our capacity for loving others — whether it is our children, our siblings, our our mothers — that makes us optimistic, even hopeful, yet.
That’s more than ok.
Much love.
-A.
P.S. Incidentally, the “security code” I must enter is “LUVE.” Interesting!
You’ve put it so well. I often feel like a bad deal for my family, like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. I don’t know what to say except thank you for your writing and I hope the visit is as even-keeled as it can be.
As a fellow pessimist (or “realist” as I like to think of myself), for me I know this comes from a place of fear and anxiety – that the other shoe will drop and then if it drops? I’m prepared. Except I’m not really, and I’ve wasted all this time waiting for the shoe to drop. My husband, an eternal optimist, helps redirect me sometimes but the anxiety still tiptoes around in my head, reminding me.
One foot in front of the other, one foot…
From someone who does know some level of what you speak, feel free to chuck something solid and sharp at the next person who suggests you start exercising. They don’t get it, and suggestions like that don’t help. No offense.
Wow, sweetie.
As usual, there’s a ringing difference for me between your post and the comments. I read your post and I laugh. I do. Not evilly, but just because your humor, wry and bitter as it is, comes through, and it works. Me? I love wry bitter humor. I’m also a horrible pessimist, able to piss on any joyous moment, because there really is always a crack. Sometimes a dangerous one.
I never know how despondent the inside of your brain is. Much as I try I can’t crawl in there. So I busy myself with the outer parts, checking for signs of life, poking when necessary. This is how I love you. Just like you are, right now. Big oozing mess, with a freaky happy smile on, or whatever the current manifestation is.
I see you on your bad acid trip that won’t stop. I know all I can do is hover around on the reality side. Well, my reality, anyway. I can see Joe and you sitting and looking at the sunset. In my head I say: I’ll just take some photographs of the pretty parts, to remind you later. I’ll tell you stories about the good times, so you can hear them in your head later maybe. Because what I always want is proof, I’ll provide that for you. I’ll say: Witness. This was a golden moment. See this? These are the people that love you.
I’ll pick the right moment, or try to. Like not right in the middle of an ugly cry. Sometimes I’ll provide a silly distraction, just to try to get that brain off track. A fart. A ridiculous comment. And when it doesn’t work I’ll wait. I’ll try a photograph of a moment. I’ll try waiting. I’ll try coming back later. Checking in. Sending chocolate.
Sending love. Sending strength in tiny tic-tac-sized nuggets. Sending a picture of someone else you love crying. See? Isn’t that distracting?
Checking in.
The exercise that helped my husband was jogging. I was not talking about sit-ups, etc.
I’m sorry for all the suck, Jenn. I hope you find your way out.
I’m an optimist (or realist, as I like to think of myself;o)), and sometimes I get depressed. Maybe it’s not the very deep depression you face, but it feels like hell anyway. Even us optimists know a little of soul crushing despair. I think we are not so very different. Perhaps we just have better coping mechanisms or have learned to use them more effectively. If we seem frustrated with those who are not so sunny, it is more likely we are frustrated that we don’t know how to help. We want you to see our magical world where, if everything isn’t perfectly peachy, there is still the possibility for rainbows and unicorns. Maybe we are also a little afraid because you can so clearly express that darker side of ourselves. (Oh yes, I’m certain everyone has it.) Most of all, we love you and we do understand, in our own limited–and limitless–optimistic way.
oh man. first time here. i totally get it. struggled so badly with depression and then axiety and panic attacks -its under control now with fish oil (capsules, lots, every day), exercise, sex with husband, and Zoloft.
wishing you headway.
i really like your blog
I read and try to understand. I can honestly say that I don’t, really. I’m an optimist and I read daily, hoping that things get better for you, but I do wonder what better really means.
What you have, many people yearn for – even as you yearn for what they have. People without babies but with loving spouses, people with jobs but lacking love. It’s a crazy mixed up world.
Shit happens, but I hope less shit happens to you.
Sadly, there is no cure for the variety of mental illnesses out there. There are some great treatments (including electroshock therapy), but no cure. So, as my therapist pointed out, my life will always be a series of ups and downs, like a sine wave. II don’t have polar bear disorder, but with my particular disease, I’ll never get the perfect 45 degree incline. What I do hope, and not because I’m an optimist but because I have to believe this to live, is that my personal sine wave is on a slight incline seen over time. That means the stable periods are even more enjoyable and the depressed periods are not as intense. I have to say, compared with my 20s, that it does seem to be getting better overall. But believe me, it’s a real party pooper when the periods of sadness come and don’t seem to end.
Please hang in there and consider all your treatment options, and the fact that life will not be perpetually pleasant. I just wish.
I can’t get over the Miata. A convertible, I assume?
Read your blog all the time…commented once or twice before. But today, I had to because today, you captured what I have felt for so long now. I was just thinking this morning as I drove to work, “I am a pessimist.” However, how can I not be after living with this stupid depression all my life. Yes, it goes away and then comes right back again with a vengance. It is never far, not for too long. I used to have promise during the good times, maybe this time it is gone for good, but no more. Now I know that it will never go away completely.
So, I understand your words, your frustration. I live with a husband who I adore – who is a happy-go-lucky man. I wonder how long until he realizes he cannot fix me – until he decides that living with a pessimist, a ‘despressed’ – is too much. My family looks at me with pity. She had so much “potential”. Sometimes it is almost more than I can bear. I have no children. As silly as it sounds, my dog is what has kept me going for the last 9 years. He wouldn’t know what to do without me. Without him, I’m not sure what my purpose is.
Thanks for sharing your deepest, darkest. You are not alone in your journey. There are others like you out here, holding on by a thread…because there really is no other choice.
Hugs….
Joe sounds like a wonderful brother. And I know you are a wonderful sister. I wish I could hug you.
Darling Jenn, we love you just as you are. Dark polar winters and steamy equator summers, all. The great message of the Bhagavad-Gita: “Your duty must be about action, not the fruit of action. One must not be motivated by the fruit of action. And one must not be attached to inaction”. In other words, you cannot know what will happen, you just have to keep going. And guess what – you’ve already done it! You’ve made it through another year. You’ve DONE. You’ve LIVED! That is as far as we can see, and thus, that is as far as we CAN. And so you have, dear. You have done everything you could, and thus should. I toast to you! Don’t look too far, just keep doing and you’ll do right. Love.
You are eloquent, even in sadness, in despair. Your post opens the door to the feelings inside of depression, something we yearn for others to understand while standing in the blackness. I adore you and your family, Jenn. Thinking of you all and sending warm hugs from the west coast. Much love to you, Jen
All you have to do is try, and you’ve been doing tons of that this year! I think you’ve accomplished a lot.
I’m sure you’ve gotten that email where the man comes home to his house wrecked and asks his wife what happened and she says, “Every day you ask me what I did all day, and today I didn’t do it.” So, if we manage to maintain for an entire year, that’s pretty damn good, isn’t it? I think so.
What you say is true, and it is sad bleak, but there’s nothing to say, no making it better. THe one thing that I try to remind myself of, to keep me going through those blackest of hours that turn into days, weeks, months….There is no such thing as permanent stasis. This, whatever THIS is, cannot last forever. It will change – and change for people like you and me and countless others can only mean something better. At least that’s what I hope.
The fact that you are still here, loving your girls, is the biggest, and most critical accomplishment. However imperfect you may be (as we all are) – you. are. here. loving. them. That is not to be underestimated or minimized. I am looking forward to the two year anniversary of the minivan breakdown – because that will mean that you have been here another whole year, loving your girls. I hope with a fervence that cannot be expressed in words (I’m one of those optimists) that when I read next year’s minivan post, you will also be able to say that you feel better. Peace unto you.
Those of us who are clinically depressed and have children are blessed and cursed—we have someone to live for, and we have someone to live for.
I am cringing. How well I understand this.
My takeaway?
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m coming there with very low expectations.”
And he still comes.
Hooray!
“…but like my Dad used to say, shit in one hand, wish in the other, see which one fills up first.”
Jenn, my brother painted the walls with shit from my nappy when we were just babies. Shit happens. But it doesn’t always have to be bad shit. Sometimes it’s good shit. It’s just a matter of weighing up the good and bad.
Your blog, your courage, your strength and your love for your family are amazing. All that weighs more than anything in this universe. One day I hope you feel the tilt of the scales in your favour.
I would try to explain to people that when I am in axious state i say, “THE SKY IS FALLING! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO???”, but when I’m depressed I say, “the sky is falling and there is nothing to do.” In a very very little voice…
You use many familiar words… the children and the family – thank you for putting into words so many that I never have.
you nailed it.
you got it totally right.
and maybe that’s the difference
between depression and sadness.
that in depression is there is no future,
no way to see any other way.
and yet…
(i love any yet, because it says everything
that needs to be said here)
and yet
you wake up every morning
until you don’t.
and you live.
crappily maybe
but you live.
and then one day, maybe,
it’s not absolute crap.
and one minute or year or century
you look back and see what was the dip.
or you don’t.
thanks for waking up today.