I have a long, glorious history with depression. If women were to be completely honest with themselves, I'd bet money that the vast majority of us do, whether we can to admit it or not. The first bout with depression that I can remember hit me when I was a freshman in high school. I remember my drafting teaching ~ a man ~ approaching me in the hall one morning before school and asking if everything was OK. My initial response was my usual one: Fine, I'm just tired. A half-truth, to be sure. But in hindsight, that teacher kept an eye on me the rest of the year, occasionally checking in with me to see how I was fairing.
My worst and most prolonged bout of depression began when I found out I was pregnant right after I graduated from high school. My world crashed down around me. I felt like God was punishing me for some hideous sin I had yet to recognize and repent of. I'd heard from my friends all about their unprotected sex lives and how, up to this point, they'd managed to remain blissfully baby-free. Yet, I had given my virginity in immediate exchange for a birth-control baby. My life was over. I had sworn I'd never have kids. (God has such an evil sense of humor.) I had to wait to go back to school. The rug had just been very nastily pulled out from under my freedom. And I did not handle it well.
There was a lot of crying, a lot of screaming, a lot of believing that God hated me and was out to ruin what was left of my pathetic life. Though the thought of abortion never entered my mind, the thought of giving the baby up for adoption did. The baby's daddy ~ who is now and forever will be my loving husband ~ refused to let it happen. And so I relented, and was miserably depressed throughout my pregnancy.
All through my pregnancy I had hoped that there would be an immediate bond of heavenly love between the baby and myself that would magically lift this darkness from heart. I sank even deeper when that immediate bond was not immediately there. And sink I continued to do, for 2.5 years.
By the time I finally sought help for my depression, I had almost killed my son twice and was myself suicidal. I will never justify a woman killing her child, but I do understand what drives her to the brink. I've been there ~ it's a dark, deep, debilitating place that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. And if I hadn't had people in my life to keep me from shaking my son or throwing him down the stairs, he would be in heaven and I would be behind bars. At the deepest point of the pit, after falling asleep in the bath tub more than once hoping I would slip under and wishing I knew a lethal concoction of OTC drugs, I was so warped in my depressed thinking that my twisted line of reasoning went something like this: It would be so selfish of me to kill myself and leave my baby here as a burden for everyone else to raise, so I'll have to take him with me. Sounds like a murder/homicide to me. I was so demented that I actually thought this was a good and doable plan!
One day, when my son was 2, he took off for the street. I was so frightened and angry when I caught him that I carried him by his upper arms all the way back to our apartment. It was when I took his shirt off of him for his bath that night that I saw the bruised ringlets I'd left on his arms from squeezing him so tightly. It was the first visual evidence to me that I had gone over the edge. Out of sight, out of mind ~ if I couldn't see it, it wasn't real. Now I had seen the mark of the devil, and knew I needed to remove him from me. But how?
Enter pharmaceuticals. Yes, I started taking an anti-depressant. And it helped me feel like a normal human being again. Combined with talk therapy, my treatment make me feel human again. And over the years, I have gone off and back on the meds. At times I feel so overwhelmed with life that I need something to keep me on an even keel. Paxil seems to do the trick.
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