Breakdown

I think I’ve been teetering on the edge of serious depression. Keeping my patience with the kids was getting harder by the day. Little challenges like getting the car registered required as much planning as an Artic expedition. I cooked dinners that were too salty, too bland, raw, burnt, or illogical (Greek salad with fried rice). The worst part was decision making. I felt like my mind was wading through mud as I made decision. Looking back, I think I’d felt like this for months. I could manage life, but it was a lot of work to get through a normal day. I was fighting everyday to find happiness.

In August things got worse. I can’t say what made me worse, but I went from treading water to drowning in life in about two weeks. I yelled at the kids all the time. Poor Vivian couldn’t do anything without me scolding her. One day she told me, “I had a good dream. You didn’t yell at me and we had fun.” I think my heart broke. Then I started crying. When I’m feeling normal, I cry to work out a problem and when I’m done crying I feel better. This sort of crying wouldn’t stop. I would slump against the wall in my closet and cry for nearly an hour (a couple times a day), and I wouldn’t feel better. I would feel ten times worse than I did before.

My kids are the best. One more than once occasion I would hear them whisper outside the door, “Mommy is crying. We need to make her happy,” then they would pop into the doorway and make silly faces at me to cheer me up. This would make me cry even more because I felt like I didn’t deserve children who could be so wonderful. I yelled at them all the time. How could they want to make happy when I was always making them cry?

I was more than sad. I was broken.

Picasso's Woman in the mirror. Exactly how I felt.

I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up at 3 am and not be able to go back to sleep. I would pour a bowl of cereal, and stare at it. I couldn’t make myself eat it. My appetite was gone, gone, gone.  I made lists for everything. I even had to put the most mundane tasks (brush teeth, do dishes, get gas)  on my list because I couldn’t remember a thing.  Nothing was engaging. I couldn’t focus on TV or books or sewing or any of the hobbies I enjoy. I knew I should have enjoyed fun times with my family, but it was like watching the world from an aquarium. Everything was muted, and I had a buffer between me and the rest of the world. I felt miserable, trapped, isolated and safe all at once.

And I stressed. Oh my, did I stress. I know now that it’s called cyclical thinking (worry). You know when you get a song stuck in your head? Well I had unfounded worries stuck in my head. If it only bothered me for a couple hours a day, I would have been fine. That was not the case. I worried all the time. I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worrying. Then I would wake up at 2am because I was worrying and then not be able to fall back asleep because I was worrying.

It got worse and worse…One Thursday I couldn’t stop crying. The image of a Picasso painting of a fractured woman popped into my head. I finally knew what in the hell Picasso was trying to show the world. Depression is when you are so broken that you can’t even recognize your own mind. I felt fractured. I didn’t even recognize my own thought process. That scared the shit out of me.  

Then I went to my doctor. She diagnosed me with clinical depression.

I was filled with relief.