Out of the Bell Jar

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. ~Sylvia Plath

Every year, millions of people suffer from depression, and I am one of them. Depression. Such a stupid word, a wrong word, for what it really is. A "bell jar" really is the perfect descriptor. Thank you, Sylvia...I wish you had escaped from yours. To add to Ms. Plath's image, maybe weakly, I say, "It is to live inside a gray bubble." That is one variety of my experiences with depression. In the middle of my darkest times, I have felt searing pain, right around the solar plexus, wild for anything that might ease it. Utter hopelessness, the airless need to cease existing.

Along with desperation, there is sheer numbness. Sluggishness. Your very own endless Minnesota winter, right inside your head, and you are slodging through waist-deep, heavy snow, soaking your jeans and sneakers, and you've forgotten your winter coat. You are in freezing misery.

The good news, and I truly believe there is always good news, is that there is very real light at the end of each tunnel one passes through. I am at the point now with my depressive episodes that when I feel that black hopelessness, I can recognize it, even though I cannot control it, and there is something comforting in that. It is part of the process, and it will end.

I'll attempt here a brief sketch of my history of depression, if only so you will come back to find out more. I have had mental illness, by my memory, since a very young age. Eleven? Six? Hard to say. I have used food to self-medicate since relatively shortly after I knew I was miserable in some way. At the age of 15 I became anorectic, and by 16 I was bulimic. By my freshman year of college, the eating disorder was no longer staving off the hurricane of my mental illness; I had my first major depressive episode. I spent many subsequent years attempting to treat the symptoms of my E.D. , and after hitting bottom in 2005, I entered semi-residential treatment at The Emily Program in St. Louis Park, now also in St. Paul. After much giving up, hard work, giving up again, and sheer jackass stubbornness, Ed (I call him "Ed"...he's a real dick, believe it.) and I have a bitchy but mostly comfortable relationship, like an abusive ex-husband I still need to deal with sometimes. He tries to visit occasionally, especially when I am not caring for my depression, but mostly he lives on the coast, probably in jail.

My depression is technically diagnosed as "dysthymia." At age 19, I was mis-diagnosed as "cyclothymic." Through many uninteresting adjustments to different medications and many years of episodes, job losses, and general crappy experiences with my dysthymia, I was finally hospitalized at my very very rock-bottom during the summer of 2008, after the birth of my daughter. I spent a week in lock-down in Fairview/University of Minnesota Behavioral Health. Not exactly the Hilton, I might add; no mints on the pillows. Or keys to the bathroom.

Since then, I have been on a pretty steady road to recovery, with the exception of a recent event-induced episode that let me know in no uncertain terms that severe anxiety is just another course in the delicious banquet that is my depression. Since I am "in the shit," as we speak, I thought it may be an interesting time to begin a blog on depression. I am on Day 2 of Prozac, a depression classic. Like Coke Classic, only people are still buying it.

So that's the idea of this blog: sharing my struggles and triumphs with this nasty beast. I don't know exactly yet what it will look like...my writing muse is capricious, to put it mildly. I am sometimes called to talk about my day to day "FEELINGS!" (all caps!) including my relationships with my faith, my loved ones, my work, my writing, being a parent, (although for obvious reasons I cannot, nor do I have any desire to, reveal personal information about my loved ones), and I am sometimes inspired to write in a more journalistic, informational tone. I will do my best to present information here from the most valid resources available, and will cite said resources.

Mental illness is a subject that I am passionate about sharing in some form, and I invite you to read, comment, and share your own stories and struggles.

Peace

Kate