I’m sad this evening. It’s not even about my mom, or dad, at least not directly, but about a young man who is lost. Who has nothing to care about or who feels he has no worth. I don’t know why he feels this way, but it tears me apart because he has value to me. He is important to me.
Actually, that’s a lie. Not a big lie. It’s a lie of not looking. Not seeing. And that’s really lying to the self. Maybe that is a big lie.
Depression is an awful thing. It strips away everything of value to the self. The You of you. And so this really is about my mother and all the others in the world who suffer from depression.
My mom has suffered from depression her whole damned life. Every minute as long as I’ve known her, and that’s been long enough. She struggled with the lows and the lower lows. She did what she had to do, though, because she had her children to consider. She had them to help her rise up above the depression, day by dragging day.
My earliest memory of my mom in one of the troughs of depression was when I was about four years old. It’s a vivid memory. She was very pregnant with my sister in the TV/living room in the second floor apartment where I and my sisters grew up. It was summer. I know this because she was wearing shorts and a big top to cover her big belly – my sister was born in August. The shades were drawn to keep out the sun so it must have been later in the day since the window faced west. She was weeping. I dimly remember it was about being baptized. I’m not sure who. Me? The unborn child? She was raised a Catholic and my dad as a northern Baptist so there was bound to be friction. All I know is that she was very upset.
Even having never borne children, I do understand the emotional turmoil of hormones gone wild, but this was more. It was bone deep. It wasn’t about the baptism, my mother was never terribly religious; my father was and is, now in a Congregational way. It was more or she would not have let herself break down in front of her four year old child.
My mom is more Yankee than a Yankee, which is extremely odd since she was born and raised in Cuba. She was never very demonstrative. Not a hugger or expressive with physical contact. She could be volatile, mostly by yelling or threatening with the Paddle. Mind you, in my memory my mother never struck me until I was 12 or so when I sassed her. I don’t recall why, but I probably deserved it for being insufferable. Most 12 year old girls are insufferable.
My dad never believed in depression. Like it was a belief rather than a condition you can’t control. I think he thought it was something you could just shake off, like water off your back. Like washing yourself clean.
It’s not like that at all, of course. Depression is caused by multiple factors and sometimes it is temporary. You can just shake it off. But most of the time you can’t. A lot of times it’s purely a physical thing, like high blood pressure or diabetes. It’s a chemical imbalance. It doesn’t just disappear because you wish it so.
Depression dogged my mother. She got better when she went to work full time. Maybe it distracted her. Let her contribute to the family coffers and make life easier. Gave her value and worth. I know when she went to work she developed a modest network of friends. Not many. How many do you really need? But enough. For her.
I remember rehearsing the Pledge of Allegiance with her so she could get her citizenship papers outside of being married to an American citizen. I remember her practicing her typing so she could pass the test so she could get a job with the state.
She did it. She did it to improve her lot in life and for the life of her children.
But her depression never, ever, went away. It waited for her, ready to leap out at any moment. The slightest setback would drop her into the gully. She spent a lot of time unhappy. She still does.
Mom was never treated for her depression. Then again, I have to wonder what treatment she would have been given in 1960-something. Would she have been like a potato? Or jacked up? Who knows? Even now it’s a dicey thing and has to be carefully balanced.
This leads me back to the young man I care about. Who at least needs to find out if it’s a temporary depression or something that needs longer care. It’s not shameful. It just is and if, if, depression is a thing in his life, it’s better to know now. I don’t want him to suffer like my mother did her whole damned life.
