"The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." (spoken by Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring.)
It is easy, as an outside observer, to make the claim that depression is due to nothing more than a lack of willpower. It is also easy and accurate to describe those outside observers as delusional or total assholes. Here's why:
My oldest son, little Korben, is a Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia survivor. He was put into a medically induced coma as a sick but otherwise perfectly normal two year old. Two months later, his muscles were the victims of atrophy, his sides were impaled with two chest tubes and his throat had been sliced open to make way for a tracheostomy. Despite having just mastered the skills of walking and talking, he was required to learn how to do them all over again. His tiny body was ravaged by adult doses of chemotherapy and full body radiation, turning his skin into what can only be described as the worst sunburn that I've ever seen. As is usual when they are irradiating the body, he had sores completely covering the inside of his mouth and the top of his tongue; during this time, we discovered that he was the third person in the entire world to be allergic, dangerously so, to T.P.N, the nutrition that they give patients intravenously when they are unable to process solid foods without pain or distress. Most of the friends that he made up on the tenth floor of O.U. Children's, the other patients similar in age to him, passed away within a year of his diagnosis and treatment. By the age of three, he had had more surgeries and more life experience than most people ten times his age. He's managed to work his way through it with counseling and understanding from his family.
Tobe, well, he was the most complicated of the pregnancies. A mere five days after his birth, I called my husband with severe shortness of breath and edema. We rushed to the hospital to discover that I was suffering from a peripartum cardiomyopathy, also known as heart failure due to the increased pressure on the heart from pregnancy. I was also diagnosed with severe pneumonia. My primary care physician insisted that I be admitted into the hospital to be treated but I was emotionally fragile and couldn't stand to be away from my newborn and four year old. Heavy doses of Lasix and nebulizer treatments got me through the major hump but I still occasionally experience heart palpitations and shortness of breath. I began seeing a cardiologist who dropped the bomb on my husband and I that having another baby, would likely kill me. We struggled with this news for weeks and I constantly battled back and forth between wanting to have the tubal ligation to prevent future pregnancies or continuing birth control.
Before we could make a decision one way or the other, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. I cried myself to sleep for weeks, WEEKS, trying to decide whether to continue with the pregnancy and possibly killing myself in the process and/or terminating the pregnancy right then and there. After weeks of grueling pros and cons, I decided that the only way I could live with myself was to try to carry the pregnancy to term. If I had to terminate the pregnancy or die, I would terminate the pregnancy. We luckily made it to full-term, even survived nearly two weeks of passive labor, and now have a beautiful baby girl.
We've lost a house. Were kicked out of our apartment because we had already given our notice. We lived in a hotel suite for two weeks but not before living with my grandmother.
We've acquired normalcy, in the face of near financial ruin when I was laid off from my job after taking out a large loan to purchase a larger family vehicle, our now paid off minivan.
We've managed through the death of my grandfather and Zach's oldest sister, who we attempted to honor by passing on her middle name to our daughter, Skyler.
It has not been an easy life. It has been a grueling, demanding and heart-breaking life. Obviously, it has not all been downs but there have been a lot and within short succession of one another. How could anyone, after looking at this long line of painful memories, how could anyone honestly believe that the only reason we still trudge through a river of crap is due to my refusal to will myself out of this black hole? Willpower will not get rid of depression. Willpower does have something to do with depression but it has absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of it altogether. In fact, because I am feeling generous, I will tell you what willpower has to do with depression.
Every morning, I wake up and fight to get out of bed. I use all of my energy just to toss my legs over the side, set them on the carpet and walk the four feet to the bathroom sink to brush my morning breath away. I stare blankly at the mirror, trying to figure out what my husband sees in me and why he continuously puts himself through the trauma that is dealing with me and my disorder(s). Then my irrational brain begins to wonder if he does love me and if he only manages to make it through his days because he has someone else on the side. Someone who loves him and holds him and lets him ... just be. It becomes so overwhelming that I have to get away from the mirror and the reflection of that awful person that is standing in front of me. Even if it is me. By this point, I'm completely drained. I'm completely drained and it's only 6:35 in the morning. I'm completely drained and I still have to feed my son breakfast before school and get him to the bus stop. I have to give him snuggles and hugs good-bye, even though my irrational brain has taken over again and I am terrified that I'm sending him off to his school bus of doom or that a mass shooter is going to target his school. After that, I try to get an hour or two of sleep. Anything to recharge my brain just a little bit before I have to get up again for work. More often than not, I don't get any sleep. I just sit there and feel the exhaustion course through my veins. I desperately want to sleep... for days or weeks... whatever it takes just to reorganize the chaos in my head. Then I feel guilty, because I am a mother and a wife and a friend and I can't just lay in bed and be useless.
By the time work rolls around, I am on the verge of a breakdown. Not because I hate my job. I don't. I love my job. But depression has taken anything and everything of value to me and made it cumbersome. Work is cumbersome. My kids, whom I love dearly, are cumbersome. My husband is cumbersome. And I hate myself and I hate my brain for that. Even if it isn't my fault, I hate myself for it. I can logically know that it isn't my fault and still wish that I weren't here, so that my family wouldn't have to go through the rigorous schedule of helping me recuperate from this disease. But then there are two things that keep me from just "selfishly" offing myself: the people that care about me and fear. The first is the fear. I am afraid to die. I am afraid of what will or will not come when the light leaves my eyes. I am afraid of that nothingness. The second are those people that care about me. Those that will feel my loss. That will grieve the future without me. As the depression's severity increases, I slowly care less and less about those people. The one thing that doesn't change is my fear of death. If that fear of death were to change, I don't know where I would be... or wouldn't be for that matter. It is a very sharp, fine blade that I am teetering on. One wrong move and I either fall off or slice myself in half or hell, maybe I'll swing out of there with nothing but a paper-cut small incision but either way, I don't feel like I will ever get out of this unharmed.
After faking my way through work and patient's homes, smiling and laughing and ignoring the knot in my throat that has taken refuge there, I have been drained to the negatives. I have nothing left to give. I have a few snuggles that I can bear to pass out to my family. I can pretend to smile just a few more times. But the lure of my bed and the cool sheets are just too much to ignore. My body will sink into the bed, comforting and quiet, but I go right back to feeling awful and guilty again because I can't will even a little bit more energy for the ones that I love. Before I know it, the little bit of sleep I've managed to get is over and I have to start the new day over again, often with an energy deficit.
I am not in my right mind. But even if I was, who would willingly put their family through such a troublesome existence? You say depression is weakness. That suicide is selfish? If this disease were to physically manifest as something else, would anyone be quick to judge and force the diseased to live as if they are normal? Is it just because it is invisible... silent... that you all can ignore the pain and suffering of those affected? Or have those of you that feel you have the experience to say what you do, just not lived the life of someone who either has had or has dealt with someone who has had depression? Depression is not weakness. It is a very strong individual that tries and fails to fight a disease such as this every single day but tries again over and over. That is admirable. And all of the ignorant, chair quarterbacks out there would be well to recognize that that strength is also beautiful. That uplifting the fallen is a worthy cause because some of these lost souls may have so much to give, they just need the strength to give it.
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