The Depression Whisperer

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I'm going to say Macbeth suffered from depression. Just a hunch.


I'm one of those people. Tell me you've been having problems, family problems, work problems, any problems, and I will lean over intently, gaze into your eyes and say:
"You're probably depressed."

I am a shameless arm-chair diagnostician and my friends, I WILL DIAGNOSE YOU WITH DEPRESSION.

October is National Depression Awareness Month (Poor October: Breast Cancer AND Depression). Sara is National Depression Awareness Blatherer. Anyone unlucky enough to cross my path will get a lecture on the topic.

Why do I do this? Apart from adoring the sound of my own voice?

Because I believe this is still a taboo topic.

Depression is not cured by "a nice long walk". Depression does not mean you are lazy. Depression does not mean you are a failure. Depression is a mental illness that can make you lose your family, your friends, your job and ultimately your life.

However I also believe we can fight against it. We can decide to get better. Don't get me wrong, it is a long, difficult decision to make, and people in the throes of depression are often not in a state to accept those efforts.

Yet there are therapies. There are ways.

Watch the people around you. Do you know someone who has been unhappy for a long time? Withdrawing into themselves? Do you know someone who is no longer themselves, for lack of a better word? It could be a midlife crisis, could be a bad patch, but if it is depression, what do we have to lose by asking that person how we can help, if they are in need of comfort, or advice.

It is hard to reach out to depressed people. They don't want your help. They want to die.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

To anyone who stumbles accross this message, if you feel you are depressed, please see a doctor. Please talk to someone. It's so hard to do this alone.

I have been greatly helped by people sharing their testimonies and stories with me throughout my own battle with this disease. If anyone should want to talk to me, please do not hesitate to do so.

Depression can happen to anyone.

But I promise: you can get out of it.

Overwhelmed

I'm feeling a bit weird. I'm allergic to pollen, so this season is a bit trying to me. I'm depressed, for reasons that I can't really get into, because there are no real reasons.

Sometimes I feel like such a burden to the people around me. Help me. Listen to me. How often can you hear that without feeling overwhelmed? After all, it's my life, not theirs. I'm the one meant to figure stuff out.

In a perfect world, everyone would be honest. Or at least a bit. They would tell you that they are busy when they just can't take your drama anymore. So you could always be sure of when you are annoying them or not. You wouldn't have to guess all the time. I'm not afraid of rejection as much as I am afraid of mute boredom and annoyance.

I hate bothering people but I'm convinced I do it all the time.

I like to watch

There's the faint trace of purple lipstick on the narrow strip of skin between his spike-studded cuff and his leather gloves. He stares at the bartender. She leans towards him, her short green hair gleaming under the poor lighting. She grabs his cell phone, using the camera application as a mirror to reapply some lipstick. She looks at him provocatively. He's grinning at her. Her backless dress shows off the huge tattoo etched on her shoulders: "ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME". She throws a quick glance at me: "Wanna drink?"
"A lemonade please."

You know, because my jeans and cardigan weren't conspicuous enough.

I love this Goth bar. I come here when I can't sleep and feel like people watching. There's always a couple making out in front of the entrance door, alternately taking puffs from a cigarette and kissing. There's always a guy in his fifties hungrily staring at the young girls wearing bunny ears, and at the lesbian couples slow-dancing. And there's me, with my book and my owlish glasses, perched on a armchair, using the book as an alibi to watch the scene.

There's the two guys who always argue about nü metal, and the other guy who texts all the time.

There's the other bartender, with his spiky pink hair, who conjures up pastel coloured cocktails with one whisk, and who flirts with the indie guys who turn up already drunk.

I'm fascinated by the courtship ritual.Theway bodies find a way around each other, moving slowly, surely towards their goal. The way it always ends in the same way.

When I lived with X, I hoped his gift for living would rub off on me. One day, I would wake up, and I would no longer feel desolation rushing up to my heart, crashing like a wave against an obstacle. Depression would no longer follow me stealthily, robbing me of what was rightfully mine. I would bounce out of bed and everything would sparkle at me like a promise like passion like love like lust like faith like you.


I watch them as if they will entrust me with their secret.

As I leave the bar, rain pelting down on my bare head, I espy a couple under the bus stop. His hands move passionately down her back, and her arms are wrapped around him. As she breaks off the kiss, I notice the tattoo snaking around her white neck: CARPE DIEM. Seize the day.

I like to watch, because I want to like to live.

In the meantime, I'll fight this bitch off with everything I have.

Choices, choices

I hate this armchair, but I try to settle comfortably. I am paying for this, after all.
"So let's pick up where we stopped last week. Why don't you want to have children?"
I look at him. He's scratching his nose, not looking like an inquisitor at all. I smile.
"I don't want anyone to have my genes."
"What's wrong with your genes?"
"I'm chronically depressed." I wave an airy hand. And all that. I also have really bad blood circulation and asthma. But those don't count. They aren't life-threatening. They don't make you want to die. Or try to die.
"Do you believe depression is genetic?"
"I believe that it is, yes. And even if it's not, how could I bring up someone if I'm sad a lot? Wouldn't it be unfair on the child?"
I was brought up by someone with addiction. I know what it feels when your love is not enough for someone to change, not enough to make them happy. When you are a child, you don't know happiness is something you make for yourself. You think it's your fault.
"Why do you believe it's genetic?"
"I don't want to believe I had a choice in this."
I didn't choose to be alive. A lot of the time I wish I weren't. I'm stuck here for the best and for the worse. And my best is amazing. And my worse is soul-killing.
"I don't want to believe that I chose depression for myself."
"You've been through a lot."
"No, I haven't. And even if I had, it wouldn't change anything to the fact that it's my responsability to go beyond my bad experiences to make something of myself. If it's something wrong in my genome, my stumbles don't make me feel so guilty."

I choose to not be angry; I choose to forgive and forget, I choose to fight for what I care for.

"Maybe everything is a choice."
"Life isn't."
"Yes it is. You're here. You're choosing to remain alive. You're choosing to see me. You're choosing to get better. Every morning you go running to pump some endorphins in yourself and make yourself happier."
I can't see through my tears.
"Sometimes I feel no one knows what this feels like. How bloody hard it is. That no one cares."
"Don't you think I care?"
"I don't know."
My family cares. My friends care. But in the end, the shrink is right.

I choose this struggle, and I will run again tomorrow, and I'll think of the things I love and am passionate about. I'll see my friends and family. I'll cuddle with the cats and make really stupid jokes.

Whatever is coming, I may not be ready, but I choose to pretend I am. Give it to me, and watch me take it.

I choose to be a grown-up.

The question that has no answer

Every Thursday afternoon, I have a routine. I walk up the hill of the Quartier Latin in Paris, I stop in front of the bicycle shop and fantasize about owning that sweet blue number. I walk on until I arrive in front of a primary school, and punch in the entrance code of a small, inconspicuous building. I go up to the second floor. I ring the door bell. A slight man opens the door, shakes my hand, takes me to the waiting room. When the previous patient leaves, he comes to fetch me and I sit in the large leather armchair, feeling overly large and strange.

How was your week?

I take some time to answer this. Because there are so many answers, every time. It went fine. I did loads of things. I talked to people I don't know and it wasn't scary.

So I answer.

It was OK. But I'm still sad.

Why are you sad?

Why am I sad, indeed. I don't know, Mr Shrinko. Please open my head and empty it of all its shit. It's that same bloody question I always have to answer. Why did you try to commit suicide? Why do you cry for hours? Why does getting up feel like picking up the globe? How can YOU complain? What's wrong with you?

I get why I should ask myself this question. It has to begin somewhere. But the truth is, every answer I give (I'm stressed, I'm not good enough, my family is going to pieces) is never the truth. I don't feel like I belong here, never have. But that doesn't mean I don't try. I straighten myself up and I look at him straight in the eyes, and I tell him that next week I'll feel better. Or that I know it's just a phase. And he knows that I'm not being honest, but something more important for me: I'm being optimistic.

See you next week.

So if I know how the routine goes, why do I go back?

I want to be happy. I will be happy. I believe in me.
Sometimes I find the right answers.

Lost Cause

I'm tired of feeling like a lost cause.

Running away

There are days where I run towards things or people. And today I went to my first EVER group run event. I enrolled for the track and field club in my new uni.

I was horribly nervous; I'm not good at sports, never was. Last picked for gym and all that sob stuff. Who cares? New year, new resolution.

We ran 10K as warm-up, did some interval training and then ab exercices. Three hours. I was much slower than anyone else there, but I finished all the same.
So why can't I just feel proud instead of wasting my afternoon? I mean I have lots of work. But I feel depressed and lonely. I feel unfit to belong to this club. I feel that I'll slow everyone down and be an object of scorn or pity. All the procrastinating makes me feel worse. It's a spiral of self-hatred.

Shut up! I want this unproductive rut to cease. SHUT UP, VOICE.

But instead I fantasize about running away from everyone, everything, all my responsabilities, and just get numb again.

In olden days I used to go hug my boyfriend, he would be the voice of reason and of kick-assness.

Now I'm my own coach and sometimes it's rough. But if I manage to get myself out of this mire, all the success will be my own.

How to choose your therapist (or do they choose you?)

My first experience with a therapist was at my university in America, where foreign students were encouraged to talk to someone in case they had adaptation problems. This was a good initiative and since I was homesick (and also without realizing it at the time spiraling down into depression), I booked a meeting with Rachel.
Rachel was a kind person but she was incredibly wrong for me, for several reasons.
1)She was easy to read.
Let me clarify: I could tell exactly how she reacted to all my disclosures and which ones hit home. She was clearly a troubled eater, I guessed that early in our conversations from her way of talking. She was constantly reassuring me about my weight, which is neither here nor there. It's not about the weight for me. It's about loving myself. However, she had a fixation on weight and it showed. I ended up not talking to her honestly because I knew in advance how she would react and that it hurt her feelings that I , a slimmer person than she, should feel unlovable.

2)She was not subtle.
My maternal language is French. I was talking to her in English. This obviously has consequences for therapy. I would often try to explain why some words had a special meaning to me because they were "new", or reminded me of a French word that had impacted me in some way. She would never understand this and always tell me that "it's the same word, just in a different language."

3)She let herself be manipulated by me
I'd like to emphasize the fact that I don't think she was bad at her job, just bad for me. I managed to have her prescribe me the medication I wanted to take to commit suicide. I never told her I had tried to kill myself. I never trusted her enough, because she hadn't been able to understand my deviousness.

My second therapist was a Lacanian psychotherapist who believed that only complete silence on his part would reveal my pain. I quickly got freaked out by the eery silence pervading all our "conversations" and gave up.

My current therapist is a psychiatrist. He is very good at deciphering my moods, never lets himself be misled by me. He avoids any identification and gently reproves me when I try to get him involved in my story. For the time being, he is the right person for me. Funnily enough, I feel that he chose me rather than the other way round: during our first talk he looked at me earnestly, and then told me to come back next week because we had work to do. I felt like I'd just passed a successful test. Yes, you are demented enough for me!
So if at first you don't succeed, try again. I believe many could benefit from therapy, but that we all have different needs. So trying out different methods can be necessary. Or you can be lucky and find someone perfect for you on your first try.

I find therapy incredibly challenging. I often ponder our discussions during the entire week after our meeting. I often leave the office crying or very sad, but it has taught me so much about myself.

Post-natal Depression

My dearest friend A has just had a beautiful baby son (and I don't even like babies!) and fears that she is suffering from post-natal depression.
I had told her during her pregnancy that my mother had had an awful time after giving birth to me. This being 23 years ago, PND was not commonly diagnosed and mothers who did not instantly bond with their children were judged by the doctors treating them and were seldom sent to see a mental health provider. Symeon is only two weeks old, and A is already reaching out to her friends asking for pointers and helpful advice.
My heart bleeds for her. I've been through depression and I can't imagine the strain of having to care for a new-born while coping with the horrendous backlash of emotional distress depression brings in its midst. However, I am glad that I told her about it and that she is able to ask for help. Instead of making mothers feel guilty about how they feel, we should always try to help them in this time of need.

Instead of constantly labelling women "emotional", "irrational" or "hysterical", can't we just acknowledge the diversity of experiences we can feel? Science has too often reduced us to the sum of our (private) parts; I strongly applaud the new transparency that enables us to understand how we feel.

Now if only the Scientologists would shut up...