Last week I sat through lunch with several women of different ages, backgrounds, and walks of life and we had the most interesting conversation about clinical depression. One of the women in the group opened up about how her widely popular anti-depressant doesn’t seem to be doing a darned thing to help her, and we started talking about depression and its devastating effects.

I found myself nodding my head vehemently throughout her explanation of how she feels (or maybe more accurately: how she doesn’t feel) and how nothing seems to matter, no interest, no energy, no life… How I could relate! She talked about how sunny days make her actually feel worse, she can see the potential of a sunny day and all she could accomplish, but she just doesn’t. She can see her life passing in front of her but she cannot make herself get out and actually live it.

Oh how I understand those feelings. I felt them before too. I hope that in a small way, my understanding of exactly how she feels helps her in some way because it is such a lonely existence when you are dealing with clinical depression. This I know acutely.

One of the women at the table, a young college student, couldn’t understand the difference between just feeling down and depressed, and suffering from depression long term. When she said, “just get up and out of the house! Just make yourself do it! You’ll see, you’ll feel better”, I just wanted to strangle her. I think the other woman did too!

Suffering from depression is like suffering from a migraine headache. Until you actually have it happen to you, you don’t know what you’re talking about. A headache isn’t a migraine, and feeling down one day or even acouple of days, is not being depressed.

The interesting thing I have witnessed since dealing with my own bouts of depression (the first one was 1999-2001 when I lived in Venezuela and the second was in 2005 until 2006) is that the person suffering from the depression consciously knows that something just isn’t right, but they are powerless to do anything about it. As a newlywed in Venezuela, I knew that I was not acting like myself day after day isolating myself in the house, insulating myself from contact with anyone, not looking in mirrors, not eating, not even bathing or dressing myself for days at a time. I knew I was having some sort of problems, knew that I shouldn’t be acting/feeling/doing these things, yet I just couldn’t stop. I felt like my friend, as if the world were passing me by, and as upset as that made me, I couldn’t bring myself to do a damned thing about it.

It happened again in 2005 when we moved to the ranch. I think that if I had to guess, I would say that huge moves triggers something in me that pulls me under. I spent most of 2005 isolated in the house again, this time a new mother, and I used my son as my excuse for everything. I was afraid to drive! I was afraid of having to talk to others, afraid of going through the bank drive thru! Paralyzed by my own mind, stuck in the house and incapable of moving.

When I think back about how desperate I felt, it is a wonder that my husband stayed with me. I was such a basketcase. Such a mess. And the craziest part is that while I was going through that, I actually knew how foolish and silly I seemed, but I could not change.

This is Depression…

So, how did I get out of these situations both times? Well the first time, I tried medication. But it  didn’t work, in fact, in lots of ways things were worse when I took an anti-depressant.  Thankfully I had my parents and my close friends (and the blessed internet and videophone) to  help me the first time I endured depression. I did hit a point in late 2000 when I thought I could  not go on, and I made plans to move home to be with my parents. Big D made the move with me, of course. He has always been my rock.

Being home eventually pulled me out of my first bout with depression. Familiar surroundings, home, and my old stomping grounds helped me to get back to living, though it took a long while.  We all started to slowly see the transformation happening though: my hair started to grow  again, I gained a little weight (I had dropped from 145 when we got married to 115. I am 5′10″!),  and even though I wasn’t my loud and boisterous self as much, I was getting out of the house.  Somehow my home life was healing my deep wounds.

In 2005, I didn’t have that luxury. I was in a new place, far from home and family and friends. My Mom, my best friend, had passed away, and I was stuck on the ranch with a toddler. No work, no friends, nothing to do except sit in the house day after day and wait for my husband to come home. Except for the addition of our son and the fact that we were now in the United States, I felt very much the way I had all those years prior in Venezuela. Lost all day every day in my own thoughts, waiting for my husband, my Knight in Shining Armor, to ride in and save me, day after day…

And that is a hard situation to be in when you are depending on someone else to fulfill your every need. Spending all day waiting for D to come home meant that I had to spend almost every waking hours in my own head, and self-talk can really be poisonous if you’re not careful.

And I wasn’t careful. I was horrible to myself. The more and more I had thoughts pop into my head with no one around to contradict them or offer their own ideas, the deeper and deeper I fell.

My saving grace was a stranger who owned a store in my small town. One day that I absolutely forced myself to go to town and walk into a shop that I had secretly been coveting for months, the shop owner spoke to me and in that instant, it was like I saw a light. There was hope. She sparked something in me that helped to pull me out of the depths of my despair. She was a God Wink, and became so much more to me than just a shop owner, but one of my very best friends. She was put in my path that day by Someone who knew I needed help. Thank God. Literally.

During this roundtable lunch we had last week, when my friend opened up about her depression, I knew it. She had all of the signs, but I didn’t have confirmation. The fact that she opened up at all and announced to us that she is suffering was like a chorus of angels because it was a way to ask for help. I have another friend on Facebook who is also suffering with her own deep depression and the overtures that she has made in mentioning different things lets me know that she, too, is opening up about how she is feeling and ready for help.

Help comes in many forms. What helped me might not help them, but one thing I’m sure of is that you cannot help yourself with this one. It requires patience, it requires understanding, and it requires determination. Personally, I think that combating depression requires a short term and long term goal that others help you achieve. Not a goal  that is set and executed by yourself, because again, you will become your own worst enemy. A goal that you openly discuss with someone you do not want to disappoint.  That fear of disappointing a loved one seems to be the only thing that might move you off center and get you moving. At least it did me. The first time my new and fragile marriage was the catalyst that moved me off dead center. I did not want to disappoint my husband or our parents. The second time, I did not want to disappoint my son. I wanted to be a Mother he could be proud of, not be his liability…

These things have been bouncing around in my head for days and I just thought I would sit down and let it all out. It helps me to get it off my chest and maybe- just maybe, it will help someone else, too.

Casey Roon de Pacheco, author
Just Me…the Crazy Rancher’s Wife

Photo credit: Casey Roon de Pacheco. All Rights Reserved.