Cry For Help

This story brings up deep grief for me and for all people, especially children, who suffer from a chemical imbalance in their brains causing depression. Undiagnoised, the blame centers on the victim as being depressed or acting out “on purpose” when, in fact, like cancer ravaging the body, our thinking and our feelings are askew and running amuck quite apart from anything we can control. Enviornments play a part. And often, as with mine, the suffering person is not supported, possibly because of genetics and a generational component that has, along with guilt, been passed down. The attitude of the times we live in has a part to play, too—although I still feel, after working in the field for 30 years and living in the pain all my life that the misunderstanding about the physical illness of chronic depression is still commonly harshly judged with the false but common assumption that we’ll just “snap out of it”.

I have worked hard on my psyche since leaving home at 18—years of therapy, degrees in psychology, giving my all in a 30 year psychotherapy practice helping others. But without a clear diagnosis and treatment, which I finally got at age 55, my true life potential was minimized, or at the very least, I didn’t get to enjoy it. I always felt bad about myself, as though there was something “wrong” with me that I couldn’t seem to fix no matter what I did. Looking back, I can honestly say that those events that were the most painful, the most destructive to my sense of self, the most devastating to the choices I made in my life and for the people affected by them, the most loss of things both outside and in—were all related to what I know now was an illness. The most startling revelation came with the realization—I am a good person. I am enough. The following is an incredibly sad story about my first major depression. I hope it will help you have a broader understanding toward those caught in the ravages of this awful malady.

My life was crashing and I was crying out for help. I was 8 years old and in the 4th grade. Soon after school started in the Fall, the old red brick schoolhouse that had been the grade school’s home for generations was condemned. The classes were dispersed across town into every possible nook and cranny. We watched as they tore the building down and replaced it with a modern 50’s one-story sprawling ugly-looking one. My class was moved to a tiny room adjacent the home economics kitchen in the high school. It had been used as a sewing and storage room until we arrived and attempted to arrange our desks in such a way that we could all fit in the room. The only possible way to get us all in was by placing our desks touching one another in a square in the center of the room. This gave us about 2 feet to walk around. The room had no windows and hadn’t been painted for a long time so the dingy room was dark and smelled of mold, Clorox and blueberry muffins.

I found the space deeply disturbing. My skin crawled when I had to go in. I tried not to think about it. But every day I sat in that room, when Mrs. Laswell’s steely grey glazed-over eyes fell on me, I had less grip on reality than the day before. My mind would start racing and my heart quicken until I thought I would pass out. I didn’t breathe. The whole school knew those eyes meant Mrs. Laswell was craving her next cigarette and was trying to figure out how to occupy us so she could slip outside for a drag. Even though I knew her stare was not personal, I began to feel that she was upset with me. The thought of this made me go “wild” inside—like I was a rabid dog running crazily around the playground outside without being able to stop.

I had this reaction partially because my mother was so hard on me. “You need to back off of Paula a bit,” I’d overheard my two Aunts say to my mom once. But, with what she thought was a secret now seen, it only seemed to make matters worse. Her obsession with my being “perfect” seemed to relate to her confusion between where I began and she ended. It was obvious to me, just being 8, that she was living her life through me. It felt to me like all of the expectations she put on me had something to do with an immense pressure felt from her father. Regardless of where it came from, it felt absolutely necessary for me to be perfect in everything I did. My convoluted thinking went something like this: if I didn’t get all A’s at school, Grandpa would stop giving Mom money and we would die. It was a hard burden to carry but I didn’t feel like I had a choice about it. I think I had gotten the ideas from Mom’s tirades night after night after I was asleep. She would yell all kinds of threatening things at my father, most I didn’t understand, and I would hide under the dining room table with my brother and sister.

It was in December when I learned the “way out” of the classroom. By sitting back on my chair, which made it impossible for anyone to walk behind me, Mrs. Laswell would make a scene and banish me from our classroom to sit on the floor in the main hall of the high school. I was very comfortable there. It was right by a side entrance to the school and light streamed in through the glass in heavy doors with a brass bar. When I was on the floor in the hall I didn’t feel so wild and out of control. I spent the majority of my days there alone, isolated on the polished linoleum floor, separated from the 4th grade by a brick wall.

When I was in the classroom I pretended not to take anything seriously. I did everything I could think of to get in trouble to get kicked out of that classroom. Everything I said was funny in a sarcastic way. This was in stark contrast to how I was actually feeling. Every day I felt sadder. No tears ever came but I suspected if they did I wouldn’t be able to stop them. The kids, who had gone to school with me since kindergarten, didn’t know what was happening with me. They could see changes in me and were as concerned as 4th graders can be. Still, as the year went on and I was away from them more and more—I felt less connected. This didn’t help my dark thoughts, which were becoming more and more hopeless by the day. I thought a lot about all of my family dying because I wasn’t able to live up to Mom’s expectations. I felt tired, heavy, overwhelmed, worthless and totally hopeless.

One day I was called back into the classroom from my place on the floor in the hall. The announcement made was devastating to me and seemed to be some kind of tipping point in my ability to handle the distress I was experiencing. Girls were no longer allowed to wear slacks under their dresses to school. I thought I would die. I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly wear just a skirt day after day. I decided I would run away but didn’t get far in figuring out the details before even that seemed impossible. I felt exposed and vulnerable, embarrassed because I was the only girl wearing slacks. I felt like I was being punished. I felt as though I’d been pushed over the edge.

After that day, all the days were dark—as the winter’s grey skies covered the bleak Kansas landscape and each day folded seamlessly into the next. Spring, sunshine, warmth and longer days seemed like they would never come back. I felt like I was just hanging on to my life by a thread. I kept replaying that day in my head when they told us we couldn’t wear slacks and could see I had given up completely then. I was simply going through the motions. What was keeping me going? Mom’s expectations? I certainly didn’t have the energy to keep going myself. Everything that truly mattered to me felt like it was out of reach. I felt split in two, the one part of me panicking about being perfect and the other not wanting to live.

Then the spelling contest was announced. I dreaded the spelling contest all year. I was a horrible speller and struggled with dyslexia, which was not diagnosed or worked with in the 50’s. Not understanding there was a reason for my problem did not help my feelings of self-loathing that lurked nearby whenever I had to read or spell. These feelings of dread did not help my mother’s expectations for me winning the contest. I was beside myself with anxiety and did not know what to do about it.

The next day, while sitting alone on the floor, too anxious to concentrate on the assignment I was supposed to be doing—I concocted a plan. It seemed complicated and as I thought it through in my mind I kept refining it to try to figure it out. I was terrified of implementing the plan because I knew lots of things about it weren’t right. But I had to do something. I was desperate! I became more and more obsessed with thinking about it and found myself withdrawing even more.

First I talked with 2 girls in my class separately who were good spellers and in the running of the contest. I have no memory of talking with them. The actual executing of the plan paled compared to my mind’s version and it’s outcome. Because I was so focused and obsessed with my mind’s version and the fantasy of it actually working, I had failed to consider some of the consequences. I lost track of how other people would be hurt. I forgot myself and how what I was doing would hurt me. I was only thinking about what would happen if I lost the spelling bee. My family would die. I was absolutely convinced of that. My thinking was speedy and my thoughts were not tracking well.

I didn’t have the word “bribe” in my vocabulary then—but that is what I did with Susan and Carol. They would get money for missing a word. I don’t remember the exact details. I started with these two girls because they were not friends. The real threats in the contest were Becky and Linda Lee, but I never found the courage to talk with them about missing words because they were my closest friends and at that point my only lifeline to the entire 4th grade.

As it turned out Susan and Carol told their parents that night and the next morning—the day of the spelling contest—I was called into the classroom from the hall and confronted by Mrs. Laswell and the Principal. Mr. Sparks was an unkept, pessimistic, authoritarian man with no social skills, who treated children as if he hated them. I remember feeling the cold air on my legs and staring at the indentation across the top of my desk where pencils were supposed to go as the two of them stood over me. My head throbbed and I had too many unleashed feelings being in that tiny claustrophobic room totally humiliated. I remember all my classmates staring at me aghast. I remember repeating after them very softly that, “yes, I had offered the girls money”. I remember them making me apologize to the girls. I remember seeing tears in Becky’s eyes when I chanced one quick glance sideways. Then I am floating in space above the room. I feel abandoned and untethered. But I am safe from everyone here.

Shame has a taste to it. It tastes metallic and cold. There is also a smell I associate with shame—mold, Clorox and blueberry muffins. But there is no sound. I couldn’t detect my breathing or hear my heartbeat. All my energy was being used to hold myself together. I wanted to leave that room, that school, that family, that town, that state, that life. I had proven to the world I was a horrible person and would never convince anyone again that I was basically good. My life was over. All my feelings tumbled inside like a pair of heavy old tennis shoes pounding inside a clothes dryer. The shock of shame paralyzed my thoughts and I felt like I was in a long, enclosed room with no air, no windows or doors, no way out. The deafening scream in the back of my throat was trapped by the silence of my shame.

After Becky won the spelling contest all I could envision was my family lying bloody throughout my house. I was escorted to the principal’s office to meet with him and my parents. I have no memory of the encounter with my parents or what was said to them —I do remember the feeling of curious eyes drilling into me as I walked down the hall following Mr. Sparks toward my doom. My parents never talked about the meeting -- that night or anytime after. They missed or ignored my cry for help entirely. The only way I would have known anything had happened was that my mother did not speak to me for a good two weeks. I don’t know when she started talking to me again...but I felt as though I had permanently ruined all her hopes. Her dreams were dead. I was not enough.