Depression

On the first day of fourth grade I eagerly enter the old red-brick three-story schoolhouse, trudge up the thirteen worn wooden stairs, and walk down a wide hallway that has tall windows that reach almost to the ceiling. At the end of that hall I climb another thirteen stairs to the third floor, walk down another hall and enter my classroom.

Mrs. Laswell, my teacher, is up in the front of the room by her desk. When I turn in her direction she looks down. Gray, I think. Her hair is dusty gray and her home perm looks recent. Her glasses have gray plastic frames with gray tinted lenses. Her polyester dress is a gray floral print and she wears a simple gray cardigan that looks thin and worn. She is old and tired of kids. She is dreading teaching another year. She has thought about it all summer, wondering how in the world she can get through the year so that she can finally retire next May. She settles on an idea. She sets up her lesson plans to be able to leave the classroom at least once an hour to go to the teachers lounge and have a cigarette. She hopes this year’s kids are old enough and good enough to leave alone—at least for the time it takes to have a quick cigarette to calm her nerves. It isn’t a perfect plan but it will have to do.

There are fifteen kids in my class this year. I take a seat in a desk next to my friends. The chair and the desk are connected. I lift the top of the desk and put my supplies inside: a brown glue bottle with a pink rubber nipple, 10 yellow number 2 pencils that need to be sharpened, a new pink eraser that’s rectangular with points at both ends and a 12 inch ruler that is wooden with a thin metal edge along one side. I look around and locate the pencil sharpener. It’s attached to the wall next to the black board in the back of the room. 

Once we’re all seated, Mrs. Laswell drones on and on and on in a muffled monotone voice while I look around the room. On the back wall are wooden cubbies where I put my coat and boots and other stuff like that. There are enormous windows all along one side of the large room and there is a big elm tree growing outside. We are on the top floor of the building and I can see the sky and watch the clouds moving by perfectly.

At 10:30 we go outside for recess and enjoy running around on the playground. Lunch downstairs in the cafeteria is next. Today they serve rice pudding for dessert. I miss after-lunch recess because I refuse to touch the rice pudding and the rule is you have to eat everything on your plate or sit there thinking about why you didn’t. When we gather back in our room for the afternoon, Mrs. Laswell announces we are going to have a special all-school assembly at 3 o’clock. She dodges our questions about what it is about by turning her back and writing furiously on the blackboard.

She hurries back into the room from one of her “breaks” at 10 to 3 and instructs us line up single file to go downstairs to the cafeteria for the assembly. All the kids from kindergarten through eighth grade are arranging themselves facing the stage that’s at one end. We sit on the floor and the teachers stand leaning against the walls, looking bored.

I search the room for the 6th graders. They are already sitting close to the stage. I see my sister with them, laughing with her friends Sandy and Pam. As more and more students arrive, the noise level gets louder and louder. I lean forward to better hear what my friends Becky, Linda and Mikie are talking about.

All of a sudden there is a loud metallic screech that silences the room. The principal is attempting to get the new sound system working. He definitely has our attention now! After bumbling and fumbling a while longer with the help of the Phys Ed teacher, he stands behind the microphone and begins to talk. His voice sounds garbled and too loud. It is difficult to understand him—almost like he is underwater.

He tells us that starting tomorrow the students will be ‘housed’ all over town because they are going to tear the existing school building down and build another, newer one. It will take the entire school year to complete. “We must all do our best to get through the year,” he says with absolutely no emotion. He goes on to tell us where each grade will be located. Some kids will be in buildings across town. One class will be in the clothing factory on Main Street. One will be in the Methodist church basement. I stop listening when I realize I am holding my breath and look down and see my fingernails digging into the skin of my leg.

When we are released to go back to our classrooms the kids file through the halls in stunned silence. Mrs. Laswell explains to us, “Tomorrow morning when you come to school go to the main entrance of the high school and turn left. Go down that hall and up four steps. Take the first door on the right. That will be our new room for the year.”

When I go home that night my feelings are unsettled and jittery. My leg bounces all through supper and later I have a hard time getting to sleep. When I arrive at the high school the next morning and walk into the classroom my fears slam into reality. The room is tiny. It is off the kitchen that is used for high school home economics classes. It is dingy and smells of mold and blueberry muffins. There are no windows so even with the lights on it is dark. There are no blackboards. Our desks are squished together and face the center of the room in the shape of a contorted square. There is just barely enough room to walk behind the chairs.

It feels like my breath has been knocked out of me by an unexpected punch. My eyes squeeze shut for a second as if the assault is coming from the oppression of the stuffy hot room. When I open my eyes it takes me a minute to focus. The beige asphalt tile floor, beige walls and low dirty-white ceiling tiles move in and out as if alive. My friends are already sitting in their assigned seats according to names written on masking tape across the desks. As I make my way to the desk with my name, I panic because not one of my friends is close by.

As I sit down in my seat I have a bizarre awareness that my brain and body are changing. There is a shutting down, a slowing and thickening, a shallowness of breath, a heaviness of extremities and an uncomfortable pinched constricted feeling in my throat. It all happens so fast I can’t grasp what’s happening. There is a visceral darkening of mood. General overall pain cries out. It is like straining to swim through peanut butter. I feel like I want to run screaming out of the room. I want more than anything to get outside, to run home, to hide. I don’t remember anything else about that morning but when it is over I run home for lunch as fast as I can. I do not go back.

That night I dream of the classroom. The walls are closing in on me and I am being pulled into a dark hole in the middle of the desks. The light that is ahead fascinates me but I am totally preoccupied with the force of the black swirl that encircles me. Mrs. Laswell is there and I know she sees me but she turns around and walks out of the room. I reach out to my friends to pull me back but no one is strong enough. I wake up panicked and panting. “I don’t want to go to school,” I tell my mom. She confirms what I already know—that that is not an option. How will I ever get through the year?

I am ruled by overwhelming sadness. I feel ripped apart. Everything feels like it is ‘too much’. I am anxious and upset—just like when you’re about to do something new for the first time. My attitude has gone from a positive “I can do this!” to a flat “there is no way!” By the time I step onto the school grounds the next morning the voices in my head have completely taken over and are screaming horrible things about how worthless I am and what I don’t deserve.

Each day the struggle continues. Every morning when I arrive at school I hesitate in the hall outside the classroom—my mind scatters, my feet are so ridged and heavy they feel like they’re glued to the floor. I have to make myself go in. When I sit in the room for any length of time I feel like I will lose my grip on reality. My mind gets blurry, my heart races and I wouldn’t care if I passed out.

By November I am despondent and withdrawn. I am obsessed with getting out of that room. One day I look over and see Gilbert, who sits next to me, leaning back in his chair. Mrs. Laswell spins around, sees what he is doing, and snaps, “Gilbert, you may take your distraction out into the hall. Sit on the floor with your back against the wall until I come and get you!” I have found a way out!

Gilbert and I spend our days on the floor in the hall. It is calming for me to sit on the floor. The polished linoleum is cool against my legs and provides solid grounding for my fast moving, spinning cycles. I don’t even mind the fatigue that comes with sitting on a hard surface for  long periods of time.

With lots of time to be quiet, I start to notice the difference between what is going on in the outer world and what is going on inside me. Sometimes outside can trigger a tornado of feelings inside. Other times my own thoughts can produce an avalanche of feelings. As I track my feelings it becomes clear that depression looms underneath everything. The sad, overwhelming, heavy, dark depression is a constant. The depression makes it difficult to have normal feelings. I get that I am not the depression but it holds me down until I want to scream.

Even though I am afraid of it, I get curious about the depression. When I am depressed I experience my life as being right over there on the other side of the room—just out of reach. I have very little energy available to move or do anything. The sense of hopelessness is overpowering. Being alone and isolated feels both safe and unbearable. I start to recognize that my depression is not the same as the other kid’s “feeling down” that they can snap out of pretty easily. Every day I know with more certainty there is something wrong with me. I am overcome with shame.

I begin to wonder if the depression will ever lift. I experience my predicament similar to needing to find a way out of the temporary classroom. Only now I need to find a way out of the depression. I spend the rest of the school year separated from Mrs. Laswell and my classmates by a thick brick wall. I know my pain is visible. But why isn’t anyone helping me? It seems odd that no one notices or steps up to intervene. Sometimes I do things that are kind of off the wall just to see what kind of response people will have. As I suspect, I am punished for bad behavior without acknowledgement of where it’s coming from. I’m certain my sister knows I am struggling and my friends have a way of letting me know without words that they will still be there when I get through this. Other than that no one cares.

By the time 4th grade is over in May I have become a different child.

I slog through the summer but nothing improves. Our new school building opens at the beginning of fifth grade. Everyone is excited to see what it is like. I walk into my new classroom and am grateful the room is large with lots of light streaming in the windows. I am disappointed that I still feel discouraged and completely depressed. I sink further into it. I don’t talk at school through that entire year. I am miserable. On Saturdays at ballet lessons in Topeka and I refuse to use my arms while dancing on point. I am silently screaming for help. I stop caring.

When I go into 6th grade I am sick and tired of the depression. I know my body and brain still aren’t working. I am so sad and lonely. I make a conscious decision to talk and try to be part of my class, although I know this means faking it. I pretend to be okay even though I’m not.

I remember the moment when the chemicals in my brain come back into balance and the depression lifts. It is September and I am sitting in seventh grade English class. A heavy curtain lifts in my head is replaced with a buoyant lightness and all kinds of positive activity. I have energy again. I have found the way out! How did I get here in the first place? How did I get out? How can I stop it from happening again? These are urgent questions and I need answers...

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.

Pain Brain

For the last 3 months I have been in excruciating pain. It started one night when I woke up and my right leg hurt so much I could not walk. A trip to the emergency room unearthed nothing. The first orthopedic surgeon ordered an MRI at my insistence to determine what was going on. I was put off by his ageist, non-directive manner so I sought a second opinion.

The second orthopedic surgeon essentially told me there was nothing he could do. I understand now that in the orthopedic world that is code for “I can only do surgery to help you and I don’t think you are ready to hear that”. The discouragement when I went home after seeing him was difficult to bear.

The next fiasco was trying to get painkillers. A miscommunication with my PCD led to six weeks going without them. During this time my pain level was relentless and I was unable to concentrate, sleep or think. When my doctor and I finally sorted the situation out, I finally got painkillers. This helped about 50%. I was still in a lot of pain but the painkillers took the edge off.

A rheumatologist finally went over my MRI with a radiologist and told me my knee was very bad. A standing ex-ray had never been taken and needed to be to confirm the bad condition my knee was in. Her advice was to call the 2nd surgeon and make an appointment for surgery.

I tried this and the ball began rolling. The next day I was in his office with his assistant looking at bone-on-bone on a standing ex-ray. It was confirmed that a total knee replacement was appropriate for the date I had set.

Never have I been in so much pain for so long a time. Pain is an interesting teacher. It is relentless. It takes the upper hand and will not let you keep up with it. Trying to stay ahead of pain is all but impossible and once it has won its domination it stays triumphant.

Pain brain is an interesting phenomenon. There is no logic to it. There is only physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain. The different types of pain occupy the brain in varying ways. Sometimes only one aspect is active. At other times they can all fire off at the same time. This amount of pain is totally challenging and is something that can rarely be tolerated.

I tried everything to cope. Breathing helped temporarily. I was unable to concentrate so reading, creating, and all of my usual life was out of reach. My body hurt too much. Mental and emotional pain could be temporarily relieved for a few moments with meditation. Spiritually I was losing ground and I could feel my life force slipping away. I was depressed.

Depression is a familiar old friend. I have been dealing with it for years—but never in this way. The longer the pain went on the more I could barely hang on. I found the despair unbearable and felt it was going to be never-ending. I clung on to my sanity by my fingernails and tried as best I could to keep going. The life activities that had fed my soul and given me a tremendous vitality were gone. I felt as though I had abandoned myself and had been abandoned but had no energy to do anything about it.

What does Pain Brain feel like? There is an overlay of the feeling of being overwhelmed by physical pain. There is a strong sense of hopelessness and an ever-growing doubt that things will ever change. There is no vitality or life force and it takes all your energy just to walk across the room. Concentration is impossible. This makes reading, playing and writing music, doing anything creative, communication with others and thinking in general impossible. Pain Brain is all consuming, relentless and will not give up its domination. Doing anything takes all your energy and requires rest. Sleep is sporadic and challenging.

I feel as though I have missed the summer, a time when activities outside bring me so much fun and pleasure.  All of my energy has gone into the losing battle with my Pain Brain. I have lost. Over and over again I have watched myself dip deeper and deeper into oblivion.

I welcome the pain of having surgery because I know with that there is an end in sight. I feel edgy and on have no tolerance for the thought of more pain. I sense this in my everyday life. For instance, I will wait several days to go down the hall to get the mail, think hard about if I want to walk across the room to get something, welcome sleep when it comes and have given up on reading entirely. I need this to change.

I have a new respect and appreciation for people who live with debilitating pain all the time. I simply don’t know how they do it and realize now that Pain Brain’s domination fills many lives everyday. I do not know how they survive?

My surgery is coming up the last day of July. There is an end in sight. I will not have won the battle with Pain Brain but hopefully getting my life back will put it away for a very long time. I am not grateful for the pain. Perhaps I will never be. I feel as though I have learned nothing—other than I do not have any power when pain grips me so strongly. I have been cranky and whiney and feel betrayed by my body aging. I am hoping to regain some positive insight when this is all over. I’ll let you know.