By Dina Moon
I suffer with depression. Or, do I? At some points in my life, I have certainly been accused, by medical personnel and my own family, of being a depressed person. They say things like, “There is no joy in your life anymore. We miss the audacious you who had the world by a lasso. What happened to the woman who wanted more out of life?” Yikes. That certainly sounds like things one would say to a depressed person. Is that who I am now? Am I a joyless woman with no aspirations for her life? Hear me out, because I think this could be true. However, I think it could be okay.
Now, here is the disclaimer part of this tale. Just because I consider myself a brilliant diagnostician does not mean you should attempt to do the same. In fact, please don’t. There are far more qualified folks out there who can administer tests and have fluffy sofas for you to recline upon as you tell them all the nuances of your days here on earth. They are chock full of recommendations, accommodations, and medications that can put you back on that ole road to joy. I have utilized them myself from time to time. You could say these professionals taught me how to deal with myself in a kinder fashion, kid gloves included. Go. See. Them. Now, on with the story.
1 Corinthians is absolutely brimming with sound advice. I first heard this passage in a movie. I know. I know. It’s just that I was Catholic at the time. I am sure there are amazing people of the Catholic faith that do read the Bible – like, all the time. Also, like me, back then, there are lots of them that use the ideology of “if you come to Mass every Sunday, you’ll cover the entire Bible in a calendar year.” That is how I found myself at the age of 27, learning Bible phrases while watching Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral. During one of the wedding scenes, a very inebriated man, presumably the best man – and a Brit, at that – recited 1 Corinthians 13:11. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” I recall feeling like I’d been hit upside the head with the very Bible he was reading from.
Once, at a doctor appointment not very long after my daughter passed away, I told a family doc that I wanted to drive my car off a bridge. She looked alarmed. I quickly followed up with the declaration that I had no intention of doing so. In fact, I am terrified of heights. Those were just the only words I had to explain my despair. One 20-page questionnaire later, I was diagnosed with ADHD and offered Adderall. I declined. Another time, years earlier, I was placed on medication to balance my hormones due to some perimenopausal symptoms. It was a form of birth control. Again, the need to explain my desire to vacate a bridge, also followed by the explanation that I would never in a million years do anything of that nature. Even as recent as a few years ago, I explained the same sensation to a therapist, via a Zoom call. She hit a nail that medical doctors had been blindly hammering near for years. Her question to me was simple. “Why do you feel you should be immune from suffering? Two things can be true at the same time. Life can suck. You can change how you find joy, both in where it is found and in the time parameters that it lasts.”
I get super sad sometimes. Once, that made me feel like a circus sideshow. The death of a child followed by a gnarly cancer diagnosis does make you feel like you’ve been placed in a cage in your front yard where everyone can drive by and take a gander at you. What you don’t understand at the time, especially if something happens to you when you’re relatively young, is everyone will catch up to you…soon. Where I was once the only person I knew going through that type of suffering, now I don’t know anyone who hasn’t gone through something similar. I just read a study that surmised 1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime. Basically, that’s everyone. I don’t do math. And, while I pray no one who reads this will lose a child, all my friends of my similar age are learning what life without parents looks like. My lonely boat is starting to look like a Carnival cruise.
I’m not a child anymore. I may seem joyless or sad. At times, I am. I deserve that right. I’m not watching my daughter’s children grow up. I have someone working on my old house doors today – a job that should be my father’s. I can’t call my mom to ask her for one more tutorial on that coconut cream pie. I just held my father-in-law’s hand while he took his last breath. But here’s the important part. Don’t miss this. The fact that I am still here in this world, daring to smile, laughing until my 57-year-old bladder threatens to bust, rescuing cats, and loving grandchildren – this makes me wildly audacious. I’m not depressed. I’m just real.
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