VISIBLE CHANGES

For the past week, every afternoon, my designated "helper" at work has been coming in asking me about the holidays. He wants to know if I am ready for Christmas, for Thanksgiving, and I still can't even get my head around Halloween. Plus, I have been unusually disinterested in conversation, period.

This day, he is shelling peanuts and popping them in his mouth as he brings up Thanksgiving again. He asks me what my plans are. I tell him about how Halloween is (tomorrow! yikes!) coming up, and I have a big old box of Halloween decorations that I never even got out of the garage.

"I guess I just don't have the holiday spirit this year," I say.

"It's because you're sad," he says. I open my mouth to protest, but he waves his hand at me.

"You don't have to say anything," he says, "I know you are sad. I can see it in your eyes."

Then I realize how utterly transparent I am. Sometimes I think I am so tough, and I keep up this image that I am happy-go-lucky, smiling at my other coworkers and laughing with them, but just before my helper came in, I was fighting back tears and a dark feeling of hopelessness.

The other day, my best friend had to come over to borrow my shower. We were standing by my fridge and she is looking at the various papers and pictures I have hanging there. I point to the flyer for a 5K race coming up in a little over two weeks time.

"That's the race I was training for, " I told her.

"I know. You've been talking about it. What, you aren't going to do it now?"

"I don't even know if I can run a 5K now. I haven't been running in over three weeks."

"Why not?" Hmm. I haven't thought about how I would answer that question to someone else.

"I've only wanted to sleep the past few weeks. I haven't wanted to do anything but sleep."

She looks at me funny. "Oh, I feel like that too, sometimes." But she seems like she doesn't believe me.

There was a client of mine once at the veterinary hospital who was young and beautiful and lived with her handsome husband in a nice house. She was a stay at home wife, no kids. That in itself surprised me - why wouldn't you work? Then again, I find my life's purpose when I work, and not everyone is like that. Some have other purposes. Anyway, one day she and I were kind of talking about it, the whole not working. She told me that sometimes, sometimes meaning "often", she couldn't get out of bed because she was so depressed. She would stay in her pajamas all day under the covers. I thought that sounded like a luxury. I do not have the luxury to be depressed. I have two little boys and two big dogs and one big ol' man to take care of. It's go time, all the time.

About a year after this conversation, the couple missed a vet appointment. When the receptionist (Genea) called them, the husband told her that his wife had been found dead the night before. She was found in the ritzy neighborhood where she did housesitting. He became concerned when he hadn't heard from her before she went to bed, so he went to the residence and found her drowned in the swimming pool. No one was sure how she ended up that way. "She never mentioned going swimming....

Around this time, I had been very sad myself. I left the clinic for a lunchtime appointment with my therapist and ended up being held against my will in the psych clinic. My therapist said I could not go home without a prescription for different antidepressants and we had to wait for the psychiatrist to visit with me. "It's either that or I put you in a hospital," he said. I was supposed to be back at work and had to call and tell them I was held up. All this because I answered the questions "do you ever think about hurting yourself?" and "do you ever think about suicide?" honestly, which in retrospect I shouldn't have, because it was not relevant. I used to hurt myself when I was younger, and suicide fantasies are just par for the course, but I would never actually do anything like that, because of my children and my faith.

Now I don't want the medications that simply numb you. I don't believe in their diagnosis, but I do understand that I am usually at a lower plane, in terms of happy, than most people, and so my lows are way-lows. It dips down below normal. A couple of weeks from now, I'll be my bright shining self again. There is always hope, and things always find a way of turning around. I've been to the lowest of places, but I have always come back around, an old pro at turning the tides of these moods.

I leave my office, trying to be composed. A recently hired supervisor greets me, then puts his hand on my shouder, and looks me in the eye. "Are you okay?" he asks. I nod yes, but tears well up in the corners of my eyes. "Do you want to talk?" he asks, and I shake my head no and just smile at him, trying to fight back tears.
"Let's pray", he says, and together we bow our heads as he leads us in prayer, "Lord, hold up our sister with your strength and grace..." his arm on my shoulder, our hearts uplifted to God.

And I felt better, that day. There will be more days like that to come.