“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced … it is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different”.

J.K. Rowling

It wasn’t until after Madison was born, my marriage was dissolving and I was questioning what kind of Mother I was when I started to figure it out. I began talking to Source again and asking for guidance. I hadn’t asked for spiritual help since my childhood. I also started counseling because I was driven to become the best mother I could be. I was desperate to be for Madison what my mother never was to me … a source of unconditional love and kindness.

One day, in one of my first sessions with my Counselor, I shared with her my life story. Feelings were still uncomfortable for me, but I excelled at being able to live from my mind and answer all of her questions in a rational and logical way. Being an emotional empath, she saw through my mental bullshit, knew my emotions, and told me that I was clinically depressed. And probably had been for years. WHAT?! ME, DEPRESSED? Believe it or not, I thought that couldn’t be possible given the fact that I was successful in my full-time career and raising my toddler as a single mother. Depressed people don’t function normally…

Obviously, I knew very little about what clinical depression was and how it appeared in people’s lives. And then she calmly stated that I would benefit from anti-depressant medication WHAT?! ME? I considered myself a strong person and I had those stereotypical beliefs about medications for mental disorders. I could certainly learn to heal on my own, without meds, thank you very much! She agreed with my ‘logic’, adding that I could probably heal myself with intensive counseling, and time … lots of time. But I knew I didn’t have that time. What I had was a precious life entrusted to my keeping and I needed to heal now.

I also had another sense of urgency attached to this decision that I’d like to share. At the same point in time, one of my sisters was in the hospital in liver and kidney failure. It was due to alcohol that she was consuming in private and I never even knew about it. Her Doctor had run some tests after she complained of flu-like symptoms, and he called me to tell me to get her to the hospital asap. We didn’t know if she was going to live or die. My other sister was in treatment for breast cancer. When she came to the hospital to show her support, a nurse gave her a plastic basin while she was throwing up her brokenness from the chemo treatment … while sitting in a chair next to my sister’s bed. My final and other sister was living with her family in another state suffering from active alcohol abuse. I remember being in the hospital room, walking over to the window and thinking to myself, “Leigh ~ if you don’t get some help, you’re going to end up just like them”. I loved them but did not want to live their lives.

So, I agreed with my Counselor to try an anti-depressant medication. I tried two before I decided on a third one. There are a myriad of anti-depressant meds on the market, affecting the body in different ways. The goal is to find the one that works for you. The first two meds left me feeling lethargic and zombie-like … not a good combination for raising a toddler and working full-time. But the third one, Wellbutrin, was a gift to me. It was simply an amazing feeling. For the first two weeks on the medication, I felt a burst of energy and it almost scared me. I had become so comfortable with ‘fatigue’ for the past 15 years. I remember calling a friend, an excellent Physician Assistant, and asking him if it was okay to take this drug since it made me feel almost ‘high’. He laughed and said, ‘Leigh ~ that’s just telling me that it’s working and that you need it”!

I must say that my depression has been a beautifully tortuous journey. Without this experience, I possibly could have lived an extremely sad life and passed that legacy on to my daughter. It’s led me from the brink of a demented reality to a choice to heal into wholeness. I now embrace all my emotions, for I now know that I am the one who labels them ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I am the one who reflects upon the gifts they bestow and all the inherent lessons I learn. I am the one who is grateful for feeling them all. And most of all, I am the one who loves my daughter with unconditional kindness.

“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced … it is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different”.

…J.K. Rowling

I wasn’t born depressed. For me, depression was a gradual descent that took years to mature, until one day life suddenly went dark. I was born full of light and love. I was a joyful and curious child, full of active energy and constantly in motion. I may have been petite, but I certainly packed a punch! I was curious about the world asking endless questions, experimenting fearlessly, and spending many hours laying outside in stillness and repose wondering about the vastness of the universe.

I loved myself. I really truly loved myself. And in the beginning I fought for the validity of my emotions and the conviction of my thoughts.

I suppose my parents had other ideas for who I should be. They found my energy draining and told me that I needed to learn how to be quiet. They told me that I was a selfish and conceited girl for loving myself. They told me that ‘I was a bad girl’, and impressed upon me that my thoughts and feelings were not that special. Oh … and that I wasn’t that smart … my older sisters had the higher I.Q.’s … they said. There were better girls than me out there and that I should be more like them … they said.

I remember seeking refuge and love by being with my dogs. I hugged them tightly, cried mercilessly to them, and had them hold my heart as it slowly started to break. I also remember that I spent a great deal of time outdoors in nature. I found solace in the stillness and loving balance of the earth, and would talk to and ask questions of Source, and that would comfort me.

I discovered that being alone was less painful than trying to make my family love me. The majority of the time, I just never felt their unconditional acceptance of me. Then my self-doubt started to seep in and enticed me to start believing that maybe they were right about me.

Over the years, and at about middle-school age, I developed such low self-worth that I felt no one else would be able to love me since I had so little to offer. Inside my soul, I felt completely worthless every day. I had little joy or sense of adventure. I knew I wasn’t fun anymore. In order to cope and appear ‘normal’, I learned to live vicariously through my friend’s gaiety. Yet, the pretense required copious amounts of energy on my part. My emotions, any emotions, were becoming more and more elusive.

I discovered that the most comfortable panacea for my unbearable sadness was sleep. I would enter into an emptiness where I could estrange myself from humanity and be surrounded by a sense of peace. I slept a lot! I would claim fatigue to get out of social engagements. I would go to sleep when I was bored. I would sleep when it was raining. I would sleep after an argument with anyone. It was easy to sleep away my life. I conditioned my body so well, that I still struggle with fatigue and the desire for sleep. But the difference today is that I make sure I sleep to dream and not to escape my life.

So, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ thought she had found a tolerable answer to her sadness by slipping into a peaceful place of emptiness. She/I couldn’t have been more wrong. The emptiness was like immersing myself in a sea of blackness. While it was washing me clean of all my sadness, it was also sucking all my emotions into its abyss. My soul sunk slowly into the nothingness. It was a silent, deep and dangerous fall. And one day I woke up and felt a complete absence of feeling, absence of interest and absence of response.

I unknowingly was in the throes of depression and went on living my life. At this point I just accepted the fact that I was different from everyone else. I imagined all people being this beautiful earth, while I was a small grey planet orbiting around the earth in the darkness. Very separate and not a part of the whole.

I went on living like this for years. And then I met and married Madison’s Dad. He was truly the first person who ever showed me unconditional love. He gave me a sense of hope that I could be a woman worthy of feeling deep love and joy. What I didn’t understand at that time was that I needed to learn to love myself again before my true healing would occur.

… TO BE CONTINUED