Tag Archives: depression

The Winter of My Discontent

Winter is always a difficult season for me. It is a season of dormancy, and with the onset of shorter days and greyer skies a vital part of me seems to go into hibernation. The upside of winter, though, is that it always ends, so I have come to view winter as a time of waiting. Winter tempts me to contemplate its brighter cousins, and to believe that by March or April life will change. Transformation will come, and not just to the world outside, but to the inside of me as well.

This past winter something tripped me up. Nothing terrible happened; I just lost myself.

Nothing terrible happened. Here lies the shameful underbelly of my depression, that a person so perfectly blessed as I am could be tripped up by something so dark, so unexpected, and find no way to make sense out of it. I am like a thirsty person who finds only muddy water in her glass. I know my condition; I just have no clean water to drink. All around me others are fine, but the water in my glass is filthy and I just keep picking it up and putting it down again without drinking.

I have been unable to write this winter. As a writer, I’m a creature of reflection but some experiences take all your resources, leaving nothing in reserve for reflection; all is thrown in for the fight. I became a selfish schlub of a person this winter. In an effort to just feel better I surrendered to my lower urges, and became content to harbor a slew of petty resentments and serial disappointments. Winter has passed and, like scales, the residue of my self preservation hangs from me, ugly, uncomfortable, and alien to the core. I am emerging from this winter like a caterpillar that didn’t receive the cocoon instruction manual. Not only have I failed to become a butterfly, but I am no longer even a particularly appealing caterpillar.

What was this winter for, I wonder, other than to show me my own darkness?

I used to joke that it’s a good day if I’m alive at the end of it, but then I lost my sense of humor. That’s what the sleep of exhaustion is for, for the blanking out of the day that leaves nothing good except the fact that another one just like it will be waiting for you in the morning. Now I see that it can be a good day but I have no senses left to know it. And just because I don’t understand what a season has been for, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been for something.

So I wait, and in the waiting, my personal winter goes on.

Still No Room at the Inn

A different kind of Christmas story, but some of the characters feel the same. There’s a fourteen year old girl. She’s not pregnant, but she carries a heavy load. There are shepherds scattered throughout this tale, a high school principal, a guidance counselor, a police officer, keeping watch. Like the original story, a journey must be made, lodging and assistance is required and time is of the essence, but the innkeeper in this story is not a busy, distracted hotelier. It is an overwhelmed and completely impersonal mental health system.

Zero in on the setting for this drama- not a crowded, filthy stable, but an empty, windowless cell in the psychiatric lockdown unit of a suburban ER. No manger for a bed, rather a two inch thick vinyl covered mat on a bare tile floor. There are shepherds here also. They wear military type uniforms. They confiscate and lock up your possessions, show you the stance you are to take as you are “wanded” for contraband, and control the door in and out of the unit, in and out of your cell, a door with no handle on your side. They are just doing their job. Our fourteen year old young lady, scared and confused, bears her load with grace and dignity and waits for help.

Like the stable on that long ago night, the lockdown is crowded. Neighbors arrive on stretchers, in handcuffs, sometimes other restraints. They bring their people, just like our young lady brought you. We make a strange little collective, a collage of humanity, the dazed, the raging, the profane, the apologetic, the apathetic, and the sad. The sensory deprivation of the cell, the brightness of the light, the lack of information about what to expect, what to hope for, tests you.

A bed in one of three in-patient units in the city… that’s what you wait for, but like the original Christmas day, you are in a crowded city teeming with activity. Information is fed to you in little scraps sandwiched between thick slabs of boredom spent waiting for more little scraps until you feel like a lab rat staring at your door, listening to conversations in the hallway, watching the activity that passes by. With no clocks anywhere, time doesn’t pass so much as pause. The challenge for a fourteen year old in such a place is to keep her humor sharpened, to wield it defensively as needed, and sometimes to flatten it like a shield across her heart when the impossible looms.

Unlike our young lady, you are allowed to exit the lockdown and re-enter the larger world. When you do, the contrast is unsettling. It is December and all the world is planning a party. Swags of evergreen and twinkle lights drape the hospital doorways. The halls are swarming with cheerful ladies in green jackets selling cakes, cookies, wreaths. Tables are lined up featuring jewelry, bobbles, handmade crafts from around the world. You can barely navigate through the common areas. Even in the hospital, people are shopping.

A wise man finds his way to our girl’s cell, a pediatrician. He is kind, and gentle, but he cannot provide a bed at an in-patient unit. Another wise man, a psychologist bearing gifts, recommends two books to read when our fourteen year old returns home. He is apologetic that he cannot find a room at the in-patient unit.

A day, a night, a day.

It is Christmas in America, and I am looking everywhere for Jesus.

Maybe Christmas is just a holiday for happy people. Maybe the way we celebrate Christmas, the commotion, the gift buying and giving, the lights, the music, the hype and expectation of it all does nothing to invite the sad, the discouraged, the frightened, the lonely. A crowded church full of joyous, well-dressed people singing familiar songs does not automatically banish the demons that prey on the downtrodden. Nothing about a brightly lit tree or a house full of relatives can fill an empty heart. No gift that comes in a box or a bag will make up for returning home to a broken life at the end of the day.

A fourteen year old wakes up on a December morning and isn’t certain she can make it through the day without hurting herself, but like the young woman in Bethlehem whose baby comes early into an overcrowded world, there is no room at the inn for her. It’s a different kind of Christmas story, but it’s the one I lived this past week.