introducing myself

Wildcat, I know what it is to "want a life and serenity". I had a corporate job in Contracts but i couldn't carry the two 25 lb contract bags around Europe because of arthritis in my ankles. This was before laptops. I drank to combat the pain. I was hungover. I took painkillers and got fuzzy-brained. I got MDD big-time and dropped out of the life of suits and skills andbig salary. I wanted to 'be' too. I took a disability pension and walked. Marriage broke down. I stopped drinking and started reading up on how to achieve tranquility in my life. I lived alone for the next 15 years or so and practised 'emptying my head of thought' like it advises in the books on zen. Didn't work at first but i persevered (what else did I have to do since I was retired and eating rice as a staple?!)and I chanted in my head as I drove on weekends to see my sister (100 klms each way) and I did get glimpses at "the jewel at the heart of the lotus" ( Namu Myo Ho Renge Kyo - Namoo Me yoh Ho Rengay Key oh - sort of!) and it relaxed me and stopped me grinding my teeth and helped me to deal with my pain and lonliness and depression. I bought (after much searching) tapes (DVDs now) of Tibetan monks chanting and played them with my earphones stuffed in to my ears. And I got lost for hours in the low thrumming and humming of these monks, softly and deeply, repeating the word "Om". That's all, just "Ommmmmmmm" over and over and I'd hum along with them (quietly, not to freak out the neighbours!) and, somehow, "be" with them a little bit for a little while. At One with them, maybe. Sometimes i forget to do that because of the speed of family life now. Thanks for bringing up the question of seeking serenity, Wildcat. You're 34 now and this is the beginning of a new chapter in your life. Make the changes that you have to make. make yourself the most important thing to 'fix' in your life. Take yourself VERY seriously. Love yourself enough to be able to give away some love. Patrick

It's More than Okay to be Selfish

I'm seeing a pattern here where people are posting really well and often but there's a tendency to apologise because you think that you're being selfish and that your illness doesn'tdeserve time and patience from either you or your loved ones. What is this? You're hiding your tears, you're locking yourselves in your rooms, you're not saying what's wrong with you to your husbands (spouses) ad you're not getting pissed when people tell you to "pull your socks up" "Man up", "Get over yourself" "Stop pitying yourself" and all the other put downs that spouses and friends and family can throw at you. Get selfish! Turn it around in your head: would you threaten to take a hike if your husband started whinging and whining because he was coughing and spluttering from bronchitis and still insisted on smoking cigarettes?? It's frustrating and not smart but we don't threaten to split because we have been annoyed three days in a row by ill-advised behaviour. We marry for love and friendship and we get sick and we help each other over the illnesses that come along. We don't sign pre-nuptials that exclude future responsibility for depression or quadraplegia in a spouse! We expect blind and/or deaf people to cope with the world and learn skills to get around their disabilities. There are adults, men and women, going blind right now who are having to deal with the depression and the need to learn skills to deal with a senior-life without sight or hearing. That's concrete, isn't it. "Hey, she's going blind, it's okay for her to be a "burden"." Well, there's no need to feel 'inferior' just because you are MDD and need more love and attention from your spouse and families. It is an illness. We are ill. We have remissions, we can get those remissions from medications: we are not cured (if we are chronic MDD-ers)and the pain and the suffering will come again. We are not to be kicked to the kerb because our spouses don't 'get it'! They must educate themselves about the condition. It's part of being married. Okay. I will admit this. I was aware (diagnosed) of my illness-MDD in my mid-forties and I lived alone after the collapse of my marriage for a long time. When I was stabilised and 'ready' for a relationship I made sure that my more-than-a-few-dates girlfriends knew up front that I suffered from MDD and that I was still learning to cope with the thing. Nobody got into a lasting thing with me without knowing full well about my depressive nature. Now, some of you have developed MDD AFTER you married and that can be a shock for your spouses but I still feel that they should be the ones to "man up" and understand what MDD is really all about. It's not the "blues", it's not self-pity, it's a chemical imbalance problem that doesn't get fixed like you fix the fan belt in your car. I know that, for most of you, this is unsophisticated stuff here. But we get like children when we lose the seratonin and tumble into the abyss. We lose perspective and blame ourselves for being "bad". We apologise for being "bad". We are afraid to lose the love but we can't keep hiding and pretending; depression doesn't cooperate with us and let us off like we had a cold for 5 days sort-of-thing. We deserve to be understood by our loved ones. Screw all that shame and guilt and embarrassment an all the other medieval emotions we conjure up to bash ourselves to death when we manifest depression. Don't you expect to hold up your spouse when he falls? Don't you expect him to hold you up when you fall into depression? It's your right in a marriage to demand that very real and necessary aspect of love. I'm prompted to write this diatribe because I see 99% of depressives on here are women and married women to boot and I would be ashamed to be the husband of a woman with depression and have the bad balls to say "Jeez

It's More than Okay to be Selfish

(Continued from below) ...the bad balls to say "Jeez, I can't take this anymore, Mary! I'm going to leave you because you're making my life difficult." We didn't sign pre-nuptials to exclude future depression or quadraplegia in our spouses. It's part of commitment, part of marriage. It is a framework of love. Don't be afraid to be "selfish". Enough of this shame and guilt and embarrassment. if your spouse is that crumbly at the edges maybe you need to think about why you're still with him. If he really thinks you're just a "drama queen" then he doesn't see you at all. He is seeing women as cardboard cut-outs with a role. What you need is a friend and companion and if he can't be tht then you'll be wise to re-think it all.

taking care of myself

Wildcat, Just sounds like you're doing what you have to do to stay cool. Only you can say if you're in need of that laid back day to yourself. Good for you. I hope you enjoy the whole day.

whats the point

Hi everyone, Nullpointer has brought me up short and pointed out a major deficit in my 'advice' to the problem of How to pay for Hospitalization? It is thoughtless of me to assume that everyone here lives in a universal health care country. Sorry. Even here in South Africa there is universal health care but, like the scaredy-cat I am, I prefer to drop $350 per month on health insurance so I can go to a 'private' clinic when I get kidney stones or twenty-year-old staples rising out of the bones in my foot and causing infection. In defence of my glibness I can tell you that I once was broke once about 30 yrs ago but I had a water colour that my grandfather has willed to me and which was valued at $2000 (yes, I found out later that it was worth three times that...)and, with tears and shame, I sold it to buy a banger-car so i could go look for a job and eat pork chops and Boston lettuce for a few days. Not everybody has a valuable item to sell to save one's life but that was like selling a kidney to get rid of that water colour - my only remaining memento of a beautiful old curmudgeon. Point is it saved me from an even faster slide into the abyss. It's a 'hook or by crook' kind of choice; your life is way more important than the decorations, the symbols you have around you. I see these self-decided interventions (drug rehab, chronic pain rehab, psychiatric 'vacation')as having been quintessential to making it through. Even now, if the crap hits my fan again, I would not be above researching charitable organizations for financial help. Again, this is a mindset peculiar to me, I suppose, maybe pride is more important than the way I see it...

whats the point

Rosie and Gabs Hello Rosie. Welcome to the site and thanks for posting right away. I really wanted to congratulate you on dumping the abusive partner-person-thing. It takes plenty of time to get back to 'normal' after years of wrongness so take your time. Rejoice in the fact that it's ended now and you're not being assailed everyday by Oberleutenant Crabface's inadequacies and insecurities. Doesn't it feel good-great not to have to listen to him and his twisted crap anymore? You love your daughter and you will live to the full your own life now because that's what she needs to see and learn from so she can become an engaged-life-lover. Read some Marvell to her! Read Donne to yourself. They wove blankets at great personal expense to wrap around the world; greatest thing for your shock and trauma. It also takes months to get over anaesthesia for some people. Take your time and breathe slowly and deeply - deliberately. Talk about your days to us as stuff happens; it's all important stuff and we know what it means. Let the Effexor kick in - it works well. Gabs, Hi! What do you think is happening when you 'disappear' over your cup of tea for an hour or two? Your body/mind is telling you to stop thinking and take a vacation. It takes supreme strength to always be "on". Let your mind take off for a while. Suffering deep physical, chronic pain as well as dealing with the abyss is a tall order; it is physically and mentally exhausting to be in pain and depressed at the same time; don't forget the morphine. Since you're on medication for chronic pain you have to expect the natural withdrawal symptoms when you miss the next dose. The thing about Effexor is that it perks you up and some people may be too 'perky' to settle into a soft sleeping habit until they're used to it. Ask your doctor about taking low doses of Trazadone to get a good night's sleep.It's largely an anti-depressant with soporific overtones. I only take it when I really mess up my circadian rhythm by reading all night or watching meerkats chasing centipedes on the telly all night. I hope you got some relief today from your hospital visit? How did it go? I know the anxiety of hoping against hope that your doctor will understand that you are walking a tightrope and come up with some sympathy/support - anything to indicate that you're not just another 'fee' coming in and going out... oxo

Go ahead and say something

Hello all you new members that I see listed on the Home page each day. I tried for hours this morning to access the site but couldn't get on. Very frustrating , especially when I see three names of new members who are just looking and reading and probably wondering how it would be if they posted something, anything on the site here. Please just go ahead and talk to us. We understand the need to vent AND the need/inability to say anything. Just say Hello. Let us know that you're there and living through it all... Thanks Patrick

children

Wildcat, Calme toi! When my mother called me "Stupid!" I was hurt and ashamed and guilty for doing something 'bad' and 'stupid' but I knew in my heart that I was NOT stupid, that that was just her way of trying to bring me up short and look at my selfish behaviour. It worked. In those days parents didn't apologise to their children for saying harsh things to them but nowadays we know that it's right and respectful to say 'sorry' to them and to explain why it was that we got mad at them. Even at 4 yrs your daughter can see very clearly that you are tired and frustrated and sad and that you need to be left quietly; the fact that kids don't act accordingly is why we let them live and learn. What you said is the kind of thing that she may remember one day when she's older and laugh about "... and Maman said to me 'If you don't like me then go and shop for another Maman' and at the time I was shocked but then I understood that she was at the end of her rope ... she's a funny lady!" There's obviously nothing wrong with your daughter at 4 yrs if she can express regret and apologise for having hurt you with her demanding ways?! like the counsellors say here " Don't be too hard on yourself!" Stuff happens and it's family stuff and not an indictable offence under the Childrens'Act! Don't you know that your son is a way clever boy too? So much so that he stays calm and attentive to you when he sees how you are hurting and yet coping very well with his little sister. Tell him that you love him when you two are alone for a minute. And tell your husband to invite him up to watch the hockey with him - cold or no cold. I think your subconscious will tell you that you are a good mother and a very human one too.

Go ahead and say something

Just me, Hello, and thanks for posting and telling us about yourself and the crap you're going through right now. We understand and want to help. The work situation is tough for you but I do think that it is okay for you to explain to your family and friends what is going on with you and that depression is not like having a case of the sniffles. It is a debilitating mental problem and you are working to deal with it by using medication and your will to be happy. Happy comes in small doses - aren't you satisfied and proud of yourself because you're dealing with a major personal problem? You should be. You're brave and you know that you have to struggle to make your life easier. The "happy face" can do you a disservice when what you really need to do is articulate the pain that you feel to your friends - help them understand that you not trying to 'bring them down' but that you need their help and sympathy Talk to us some more

Go ahead and say something

Just me, what the counsellor says is the best thing for you. Divide your time on this site between the Support Group and taking small doses of the Sessions - I know it's hard sometimes to 'work it' and that it seems more satisfying to talk and read with the members than it is to apply the lessons of the Session. I could take my own advice and keep moving in the Sessions but, you know, I really need the members and their thoughts during this difficult time I'm going through right now with moving back to Canada from South Africa and being without my wife for maybe 6 months to a year while she waits for Resident Status papers from the Canadian Government.