Tag: depression

Ooph

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[A head’s up, this post contains the subjects of womens health, mental health, depression, and passive suicidal ideation. If this is too much, feel free to skip and go listen to https://youtu.be/x2bd1zp_q6Y?si=TRB_f28QAZvKY8Jz]

I’ve been sick the last week with Covid. The bilateral hip pain, the fever, the inordinate amounts of sweating, the coughing and phlegm, you know, the symphony of the body’s response to an unwelcome guest–all of it fairly typical. I was sick in February, too, but the difference between these two bouts is night and day. In February, I felt like I deserved to be sick, like I wasn’t good and what was the point in getting better. This time, I felt like I can’t wait to get better and go hang out with my friends, do house projects, have the energy to paint and create. Similar physical symptoms, polar opposite mental and emotional symptoms. Why should this be? Well let me tell you a little story…

Last summer, I decided to get the Mirena IUD. There are lots of reasons for such a decision and this post will be plenty vulnerable and intimate I don’t need to go into that too. Just know, that at the time, it seemed like a good course of action for me. Over the next nine months, I would discover that it was a horrendous match for me. If you’ve been following along here, you’ll remember I had a particularly hard winter and didn’t know why. The response to being sick in February was disproportionate and not my customary reaction to illness.

Since last September, my emotional responses to life circumstances swung wide and wild. Emotional lability is a nice way to describe what felt like hell. I wanted to escape the feelings, the world, myself. It was untenable. The parts of me that developed in chaos in childhood started to take over during the uncertainty. I began to invent things to worry about. Do I have throat cancer? Am I dying? Seriously, chronic intrusive thoughts became ever present. If I have throat cancer and am dying, do I deserve it? What do I need to do to be ready? Make a to do list, Becci.

While all of this was happening, I ended one job and started another. I did house projects. I continued to visit friends and family. I sought solace in art and music and the routine of every-day living. I was also proactive in trying to figure out what was happening. Urgent care visits. Primary care physician visits. Blood draws. Tests. Anti-depressant prescription. Exam room tears. Pleas for help. Calls to my sister who helped me map out when the worst of the intrusive thoughts would happen. Monthly, it so happened. Right around my cycle, to be specific–that’s when the lies in my brain would be the loudest. It’s scary to have thoughts that are so outside the norm to become daily, hourly, common.

Many women have success with the Mirena IUD. They rejoice in no periods. The simplicity of it. 10 years and nothing to worry about in terms of buying feminine hygiene products or worrying about pregnancy. That sounded amazing to me. About 5-7% of women who have used this form of birth control self-report depressive episodes, depression, and worse. Guess who fell into that percentage? This gal. The anti-depressant helped, but the thoughts still came right before my period. At the follow-up to check how the anti-depressant was doing, I explained that I wondered if I should get the IUD out and see if that would help. We schedule the removal and got the sucker out. Within one week I felt more like myself than I had in nine months. It was that quick. I have had loss, heartache, emotional highs and lows this summer subsequent to its removal and the emotional response has been more in line with me, with my personality. Yes, I’m heartbroken, sad, joyful, elated, relieved, the gamut of the human experience minus one thing–I don’t want to die.

What’s the point in telling all this? Being so vulnerable about something so terrible? A friend of mine recently told me my writing gave him space to write and communicate his own thoughts and feelings after a tragic loss. If this post can shed light on something someone else is grappling with and help them fight through it to the other side, then my nine months of agony and understanding it afterward will have been well worth it. Friends, if your body and brain are not behaving like you know they should, don’t stop fighting for yourself. You are your own best advocate for your health, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. Many of my peers are navigating perimenopause and menopause. The shifts in hormones have a lot of these similar effects. There is the right thing for you. Whether its HRT, diet changes, exercise changes, a move to the seaside or the Kentucky bluegrass, keep searching until you find it. We need all of you here to navigate this world. We need your questions and your curiosity. We need your humor and your insight. We need your problem-solving and creativity. We need your light, your joy, your love. Don’t go. Keep fighting through it. You’re worth it.

You

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It is very easy to go dark, dark in thoughts, dark in attitudes, dark in words. The pull is strong. In this place, self-doubt, anxiety, worry, heartache, shame, all bubble up. I’m no stranger to this place. I’ve not just been a tourist there; I’ve taken up residence there. It’s not my favorite place to live. Usually, I fight like hell to get out and stay far away from it. One of the constant refrains on the loudspeaker in this place is the lie that those feelings are deserved, earned. Self-worth is questioned. Purpose is ridiculed. I write this as a love letter to anyone who has been in this place and to myself, too…

One of the things I love most about my time working at a liberal arts college is the emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. How there are things to gather from diverse places to create a more rounded out picture. Its a way of thinking that I dabble in and enjoy quite a bit. Recently, I had dinner with a dear childhood friend. We talked about a number of things not the least of which were our respective preferred art forms–writing for him, painting for me. We all have a voice to share and our internal editors can hamper it. Living in that dark place can also hamper it. I recalled a song from our childhood–“This Little Light of Mine.” As much as the modern world would like to say we’re all the same and not special or unique, I would disagree. Are we better than? No. But do we have things unique to ourselves to offer the world. Absolutely. And I believe the purpose of this life is to connect with others, to weave bonds of life–thought and emotion–and ultimately to love. We do this with our own “little lights.”

My husband was a big fan of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Their music featured largely in our home. It’s not lost on me the humor and delight that countercultural music from the 1960s would echo a sentiment from my Sabbath School class. “I Almost Cut My Hair” has a line “I feel like letting my freak flag fly” and later “I feel like I owe it to someone.” By being you, you give space for others to be themselves. “Hiding it under a bushell (aka large basket)” serves no one, not you, not the greater world.

Whether you believe in a Divine entity who created us or that we are the product of minute changes over millenia–stardust that has become self-aware–or some combination thereof, the end result is we’re here now and that fact is pretty damned amazing. And that we won’t be for very long means there’s no cutting corners, or skimping, or hiding under a bushel. Your “muchness” (thank you Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland), my “muchness”, are desperately needed, for connection, for the sake of all. You are worthy. You have purpose. Bad things and feelings are just part and parcel to a rich life full of every facet of the human experience. Your little light, your freak flag, your muchness are your superpowers and we need them.