- The smell was horrendous, like nothing I had encountered before. Almost a decade later I would smell it again while working in the operating room at the Naval Hospital, but at this time I had never smelled burnt flesh. I was speechless, stunned really, as I looked around the room. There were tiny pieces of flesh and bone scattered and stuck in a spray pattern across the wall. I offered to help clean it up, but he wouldn’t let me, and would bear that burden on his own. She was at the hospital then, recovering from her injuries. As I smelled the smell of spent gunpowder, I could still remember the sound it had made that night before. A loud bang, too loud for something to be heard inside. It had sounded like a gun, but at the time I couldn’t imagine why I would be hearing a gunshot. As I stood, frightened but preparing to investigate, she had come up the hall, with a bloody towel over her wrist. She managed to whisper, “It accidentally went off. The gun.” I sat her down, looking behind me to see if the little ones had been awakened. Thankfully they had not. I was unsure of what to do, so I tried to remain calm while fashioning a tourniquet from the little boy’s belt laying in the floor. Later, in the emergency room, she would swear to the questioning physician that it was an accident, that she had heard an intruder. We had to believe her. Only many years later would she admit the truth to me.
- The next generation. The sadness has been there, lurking in the shadows for as long as I can remember, threatening to overcome me. I tried taking my own life as early as eight years old. Thinking of it now, I’m not sure what kind of pressures I could have possibly been under, but at the time the sadness was so intense that I didn’t want to go on with it all. I never told my parents of my botched attempt, and somehow managed to keep the rope burn hidden from them until it faded away. I can recall feeling the melancholy take over me countless times over those developmental years. I remember simply wanting to sleep my time away, and having little interest in things around me, even food. I would periodically emerge and fight to get past the sadness that stole me, fight to be happy and get involved in life. I would for a time, but the dark times would always return. I started an antidepressant for the first time as a teenager, and tried out several different ones. I was once given the tentative diagnosis of bipolar disorder by a community health psychiatrist. He gave me a paper with orders for blood work to be taken at a local hospital, and orders to return after they resulted. I drove away with no intention of being told I was crazy. That was what I felt like, unstable, and didn’t want to know if it was true. I threw the order away and never returned. I went through cycles over the next decade, feeling sad, feeling good. When everything around me was good, then I was good. If things around me were bad, then I was really bad. The sadness never overtook me to the point of being unable to function at work or around others. It waited until I was alone, and then would fall on me like a building, crushing me into a sobbing wreck of a young woman.
- About four years ago I made a decision to taper myself off of my antidepressant. I had been on and off one for years and knew how to do it safely (in my opinion anyway). I didn’t like the fuzzy side effects, and the way it sometimes seemed to not only take away my sadness, but rob me of any emotion whatsoever. This isn’t a decision that is good for everyone. I have no prejudice against medication for illness, it’s just something I personally decided to do without. I’ve spent a lot of time in thought over the spirit of depression that tries to hover over my life. Is it a genetic predisposition? Likely so. Is it a generation curse, with there being an unseen war in the spiritual realm? I believe so. Can those generational curses be broken? I definitely think so. Is depression often situational? I believe so. Can I control all of these factors to ward it off? Not at all. I have made decisions over the past four years or so that I think help. I avoid depressant substances, even though I use to depend on them to chase the sadness away. (That never really worked as well as I thought it did). I began to cast my burdens on The Lord rather than bury them inside my head. When my situation in life changed, and I became a mother, leaving behind so many things that brought me down, I wasn’t suddenly cured, or free from that heavy spirit of defeating depression. On any given day, even now, out of no where, it can threaten me, falling on me like a heavy weight around my neck. I am able to recognize it immediately, and immediately launch into prayer, asking Jesus to take it from me. I do believe this helps me, but I can still sense the sadness there at the edges, waiting for a weak moment to slip back in. I persevere, but also with the knowledge that this is not something I have to bear alone. My God is with me, always, and that lessens the heaviness of the load. I’ve watched the cycles of sadness change, and become less and less. I believe in healing, and believe it in my life. I know trials will come, some I may not be ready to even think about, but I know He is with me, to comfort me, to guide me, to rescue me from any darkness that threatens to consume me. Some people may not be healed of depression completely until they enter the perfect peace of Heaven, even me in a way, but I have found it an easier burden to bear here on earth by placing it at His feet.
Psalm 40:1-3
1 I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear the Lord
and put their trust in him.
That is all 🙂
original image from katerawlings.com
Brie, you are so brave. And I know you know this, but you are not alone. (Sometimes we all need a reminder.) Depression can be as crippling as any physical ailment but harder to fight. That’s why the triumphs over it are so joyous. Thank you for putting this out there. Silence really is the enemy here.
Thank you so much for your kind comment. My hope is always that by baring my soul, others will be touched.