My Story- Depression Introduces Its Self to Me While Tree Planting...

Me, Depressed in my early 2o's

Last post, I touched on my formative years and my foray into self abuse and alcoholism.

Tonight's post will be equally uncomfortable for me to write about, because this "condition" has stolen so much from me and I have yet to make peace with it and appreciate its presence in my life.

I even hate the word…D E P R E S S I O N.

I feel like if I say it 3 times it will appear like Bloody Mary.

But, I guess if I'm gonna have a blog about it, I gotta talk about it, so no one thinks I'm a lightweight, just spewing rainbows and sunshine, and penguin marches, with no real insight of how dark life can really be.

It struck me first when I was around 22, and went tree planting.  I told my then overbearing father to shove it, and decided firmly in my young mind I wasn't going to look to him for ANYTHING, and come hell or high water I was going to make my own money and live by my own rules.

I instantly felt very alone.  Even though the semester prior to tree planting, I was living downtown, was a regular at hip hop and rave nights, and was drinking heavily and experimenting with cocaine, I had an aversion to the other tree planters.  I had this weird jock idea (I was a college runner) that being a stoner was bad news.  Well, tree planters are a special breed.  I remember hippy men and women that didn't bathe, wore ratty clothes, played the guitar and smoked weed.  I also remember having to share hotel rooms with strangers that were much older than me, that I had nothing in common with, other than that we all had possibly the worst job on earth.

So I kept to myself.  For hours and hours alone in a barren, devastated wilderness, with a bag full of little trees.  I was going insane, obsessing about all that had gone on in my life and trying to make sense of it all.  Fear and anxiety started to take root.  Within a month, I didn't want to leave my tent, spoke to no one, and only took joy in eating the cookies they made in camp.  I was so alone and miserable, and I had lost my sense of self.  It was a frightening and depersonalizing experience.  Gone was the down for anything, good times, extroverted Jeanne.  I felt like a shell of my former self, just painfully going through the motions.  I felt like my soul was gone on vacation and I was just Jeanne's body waiting for Jeanne's spirit to return.

That's what is felt like the first time, and thats what is has felt like ever since.

I eventually came back to my Dad's house, mid August, with my head between my legs, and found very little support from my family, they pretty much told me to get over it and to stop mopping around and sleeping all day. I think my Mom thought it was serious and probably encouraged me to get help.  I went to my doctors office and got my first prescription for an ssri.  

I also started school again, which really helped.  I remember kinda feeling weird around my friends, but trying to be cool and just keeping my conversations really short in case they realized there was something wrong with me.  I went through the motions, doing my second year assignments, which at least gave me something to focus on.  (With depression, it didn't really matter if I was working, I couldn't escape the heavy, tired feeling and the constant fear that something was just not right.)

Than one day, while I was painting, I stated to actually enjoy what I was doing, and feel connected to the moment that I was experiencing, and I noticed some of the heaviness was lifting.  I used the positive  momentum to shift back to my normal self.  It's been really weird for me, it seems like the depression eventually just vaporizes and I feel like myself within a period of a day or two.

I stayed well for another 9 months, until the school year ended, and I was once again without structure or direction, and fell back into the same trap.  I remember having the hardest summer, spending hours in bed at my Mom's house and sometimes hanging out with my then boyfriend, a talented film maker, who had also experienced depression, and was ok with hanging out with me, even if I was silent and unhappy.

***

More to follow….this is hard to write because I want everything to have a positive slant…but dealing with recurrent depression is like living in your own private hell,  not the fire and brimstone type, but a silent, unchanging and seemingly never ending one…not something I would wish on anyone, and not something that any of us to do ourselves intentionally.