Dealing with depression

I am a big fan of biographies. I read them all the time. Same goes for movies and videos on YouTube. I gravitate to true life stories. I often have people ask me why I don't read fiction. After a while I came to believe in the old adage, “Life is stranger than fiction.” I also find it inspiring to see how ordinary people overcome extraordinary circumstances. Well, at least the hope is that I find it inspiring.

Here I am - a 50 year old (ok, 51 now), sitting on a couch, typing this. I guess all the inspiration hasn’t moved me much. Remember when you were in college - at that proverbial fork in the road where you need to decide which path to begin your journey of adult life? Or maybe it is after you have been working five years at a dead end, brain dead job. Or maybe it is after a few years of never finding love and beginning to believe you never will. Then you are sitting at that party, or in a restaurant, or at the park, or on the beach with your best friend. Your best friend is listening to you grovel in self pity - because that is what best friends do. And you inevitably wind up saying, usually with watery eyes and concern in your voice, “I don’t want to wake up when I am 50 and look in the mirror and wonder what did I do with my life.”

Well, guess what? That's the point I am at. It blows my mind to think that I have been on this earth for a half century - you know, those things represented by those Roman numerals you have a hard time remembering.

As if hitting that major milestone birthday was not hurtful enough, in the last year I lost my mother (MY best friend) and, subsequently, my job. And let us not forget that whole COVID thing which has hung over our heads for the last two years.

Hey bartender, can you mix me up a stiff drink of depression, grief, rejection, abandonment, and indifference? Excuse me one second while I chug this drink down.

So it happened one day in early October, 2021, that the depression monster emerged from whatever deep prison cell I had it confined to for over 40 years. I can give you the exact day if you like - October 5, 2021. It was a chilly, overcast Tuesday afternoon. I was sitting in my SUV, in the parking lot of a medical complex - one of those with about twenty buildings specializing in every medical condition imaginable. I had just come out of one of these buildings. I had just finished my annual physical. Physically, everything seemed to be in order. The doctor questioned me, however, on a simple questionnaire the secretary had me fill out while I was in the waiting room.

Have you lost pleasure in things that you used to find pleasurable? Yes. How often do you feel hopeless? Pretty often. How often do you feel there is nothing to look forward to? Every waking moment. Do you ever have suicidal thoughts? Yeah, sure. It was one sheet of paper with about six questions along those lines. Standard stuff. I figured I’d be honest this time.

I guess the doctor didn’t like my honest answers. He asked me if I would like him to sign off on a couple of weeks out of work. Really? Was it that easy to get time off of work? After not being able to make a snap decision (part of my over-analytical issue), I stayed the course of “I got this under control.”

I didn’t make it out of the parking lot without changing my mind. I did make it to the other side of the parking lot, though. Then I just broke down. Like a volcano, my mind just exploded. My mother dying. The way she died. Lewy Body Dementia – a hideous disease combining the worst aspects of Alzheimer’s AND Parkinson’s disease. My not being able to see her at the nursing home for the last year of her life due to visitation restrictions due to COVID. Did she feel, despite the memory loss, her family abandoned her? Was I ever given enough time and did I grieve her loss properly? I don’t know. Is it normal to only miss a week of work following a parent’s death? My bosses seemed to think so after I had to go home an hour into my first shift back. “If we give you another week off, do you promise to be 100% next Monday?” Seriously, dude?

Now I started thinking more about work. I had worked in the food industry for over 30 years. I had managed restaurants for the last 20. And done a pretty damn good job of it too, if I should say so myself. But these last two years with COVID were tough. Not enough workers. Not enough supplies. Strict health guidelines. Heck, there was even a shortage on coins. You know, currency! The bank had no quarters, dimes, nickels, or pennies! A bank!

Despite all this, I had managed to keep it all together, even after my mother passed away. I made it six months after she was buried. But then most of my upper management team quit, for various reasons. Some of these managers had been with me for years, and I considered them “friends.” I mean, we were friends on Facebook, so that makes it official, right?

My superiors told me all their other 17 restaurants were in the same boat. No one had extra managers to spare. Now I found myself not only doing my already overwhelming administrative duties, but also doing schedules, ordering, hiring, answering phones, cleaning fryolators, and coordinating the actual shift itself while manning a position. At one point, I worked 22 consecutive days. I’ll show them. I can do this. And they will appreciate me for it. I know they will.

Did I mention my mother died?

So all that shit began spiraling through my head as I sat in the parking lot on that chilly, overcast Tuesday morning. I couldn’t do it anymore. Get out the white flag. I give up. You win.

I called the doctor’s office. Now that I think about it, I could have just walked across the parking lot and spoke to him in person. I told the secretary that I wanted to accept the doctor’s offer of taking a couple of weeks out of work.

Two weeks turned into four weeks. Four weeks turned into eight weeks. Eight weeks turned into taking advantage of the Family Leave Act which protected my employment up to 12 weeks out of work. Once those 12 weeks were done, I received a letter in the mail from my employer stating they no longer were required to hold my position and that they had decided to “part ways” with me. After 30 years, I got fired via registered mail. No in-person meeting. No phone call. Not even a text.

That didn’t help my outlook on society and life. But it was a weight off my shoulders in that I no longer had to worry about returning to work and instead could focus on me.

So the reason I kept having to get extensions on my time out of work was that it was taking me time to find a therapist. It still amazes me to think back. After I told my doctor on October 5 that, hey, maybe I was having suicidal thoughts, it took THREE weeks until I sat down and talked to a therapist. “In the meantime, if you continue to have these thoughts, call this hotline.” You think if I get to the point I want to actually kill myself, I am going to call a hotline and talk to a stranger. Probably be put on hold when I call. “Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line.”

So here I am, four therapists later, three different medications later. And I feel the same - hopeless, joyless, worthless, without purpose. Simply put, I feel lost. Like the feeling of being in a corn maze and every route you choose is a dead end, and the sun is going down and it is getting dark fast.

I’ve tried therapy. I’ve tried meditation, mindfulness, massages, reiki, reading self-health books, watching YouTube videos on grief, listening to podcasts, journaling (both written and video), walks in the park, trips to the mountains to be one with nature. All dead ends.

After a year of therapy, I have learned that I may have a purpose in life and that is to maybe have one person who is reading this realize they are not alone. That is a scary part of all of this is the isolation and loneliness depression and grief brings. When you are grieving, you just want the world to stop for a little bit. But it doesn’t. The sun comes up. People go to work. The news is on TV. Sports are being played. You just feel like screaming, “Hey, my mom just died! Can you please just stop for a minute.” Just had a realization that is probably where the idea of a moment of silence comes from. I want more than just a moment, though.

So I decided to write this blog. I have no idea what direction it will take me. It is more therapeutic for me than anything else. I have always loved sports and have dabbled in freelance sports writing in the past. Heck, I graduated with a degree in journalism a lifetime ago (when the rules of journalism were far different than they are now. Are there any rules?). So if I can inspire even one person, maybe I someday will be worthy of someone writing a biography of me.