The Stigma of Depression

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Robin Williams stunned the world when he committed suicide on August 11, 2014. I was deeply saddened but not stunned. I've always thought he had the saddest eyes. I believe there were many reasons why his death touched so many people: Millions of us can relate to depression. Unlike many celebrities, he didn't die from a drug overdose. He had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was on medication that had a side effect of suicide.

When you think about how physical his comedy was and how lightning fast his mind worked, he must have felt his career and way of life were over. We cannot know what goes on in another person's mind, nor is it any of our business. The laughter he gave to all of us and his kind spirit to all he met will be sorely missed. After his death there was a lot of information and misinformation on every form of media you can name. I'm disheartened that so many people believe that fame and fortune will guarantee happiness. This prompted be to write the following post on Facebook.

I don't usually post much of a personal nature on FB, but I feel strongly about the topic of depression, so part of my writing today is going to include my thoughts on depression, an illness with the stigma of shame attached to it. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years ago, I felt a lot of things, shame was never one of them. I didn't hide it. I had support. I got well. Depression is a whole different game. We often try to hide our depression or deny that we suffer from it. The tricky part of depression is that sometimes you don't even know why you're depressed. This starts a lot of self-talk. "What's wrong with you? You don't have anything to be depressed about. Get up off the couch you ungrateful piece of shit." When I had breast cancer, not one person said to me, "Stop having cancer." But I have heard people say, "Stop being so depressed." Not helpful.I was never so depressed that I felt suicidal, but I have wondered how I could keep going. Many people think it's weak to ask for help. Asking for help is just the opposite of weakness. It's one of the strongest things you'll ever do for yourself. I think that sometimes, people are so worn down from fighting depression, that they feel they have run out of options. My two cents.

Laughter and smiles hide a lot. Take care of yourselves. Put your own oxygen mask on first. 

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse. 

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Half-Way House

Hello Friends,

I recently saw a photo of a house I lived in long ago that had been greatly gentrified.  I got to thinking about my own personal gentrification.  I hardly recognized the house, just as I hardly recognize the young woman I was who lived there once, but here's to resurrecting places and pieces of a self and trying to get it down.  (Couldn't quite make my 3-line- stanza format correctly on this blog, but you get the jist.)

My Half-Way House

Wasn’t the Graves Avenue place, on the other side of the tracks,

round the corner from Burt’s second-hand store where the guy gave 

discounts then undercut his own bottom line to keep you coming back.

There, on Graves, with 90 bucks after the security deposit and 1^st month's 

rent paid, I was. Landed with a thump and the slow leaky lump

of my heart big enough to stain the walls and hardwood red.

The part of me dying went to live on Graves.

It wasn’t that other house in the country, Tiny, White,

Yankee-Prim  place-holder house I rarely slept nights alone.

But between those two, on State Street, near the old fruit market

We came and went in a shingled green flop house:

The clown I slept with, the blind hippie, his

Flat-bellied, wild-haired Cuban princess and their pet

Ferret, whose name I forget, but not her scent.

The whole house smelled of musk, sex, bong water and sandalwood.

In those younger, in-between-things- days, I sought

A house of forgetting, wood-screened door to slam closed  

what had opened, Big Love, Big City Loss

I sought to cauterize my wounds

With instruments that played lullabies

in the underwater light of dreams.

Not on Graves, or in the country near Amherst ,

but the half-way house on State

was a good spot to die awhile.

Most places like this are for getting it together.

Mine was for falling apart, which I did

Until lack of breath brought me up for air.

State street for the state of me then

Part Emily Dickenson, part Diane Arbus,

The green house healed me in the end.

--BLR  for the Poplar Grove Muse

Living Dead Baby CIRCA January 1968

     A still birth had just occurred. The veterans of many births had hurriedly wheeled a gurney into the delivery room, bumping it against the door. The ill-fated contents of the six-months-pregnant uterus spontaneously aborted. The tiny fetus was wrapped in butcher paper and placed in the dirty utility room for pathology to pick up. Meanwhile, inside the cold, white, sterile delivery room, the doctor delivered the placenta under a bit more control than the ‘bumped door’ fetal technique.

     Nurse Miller, the gray-haired nursing instructor, motioned for Elaine and her fellow student nurse, Sandy, to follow her into the dirty utility room. “I’m sorry we’re not dealing with a live baby, but this dead infant will be worth studying a bit.” Nurse Miller gestured for the two to hurry as she looked up and down the corridors in a furtive manner. “This fetus is a mere 6 months, no good lung development, no hope for viability but let’s see what we can see.” Nurse Miller had quickly materialized in the corner area where specimen bottles, dirty linens, and old instruments awaited cleaning and reprocessing. On the lower shelf was a tiny brown-paper-wrapped parcel. “I ‘m very cautious about whom I would show this to…, but you both are mature, smart nurses, so let’s take a gander at this little creature’s last remains, shall we?”

     Nurse Miller quickly unwrapped the bloody package. Lying in the middle of the plain brown wrapper was a little thing with a face, fingers, toes and a minuscule penis. A tiny chest started to rise and out of the little slit of a mouth, a gurgling sound arose. This little baby hadn’t been suctioned or resuscitated in any way. The extremities were a bad, dusky blue color.  Maybe he weighed as much as a bottle of coke. He could fit in the palm of a man’s hand. “It’s alive,” Elaine whispered. Sandy was fumbling for the tabletop to steady herself as she tried to back away. Sandy gurgled, “Oh my God, this is not right!”

     “Let me go for help. Stay right here!” Nurse Miller commanded. She picked up the tiny package with the breath battling baby and turned towards the door. Just as she moved, the attending physician, the head of the Obstetrical Department of this urban Catholic hospital, walked through the utility doors looking for a place to discard his gloves. With a friendly nod he glanced at the quivering trio. “A little post mortem inspection, Nurse Miller?” He gazed at them over the tops of his glasses with a sly smile.

     “Just in the nick of time, Dr. Anderson, this little guy is breathing and was just wrapped here to die.” The older instructor walked towards him with outstretched arms, the baby lying nude and panting.

“Hold on a minute, put that fetus back where you found it,” he ordered, his smile rapidly disappearing. “That is a non viable little thing. Put it back.”

“Put it back?” Nurse Miller looked confused. Elaine and Sandy huddled in the corner not moving an inch. Unclear where the authority was, in their teacher or this power figure of a medical man.

“That’s barely a six-month gestational fetus. It will not live. The parents are distraught and in pain.” The tall man loomed over Nurse Miller as saliva collected on his lips and his voice boomed, “Telling them they have a child only to incur major, I mean major expenses and have a dead baby within two days, is cruel and unusual punishment for no good reason. Put that poor creature back. Now!” With that he ripped his gloves off and slingshot them into the trash bin, “I'm doing what is best for that fetus and the family.” He abruptly made an about face and stormed out the door, leaving it swinging with a helicopter whirling cadence.

     The threesome stood silent and shocked.  Nurse Miller responded first and quickly, placing the infant back on the brown stained paper, “He’s right, and he’s wrong.  I’m sorry, girls, it’s the real world. He‘s a good man. We caught him unaware, this isn’t his nature.”

     It took Elaine a moment to realize Nurse Miller was apologizing for the Doctor, muting his anger and trying to contain the horror for them. The old nursing instructor started cleaning the floor where placental blood had dripped from the umbilical cord when she had spun around in rescue mode just a moment earlier. “It’s not appropriate to look closer at this child, I‘m truly sorry, you saw this.” Her right eye started twitching. Sandy who always had something to say about anything, stood there with every drop of blood drained from her face. Elaine vowed never to work in maternity.

EPILOGUE: 

Nurse Miller stopped teaching after that year.

Sandy graduated but never passed her boards and worked in a plastic surgeon’s office as an insurance adjuster minimizing all patient contact, infant or otherwise.

Elaine just collected degrees and taught others to do what she couldn’t.

carolefor The Poplar Grove Muse

 

“We move ahead into the vast unknown, metaphor by trembling metaphor.” Thomas Cleary

Lately, I have been thinking about walking to school when I was a child. We lived near the end of a long dead end street and to get to school I had to walk to the top and take a right and walk about three more blocks on some sidewalk which paralleled a busy neighborhood street. At age 5, the walk was interminable, now I could make it in 15 minutes, but at age five it seemed to me to take most of the morning. How my mother could trust that I was getting to school is beyond any memory I have. I suppose there were other kids who guided me and with whom I knew to keep up, but any real memory I have of that long walk is a remembrance of myself alone.

Kids did not get rides from their parents then and there was no bus for us, we were walkers and I had not yet mastered the two wheeled bike that sat patiently in the garage. We had plastic book bags with pink handles. No backpacks like they have now. This slow meandering unremembered walk of my very young youth is something I have been trying to conjure from my past. I was never afraid of the walk, I was only lazy and the thought of those miles in front of me to the school bored me to death. I was not even particularly aware of time. Was I ever late for school? Early? Who were the people that walked with me?

Walking that tiny stretch of neighborhood street became a constant in my youth. On warm summer evenings in high school, I slipped through the front door of my parents tiny ranch house to walk up and down, up and down the street, even at midnight. I was restless and full of ideas. I would walk and dream and write stories in my head to the beat of my own sneakered feet. I was oblivious to all but cars coming, when I would dodge bright headlights and make myself invisible while their owners passed, in a hurry to get home after late nights at the bars. I was not scared or unhappy, I was simply restless and wanted to move. I needed to fuel my late night imagination with cool air and stars. I wrote stories in my head. Vivid detailed fantasies of other lives I might lead or other people I might become.

Walking has been both myth and metaphor for me through the years. In college, on the shores of lake Michigan, I would come home after a night in the library, drop my backpack and begin to walk. Listening for the sounds of the lake reaching up over the rocky shore. Sorting through my day.

Walking for me in those earliest of years was never about physical exercise. It has been both flight and fantasy. It never occurred to me that I could walk for good health. It almost seemed to me that when I walked I was nobody, but that that was good. I could disappear from the folds of the earth for a few minutes. Capturing myself from above. Black stars, cool nights, and more than a thousand ideas to fuel me. I am sure the things that fueled me were about love. I had a hard time settling down to understand anything unless I was in the throes of unreciprocated love. When I had that excitement to hold onto, I walked and dreamed. It seemed love made me weightless and timeless and drifted with me through campus, lifted me up beyond the cold winds. These walks are the closest I have ever come to a lifelong dream of projecting myself out of body. The gift to look at myself from some astral plane—wings of angels tied to my back. I want an other’s perspective.

I have also been lucky to spend my professional career working on various college campuses. It is here near ivy covered walls and tree lined walk ways of Florida, Vermont and Indiana that I have felt most at home. Walking from one place to the next as I go from meeting to lunch to symposium. Enjoying the feel of swimming with youth as they make their ways through these beginnings of their adult life. I dream still. Not about love but about other things I love. My child, faraway places, a problem I am solving, how to fly, what to listen to if I should become invisible, who has the keys to the grail and how do I find it? Here, somewhere hidden in the brick and mortar of these holy places are my dreams. I enjoy especially coming to the campus after hours. When everyone has gone in and the place is silent. I am bothered by people who have created the boogeyman in places like this. Worries about dark spots and strangers. I am sorry they have to be out there and ruin our chances to experience the mysterious thrill of walking alone in these silent places: enjoying the ghosts that hang out between the stairwells and bronze plaques. Making us worry and install blue lights.

But still I walk to bring me comfort: stepping on cracks, greeting dogs, counting stairs, walking balanced on thin curbs, kicking the can, running my stick through a fence, watching for lost trinkets, enjoying the burst of buds in the spring and the green leaves of summer and the mantle of reds and oranges in the fall, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming...

Warrior-Champion

I had a dream recently, the kind of dream that has me writing about it days later. It was an epic, adventure-style dream. My mother and I guided a tiny canoe on a vast ocean. We accompanied my niece on a dangerous journey. We were negotiating with the gods to keep my niece with us. We eventually won, or shall I say, the gods agreed with us.

What I find most interesting is that my dream-self placed my mother and me to each side of my niece. We were in the position of sentinels. While my sister, the niece’s mother, was missing as an active character in the dream, her place was well-known and respected. This dream was about being a champion for my niece.

My job was clear. I was at the front of the canoe, the warrior-champion. I was in a state of high alert, ready to defend and protect my niece. My mother, wise and strong, sat at the back. She steered and counseled.

The translation of this dream is literal for my role. It’s a nice variation of the maiden/mother/crone circle. Not all of us choose to give birth, but all of us can be warrior-champions for our maidens.

I think of my own maidenhood. I recall several warrior-champions and wise counselors, both male and female. I’m grateful my mother realized that a daughter needs these roles, and that she sometimes needs them from others.

In my present life, I’m struck by how WWF(a)C stands as champion for me. It creates the safe spaces I need. I can only imagine how powerful that would be for a young writer, and I’m grateful WWF(a)C has expanded to serve that population.

Here is what I will be writing for a few days: As a child, who were my champions? How did they help me? When were they missing? As an adult, do I still have these in my life? How can I find them when I need them? How can I be these things for myself? How can I best be a warrior-champion for my niece?

Stephanie, for the Poplar Grove Muse

Wearing a Friend's Shoes

Last week I led my friend’s life. I stepped into her shoes, a different size than mine, and tried not to stumble. I remember organizing help, living communally, keeping people safe, sleeping little, balancing needs, opening to sorrow and joy, breathing in suspension, holding tight, and letting go. I cared for her special-needs child. She regularly does all these things, with grace. I did it for one week, clumsily, while she lived through other crises of life and death.

No longer did normal things matter, like whether I’d eaten, put on deodorant, or brushed my hair. I was happy to brush my teeth. To be honest, I had moments of self consciousness (“What did I smell like?!”), but mostly not. I was too tired and too focused to care. It was a gift, this sense of freedom. Freedom from my ego and my insecurities (well, mostly). I was also challenged. The line between things that didn’t matter and true needs blurred. I neglected to eat and then crashed. I didn’t take a break when I really needed one.

This experience was like a bubble: fragile, beautiful, sticky, and short-lived. After the crises passed, I slowly laced up my own sneakers. I began to process what I felt. I walked back to my life. My friend returned to her daily, daunting routine.

I write now, frantically, in my journal. I rage at an unfair world. I express thanks for my life’s blessings. I sit, numb. I try to write something else, something more coherent. The writing helps me decide what to keep from this experience and what to release. I know my friend keeps a journal. I hope that she finds the time to write.

--Stephanie W., for the Poplar Grove Muse