Excavating Secrets

I’m grateful for every person who responded thoughtfully after my last post, many with their own stories of depression.  I was surprised when some used the word “courage” to describe my willingness to put my experience out there for public consumption.  Working in a profession where depression and anxiety disorders are, sadly, commonplace among clients and colleagues (many of whom come to the profession because of their own experience with various disorders, or those of family and friends), it didn’t seem unusual for me to claim ownership of that. In addition, I live in a city full of psychotherapy training institutes which creates an environment where being “in therapy” is almost an expectable event, even a rite of passage. So – not brave – and not courageous.

One communication from an old friend, however, caused my stomach to lurch and my breath to catch. For in a few sentences, I was thrust backward in time to an emotional space I’ve struggled mightily to negate.  She wrote, “I vividly recall my uncertainty as an adolescent when you experienced episodes of depression. Although, we had no ‘term’ for the feelings that engulfed your life, it significantly impacted me as your friend. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me! I held onto the belief that if I could be the best friend possible and let you know how much I loved and cared for you that you would survive. And you did, very well.”

My post set my first experience of depression at 19, perhaps because that was the first time of “official” diagnosis, perhaps because I didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to document a murky and dark time. But my old friend is right.  I was depressed and sad long before 19 even though we never discussed it and we never named it. “J” slipped into my life when we were freshmen in high school. We’d lived probably a half mile away from each other our whole lives, but we attended different schools up to the 9^th grade.

Now in high school, we rode the same school bus. Somehow she and I ended up getting our ears pierced together and from that moment became inseparable. “J” is one of the few happy memories I have of the time between 14 and almost 18. Every day after school, we’d get off the school bus at our respective homes, change our clothes, and head down the graveled shoulder of the highway that ran past our houses, meeting in the middle. From there, we’d walk down to Pic-a-deli, a corner store in the middle of nowhere, stock up on ice cream, potato chips, candy, and pop and settled in on the couch in my living room where we’d watch Dark Shadows together. We walked around in the rain, burned candles and let the wax run all over our hands, cut each other’s split ends, made cream puffs in my mother’s kitchen, went bowling and to the movies on weekends, and cheered in the bleachers at basketball games on Friday nights. We planted a garden, buried “pet” butterflies that didn’t make it, and got drunk together for the first time at her brother’s graduation party. Well, at least I got drunk. I shouldn’t claim to be fully aware of her condition.  She was the most important person in my life.  And she definitely was the best friend she could possibly be.        

So what could have scared the hell out of my best friend? I knew what she was talking about the minute I read her words even though for a nanosecond, I tried to not know. For it involved razor blades and my forearms…. not the side where I might have accidentally severed an artery and bled to death but the side where I could feel just enough sting to assure myself that I could, in fact, feel something. I did not realize I had scared her, lost in my narcissistic fugue, believing that my activity might be invisible, as I often felt I was. I don’t think I wanted to die, although I definitely didn’t want to live my life.  It’s probably the one time my chronic ambivalence operated in my favor.  I don’t remember how long this phase lasted. But it was long enough to be noticed by my boss at the restaurant where I washed dishes on Sundays. I lied and said it was due to my cat even though I didn’t own a cat.  I wore long sleeves at home to cover the evidence although I do not remember if long sleeves were appropriate weather-wise. I spent most of my time in my bedroom with the door closed anyway, so it was easy enough to escape notice. My best friend must have told her mother though because I do remember what made me stop. She told me that her mother said she had to stop being my friend if I kept on cutting myself. Her friendship was more important to me than my need to draw blood or feel something real. I stopped.

But what was I thinking? Was I thinking? Obviously, not clearly. My diaries and journals from those days are long gone – tossed decades ago in a flurry of embarrassed “I’ll die if anybody ever reads this” chain reactions. The only written words that survived that era are page after page of “remember this” and “never forget that” lists that “J” wrote to me in my senior year book. I sat and re-read every word she wrote one recent evening to see what was there, hunting through the pages forward, then backward, in an effort to follow her whimsical and circuitous route through my year book. There was, of course, no mention of the cutting. No need to bring up a negative period that, hopefully, was over forever.

Her final year book words to me were, “Our friendship is one of those in a million, something everyone wishes for and only few have. You are the most important thing that has happened in my youth.” I’m not sure that sunk in back in 1971, I was so numb.  After graduation, “J” and I grew apart. I’m positive my depression had a lot to do with that because I withdrew from everything and everyone.

I closed the book and turned back to her recent note, rereading to absorb it.  After the part about scaring her, she wrote, “The caring and love of friends do not extinguish. Know that I and others truly care. You will survive. Very well.” 

She’s right about that too. I did – and I will.  Thank you, “J”.

Breaking Tradition

For much of my life, I have taken solace in the traditions of holidays. Actually, it wasn’t just solace – some traditions were so important to me that I actually thought I might not survive without them.

Once the gauntlet of snake-necked swan statues and barking, biting dogs ended (see Thanksgiving at Aunt Boo’s House, 11/13/10), Thanksgiving became a safe holiday. From the time I was 8 until my beloved mom’s final Thanksgiving in 2005, the holiday was always spent at my childhood home. The guest list was always the same except when death, divorce or birth intervened. As a child, two sets of my grandparents were always invited (I had three sets, but that’s another story), my aunt and uncle who would have to sneak out in the afternoon to go “do their chores” (they had a dairy farm), and a grand-aunt who gave very wet kisses (yuck). Later, as my sister and I grew up, my father left, spouses were added and subtracted as we married, divorced, and in the case of my sister, remarried. Children were born and there was a long stint of status quo until our children started adding boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands to the mix.  And no matter where we were living, when Thanksgiving arrived, my sister and I always traveled to our childhood home with our families for the long weekend. 

Routine was very important and so was the menu, which never changed. I usually arrived the day before, and spent much of the day helping my mom with preparations. That time together was quiet and sweet as we cut up bread for dressing, rolled out pie crusts, sliced apples, and chatted. Late in the day, we’d get out her Spode china, brought from England long ago by her cousin, and set the table. Thanksgiving morning, with parade sounds in the background, there was usually a panicked, “Didn’t I buy a bag to roast the turkey in?” and my mom would rout through her floor-to-ceiling cupboards in disbelief that she might have forgotten this most important element (and always find one buried someplace). 

The house gradually filled with the smells of turkey and dressing and the sounds of our children complaining of hunger until finally, it was time to carve the turkey – always my job. The yummiest bites were those I snuck ahead of time and passed around to anyone in the vicinity of me and my knife. At the dinner table, our children’s voices sped through, “God is great God is good Let us thank Him for our food Amen.” Later, my mother’s voice quietly intoned, “Bless, Oh Lord, these Thy gifts which we are about to receive” when our children grew too cool to say grace.

After dinner, we always lingered around the table. As a child, I loved listening to the grown-ups talk and tell jokes, and later turn the conversation toward Christmas.  As my sister and I moved into the middle generation, Thanksgiving night usually included a “Kmart run” for Christmas stocking shopping, which was fun beyond belief. We’d run around Kmart with our carts, buying things for each other, for our kids, spouses, mom and brother, warning “Don’t look!” if we had to pass each other or stop and ask a question.

Friday morning we’d often be up at the crack of dawn – yes, that would be us out at 4:30 a.m. and in line somewhere to buy our mother a computer or buy our kids some coveted gift. As we got older (and more tired) we moved our start time a couple hours later. But the tradition of sitting in a mall with my sister, my daughter, and my nieces not long after dawn, having coffee together and heading off in our various directions to shop till we dropped was special, and in our minds, compulsory. Friday night was always given to celebrating my brother’s and my youngest niece’s birthdays. Saturday was designated for more shopping – my sister and brother-in-law might sneak off to see his family, or occasionally to play cards with their friends, and in later years we always put my mom’s Christmas tree up and decorated it for her. Finally, Sunday morning, Thanksgiving was officially over. We’d pack up our cars and head south or east – until it was time to reconvene at Christmas.

Those traditions are sweet in my memory and I smile when I think of them. The usual and customary, however, came to a screeching halt during fall 2005 when our mom took a turn for the worse in her fight against ovarian cancer. She had been hospitalized for a few weeks at the end of October and came home to hospice care in mid-November of that year. Our celebration was vastly different, though it stands out as my most memorable Thanksgiving. My sister and I, exhausted from trips back and forth to care for mom, had no inclination to prepare, bake, or cook anything. We let our neighborhood supermarket do it. We set up card tables and chairs to eat our dinner in the living room where mom lay in a hospital bed. Although the rest of us remember the meal as forgettable, our mom, who had not had an appetite for days was alert, able to sit up in bed, eat some of it, and with a big smile, pronounce it “delicious.”  We looked at each other and gave thanks.

The following year our mom was gone, our childhood home was sold, and we convened at my sister’s for Thanksgiving. My sister and I flew solo for the first time in preparing Thanksgiving dinner and everyone lived to tell about it. A few laughs, a few tears, and without missing a beat, we began another tradition in another town, another state.

This year we are breaking with tradition again. My daughter and I are staying home for the first time ever. We want to see the Macy’s parade in our adopted home town. I want my brother, who loves parades, to experience it too. The parade passes the building where my daughter works. Her office features floor to ceiling windows on the 4^th floor overlooking Times Square. Her boss has given us permission to be there. We won’t be cold (or wet) and we won’t have to fight the crowds.

Although we were prepared to “go it alone” for Thanksgiving, some of our family will travel north to join us. While we feel honored, we know we would survive if they didn’t or couldn't come. That’s the important thing. But we will all look at each other next Thursday morning in a totally different setting – surviving, no – embracing another break with tradition and we will give thanks.