This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post. Due to a clerical error, I was without my depression medication for a time. I tried to pay attention to what was happening to me so that I could describe it clearly.

Calling it depression was a mistake from the beginning. What does that mean, exactly? Depression. My grandfather didn’t call it anything. He was just moody and lost his temper sometimes. When he was in “one of his moods” you stayed away from him. And when he got one of his “sick headaches,” he just endured it.

My mother never called it anything either. She had sick headaches too, and would go to bed with them. Sometimes her face would be slack and show no emotion. You sometimes saw that in photographs. Then she started slowly pulling away from everyone. At holidays you would see her in another room sitting quietly on the couch. If you went in there she would try her best to engage you and be a good mother. She would ask questions and talk to you, but you could tell she wanted to be alone so badly that it made her jittery.

Then there were phone calls where she would talk so fast you couldn’t keep up. And dad told us of nights where she stayed up cleaning the house, happy as a lark, laughing, thrilled to be alive. She would hardly sleep.

And then one of those highs caused her to have a psychotic break from reality. She didn’t know any of us or who she was. She went to a hospital, and they named it. They gave this demon a name. Bipolar Disorder, the doctor said. My mother started taking medicine, and it was like she had been born again.

In my case it was the sick headaches - the migraines - that got my attention. There were other physical symptoms. And I had become withdrawn and uninterested in life. My family noticed that part; I didn’t. It happens gradually. The doctor gave me medication, and it was like being born again. I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember that this is how I used to feel and think.”

It was absolutely wonderful to be living again. And it’s been great all along. I’ve never stopped taking the medication.

So what do you want to call this thing? Depression? Depletion? Mental and emotional dysfunction sounds like it fits my experience. People who suffer from the many emotional disorders that we put in the category of depression often have a hard time describing what is happening to them. What follows will be my attempt to describe my emotional and mental state when I’m not being aided by medication. This is fresh on my mind, having spent some days without any medication recently because of a problem with insurance. This was actually good for me. I had been wondering if I really needed to be taking the medication.

Last week, as my Wellbutrin dwindled, I waited to see if I would feel a sudden mood drop. I did not. What happened was a gradual loss of interest and emotion. As I think about it now, I wonder if what I experience with depression is something like the experience of a psychopath. I can’t love anyone. I can’t feel any love for another person. It’s like someone removed that part of my brain.

This is a marker for me: When my depression has gotten me into a bad place, I don’t want to be around my children. I don’t want them touching me. I don’t want anyone touching me. I don’t want to look people in the eyes. Any kind of social interaction causes levels of discomfort you might expect if you were asked to walk into a ballroom in your underwear and start talking to people. You don’t want to be there. If forced to go into the ballroom in your underwear and talk to people, you can do it. But you hate it, and you can’t wait for it to end so you can just go home.

It’s kind of like that, only there is no good reason for me to isolate myself. I’m not being asked to go to a ballroom in my underwear. My daughter just wants to hug me and sit close to me on the couch. The people at church just want to talk. Normal stuff.

All of my desire goes away. Everything inside me that I identify with Gordon seems to wither. I have a good sense of humor, and I like to laugh. Nothing is funny. I’m passionate and curious and want to know about everything. All of that is gone. I adore my children and love to hug them and talk with them and be with them. They become like someone else’s children who have been in my house too long.

I can’t feel any familiar emotions. I force myself to go on living. I do all the things I need to do. But eventually the emotional stress of it causes me to despair. I start to panic and feel what I can only describe as a deep, hopeless despair.

You see, you need the emotions and feelings that you are accustomed to. Whatever yours are, you need them. You must have them. We are emotional, relational beings. To rip away a person’s ability to feel and interact is a violent thing.

When I’m down, my wife is the only person I can be with and feel no aversion. But I don’t feel love for her. I know intellectually that I love her, but I can’t feel it. The piece I wrote recently called “If Only” was an essay that got away from me. I wrote it as the Wellbutrin was coming to an end. I started with one thing, and I ended up writing about what it is to feel love for my wife. I couldn’t feel love, so I tried to write love. When I was done I knew the piece had started out as one thing and turned into something else. I could have torn it apart and made two things. But some instinct in me said to leave it alone. So I did.

In the worst of times, I could feel something when writing. That may be why I was so driven to write in the first two years of this blog. I suppose that’s why so much of what I write has a kind of sad, longing, emotional feel. My writing voice has always seemed to connect to people emotionally. Maybe you can feel the hunger and desire in me as I try to write emotions into existence.

So there it is. What can I do about it? That’s how I was feeling by Tuesday night. Empty and dead. Lillian came in to hug me goodnight. I put my arms around her and stared over her shoulder, gritting my teeth. I couldn't wait for it to be over. Now see, that's just not right. That is not me. Lillian is our last little girl. I've been treasuring her hugs, knowing that little girl hugs are just about gone. But Tuesday, I could hardly stand being near her.

I got my Wellbutrin back on Wednesday. It is now Thursday afternoon. I feel my interest in life returning. I’m at the church alone today, and I still want very much to be alone. But I can feel things again. Ironically, one of the first feelings to come rushing back is fear and anxiety. I’m very jittery. I feel like you might feel if you’ve done something wrong.

So I guess I’ll keep taking Wellbutrin. I hope very much not to have to take it for a long time. I don’t know how you stop taking something like this. I take three white pills every morning. Whatever that is doing to me is being done. Whatever that says about me is true. Whatever will happen to me because of this medication is going to happen. Because I don’t know what to do but take the pills.

I like being Gordon very much. And my wife and children love Gordon and want him to be around.

So okay. Give me the pills. I don’t care. I’ll do anything.

rlp

The Emotional Journey

There is the physical side of depression recovery, of course. It may involve medical intervention for physical symptoms and emotional states. In my case, as my depression deepened, I began to have migraine headaches for the first time in my life. Apparently, the neurotransmitters that I seem to be deficient in also have something to do with the dilatation of blood vessels. Migraine headaches are a classic symptom. I also developed a facial tick and serious sleeping problems, along with a few other assorted symptoms.

It is astonishing how quickly those physical symptoms went away as soon as I started taking medication. To be honest, I might be willing to take the medication just to avoid the headaches. And after a period of time, I found that I no longer felt depressed, but was engaged and interacting with people in ways that are important to me.

So this is good, right? Sure! Of course it is. It's freakin great!

But when you start to recover from depression, you may find that there are some emotional and relationship messes that cannot be fixed with pills.

Yesterday was Valentine's day. On this day I have traditionally given a flower to each of my three daughters along with a card that contains a VERY personal and carefully written affirmation of love from me. These little love notes are not filled with trite sayings. I write my heart out in them. It's always something special and just right for each of them. Watching them read my words has always been something I look forward to.

This year I didn't have to buy cards because I still had the three cards I bought for them last year and never gave them. One year ago I was in the deepest part of my depression. I had a number of emotional collapses that frightened Jeanene very much, because I had always been a steady and reliable presence in our family. Suddenly, with me falling apart, she was facing the reality that she was the last line of defense.

I recently finished my fifth month taking medication for anxiety and depression. I wrote about this a few times during the first month, but after that I’ve avoided the topic for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t want this to become Real Live Preacher’s depression journal. Second, what do I know about depression this early in the game? It’s not like I’m an expert or anything.

But I would like to revisit the topic at this time and share some beginner’s insights gained from five months of a new perspective.

You see, I never knew that I was depressed. With no perspective other than my own, how could I know what I should be feeling in a given situation? I just thought I was a moody, sometimes lazy, selfish guy who moped a lot. I always managed to find the energy I needed to smile at church and get my work done, but I had no energy to put on the same act for my family. I was pleasant enough at church or if you met me in the supermarket, but at home I was a morose, withdrawn, shadow person.

I figure I lost about a year of my children’s lives. I’m choosing not to dwell on that. What’s done is done. My children still love me, and I love them. My lack of presence has also been hard on my marriage, but Jeanene and I are committed to each other, and we’re working on that as well.

What I have gained over the last five months is a benchmark for my own feelings. I have an idea about how I should feel. I know what my low point is, and I know what my high point is. I have some understanding of how much anxiety and worry a person ought to experience when small problems present themselves. I know what a small amount of stress feels like. It tickles my mind and gets my attention, but it doesn’t cause me to have an anxiety attack and eat, say, an entire box of Poptarts at midnight.

Note: This is not going to be nearly as exciting as the title sounds.

Before I get to the preaching on drugs part, let me give you a little update. I'm just about through my first month of medication for my depression. The third dosage level, 75 milligrams of Imipramine, seems to be right for me, though it's really too soon to tell. The last two weeks have been wonderful. Jeanene and the three sisters would tell you that I'm like a new person.

I feel like I've been reunited with a long-lost friend. I remember that I used to feel this way. I used to be happy and very silly with the girls. I used to play a lot of crazy “daddy games.” It feels good to find myself again.

There are a couple of side effects that I'm having to deal with, but none more important than the benefits, and all of them can be dealt with. The thought of slipping back to the way I was before is terrifying to me. I would do just about anything to keep feeling this way. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but that's how I feel about it.

But you want to hear about preaching on drugs, am I right?

First, I need to tell you what preaching has been like for me over the last ten years. Every Sunday morning I would awaken before dawn and experience some combination of dread, sorrow, anxiety, and paranoia. My moods would range from simple sadness and lethargy to a dark, “Camus-like” angst, which drove away any sense of the presence of God. I knew I was on my way to a sacred place of worship, and I knew that I would be called upon to stand and preach. I felt like the world's biggest hypocrite.

I am unable to remember a Sunday when I felt happy and glad to be going to church. This was my big secret. The thing I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want to be there. Not really. Not in my heart. It certainly came out in my writing. Once I wrote something that began with this line: “Sundays can be a bitch.”

Yeah.