The Symptoms, Part One: Depression – Jackie Shea
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I sat submerged in the bath water. The bathroom was dark and quiet, lit only by one large, flickering candle. My face dripped with sweat from the steaming hot water infused with epsom salts. I was motionless. Only my eyes shifted, taking note of my surroundings— the blue walls, the dancing light, the sparkly new bathtub—I worked hard to have my old one replaced because it presented with moldy spots, and as a person recovering from Lyme disease, the sight of mold scared me— and the water. I noticed the still water, and it was calling me to go under, go quiet, go completely still until my heart stopped beating. I stared at this element that I once found harmless and enjoyable, and how weird that I suddenly couldn’t see any other use for being in the bath other than it being the thing that assisted in my death. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? It seemed so obvious. How easy and seemingly peaceful it would be to just go under water and stay there. All of the hell I was living would stop—no more doctors, no more pain, no more fear, no more needles, no more uncertainty, no more isolation, no more crying and staring out of the window next to my bed, no more HOPING, and no more being let down. The temptation was great. I was spiraling and then suddenly I gasped because I had stopped breathing, and I pulled myself up to sitting. The water rippled with force and I frantically pulled the drain open and jumped out of the tub. The appeal was so great that I thought I shouldn’t use a knife or get in the car for the next couple of days.That night I became intimately acquainted with the profound uses of everyday appliances. And I needed to protect myself.
That’s the type of depression that taunted me during my sickest year and a half. In the moments that symptom flare- ups made death seem imminent, I would be almost relieved, “good. let it be over. I don’t want to live like this. This is not a life.” Sometimes, I hoped I wouldn’t wake up in the morning. It felt like too much work just to stay alive. Lyme depression is two-fold and a real mother fucker. First, Lyme is a neurological disease—that means it’s a disease in your brain. That means that anxiety and depression are a SYMPTOM. Second, along with the depression and anxiety, you’re hit with a host of other symptoms. For me, I had extreme fatigue, insomnia, terrible physical pain, loss of appetite, hormone and thyroid dysfunction, and brain fog…just to name a few. So, all of the things I’d generally use to fight depression like exercise, socializing, working hard, food, books, creative outlets, spontaneity, or vacation also got taken off of the table and I was left isolated, broke, and painfully under slept. It’s common knowledge that the experience of being home sick with a cold or the flu can make someone a little batty. Now think about that experience on repeat for many weeks/ months/ years, add A LOT more symptoms, and then remember that you CANNOT sleep. Sound like hell? It is. I was in hell. As a person in the Lyme community, I hear it all. I hear about the deaths that are a direct result from Lyme. I hear about people getting cured. I hear about the seizures and the fainting and the permanent brain damage, and I hear about those whose lives will be forever better because they fought and prevailed. I hear the cases that are just “mild” but so disruptive. And I hear about the people who kill themselves—there are more than you’d like to believe. It doesn’t surprise me. It was so real for me. It’s very hard to want to live when there is a disease in your brain affecting how you think and when most of what was previously enjoyable about life gets hijacked. Lyme disease pushed me right to the edge. For some reason, I got willing to turn around and fight the wind, and LOVE is what pushed me along.
I had met depression earlier in life in more manageable doses. My attempts to harm myself in the past were half-assed: In high school, I tried to cut myself with a metal nail file —I quit as soon as I broke skin, I tried to be bulimic in middle school, but it took way too much energy to force myself to puke, and, as a teenager, I took a lighter to my skin every once in a blue moon to make the mental anguish quiet down. Yes, I liked forcing my brain to redirect its attention to physical pain and off of my thoughts. But, in the end, I LOVED being alive. Yes, there were moments of serious darkness, but, most of the time, I was excited about life. With Lyme, I didn’t feel alive. Everything I loved about life felt like it was taken from me without my consent. There was no escape from the mental or the physical pain. It was prison. I had *very sparingly* comforted myself with the idea of suicide in my earlier life—I’d remind myself that if my depression or anxiety got bad enough, I always had an out, but it never got bad enough. It never lasted long enough…not until illness.
I had been sick for about ten months before I started losing hope. It was when I stopped sleeping in September of 2014 that I spun out of control. It went on night after night—adding up to 50 or 60 sleepless hours at a time. The relief came in very small doses—maybe 3 hours of sleep in a row—never a full nights sleep. I was desperate. My eyes burned, and I was driven to tears throughout each day. I took many variations of sleeping drugs—most didn’t work, and two of them made me more depressed. More emotional pain would cause less sleep which would cause more physical and emotional pain and on and on and on the cycle went.
One October day, I sat on the bottom step of my staircase trying to execute the simple task of putting my shoes on. Something that I used to do in less than a minute multiple times a day was now a terrifying, olympic- style task. For the gold, all I had to do was put my fucking shoes on. But it was so hard—I was so tired. I took a deep breath and slipped one foot in, methodically tied the laces and then paused. I took another deep breath and did the same on the other foot—the last bunny ear went through the hole, I pulled tight and PHEW, I just sat there. I couldn’t move, I had exhausted myself. The roaring sadness was called from my gut and rose up through my body and tears choked out, one after the other. I just needed to stand up and leave the house. Anger struck. I was enraged with myself, “how the fuck is it possible that you can’t stand up. STAND UP. STAND UP.” I wanted to drag myself across the floor by my ponytail and beat the living shit out of myself. And that thought devastated me. The desire to harm myself, the self-loathing I was feeling became so unmanageable. I wouldn’t get well if I kept it up. I needed help.
That Thursday night, I decided I had enough. No matter how tired I was, or how sick I was, I was going to go to show up at the Hollywood Mental Health Center at 7:30 am the next day—Friday. It’s where my insurance told me to go when I called hysterical. I crawled out of bed with blood-shot eyes encased in dark circles and willed myself to get ready— put on a sweater and some shoes, grabbed my insurance card and just went. I hadn’t been in therapy for almost a year, and I certainly was not on any anti-depressant, I was free-balling, trying to be “strong,” and it obviously wasn’t working. It was a cold, foggy morning, and I was NOT drinking a coffee near a fireplace. I was shivering on a long, scattered line with Hollywood’s homeless population. I kept my head down and my nose tucked in my sweater because it smelled, and I was too sick to deal. The man in front of me kept hacking up phlegm and the guy behind me fluctuated between nodding out and jarring himself awake with the sound of his personal cocktail of snore and snot. Goddamnit, this is not my shining moment, I thought. When I looked up to determine how much longer I’d have to wait, I fucking saw someone I knew. Not a friend—not yet— but an acquaintance I had met a couple of times through friends. I was painfully ashamed—so ashamed that I considered leaving right then. I couldn’t be seen in this place. I was supposed to be the girl who had it together, but I couldn’t justify leaving—it was too dangerous, my life depended on what came at the end of this stupid line. He, unfortunately, spotted me, and he came over to greet me like it was just some normal morning. I was so sick I felt like I was dreaming, and he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, “Hey, are you ok?” he asked. I acted surprised, “hey, whoa, crazy running into you. I’m uhh. I’m OK, yeah. I’m actually just considering leaving.” Yeah, Jack, play it cool on the line at the Hollywood Mental Health Center lol. His face was compassionate, and he told me—point blank— to stay. He was the familiarity I needed to get through that morning, and he was so kind to me.
I took a seat on a plastic orange chair in the waiting room with the rest of the early morning crazies, and, for some reason, I told my new friend what was happening in my head and in my life. I had nothing left to lose. I mean, how was I going to get around the fact that I was spotted at the Hollywood Mental Health Center at 8 am on a Friday morning—sober. Only desperate people do shit like that. He listened intently and casually said, “I have a therapist and she takes your insurance, and I respect her a lot. She’s well educated and no joke. And you won’t have to do any of this nonsense.” A gift from the fucking angels, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “Insurance wouldn’t give me any therapist’s names. They just told me to come here.” “Oh yeah, I know,” he said with an eye roll, “her name is Claire. Call her, she’ll be good for you.” I took her info and waited out my turn in the clinic because I was trying to cover my ass from all angles. If Claire didn’t work out, I needed something else in motion.
I called that day, and she got right back to me. It seemed like one of the first times since I had been sick that a medical professional got right back to me. And it saved my life. It was all of the hope I needed that day. That week. The first time I saw her, she promised that she would have my back—that even if insurance failed, we would be able to work something out. I’ve been seeing her twice a week, for free, for almost two years. Insurance never failed. Her office, her familiar face, her kindness, her insights, and just the simple consistency salvaged what was left of me.
I sat in Claire’s office last night crying about how far I’ve come, how lucky I feel just to have an appetite. How lucky I feel to be able to hold my head up. She wrapped up the session at minute 49 instead of 50 so we could “talk about a couple things.” She said, “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m pregnant.” I took a moment to congratulate myself on “being right,” because I had a suspicion she was pregnant and THEN promptly congratulated her. She spoke directly—her maternity leave will start in March, and she’s taking six months off. She will no longer be working in the office where I see her—she will have a private practice and not be accepting insurance. She might do sliding scale with me if I need it, but, in the meantime, she will help me find someone new. BUMMER.
I started writing this a few days before I got the news and I’ve come to realize in that time just how much I credit her with keeping me alive/afloat during the last couple of years. The magic is this: Just as I NEEDED her in the moment she came into my life and just as I needed her for the last two years, I am now perfectly capable and ready to let go of her. My need is not what it was. I AM alive. I AM afloat. I am so much healthier, in mind, body and spirit. She watched me fall completely apart and slowly reassemble the pieces—sometimes finding new, shinier pieces while throwing away the old ones. And how amazing that I feel ready to part with what we had. Yet again, it is proven to me that I CAN trust the Universe.
I think more today about how grateful I am to have some sense of myself back. I am often excited about life again. The days where I “just can’t imagine another day” are fewer…much fewer. Actually, they’re rare. But for a while there, I was just holding on and hoping it would pass reminding myself again and again that I was willing to do one more day. I was willing to do another hour or minute while I took care of myself and did the next right thing. I was willing to keep swimming and not let myself drown. And I was willing everyday until I got here:
Today I woke up at 6:30 am after about 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep, drank celery juice, drank some tea, read some spiritual stuff, and then STOOD IN LINE at the Chinese consulate to pick up my visa for an upcoming trip. And I was grateful for that whole hour-long wait—that line was glorious.
With Fun and Love,
Jackie
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