Tag Archives: Bell Let’s Talk

Not Today

I’m staring at a blank page, not because I have writer’s block. In fact, I have too much to say. 

Dark Reality

The problem is, today, I feel worthless and mocked. I am doubting all the things I have told myself, trained myself to think in resistance to a broken childhood. I am rejecting that voice in my head that tells me that I am good enough and the words I write have value to someone somewhere, even if it is at my expense. Today, I am drowning in debt. My partner from yesterday has gone. Slipped off from the side lines swallowed by his own darkness that casts a shadow that today is too heavy for me to hold up.

There is so much to say. Why would I feel as though it is worth the time, effort, and draft space to express? I am a silly girl who has been faking it for too long. Yesterday, an error of my own was dropped at my feet. I let down the one person I vowed to never let down. I have tripped over this mistake and am struggling to get up. 

Down here are all of my mistakes. I can not push them aside to find purchase on the ground below without looking at them and rolling them over in my hands. They are scattered around me like bones in a mass uncovered grave. They tumble and clatter together like a morbid mosaic of my life. 

What business have I raising teenagers with a collection of bones just below the surface? I have no right to attempt to direct them on this path of life given this pit of my own making. Among these scattered bones, not one is for my children. Some are of parenting decisions and behavior I should have thought better of, and conversations that were better left unsaid. They make up the many chips and fragments of bone that dig into my hands and knees. They peirce my thin exterior and tear at my already raw and battered self-worth. Now punctured, my armor is exposed for the camouflage vail it is, an exhausting illusion I can not bare to carry today. 

The idea of my children having their own basement of bones stops me cold as I consider how many I have personally put there. This thought robs me of breath and drags my heart through the dank dirt of bad decisions. Entitled decisions on the self-proclaimed pedestal of superiority made up of the falsely earned right of the parent to abuse priveledge through lecture, demand, and rule.

Today, I am sad. Too empty and weak to dig through in an effort to find solid ground I can stand on before climbing out of this pit. Today, in the cold darkness of January, I dwell on financial woes and all that could have been in my life. Today, I will allow the words of doubt and self-criticism, the voice of my own parents, hold me down and bury me alive. 

A dyslexic writer! Hah! Who am I kidding? A lifetime of academic and professional wrong turns, yet I think I deserve more. Why? How delusional am I? I am nothing but a fraud who is able to convince others that I am somehow capable, confident, and credible. Today, I am anything but. Today, I will continue to fake it for the sake of my children and colleagues, aware that it is to my own detriment. For today, as I go to work and put in another day, my mind will continue to drag my heart through my collection of mistakes. Pointless torture from yesterday, a past I can not change.

Behind my forced smile and deceptively warm eyes, there is a cold dark pit to which I have fallen. It took so little to get here, but it is going to take everything I have to get out. 

But not today.

The Pit
Dark Secret of depression

Tom Wants to Talk

It’s January 27, 2016, Bell Let’s Talk day.

goneThe day when you call, text, or tweet to raise awareness of mental illness as an effort to end the stigma attached to this type of suffering.  It is a great cause that brings all the levels of support and avenues for help to light.  I would like to point out where we are failing and still have much work to do.

The crisis hotlines are only for people who are actually on the ledge.  These selfless men and women who answer these calls are trained to encourage you to climb down.  This is not a number you can call if you are hurting and contemplating suicide. If that is the case you will be directed to your family physician.

General Practitioner knowledge and training is lacking.

If you are brave enough to go and be honest with your family doctor about your coping methods:  whether it be drug use, alcohol abuse, or a tendency to cut, your GP will be happy to prescribe you an anti-depressant and refer you a psychiatrist. There will be no follow-up, just an assumption that you are indeed taking the meds (which clearly do the trick but take weeks to kick in) and an acute oblivion to the fact that the earliest shrink appointment is several months away.

Human Resources department are enough to drive anyone crazy. The forms required to take leave when you are in crisis fail to have a section for mental illness or depression and even when your doctor has filled it out to the best of their abilities given the irrelevant space, HR will reject the request for leave.

The hospital itself has a protocol that hinders many by painting every patient with the same brush. When there is a suicide attempt regardless the reason or the method, the ER doctor is required by law to notify the ministry of transportation. They will immediately suspend your license. This means, that the survivors of suicide, if lucky enough to recover physically, will be unable to resume their lives and pick up the pieces especially if they depend on their license for their income. The red tape involved in having a driver’s license reinstated is long and tedious. It will take the better part of a year.

How do they expect someone struggling to get their life back not to feel helpless and dejected if they cannot get themselves to work or do their job?

A year ago, my wife of nineteen years was in a horrible car accident. When the blown tire of a transport truck crashed through her windshield it was a miracle she survived. After weeks of therapy and months of pain killers, her body was healing but she was never the same. Darlene (the unknown author) developed a dependency on her pain killers which she had begun mixing with alcohol. The mother of my two girls was turning into a completely different person. She was an angry drunk who sank back into dark corners of her past that I could not determine if real. After she accused me of despicable things, I am not capable of; we began living apart.

Finally, five months ago after a break down that even she recognized, I convinced her to get help. We called a hotline together. I heard her admit that sometimes she just didn’t want to be here anymore. It was clear to me that Darlene did not see this as being suicidal. Once the councillor determined that she was not a threat to herself or anyone else, she advised my wife to seek a physician’s help.

We Waited…waited for help.  She was hurting and we had to wait to get help! Admitting that you need help is not the hardest step.  The waiting is.

Eight days later she had a doctor’s appointment which she allowed me to sit in on. The glossed over version of events that she spun was worthy of a weekend at the spa. Risking our marriage, I clarified a few points and reminded Darlene of a number of specific breakdowns. We left there with an antidepressant prescription and the promise that a psychiatrist’s office would call to arrange an appointment.  Little did he know that Darlene would take those pills with a bottle of wine and that the shrink’s appointment would be a seven-month wait.

black dog, depression, bell let's talk, january 27
Promote Bell Let’s talk January 27 2016 The Black Dog of Depression Follows Her

Four weeks later Darlene stumbled home. Her work had called; she hadn’t been there all day.  With red rimmed eyes, she dragged herself to bed muttering that she wasn’t feeling well. I made her a tea and wrapped her up in a blanket. Thinking it was the flu, I found it was strange that she did not have a fever and had yet to explain where she had been all day.

“I was supposed to be gone by now,” she said.

The words floated around me meaningless for a while. Darlene had tried to kill herself. She had downed a bottle of Tylenol after she left in the morning.  She had no intentions of going to work. She sat in her car all day waiting to die. When I got her to the hospital they pumped her stomach.  ‘Wait and see’ was what they said after that.  The next 72 hours were crucial. For three days, I didn’t know if my wife was going to live or die.

My work gently explained that it was my wife in the hospital not me. I would be expected back to work unless I had a doctor’s note. Our GP was happy to fill out the form the first time but after the fourth rejection, he had grown to dislike my company.

On the second day, after the liver specialist told my wife to get her affairs in order, our daughter’s sat by their mother’s side and kissed her goodbye. That night, Darlene died in my arms.

Women will often say that the best day of their lives was their wedding day or the day their children were born.  Those days were great indeed, but when you have had the worse day of your life the rest are like little pieces of wonderful.  I wish I had one good day to give back to Darlene.

So many of us failed my wife, including me.  We let the darkness win.

Depression is not a choice; the ignorance surrounding depression and mental illness is.