Pandemics and Depression are Common Bedfellows

 The pandemic has caused many people to struggle with mental health, primarily anxiety and depression.  Everyone is scared, sad, touch-starved, struggling to make ends meet, all the things that go along with this dumpster fire of a year.  Even my husband, who has never had mental health issues (and in fact has trouble relating to them), is definitely experiencing some depression.  I've experienced a resurgence of my depression, and it's taking a different form than it ever has.

Typically, my depression comes out as anger and irritability.  This year, I've encountered those as well as changes in appetite and sleep patterns, which have never been things I struggled with before.  I've also attained a level of apathy and lack of motivation that I always thought was a myth.  My children roller skate in the house.  I don't care.  My 10-year-old hoards candy in his bedroom.  I don't care.  I have no clean clothes.  I don't care.  There's no food in the house.  I don't care.  Christmas shopping has been a total nightmare, even though I did it all online.  And now that all the gifts are here, I wonder how much I would have to pay someone to wrap them for me.  I have completely lost touch with my wardrobe.  I wear scrubs at work (one less decision to make), and when I come home I take a shower (at least I still do that!) and put on my pajamas.  At 3:00 in the afternoon.

I'm retreating.  I'm isolating.  I'm hiding.  All signs of bad brain action.  Honestly, the hardest thing about this whole situation has been forcing myself to do the things I need to do.  There are days when all I can do is go to work and go home.  No laundry, no errands, dinner ordered in.  I have a very autonomous job, and most days it's up to me to get things done on my own schedule.  Most of the time I like that, but right now I kind of need someone to hang over my shoulder and remind me to do things.  I mean, things other than sit at my desk and play Candy Crush.

Everything takes so much energy, so much strength, so much work.

People think depression is being sad or despondent.  For some people it is.  But it's also lack of motivation, lack of pleasure in things you used to love, the inability to prioritize or make decisions.  I increased the dose of my antidepressant, and that helped some, but mostly I've just been putting one foot in front of the other, trudging forward, hoping it will pay off one day.  And hoping that when this all ends, and we all go back out to the world, it won't linger.

Because the thing is, it's normal to be depressed right now.  I'd be a little weirded out if I weren't.  It's not normal to continue to be depressed when the circumstances change and we get back to living.  I've realized how many of the things I did were coping mechanisms for this same depression.  Now that they've been taken away, I see why I did them.  They got me out of the house and out of my head.  They allowed me to interact with people and be social.  They allowed me to have something to ground myself.

Every now and then my husband will randomly ask if I'm okay.  I always tell him I am, while simultaneously wondering why he's asking.  Last night I realized that he asks that because he really doesn't know.  I've retreated so far into myself, began listening to my own internal monologue so much, that I often don't talk.  So the days blend together, one after the other, all the same, and I just keep plodding.  Hoping something will change.  Hoping something will break.  Imagining... what?  What will the world be like when we all surface again?  I like to think we all learned something about how to relate to each other, how to be kind to each other, how to see things in a new way.  But I know humanity.  American humanity in particular.  We're very resistant to change and learning.  We don't learn from our past experiences, which is why history really does repeat itself.

One thing I know for sure: I'm not the only one.  In fact, for perhaps the first time in history, mental health is affecting more people than not.  I have a group of friends, we call ourselves the Crazy Moms Club.  We all have issues with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, body image, you name it.  All of our husbands are what we like to call neurotypical, meaning they don't have mental health issues at all.  We are all abundantly thankful for our "normal" husbands because they give us perspective.  They tell us when we're being crazy.  They pick up extra slack around the house when we don't have the energy.  They remind us to feed the children.  And when we get together, our conversation almost always revolves around the difficulties we face being moms with mental health issues.  Some people may say it's commiserating.  Maybe it is.  But it's also therapy.  It reminds us we're not alone.  We get ideas on how to cope.  We remind each other of our worth.  I love those Crazy Moms.  But right now, we can't get together.  We can (and do) FaceTime or Zoom, but anyone with kids knows how that goes.  You spend half the time talking to your friends, and half the time dealing with the kids.  It's less helpful that way.  But what else are we supposed to do in these times?  So we grit our teeth and move forward.

This will all be over someday.

There Are No Two Ways About It

Two types of matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time. It's a law of physics as well as an important Spiritual reality.

I have previously alluded to some faith issues I have faced, but I have refrained from going into detail. Yesterday I had a bit of an epiphany and feel that I have finally reached a place where I can let the world know what has been going on.

When I was first diagnosed with infertility, I had a few niggling doubts about the entity I have always called "God". However, I have always believed in a loving, caring God who always wanted what was best for me, and I knew that sometimes even the faithful have doubts. In my past, when doubt has arisen, there has always also arisen a way to overcome it; some small miracle that made me believe again. Bearing that thought in mind, I paid little heed to my doubt and moved on, knowing it would subside.

When our first adoption fell through, those doubts went from niggling to screeching. The God I had always known would never allow this to happen. He would never take two amazing children from a loving, nurturing home, and return them to parents who had gone to prison for felony endangerment. That single thought was so big and so loud and so important that the day we handed those children back to their parents, I said to God, "This is my reward for a lifetime of service? This is reaping what I sowed? This is your plan for me? Well forget it. I'm done with you. I gave you your shot and all you did was mess everything up, so I'll be doing things myself from now on, thanks."

I lived in that place of bitterness and anger right up until quite recently. It caused me to do many things I never thought I would find myself doing. I looked into other religions. I doubted whether God loved me or anyone else. My husband told me I sounded like an atheist, but the reality was so much bleaker: I believed God was out there, I just didn't think He gave two shakes about what happened to me. Which expanded into wondering whether He cared abut anyone at all. And if He doesn't care, how can He be in control? And if He's not in control then everything I've ever believed was wrong.

And I did all of it alone because I was so afraid of hearing nothing but trite, well-rehearsed "Christianese" from my friends. I was even angry at people around me that I loved because they could say, "Well, trust God," and I would think, "Oh sure. Trust God. Let's all trust God. Look how well that's turned it so far."

But a few weeks ago, I decided to confide in a trusted friend who I knew had also had significant doubt in her life. Since then, she and I have begun a partnership to rediscover who God is and how I can relate to Him. It's a slow process and I'm a difficult student, but together she and I are focusing on one important and fundamental truth: God is. My plan is to rebuild the faith I once had starting from scratch. As a church-kid, this is something I never expected to have to do. Faith has always been like breathing to me. So easy. As an intellectual person, understanding it has always been a bit of a mystery, but since faith was so easy, I could always fall back on it for things I couldn't explain.

There has been, however, one aspect of faith that I have been as yet unwilling to surrender. I was willing to move forward and rediscover God, but I felt I was entitled to keep that anger about the failed adoption. That was mine, and I refused to let God take it away. I needed that anger, I believed, in case God ever let me down again. That way I would have more than one example to point to in order to prove I was right and God didn't care.

Yesterday, in the middle of folding laundry, I realized that this is not the case. I can't hate Him for taking the other two away, and love Him for bringing me the new one. I can't believe He wants the best for me, except for that one time. I can't say He's in control except for that thing that happened. I can't be angry and move on. Those two states of mind can't exist together.

I can live in this place where I am at the moment where I don't know or understand God and how I relate to Him. I can seek Him with any sort of faith, philosophy, or Spirituality I choose, but I can't hate Him and love Him at the same time. Although this is not what the Apostle Paul was talking about when he said it, it is truly being "a house divided". And as Paul said, it WILL fall.

Where am I now? A step or two closer than I was before. And there will be many times in the future when I'll have to let that anger go again (it's been such a comfortable place for me). But I am now truly stripped. I don't know who God is or what He wants from me or anyone else. And that's okay. I know eventually He'll tell me. And this time I'll be listening.

On the hillside you will be delivered
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the river that flows
For you and for me and for all