March 11, 2007
To my wonderful nephew, Brandon!
Here is a poem that I wrote when I was 16…
I feel the loneliness
Building inside me
Turning
Crashing down
I can’t find a way out
I feel I should
construct a wall
to hide me
from the world
and take away this pain
I feel like crying
But the tears
won’t spill out
the anger and confusion
out weigh the sorrow
I feel I could let go
And scream
Until my throat hurts
As much as my heart does
At this moment
I feel like hating
Everything and everyone
I don’t know why
It’s all building up
I can’t take the weight off my shoulders
I feel like hiding
From my upset
I don’t want to face it
Not now
Not ever
Why did I think
Life would be easy?
Sheena told me that you are posting on the fiction press website. I often go on the site to read her stories and this morning I read your poems. I hope you aren’t mad at her; she didn’t tell me anything other than the name that you are using but I guess she was worried about you and she thought that I could help. I wanted to share my poem with you in the hope that it would show you that you are not alone and I understand the things that you are feeling.
I know that you are aware of our family’s little curse called depression. A couple of years ago I mentioned to your mother that I thought I was seeing signs of it in you and I believe that you both have discussed it but I want to tell you a bit about my experience.
I want to share some things with you that are very personal and I am going to trust that you will keep much of this confidential. I talk about this with my family and with maybe four of my closest friends that I know will love me no matter what. It’s not that I am embarrassed about my depression but some people look at you differently when they know. Sometimes people knowing is a good thing… like with Ian because he can see that sometimes I need to be alone and sometimes I need a hug. I don’t discuss this with Sheena because she lives with Joe, who is my boss, and I don’t want him to know. I guess I don’t tell most people because I want them to see me and not this depression. And sometimes it’s frustrating to deal with the people that don’t “get it”. I don’t feel that I need people to understand but I do need the people around me to accept it and not turn it against me. It takes a while but eventually you figure out who those people are. Feel free to tell anyone around you about the things that I am going to tell you, I just ask that you not discuss it with the people out here.
For most of my life I had no idea that there was something wrong with me. I thought that I was going through the same teenage angst that my friends were going through. I had days that I felt good about myself but, for the most part, I thought that I was pretty useless and ugly and fat and worthless. Sometimes I doubted these bad feelings but most of the time I felt this was a fact, I was crap… I just wasn’t worthy of people caring about me. But the really funny part was that I thought all of these bad things about myself but I didn’t want anyone else to figure it out. It was almost as if I told them how I felt about myself that they would go “you know, you’re right - you are crap” and not like me anymore.
I have always been quite guarded with my feelings. On the bad days I couldn’t talk about it and on the good days I didn’t want to. I smiled and kept up my “life of the party” image. I didn’t act out much as a teenager because I didn’t want to stand out, I just wanted to blend in with everyone else so no one would know. I didn’t really get close to people either; you can’t really let people in if you are afraid of what they will find. When I had a crush on some guy, I liked them until they liked me... then I didn’t like them anymore because I thought something had to be wrong with them if they liked me. Some people might think that’s pretty twisted but that was how my brain worked. I know now that not talking about this stuff was my biggest mistake. I had no reason to doubt these bad things that I felt because no one could ever say that it wasn’t true. I felt so strongly that I was right that I never gave anyone the opportunity to tell me that I was wrong.
Not knowing where the feelings were coming from, I always found a reason for them… I was too fat, what ever boy that I was currently crushing on didn’t love me back, I didn’t have enough money, I felt sick, I hated school or my job or whatever. There were a million excuses and I spent a life time trying to fix what was causing the hurt… I changed jobs, changed boyfriends, changed homes, over and over and over… until I realized that it had to be me. But depression? I saw the commercials on tv, I read the articles in magazines… they said that if you lost interest in the things that you used to enjoy that you should talk to someone. That didn’t apply to me. I was like this my whole life.
In October of 2003 I was thrown from a horse and hit my head. My doctor prescribed pain killers but I didn’t take them. I think it was about three weeks later that I accepted the fact that I was saving them up so that I could take them all at once. That was one of the hardest days of my life because that was the day that I realized that I needed help (and I really, really hate asking for help!). I started taking an antidepressant medication that has changed my life in more ways than I can measure.
But so much much more than medication, the biggest healing came from talking to a therapist. He was the one that figured it all out, actually. One day I was telling him a story and said something about not wanting to get out of bed for a week and he said that wasn’t normal behavior. But how could it not be? I had lived like that for my whole life and I saw other members of my family behave the same way. I thought everyone had times like that but they just didn’t talk about it… like me. So we started digging deeper. I think it was okay to tell him my feelings because he wasn’t my family, he wasn’t my friend… I could handle it if he found out what a waste of a human being that I was. And he helped me accept that I wasn’t a waste, that I was worthy. I learned to love myself and, so much harder, I learned to let people love me… the real me. I am happier than I ever thought possible, happier than I ever thought I deserved.
Now I can look back and know that all of the tears and heartache from my youth did not stem from my worthlessness. My worthlessness was, in fact, a byproduct of my depression. In some ways, the fact that you know that your feelings are caused by depression can be a great benefit to you. But, in other ways, I think it could become a disadvantage. I guess it depends on how you look at it and what you do about it. If you let the feelings of depression become a crutch, you could sit back for your whole life and blame everything bad that ever happens to you on your illness. But that won’t make you happy or fulfilled or give you a feeling of self worth. The happiness and self worth will come from struggling against it. It will come from knowing that you have this hurdle to face and believing that you have the strength within you to overcome.
I know it probably doesn’t feel like you have that strength yet but you can and you will. The easiest thing to do when you start feeling down is to sink into it and let it swallow you. I still have bad days when all I want to do is push everyone away and crawl under the blankets until the bad feelings go away. And sometimes that’s exactly what I do. But that only makes it worse. Your writing will be quite good for you. It’s an outlet to express what is going on inside you and exploring the things that are going on in your mind. And you really are good at it. If you keep it up you will eventually feel more comfortable putting your feelings down on paper. Don’t berate yourself or talk down to yourself. There will be enough people in your life that will try to do that for you. If you believe it, it will only hurt you. Know that you are an amazing person. You have so much to offer the world; don’t ever doubt that.
You have a head start now, Brandon. You are so much further ahead of the game than your mother and I were at your age, and you are worlds ahead of your grandfather. It’s hard but you need to remember that the things that go through your mind when you are down are not coming from you, they are being caused by disruptions in the neurotransmitters in your brain (or whatever the correct medical terminology is!!). This is different than people who suffer from depression that is not caused by genetics. These people get depressed because of events that happen, they have a specific reason to be down; someone they love dies or they lose their job or a million other reasons. Our bad feelings do not always have a specific reason. And sometimes the reason is different than we think it is. I’m not saying that your experiences and upsets aren’t valid, I’m just asking that you try to find a positive way to deal with them.
The answer is never never never (did I say never??) suicide or hurting yourself. Trying to stop the pain in that way offers absolutely no benefit. It doesn’t help you deal with your problems, it doesn’t fix what is wrong. The only thing it could do is devastate the people who love you. Ian’s brother committed suicide when he was a young adult. His family was crushed and his mother will never recover. Suicide is an extremely selfish act. If you feel that you want to hurt yourself, I beg you to reach out to someone. Even if you don’t care about you, you need to care about your mother, care about me and everyone else who loves you; you need to look for help. Honestly, I think that you are a very loving person and you are too considerate of others to try to end your life but sometimes the pain is hard to take and we look for a way out. Promise me that you will look for a different way.
When you are down the best things that you can do for yourself are difficult to deal with when you feel like you can’t deal with anything but they will always, always help… be around people that make you laugh, get exercise, take Holly for a walk, DDR until you can’t take it anymore! Just do something. And it’s HARD, so hard to do, but it will make the bad parts pass much faster. You might want to talk to your mother about medication. Most doctors don’t like to prescribe antidepressants to teens but it might be an option if things get bad and you feel that you can’t cope.
The most important thing that I can tell you is to understand and BELIEVE BELIEVE BELIEVE that the pain will pass. It really will. There is nothing that you will ever go through, good or bad, that will not ease with time. Even if you someday find yourself at the end of your rope, know that you do have the strength to get through it. Ask for help, talk to someone (I’m available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), hug your dog, lie in bed and pull the covers over your head… do what you need to do to survive and it will pass… I promise. I will always be here for you and you can tell me anything - and anything that you tell me will stay with me and only me. I want you to feel that you can talk to me about these things but, if you don’t want to, I will understand that, too. Just do what you need to do… and be happy… you deserve it!
Brandon, we are connected by blood but I feel more than that with you. I think of you as my nephew and as my friend. I see a lot of myself in you, I see a lot of your mother in you and I feel a bond with you that will never weaken. You are a fantastic person, you are fun to be around, you are handsome, you are smart, you have a good heart and I love you. I love you – UNCONDITIONALLY – no matter what.
From your favorite aunt,
Bev xxx
