Home
About Christine
How it started
Blog & Columns
It's all in my head
Guest Book
Events, book signing & interviews
Hoping for a Happy Ending

 By Christine Stapleton

Staff Writer
The Palm Beach Post
August 13, 2006 


This story launched my weekly column, Kicking Depression, in the Palm Beach Post. 
 (If this page does not display properly, please switch your browser to Firefox or Safari.) 


Years ago I bought a poster of Rosie the Riveter, framed it and hung it above the desk where I write on my front porch. I love Rosie. She is the face of millions of women who rolled up their sleeves and headed to the steel mills, shipyards and factories during World War II.
Rosie nixed the notion that brawn and beauty were incompatible and that women weren't capable of handling a job and a home. Her nails are polished. Her mascara is perfect. Her right arm flexed as she rolls her work shirt over her bicep. A perfectly plucked left eyebrow is raised just enough to say We Can Do It!
Rosie is my hero. She is strong. She is beautiful. She is me. 
I believed this until April 25, 2006.
On that day everything I thought I knew about myself shattered. The image of the capable woman so many people had of me - award-winning journalist, single mom, bread winner and baker - sat sobbing on a park bench at 5 a.m. as my puzzled dog watched. I had begun a journey into a hell I did not know existed. A hole so deep and black, I could only focus on ending it. A hell called depression.
I was scared. I was alone. I was human.
I was not Rosie.
I thought I knew about depression. I have friends who have been depressed. I would tell them how badly I felt for them and ask if I could help. Privately I thought, come on, get a grip. Eat some chocolate. Walk on the beach. Put peanut butter on your dog's nose. Go rent Caddyshack, for Chrissake. Lord knows I have known sadness and grief. Death, divorce, illness. But depression - a real major clinical depression - is much, much more than being really, really sad.
Although it is no consolation to those of us who have this disease, we are not alone. There are about 21 million Americans who suffer from depression every year. It is the leading cause of disability in the United States. The economic toll is $83 billion annually.
King David and Job had it. So did Goethe, Tolstoy and Florence Nightingale. Actor Drew Carey. Journalist Mike Wallace. Even the Beaver's brother, Wally Cleaver, had it. It killed Kurt Cobain. Winston Churchill named his depression his "black dog." I call mine my "black hole."
My depression is cunning and baffling. It tries to convince me that I am not sick. It tells me that I'm just not trying hard enough. I am a loser. I am a selfish ingrate. Depression tells me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. Keep trying. I can think my way out of this mess. Look at all I have. I should be happy.
And I should be happy. Hell, I should be ecstatic. I have a wonderful life. My 14-year-old daughter and I have traveled the world. She loves school, has great friends and gets good grades. Her college is already paid for. I have a beautiful home in a trendy neighborhood. I have wonderful friends. I have money in the bank. I can still wear a bikini.
So why was I sitting on a park bench at 5 a.m. on April 25, 2006 wondering how long it would take to kill myself - or if I even could - with a hose hooked up to the exhaust of my Toyota Prius, a hybrid that has almost no lethal emissions?
In hindsight, my depression makes perfect sense. On that day there was a perfect confluence of genetics, grief and chemical imbalance in my brain. I fell into a black hole. I could not get out. I could not hit bottom. I just fell deeper and deeper and deeper.
That day is a blur. I woke up crying. I finally made it to work and as I walked by the security desk I had a feeling that I was not in my body. Someone asked me a question. I couldn't answer. I left. I called a psychiatrist's office. They offered me an appointment the following week. I remember saying: "I need to see someone now." 
The nurse asked a lot of questions. Yes, I had thought about suicide. Yes, I had tried to kill myself before, as a teenager. No, I wasn't going to do it. I love my daughter too much and could never leave her. They gave me medicine. I took it. I don't remember the rest of that day, or the next, or the next. They are all a blur. 
I remember trying to watch television. It sounded tinny and hurt my ears. The story line of an episode of Law & Order seemed impossibly complex. The memory of an article I had read only moments ago vanished. I bounced between inconsolable and catatonic. I could not focus on the newspaper that had published my stories for nearly 20 years. 
 
People who know me - co-workers and friends - will tell you that I am a strong woman. I have run marathons, triathlons and ridden 100-mile bike races. I scuba dive. I ski. I mountain bike. I volunteer. I restored my 80-year-old home. I go to the gym before the sun rises. I read the Bible at breakfast.
How could this be happening to me?
Had I known more about depression I would have known that I had suffered with depression since I was a child and had grown up with a mild state of depression called dysthymia. I would have understood that nothing I achieved - the trophies, the scholarship, the byline - could ever have made me happy.
I would have known that this disease runs in my family and all my gold stars, blue ribbons or a million Hail Mary's could never have made my depressed mother happy.
I would have known that the endorphin rush I got running back and forth across the Blue Heron bridge until my heart rate reached 180 bpm was just a desperate attempt to self-medicate myself.
I would have known about "situational depression" - a type of depression caused by a loss - and that a steady stream of devastating losses in my life and my reluctance and inability to grieve them had exacerbated my chronic depression.
I would have known I was a major clinical depression waiting to happen.
My 10-year marriage had ended in May 1999 and left me a full-time single working mother. My daughter was 6. By February 2001 I was in the hospital with pneumonia, exhausted from working countless hours on the newspaper's coverage of the November 2000 election. Eight months later my father died of lung cancer. Five days after his funeral my mother began another round of chemotherapy. Her colon cancer had spread to her liver.
On March 6, 2003 - 16 months after my father's death - my mother died a slow, painful death that robbed her of her dignity. By the end of the summer our family's home for 35 years - the kitchen where Mom canned applesauce, the bedroom heating duct where I hid my diary, the basement where we listened to Led Zeppelin - was gone. Sold to a young family.
Without my mother - the glue that held our family together - my brother and sister and I became estranged. We talked only on holidays and birthdays. I felt like an orphan. Nine months later my beloved dog Bella died in my arms. She was 14. It was cancer. I buried her in the back yard. 
Reeling like a stubborn boxer on the mat, I got back on my feet and plunged back into my life. I assumed grief was like a sad movie that ended with the last spade of dirt thrown on a grave. I was wrong. Very wrong. One more loss finally pushed me into my black hole.
I had fallen in love with a man in the spring of 2000. Six years of juggling a career, terminally ill parents and single parenting had strained our relationship. I wanted couples' counseling. He wanted out and declared our six-year relationship over. Ten weeks later he had a new girlfriend. She was "available," he said. Her children were grown. He took her to Las Vegas.
I was crushed. I had tried dating but my heart wasn't in it. I couldn't sleep. I lost 20 pounds. My chest was tight and my heart raced. My doctor ordered a stress test. My heart was fine. I was stressed. I started therapy and got on my knees every night and begged God not to take the only love left in my life - my daughter.
My therapist and my girlfriends told me I needed help. I needed to consider antidepressants. I balked. I can handle this, I thought. Look at all I've been through. Time heals all wounds, right? Then I learned it's not time that heals the wounds. It's what you do while time passes that heals the wounds.
A friend of mine, a respected physician, admitted taking antidepressants. Many of my friends - strong, successful career women - admitted that they were on antidepressants. I was shocked and saddened that so many of my friends not only suffered from depression but had felt too ashamed to discuss it. I agreed to take antidepressants.
My experience with prescription drugs is nearly nil - the occasional antibiotic and Novocain at the dentist, drugs that work fast. Antidepressants, I learned from the psychiatric nurse treating me, can take up to six weeks to reach their full effect. 
 
And they might not work at all, she said. And they might make my depression worse, she added.
Three weeks later I felt no better. One of my medications was increased. I became more depressed. Another medication was added to my regime. Within a week I was beginning to feel better. However, drugs would not be enough to manage this disease, she said.
I needed to continue my therapy, exercise, eat even if I wasn't hungry to stabilize my blood sugar, keep a journal about my feelings and deal with my anger.
Anger? What anger? I had never considered myself an angry person. I didn't understand. For many women, depression is anger turned inward, she explained. And anger is a healthy emotion and a necessary phase of grief, my therapist said.
I had never been given permission to be angry. As a child, anger was not an acceptable emotion. Growing up I learned anger wasn't lady-like. But now my therapist wanted me to beat a pillow with a whiffle bat. Scream. Shout. Get mad. Get it out. Suddenly I realized I wasn't angry. I didn't have whiffle-bat anger. I had junkyard rage. I wanted to break something. I wanted to hear my rage. I wanted to do damage.
I got myself a metal bat. I pulled out the Yellow Pages and found a junk yard. I put on the steel-toed boots I had bought after one of the hurricanes, found the pair of gloves my daughter had used at sailing camp years ago and crammed a Rolling Stones CD into my car's stereo.
It was a raining when I pulled into the junk yard's muddy parking lot. I walked to the office and explained my predicament to the guys behind the counter.
"They say I need to do this to feel better," I explained. The guys didn't blink.
"You want a bat or a golf club," one guy said pointing to a pile of bats and golf clubs in the corner.
"I have my own bat," I said. "It's metal." He smiled.
"Are you gonna scream?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said.
We walked past wrecked cars stacked on top of each other. Then he pointed to the frame of a green truck. Some of the windows were gone but the grill, headlights and driver's window were intact, along with the hood and front quarter-panels.
He pointed: "You can hit this truck, but only this one." Then he walked away.
I started with the hood, moved on to the grill, took out both headlights, the drivers window and the front right quarter-panel before I stopped, completely exhausted. I have no idea how long I was there. I went back to the office and asked if they wanted me to clean up my mess.
"Nope," the guy said, giving me a look I had never seen on a man's face before. Utter respect.
"Thanks," I said and walked back to the car, dragging my bat. My hands were shaking but I felt good. Really good. Better than I had felt in weeks.
I decided then that I will attack this disease. I will do what the doctor and therapist tell me. I will take my medications no matter how good I feel. I will learn to say "no" when I feel overwhelmed. I will cry when I am sad. I will learn to get mad without a bat. I will not be ashamed to tell people that I have depression.
I will get better.

 

Home | About Christine | How it started | Blog & Columns | It's all in my head | Guest Book | Events, book signing & interviews

Christine Stapleton
Columns published with permission of The Palm Beach Post. Depression graphic by www.wordle.net Reprints prohibited without consent of the author.