For years I’ve watched television ads about depression and the many medications available to help those in need, and had always wondered: Is this a real disease?
Bi-Polar Disorder, (another disease that I used to be skeptical of,) runs in my Wife’s family. It had not reared its ugly head to my Wife until she lost her job, and we subsequently lost our house to foreclosure back in 2007. From that moment on, everything changed for her, and for our family. There were one or two half-hearted attempts at suicide, a lot of hospital and Psychiatrist visits and a lot of tears shed in that first year. One of our closest friends even turned his back on her.
My Wife was put on multiple medications to treat her disorder and it took a long time for her Doctor to finally find the combination of medications that she needed to handle basic, everyday functions. Through all of this, I still had this skepticism. Was she just overreacting to all that had happened? Was she using this as an excuse to not find a job and get back out into society? She was losing interest in more and more activities every day and she began to experience anxiety, complete with tremors enough to make it hard for her to even use her hands. I was becoming a believer quite quickly. During this period, I had no choice but to take control of everything in our lives. Earning the living, paying the bills, trying to take care of our children and there was the foreclosure and moving the family out to deal with.
For the next few months, I looked around for a house to move my family into. It had to be a rental, and the terms had to be easy for a family that a foreclosure on their credit report. I was able to find a house just two blocks away from the house we were losing to foreclosure. With a lot of fast talking, begging and pleading, I talked the Property Manager into letting us rent the house and move in. We were very short on cash, so I moved the contents of the entire house to the new house with my minivan and a lot of determination! My Wife helped where she could, but it really was up to me to make this happen.
Once in the new rental, we tried to slow everything down and get back to normal. My Wife’s condition was leveling, and though money was still very tight, we were getting by. I can’t for the life of me remember what happened, but something occurred that created a money issue. Might have been an expensive car repair, something like that. Either way, now rent was being paid late on a regular basis. I was hearing complaints from the Property Manager and the owner of the home. We ended up paying rent late every month and just trying to give what we could, when we could. A month before the lease was to expire, we got a call from the Property Manager, telling us that the owner of the house was losing HIS house to foreclosure and needed the one that we were living in. So, they were not renewing our lease. Mind you, over the past year living in that house, let’s just say that things were NOT kept up. There was paint on my Daughters’ walls and carpets in her room, the rest of the carpets were badly stained by 3 dogs that my Wife needed to help with her depression. The bathrooms were less than clean, and the garage was a total mess.
So there it was waiting for me. I had a month to make everything right in the hopes of getting our deposit back, just in case I was able to find another home to rent in the next 28 days. That deposit was critical, since we had absolutely no money in the bank for the next rental. I had a friend who was a realtor in town, so thanks to him, finding a new rental was not as difficult as I thought it would be. We had secured our new house 2 weeks before we were due out of our old one. We still didn’t have all of the money for the deposit, first and last month’s rent, etc., but at least we had a chance. Before I knew it, the last week of our lease was here, and none of the repairs or cleaning had been done. My oldest Son, (who would have been a huge help with the move,) was traveling around the Southeast, visiting colleges in search of a baseball scholarship. Lisa was in no condition to help me and my other three kids meant well, but just couldn’t give me the help I needed. I was alone. Again. We scraped together enough money, (without getting anything back from our old landlord yet,) to get the keys to the new house 2 days ahead of schedule. That enabled me to get everyone out of the old house and let me have time to be alone working on the cleaning and repairing.
Once again, I used my trusty minivan to move everything over to the new house, trip after trip with basically no help. As I was moving things out of the old house, I was finding some bad surprises like really bad carpet stains, tears, holes in linoleum, etc. I utilized my carpet shampooer to work on the carpets and the machine did a pretty good job. I could not, however remove paint. I tried to scrub the walls clean of paint and other things, but wasn’t very happy with the results. I would have just painted, but I had absolutely no money available to put into the old house, with all that I needed for the new house. For two days I went to work during the day, then back and forth between houses at night and finally finished the job. The Landlord joined me for an inspection of the house on move out day and was not as happy with my results as I was. I lost most of my deposit due to the paint on the walls and various other things like carpet tears and dented walls.
Lost money and all, I was glad that was over and was very glad to be out of that house and that situation. The day we were officially moved into the new house, my oldest Son was taking my only working vehicle up to South Carolina for a campus visit at a college. My Son had JUST learned how to drive and I was worried for him, and quite honestly, for my only vehicle. So, my first day in the new house was me pacing, taking phone calls from my son as he drove up and down the east coast.
My Son got home just fine and it was the first weekend in the new house. I woke up in the morning and everything was quiet. Everything was done. I didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. I started to hyperventilate! I couldn’t believe it, of all people, I was experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder! I was trembling, sweating and freezing at the same time, and I was nauseous. That whole weekend, the only thing that could calm me down was alcohol, and I needed a lot of calming down.
I woke up on Monday morning with the same symptoms, but problem was; now I had to be at work. I got into work and was shaking, sweating and was experiencing serious short term memory loss. I was also so paranoid, that every time someone would come up to me or even if my phone would ring, I would jump. This went on for a few days. By the fourth day, I started to fear for my health. I walked into my boss’ office and told her about what I was experiencing. She immediately sent me to the emergency walk in clinic in town where I was diagnosed with PTSD, and was given medication for anxiety and depression. I actually had a nervous breakdown. Me of all people. Me, the guy who so doubted that such things really existed in peoples’ minds. I had a mental disorder.
I took my medication faithfully and it really did help. I have since moved my family to a new town to follow a job. The first six months were great and I had worked myself off of the medication. Then one day, the symptoms returned. As of today, I have not gone back to a doctor here in my new town. I use my Wife’s’ medication when I need it and things seem to be fine again. I think I’ll always have feelings of depression, because I am a type A personality. I am NEVER truly happy. However, the worst part of those symptoms was the anxiety. It has calmed now, but every once in a while it comes back. I can’t control it, and I’m pretty sure I never will be able to. Man, depression is a strange beast…