My name is Ben,
and I have a confession to make: I have an illness. I learned this in the ER after recovering
from an overdose on pain pills. My
doctor told me he didn’t know the cause, but the disease had corrupted my
blood, which is why I was in so much pain all the time. When I asked if I would ever get better, he
told me there were treatments, and some worked really well. He warned me that each patient reacted better
to some treatments than others. The
recovery process could be long, expensive, and complicated, and even then,
there was no guarantee that I would ever be cured.
My parents drove
me home in dead silence. They thought I
was just exaggerating my symptoms. I
didn’t dare talk about getting treatment or returning to the doctor’s; every
time I tried they just shut down the conversation. I guess it hurt them to think their son was
broken. They didn’t like to think that I
could die from this disease, so they pretended it didn’t exist.
They didn’t
realize I had been taking the pain pills for eons now; almost seven years ago I
had started getting massive headaches and became sore all over my body. Each
morning I woke up to a throbbing in my limbs that begged me to rest. But I couldn’t: I had school. So I got ready, my stiff joints forcing me to
move slowly, lethargically. There were nights when I just wanted to never wake
up, because death would be so blissful compared to feeling like every muscle in
my body was on fire.
When I first
started to have these problems, one of my friends just scoffed at me: “Whatever
man. You’re just trying to get away with
doing no homework. Stop kidding around!” Others got tired waiting for me because my
limbs were like lead and I lacked the energy to keep up. By the time I started self-medicating, most
of my friends were pretty much gone.
Even one of my teachers pulled me aside to tell me to pull myself
together: he expected more of me.
Telling people
about my disease and diagnosis only made it worse: now I was an outcast. Even my closest friends avoided talking about
the illness. One of them went as far as
to say that the doctor who diagnosed me was a fake and I should just go cure
myself.
So I did. Or tried to at least. It began with bloodletting—cutting. At first it made me want to vomit, but it
helped, so within a few months the acrid, metallic smell of my poisoned blood
brought a sort of reassurance that I could manage my condition. I became an adrenaline junkie—supposedly it
would give my body energy to fight the disease—and I was drawn to danger.
I tried everything
from starving to suffocating to self-medicating. After all those attempts
failed, I thought there was no hope for me: that I would slowly waste
away. I was broken, helpless, and
hopeless. No one wanted me: a person doomed to a long and painful death.
Then one day a
girl smiled and said hi to me. Every
day. For weeks. By this time my disease had already left my
body twisted and deformed. No one dared
look at me. No one… Except her. Then she introduced herself—her name was Kim. We hung out.
For the first time
in years, I had a friend! But I didn’t
dare tell her about my disease… Months passed and she noticed how I kept
wincing in pain. She asked what was
wrong, so at last, I told her about my disease.
I told her about the pain pills. I told her about the cutting and all
the times I had nearly died because I just wanted the pain to end. I told her about the times when I was by
myself and I just screamed in agony or sobbed because I felt so alone. I told her everything.
And you know
what? She listened! She didn’t judge. She told me my disease didn’t determine who I
was. She told me about the famous people
who also suffered from the same condition.
Like Abraham Lincoln! When Kim
looked at me, she didn’t see a broken thing; she saw a person with talents and
the capacity to be great.
You may be
wondering what my disease was. Well, it actually isn’t anything physical. No, it is something far more terrible and far
harder to escape. I have
depression. My actual diagnosis is
Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Major Depressive Disorder and Dysthymia (if
you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, most people don’t). I was diagnosed after my fifth—or maybe it was
my sixth—attempt at suicide.
One time Kim asked
me why she was the one to help me—two years after my diagnosis and almost 10
years after my first suicide attempt.
She was upset that my parents, friends, and high school counselors did
nothing and even made things worse. I
told her that, unlike her, they didn’t listen.
They were afraid. Talking about
mental illness made them uncomfortable: it was taboo. Because of their responses, I felt trapped: doomed
to face my hopeless, painful illness completely alone. So I stopped talking about it, afraid of
dragging others into my abyss.
Today I’m writing
because I’m worried for all the other people out there like me. An estimated 1.5 million children and teens
in US schools will suffer from depression this year, and most of them have no
idea help is available. I’ve heard
tragic stories of sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and
friends who couldn’t take the pain any more and chose to end their lives. This disease doesn’t discriminate.
As long as no one
is willing to talk openly about depression, it will keep on killing. So I hope you will learn from my story. Take it from me; it doesn’t take much to
help. Just a smile. A listening ear. Being
a friend. I will warn you that they—like me—will not bring up the topic. So if you are seriously worried about
someone, ask if they feel worthless or purposeless. Please, ask if they have thoughts of suicide.
A friend or
parent’s silence causes more damage than many people realize. Because discussing mental illness was taboo
in my family, it took Kim over 3 months to convince me to seek professional treatment.
I’m now taking medication, which helps, and I’m doing much better. I’ve finally
chosen a career that I’m passionate about, I have a job that I love, and for
once I feels like my life has real meaning and purpose. Fighting the disease is still hard, but now I
have people by my side to help me along the way.
Depression doesn’t
have to be a death sentence. But it is
real. Painfully real. And its victims need our help. I think of Kim often… she and I both realize
that, if not for her willingness to talk about my depression, I likely would
not be alive today… So please, talk
about depression with your spouse, friends, parents, children, or peers. Better yet, listen. You might just save a life.
Sources/Additional
reading:
Black Dog Analogy-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiCrniLQGYc
A good blog post-- http://www.thedarlingbakers.com/love-someone-with-depression/
My blog-- http://www.buildmeawindow.blogspot.com/
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