Hope For Gravediggers

I was 17 when my mind cracked like an egg…when I first realized what clinical depression looked like.

It shattered, and I couldn’t put two thoughts together. It was a mess and so was I. I was terrified of not finding my way back home to myself.

You know how they say, Stress can kill you? Well, it’s true. I didn’t know it at the time, but what I knew was that I was really sad and depressed. Then I repeated what I knew over myself: I’m so depressed, I’m so sad. I didn’t know repeating those words was building a house that I would be stuck in for the next 6 months, which then grew into a prison for me. This daily mantra eventually took over my thoughts and gave me skewed windows on how I saw myself. I didn’t even have to “feel” depressed anymore because it became my identity, my persona. Depression became Me.

I knew this was true because I would cry for no reason at all. I would read the newspapers and see the word “illness”, and consider that I had the same disease that I was reading about. 

Everywhere I went, a  cloud of sadness and darkness seemed to follow me as if I was Eeyore. We were reading Edgar Allen Poe in school, and that made me sadder and more afraid that I would never find my way back home to myself. The real Me. 

In my town, my friends were either getting sick, dying or having nervous breakdowns. One died from an aneurysm when she was so young, a teenager like me. Her death was terrifying because it was so sudden. I knew I was next, and the stress of being “homesick” in this way would kill me. 

I felt stuck in a constant panic and would have multiple anxiety attacks a day.

Then strength from within me, which was a sense of life, cried out, I wasn’t born this way, I just need to find my way back to myself. Out of this needlepoint cry, a still small voice spoke what one would call a “mantra”. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, but I spoke this statement because it was what I knew to be true so I said it to myself every day. And this statement started to tear down the mausoleum that I built, being buried alive in my sadness. I realized I wanted to become a gravedigger for those who were stuck in the same way.

For me, depression looked like sadness that wouldn’t go away coupled with panic attacks, restless sleep (sleepwalking too), suicidal thoughts, an obsession with death and dying, and social isolation. There’s no silver bullet as to why a person develops clinical depression A.K.A Major Depressive Disorder. It can be a result of multiple things and the symptoms can range from being distracted, constantly feeling like a nobody (a sense of worthlessness), hopelessness, fixating on past failures or self-blame, constantly annoyed to the point of tears or anger (irritability), being super tired (constant fatigue) or restlessness, just to name a few.

If any of these ring a bell, talk with your healthcare provider about what you may be experiencing. Don’t have insurance? I got you! Go to OpenPathCollective.org to find a sliding-scale therapist in your area.  

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