BLOG: DEPRESSION AND FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN 

BY ADRIENNE GURMAN

I’m not okay. These three small words may make some of you uncomfortable. Perhaps they’re scary enough to make you reconsider reading this blog. If so, I understand.

I’m not okay. That does not mean that I’m on the brink of losing it, or falling into a dark hole. What I’m telling you, at this moment, is I’m afraid of those things happening. There’s a profound sadness making its way throughout my brain, traveling south in the fast lane towards my heart. I can only compare it to the aura I get before a migraine – tiny sparks flying before my eyes, forewarning of the pain and misery of what’s in store for the following 24 hours.

I’m not okay. The melancholy with which I awoke this morning is a telling sign that an episode of depression is about to strike. Or, maybe not. I can just as easily get up tomorrow and feel fine. That’s the frightening part of living with a chronic illness. Any sign, (or omen as I call it), of an impending strike, evokes a primal fear – what if this is it? All rationality dissipates when I’m in this place. The years of bouncing back from hitting bottom don’t mean much when I feel the magnetic pull of the dark side. Will this be the time when I reach the point of no return? But maybe it’s only a fleeting bout of the winter blues. After all, the past months in the Northeast have been filled with icy polar-vortex gunk, turning the roads and streets into dangerous sheets of slippery, pot-holed frosty pavement. My instinct to hibernate is at an all time high.

Writing about it helps. Especially when my sweet dog Anya is sleeping soundly next to me. I’m not up for talking it through – analyzing and speculating why I feel so off and so terrified. As a seasoned therapy patient, I’m well versed in the Q&A of treatment and don’t feel the need or desire to make a call. The big red panic button seems off in the distance, yet I still worry that maybe by tonight or tomorrow I’ll be in my crawl space, hiding from the world.

I wonder if it’s possible to have Major Depression and ever live completely without the fear of it paralyzing me into oblivion. Then again, trying to surmise about my future is robbing me of my present. If I had a dime for every time I’ve been told to live for today, I’d have a boatload of coins stuck behind my sofa cushions.

Live in the moment. Breathe. Make a mental inventory of the objects in the room and welcome the sunshine pouring through the windows. Take another sip of freshly brewed coffee from the I Don’t Do Perky mug and relish in the early morning’s silence.

As if on cue, Anya shuffles over to the sunbeams hitting the wood floors and stretches out, making sure every inch of her long body fits perfectly in the rays. She’s closing her eyes and drifting back into a carefree nap. I doubt she’s wondering if she’ll be able to do the same thing tomorrow. I bet all my virtual dimes that she isn’t scared of having her water bowl stolen or losing her favorite blanket. For all of that lack of concern, she’s able to soak up the warmth and live in the present.

My sadness has not gone away, however the fear of spending my life in an eternal state of despair begins to lift a tad. Some days I’m convinced that I have a tight grasp on my depression - I walk with pride, and stand tall while bursting with enthusiasm. I tell myself “I’ve got this,” and lap up every minute. I’ve learned to never take a good day, or even a good hour, a good minute, for granted. None of us should. So when I wake up full of dread and impending doom, I must shift my thoughts to the here and now, just to survive. It’s times like this that simply not getting any worse is something I consider to be a success.

In many ways, chronic depression is similar to the weather. This week’s forecast is calling for more bone-chilling temperatures with no end in sight. But winter is only one of four seasons and as time passes, spring will gradually arrive.

I’m not okay. But I will be.

Adrienne Gurman has over 20 years of experience in advertising, marketing and magazine publishing.  She is currently the Vice President of 1212-Studio, a product design company in NYC.  A native New Yorker, Adrienne lives with her husband and their vivacious chocolate lab, Anya.  Adrienne began volunteering for Bring Change 2 Mind not long after the organization was founded, and has since been a leading advocate for fighting the stigma that surrounds mental illness. She has lived with Major Depression since the age of 12. Adrienne writes a weekly blog for esperanza magazine and continues to be a growing voice in the anti-stigma community.

Blog: Only the Lonely 

by Henry Boy Jenkins

There’s a joke that goes, “You’re never alone with a schizophrenic,” based on the mistaken belief that having schizophrenia is the same as having a split personality. It’s not. That would be dissociative identity disorder, a rare psychological condition defined by distinct and recurring alternating personality states which control one’s behavior. To clarify: schizophrenia is a chronic and debilitating mental disorder characterized by a breakdown in thinking which significantly impairs an individual’s thought processes. The ability to assess one’s surroundings and to interact with others becomes distorted. Isolation gets to be run-of-the-mill. This is not by choice. This is the illness. It is a lonely place.
Two months ago I attempted suicide. I suffered through a psychotic break, resulting in emergency medical intervention. I’d hoped that my symptoms had abated, but they seem to have left a vapor trail. Residual audio and visual hallucinations persist. I find myself preoccupied with them. I feel ashamed for not recovering sooner. I’m confused and haunted. When questioned, I act as if nothing ever happened. It’s not denial, it’s more like a memory wipe. In psychiatric terms, I am experiencing post-psychotic depression. With an unusual side-effect: I came to believe that I had no friends.
I approached the idea in much the same way that one might act on the notion of Spring Cleaning. I removed numbers from my phone, and I purged my friends list. I was getting things done and it felt good because getting things done always feels good. There’s that sense of completion and renewal. By actively eliminating all those names, I believed I was getting mentally fit. These were just names, after all, and how can a name be a friend? It’s random letters strung together. Meaningless. Without caller ID my phone was a brick. My newsfeed cruised without memes and cat pics. Cleaned out, like the closet. No mismatched socks or tatty jeans. Orderly. Like the hospital.
Days passed. The phone would ring and I would ignore it. A jumble of unfamiliar numbers. A text from the Twilight Zone. I could exercise or write or play guitar or paint, and nothing and no one was there to bother me. Something felt off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I started not sleeping again. I skipped my therapy sessions. I found myself living in a ghost town. I only jogged on days when it was pouring down rain to avoid seeing people at the track. The Brother From Another Planet had become The Boy In The Bubble. I wondered if I was lonely, but I knew that wasn’t possible.
Because you’re never alone with a schizophrenic.
If there’s an art to living with a mental illness it’s learning to ignore the dismissive paint-by-number forgeries hung by ignorance and prejudice as truth. Like in that movie where everyone laughs at the quiet girl with her Goth tapes and black lipstick. At the anorexic geek with his comic books and action figures. At the stressed-out veteran experiencing flashbacks. The bag-lady talking to shadows. Depression, anxiety, trauma, psychosis. You laugh along with the audience because you want to blend in, but it hits too close to home. It’s wrong to laugh, and you know it. You know it because it hurts. Something needs to change. That change begins with you.
It starts with an honest conversation. It continues with active listening. Speak to the words between the words, and to the ones tucked in behind them. Listen to the words that no one will dance with, to the words that never get a goodnight kiss. It really is a two-way street. This is how the conversation starts, and this is where the healing begins. A glass pressed up to the adjacent wall, listening intently for signs of life. Who is in there, and how do we get to know them better? Our words are the trail of breadcrumbs we follow to get out of the forest of loneliness.
It’s up to us to speak our truths and become a part of something bigger. We need to be seen and we want to be heard. We are not ciphers, cute off-the- wall characters in a situation comedy, or newspaper buzzwords when reporters get hasty. We are not punchlines. Mental illness is no laughing matter.
Confronting the stigma head-on, it would be more accurate to say, “You are always alone if you have schizophrenia.” But I tell you what: I am resolved to make - and keep - every friend that I can, no matter how many times I need to humble myself and surrender to the fact that I live a life in a world that no one else can understand. That is, until I start the conversation.

Henry Boy Jenkins is a Seattle artist, writer, and musician living with schizophrenia. He received his diagnosis in 2010 and has been managing his illness with a passion ever since. He is currently writing a memoir chronicling his experiences with schizophrenia and trauma in the hope that people living with a mental illness - as well as those who love and care for them - will find something in his story that compels them to share their own. Publicly open in his advocacy for awareness and change, Henry focuses on education and communication as the most effective tools in any superhero’s utility belt. Honesty and courage work hand-in-hand to combat stigma.