This may be a Debbie Downer of a blog and for that, I apologize in advance. It isn’t a maybe, it is completely, 100% a sad blog. The topic I would like to discuss with you: depression. It’s a serious topic for a lot of people (me being one) do not take it lightly, although I used to have elements of denial with it. I’ve been seeing a lot of support on Facebook with the (September) Suicide Prevention/Awareness Month and I’ve seen donations made to various organizations and that is wonderful! The depression/suicide awareness should not just be one of those fad once a month, “Hey-Look at me-I changed my profile picture-I support this month’s awareness”. It goes way deeper than that, especially for this topic. It is a serious thing and it should be more than just a month of random posts on Facebook. I would say that about any disease/organization/awareness topic-make it your passion if its something you truly care about in a subject matter. Do something about it-don’t just copy/paste shit. I am passionate about this one though. I am going to speak of my experience of it as my form of supporting the month of awareness. I am by no means a doctor nor am I an expert on the topic but I have firsthand knowledge of feelings and effects of depression as I have struggled with depression since I was an adolescent.
What brought this topic up: I attended a party where I met an older lady that approached me and was discussing the food that was served and I admitted I couldn’t try any of the food due to my surgery. She was very interested to hear my story because she has a daughter, younger than myself, in college hoping to make something of herself and is quite a bit overweight, depressed and struggling. Her daughter struggles with mental health to the point of not functioning and she said her daughter would love to have some sort of surgery for her weight loss but she has to get her life together first. I know how that goes-it is a real struggle to put your life on hold until your brain/mind decide to function as normally as possible. It isn’t even a matter of your brain/mind ‘deciding’ to function. It goes beyond that. It was, in all, a great conversation-I feel as if I provided information and resource because I also told her about my medication I am on, what doctors I see and the name of my surgery and so on. I could feel this lady’s pain through her daughter. I have seen it before. I have lived it before.
It’s hard to pinpoint where depression comes from or how it happens to some people and not others. It seems as if the ones that have never experienced depression or anxiety, don’t understand why it happens and sometimes they don’t even try to empathize and expect people to wake up one day and be OKAY. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to, “Shake it off-it isn’t so bad”, “Don’t be in such a mood”, “Maybe you just need a nap” or anything else along those lines. It just isn’t that simple. I’m not even sure why depression happens the way it does but I suppose there is an element of genetics, an element of environmental factors, and an element of self-worth. There are probably more factors I am missing but I know the elements I described are the ones that probably impacted my depression the most and probably in that specific order. I’ll explain in more detail.
Mental health issues run in my family. I shall not get into the specifics of who and what run in my family. I’m not ashamed of it, I am just being respectful of everyone’s privacy. Not everyone I’m related to are quiet as frank as I am about things, particularly life events, and I understand that completely. We aren’t unusual for having it run in our family. Hell, mental health related issues are probably just as common as inheriting skin tags, certain hair colors, blood pressure or something of that nature. Again, I am not a doctor so stop being a Judge Judy about my comparisons.
Depression is a disease that, much like eye color and hair styles, sometimes you don’t have a choice but to be born with it-it just depends when it develops. The choice, once depression is discovered and once one finally admits that they have an issue with their upstairs, they need to decide how to handle it. There are various ways to cope with it and trust me from my experience, sometimes that isn’t always easy to take that plunge. Here is what I did and it took years for me to discover: 1). Admit you have a problem and 2). Admit you need help 3). Actually seeking help. In fact, it is very dangerous mixture- to have depression and also the unwillingness to admit any of those things. That’s why I believe it is hard enough to get help. Trust me, I know.
I have been off and on depression pills since I was 16 years old. My depression dates back well before that. I have journals that I wrote very sad and depressing things when I was so much younger. Things that I don’t even know how a child that young can even comprehend what those feelings are like, what they mean and not even knowing I could have sought help. Here are some excerpts from my journal:
…”Life sucks so bad. I feel so ugly and stupid and fat. I hate it”
“Today, at first, was real bad. I kind of had a disagreement with my mom about how bad our/my life really is and how stupid I am, how I am going to fail in life..”
“…Life is sucking, sucking really bad and has for a while now. I don’t know what to do. I can’t put on a happy face forever. I believe my depression is getting worse. My life is going nowhere and it’s because of my negative thinking.”
“I hate my body and so I rather not show it. Why couldn’t God make me skinny? Why do I have to be fat? I gained weight. Like 4 pounds. That’s depressing”.
“Today wasn’t a good one. I’m finding more and more reasons why my life sucks. To me, lately, my life seems like a big mistake, like I’m a no body. If I die tomorrow-who would miss me? Sometimes I just can’t take life”.
“This has been happening for a long time now but I can just barely look at myself in the mirror. When I come out of the shower, I can’t look at myself for very long-without make up I feel so ugly. No! I am ugly. I’m going to try to make myself into what I call ‘beautiful’…I hate my life. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t have been born. God, just take my life. I also hate my body so much. Why didn’t God make me pretty?”
Growing up isn’t ever easy. I’ve had certain situations in my life that chose to stick with me like glue which highly influenced my depression. I tend to remember more negatives than positives in my life-I hate that and I’ve been working on that for years now. I suppose that’s why now as an adult, I like to take pictures to 1) To remember what happened 2) To know that life wasn’t always so bad and there are always something to be happy about. I’ve always known I am a little different from everyone else-my family, my friends, social acquaintances. I don’t mean that in a negative way, I mean that as positively as you can imagine. Perhaps that had something to do with how I was raised-to be my own individual. I love my parents allowed me to do this and to experience things on my own, learn the good and the bad, owning who I am. There were some negative to this though.
I was home-schooled until college. Even though my brother did go to public school for a while and I saw what that was like, I still learned at home. One of my first memories of people teasing me was when I was six years old and it involved my brothers public school. I had dressed myself one day-I decided to wear the most vivid rain boots and a ridiculous long jacket that went to my knees. The day wasn’t gloomy, there was no forecast of rain. I would like to think that I was channeling Lady GaGa even when I was a young tot. We had to go to my brother’s public school to pick him up and my mom had to speak with a teacher. I had to go to the bathroom and I was trusted to go by myself, so I did. The girls in the bathroom, they knew who I was, in fact my brother had a crush on one of the girls. They teased me for wearing my outfit on a beautiful day. I don’t remember exactly what was said but I know it was cruel, loud laughter occurred, pointing and teasing. I cried. I ran to my mom. It was unnecessary. It was memorable for the worst.
Eventually my brother was taught at home too. Home-schooling had some extremely terrible stereotypes which affected me until college, to the point I started lying to people about my “high school”. People assumed I was stupid or something, some sort of learning disability that required me to be taught special at home by my mother. All my life I was assumed to be that type of person. I remember when I was about nine years old, playing basketball on a very successful team as a club, the girls would make fun of me behind my parents back (who were the coaches). They would tease me with questions because I refused to answer and when I went silent-they would say stuff like-“I told you guys she wouldn’t know. That’s why she is home-schooled because she doesn’t know anything!” I would cry at home, alone because I didn’t like feeling I was less than a normal person or that I was stupid. Some of our close acquaintances did not understand why my parents chose to home-school us, but it wasn’t any of their business. If I was paid $5.00 for every time I heard this statement, “…but since you are home-school, think of everything you will miss out on-you can’t go to school dances or prom, you can’t participate in sports, you won’t be social”. First of all, I attended more school dances than I can count on both my hands and I still own those dresses to this day! I did go to prom, homecoming, winter balls, you name it-I went to all of them. I was so good at bowling that I was bowling on a JV High School team when I was in middle school, on a boy’s team nonetheless. Due to my bowling career and support of my parents that allowed me to travel so much and see so much of the United States, I was very social! I hated that stereotype the worst-“You don’t act home-schooled-you know, all weird and anti-social”. I do own up to the weird part but anti-social, only selective with people I do not like. I knew other home-schoolers and yes, some are strange sometimes but not all of us are like that.
The teasing continued in my life with my brother. Older brothers can be…hard on siblings-or older siblings can be hard on younger ones. I shouldn’t put a gender on that because I know of some older sisters that are dicks (twats?) to their younger siblings. I always envied the sibling relationships that you see on things like Little House on the Prairie. Even now, being an adult with people on Facebook posting their sibling love-I envy that. I don’t have anything remotely to it with mine. Being told I am stupid, can’t learn, can’t do anything right, ‘why don’t you just give up!’ negatives all the time coming from multiple directions. I decided I hated learning. I felt as if I shouldn’t even try. Most times, I didn’t try-I didn’t want to. It isn’t like I couldn’t try, I chose not to because I didn’t want to fuel the negative comments and prove them right. I struggled with this up until I had to graduate. I had the worst anxiety taking my GED test. I didn’t want to even do it. In fact, I didn’t even take the test until I was already in classes at the community college I attended because I was so afraid of proving those people right with their negative comments-the ones where I was stupid, I couldn’t learn and I wouldn’t be anything in life. I think this was just the beginning of my understanding of what depression was, starting early on and moving forward.
The teasing went beyond how intelligent I was. The teasing started to also include my body. Since I had already felt/looked bigger boned than my young-skinny-bitch friends, the comments started to flow which confirmed my feelings. It was a mix of boys (sometimes men) teasing me, my brother and even other girls.
Some of those comments still hurt if I think about them hard enough. One of my guy friends growing up (whom I had a falling out with) said out loud at the bowling alley for all to hear-“Look how fat Kaleena’s ass is. It jiggles with her just standing there. It is so fat that she probably should start worrying about chairs!” Another really hurtful comment came from a very, very well-respected bowler in the bowling community. I was 15 years old at the Hoinke Tournament (Ohio) watching my brother bowl this huge competition. This (now well-respected) guy was trashed knew my brother somehow. I was walking around watching different people bowl. He goes up to my brother and points at me and says, “Hey…you see that young girl that is walking around? She is seriously the fattest, sluttiest, gross piece of shit white-trash I have ever seen!” Of course my brother didn’t stand up for me but that is beside the point. I have since taken the higher road and have been nothing but polite to him- I’ve never even brought it up. I was made fun of for my stretch marks, “You have a map of the world on your stomach” or this one, “You have a worm farm on your stomach”. Comments about the size of my thighs, “You have thunder thighs. They are the size of manatees”. Even my teeth, “I’ll call you Bucky because you sure have buck teeth-like a rabbit”. Seriously, kids can be true assholes sometimes, even if they’re your family. So help me, if any future asshole kids who choose to tease my future children. They will learn a hard lesson.
At the ripe age of 14 years old, I was allowed to start dating boys-with restrictions. I was involved in a serious relationship at the age of 15 (and a half-because at that age, halves are super fucking important) with my long-distance boyfriend. He was older but also advanced in school. He lived 5 hours away but I was still able to visit, bowl league with him and do what couples do-almost every week for a year and a half. We had our amazing moments, he traveled with us to bowl when he could and I spent several holidays with him and his family. However, as we got older, I started to get paranoid. It was my fault and I admit it 100%. He never gave me a reason to believe that he was going to be interested in other girls while thinking about college but in my mind, I had nothing to offer him. Wait a minute, I take that whole statement back. He did give me a reason to doubt this. He would specifically tell me which actresses he would love to bang and which ones he found most attractive. He had posters in his room of skinny girls, big boobs, ass hanging out-the typical. He would admit that he would masturbate to certain girls-fictional, famous or someone we knew. Guys-if you are reading this…please, never do this to your girl/wife/spouse/partner. It does no good for anyone to admit who you find attractive. These actions silently pained me from the inside out. He would even point girls out at the mall he found attractive. Do you honestly think this helped my-self imagine that has already been shifted in such a way of hating myself? It did nothing for me but hate myself harder. In a way, it was my fault for being OK with it and not saying anything, or at least pretending to be OK with it. My non-response was that I was trying to change my looks to be like some of those girls-or a mix of all the girls. I admit, I lost weight and was my skinniest to help “fill his desire” since my natural self wasn’t enough-so I felt. I dyed my hair, I bought clothes and shoes. I wore make up more often. I was so stupid back then-I should have just left at that point.
Back to us worrying about college- or I guess I should say, back to me worrying about it. He wanted to go to a big school-I didn’t even want to go to college. I hated the idea of going to college. I did want to go to college at one point and even discussed it with him; go to school together, live with each other, save money for our wedding but he immediately shut that goal down. I therefore got discouraged. It escalated into a huge argument. The night before we were supposed to attend his senior prom we reached a breaking point. I had worked really hard to fit into this skin tight dress. It was black, sparkling everywhere, it had a low bust line, and there wasn’t even a need for jewelry because the dress and what I had planned would speak for itself. When it came to dances and proms, I feel as if I was ahead of the fashion trends-again, channeling my Lady GaGa. I always went for the strange dresses, the odd colors, the risqué looking styles. I was very excited for that night because it was the first time I ever felt decent, good enough, to wear anything of this sort. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fulfill my excitement with my wonderful dress with my decent-ish body.
The night before his senior prom, we fought really badly, like super bad. We were at his parents’ house, alone and we started discussing college and the future. I told him all my worries, again, looking for reassurance. He and I said very hurtful things to each other-some of the worst things. He ended up breaking up with me after a couple hours of arguing. He told me, “I don’t want you baggage while starting college. Plus you will end up working for daddy your entire like and probably not go to college”. I was in a bad, dark place. I was there for a while, we both knew it and it just kept getting darker. He wasn’t supportive. He left me alone in the basement after our final words of pain to one another, this is where my ‘room’ was when I visited him, he went upstairs to his room and turned the music on as loud as he could to mask my hysterical crying. I still remember the band and songs playing. Being alone was a huge mistake for me. My mind went to the darkest place: I wanted to die. I saw no use to living. At that time, I thought that everything everyone had said negatively about me was right-I had nothing going for me. I was being selfish but yet harmful to myself in the worst of ways. I attempted suicide. First, I had found a large piece of glass and tried to slit my wrist. I didn’t even know how to do it right and honestly, the thought of seeing my blood freaked me out so I tried three times and gave up. I grabbed a bottle of 120 count Tylenol and thought it would be the less gory route. I stopped myself at 10 pills. I packed my bags, left his house and walked half a mile to the nearest gas station. I called my mom to pick me up. It was late already-somewhere around 8PM. I waited at the gas station, outside, alone and completely drained of emotion and feelings. I just gave up on life. I wanted nothing. I didn’t care. I am not saying that I was in the right in the entire situation or relationship. In fact, I was probably really bad the entire time. I needed help and got nothing that would help me. I didn’t know what would. I felt hopeless. Nothing would take that edge off.
I got back home and my mom made an appointment to see my family physician. He prescribed me my first dose of depression pills, Lexapro. I had to have a coming to Jesus conversation with myself about why I was on it. I hated taking pills. I hated the responsibility. I hated that it meant something was wrong. I found no reason to want to take this, I was still in my funk. I did end up taking them. I was on them for three years before I weened myself off of them since I was more stable.
Then, I attended the University of Nebraska Lincoln after spending 2 years at a community college. I had full anxiety about going to a big school but it was also a mixture of excitement. I got to be a student-athlete, not many get the honor of saying that. Not many people got to finish school, while a student-athlete. College was some of the best and worst times I’ve had to deal with. That can be a later blog but in all, I miss college. I did go through some rough times-I was prescribed Lexapro (a higher dosage), Wellbutrin (to help with my energy level), Ambien (to help me sleep) and Zanax (to help with anxiety). I felt like a walking pharmacy. It wasn’t a good feeling. It also wasn’t a good feeling to be labeled ‘anxious’. I do believe in self-fulfilling prophecies. Luckily, my mental health did not get in the way of my success. I was not the ‘star’ on the team that I had hoped for but my grades were amazing, I had honors, I won an award for a paper I wrote in which my name will be forever engraved in the Sociology department, I won a national championship in 2009, I graduated with a 3.65 GPA. When I ordered my graduation ring and my national championship ring, I actually got it sized for each of my middle fingers. I did that because it’s a homage to those haters of mine in my life be it all the teasing, the ones that filled my head with doubt and negative thoughts, the ones that thought I wouldn’t be anything, the ones that thought I wouldn’t or couldn’t go to college, the ones that thought my bowling would be worthless, to my ex, to my brother, and it is homage to myself-I won’t take anyone’s shit anymore.
Fast forward to now, my life is great! I have had a stable job for 5 years and yes I am ‘working for daddy’ but I am not complaining about that because I love working with my dad. People who think I have it easy and handed shit on a silver platter can just go fuck themselves. I also have three of the most loving, compassionate dogs that I have had crazy-dog-lady-dreams about. Truly, they are my children. Anything I want, I buy it myself because I am financially stable. Anywhere I want to go, I can go. I’ve taken trips that people fantasize about. I married my biggest fan, my best friend, my soulmate. I do have some really amazing people in my life. I’ve grown to learn who is there for me and those who are not. I wouldn’t change my friends for anything. They mean the world to me. My parents visit often and I love that. I’ve grown so close to them-not that I wasn’t before but they truly are such huge pieces of my life puzzle. I would be a complete mess without them. Another thing, my mind has never been so clear. Since I described all my bad times, I am sure it makes me sound like a complete psycho and that’s OK-I’m fine with that! I truly believe everyone has their moments in life where they aren’t necessarily proud of but my honest hope is that explaining my journey will give someone reading this, hope within themselves that it is going to be OKAY! I am not saying I had the worst life ever or to feel sympathy for me and I am sure someone out there has had it much, much worse than myself but I ended up fine, great. I also hope you understand my story a little more and where I’ve come from with my journey.
The journey to conquering depression or the thoughts of suicide never stop or start at the month of September. There is another side of depression and suicide that a lot of people do not get to see. The side that doesn’t have to be dark. There is light at the end of the tunnel that doesn’t have to end in death, I promise you but it is up to you to make the changes because unfortunately being as stubborn as I am, I have had to admit to myself that I am not going to be healthy my whole life unless I ask for help and take medication, do things that make me happy and surround myself with people who won’t harm me emotionally, physically or any other way possible. This includes being kind to myself and preventing that type harm from me. Please, do not hesitate to ask for help-whether it’s a friend, a stranger, a doctor, a family member, online chat rooms, a phone call to a help line-there is another way to feeling better and it starts with answering honestly-how you are truly doing. Let down your happy face and tell someone your feelings. I am very fortunate enough to have a best friend within my mother because honestly, without me thinking about what my decision would have done to her-how much of a wreck she would have been, I am so happy I called her and was honest with her. She has helped me through those dark, dark times. Even now, not everything is kittens and rainbows and clouds raining Skittles. I have bad days still and I am okay with that. It isn’t an everyday struggle like it used to once be and I find the good, the happy and the joy of life 90% of the time! I would say that is a tremendous stride in the right direction.
Be kind to people and raise your children to do the same. You never know what your comments or actions may make other people feel. Don’t be part of a reason to cause someone to be in the pain, the pain like I once was in. This disease, depression, it can be invisible and very silent. Most times, you won’t know the harm you do until it’s too late. I actually found my suicide note. I thought about posting it but honestly-it is too much for me to share. It pained me instantly. I cried instantly. It would pain my parents and everyone I mentioned in it. It would pain me to know and think about if my child ever felt the way I described in my note and said the things I did say. It would pain me if my child actually did commit suicide. Remember that thought in your head. Be kind to others. Be kind to your parents. Be kind to you.
kaleena's journey 