Five years ago this coming Easter Sunday, I recovered from what I believe to have been a case of clinical depression. This is the fourth post I wrote back then on a private blog about what was going on. For more details, see the first post in this series. And the rest: 2 - 3
3/31/2008 7:00am
This weekend was wonderful! Outside of the death of our refrigerator (which I mentioned in the post previous to this one)
the blessing of being led to the brand-new refrigerator which we bought
for a price that even WE could afford, and then an awesome Sunday
morning pair of services and a great Sunday School and then a (mostly)
relaxing Sunday afternoon (in which I almost finished defeating Paper Mario 2
(that darn Bowser!) have me feeling pretty good this Monday morning. I
did not get up and go to the gym today... I got up at 3:30 to give the
baby a bottle and turned on the weather, and it was one of those
tornadoes-knocking-at-the-door mornings we get in the Oklahoma
springtime. Turns out the twisters were in the neighborhood but not
ringing the doorbell... I think the closest they came was at least 15-20
miles away. I'm not sure we even got very much rain, although we did
get some lightning and thunder. Anyway, I was beat anyway from a kind of
late night, so instead of trying to tough it out and passing out on a
treadmill or something, I decided to get an hour and a half more sleep.
And I'm glad I did.
That late night... I actually got in bed around 9pm or so, which is decidedly not
a late night for me and my wife, but then she came in and we talked for
a little while. During the day two things happened that she was upset
about... the oven isn't working to her satisfaction and probably needs
repair (the pilot light is on but it's not heating up like it's supposed
to), and I discovered that someone has misplaced the hardware we need
to put our crib back together. When my son was 5-6 years old and had
clearly outgrown the crib, we actually gave it away to some friends who
had a new baby but no baby bed. When we had our new baby girl they
gifted it back to us, but it's been sitting up in her room not put
together because she's been sleeping in a bassinet. Well, there have
been a number of people over at our house messing around in the baby
room... my wife is terminally impatient and so I put up with her calling
her friends over to half-do stuff in my house sometimes. For example,
they painted the walls pink... up to about 2 inches from the ceiling.
Nobody has been back to finish whatever the heck they were trying to do.
There is an ugly metal rack shelf hanging off the wall, half-attached.
Then there's the crib, which was brought back but not put back together.
It's been so long since I put it together... in fact, come to think of
it, I don't think I was actually the person who put it together in the
first place, but if I did it was eight years ago. They didn't bring back
the instructions, and either my wife or someone else who was in the
baby room apparently threw away the bolts and other hardware we need to
set the thing up. Either that or our friends didn't bring the hardware
back, but they promise that they did so likely the hardware is either
thrown out (seems unlikely that someone would throw away was was
probably a pretty heavy bag full of new-looking metal bolts and stuff)
or lost.
Anyway, my wife took the opportunity to plunge
into a depression. I don't think she's medically depressed, but she is
hanging on to a very downbeat view of the world. She constantly says
negative things about our neighborhood, our house, people we know,
people we don't know, the neighbors we don't know, the few neighbors we
do know, people of other races, and the world in general. She talks to
people about our neighborhood, and when she recounts the conversations
to me, she puts words in their mouth that are far more negative than
what the people said (I caught her doing that one time this weekend and
called her on it). Anyway, the oven and the crib were apparently enough
to plunge her into the depths of despair, even though both problems can
be easily remedied with just a few hundred dollars. We don't really have
a spare few hundred dollars, but it's not the same as being out on the
street. Replacement hardware can most likely be purchased (she actually
knows who to call for that) and it's not unlikely that the oven just
needs a new thermostat or something. But she was crying, so we talked in
bed for a while until she felt a little better. In light of some of
the reading I've done lately, I asked her if she had been feeling
suicidal... that's the real red light that means you have a problem and
need to see a doctor right away. She has not, so I think she's probably
just down, not clinically depressed. Unless it gets a lot worse, I won't
recommend a doctor.
As for me... I feel so much better
today that I wonder if either I was just in a particularly ugly doldrum
the other day, or maybe I received a healing from God this weekend.
Either is possible. It is also possible that I'm just in a momentary
peak that will go away. However, I do still intend to get out to the gym
frequently while the membership is there, and I also intend to give
myself some more regular diet of the Word of God. It is powerful and
alive. It brings life. I think it can bring life to me. If I fall back
into depression I will not hesitate to talk to my doctor, but I'm going
to wait and see for a while. The last thing I want to do is give my wife
ANOTHER thing to worry about.
Start with the first post in this series here, or continue with the next post here.
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