Memoir ideas

The Depression/ Dysthymia

My depression settled in as anger towards my parents when I was about 5- or 6-years-old. I could not handle the constant fight. The fact that my parents were too focussed on themselves and not my sister and me did not help one bit.

I believe that my sister and I suffered but we turned into polar opposites. She became the neat freak recluse. While I turned in the screaming throwing, anger temper tantrum type. I would anything to get the attention.

My parents were to busy with life to see my attitude deteriorating or they simply did not care enough to get profrssional help. Therefore I suffered for 19 years before I got help and almost lost my husband and son.

My husband could not take the abuse anymore and gave me an ultimatum to either get help or he was moving out and taking my only son with him. It was then about a week after getting my Master's in Social Work that I put myself in the hospital volunteerily at first.

The doctors immediately diagnosed me as having Dysthymia with a borderline personality disorder and was at a 50% functioning level. My underline cause was the fact that I grew up in a dysfunctional family.

Great! On top of that I was extremely suicidal. I am really not sure how I got my bachelor's and then my master's degrees with the problems I suffered from.

I was a walking disaster waiting to explode. It came down to telling a friend that I was suicidal with a date in mind when I would end my life to get professional help. The date was my sister's birthday May 28th not because it was her birthday but because I would have been done with my social work internship then and have had accomplished all that I wanted to accomplish/ Lucky for me my friend from California called the police department in Columbia Missouri and got me admitted to the hospital.

At the time I was very thankful that she took me seriously. Although, that was the demise of the friendship we once had. She and I have had very heated discussions since then regarding my depression and my life choices one being the fact that I did get pregnant a second time.

Almost, four years later I am so glad I got the help I needed. I now feel like a total different person and hardly think of suicide although I do have my down periods I handle them with medication, writing, and talking through the worst of the episodes. I also have the resources from my psychiatrist to help me talk through the problems I encounter.

For now, life goes on. I will probably always have depression but with medication life is bearable for the time-being.

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I am more myself in solitude. For in solitude I am myself.
-(c)Melia Benjamin, August 2000

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