A Family Thing

I believe that depression is a family disease. It not only has devastating effects on the person who is ill, it also harms family members. Children lose a parent. Husbands lose their wives. Parents lose their children. Family members are often left feeling abandoned, sad, confused and helpless.

In my family, my daughter is probably the one who has been most affected by my depression. She was around nine or ten when my depression manifested itself to such a degree that I could barely function. I rarely left the bed, and when I did, I was either very cranky or very sad. To my daughter it seemed as if she no longer had a mother to take care of her, play with her, and comfort her. Instead she had a blob.

My husband worked a lot. That meant my daughter had to spend a great deal of time at home, taking care of herself. Too often she had to prepare her own meals, do her own laundry, and take on several household chores. There was too much responsibility placed on her very young shoulders.

All my daughter wanted was a mother to love her and hug her. I was not capable of doing that. She began to believe that I was rejecting her. My daughter felt as if I had abandoned her and no longer cared about her. She thought I no longer wanted her to be around me. To some degree my daughter was correct. I did not want anyone around me.

With her feelings of rejection and abandonment, my daughter became very angry with me. Because of my own lack of self worth and self respect, she lost respect for me. I was too tired from the depression to even bother with discipline, so she became a bit unruly. The blob that I was took no notice of any of this.

After I had managed to reach some sort of even keel in my depression recovery, I began to notice her anger, disrespect and lack of discipline. I tried to be a mom again. I failed miserably. Every time I asked her to do something, or correct her behavior it turned into a huge battle. You could see the anger she had for me oozing out at those times. The amount of disrespect she showed me was heart breaking. It felt as if I had lost my daughter forever.

In time I realized that my daughter’s anger and disrespect was her way of protecting herself from me. If she could distance herself from me, then the next time I went away and became a blob, it would not cause her as much pain. She knew she could trust those emotions to protect her. What she could not trust was me.

I knew that if I did not earn her trust back, she would very likely carry those hostile emotions with her for a very long time. They would affect her and her relationships far into the future. It became my priority to show her she could trust me. I spent a great deal of time talking with her and explaining my illness to her. It seemed important to me to help her understand that I had a disease, just like my asthma and diabetes were diseases. I made sure she saw me taking my medicine and went to every one of my therapy appointments. I wanted her to know that I was doing everything I could to manage my disease.

My depression led me to be a very cranky and not nice person, and when I spoke to people you could hear it in my voice. More importantly my daughter could hear it in my voice. So I changed how I spoke to her. I used a lower tone and always tried to sound interested and patient with her. I changed how I disciplined her. She was no longer nine or ten, she was a thirteen year old young woman. She had become older and more mature during the time I was a blob. She needed to be treated that way.

As I continued with my recovery process and my mind became more clear, I was able to pay more attention to my daughter’s emotional needs. Slowly, I started seeing her anger seep away, and I could see that she was becoming less stressed. She started speaking to me respectfully again. We could joke around with each other and we began to forge a bond

My time with her recently has been beyond wonderful. We do girlie things together, fixing each other’s hair, giving each other fashion advice (her sense of fashion is much better than mine), and sharing reading material. She feels close enough to me again that one of her missions in life has become making me a little nutty every day.  She likes to sneak up behind me when I am sitting on the couch, and then jump up shouting "Boo!"  My screams and almost heart attack that she gives me is guaranteed to cause her to laugh hysterically.  By far though the thing that pushes me toward the edge of nutty the fastest is a certain question she asks me every day, all day long.

"Hey mom!  Guess What?"
What?
"Chicken Butt!"

It seems as if she genuinely enjoys spending time with me now. I know I enjoy spending time with her, even when she is doing her best to make me nutty.

My daughter reads everything I write.  It has been a way for her to get to know me and also to learn how my disease affects me. Since I write about my family often, my writing has also allowed her a glimpse into my emotions and feelings.

I never realized that she kept looking for something that was totally devoted to her.  About a week before I wrote this, she asked me if I would write something about her.  I believed, and still do, that she needed to see how I felt about her in writing.  Once I completed this writing piece, I had her review it to make sure it met with her approval before I submitted it.  Not only did it meet with her approval, it filled an emotional need that she had.  Instead of just hearing me say that I love her and how hard I have been working to repair our relationship, she now has it in writing.