Depression – Here I Come!

If my mother hadn’t died from stage 4, cervical cancer, she would have turned 76 today.

I don’t know why this is so important to me, when I hated her more each day.

I am angry that cancer got her so young.

But why, after all she had done??

If she’d gone to a doctor to get checked out,

She would have lived, I have no doubt.

She never would go to get seen,

Wouldn’t take me until my pain was keen,

Now I feel I have no one,

Who knows all my father had done,

He too has passed away,

I think of him never, in a good way.

I feel so very much alone,

I sit and wait by the phone,

There is no one I can see real soon,

The silence echos like a boom.

I’m going backwards to a past,

A time when good things never last.

Depression comes, and then it goes,

How long it will last, no one knows.

When Does The End Really End?

English: Jericho House Long stay care for adults with mental illness and /or alcohol dependence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Several times, I have nearly come to an end; severe auto accidents, including one with a fatality.  Broke my jaw in one of those, that’s why they built in seat belts.  Hadn’t been back on the road more than a minute or two, on the Interstate, when we were hit head-on by another vehicle, which then hit the car behind us. Five people in our car, with two of them being hospitalized. It was after a week of not being able to open my mouth or chew, that my broken jaw was discovered. Six weeks wired shut over that one.

But when my life started sliding down into the depths of mental illness, there were several times where it could have been the end, but the actions of others kept me alive. Alive to a life I didn’t want to be living in.

The word was never said out loud, but it was implied. Suicide. After many hospitalizations and medication changes, I started to climb out of the trenches. I moved to a safe neighborhood, and started to live again.

I started playing my piano, my guitar, but was living a solitary life. I started trying to change other people’s habits, because they bothered me. I got into a lot of arguments over all of that, and I developed a reputation, and it wasn’t a good one.

But I didn’t care. I continued trying to control others, paying little attention to my own actions.

It took a long time before I realized that I had no friends, no life. I started staying by myself so that I wouldn’t be out there trying to change everyone else. I worked on changing myself.

Slowly, but steadily, I started climbing out of the trenches again, with a new attitude, and a new look at those around me. If I thought of something bad, I kept my mouth shut. I eventually got to where I didn’t even care about how other people were, I started getting along with everyone.

I found God, and a good church, and continued working on myself. Then I got the devastating news . . . MS and a 9mm aneurysm on my inner carotid artery. It was a Friday the 13th of all days, when I was told this by the neurologist.

Now, my look on life took a whole new direction. I was saved from the end by brain surgery for the aneurysm. I started taking shots for the MS, after several weeks of KT and OT, I was released from the hospital.

Now, my life seems to have no meaning, no objective. I stopped playing the piano and the guitar. I stopped everything. I knew that my life could quite possibly come to an earlier end than I had previously thought, and not in a very pleasant manner at that.

Now the desire for the end is back. I don’t want to see myself lying in a bed, wearing diapers and not remembering things. I think about the end a lot. Then I talk with someone who saves me, again, for awhile.

But this new cycle has settled in. I slide down, and someone reaches out and drags me back up, temporarily, then I start sliding down again. It has become a routine, and I never know when the end is really . . . the end.

~ van ~